Brownfields Redevelopment Enhancement Act

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present to the House the Fiscal Year 2006 Transportation, Treasury, HUD appropriations bill which was passed out of committee via voice vote last week.

Before getting into the specifics of the bill, I want to commend the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), for their tireless work to finish these bills by the end of this week.

Here we are on June 29 marking up the final of the 11 spending bills. I am sure that the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) has been saving best for last.

Mr. Chairman, I must acknowledge the role that my ranking member, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), played in assembling this bill. I consider him a partner in creating the product before you because his input has been invaluable. We have found common ground more often than not, and what few differences remain are the result of honest disagreement.

He and I have had several conversations about almost every facet of this bill. The staff has met repeatedly, and information has been shared in a timely manner. I believe the bill is stronger because of the input the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver) has provided.

I also want to mention, of course, the staff which has contributed heavily and in mighty ways, extraordinary ways, to the completion of this bill. My clerk, Dena Baron, Cheryle Tucker, David Gibbons, David Napoliello, Steve Crane, Tammy Hughes, Kristen Jones; and on the minority side, Mike Malone, the clerk, and Michelle Burkett. They have done tremendous work.

As my colleagues know, this is the committee's first year with its current jurisdiction, and I believe the product before us is worthy of this body's

strong support. It is a fiscally responsible bill, funding high- priority programs and eliminating Federal funds for other programs that are duplicative or ineffective.

The bill before us is at our 302(b) allocation of $66.9 billion in BA and provides total budgetary resources, including transportation obligation limitations and mandatory spending, of $134.9 billion, an increase of $7.2 billion over last year and $8.8 billion over the request.

Let me be very clear here. These increases do not represent frivolous spending by the committee. The increases over the budget request and last year are due to House rules mandating certain funding levels for highways, transit and aviation programs, House rules that we voted for.

We also retained CDBG in the bill and were able to fund it at a level near last year's limit. As most of my colleagues know, the President proposed eliminating that program, but the response was overwhelming to keep it right here in HUD.

In transportation, we have met all of our guarantees for surface transportation and safety, and aviation infrastructure as included in TEA-LU and Vision-100. For FAA operations, we have provided funds for 595 new controllers, plus an additional $8 million over the request for safety inspectors.

I realize there will be a lot of attention paid to Amtrak today. The bill provides $550 million, $190 million more than was included in the budget request, and $657 billion below last year's enacted level. To that end, this bill prohibits Federal funds for any Amtrak route that requires a subsidy of $30 or more per passenger, most of which, of course, are long-distance routes. The 24 routes that require a Federal subsidy of less than $30 per passenger will continue to receive Federal aid, and those 24 routes account for more than 80 percent of Amtrak's annual ridership. Let me just repeat that: The 24 routes that will continue to receive the Federal subsidy make up more than 80 percent of the ridership.

Specifically, the bill permits Amtrak to use Federal funds to support operations for the following: All routes in the northeast corridor, including spurs that run from New York City to Albany, from New Haven, Connecticut, to Vermont, and from Portland, Maine, to Boston; routes running through Pennsylvania; most corridor routes in the Midwest; trains running from Portland, Oregon, to Vancouver; and corridor routes in California.

I want to also be clear that it does not prohibit Amtrak from using non-Federal resources to support other routes, nor does it mandate that any routes be shut down or truncated. We need to make it clear that Congress will no longer sanction the use of taxpayer dollars on such extremely unprofitable routes.

From the very first time I picked up the subcommittees gavel, I knew that Amtrak would be a major issue of contention. I came in with an open mind and had no preconceived notions of an outcome. I instructed staff to follow the facts wherever they may lead, and Mr. Chairman, they have led us right here. The Amtrak proposal before the House is an honest one and worthy of our support.

In the Department of the Treasury, we fully funded the budget request for the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The Community Development Financial Institutions program fund is funded at last year's level of $55 million.

The IRS is funded at a total of $10.5 billion, an increase of $313 million from last year and a decrease of $130 million from the request. This funding level allows IRS to maintain the critical balance between taxpayer services and enforcement activities. While the IRS requested more funds for enforcement, the request relied on a Budget Enforcement Act provision that our Committee on the Budget did not adopt in the budget resolution.

Also included in Title II is an administrative provision that prohibits the IRS from closing taxpayer assistance centers until IRS submits a report outlining the impacts of the closures on taxpayer compliance and consults with stakeholders.

The committee had two priorities to meet for HUD in 2006. First and foremost was the protection of all extremely low-income families currently receiving Section 8 and public housing rental assistance, and to continue to restore facilities and rental assistance for low-income individuals that are severely disabled or have HIV/AIDS, all of which the administration proposed for major reductions. Failure to fully meet this commitment would have resulted in thousands of families losing their assistance and becoming homeless. To achieve this, the committee added more than $2 billion over last year's funding level and more than $700 million over the administration's proposals for these programs.

Our second priority is to retain and restore to the maximum extent possible the formula funding for cities and towns across America through the Community Development Block Grant. As my colleagues know, the administration proposed to terminate this program, which was funded at $4.7 billion last year, but we were able to restore formula funding for CDBG to within 6 percent of the amounts provided in 2005.

To fund these high priorities, however, the committee had to do a broad sweep of duplicative and lower-priority programs throughout the Department, including boutique programs that have typically been funded by reducing the amounts in the formula CDBG program. It is never easy to stop funding a program once it gets started receiving Federal funds, but we have to make these decisions in order to meet our main funding objectives.

For the Judiciary, the bill provides sufficient funding to maintain current services of the Federal Judiciary, including rent and personnel increases. In addition, we fully fund the Judiciary's revised request for court security.

For the District of Columbia, we provided the budget request for Federal payments to the District, which includes tuition assistance, court costs and school improvement. As for the District's local budget, the bill appropriates the budget and financial plan by reference, and carries many of the same general provisions of the past.

We funded HIDTA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program at $227 million. That is the same as last year, and it was $77 million over the request. Other Executive Office of the President programs are funded at the requested levels.

As for the General Provisions, we recommend no substantive changes to the provisions carried in prior years.

All in all, after much hard work and discussion, I believe that we have a balanced bill before us. No, we did not fund every program, but we did fund the higher priorities under our jurisdiction that will deliver the best results to the most people, and that is our responsibility.

I would like to take a moment and talk about a few of the amendments which may be before us today. This is a large bill with a rather vast and disparate list of agencies under its title. When it comes to dividing up the 302(b) allocation, we really have to do a balancing act. Each agency has a responsibility to the citizens of this Nation and each has a role to play.

