Political Quotes

“I congratulate all who had anything to do with putting this together, particularly the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Shuster]. Just 24 hours ago, it was very dark as far as the future of Amtrak was concerned, and a lot of us were pleading to sit down and see if this could be worked out. A lot of individuals undertook to do that, and that is in the best interests of this country. We have resolved the problems of the labor issues, the problems of the legal liability issues, the problems of the board issues that were so important. Hopefully now, with the release of the capital improvement money as well as what we are doing in this reauthorization, Amtrak can become self-sufficient once and for all by the year 2002. We must improve passenger rail service. It is of vital importance to us. Our Governor is very involved, is on this board. But I think we have an obligation to make passenger rail service in the United States of America as great as our highway system is, our air system, which is the greatest in the world. It is going to take a lot of work to do it, but we have set the stage so that that can be done. So everybody that had anything to do with the resolution of this, I thank my colleagues and the country thanks to you, and we will see the benefit that will come from it.”