Political Quotes

“Mr. President, just a quick comment, if I may, about this tragedy that is now up to 7 deaths and about 150 people who were injured in this Amtrak derailment. There was a report out of the Wall Street Journal just a few minutes ago that apparently the train was going 100 miles per hour going into a curve and that the curve speed should have been 50 miles per hour. If that is the case, that would indicate the conductor would not have been aware of what was happening or was negligent in what was happening. But there is something we can do about that, and it is called positive train control. Indeed, this is an issue which is facing all of the railroads. The infrastructure is very expensive, and the question is, How much should it be delayed in the future because it is not ready to go? Positive train control would--in places where there is potential danger or the potential of two trains colliding, there is automatic monitoring, and electronically it would change the speed of the train. Interestingly, Amtrak in the Northeast corridor already has some of this positive train control on the tracks, but apparently it did not at this particular location, in which case, that begs the question, What do we need to do if this is ultimately, by the NTSB investigation, determined to be the cause? One of the things this Senator would suggest is that we certainly do not want to cut Amtrak's budget. To the contrary, I would think we would want to increase Amtrak's budget.…”