GSA has the responsibility for being the Federal landlord, for every citizen receiving Social Security or needing a passport or a visa, for every veteran needing his claim adjudicated, for every neighborhood waiting on an economic development grant, every citizen seeking justice in a Federal courtroom, or relying on the Department of Homeland Security to keep our borders safe. GSA provides those buildings to do its work, and the public, of course, to find the government. To view the Federal Buildings Fund as a bottomless offset for ``program'' spending is dishonest to the programs we propose to fund.

I do have an amendment to offer with the gentleman from Massachusetts, my friend, the ranking member of the subcommittee, that takes money from an unidentified project in GSA and moves it to CDBG for Youthbuild and tax law enforcement.

Other than that one amendment, I think it is a good bill. I urge its adoption quickly so we can move to other urgent business.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney), the vice chair of the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies.

(Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner) for working with me on CDBG and for his efforts to help fund this program.

Restoring the funds for CDBG was our highest priority after funding assistance for the neediest families in our society. Funding for CDBG remains one of our highest priorities, and I will do everything to return the program as close to the 2005 enacted level as possible.

That was my intent during the development of this bill, and it remains my intent as we continue to final passage of this appropriation act for 2006.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert).

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman raises a very important issue. I acknowledge that series-type hybrid systems have the same goals and encourage the Federal Transit Administration to increase the procurement of buses utilizing both types of systems.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri).

Mr. Chairman, I am aware of the accounting problem that split-funding the Federal Transit Administration program has created. I will work on this issue in conference and trust that there will be a long-term authorization in place by the time the House Committee on Appropriations and the Senate Appropriations Committee convene a conference.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda).

Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman knows, we had included funding in last year's bill to study flight attendant fatigue. I understand the study was due to Congress on June 1, 2005, and I will be happy to work with the gentleman from California to determine the status of CAMI's current study and expedite its completion, if possible.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I, too, want to thank everyone that participated in this opening inning or two of activity. We have a long way to go. But I do think, with the work of the staff on both sides, who I think have done extraordinarily well to shape this product into what it is, I am very, very happy with where we are in terms of the kind of bill. I know there is going to be more debate, and we look forward to that.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriations bill and therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI.

Further, the rule states, in pertinent part: ``An amendment to a general appropriations bill shall not be in order if changing existing law.''

The amendment includes an emergency designation and, as such, constitutes legislation in violation of clause 2 of rule XXI.

I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment provides an additional $38 million for tax enforcement efforts at IRS. These funds will significantly enhance our ability to close the tax gap by more than $400 million over 3 years.

Further, this amendment restores $67.5 million to CDBG. Some of these funds may need to be used to provide some funding for the YouthBuild program if the program is not authorized under the Department of Labor by the time of final passage of the appropriations act.

The program, for the moment, has been left in suspension because the administration has not yet submitted the needed legislation, but I am assured that the legislation will be submitted very soon.

I want to thank the ranking member, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), for his diligence on these issues and for working with us.

Mr. Chairman, I urge the adoption of the Knollenberg-Olver amendment.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I can assure the gentlewoman that I will do everything I can to work with her to make sure that we do address this issue. So I thank the gentlewoman for bringing it up.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that debate on this amendment be limited to 40 minutes, equally divided and controlled by the proponent and myself as opponent, and that this limitation also apply to any amendments thereto, except one pro forma amendment each by the chairmen and ranking members of the Committee on Appropriations and its Subcommittee on TTHUD.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve my time, and I do not have at this point an additional speaker because there are a couple of things we are trying to work out right now.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in opposition to this amendment, which is a wholesale slash- and-burn attempt to restore funding for Amtrak. First, I want to state clearly that I want to reform Amtrak. It is a broken system that has siphoned billions of dollars from other priorities over the years.

For Members who agree that Amtrak needs to be reformed, this bill provides an excellent starting point. The bill preserves Federal funding for routes that are heavily utilized and that show signs of economic sustainability. It also preserves Federal subsidies for more than 80 percent of Amtrak riders, 80 percent. While the amendment proposes to leave the route limitation in place, I have little doubt that if it is successful another will follow to remove the limitation and return Amtrak to the status quo. I do not want to go to the status quo.

If that happens, Congress will again send the message to Amtrak that it is acceptable to run a route so unprofitable as to require a Federal subsidy of $466 per ticket. We have seen Amtrak's Federal subsidy grow from $521 million in fiscal year in 2002 to $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2005, and now Amtrak is asking for $1.8 billion. When is it going to end?

Continuing to throw good money after bad to maintain the status quo is totally unacceptable to me. Amtrak is threatening to shut down again because it is unwilling to make changes to improve its profitability. This marks the sixth time since 2002 that Amtrak's CEO, the sixth time since 2002, that Amtrak's CEO has threatened a shutdown if we do not provide more money.

The flaw in the argument that $550 million is not sufficient to operate trains is the assumption that Amtrak would have to shut down routes. There are cost-saving measures that Amtrak could adopt to continue long distance rail service, but it simply refuses to do so. Furthermore, the offsets to this amendment would cannibalize the Department of Transportation and important GSA facilities. These in effect would cause severe disruption to programs within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

First, the amendment proposes to completely eliminate several offices within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation.

Second, it cuts funding from the Transportation Planning, Research and Development account; $20 million of that funding is for commuter rail in the event Amtrak cannot meet its financial obligations. And $1.2 billion, if expanded to all routes, as I suspect will be offered, is according to Amtrak a ``shutdown'' number. So the amendment leaves commuter rail, particularly in the Northeast, in jeopardy.

Third, the amendment cuts funding from the DOT headquarters building. DOT's current lease runs out in June of 2007. If the building is not complete, significant rent increases on the old building will kick in, as will rent payments on the new one.

Fourth, the amendment eliminates railroad research and development which provide science and technology support for rail safety rulemakings. That means no funding for research on such things as grade crossing safety, derailment prevention, hazardous material transportation, like the chlorine tank cars that were involved in Graniteville, South Carolina, earlier this year, or simply passenger protection.

Fifth, the amendment cuts $435 million in repairs and alterations to government buildings nationwide. Some may be in your State. This funding is critical, given that the backlog in repairs and maintenance currently stands at $6.2 billion.

Six, the amendment takes funding from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which would delay completion of construction, including security-critical features and the cuts to building operations, much of which are a part of that. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has repeatedly stressed the importance of modern, safe facilities.

