John Kerry: “This is a good bill, Mr. President, responsibly and carefully assembled by the distinguished chairman, the ranking…”

“This is a good bill, Mr. President, responsibly and carefully assembled by the distinguished chairman, the ranking Democratic member, the subcommittee and its staff. I compliment them on their work and support its passage. Even so, Mr. President, due to the very difficult budget environment in which we are laboring, this bill does not do complete justice to what I believe are vital transportation infrastructure needs, a reality on which I believe I could find considerable agreement with the chairman and ranking member. For example, Massachusetts and other States need more funding for mass transit and passenger rail than the committee could provide. Federal funding for Amtrak has declined by approximately one-quarter since 1995. This year, the Senate bill appropriates $592 million for Amtrak for 1997 which is $130 million more than the House provided. I commend the committee for at least including this amount for Amtrak because the House's amount is a slow-motion death penalty. The capital-intensive nature of passenger rail makes it unlikely to survive as a viable transportation mode without some kind of Government support. And I do not know why we find that surprising. We heavily subsidize scheduled air travel, general aviation, and highways. It is entirely appropriate--and beneficial to our Nation--that we subsidize passenger rail.”