Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act of 2007

Floor Speech

FEDERAL RAILROAD SAFETY IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - September 29, 2008)

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Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I do appreciate the leadership on this bill. I am particularly honored to serve with John Warner. He has been involved with so many great victories here, great leadership. He will certainly be missed.

I don't want to be the one to rain on the parade here because I certainly know there are some good improvements in this bill. Obviously, there is some disagreement whether this bill should go through. The Heritage Foundation calls it the biggest earmark in history. We do have to recognize that with this, on top of the over $20 billion in earmarks we passed last week, the American people have to be looking in on us and asking, What are they thinking?

If we adopt this cloture motion, we are setting up 30 hours of debate on what I am sure to many is an important bill, but this is in a time when we are talking about a financial crisis of proportions we have not seen since the Great Depression. We have instilled panic in the American people, and people are working around the clock to determine whether we should spend $700 billion to intrude into the private markets.

To take 30 hours during this time is to suggest to the American people it is business as usual here while we have a crisis and panic on the outside. I encourage my colleagues to let's put this off until later. Whether you support it or you don't, this is not the time to tell the American people one thing and to proceed as it it is business as usual. We should not be spending 30 hours of debate on an Amtrak bill, with the pork that has been added to it, at a time when we need to be addressing a crisis in America.

I thank the leadership for all their work on this bill.

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