re: #470 Justanotherhuman

Rep John Mica (R-FL) calls Amtrak a “soviet style operation”. Idiot. This is why so many loathe your party.

“Republicans have long looked to Amtrak as a focus of its efforts to cut domestic spending broadly, and many see cutting funding for the train system as a bid to privatize it. On Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the New York-bound train crashed, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee voted to reduce grants to Amtrak by $252 million — a drop of about 15% from last year’s level.”

cnn.com

Do remember that is from the capital expenditures budget (which they claim has no impact on safety) not the operations budget. The actual budget was passed 2008 in the wake of another deadly crash. That bill ran out in 2013 and has been limping along ever since.

washingtonpost.com

Given the status of the infrastructure, claiming that capital expenditure cuts don’t impact safety is quite the despicable statement however.

The use of Amtrak as a political football for partisan purposes will continue by both parties and the only thing that will change is the number of deaths of riders that will get used by each side to score budget points rather than as a wake up call to the fact that our nation is disintegrating because of the anti-tax greed of the puppet masters of the House majority party.