Political Quotes

“I won't take the 5 minutes, but I just wanted to complete a couple of comments on Amtrak from the discussion of the last amendment. That amendment, which has now been passed--I thought it wasn't--on a voice vote, but which has been passed subject to a vote on the floor presumably tomorrow, if adopted, will, as Mr. Olver said, essentially eliminate all capital funding for Amtrak after debt service is taken care of, all capital funding. 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. It's far more energy efficient. I don't have the figure, per passenger.…”