Frank Lautenberg

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, the Senate is now back on the Amtrak bill that Senator Lott and I have been working on together for many years. I am glad we are moving closer to passing this bipartisan legislation. Our bill has had wide support with over 40 cosponsors. This is our fifth day on the Amtrak bill, and we have made very good progress. We have been able to work through most amendments. Some we were able to agree to, while some required votes. We still have a few amendments, however, we need to address. But we should be able to finish this bill soon, hopefully today. It is critical that we do so. When we think about how crowded our roads are, the high price of gasoline, airport delays as an alternative, the potential fuel savings and reduction in greenhouse gases from more people riding the trains, the need for multiple modes of transportation for evacuations during emergencies, rail is a critical answer to our needs. The need for multiple modes of transportation for evacuations during emergencies is a critical factor, and rail is one very important answer. We know people will ride the train when there is service available. Amtrak set a new company record of almost 26 million passengers in the last fiscal year. We have seen successes in the Northeast corridor between Boston and New York and through New Jersey to Washington, but there is no reason why we can't have world-class rail service in other regions of the country. Many States are ready to develop new rail corridors, and our bill is going to meet this need by creating a new State grant program for rail projects. In all, it would authorize almost $2 billion a year for Amtrak and for the States over the next 6 years. Instead of barely giving Amtrak enough resources to survive, our bill paves the way for an improved, modern passenger rail network by providing funding for Amtrak's capital and operating needs. Our legislation will also reduce train delays by allowing the Federal Surface Transportation Board to issue fines to freight railroads when their trains delay Amtrak passenger trains. When it comes to overseeing use of taxpayer funds, our bill requires that Amtrak improve its efficiency and its management. Overall, we require a 40-percent reduction in Federal operating subsidies over 6 years. We require a new financial accounting system to increase the transparency of the company's financial management. The last Congress, our bipartisan compromise bill plan was approved by the Senate 93 to 6. I hope we will see a similar showing of support in this Chamber later today. America's travelers have been through terrible inconveniences, missed appointments, total unreliability. Now they are relying on us to provide practical and convenient travel options and passenger rail service must be one of them. I yield the floor.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I object.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Excuse the delay.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Yes, I object.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, everybody knows the Senator from Oklahoma is meticulous in terms of his anxiousness to reduce the costs of Government in any way we can. That certainly is what is being attempted in this bill that Senator Lott and I have introduced. The amendment the Senator from Oklahoma has offered will slowly but surely eliminate one crucial component of Amtrak service, and that is its food and beverage service. Passengers who take Amtrak's long-distance trains may be in transit for as long as 2 or 3 days, and some may be diabetic. Unlike airports, most Amtrak stations don't have restaurants or snack bars where you can pick up a bite before you get on the train. Mr. President, how much time do we have available?

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the recess period count postcloture.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. During the Executive Session, Committee members will markup the following agenda items: S. 2045, Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Reform Act of 2007; S. 2096, Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007; S. 1580, the Coral Reef Conservation Amendments Act of 2007; S. 1853, Community Broadband Act of 2007; S. 1675, Local Community Radio Act of 2007; H. Con. Res. 225, Honoring the 50th anniversary of the dawn of the Space Age, and the ensuing 50 years of productive and peaceful space activities; and the nomination of Mr. Todd J. Zinser, Inspector General--Designate, United States Department of Commerce (PN 908)

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at 2:30 p.m. in order to hold a nomination hearing.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to hold a hearing entitled ``Protecting the U.S. From Drug Resistant Tuberculosis: Reinvesting in Control and New Tools Research'' during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 30, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Role of Local Law Enforcement in Countering Violent Islamist Extremism.''

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 30, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. in order to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. LAUTENBERG