If GSA is impacted in this fashion, we will not be able to pay for utilities, for maintenance, or cleaning. These cuts are in direct conflict with that policy.

Seventh, the amendment would void the FAA's flight service station contract that would deliver tremendous benefits to the general aviation community and save the FAA $2.2 billion over the next 10 years. Instead of realizing these savings, taxpayers will be on the hook for up to $350 million in additional costs to the FAA in the form of termination penalties.

This contract has been years in the making. Congress should not step in after the fact to stop this contract and deny better services to more than 600,000 private pilots.

Eight, the amendment eliminates the air transportation stabilization program which issues credit instruments to air carriers.

I know the authors of this amendment feel strongly about Amtrak, and I appreciate their interest in the issue. And what I am trying to do is to make sure that we do keep a system in the short term and one that will develop into a long-term situation. But if you obliterate important safety and construction projects, that is no way to go about funding a railroad that desperately needs to be reformed.

For these reasons, I ask Members to vote ``no.''

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions).

Mr. Chairman, I am just inquiring about the amount of time for each side.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I want to just comment on a couple of things in closing. This has been recommended to the CEO of Amtrak over and over: eliminating sleeper car service would save 100 million a year. Just improving their food and beverage service would save $83 million a year. If it would match its train sets to the actual locomotives and the cars they need, they could save still more money. All those things have been ignored.

Let me tell my colleagues a little about our friend who is the CEO of Amtrak.

This is a quote from David Gunn, ``President Bush's proposal to give Amtrak just over half of what it is seeking in Federal subsidies would shut the railroad down just as more passengers are taking the train.'' That was February 10, 2004.

Secondly, ``It would be a chaotic shutdown,'' says David Gunn, Amtrak president, on what would happen to the railroad if a bill passed last week by a House Appropriation Subcommittee becomes law. That was July of 2003.

Amtrak President David L. Gunn said last week that if the passenger railroad corporation does not get a loan of at least $200 million by the end of month, he will be forced to begin an orderly shutdown of all Amtrak passenger service in July; June 15, 2002.

And when he was with the folks in Toronto, ``Bits and pieces of the Toronto Transit Commission risk being shut down and abandoned unless the cash-strapped organization gets proper funding from the metro and provincial governments, transit boss David Gunn said.'' That was in the Toronto Star, February 17, 1996.

Going back to December 30, 1982, ``Authorities in Philadelphia and the New York area are bracing for possible shutdowns or slowdowns of commuter rail service beginning New Year's day. `I would not assume my train will be there Monday morning,' General Manager David Gunn warned commuters.''

Finally, ``Without an emergency transfusion of public funds, this area's commuter-train service could die before next July, transportation officials have warned. `There is the real risk of a shutdown for the rail service,' said David Gunn.''

This gentleman has done nothing but ask for money; no reform, just money. And this amendment lies on a phoney offset to reward mismanagement of Amtrak. The bill fully supports rail service for four out of five riders or 80 percent of Amtrak's ridership. I oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentlewoman's amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

This amendment would add $47.7 million to the fair housing budget. The amendment would more than double funding for the program over the 2005 level. There is no possible justification for doubling the program in 1 year.

Additionally, this program has one of the lowest spend-out rates in all of HUD. Simply put, these funds could never be used by HUD, and they are absolutely unnecessary. The committee has funded the program at the requested level which HUD has said is full funding. I have already indicated why this is the case.

Also, as drafted, all of the funds would go to the FHAP program. If Velazquez did not mean to double the total and put it all in the FHAP program, I strongly suggest that the gentlewoman should withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I am very opposed to increasing this program at the expense of other critical programs. There are a number of reasons.

The committee mark fully funds the amount requested by the administration and fully funds the program that has been in place for the last decade. These funds go to State and local governments to abate lead-based paint in homes that will not be restored through modernization or resale. Three years ago, the Senate began a new demonstration program and added between $50 million and $75 million. The House has not included these funds in subsequent years, and the Senate has attempted to continue the demonstration program each year. They may well try to do so again.

The committee is simply not in a position to absorb a $60 million increase in funding for this demonstration program at the expense of programs that are being funded at the 2005 level or below. This is not an appropriate trade-off.

Mr. Chairman, I urge that the amendment be defeated and we work to determine if the program should be included during conference.

I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, this is a very simple amendment. On page 7, line 8, after the dollar amount, insert ``increased by $263,000,000,'' and page 7, line 12, after the dollar amount, insert ``increased by $263,000,000.''

What it does simply is it adds $263 million to FAA safety programs.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point order against the amendment because it increases an appropriation from the Airport and Airway Trust Fund over the amount authorized from that fund and therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would remove from the bill the limitation on routes that would be eligible for Federal funding, take them all out. It would strip any semblance of reform out of the House bill. All reform goes out the window.

If we want to talk about killing Amtrak, if you really want to kill it, this is the way to do it. In the FY 2006 grant request, Amtrak specifically stated that it cannot continue to operate all routes with $1.2 billion, all routes. The LaTourette amendment offered earlier provides less than $1.2 billion. If this amendment is adopted, the northeast corridor is in jeopardy, the northeast corridor is in real bad shape.

The limitation in the bill protects the northeast corridor. This amendment does not. Amtrak supporters in the northeast need to understand that supporting this amendment redirects the funding to the highly unprofitable routes, routes that carry Federal subsidies up to $466 per passenger, routes that carry less than 20 percent of Amtrak's riders, and it leaves more than 52 percent of Amtrak riders in the northeast exposed to a shutdown, 52 percent, over half.

Striking the limitation on route eligibility will siphon funding from routes that chill the promise of self-sufficiency, routes that are well used, to routes that will never, never, never under any circumstances be profitable.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

What is interesting about this amendment is that only 20 percent of the people are involved in the elimination of these lines, but it is 50 percent of the cost. This is like a stake in the heart of a plan to establish some reform. You know, unfortunately, our

national rail service is no longer a source of pride. Amtrak has suffered mismanagement, irresponsible investments, poor service and a tremendous backlog of, maintenance that has sunk the system to a new low.

Amtrak, as we know it, faces tremendous debt while operating in a fundamentally flawed management system. Amtrak goes back to 1971, and the conception at that time was to produce it as a for-profit business. And it was expected to be one within 5 years. Here it is 35 years later. Guess what, they are in worse shape than ever. As has been pointed out, unfortunately for the taxpayers, its self-sufficiency is only a pipe dream. On average, taxpayers will pay a $210 subsidy, even though you do not think you are paying it, because some pay $466, you are because the system needs an average of $210 per person. All other transportation systems in our country are paid for directly. Highways and aviation are funded through user fees and excise taxes. Rail is the only passenger transportation mode that relies solely on the generosity of taxpayers. And this charity is running out.

