Political Quotes

“My amendment would reduce the amount appropriated for the operating grants to Amtrak by $340 million and increase the spending reduction account by the same amount. This reduction would eliminate all operating funds for Amtrak. My amendment to some might be quite harsh, but I suspect that my colleagues who support Amtrak will argue that since the underlying bill keeps funding at concurrent levels, we should leave the embattled entity alone. But the committee report for this bill gives us plenty of reasons why we shouldn't allow Amtrak to continue at the status quo. The first sentence in the committee report says: Amtrak runs a deficit each year and requires a Federal subsidy to cover both operating losses and capital improvements. A couple of paragraphs later it says: Although the Northeast corridor is profitable, the federally mandated services such as long-distance and State- supported routes sustain large losses that cannot be overcome by Amtrak's profitable services. Let's talk about the long-distance routes, Mr. Chairman. According to Amtrak's fiscal year 2013 ridership tables, the long- distance routes experienced the highest ridership in 20 years at 4.8 million passengers. That sounds pretty good. But despite this growth, these routes still lost $587 million last year. In other words, for every passenger who traveled on one of Amtrak's long-distance routes last year, Amtrak lost $122.29.…”