wanted list of transportation safety improvements. ptc is one of them, but so is maintaining the integrity of our nation's infrastructure. >> thank you. >> may i add a comment? >> sure. >> i think one thing we're not talking about is reducing highway grade crossings and trespasser accidents. and, actually, if you look at that, it's obviously gone down as well, but it's actually a higher percentage of overall accidents and fatalities. and it's something that is difficult to address, but it really involves, you know, working with multiple stakeholders, but it is something that really has to be tackled. and so i think when you think of rail safety, you have to, you know, really address it on a number of fronts. you know, technology, i think ptc is very promising. our point is that it has to be installed in a way that insures that the system functions as intended and is reliable. ..

>> i think obviously if you have high traffic area that's certainly poses a risk. but i'm definitely probably not the best person to answer that. >> i don't know if there's one definitive risk that drives crossing accidents. more than 50% of them occur at crossings are fully protected with gates and flashing lights and bells.

you know, really we're trying to advance the position that the safest, the safest grade crossing is one that doesn't exist at all. we really need to take a look at a more systematic approach as we propose and our budget proposal. eliminating grade crossings, strategic placement of overpasses and underpasses, and this advances safety for the rail network, for the vehicles, for pedestrians and proves the fluidity of traffic for all of the above also. but the fundamentals in grade crossing safety come back to education, enforcement and engineering. and we need to continue to engineer improvements. when you to continue to work with local judge to enforce the laws that are in place. and we need to continue to work with educating drivers do not put themselves at risk by illegally trespassing through a

crossing. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, senator johnson. senator mccaskill? >> in talking about pdc, and i know that before i arrived you discussed it with senator blunt about a case-by-case basis extension. to code you and your last answer you said we've got to be careful that we don't make it less safe in coming up capacity. aren't you a little worried that rather than biting the bullet and acknowledging that were not going to be ready to roll this out in a way that is sound and safe and universal that you going to get a piecemeal approach that could exactly do what you indicated your worried about doing, which is making it less safe and coming up capacity? >> senator, obviously we have responsibly to ensure that doesn't happen. believe me, a lot of people are doing a lot of good work in

making significant progress. the approach that we are proposing is to make sure that we find that right balance between in shoring that good progress continues to be made, that people are making that legitimate effort while also recognizing the challenges that are there, the risk to not getting it right, and making sure that the appropriate amount of time is provided for those tweets that are necessary to ensure we get it right. >> i think i kind of get it. you want to not let -- >> it can't be a free ride stanky don't want to let the pressure off of getting this done. i can't do. you want to hold their feet to the fire, but my sense is that everyone is really working on this and trying to make this happen. this is just one of those areas. we see it with available

technology and capacity and many other areas at the federal government tried to influence in terms of rules and regulations. if they are doing, do you get a sense that anyone is dragging their feet? >> for the most part i think the effort is there, and that due diligence is being applied. but we need to make sure that we don't create an environment where people feel that there is a free out, at that effort can be reduced. >> i hope you can do that in a way that doesn't lead to this case-by-case basis. first of all, you're talking about something that's hard on its face. that means each individual company has to figure out the rubic's cube of how do they get the extension. and the amount of time, energy and resources that goes into figuring that out when, it's a really thorough look at the efforts that are being made at the timetable that is reasonable would indicate that maybe 2015

is not the right moment in time to say everybody's got to be compliant. maybe it's 2016 but maybe some way you can have forcing them to show you, which i think they're doing now, aren't they showing to the progress as it goes along? >> they have implementation plans which we have reviewed and approved but actually we do believe that we can very systematically achieve this case-by-case approach we're talking about are working with each one of the carriers on the amendments to their implementation plan. since each one has already had to develop one now, let's go back, do the assessment of where they're at, what are the very specific challenges that each railroad is facing. because while many of them are the same, some are different. and then work with them to make and a minute in each case to their implementation plans and manage it up accordingly spent i think we need to continue oversight in that way. if you manage case-by-case basis without any byzantine

bureaucratic problems then we've got to somehow lift you up and celebrate you in this town because i'm not sure that he case-by-case basis is music to ears of anyone who is regulated by the federal government. so hopefully we can accomplish that. i would like to also talk about the train horn rule. i promise when my colleagues was not on this committee had a strong feelings about this, senator bennet from colorado, that i would inquire about this. i know there is a workaround for communities for quite some. but can you talk a little bit about the flexible on those workarounds and whether or not we have embraced sufficient flexibility where we on this opportunity and safety, but obviously the whole thing is a huge problem for many communities that are quote unquote bedroom communities and what is being required of them in terms of a workaround i think in some instances may be slightly too onerous but i'm certainly willing and open to hear your views on the.

