Marcy Kaptur: “I thank our fine chairman from Massachusetts for recognizing this Buckeye. And I thank Chairman Olver for doing a…”

“I thank our fine chairman from Massachusetts for recognizing this Buckeye. And I thank Chairman Olver for doing a phenomenal job on this bill. And also Ranking Member Knollenberg of Michigan, my sister State, thank you so very much for your fine work. To both these gentlemen, let me thank them for their outstanding leadership and for their commitment to investments in America. We see so much money going abroad, indeed billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, and these gentlemen have done something for our country, for our fundamental infrastructure, for transportation, and for housing, the most important investment any American has, their most important form of savings. In the transportation area, I want to just focus in one area important to Ohio, and that is Amtrak. This bill is funded at a level of $1.4 billion. And the funding in this bill is providing critical capital and operating assistance to maintain our national passenger rail system in a manner that is environmentally friendly and necessary. No major industrial country in the world does not have a modern rail system. We need a ways to go in order to make ours better. This bill takes a step in that direction. Though President Bush and some of his allies in Congress were trying to kill passenger rail service in the country, they cannot succeed, because Amtrak is far too important for the Nation. In 2006, more than 24 million passengers traveled on Amtrak.”