James Norton: “I thank the gentlewoman for making that point, because I hope we do not have to lose it before people understand how…”

“I thank the gentlewoman for making that point, because I hope we do not have to lose it before people understand how much they need it. The notion of bankruptcy, well, there is a bankruptcy of policy, if bankruptcy is all one can think about for a public service that the country cannot do without. We know that bankruptcy has not done anything for the airlines. We have had several airlines go into bankruptcy. They go, they come out, but because they are a public service, they have to go a certain number of places. And guess what? They need some kind of subsidy, and they certainly have gotten some, even though we have required them to operate as businesses. We used to require the railroads to operate as businesses; but beginning in 1971, the Congress understood that the business model did not work for railroads. It does not work for railroads anywhere in the United States. Yet that is what we have here: bankruptcy. Because policy is being determined by ideology, the ideology that says that if the private sector cannot do it, then maybe we do not need it, and that is why the gentlewoman's point is so important. Somebody needs to get up and tell the Congress and tell the administration that they do need it. It is not ideology that should decide whether the Nation is going to have railroads; it is old fashioned American pragmatism. We took them over, eliminating half of the lines in 1971, because the private sector said, hey, there is no profit in this.”