>> thank you. at the opening i would like to remind you i am a former mayor of what was a railroad community, two major rail yards, five through 10. so i lived off as he sits in as well as the minnesota leader, you know, these on a daily basis -- municipal leader. we are open to the utmost highest level of flexibility, provided that an equivalent level of safety can be achieved. and that's the goal. that's all we need is a good sign to be applied to show that whatever creative approach a community is choosing to use, will generate an equivalent or superior level of safety. there is no question if you take a look at the statistics that the whistleblower regulation has worked at how significantly

great crossing accidents has come down since the agency implement the resolution about a decade ago, and so we're here today talking about a tragic crossing accident baltimore. so we need to make sure that, you bet, we will provide flexibility. our goal is to be performance-based and our approach to safety. what we care about is the outcome, not telling you that you must do it this one and only way. >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. senator thune? >> mr. chairman, thank you for holding a hearing today and we're here because we had a lot of rail accidents of late, and that's brought additional tension to the importance of real safety and a want to thank our witnesses, both this panel and the one to follow, for come today to tell us about some of the lessons that we can learn from these accidents. i think it is important to look at the overall context, the rail industry over a long period of

time. if you look since the passage of staggers back in 1980 where the industry was partially deregulate, the train accident rate has fallen by 76%. so there been a lot of progress made, a lot of gains me. the railroads, also last year invested $25 billion. i think someone was asking the question earlier in capital improvements. these are investments that help keep the railroad system state, and should the efficient movement of freight out of touch which many of us represent states that are dependent upon railroads to move freight are very interested in. i think it's important that we as congress be careful not to impose undue regulation on the railroad industry, especially if these force the railroads to spend money that would otherwise be knew he -- would be needed for improvements. the freight railroads installed

ptc technology by december 2015. i think that's an overly aggressive timeline that railroads are going to victory difficult time meeting for a number of recent. and edwards to implement ptc by the date mandated they are going to have to defer more pressing maintenance and infrastructure improvements. as i hope to introduce legislation in the coming weeks, along with others, that will reasonably extend the deadline for ptc implementation. i think we need to have additional flexibility for the railroads if we truly want to see ptc systems installed in a matter that recognize the technological challenges that currently exist for wide adoption. and ensures that of the necessary safety measures are not sidelined. so i guess i would count myself among those who have expressed concern about that mandate and what it's going to mean in terms

of overall of safety. and any investment that could be made in other areas. so i appreciate the insights you all are sharing with us today i guess i would like to ask, if i would, if i might, one question and it's kind of in touched on different ways today, mr. chairman, but this whole issue of case-by-case analysis versus sort of a blanket extension, there's a five year extension proposed in the house. the senate has proposal allowing fra to improve ptc extension on a case-by-case basis. mr. szabo, i'm interested in knowing if the fra were to consider extensions on a case-by-case basis, based on the technological financial and logistical challenges that would be associate with that, how long would likely take fra to consider an application and to make a decision? >> you mean to get through a process? >> right.

>> assuming all information was complete we believe we could have it done in 30-45 days. >> how much would you have to devote in terms of resources? is that a resource intensive process? >> it certainly consumes recess is but in a 2014 -- resources, we have requested the personnel necessary to execute our entire safety regime which would include implementation of ptc. >> if i might just express a concern that's already been raised here, and that is there some high level of confidence i would argue right now particularly with regard to government agencies, and evaluating these issues on a case-by-case basis which is argument alluded to. it strikes me lives and make a lot more sense if we're talking about doing some sort of an extension for compliance with this, dude in a way that recognizes that all the railroads are going to have to comply with that and do some sort of a blind extension.

