Cory Booker

But what you're talking about, and especially the four business units you outlined, that's a great area for a bipartisan coalition.

In New Jersey, we know that the Northeast Corridor is our lifeblood. We use it to get to work. We use it to get to school.

So that's the multiplier effect.

I am urging your committee to do everything possible to make sure that Congress provides funding for Amtrak to proceed immediately with the Gateway rail tunnel.

I urge you to make these policies and investments for the NEC a keystone of the upcoming rail reauthorization bill.

There is no greater time than now to make these investments.

If we ran this like America, Inc., it would be different.

We've learned this lesson the hard way. We saw when Super Storm Sandy came the impact it had on the Northeast Corridor.

We are dramatically high.

The Northeast Corridor is incredible. The more I dig down in this valuable corridor, the more we realize it is an indispensable transportation asset and a profound national economic driver.

We cannot wait until a crisis to act, because at that point it will be untenable.

Well, I have a lot of hope for PRIIA. I think that, number one, we're going to get more investment.

What we're digging into is trying to figure out the best ways in the bill I introduced about trying to create a stable, long-term funding mechanism.

What frustrates me as a new Senator is that our country has slipped from our greatest generation being number one across these indices to now just challenging issues.

It's probably best termed, in the official graduate school political science terminology, it's the 'mishegoss' in Congress.

The economic benefits to these projects would be enormous.

But I think this is really the test moment for us.

That's a critical link.

the fact that I'm touching this gavel right now is giving me such an intoxicating feeling of power.

So my intention, frankly one of my main missions in the Senate, is to work in a bipartisan manner to get things done.

The problem is that parts of this infrastructure are more than a century old.

this is actually a really, really important, I think vitally important topic that we're hearing.

Eighty-five percent of those polled predict disaster. That sounds like my first poll when I was entering politics.

I would ask you to give favorable consideration to this proposal, and to work with us to fund and launch this project, because, as I stated in the beginning, the time to build it is now.

Congress can play a role in helping to streamline all these cross-authorities that are going on.