These cable providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. Up next a house transportation and infrastructure subcommittee hears testimony from amtrak c. E. O. Steven gardner and the executive director of the northwest Corridor Commission on improving Train Service and efficiency. They also discuss passenger safety, route options in the midwest and west coast and high speed rail. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] the subcommittee will come to order. I ask unanimous consent that the chair may call recess at any time. Without objection, so ordered. I recognize myself for Opening Statement for five minutes. Todays hearing examines the current and future state of amtrak. The Infrastructure Investment and job act gave historic funding to railroads with a large portion of that money going to amtrak. Amtrak is a federally chartere
Iran, leaving the deal intact for now. Releasepresident did new sanctions among 14 people and entities involved with the Ballistic Missile programs, and a crackdown on government protesters. President has repeatedly denounced the Nuclear Agreement negotiated by president obama, and in october, declined to certify that it was an interest of the u. S. He has stopped short of. Crapping that deal altogether south africas ruling party is calling President Trumps comments on african immigrants extremely offensive. The deputy secretary general of the African National Congress Told reporters that developing National Countries do have problems. It is not as if the United States does not have difficulties. There are millions of Unemployed People in the usa, people who do not have health care or access to education, and we would not make commentsto so derogatory about any kind of country that has social, economic, or other difficulties. It isand el salvador said expressing the countrys resounding
Too often it is one party power and sticks it to the other party. And then secondly i know you mentioned geographic concerns. We try to putt some other limitations on the map drawing process by requiring districts to be drawn more according to county lines or natural geographic features rather than just these crazy districts that squiggle around. Thats not you know not easy to do but one thing it does is makes it possible impossible for people to be too key yative. Some of the districts are very, very creative and having little bit more limitation on the process, open process about how to redistrict we are for. We werent willing to go as some people say to go to california or arizona which have models which are more completely out of the political process. They have turned it over to citizens. They dont want the legislature or the parties involved. Our commission really believed that having both parties have a say in those maps made sense but we did agree with you in many ways redistri
We want to keep using our military do go into the other countries, take a bill with us figure out what its going to cost and tell them that you pay half when we get there and half when the jobs done. We cant keep affording to go and police the world and some of the social programs like Social Security so easy to fix. When the kid comes out of the Social Security on year one, start taking taxes out. Dont wait 18 or 20 years. Take a little bit out of earned Income Credit and not miss it. It would fix Social Security and probably give a little bit of money there for health care that the whole country needs. Okay. Caller i think those are a couple of good things to start with. All right. John fortier the budget. We with respect taking positions like wars and entitlement. Those are functions for congress to address. I think if youre getting at the budget process, thats something we made recommendations about and the Bipartisan Policy Center has additional recommendations out of an economic
Its uncomfortable to say we want to defeat islamism. It is much more difficult the take on allege ideal logical question. There isnt a government in the world, right, left democrat republican that has to do that kind of thing. Too bad. Well, i would argue that that is extremely kournts productive. The last thing look and i say this. I dont want to sound flippant. But if were going to dispute iraqi freedom with iraqi salvation, its not a good plan. The u. S. Government has no business this is in policy, we have no business involving ourselves in things were not experience on. Were not experts on reforming religion. We didnt do that in this country as a government. We shouldnt be doing that in other places. Something that dana talked about is crucial. This idea of we cant reform islam as the u. S. Government, but we certainly are experts on addressing the ecosystem in which these kinds of movements can find followers supporters people to fund, etcetera, etcetera. What are those . Theyre