we welcome your input as we consider that. i think it's important this be done in the right way. because if it's not, if it's rushed i think it puts perhaps people even at greater peril at a greater risk. >> senator, i become overly congress acts and we execute. to we execute. so we'll execute whatever direction congress provides for us. i think we are all saying the same thing, that ultimately it's about finding that right balance between ensuring that this is done expeditiously, while also making sure that it is done in a safe and reliable manner. so i think we want the same outcome and it's just a matter of working through details on how we get there. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator thune. i have some additional questions which i'm going to ask now as part of a brief second round but

anyone else who has additional questions, but just very briefly here you're not saying, are you, administrator szabo, that you're willing to forgo or abandoned ptc? is just a question of timing? >> again, ultimately that decision is made by congress, but no, we believe, we believe that this is a game changing safety technology. and again if you take a look at where the biggest risk is in railroad accidents, that it has a significant impact on safety for the public as well as rail workers. >> and i want to bring you back, chairwoman hersman, to the report december 15. as i read through this report, i see references to the erosion of dirt, the sake -- same kind of weakness and balanced that almost certainly contributed to if it didn't cost that derailment collision, they need

for new ties, they need for other kinds of correction and repair on different parts of the track. and neighboring tracts in that vicinity. wouldn't you agree coming to spoke earlier of infrastructure, bringing it down to the real life, so to speak? isn't this a searing indictment of the quality of that track? >> what this demonstrates is an inspection over 30 miles of track. you have to employees arriving in a high rail vehicle, and they are inspecting for lines, four separate tracks during a shift. they are identifying the defects that they have found. this is certainly indicative of what we see in our

investigations, and i know with the fra sees in the railroad invited. attract environment is one that is constantly deteriorating. you have to maintain. you have to be vigilant. you have to be on top -- on top of the. yet to be identified the defects. you've got to put them in your work plan. it's important for them to do the inspections. they were required to do inspections twice a week. they told our investors they were doing three times a week. but yes, you're right. here we have defects that are similar to the one that we have identified that was near the point of to really. these are all risks, and they need to be addressed. so what we need to do is this is one inspection. we want to look back at all the inspections, see if this is a chronic problem, it was dealt with effectively over time. if the fixes were appropriate, if their prioritization was appropriate. if there intervals were appropriate for the circumstances. and so i think what this tells

us is if they did an inspection, they identified a number of defects. we have to understand if the standards are adequate and if things need to change to impro improve. >> senator, if i may add just one comment on that, to me my bigger concern is we drill down on this is better understand the safety culture that exists on the property, and you know, in due time will determine whether this was or was not a violation -- >> the safety culture, i don't mean to interrupt, but the safety culture is a somewhat vague term. there are fra standards, and apparently these defects did not violate those minimal standards. >> and that's my point, senator. that's the point i'm trying to make, is that we should not be approaching this as to whether it needs a minimal standard or not, but if something is identified that could cause

risk, the culture needs to be that we immediately take the safe course of action. >> if these were not violations of present every standards, maybe they should be? >> that's possible. we are not willing to say yet that it is not a violation. i know in dsb has drawn that conclusion. we continue to will that open. >> just to be clear, this is metro-north position that it did not rise to the level of an fra defect. is metro-north believed it had risen to the level of an fra defect it would've been noted on the front of the report that it was repaired immediately. so again we're still investigating, and so we are providing commentary on what metro-north has president spent that is a very important point. you may well find that these defects violated the existing minimal standards. >> that is correct. >> let me just close by asking you, esther stable, --

mr. szabo, speaking of standards and rules, my understanding is that the fra this deadlines set by law in a number of the 17 rail safety rule makings that were required by the rfi a. and, in fact, your agency has yet to finalize nine remaining rules that two out of the five compliance manuals have been completed but three remain outstanding. in fact in the final rules the effective date of those rules have sometimes been postponed. can you give us an explanation for the delays and the failure to meet deadlines and? >> the rail safety improvement act of 2008 mandated fra complete more than 40 will makings, major studies report. it also promised us 200 more

individuals and ultimately we were only allowed to hire 31 of those 200. but with more than 40 major will makings reports, studies, you know, we had to prioritize and try and work through them in a systematic order. and approaching those first that we felt would have the most significant impact on safety, the greatest impact on the most immediate effect on safety. so positive train control was made the highest priority. and consume the majority of our resources. so we've continue to work down that list in a systematic manner and look forward to completing the remaining work that is outstanding. >> thank you. i know you don't disagree that meeting the federal deadlines is important. >> is always important. >> it's important to the rail workers as well as passengers

and businesses that depend on reliability and safety and freight transportation and i want to thank all of this bill. i have additional questions i'm going to be 70 for the record. i don't want to keep both my colleagues at our next panel waiting, but i do want to just close by thanking all of the dedicated people who work for you in your agency's. i've worked, for example, with the ntsb folks who came to connecticut in the wake of that collision and tournament. and i know how much time and how probably they responded. so thank you very much for your testimony and thanks for the work that your agencies are doing. thank you. we will follow with the next panel.