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

Mr. LAUTENBERG

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I agree.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 20 minutes for debate with respect to the DeMint amendment, No. 3467, prior to a vote in relation to the amendment; that no amendment be in order to the amendment prior to the vote; that the remaining pending amendments be withdrawn; that no other amendments be in order other than a managers' package of amendments that has been cleared by both managers and leaders; that upon disposition of these amendments, the bill, as amended, be read for a third time, and at 4 p.m. the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the DeMint amendment; and that upon disposition of the DeMint amendment, all postcloture time be considered yielded back and the Senate proceed to vote on the passage of the bill; further, that the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3963 not occur prior to 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, October 31 or at a time determined by the two leaders on Wednesday.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I want to start off this discussion by saying how much I appreciate working with Senator Lott and with other Members of the Senate in terms of the amendments. They were offered and considered, but we moved with a degree of dispatch, indicating to me that this is a bill that is wanted by a significant majority of the Senate. That is representing what we believe is a significant public opinion about whether Amtrak ought to be brought up to date and be part of the transportation system that can help relieve other transportation modes of the congestion, pollution, et cetera, that we face constantly in our country right now. I think the amendment that has been offered by Senator DeMint is not one of those amendments we would accept--the notion that each ticket a passenger carries should identify the amount of subsidy that goes into that passenger's ride. I think it is wasteful and I don't see any benefit to travelers or taxpayers. Can you imagine the complication that is involved here? You don't know how many passengers are going to be on that leg and the subsidy has to be divided among the number of passengers. How far is each passenger going to travel? That would also indicate a part of the subsidy. You cannot take a mathematical formula and apply it to this percentage or to this particular passenger's ride. We all know what is afoot here. I generally agree that transparency is good when it comes to Federal taxpayers' dollars. But this amendment is not needed. It carries the request that Amtrak publish subsidies on its Web site. It already publishes subsidies information per route on its Web site every month as part of its financial report--the general information related to those routes, not individual subsidies per ticket. Amtrak also provides details on every dollar and dime of its finances to the Department of Transportation and the Congress on a continuous basis. The DeMint amendment would provide travelers with redundant information and, frankly, waste Federal funds. As I indicated in my earlier comment, it would also be logistically almost impossible to do what this amendment calls for--to determine the subsidy for each rider and print this information on a ticket. These numbers change depending on how far a passenger rides the train. Even if they did not, Amtrak would have to redesign its online reservations and ticketing system for customers to get this information. One doesn't have to have been in the computer business, as I was, in order to know it would take an incredible amount of time and energy to get the software up to date and get the information in on time for it to be printed with any degree of accuracy on the ticket. It is the kind of added cost and redtape that taxpayers are disdainful of. We don't require the same printing burdens on the airlines, and we have provided some $20 billion to that industry in the last 6 years. Americans already understand our Nation's passenger rail system requires subsidies, just as rail systems in other countries. What American travelers care about is receiving high-quality and convenient rail service as a result of that subsidy, and this amendment is not going to do anything to help us in those areas. Senator Lott has indicated he and I have worked on transportation issues for many years. Finally, the public is so immersed in congestion, in lost time, in delayed and missed appointments, and with the price of gasoline going up as it is--I recently saw a prediction from someone engaged in the oil industry in the Far East that oil was going to be up to $200 a barrel in the not-too-distant future. Do we want to continue to subject the American public to these outrageous costs for this fuel, or do we want to try to achieve some balance in our transportation systems? Trains are much more economical, reduce congestion, reduce pollution, and can establish a level of reliability we can't get out of the aviation system. We talked about whether we might abandon food and beverage service on the rail lines. We took a vote and it was soundly defeated. But as I listened to the debate, I wondered whether next we would be debating separate charges for the oil and bearing grease that is used on the wheels of the train cars and locomotives, and maybe we can separate out further expenses, maybe paper used in hand towels and items of that nature and reduce the number of those used. We cannot deal with such small matters if we want to get onto doing something that helps the country function more efficiently. This bill has truly got bipartisan support. We see it not only in the leadership that our friend the Senator from Mississippi applies so skillfully, but there were quite a number of colleagues on the Republican side who joined in to get this bill as far as it is. We have almost miraculously come to a consensus that says after years of working towards this goal, we are going to get to a positive conclusion toward the reauthorization of Amtrak. It doesn't mean all the problems were solved by a long shot, but it does say we want rail to be as well treated as well as our other means of transportation. We spend some $40 billion each year on our highways, and aviation, unlike Amtrak, is a for-profit business, and we are still giving subsidies to the airlines each and every year and, as I mentioned, over $20 billion since 9/11. When we look at the possibilities of rail service and see that in Europe, for instance, from Brussels, Belgium, to Paris, France, is 200 miles, about the same distance we are from New York City, they do it in 1 hour 25 minutes. Here, if we use an airplane, we can be sure that one out of four flights is going to be late in departure and usually late on arrival. If we could get Amtrak to improve its service so we can reduce the amount of time it takes--I had the good fortune this morning to take a 7 o'clock train out of New York City. I live in New Jersey, but it was convenient for me to get to the terminal in New York City. I arrived 2\1/2\ hours later, city to city--New York City to Washington, DC. We didn't shake, rattle, and roll all the time. It was nice; if you wanted to have a coffee or write or read, it was reasonably comfortable to do that. That is what rail passengers deserve all across this country-- adequate service. We are anxiously awaiting a vote on the next amendment, which has been ordered, and final passage on the Amtrak bill. I thank my friend, Senator Lott, for his cooperative manner and his leadership throughout the issues we have faced in this body almost all the years I have been here. We have served together a long time. I yield the floor.