Sen. Nelson: Will It Take More Crashes Before Congress Spends More on Amtrak?

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
ROBERTS: "Senator bill Nelson from Florida is the ranking member on the committee of commerce, science and transportation. Senator, let me ask you first. Would you say that Congress currently is underfunding U.S. Transportation systems, the ones that are in need of most funding?" 
NELSON: "Without a doubt. What you had is a major cut in the house. Amtrak needs more money. The House is cutting money, but that's not the only reason. If speed ends up being what is going on, there are parts of Amtrak on that northeast corridor that already have electronic train control. They need to put it on more of the northeast corridor so if he's coming as the report that you just had at 100 miles an hour on a curve that ought to be 50 miles an hour, if he had that electronic control that's on other parts of that amtrak line, he in fact would have had it automatically slowed down instead of what appears to be the engineer's mistake." 
ROBERTS: "So we have former transportation secretary ray lahood saying he wants to wait for the full investigation of the NTSB before making any direct correlation of issues with funding, but he did say that America is in crisis when it comes to its infrastructure. He's a former -- also a former Illinois Republican congressman, but, senator, when we talk about the need and the aging infrastructure of America, why isn't that more on the minds of you and your colleagues? We've spent $60 billion in trying to rebuild Iraq. Shunned we try to take some of that money or that type of attention for money and pour it into our own country? 
NELSON: "Absolutely, and that's what we've been trying for years. You go back when we were in the depths of the recession. The stimulus bill, we tried to get a lot more money into infrastructure, into roads and bridges and railroads and all of the infrastructure that's falling down. We tried to get it, and we didn't get the votes. There are not the votes here. Is it going to take more of these crashes and deaths to wake up the members of Congress who keep wanting to slim down the budgets going into infrastructure?"