It is funny, I have not heard one word from anybody who is complaining about shutting those lines down who is interested in doing anything locally to provide resources to keep it going. That is an option. We are not mandating the closure. And the message should be clear. In a time of flat budgets and large deficits, we cannot afford the abuse of taxpayer dollars on irresponsible ventures, poor management and unprofitable services.

I know that reform is never easy. But in Amtrak's case, it is essential. We have come to the last stop. Amtrak is no longer helping us move forward. Passenger rail must be reformed, or it will end, be the end of Amtrak.

Announcement by the Chairman

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I, too, want to congratulate the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Ranking Member Obey) for managing to get us here before the end of June to the final bill. And with any luck at all, we will actually finish this final bill before the end of June.

For the second year in a row, last year as the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies, and this year now as the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, House and Urban Development, the Judiciary, District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies, this has been the last subcommittee to report. The reorganization does not seem to make much difference. We are still the last subcommittee to report to the floor, and I do not know what else can be said or inferred from that except that the best has been left for last.

First, I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Knollenberg) for the positive and constructive relationship that we have forged thus far in this expanded and reorganized subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Knollenberg) put the bill together, he listened to both majority and minority Members, the concerns that they might have, and worked to resolve a good many issues. That cooperative approach was not limited to subcommittees or even subcommittee members or even to full Committee on Appropriations members. He considered all Members concerned, and where he was able to help, he did that, even to the last 12 hours, as he has indicated in his remarks, the amendment that will be offered early on in the process, and I thank him for that.

I particularly want to commend the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Knollenberg) for his mark in regards to his thoughtful approach to our capital city's budget which is embodied in this bill.

I also want to take a moment to thank the excellent staff on both sides of the aisle for their hard work on this legislation. On the minority side, Mike Malone, Michelle Burkett, Matt Washington, Kathleen Harris on my staff, and Shalanda Young.

On the majority side, Dena Baron, the majority clerk, Cheryle Tucker, Steve Crane, Dave Gibbons, Tammy Hughes, David Napolielo and Kristen Jones.

This bill has become more complex than I think any of us realized it would, and I appreciate the efforts and the long hours of each and every one of those staff members.

Mr. Chairman, every dollar of budget authority allowed in the severely inadequate allocation where a subcommittee has been used, were I in charge of the distribution of that allocation, it would be different. However, there would be still the same volume of holes. So I stipulate that this inadequate allocation created problems.

On the one hand, I am very pleased to see significant increases for transportation funding because transportation investments are critical for a healthy, growing economy for our growing and shifting population. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration funding is 13.5 percent above the President's request at $14.427 billion. The Federal Transit Administration is 9 percent above the President's request at $8.482 billion. Federal Highway Administration's allotment here is 4.5 percent above the President's request at $37.026 billion. Mr. Chairman, even the Federal Railroad Administration is 32 percent above the President's request at $732 million. Mr. Chairman, as we can see, these are good levels for transportation funding.

On the other hand, I am very concerned about the impact that meeting the House TEA-LU levels was having on other agencies and accounts in the bill.

In Title I, the transportation title, Federal aviation, Federal highway, Federal transit are funded substantially above the fiscal year 2005 enacted level and way above the President's request for 2006.

That is driven by current authorization on FAA and the anticipated authorization, which we all fervently pray for within the next month or so of Federal highway and Federal transit through the TEA-LU bill.

The lone exception to adequate funding is Amtrak. The chairman uses an extremely blunt instrument on Amtrak, somewhat like the proverbial 2-by-4 between the mule's eyes. The bill terminates all Federal subsidy on 18 long-distance lines, which are the most heavily subsidized lines, thereby terminating the very concept of a national passenger rail system. Those 18 lines carry roughly 20 percent of Amtrak's passengers and provide the only passenger rail service in 23 States, represented by a lot of Members of the House and, incidentally, by 46 Members of the other body.

The shutting down of those lines would incur $300 million in labor and contractual costs in fiscal year 2006 alone. That $300 million, plus $275 million in mandatory debt servicing, plus $130 million of Federal subsidy to keep the remaining 24 inner-city lines operating is already $150 million above the $550 million provided in the bill, and that is before any allocation for capital improvements on the deteriorating northeast corridor trackage, wholly owned by Amtrak and carrying 50 percent of all Amtrak passengers.

Mr. Chairman, if this body funds Amtrak at $550 million, it should be no surprise if there is no passenger rail service this time next year. And there will be one or more amendments offered to address that problem.

Mr. Chairman, there remain holes in title III, the HUD title. Section 8 and public housing accounts are relatively well funded, but there are substantial reductions from 2005 enacted levels in the community development accounts, and that is largely because the committee wisely rejected the proposal by the President to move almost all of the community development accounts into a different department and a different piece of legislation. And in rejecting and bringing back that material, which has always been the material of the community development portion of housing and community development, the funding ended up not being high enough to be anywhere close to enacted levels from last year.

As examples, the CDBG formula grants, which go to virtually all of our communities around the country, are down below the 2005-enacted level by 6 percent, and the HOPE VI and Brownfields Development are defunded, defunded, just as examples. The YouthBuild program, which is operated successfully in so many districts, is not yet funded.

So, Mr. Chairman, our bill has some shortfalls. These shortfalls should not be allowed to remain in this bill as it becomes law.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), our capital city.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I think we have had a good general debate here for this hour that covered a lot of the different areas in the bill and certainly reflects some of the issues that we will be debating as the amendment process goes forward.

Again, I want to thank the chairman and the staff on the majority and the minority side for all the work that they have done. It has been a process which has gone a long way. It will go more in the next day or two. All of it should improve the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am not sure whether this is on the point of order, but I would just like the body to know that there would be no objection on this side of the House to having this item made in order. Notwithstanding the comments by the chairman here, if that manages to keep this issue in the forefront, even though he is suggesting and has suggested that the final actions on this legislation would not occur for 3 months, if that manages to keep the issue before the body, it is important enough that that in itself would be valuable, that it be kept there so that we do indeed find a fast way of dealing with the matter.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to cosponsor and endorse this amendment. This amendment represents exactly what I said an hour or so ago, that the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Knollenberg) has listened to both majority and minority Members' concerns and has worked to resolve all issues. He has considered all Members' concerns and, where he could help, he did; and I thank him for that.

