'This Week' Transcript 3-5-23: Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Dan Sullivan & Marianne Williamson

Interview

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Yes. Last night I spoke to Congressman Kerry, Governor DeWine, the sheriff in Clark County. They're pretty satisfied with Norfolk Southern's response there. I'm not entirely satisfied because I want to know -- there's some -- there is -- there are some sort of remnants of something that might have been in those cars. Those cars were mostly empty. But I want to know if there are any contaminants sort of left in those mostly empty cars that might have affected Clark County near the fairgrounds, all the way into Springfield. In this -- this car -- this train was over 200 cars, which is 50 more cars that the East Palestine train. So, the railroad's got a lot of questions they've got to answer and they really haven't done it very well yet, as you know.

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Well, we -- people are still concerned. My couple trips in the last two weeks I've made to East Palestine. And the railroad's still not answering all the questions. They show me -- keep this in mind, this railroad -- this -- the Norfolk Southern has done huge stock buy buybacks. Two years ago, $3 billion. This past year they were about to do another even bigger stock buyback. They backed off after the rail crash, after the derailment. But they've -- at the same time, a third of their workforce -- they've laid off a third of their workforce. So, it's clear that their greed and incompetence always takes precedent over making their workers safe, and making communities safe that they go through. And as the governor said, that these trains carrying hazardous material will come into Ohio and they don't have to notify the state that they're here. They don't have to notify local fire departments.

I've been to the fire station in East Palestine. They have one full-time chief and the rest are volunteers. They're not -- volunteers, they're not trained to deal with hazmat. So, the railroads continue to hold back information. The railroads continue to enrich their executives at the expense of public safety and public health and lay off workers and compromise on safety.

So, the fact -- Ohio's now had four derailments. As of yesterday, four derailments in the last five months. East Palestine was the most serious, but we still have questions or there -- about these other derailments too.

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Well, it does -- it does a number of things. First of all, it requires notification you're coming into the state carrying hazardous material. You're going to notify the governor's office, who will then notify local communities. We know that wheel bearings have been the cause of most -- overheated wheel bearings. We're not doing the inspections well. That will change. We want minimal crews. The railroads want to be able to drive 150, 200 cars through a community with one -- one engineer in that car, one person, one staff person, because they keep laying off people.

We want to increase the fines. The fines for safety have averaged about $10,000 over the last few years to Norfolk Southern, on CSX, in the other big railroads. That's just pennies on the dollar, a cost of doing business and it's no incentive to make it safer. So, we will significantly up those -- those fines.

And again, we want to see more inspections. These inspections, because they've laid off so many workers, they're really just cursory inspections on the rails, on the -- on the coupling of the cars, on the locomotives. When you lay off a third of the workforce, you -- you clearly are compromising the work that those workers do. And they simply can't keep up with the safety inspections. So, the bill I've introduced with Senator Vance, we have two other Republicans and two other Democrats. As you said in the outset of the show, that it shouldn't take a rail disaster to get us working together like that. And that's what we're going to be doing.

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I think our chances in the Senate are good. I make no predictions in the House. I can't believe -- I mean -- you know, keep in mind who has the influence in the House of Representatives.

The big railroads have weakened safety rules or resisted safety rules for years. I'm hopeful -- there are lobbyists who -- they've given a lot of money, I assume, to House Republicans that -- I don't know about that chairman in particular, but I am very concerned about the power of the railroads to beat back safety regulations.

But you'd think a disaster that happened in East Palestine would have gotten their attention. And I -- you know, East Palestine are Republican -- is mostly a Republican community, as the whole county is, but this shouldn't -- they -- they want this fixed. They don't care about partisan politics here.

They care that this corporation continues to weaken safety rules, continues to be immensely profitable while undermining public health, public safety for their workers and for the communities that they -- that they drive through with their 150, 200-railcar trains.

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I don't think a lot about that. I've spent much of the last three months before this train derailing doing roundtables in Findlay and Lima and Wilmington and Elyria and Ravenna, all over the state. Roundtables on the PACT Act, which is going to make a huge difference.

And one of the ways it's connected to this -- as you know, George, that the exposure to these football field-sized burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, tens and tens of thousands of Ohio veterans were exposed to these, and we actually -- we wrote a law that's taking effect where we list 23 illnesses and -- that could come about from this exposure.

So, if you're a veteran and you've had exposure with those burn pits, you present with any of those 23 illnesses, you automatically get care at a VAC-backed (ph) or a big V.A. hospital.

I want to sort of pattern what we're doing in East Palestine. If people have developed, two, three, five years from now, bronchial illnesses or cancers, perhaps brought on by their breathing this air or drinking the water or exposure to the soil -- and we've got to keep testing -- but that Norfolk Southern is going to pay for that by taking care of their healthcare, whether it's two or five years or 10 years down the road, the way the government now that the V.A. is taking care of people with the PACT Act.

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Sure, George. Thank you.

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