Frank Lautenberg: “I rise to support the Specter amendment. I hope it will prevail for reasons that I don't think have been discussed thus…”

“I rise to support the Specter amendment. I hope it will prevail for reasons that I don't think have been discussed thus far. One thing that we are not talking about is whether or not, since legislation was passed some time ago that might be more restrictive to Amtrak, the conditions have changed. One need not be a transportation engineer to know you can't get off the ground at airports. I waited the other day 5 hours for a flight to go to New Jersey from here. We were on the ground 5 hours. There are almost no airports of any size that aren't constantly late. There aren't places that one can travel by car or by bus that you can get where you want to be in a reliable period of time. We saw the front page news on the Washington Post 2 days ago about the disappearance of mountaintops, surrounded by smog, because the country is being overwhelmed by transportation and environmental problems. Conditions have changed. When we want to make comparisons between Amtrak and private businesses, we have to recognize there is no place in this world, no place, where there isn't a subsidy provided for rail service so people can travel from place to place--such as the subsidy we offer when we build airports and we provide and charge the passengers a tax to ride in an airplane. We have a passenger facility charge. Or that if one wants to buy gas at a gas station, we have a Federal tax; we have State taxes. Amtrak doesn't have that ability. Amtrak is the poor stepchild.…”