Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, by gutting investments in transportation and housing, the majority is proposing to bring our Nation backward at a time when we must be building the infrastructure needed to compete and win in a competitive global economy.

For example, with today's legislation, the majority is proposing to slash the Community Development Block Grant program by almost half. These cuts would be devastating to the working poor in communities like Rochester, New York, which I represent, where block grants provide housing assistance and investments in neighborhoods that are woefully underserved.

Furthermore, the majority is proposing to gut investments in infrastructure projects, and particularly passenger rail. They do so at a time when rail ridership continues to grow across the country.

In Rochester, the Amtrak ridership has been increased by 89 percent since 2008, despite the fact that decades of underinvestment have resulted in aging rails, delayed trains we have to sidetrack to let the freight go by, and a crumbling train station.

I want to say something about this train station. It was built over 45 years ago as a temporary train station. It has not, in all these years, been ADA compliant. You cannot imagine what it is like to get somebody in a wheelchair from the station up onto the train, or to watch a mother with a stroller struggle to get up there because it is impossible to do. 144,000 people went through that railroad station last year, and they deserve something more like the 21st century.

I have fought years to improve train travel; and we are finally getting to build, with a TIGER grant, a new intermodal station in the heart of the city. Like countless other cities and towns, our work has been supported by Federal TIGER grants, which have provided vital support in modernizing our city's infrastructure. The funding is allowing Rochester and countless other communities to build the roads, rails, and runways we need to compete for the jobs of the future. But we cannot allow that to happen if we cut out the very means by which we fund them.

Ridership, as I have said, on Amtrak's high-speed Acela, which I wish we had--we only have one sort-of-high-speed rail in New York--continues to reach record highs, and States like California and Illinois and North Carolina are already building high-speed rail lines. That is terribly important.

As cochair of the bicameral Congressional High-Speed Passenger Rail Caucus, I will soon be joined today by fellow members who realize the incredible value of Amtrak and nationwide passenger rail to our country.

The truth is that our rail system reaches throughout our economy and supports tens of thousands of jobs. The bill before us today endangers these jobs, including the jobs of 20,000 Amtrak employees and the private businesses who sold $1.3 billion worth of domestic goods and services to Amtrak last year.

As my colleagues will tell you, endangering jobs today and our economy is a recipe for failure, especially at a time when our infrastructure really needs to be upgraded. As we rebuild places like Afghanistan, it always makes me so angry. If they are going to be building high-speed rail there, I want to build it in New York, in America somewhere.

Let me tell you this story, which I think will bring it home to all of you.

In 1893, the president of New York Central Railroad, for reasons I'm not really clear, lived way out in upstate New York. He had to commute to New York City every day during the week and spent the weekends at home. In 1893, they decided they would have a race with steam engines, so they raced the few miles between Buffalo and Rochester to see which one of those engines were the fastest. Mr. Chair, they set a world record by traveling at 112 1/2 miles an hour between Rochester and Buffalo.

Today, we are on the same track. It hasn't been improved any, but we can't go anywhere near like that. There is no way we can get even close to 80 miles an hour. We can't do that. Mostly it is about 40. It takes a lot longer now to travel from Rochester to Buffalo than it did in 1893.

Crumbling infrastructure like this is not only harmful to our economy but is an embarrassment to a Nation that has never been scared to dream big, and while it is true that our Nation has faced challenges over the past few years, we need big answers.

The proposed bill fails our country now and into the future. Now is not the moment to stop investing in our country nor is it the time to resign ourselves to a future of diminished success. Instead, it is a time to roll up our sleeves and to put our country back to work.

We can answer the call of a generation by investing in the future, and we can build a better, more prosperous America one road, one runway, and one rail line at a time. So I urge my colleagues to reject the cynical and backwards-looking legislation that is before us.

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