Frank Lautenberg

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is a satisfactory arrangement, and I consider it to be very fair.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Objection.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. We object.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, we look forward to a full discussion of this amendment. We do provide in the bill an opportunity for a competitive review on two lines. Whether it should be expanded is something we will want to talk about. We think that two lines each and every year can be competed for and reviewed by Amtrak. We have to examine it here. But our inclination is to oppose this. But we will have a discussion about it at such a time as we go to a vote. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 3:15 today, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Sununu amendment No. 3446, with no amendment in order to the amendment prior to the vote; and that the 4 minutes immediately prior to the vote be divided as follows: 1 minute each for Senator Lautenberg, myself, and Senator Lott, or our designees, and 2 minutes for Senator Sununu.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Madam President, we are examining an amendment offered by Senator Sununu. As we have just heard, we have been through this somewhat before. The amendment would open to privatization all of Amtrak's long-distance and corridor train routes and give Federal funding to private companies to do what Amtrak does with no additional contract oversight. We saw something with the British experience--that there is potential for disaster when you fully privatize a national railroad. In the UK, wholesale privatization of their rail line did not work. In the end, safety was compromised for profits, and several died in horrific train derailments. Our bill does not allow a complete selloff of our entire national railroad. It does, however, provide a controlled procedure for competitive bidding on a limited number of routes. This competition will be allowed only under strong supervision by Federal regulators. The Federal Railroad Administration, which also overseas rail safety, will start by accepting bids from other railroads interested in running passenger trains for one to two train routes. This is an experiment to see if the Government can save any money by letting someone other than Amtrak try to run passenger train service. Railroading in America is a complex operation. Most railroads currently in service can trace their roots back 150 years. There are comprehensive safety standards that must be met. There are laws that apply only to the railroad industry. You have to share limited infrastructure with other railroads. Wholesale privatization of Amtrak is not in our country's best interest. The traveling public relies on the expertise of American railroads for safe and efficient service. Under our bill, a limited experiment can be attempted for competitive bidding with proper oversight. Expanding it by including the Sununu amendment, frankly, could be disastrous. It is hard to imagine that we would permit residents in a hospital or medical learning experience to go ahead and start doing surgery. Say take a couple of cases, we will examine them, and then we will go on to full-time operation with your skills. Meanwhile, you don't just throw the whole thing together and take a chance that you are right. We have included an opportunity for two of these competitive bids to take place in a year and see what the results are and then decide whether we go further, instead of throwing the whole works in there at one time. For obvious reasons, I oppose this amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote against it. We are just now doing a whole reform of Amtrak. We are reducing operating costs as a requisite and doing much more to improve rail service. It is obvious that rail service is and has to be an essential part of our transportation infrastructure. I oppose this amendment. I hope my colleagues will stand up and say: No, we are going to give Amtrak a chance to operate because we desperately need it. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Madam President, we ought to crawl before we walk, to use the old adage. We have to learn it firsthand without putting the whole thing at risk.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Texas.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Texas. She has always been a supporter of a national passenger rail service. We appreciate the fact that we can work together on this project. Among the routes that would be eliminated under a proposal that is in front of us would be the Crescent in the first year. The ridership there is not quite what it used to be because it originates in New Orleans and New Orleans is not a place where there is a lot of traffic. The Sunset Limited is the one--I am sorry--originates in New Orleans. In the third year, the Texas Eagle would be eliminated. Each one of them by themselves is not massive, but they are all part of a national network. When 9/11 came along and the aviation system was closed down, in many cases the only way to get more people to their destinations, home or otherwise, was through rail service. This would be a national security breach if we permitted this to be discontinued. There is no country in the world where there is rail service that doesn't have some subsidy contribution. We have to adjust ourselves to that. Neither would our aviation system work if we didn't make contributions to that; neither would our highway system be operating if we didn't, and we are deficient there. We have to make sure that a national transportation infrastructure is in place. An integral part of that is national passenger rail service.