Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill as well. I want to thank Ranking Member Denham, Chairman Shuster, and Ranking Member DeFazio for taking the lead on this bill. Very simply, this is the simplest bill in the world, to be perfectly honest. It gets all the stakeholders together to simply take a look at the current responses we have when there is a disaster relative to rail accidents. It gets them all in one room to take a look at best practices to figure out what they can do better and to see if resources are allocated well. It is not just Washington insiders. It includes people from the rail industry, people from the labor community, and people from the public safety community at local and State levels. It gets everybody at the table to do things that Congress is not equipped to do appropriately. We are not the safety experts; they are. There is a time limit. This is not one of those endless committees that is going to sit there forever. For 1 year, they get together, work it out amongst themselves, and come back with recommendations to us so that we can do our job well, which is to support the people actually suppressing these fires and maintaining the safety of our communities. Again, I rise in support of this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.”