John W. Olver: “this is an effort to bring Amtrak to a stop, simply. Over the last couple of years, we have had the President recommend…”

“this is an effort to bring Amtrak to a stop, simply. Over the last couple of years, we have had the President recommend no funding for Amtrak. We have refused that and funded them so they could continue service at the level that they were. We have added reform programs to them to require substantial savings out of the first-class service and the meals service and things of that sort, which have been quite substantial, and they have saved each year $80 million to $100 million a year on that program. So we are moving to make the system more efficient, though there is not any passenger rail system anywhere in this world that operates without some operating subsidy. Where we have public transportation systems, any subway system, the fares never get to as high as 50 percent of the cost of the service, and the remaining service is then part of a subsidy for the operation of that service. In fact, most of our transit programs function at considerably less than a 50-percent fare box amount. So Amtrak is not any different from any other rail program which provides great energy efficiency in the movement of large numbers of people, and it is very important in our very densely populated corridors. We as a Congress have then added the idea of having a national rail system that covers long-distance rail. And those even require a greater subsidy, but it has been our decision to do that over the years. We have to have a rail program in this country.”