Frank Lautenberg: “the obvious obstinacy at getting this on the floor seems to ignore the fact that you almost can't get anyplace from here…”

“the obvious obstinacy at getting this on the floor seems to ignore the fact that you almost can't get anyplace from here or there without enormous delays, without enormous congestion, and with pollution problems, et cetera. Is it understood, I ask the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, how difficult it is for the country right now? You can't get an airplane that will leave on time or arrive on time with any degree of certainty. I, for instance, travel from here up to Newark or to LaGuardia Airport, both of which are convenient to my home in New Jersey, and a flight that takes 36 minutes of air time takes 22 hours to get there, more often than not. So do the Senator's friends understand that this is a crisis moment for this country of ours? We have seen incidents so many times where the absence of a rail system--for instance, we threw away billions of dollars some years ago because nuclear powerplants that were built, ready to operate, couldn't get a license to go because there weren't satisfactory evacuation routes and it had to be by rail because the highways were unable to provide for it. If we look at Katrina and we see how much better we could have done if rail was sufficiently employed down there, and we didn't get it, and people were jammed and stuck in there. There is no difference in what--when you cross the aisle, when you ask the question: Do we want to get things operating better?”