booker-mtp

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker speaks about the Amtrak crash on "Meet the Press" on May 17.

(Jonathan D. Salant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Cory Booker said last week's Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, which killed at least eight people, showed the need for more government spending on public works.

"We should not be scrimping on investments in public safety," Booker said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "he lack of infrastructure spending is costing us lives in America. It's costing every commuter. In my region especially, you see commuters paying over $1,000 a year in terms of damage to their cars, lost productivity"

Booker (D-N.J.), the ranking member of the Senate Commerce subcommittee that oversees Amtrak and other railroads, said the U.S. was falling behind its economic rivals by failing to maintain its roads, bridges, railroads and airports.

"We are losing economic competitiveness," he said. "We are losing out on jobs. We are missing out on growth."

Booker called the fight over whether the lack of Amtrak spending contributed to the crash was a "distraction" from the real issue, which is the need to improve the nation's public works.

We know unequivocally our safety as a nation, our air traffic, our aviation infrastructure, our rail infrastructure, our roads and bridges, is inadequate," Booker said. "We should be investing more. That's unequivocal, unassailable. And for us not to do that in a bipartisan fashion is unacceptable to me. And it's what we should be working on."

The partisan split on government spending was evident Wednesday, a day after the crash, when Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee rejected two Democratic amendments to increase funding for passenger rail and instead voted to cut Amtrak's budget to $1.14 billion in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, $251 million less the passenger railroad's current allocation and more than $1 billion below President Obama's $2.45 billion funding request.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday it was "stupid" to question whether GOP budget cuts could be blamed for the derailment.

"It's not about funding," Boehner said on Thursday. "The train was going twice the speed limit. Adequate funds are there, no money's been cut from rail safety and the

House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak,

and authorize a lot of these programs. And it's hard for me to imagine that people take the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed around here."

As the investigation into the crash continued, the Federal Railroad Administration on Saturday ordered Amtrak to immediately install technology to reduce a train's speed in the area of the northbound track where the derailment occurred. Similar automatic train control technology is in place along the southbound tracks in the area. The agency also told Amtrak to review all curves along the Northeast Corridor track to see whether additional safety measures are needed.

MORE POLITICS

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.