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Surely.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I yield 7 minutes to the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, we understand that Senator Sununu comes with a background in business and comprehension of what balance sheets and financial statements are like. We recognize that the State of New Hampshire does have some Amtrak service. But the State of New Hampshire is also one of the beneficiaries of something called Essential Air Service, where the country takes great pains to make certain that communities are not so isolated that you have difficulty in traveling from there and to there. It costs the Federal Government about $50 million a year for Essential Air Service. We are all in the same boat. It is our country, these are our communities, and they have to be part of the functioning of our society. So when I look at the amendment proposed by the Senator from New Hampshire, this amendment would destroy our national passenger rail system. Based on 2007 data, the Sununu amendment would immediately cut passenger rail service to the entire Southwestern United States. Four of Amtrak's longest train routes would be gone. It is easy to see on this chart the lines that crisscross our country. You are saying that almost everything, in about a 5-year period, would be pretty much not in existence. We start off with four of Amtrak's longest train routes, most of them in the Southwest. Next year, five more trains would be eliminated, including the Silver Star, which is New York to Miami; Silver Meteor; the Cardinal; the Coast Starlight, Seattle, WA, to L.A., CA; and the Lakeshore Limited, Chicago to New York. These comprise something over a million travelers a year. Within 5 years--likely sooner--the entire national network of long-distance trains would be gone because corporate overhead costs would be shared among the remaining routes, increasing their costs. These long-distance trains provide essential transportation services to millions of Americans, and their ridership and revenue has been growing. Last year, ridership increased on Amtrak's long-distance trains 2.5 percent and revenue went up 5 percent. For instance, if we look at Amtrak's Palmetto train, which is New York to Miami, its route extends south from the Northeast corridor and serves South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. It had 7.5 percent more riders than the year before, a total of 157,000 riders. The States want Amtrak service, and they want to expand it as well. One Governor--I have a letter written in 1996--wrote to Amtrak claiming: Many of us believe that Amtrak finances and operations are a matter for the Federal Government. The Federal Government created Amtrak. This is the letter from the then-Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, in 1996. He attributes responsibility to the Federal Government. To connect our rural areas with our urban commercial centers, the Federal Government subsidizes all modes of transportation. We have essential air service, which I mentioned. We have Federal subsidies for intercity bus transportation. And since the Federal Government took over passenger rail service, we have funded it as well. I wish to make note of the fact that despite the fact that our airlines are for-profit companies, we insist that we have to help them function and we give them about $3 billion a year in subsidies. These are for-profit companies. We want them to keep flying. There has been about $20 billion put into the aviation system since 9/11. I remind our colleagues, there is no passenger rail service in the world that earns a profit. Countries pay for rail service because of the benefits, and if you eliminate these trains, it would mean millions of additional cars on the highways and even longer lines at the airport, adding to our country's congestion problems. In addition, terminating these routes destroys Amtrak's interconnected system, isolating different parts of the country from one another and reducing the utility and the value of all of Amtrak's services. This bill, our bill, already cuts Amtrak's operating subsidy by 40 percent. And rather than micromanaging Amtrak, our bill mandates that this performance standard is the one the company must meet. We also require Amtrak to tell us how they plan to meet this standard. They need to set up specific improvement goals and plans for each individual train route. If the plans are not followed or if they don't work, funding for that train route can then be terminated. Senator Lott and I, along with Senator Carper and others, put a lot of thought into this bill. It will make major improvements to rail service in our country. The Sununu amendment does exactly the opposite. It will destroy America's national passenger rail network. Ironically, it won't even save money because a sudden and massive reduction of trains that this amendment would force would leave Amtrak with huge labor costs for displaced employees. This is not a new subject we are airing today. In some ways, it would be nice to be able to agree with Senator Sununu on this issue and say, OK, it would be nice if they could pay their own way, but they can't do it. When you are operating on schedules that, in many cases, pay lots of attention to the key peak work hours and then don't have the traffic after that----

Mr. LAUTENBERG. How much time do we have left?

