Political Quotes

“I compliment the chairman and ranking member of the Commerce Committee for work on airline safety. I know my friend from South Carolina feels strongly about port safety and rail safety as well. However, I say to my colleague, who happens to be presiding today and was a former board member of Amtrak, I am, as the saying goes, tired of getting stiffed around here. I have been a Senator for 28½ years. I have tried over that 28½ years to put Amtrak in a position where it can run safely, securely, and efficiently. I have gotten promise after promise after promise of support and cooperation, and always procedurally I end up being in a position where Amtrak gets left out. Let's talk about security for a moment. The Senator from Delaware and I don't have a major airport; we have a large airport but no major commercial airport in our State. We fly commercially in and out of Philadelphia or Baltimore, sometimes. We know how important air safety is. We know how important to our economy it is. I note, by the way, with all the difficulty, understandably, of the airlines--there is apprehension on behalf of the American people to get on an airplane, with the necessary cancellations of flights because they don't have enough people flying--there has been standing room only on Amtrak trains, we are putting more and more trains in the northeast corridor, and there is standing room only on most of them.”