John Boehner is a real class act. Not because he's an arrogant, red-faced, badly-tanned, mouthpiece for America's top 1% but because only a complete idiot with pockets so deep that he hasn't even seen a homeless person since the 1980's could say something so ignorant.
-New York Times
On Capitol Hill, House Speaker John A. Boehner angrily rejected a suggestion that Republican funding decisions contributed to the accident.
“That’s a stupid question,” he snapped at a reporter. “Adequate funds were there, no money’s been cut from rail safety, and the House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak and authorize a lot of these programs.”
That's right, John Boehner thinks it's "stupid" to reflect on whether higher levels of funding for Amtrak could have possibly avoided the deadly accident that killed 8 people and injured hundreds on Tuesday night. Not only that, but Boehner's so quick to shrug off the tragedy that befell those riding the train, that he missed an opportunity to criticize the regulations that made it more difficult for Amtrak to install a safety-system called Positive Train Control.
Positive Train Control is a technology that can stop or slow-down a train automatically, even if the conductor doesn't use the breaks. In 2008, after a deadly train accident in Chatsworth, California, Congress mandated that Positive Train Control be installed throughout our national railroad system by the end of 2015. Unfortunately, the system is extremely expensive technology that was complicated further by rules that require Amtrak, nationalized in 1970 by Congress and President Nixon with the Rail Passenger Services Act, to bargain with private companies for radio spectrum that allows Positive Train Control to function. It does this by communicating information such as an imminent threat to derailment or a collision with another train. The system can even detect debris on the track and stop the train.
Amtrak, which has been described as enthusiastically accepting of the technology, nevertheless didn't have the funding to install the system or buy the necessary spectrum for Positive Train Control. The system can cost as much as $52,000 per mile of track or about $9 billion total and consists of equipment such as hardware, antenna, radio-transponders, locomotive and track equipment.
So far, Amtrak has invested over $5 billion in Positive Train Control. When it began to look like they wouldn't be able to install the system by the 2015 deadline, they twice asked Congress for additional funding and twice were denied that funding. Yet, Bohner still has the gall to say that more funding wouldn't have made a difference. Really? Wouldn't have made a difference? Is that why Amtrak has been so willing to lose money installing the system? Is that why even Joseph C. Szabo, former administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration has said that "[sic]Amtrak is further along than almost anybody in reaching their deployment of Positive Train Control"?
Jon Bohner can continue to ignore the desperate pleas of people who are concerned with rail safety, but to be so dismissive even as families mourn their lost loved ones is a sign of just how screwed up Congress has become. That there is no shame to be found among those that denied funding for Amtrak is even more profound since it's Congress that mandated that the system be installed in the first place. Even this latest accident isn't enough to change the minds of those who would ignore the plight of the injured and dead.
Just one day after the accident, Democrats asked for an additional $251 million in funding out of Amtrak's $1.14 Billion dollar budget. They were denied by Congressional Republicans in a 30-21 vote that didn't even make it out of a committee hearing, where it was introduced.
Still, shamelessness is a pre-requisite to being a Republican and we can't expect even horrific accidents to change that. The audacity of this Republican controlled Congress knows no bounds. John Bohner basically just says, "move along", and climbs back into his tanning booth. Did anyone really expect anything different?