Political Quotes

“Now, the question is raised: Why should we spend money on Amtrak for capital funding when it loses money? The gentleman asked that. Well, the answer is almost no transportation modality in this country makes money. That's why we had to form Amtrak in the first place. You look at trucking, for instance. You look at trucking. We support the interstate highway system without which the trucks couldn't operate. Someone may say, well, the trucks pay diesel fuel taxes; they support the highway system. Not really. One 18-wheeler of 70,000 pounds does 10,000 times the damage, the wear and tear, the vibration damage to a highway as an automobile, yet the trucks don't pay 10,000 times the gasoline tax as the automobile driver does. If we asked them to do so, trucking would be uneconomic. I'm not suggesting we should, obviously, because we need a trucking industry. By the same token, we need rail transportation because rail is three times as energy efficient per ton mile for freight.”