Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill to raise the cap on rail liability in cases of gross negligence. This bill was originally introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Elton Gallegly of the 24th District of California, and I thank him for all of his hard work on it. When Congress passed the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act in 1997, it included a small provision imposing a strict cap on liability in railroad crashes. The cap is now contained in 49 U.S.C. Sec. 28103 and states that the ``aggregate allowable awards to all rail passengers, against all defendants, for all claims, including claims for punitive damages, arising from a single accident or incident, shall not exceed $200,000,000.'' What this means is that regardless of the circumstances no matter how many people are killed or injured in a train crash, and no matter what caused the crash total liability for all of the passengers hurt or killed in the crash cannot exceed $200 million. The problem is that when a real catastrophe occurs, this number is just not sufficient and there is no way around it. Let me tell you what happened 2 years ago in California. On September 12, 2008, a commuter train in Chatsworth, California carrying more than 200 people crashed head-on into a freight train. The carnage from this crash was unspeakable. Twenty-five people were killed. Their bodies, many torn to pieces, had to be extracted from heaps of steel and wreckage. Another 101 people were injured.…”