With this amendment, the bill would now provide $50 million for YouthBuild and will keep YouthBuild alive while the authorizing committees figures out exactly where YouthBuild should best be authorized.

The YouthBuild program is a good program. Several other Members during general debate have talked about it. It is a program that serves young men and women in their late teens and early 20s who dropped out of high school, or graduates from high school who find 2 or 3 years later that they have no real job skills and poor prospects of a good job. Dropouts in this program get a GED and other key education for the construction industry. All participants get skills and experience in housing construction trades.

The program has been in place about a dozen years. Nearly 15,000 units of affordable housing have been built, and nearly 30,000 young people have learned the housing construction and building trades, thanks to the YouthBuild program. Many of these young people have gone on to college. Those who have been in trouble with the law earlier in life have a stunningly low recidivism rate after they have been in the YouthBuild program.

Each of the items in this amendment was included in my primary remarks at subcommittee markup and again at the full committee markup and in debate on adoption of the rule yesterday. I appreciate the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Knollenberg) listening and responding, and I hope the amendment will be adopted.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Rothman).

(Mr. ROTHMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment. I believe very strongly that we should have a national passenger rail system, and I want to see that that is a successful system and a system that we can modernize and make into one that is truly a part of our balanced transportation system.

Several people have come to the floor in opposition to the amendment and pointed out how much money is expended by Amtrak. Well, yes, indeed, each of the last 3 years has been over $1.2 billion. One year, 3 years ago, it was $1.3 billion. But even at that level of expenditure, there has not been enough money to even make a serious dent in the capital needs for the northeast corridor, the northeast corridor which carries 50 percent of all of the passengers on our version of the national rail system. So we are being

quite unrealistic in the idea that some seem to have that it is possible to run a passenger rail system on the cheap.

The number of dollars that are being talked about here simply does not run even the inner-city rail system, those 24 lines that the bill purports to support. As I have said earlier today, the chairman has used an extremely blunt instrument on Amtrak, somewhat like the proverbial 2-by-4 between a mule's eyes.

Well, the bill cuts out all Federal subsidy on 18 long-distance lines, which forces them to shut down. But the cost of doing that is, as the gentleman from Ohio pointed out, giving a more accurate number than I gave, I said $300 million, he said, I believe, $369 million in costs that are just to close down those lines in the first year. And it continues for several years, while those costs of abrogating contractual arrangements and labor costs would continue. That plus already the debt on Amtrak's capital debt, the debt service on Amtrak's capital debt, would be another $275 million and growing.

Those two items by themselves end up being more than has been suggested for funding by the bill. So the bill is a shutdown of Amtrak. It is not a reform of Amtrak. That is really for the authorizers to do over time. What the amendment does, as has been proposed by the authorizing committee, and I commend them for putting together a set of offsets which are difficult, but not nearly as difficult in dealing with Amtrak as the proposal is in the bill, what they have done is completely funded offsets within the authorization committee's area. And they are the ones ultimately that are going to have to figure out how to come up with a bill that in the long run provides a national passenger rail system and reforms it, which does not have to be by the basis of cutting out all of these long-distance lines.

The lines that are cut out, shown by that map that everybody has seen, cuts out all passenger rail service in 23 States, representing 154 Members of this House of Representatives and 46 Members of the other body. That is just not a realistic position. And the position which the authorizing Chair and the ranking member of the authorizing subcommittee have put forward is a position that still requires reform, because that number of dollars in the long run does not fully fund a functioning and efficient national passenger rail system.

Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment that has been put forward by the gentleman from Ohio and the gentlewoman from Florida. Both States, by the way, lose all of their passenger rail system. I hope the amendment is adopted.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I just want to say we agree with the amendment that has been offered.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

This is a bit of a surreal debate at this point. To me, the only logical thing to do with this vote is to vote to strike the section that eliminates the long-distance routes. I believe that, in large measure, the vote that was taken earlier was a vote in adding money back to Amtrak, was a vote to allow Amtrak to operate another year, and leave the authorizers with a mandate or a very strong signal that they had to do something and finally get this matter settled through the normal authorization route.

My chairman, and I know, I respect what he is trying to do. He has this section which eliminates these long-distance routes that serve the only passenger rail service in 23 States, with all of those Senators on the other side of the Capitol and at least 154 of our Members in those States. And by eliminating those routes, he wishes to force reform of the system, to force the authorizing system to operate effectively. And in eliminating those routes, there is such a large cost for the elimination of the routes that the amount of money that was put in was simply not adequate to do the job, and so it was going to shut down the whole of the Amtrak system. I think that that, clearly, is what comes through as the end result of the way the bill was written.

Now, if we leave the routes in there and no subsidy can be placed on those routes, then that shuts down those routes and triggers the utter waste of $360 million a year of costs for abrogating the labor and other contractual obligations that relate to those routes. It is an utter waste, and that means, in fact, that I think the chairman is right. It probably means that then the system is likely to shut down again because the total amount of money is not going to be adequate.

But the chairman himself has indicated what the actual reform is. The chairman has pointed out that there is extremely high costs on these long distance routes through the luxury services, the sleeper services and the meals services, which cost $300 million or thereabouts to provide on these routes. So one could have one's cake and eat it, too, by eliminating that luxury service, those meals and sleeper services on the long-distance routes, continue to have the long-distance routes without those costs, which serve a very small group of people, a very small number of people, and then that process, the amount of money that was put in the bill would then serve to keep things going for the next year.

So it seems to me that the logical thing to do would be to strike these routes and, instead, provide the reforms, not by the bludgeon of eliminating these routes which triggers that high cost of contractual changes, rather than doing that, find the reform that is going to actually keep the national rail system going and allow the amount of money that was put in to provide that service at a much lower cost than what presently is the case. So I hope that the amendment will be adopted and that we will get somewhere to what would be a real reform.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and let me simply say that I appreciate the fact that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) has tried to do everything in his power to make this bill as acceptable as possible, given the circumstances. So I do not object to what he has done, but I do object to the circumstances.

I would simply say that the problem is that Chairman Knollenberg has not been given the tools necessary to make this a desirable bill. It is sort of like giving a surgeon a spoon and telling him to go ahead and perform surgery. He needs more than that in order to get the job done.

This bill, I think, is an important failure in terms of our obligation to meet a number of national needs. As has been mentioned previously, we have a number of important HUD programs which are crunched and zeroed out. Brownfields, for instance. My community has had some wonderful successes in cleaning up polluted areas through the use of that program. That program, if this bill has its way, would be gone. We have other problems in the housing area which have already been discussed.