let me welcome our next they'll but equally distinguished and important. and safety are thank you for being here, first of all. let and introduce ed hamberger was president and ceo of the association of american railroads based year in washington, d.c. mr. hamberger, joined aar in july 1998. he was a managing partner in the office of baker, donaldson and caldwell. and he came to tha the firm in 9 after serving as assistant secretary for governmental affairs at the department of transportation. he began his great in transportation in 1977 as general counsel of the national transportation policy study commissioned. and in 1985 he was appointed as a member of the private sector advisory panel on infrastructure, financing. and in 1994, he served as a number of the presidential

commission on intermodal transportation. he has served on a variety of public service assignments. for example, who serves on the blue ribbon panel of transportation experts appointed by the national surface transportation policy and revenue study. he received his juris doctorate and both masters of science and bachelor of science in foreign service from georgetown university. kathryn waters is executive vice president for member services at the american public transportation association. she came to a pta in november 2007 from the maryland transit administration in baltimore where she was senior deputy administrator and responsible for all public operations as was the transit police purchase more than 25

years of experience in the transit and rail industry, serving in positions of leadership including vice president of commuter rail and railroad management with the dallas area rapid transit, and she worked for 20 years with mtas marketing service. before joining the apta staff, she chaired the apta commuter rail committee and was vice chair of commuter and intercity rail on the apta's executives to me. she, too, has been cited with numerous industry awards and recognition's, and we welcome you here, ms. waters. mr. james stem s. national legislative director of the transportation division, international cessation of sheet metal air rail and transportation workers. his railroad career began in

1966 as a trainman for the seaboard air line railroad in raleigh, and he joined the railroad, the brotherhood of railroad trainman. his work as a trainman comest wichman, helper, firemen, locomotive engineer, and he currently holds seniority as a locomotive engineer on csx between richmond, virginia, and abbeville south carolina. he became interested in the union of an became active in local 1129 in raleigh. worked part-time as a special i.t. organizer. in 1973, through 1976 and was elected secretary-treasurer of local 1129 in 1975. he also held the elected positions of local chairman and legislative representative and a served as a delegate to five utu international conventions from

1979-1995. i want to extend a particular welcome to our next witness, jim redeker, commissioner of connecticut's department of transportation, and he has a long and distinguished career in transportation, most tickling beginning with his great in the new jersey transportation department, 1978 he joined in j. transit which was created the following year helping to build the third largest transit agency in the country. in 30 years since he has held positions of increasing responsibility. his portfolio of experience includes strategic planning and policy, capital program, transportation planning, transit service planning and scheduling and many other areas of expertise and expense but perhaps most prominently and importantly, he asserted with extraordinary dedication and

success as commissioner of transportation for connecticut. he has pioneered and championed with great vision and courage new means of transit and new developments and investment in our connecticut railroads and other areas of transit activity in connecticut. he has been a very strong environmental steward, as well as a champion of better, cleaner, more efficient transportation in connecticut, and has worked closely with me and other officials, members of our delegation and other state officials, and i think commissioner redeker for joining us today and bringing to us the first and expense that he has had with some of the problems that we've been discussing with the earlier panel. and two michelle teel, also a very hearty welcome.

she is now head of the missouri department of transportation's multimodal division. she's worked at missouri duty for 15 years and most recent as the local programs administrator for the design division and assistant director of the motor care services division. in her new capacity, ms. teel will oversee the division responsible for administrating state and federal programs to fund and support aviation double railroads, transit, waterways and freight development. she has a bachelors degree in civil engineering from washington university in st. louis, and a master's degree in business administration from the william boyd university in phone. and she is a licensed professional engineer and also a certified professional traffic operations engineer. we welcome all of you and begin with mr. hamberger.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. appreciate the opportunity beer on behalf of members of the association of american railroads. for our members, commitment to safety is job number one. it is not only did this but it's the right thing to do and we're committed to making sure that each of our 200,000 employees get some after the ship safely every day. and, in fact, our record is good and getting better. 2012 was the safest year on record, and that exceeded the previous safest year on record of 2011, which itself exceeds the previous safest year of record of 20. according to data from the bureau of labor statistics, railroads today of lower employee injury rates than other transportation modes, and most of the industries including agriculture, mining, manufacturing and construction. avail but it also indicates that u.s. railroads are safer than most major foreign railroads. one of the reasons, and senator

