Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) on Wednesday night slammed House Republicans who voted to cut funding for Amtrak a few hours after a deadly train accident in Philadelphia.
Rendell told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that the House Appropriations Committee debate over transportation funding was “pathetic.”
“Here, less than 12 hours after seven people died, these SOBs, and that’s all I can call them, these SOBs didn’t even have the decency to table the vote,” he said.
Hayes, who said he was playing devil’s advocate, pressed Rendell, asking why the accident should influence a vote on the budget.
Rendell said that Republicans’ “policy is terrible.”
“This country used to have the world’s best infrastructure,” he continued.
Rendell then recalled testifying about transportation funding in Congress while he was governor of Pennsylvania.
“Senator Shelby said, ‘Well governor, you’re asking us to subsidize Amtrak.’ I said, ‘Senator, there isn’t a rail system in the world that isn’t subsidized,'” Rendell said. “What are these guys smoking?”
Reports indicate that the before the Amtrak train derailed and crashed on Tuesday night, the train was traveling at about 107 miles per hour as it approached a curve with a speed limit of only 50 miles per hour.
Watch the clip via MSNBC:
H/t Raw Story
Get 'em Guv! I, personally, would have used harsher words than SOB, but good for you anyway!
What are they smoking exactly? The money that they could have used on infrastructure.
The big business owners of the Republican Party have a great interest in getting their hands on the Amtrak, at pennies on the dollar, so they can peel off the unprofitable parts for tax write-downs, milk the Northeast Corridor as long as they can before it crumbles, and raid those really juicy pension plans to leverage on increasingly risky and unrelated deals until they collapse, at which point they’ll declare bankruptcy, claim they’re unable to meet their obligations and pass them back to the federal government, where the 99% will have to cough up more to cover their relentless greed. In short, that’s why the Republican stooges continue to cut Amtrak’s funding and push it to fail: “Privatizing it will make it better.” That’s their mantra and it usually translates: "It will mean more $$$$ for our owners/contributors and that’s a win/win for US!
It’s just SameShitDifferentDay for the GOP.
George Will and conservatives loathe trains and railway systems because they will turn fine, upstanding American Citizens into collectivist slaves of the state.
According to the bespectacled one with the Dennis the Menace hair do [most likely a toupee]:
I don’t know about Archimedian levers, but when it comes to the seven simple machines of Greek Antiquity, George Will and his fellow conservative bog people could use a good screw.
When asked about it, Sen. Pandering Asshole (R-Dumbfucks) stated:
“Everyone Knows” that the only people who use AMTRAK are “Elitist East Coast Liberals”, not “Real Americans” who drive their Pick-Up Trucks to work like GOD intended (it’s right there in the BIBLE!) We don’t want “OUR” taxes to support these “Creeping Socialism Luxury Trains” for these “Godless Communists” because if we do then GAYS will get married and “BENGHAZI”.
Now excuse me, I have to get to my FOX News interview.