On the recordJune 4, 2015
I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy. I appreciate him referencing the Coast Starlight. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Congress has created a difficult situation for Amtrak, consistently shortchanging maintenance and capital. As my good friend from North Carolina points out, all modes of transportation in this country are subsidized by the public. Amtrak is no exception. It provides a variety of services for people. We are watching on the West Coast ridership increase. It provides an important opportunity for businesspeople. If you talk to businesspeople in Seattle, in Portland, they would say they would like the Federal Government to invest more. It has made a big difference for how they conduct business. Part of the strength is having a network. Make no mistake, we are, in fact, going to have a passenger rail network in the United States, despite consistent efforts to chop away and minimize it. China, 6 years ago, had no high-speed rail. Today, they are moving more passengers than the entire air fleet in the United States. We will have higher speed rail, but the question is whether we are going to build on what we have got--American built, American managed--or we will wait until it deteriorates, gets so bad that we end up with a design- build to China, paying more, shipping the profits and the work overseas. I would suggest it is far better to protect what we have now, build on the progress, not undo the network, and most certainly reject this amendment.
