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Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2007

Date: June 13, 2006
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Transportation


TRANSPORTATION, TREASURY, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, THE JUDICIARY, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007

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Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today offering this amendment with my good friend, Mr. Oberstar from Minnesota, the ranking member of the full Transportation Committee. I will yield him half of my time when he arrives on the floor.

Unlike aviation, highways and transit, there is no dedicated funding for investing in our Nation's passenger rail service. This is a pretty simple amendment. All it does is restore $214 million to the Amtrak account, taking it to $1.114 billion, which is still about $300 million less than we had during the course of last year's discussion.

As the chairman of the Railroad Subcommittee, we have had exhaustive hearings, oversight hearings, dealing with the Amtrak situation, and we have done a number of things. The CEO has been fired by the board. We have looked at their food service. They have entered into a new food service contract. If you look at this bill, and I want to commend Mr. Knollenberg, because last year he had an impossible task. The President sent up a budget of zero for Amtrak. We had an amendment process that we went through this time.

This time we are up to $900 million in the bill, which I give him great credit for. But if you look at that $900 million, there is only $500 million for capital expenditures, out of which has to come a debt service of $280 million, which only leaves $220 million for the capital needs of this country for Amtrak, for passenger rail.

There is nothing for operation, and I know that the response to that is going to be that there are some incentive grants in the bill. But that really does not get the thing done.

Mr. Chairman, we have tried to be judicious with this amendment and looked for pots of money located within the bill solely within the jurisdiction of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I think we have achieved that.

I believe it is a good amendment and I urge adoption by my colleagues.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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