Amtrak. As my friends in this House know, I often quote my favorite philosopher, Archie the Cockroach. Archie said once: ``Did you ever notice when a politician does get an idea, he gets it all wrong?'' And I would say that this budget for Amtrak gets it all wrong.

Amtrak, frankly, does not impact my district to any significant degree, but the fact is it is an important national resource which should not be scuttled like it is an old World War I battleship. The fact is that it provides an important national service, and we ought to be able to preserve a national passenger rail system.

The idea that is wrong is the idea that somehow we ought to require passenger rail service in this country to show a profit. We do not require airlines to do that. The Federal Government pumps a lot of money into the budget in order to provide service to hard-to-serve areas in the country as far as air travel is concerned, and we need to treat rail transportation the same way.

We would not have a Federal highway system if we only built the routes that ``paid for themselves.'' Most of rural America would be flat out of luck, especially the West, when it comes to highways, if we applied the same logic to highway construction that the House is trying to apply to railway transportation in this bill.

Another shortcoming, in my view, is the fact that it provides a $250 million reduction to the Community Development Block Grant. I do not represent a city over 40,000 in my entire district, but those small- town mayors that I represent make terrific use of the money in this program in order to revitalize neighborhoods in ways that they otherwise would never be able to do.

I would also say, and this is no particular fault of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) either, but this bill represents the last chance that we have to do something about the fact that the administration for 2 years has kept the truth from Congress about the needs of the veterans health care system in this country.

We have been trying for 2 years to get more money into the VA for veterans health care. We have steadily been told by the administration, No, no, no, the budget is fully adequate, we do not need any more money. Now we know it has all been baloney.

Yesterday, the administration finally broke down and admitted that they are more than a billion dollars short for this year, and for the coming year, they will be $2.6 billion short. We have an obligation to do something about it. The Senate did something yesterday on the Interior bill. The Senate added $1.4 billion as an emergency appropriation to deal with what is an emergency situation in the veterans health care agency.

This is the last appropriation bill that is going to go through here on a regular basis, and because we were not allowed to offer this amendment on the subcommittee bill where it should have been offered, we have no choice but to try to get it offered to this bill, unless this House wants to sit, as FDR used to say, ``frozen in the ice of its own indifference.'' I would hope we would not do that and would respond to the challenge at hand.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Let me simply say, I hate to say, we told you so, but we told you so. We warned the majority that, if you listened to the denials of the Veterans Administration, you would eventually be embarrassed because their request was inadequate to meet the needs of returning veterans.

We have now been told yesterday, finally the VA is telling us the truth, and the fact is, this is the only remaining appropriation vehicle that we can use to add the necessary funds. The Senate added $1.4 billion yesterday to the Interior bill. That was not germane either, but the Senate did not let dunghill jurisdictional politics get in the way of dealing with the problems of veterans. I would urge the House to follow the lead of the Senate and to allow this amendment to be added so that we can take care of the problem.

We are not even adding the extra $400 million that the Senate added yesterday. We are simply saying, take what the VA has already admitted they need for this year. We know it is going to be more for next year. But at least take the $1 billion we know is needed now, so that we do not continue to listen to false promises from the VA.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Chairman, I would simply state that the House is in a strange position today because, under the rules of the House, every item that is brought to the floor is supposed to be germane to the bill at hand unless the Committee on Rules has provided exceptions to that. My understanding of the rules is that notwithstanding the fact that the rule does not specifically allow for this amendment, if no Member objects, this amendment could be considered.

So I would simply ask every Member of the House, through the Chair, whether or not this matter is sufficiently important enough that a point of order not be lodged.

The gentleman from California suggested that this ought to be considered in some other venue. We would be happy to do that if someone had another suggestion; but right now, this is the only dog in the hunt. I am afraid that if the gentleman persists in his point of order, the gentleman from Texas and I would have to concede the point of order; but I would hope that we would not be pushed into that position.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, and I want to just comment on a couple of things that were said by the distinguished subcommittee chairman during the debate. He described this amendment as being a ``slash and burn amendment.'' Well, I want to suggest that what was ``slash and burn'' was the budget resolution which has enforced these kinds of reductions across the budget.

In my view, it is the budget resolution which slashed and burned when it wound up producing an education budget that left No Child Left Behind education programs $800 million below last year. It was slash and burn which left the National Institutes of Health with 500 fewer medical research grants than they had 2 years ago. It was slash and burn that eliminated nine out of the 10 programs that were supposed to focus on the development of health professions in rural areas and in urban inner-cities. It was slash and burn which has caused this very bill to provide, in essence, a shutdown of Amtrak.

The gentleman from Oregon summed it up as well as anyone in the debate today when he pointed out the strange dichotomy that exists between believing that railroad transportation must show a profit, but airline transportation, passenger service at least, does not have to.

And I would add that there are hundreds of miles, thousands of miles in this country of interstate highway that in actuality have very few riders and standing alone could not justify their construction in the first place. So it seems to me, as has been said, we need a balanced set of transportation alternatives in this country. And you do not balance your transportation system by putting one leg of that transportation system out of business, as this committee product essentially does.

Mr. Chairman, I would urge support for the amendment. I do not like the reductions in the offsets any more than many other persons in this Chamber like them, but the fact is they were forced by every single Member who voted for that Republican budget resolution. So like it or not, those are the choices you enforced, and we choose not to shut down one of the major transportation legs in this country.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to bring the House's attention to one fact: Since Members keep asking me, are we going to be here Friday, I would like to make the point simply that this is the 224-page bill. We are still on page 2.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, this House, just a short while ago, adopted the LaTourette and Oberstar amendment, the clear intent of which was to restore passenger service to the routes shown in the map that everybody has been showing around today, the areas, the routes in red. It was meant to retain a truly national passenger railroad service.

Without the subsequent amendment of the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown), that initial action by the House remains essentially meaningless, and it means that the only thing that the money would be used for, which was gained in that LaTourette amendment, would be to pay shutdown costs to the former employees of the parts of Amtrak that are being shut down. I do not think that action is going to please anybody. I do not think it is going to fool anybody. We clearly need this amendment, and I would urge support for it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for the time.

Mr. Chairman, I have been on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the House for some 13 years, most of that time on the Subcommittee on Railroads, and I always hear that Amtrak reform is right around the corner.

