Steve Rothman: “first allow me to thank my subcommittee chairman and his staff for being so extraordinarily cooperative and bipartisan…”

“first allow me to thank my subcommittee chairman and his staff for being so extraordinarily cooperative and bipartisan in word and deed when it came to the needs of everyone on our subcommittee, Republican and Democrat. We on our side of the aisle believe there was not a sufficient budgetary allocation to our Subcommittee on Transportation. But within the confines of what we were given under the budget resolution, I believe that our chairman and his staff, my ranking member, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), and his staff put together a wonderful bill, which needed help on Amtrak, which both sides of the aisle fixed about an hour ago. So it does pain me somewhat to find out that there is an effort now to undo the solution that would have helped us keep intact a national rail system. A national rail system. Is that some wild idea that we just have here in America? No. They have it all over the world. All over Europe. China is investing tens of billions of dollars in their rail system, their infrastructure. Japan. Talk about rail system. They have the bullet trains. Where we here in the United States of America are struggling along with trains whose brake systems failed on these antiquated rail beds, et cetera. We are the greatest country in the world, and we are not keeping up with our infrastructure needs. That is wrong.…”