-- excuse me come senator johnson put your finger on it. it is the amount of money that we invest back into the infrastructure. $25 billion this year, $25 billion last you. 40 cents of a dollar, private sector money back into the infrastructure. what does that mean? in the last five years we've bought 2669 new state-of-the-art locomotives. we have installed nearly 77 million new crossed eyes, 2.9 million tons of new rail, and poured nearly 61 million cubic yards of balanced. anti-semitic am mr. chairman, the very foundation of rail safety is a network that is maintained it would delay that before the test me from the ntsb today certainly underscores that a well-maintained network is a safer network. another part of industry investment is the if element of trackside instruments and inspect vehicles, that traverse over the really.

these use technology such as acoustics, writer, machine vision, laser, optical geometry to identify safety issues in the track, on the wheels and on the axles as the cars go by. many of these technological offenses have been incorporated into the real industries equipment health monitoring equipment initiate a it's designed to detect and report potential safety problems and poor performing equipment before the result in accidents or damage. as an aside, much of this work is being done at the transportation technology center in pueblo, colorado, which is a research center of the aar runs under contract to the and 48 and the center has just been hired by metro-north to help them develop track inspection procedures. so we are pleased to be able to bring our expertise to bear. let me turn to the technology that we've been talking about today, positive train control.

such a system requires highly complex technologies able to analyze and incorporate a large number of variables that affect train operations to a simple example, the length of time it takes to stop a train in what we call the breaking algorithm, depends on train speed, terrain, the weight and length of the train, the number anticipation of locomotives, the number loaded, empty freight cars on the train and other factors. this system is able to take all these factors into account automatically come reliably and actually be able to do it across every operating railroad company. including passenger and freight. pgc development implementation includes a daunting array of tasks that railroads must perform, and technologies that must be developed to i agree with both chairwoman hersman and administrator szabo. this must be a transparent process. that's why last year both a pda and a arson at a white white

paper on the progress to date, and the work yet to be done as part of my testimony today we have submitted an update as to where we are by railroad and what needs to be done by you. we want to be transparent but we do believe that while there would be some pgc in operation by 2015, 60,000 miles, 22000 locomotives, the interoperability will not be achievable. therefore we're asking congress to consider a straight three-year extension from december 31, 2015, december 31, 28 you agree with senator mccaskill and senator thune, this cannot be done piecemeal. we are a network, one-third or more of our traffic into lines with them between to railroads in any given day. we operate with commuter rail, amtrak. this must be something we can depend on, some certainty in a three-year extension beyond the.

i think there could be authority given to the department of transportation to extend if something, that we don't know about pops up. answer that would be something the department of transportation could do for a year or two. additionally, to ensure that railroads can operate safely and efficiently with the ptc system, the imposition of pgc related operational requirements and associate penalty should be deferred until all pt systems are fully integrated and testing has been completed. my last book, thank you i will make a brief. the sec and ptc antennas, i know mr. blunt brought that up with the first panel and with mr. weaver yesterday at his confirmation hearing. we appreciate you putting that on his radar screen. we are meeting with the fcc and that they are over the next couple days. we hope to resolve that so that we can go forward. but right now we are under a

stock order to not install any of the 22010 yet to be installed. thanthank you, and look for to answer any question. i apologize for running eminently. ms. waters? >> good morning, chairman blumenthal, senator blunt, and members of the committee. on behalf of the american public transportation association, i thank you for the opportunity to testify on commuter rail safety. you have our written submission and i will not try to summarize the key points. as you said, my name is kathryn waters. i am apta's executive vice president for member services. before coming to apta i served as senior deputy administrator of the maryland transit administration in baltimore. before that with the dallas area rapid transit as vice president, commuter rail and road management, where i had responsibility for the commuter rail system between dallas and fort worth. and for many years worked in different capacities with the

market train service in maryland, culminating as chief operating officer. apta's committed to safety, passenger and employee safety is our number one priority for our commuter railroads. since 1882, apta and its predecessor associations have been advocates for safety improvements at with that said we're always make our industry safer. while our testimony speaks to ptc, an effective safety system is about more than one specific procedure or technology. a cul culture of safety begins h the commitment by the senior leadership working with employees to adopt and adhere to common safety goals and practices. apta's voluntary standards development program and a safety audit program are examples of the ways that the industry promotes safety. both programs are described in my written statement.