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, Senator Lott was speaking about the larger assignment that we have in front of us rather than simply a party allegiance. There is no doubt that long before we were Republicans and Democrats, we were Americans. If we keep that focus in mind, I think we can help our country achieve some of the goals that we need to examine. Look at the conditions that have overtaken America--I will use that word--and look back at the population. In 1970--1971, when AMTRAK was taken over as a quasi-public corporation, the country had 200 million people. Now, barely 35 years later, we have 300 million in this country of ours. Imagine, 100 million more people, and we are still depending on a rail system that was largely developed far earlier than the 1970s. I think Senator Lott was absolutely right when he spoke about our need to bring the aviation system up to date as well. We have narrowed the separation between airplanes to one thousand feet vertically. That is not designed to scare anybody because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can handle it, but the FAA does say we are squeezing whatever spare air we have to fill the airspace. When we look at the lighter jets coming into service, it is expected that there will be some 5,000 new very light jets in the sky in the next 10 years. We see the planes are filled constantly and ways have to be figured out to make air service more reliable. I repeat something that has been said many times: One out of four flights is late today. One of the airports that suffers from these delays is my favorite airport, and that is Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. We have to learn different ways to do things because, as has been said, the air time to fly from Newark or LaGuardia--I live in between because I live in that part of New Jersey near the Washington Bridge, so I live midway in between. So I can go to either airport for service. But what has happened is I have been on the airplane many times going up from here to our region and I hear the pilot say: Good evening, the weather is fine, the flying time to Newark Liberty Airport is 38 minutes. Since there are no weather delays we should enjoy our trip up there, and I hope we will be able to close the door soon and get on our way. In this particular flight that I am thinking of, the pilot closed the door, we were pushed out with the truck to get into place, and the pilot said: Oh, we just learned air traffic in the New York area is fairly heavy, and our takeoff time is an hour from now. An hour from now, for a 38-minute flight. I looked at my watch many times and couldn't wait for the hour to pass. The pilot gets on the air and says: We have just been advised that we have 23 minutes longer than expected. By the time that 38 minutes flying time got through, it was 3 hours of time passed. I just told the story about taking a train down this morning from New York Penn Station, and it was 2 hours and 35 minutes. I was in the city, so I didn't have to travel a half or three-quarters of an hour to get to the airport, and then to be there a half hour or 45 minutes early, so the time consumed just doesn't balance out. We have to get on with this opportunity to improve our transportation systems because we are being forced into it. We have not planned adequately enough to accommodate travel in our country. We have to act, because we know things are going to worsen, not get better automatically. As we deal with problems--the occupant of the chair, the Senator from Vermont, and I--we are dealing actively with global warming because of emissions that come from cars, from buildings, from industrial sources, from all kinds of greenhouse gas sources that are creating global warming. Global warming threatens our families directly. It is said by the most auspicious scientific advisory groups--the National Academy of Sciences, the Union of Concerned Scientists, National Science Foundation--they are saying: Get on with it. You have a 10-year window during which time you can do something about arresting the growth of global warming that will make life quite different on our planet than we are used to. When we see ecological disturbances, like male fish in the Potomac River carrying eggs--not the female fish--that is an ominous sign. When we see polar bears on floes that are ragged, watching as the ice melts from under their feet, it is an ominous sign. When we understand that, if the ice melts--and the occupant of the Presiding Officer's chair and I and other Senators were in Greenland not too long ago and watched ice melt, not in little rivulets but almost like waterfalls, and the forecast is that if that ice melt continues at the pace it is, within 50 years the seas can be 20 feet higher than they are. We have to get on with it. This is an opportunity to make a contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases and arrest the momentum of global warming. That rail bill we have is an essential factor in that area. How about the experience this country has had in these last years when two nuclear energy plants were built, one in New Hampshire and one in Long Island, NY, that had to be virtually abandoned because there was no sensible evacuation route. Rail makes a difference. If rail had been used in Louisiana at the time of Katrina, a lot more people could have escaped some of the fear and the anxiety and the deaths and illnesses that struck people as a result of that terrible storm. Let's get on with it. We have a commitment under the regular order of business to vote at 4 o'clock on an amendment that talks about showing the subsidy per ticket, offered from our colleague from South Carolina, to make certain that we identify how much we are spending on a subsidy. We are not saying the same thing has to be done on an air ticket. Aviation is essential. Airlines helped connect this country. We are able to get coast to coast, long distances, in a relatively short time. We subsidize these for-profit companies. They are businesses. Amtrak is a not-for-profit company, so we are going to have to subsidize it. I think now what we are saying is we are stepping up to the plate and getting on with it. I hope my colleague from South Carolina will be able to join us because the time now will be charged to the time allotted for debate. I am going to suggest the absence of a quorum while we wait and ask the time for debate under the quorum call be equally divided.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, we have about 6 minutes left. I suggest we divide it between us so that we have a couple of minutes to respond to the Senator.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, we need a couple of minutes. I ask unanimous consent to extend the period prior to the vote for 5 minutes so we can prepare the managers' amendment prior to the vote.

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

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

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, under the order, there is consent for a managers' amendment to be in order. That managers' amendment is at the desk, and I ask unanimous consent that the three amendments be considered en bloc and modified, if applicable; that the amendments be agreed to as modified, if modified; and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, en bloc.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, the yeas and nays have been ordered, I believe. They have not? I ask for the yeas and nays.