Mr. LAUTENBERG. That is good. We have no time left. We had, I thought, a minute or two before the vote.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Madam President, I have listened with interest to our colleague from Colorado. Since I have a son and two grandchildren who live in Colorado, they talk about how nice it would be for train service to run from Denver to Glenwood Springs and provide that kind of service. It would ease up the traffic on the highways in Colorado, Route 70, and others. It would be nice if it was possible to reduce the subsidies, but the problem is, the world has proven in country after country that you cannot operate passenger rail service at a profit. You cannot carry the obligations that are required with a passenger rail system. My colleague will excuse me when I say this: It is kind of fallacious to even believe that it is possible. We tried it. In 1997, our reauthorization bill said we should try to eliminate subsidies. We couldn't eliminate them. But I will tell my colleagues what did happen. Ridership has gone way up. That proves one thing; that is, that the railroads have to be there. We just had a vote on an amendment calling for the elimination of routes across the country which lost substantially. The fact is, the country desperately needs rail service. Our airlines are busy beyond capacity. Highways are busy beyond capacity. We are stuck in traffic all over. The railroad is finally beginning to find its way out. What we have in our bill, for the edification of our friend from Colorado, is a goal to reduce operating subsidies by 40 percent in 6 years. That is a start. I urge my colleague to let this take place. Let it happen. Let's see what goes on there. We have made all kinds of conditions of reform for the railroad, not ignoring the fact that there have been large subsidies but also recognizing that passenger rail service requires subsidy. In the UK, for example, the Government decided to go private with its rail system. They found out that things deteriorated rapidly. They weren't safe, and they weren't efficient. We are now beginning to see that Amtrak is attracting ridership as we have not seen it before, as 26 million people rode Amtrak last year. But so many burdens were placed on Amtrak: insufficient funding for capital in the first place, substantial outstanding indebtedness. How did Amtrak get to be a national corporation? It got there in the early 1970s because the private sector couldn't handle it. There is no money to be made there, when you consider that freight railroads are making money and freight railroads often are an impediment to passenger rail service operating efficiently. We are going through a review of what Amtrak ought to be. We know our equipment is not up to date. We know our trackage is not up to date. We know our signage is not up to date. I had the opportunity to ride in the engine of a train from Paris to Brussels going to a NATO meeting. We cruised along at 300 kilometers, 180 miles an hour, and rode 200 miles in an hour and 20 minutes. It is that kind of service that could be offered if we could invest in bringing Amtrak up to date, and perhaps we could begin to see the results that would attract that kind of support. Revenue increases have been taking place, so we are on a good track to make Amtrak more efficient, less costly, and more conscious of their operating expenses. But we have to be able to continue in that vein. If we said we demand there be a point in time when there are no more subsidies, we would not be being realistic. It can happen. I hope if this comes to a vote, we will defeat it soundly. I think we have the votes to do that. I hope we can put this aside for now and give us a chance to go further on the debate and the review of the Amtrak bill as it is.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Very briefly, I join Senator Lott in telling our colleagues to come on down if they have something they want to put into this bill. We are on the edge of progress, and we ought to move ahead. Amendments Nos. 3457, as Modified, and 3459, as Modified Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up en bloc the Murray amendments Nos. 3457 and 3459 and ask unanimous consent that the amendments be modified with the changes at the desk; that the amendments, as modified, be considered and agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, for those who served with him, the death of Paul Wellstone 5 years ago was such a shock because not only did Paul represent intellect and vigor, he also, because of his enthusiasm and high energy level, represented a youthful picture. He looked like a young guy, college-age person. When he spoke, he did it with such energy that everybody would hear him or listen to him. If you didn't hear him, he would make sure you heard him because he was never bashful about sticking up, about talking about things he believed in. There was very little he did not believe in that would engage him so--I will use the term--furiously in his presentation. So it is appropriate we remember a distinguished Member of the Senate, who served only a short time, and was on his way for another term. But his impact was enormous. I think in many ways he created a picture of courage and right that serves as a model for things we generally do here. I, as so many here did, regarded him as a friend. I did not see him unable to talk to people on the Republican side of the aisle or otherwise. No matter how vigorous his arguments were, no matter how energetic his presentation was, the fact is, he would dismiss any difference as a part of a normal process. He would continue on with his insistence that what he did was right, but he was never righteous about it. We will always think of him when we think of what is right to do in the Senate.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I ask unanimous consent that Michael F. Burke, a fellow in the office of Senator Cardin, be granted the privileges of the floor during consideration of S. 294, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2007.