Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Chairman and my colleagues, first of all, I want to thank both sides of the aisle, particularly the leadership of Chairman Shuster, Mr. DeFazio, Mr. Capuano, Mr. Denham and others for all working together in a bipartisan effort. The last rail reauthorization I did with Mr. Oberstar was the first one we had done in about 10 years. That was the precedent to this bill, and we need to do that. We need to act responsibly. We need to improve passenger rail service in the United States. We need to take Amtrak and this country from a Third World passenger rail service with a Soviet-style operation into the 21st century. I think we can begin to do that with the amendment that I have offered here today and that we have a bipartisan agreement on. It is not everything I would like. I am going to try to strengthen it as it moves through the process. This amendment would potentially open the Northeast corridor to express service from Washington, D.C., to New York City and to Boston, and it is great to have Mr. Capuano here. Right now, the service from Boston to New York City runs 68 miles an hour on average. That is Third World kind of operations. I believe that we could have express service for less than 2\1/2\ hours in that corridor, closer to 2 hours with this amendment. Right now, it goes 83 miles an hour. That is our high-speed service in the United States.…”