For the benefit of the gentleman who just spoke, in 1997, we put an Amtrak Reform Council, ARC, in place for some 4 years to 1991. They came up with a recommendation, and Congress ignored the recommendation. Yes, the problem is Congress. No, the problem is not just putting more money into Amtrak, as this amendment would do.

My colleagues heard the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the Committee on Appropriations subcommittee chair, talk about the waste in Amtrak. The GAO just testified before our subcommittee again, for every dollar that we get in food and beverage service, every dollar, it costs us $2. We lose $2.

The service, if we had service, my colleagues heard the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) talk about subsidizing routes, the sunset limited, $466 per passenger. Now, it would not be bad if we paid that and, for example, the train got there on time. Do my colleagues know what its on-time performance was? 4.3 percent of the time it got there on time, an absolute disaster.

We had a hearing on the money that they lost in trying to put in high-speed service. We have neither high speed and we do not have service, an absolute farce, billions of dollars wasted, and no Acela high-speed service in the quarter.

Here is the GAO report. The President has called for this reform. The Amtrak Reform Council has called for this reform.

I am a critic of Amtrak, but I am a strong supporter. We need a nationwide system to supply an alternate transit system across the country, and we are behind countries. We are even behind Romania, which recently decided to privatize their railroad.

So I get letters. Here is a letter from an Amtrak employee. My colleagues heard some of the waste here. ``There are so many other ways Amtrak squanders its money,'' he wrote me, and this is just one. He said, $20,000 for a 7-week course of which most of the people never even completed. ``I still witnessed my share of a finely tuned money pit.'' Amtrak West headquarters, the fifth floor of the Port of Oakland's luxury high-rise, the place is full of employees but what they all do is a mystery. Then he says, We have another office 20 miles away. He said, I started to wonder if Amtrak owns stock in FedEx. They ship everything FedEx. He goes on and says they fly around the country on airline tickets, costing thousands of dollars each.

Here is the report of how we save money with Amtrak, not how we squander it.

Then we had the question of not just losing money but stealing money. Food service, over 135 employees were dismissed, resigned or disqualified for improper cash handling and 250 conductors stealing money. There is the report.

Give them more money. Go ahead, because we will be back here next year doing the same thing.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against the paragraph.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against the phrase ``to be derived from the airport and airway trust fund'' beginning on page 5, line 25, and ending on line 26.

This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriation bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the paragraph.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against page 11, line 22, beginning with ``; for grants'' through page 12, line 1, ending with the word ``code.''

This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriation bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a further point of order against the paragraph.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against page 12, line 12, beginning with ``provided further'' through line 17 ending with the word ``program.''

This provision also violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriation bill in violation of the House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the phrase ``notwithstanding any other provision of law'' on page 16, line 8.

This phrase violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against section 110. This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law, and therefore, it constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against section 112. This provision violates clause 2 of rule XXI. It changes existing law, and therefore constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against section 130.

Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against page 28, line 15, beginning with ``provided further'' through page 29, line 2.

These provisos violate clause 2 of rule XXI. They change existing law which constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill in violation of House rules.

Mr. Chairman, could I inquire as to what page that would apply to, through what page?

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, this is an important amendment because it does do away with the reforms that this appropriation subcommittee has imposed on Amtrak. As I said earlier, I have been on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for some 13 years. I watched for more than 4 years when they had an Amtrak reform council look at the operations of Amtrak and come up with recommendations that were made to Congress; and, sure enough, they ignored those recommendations.

This is a tough business to reform Amtrak and eliminate some of these politically popular routes. But the cost of those routes, as we have heard, range from $242 subsidizing per ticket on the Sunset Limited, some $466 to run the route that we saw here. Some of those go into my State, Florida. But it is time to reevaluate those routes, and we must eliminate them if we have to, only by legislation, because the reform which we have tried to do through an advisory council and commission to look at this in an independent study, all that has failed.

I do support the President in really drawing a line in the sand and saying we must impose reforms on Amtrak.

Now, we have heard this analogy, and I chair the Subcommittee on Aviation, on how much we subsidize aviation. But every ticket that is sold by Amtrak is subsidized by $49, every single ticket. In aviation that is not the case, I say to my colleagues. We heard how much money goes in, but that money is raised by a 7.5 percent ticket tax. The next time you get your airline ticket, look at 7.5 percent, look at the other fees. There is a passenger facilitation fee, and that could be anywhere from a few dollars on up. There is an aviation security fee of $5. You hear the airlines complaining about how taxed their passengers are. The passengers are paying their full fare, including a fuel tax.

Amtrak pays no fuel tax, there is no passenger tax, there is no security fee. There is no contribution. Besides that, they are losing, on every ticket they sell, an average of $49.

Now, I am a strong supporter of mass transit, high-speed rail, rail as an alternative; and I do know that some of that has to be subsidized. I will vote to subsidize this. But a loss of nearly $500 a ticket, and that is what this amendment would do, will restore all those losing routes.

Now, why has Amtrak not changed out some of these routes? Let us be a little candid among friends here. Labor cut sweetheart deals so most of the Amtrak employees are going to get 7 years' salary and benefits assistance; some will get 5 years. There is a cost. We cannot eliminate one single route without paying those benefits that have already been negotiated. But at some time, we have to pay the piper, and sometimes we have to cut the losses.

Now, out in America right now, probably not watching the proceedings of this House, are millions of Americans who are working hard. It is hard for me to tell them to go out there and work even harder, maybe get another part-time job so you can send that money here to Washington, so we can have them waste it.

When they provide food service and take in a dollar, it costs them $2. They lost a third of a billion dollars in the past 3\1/2\ years on food service. When they try to put high-speed rail in, and I am a strong advocate of high-speed rail, we have neither high-speed and we do not have service. It is down the tubes. It was going 83 miles an hour. That is not high-speed service, even by our own standards which are, under Federal law, 120 miles an hour.

So let us make the reform that is necessary. The chairman and the subcommittee have done an excellent job in forcing some of these reforms that are long overdue. Let us defeat this ill-conceived amendment. Let us reform Amtrak. Let us provide good service, not a Soviet-style train endurance test for passengers, but modern, high- speed rail and long-distance service across the United States, and give service to passengers that do not have that service available, at the lowest cost to the taxpayers. We can do that.

Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Knollenberg) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), ranking member, for the hard work they have done under this bill under very tight budget restraints.

I think that this is a good piece of legislation, although I do have some concerns about cuts in particular programs.

