Sen. Brown on Cuts to Infrastructure Spending: ‘Dishonor People Who Are Injured in’ Crash

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
MITCHELL: "Ohio congressman Sherrod brown has been fighting for years for infrastructure investment and joins us now. Only today, as senator coons was telling us, senator, only today the house in committee, appropriation committee, cut $250 million out of amtrak's budget." 
BROWN: "Yeah, I don't get that. I would have been -- thought it was pretty awful if they did it yesterday to do it today to in some sense dishonor the people that are injured in this is sort of beyond understanding, but I -- I don't -- you know, we spent -- from the '40s to the '70s, into the '80s, we had the best infrastructure in the history of the world, everything from highways and bridges, water, sewer, public transit, railroads, ports, airports, and we have been bequeathed that by our parents and grandparents and we've let it atrophy. You know, I don't know yet enough about this accident to know what the condition of the rails are, but I do know that we've underinvested in amtrak just like we've underinvested in highways and ports in Cleveland and Dayton and all over my state and all over the country, and it's -- I'm hopeful that Congress takes a lesson from this and really begins to understand. I mean, the chamber of commerce, I was with the Dayton chamber today, I'm going to be with the Cincinnati chamber tomorrow. They are always saying we need infrastructure investment. It's how you create jobs, not just construction and steel jobs and cement jobs right then but to lay the -- but to lay the foundation to set the table for more job growth, as you know, Andrea." 
MITCHELL: "And from my own reading on this subject in the past, these Acela trains could go a whole lot faster if the track, if the roadbed were better, but it's not been improved in decades." 
BROWN: "We run on the same old rail beds and the same curvy rails. I mean, we, you know, over time, you should straighten these out so that trains can safely go faster but amtrak is just always trying to kind of catch up to keep their tracks and trains and repair let alone kind of doing the new investment and we need it -- and trains run through my state, not nearly as important as amtrak on the east coast, but I look at the condition of water and sewer and highways and bridges and our ports and our rivers and our lake and our airports. We're just not keeping up, and we used to lead the world, as I said, in that."