Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008

Floor Speech

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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is simple, straightforward, and fiscally responsible. It would prevent any taxpayer funds from being wasted on operating Amtrak's worst-performing long-distance route.

Under this amendment, which is supported by Citizens Against Government Waste, Americans for Tax Reform and the National Taxpayers' Union, the determination about what constitutes Amtrak's most wasteful route will not be a political one made by Congress, it will instead be determined by Amtrak's own most recent monthly report, and it will not take effect if the Secretary of Transportation determines that the line is critical to homeland security.

Amtrak's most recent performance report produced in March 2008 lists the Sunset Limited as Amtrak's worst performing long-distance route. And for the few lucky people who actually buy a ticket on this route, this journey constitutes a 48-hour ordeal from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Los Angeles, California.

Amtrak's report indicates that this route had an astonishing loss of 26.3 cents per seat mile, which is unsurprising given the length of the trip coupled with the lowest ridership of all of Amtrak's long-distance lines.

Right before I came to the House floor today, I went to Amtrak's Website and looked up how much a round-trip ticket on this line would be. The answer: an astonishing $522. For the purpose of comparison, a bus ticket for a similar trip leaving on and returning the exact same days, it would cost only $366, and riding the bus would take 19 fewer hours to complete the trip.

Back in 1997, Congress passed the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act which required that Amtrak operate without any Federal operating assistance after 2002.

Despite this decade-old, commonsense requirement that Amtrak cease their fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement, without my amendment, today's bill would continue to waste taxpayer money by forcing American families to subsidize Amtrak's worst line.

Amtrak's net loss in 2007 was over $1.12 billion, an increase of 5 percent over last year. In March of 2008 alone, Amtrak's net loss was $96 million. These awful performance figures prove that the time has come to restore commonsense fiscal responsibility at Amtrak, and that the time has come to at least take a small step in helping taxpayers' hard-earned money not to be used on long, expensive routes with low ridership.

This amendment simply seeks to prevent further good taxpayer dollars from being thrown after bad by limiting the cost of Amtrak's number one least-profitable route. And if Members cannot support this simple, security-conscious amendment on behalf of fiscal discipline, I don't know if there is anything else that we can do to help not only this Congress be responsible, but also to be in support of American taxpayers.

I encourage all of my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment.

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