Amtrak crash hits home for lawmakers, who respond by, yes, cutting funding 

Emergency personnel work at the scene of Tuesday’s deadly Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. (Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

The deadly Amtrak train derailment Tuesday night in Philadelphia was deeply personal for many lawmakers, especially those from the Northeast — as important as Vice President Joe Biden and as relatively anonymous as rank-and-file House members — who travel by train to and from Washington.

But just because the accident struck close to home does not mean Congress will increase an already shrunken budget for transportation. Just hours after the derailment, which claimed at least seven lives and left scores more injured, the House Appropriations Committee held an uncomfortably timed markup of its annual transportation spending bill and moved forward with a $250 million cut from last year’s Amtrak funding of approximately $1.3 billion.

Democrats urged Republicans to keep the accident in mind as the hearing progressed and members debated how much the government should contribute to modernizing and repairing transportation infrastructure, including Amtrak.

“[The bill] does not provide funding to address the capital needs required for safety,” said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., the ranking member of the transportation subcommittee of the powerful appropriations panel. Price called for a new budget agreement with higher spending levels because, without such a deal, transportation programs would continue to be “a victim of the majority’s self-imposed austerity.”

Rep. David Price, D-N.C., decried transportation spending cuts before the House Appropriations Committee. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty)

“It decimates the investments that a great country must make,” Price said. “There’s no way to sufficiently address all the gaps in funding in this bill.”

Democrats unsuccessfully pushed an amendment, proposed by Pennsylvania Rep. Chaka Fattah, to fund Amtrak at the White House’s requested spending levels for 2016 of $2.45 billion, $550 million of which would have gone specifically to the Northeast Corridor and $220 million of which would have been directed to replace obsolete equipment on state-supported Amtrak routes. The measure failed on party lines, 30 to 21. Another Democratic amendment, from Price himself, would have restored the billions that the GOP cut from the White House’s overall transportation proposal, but that also failed, 29-21.

Republicans objected to the Democrats’ efforts to break mutually agreed upon budget caps and said any increases in spending, for Amtrak or any other program, would have been challenged on the House floor. Republicans also questioned Democrats’ focus on the Tuesday accident, saying their attempts to tie the derailment to the previously scheduled hearing was inappropriate in the wake of a tragedy whose cause was still unknown. Investigators will be looking at all possible causes of the accident, including those — such as excessive speed — unrelated to infrastructure problems.