HOPE VI; the Empowerment Zone program; the Community Development Loan Guarantees; the HUD Brownfields program, a program close to my heart, which provides a second chance for reuse to many old industrial properties, all of which have been contaminated, we want to get them back on the tax rolls.

But perhaps most surprisingly the YouthBuild program, which provides a crucial second chance for a good life to thousands of disadvantaged young people in our Nation's urban communities, has been zeroed out in the legislation that we are debating today.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to describe to my colleagues today what I have learned about the tremendous success of YouthBuild in my years as mayor of the city of Paterson, New Jersey. In the work I have done with YouthBuild participants, I have heard scores of inspiring accounts from young kids who spent their lives struggling with poverty, dysfunctional or absent families, drug addiction and other forms of neglect and abuse. And be rest assured this program is not a handout. Through the challenging concrete task of building houses for the homeless, getting their hands dirty with demanding physical labor, these kids have been given the tools to begin to rebuild their own lives.

This is a model program that both sides of the aisle should enthusiastically support, a program that helps young people gain the self-esteem, self-reliance that come with a hard day's work in the service of another human being.

According to a recent study, an astounding 65 percent of the YouthBuild graduates say that they now expect to live an average of 32 years longer after YouthBuild experience than they expected to live before. Self-esteem is not the only thing that is raised through this program. Income potential and educational achievement have also soared. Seventy percent of YouthBuild graduates are either in post-secondary education or in jobs averaging $10 per hour.

This program is unquestionably a winner for young people across our Nation. YouthBuild develops job skills, leadership potential, civic involvement, and creates a community of adults and youth committed to helping each other achieve success in life. And through the construction of affordable housing, it contributes to the revitalization of our poorest neighborhoods.

It is hard to believe that a compassionate President and a Congress would want to wipe out any of these programs which epitomize our oldest and most sacred American values: hard work, self-reliance, and limitless optimism about the future.

I urge the House to find ways to increase funding for the valuable community revitalization initiatives that have been cut from this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, Amtrak was there for America after 9/11. It performed beautifully. Its employees performed. This is delivering people, product, all over the United States of America. And if you look at the map, this is all wiped out, all in red. In red, mind you.

It is inexcusable that we are only funding half of what is needed for Amtrak. There could be no more illusion about the administration's desire to destroy Amtrak. The Federal Government took on the burden of passenger rail from the freight railroads in 1971, in a bill signed by President Richard Nixon. Read my lips. These private companies were relieved to be rid of what they knew was inherently a nonprofit operation.

Federal subsidization for other transportation modes is nothing new. Each year in New Jersey, 4 million New Jersey residents ride Amtrak. Pennsylvania, 5 million. And look at the investments in the many cities of Pennsylvania, and Amtrak, that they have invested capital improvements. We cannot accept half of a loaf.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment being offered by Chairman LaTourette and Ranking Member Oberstar which would give Amtrak a fighting chance to function next year.

It is inexcusable that the bill before us today contains only $550 million for intercity passenger rail service, effectively bankrupting Amtrak. There can be no more illusions about the Administration's desire to destroy Amtrak once and for all.

The Federal Government took on the burden of passenger rail from the freight railroads in 1971 in a bill signed by President Richard Nixon. These private companies were relieved to be rid of what they knew was inherently a non-profit operation.

Federal subsidization for other transportation modes is nothing new. We have been subsidizing the money-losing airlines time and time again.

This Congress properly provides tens of billions every year for highways, public transit, aviation, and maritime transportation infrastructure and operations. Passenger rail is just as deserving of our support as the rest.

Each year, about 4 million New Jersey residents ride Amtrak.

200,000 commuters up and down the Northeast Corridor rely on Amtrak to maintain the NJ Transit system. Amtrak has tremendous impact on our regional economy in the Northeast. Amtrak relieves congestion throughout the Northeast on the roadways and airways.

Like so many of our States, my home State of New Jersey already has a severely strained State budget. Passing the buck of rail operations and maintenance onto already struggling State budgets is not a solution based in reality.

Funding Amtrak at last year's level is the very least we can do to keep the trains running that Americans count on nationwide.

We must support the LaTourette/Oberstar amendment. We must defeat this ill-conceived proposal. The Congress must provide the dollars that Amtrak needs to run efficiently and effectively.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I want to remind my brothers and sisters from both sides of the aisle that this was a national system envisioned by the President in 1971, President Nixon, who had the bipartisan support of the Congress of the United States. And why was it proposed? It was proposed because the private companies wanted out. They no longer could pay for a system that serviced America.

Now, let me say what that system encompasses, I support this amendment by the ranking member, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown), the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Railroads.

Just three of those routes in red that you want to dispose of, the Silver Service, the Silver Meteor and the Palmetto, from New York to Miami, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, all the way to Jacksonville-Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, services 738,000 people. No small potatoes. That is a lot of folks. Where are you asking them to go? How are they going to get between destinations?

While I can accept that Amtrak must reform and while I can accept that we need to do away with any frivolous spending whatsoever, we need to sustain a system here, and we need to figure out on both sides of the aisle how to do it.

The Crescent from New York to New Orleans to Philadelphia to Wilmington, to Baltimore, Washington, Greensboro, Charlotte, Atlanta and Birmingham, 256,000 people, 256,000 passengers. And the Carolinian from Charlotte to New York City, 305,000 passengers. That is why I support the Brown-Menendez-Rahall amendment to keep these Amtrak trains on track.

I want to express in the strongest words here, Mr. Chairman, contrary to what one might expect, residents in my area of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, they travel rail to Florida. They do not only travel the northeast corridor, they travel by rail to the Midwest, they travel up to New England beyond just Boston, and they like using the trains, the very same trains that brought us from place to place after 9/11, remember, when we could not travel. Thank goodness that we had some semblance of a national system.

Americans like the freedom to travel. They want to make choices. I believe it should be the goal of the Department of Transportation to expand transportation alternatives, not to cut back on those choices.

It was Amtrak that I rode home from Washington on to be with my constituents to assess the damage at Ground Zero, as well as folks from both sides of the aisle. It is too important to the American people and the American economy to settle for anything less than a national system.

Mr. Chairman, I have heard the presentations about reform. I have heard no explanations, no alternatives to in any way sustain those routes that are all in red. So if we took the red away, we have systems that are not interconnected, and many of those systems are connected to the intermodal part of transportation, which is what TEA-LU is all about, which is what TEA-21 was all about, intermodal transportation. The Amtrak system is part of it, whether we are talking about rail, whether we are talking about airlines, whatever we are talking about.