apta has consistently supported the concept of ptc long before the rail safety improvement act of 2008 provided a proven technology, resources, and radio spectrum were available. apta is working with its member railroads as we speak to meet the law's requirement on the nation's commuter railroads. we want to work with this committee on the best way to get pt see pashtun ptc systems installed on commuter railroads. ptc as you know it is defined as a system designed to prevent train to train collisions, overspeed derailments, incursions into established works own limits, and the movement of a train through a switch left in the wrong position. some railroads already have collision avoidance systems. some of which have been in place for many years. however, there is still no off the shelf technology capable of achieving all of the laws of safety objectives today.

key components of a ptc systems such as the software upgrades and revisions and the roadway work protection components are still under development. this technology is also heavily dependent on the transmission of huge amounts of digital data requiring newly designed radios and significant amounts of radio spectrum to deliver information to trains. all of this is essentially untested in the actual commuter rail operating environment. moreover, implementation costs are challenging, especially for publicly operated commuter railroads trying to deal with hundreds of state of good repair projects unrelated to ptc, but many of which impact directly and significantly on the safety of operations. congress has appropriated only 50 million of the 250 million authorized for ptc, while at

limitation costs were commuter railroads are well in excess of $2 billion that excludes operating at spectrum costs. many other railroads on the east coast are now also trying to deal with repair and rehabilitation costs were there to hurricane sandy. we've known about these challenges for some time. we've told congress force over years we have a concern about our ability to implement ptc by the deadline. we sought federal funding to help commuter rail pay for the costs of the implementation. we have asked the fcc and congress to provide greater spectrum without cost for ptc implementation. we have also recommended the deadline implementation be extended from 2015 to 2018. and as mr. hamberger mentioned, we've been working with the fra and with great railroads. we did do a report jointly with aar concerning the challenges of meeting the deadline.

in its report to congress, fra recommend it be allowed to improve road to use alternatives safety technologies unspecified line segments in the of ptc, particularly in areas with low safety risks if appropriately and properly justified the fra. we support the fra's recommendation to make such decisions. we've also urged congress to provide resources needed to to fra inspections, and approval of ptc systems and to ensure that open standards on ptc technology are in place so that railroads can buy equipment and services in a competitive marketplace. i appreciate the opportunity to testify today and would be happy to answer any questions. >> mr. stem? >> good morning and thank you. thank you, senator blumenthal, blunt, jobs. i'm going to focus my comments this morning on ptc and fatigue.

from the employers viewpoint any discussion concerning rail safety should always start with employee fatigue as the first topic. our railroad corporations as your this morning are reinvesting more than $20 billion annually in upgrading, maintaining and expanding their infrastructure. but are unwilling to invest anything in resolving the most pressing human factor and fatal safety issue. that's a predictable work schedule coupled with employee availability policies apply to the operating chris byrd federal reserve administration, rail management, rail labor, all a great that passenger service regulation should be separated from freight service regulation because of the significant safety advantages of the predictable work schedules in passenger service. the regulation also requires for the first time the use of scientific models to help create

safe and efficient work schedules for operating crews. resulting predictable work schedules in passenger service resolve most fatigue issues for these crews. contained in my packet of testimony where the recommendations on ntsb for two groups of issues, fatigue and positive train control. a review of these recommendations leads to the obvious conclusion that fatigue of opera and railroad employees was the basis for most of the recommendations both for positive train control and for fatigue medication. before 1970, opera and railroad employees could work and were often required to work 16 hour shifts seven days a week. the rail safety improvement act of 1970 change that and reduced fat so that our crews can only be required to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

during the conversations and conferences that occurred after the rsia in 2008 passed the house, the railroads only suggestion for improving the predictability of work schedules and mitigating fatigue was to limit the total hours that are safety critical employee could be required to work the 276 hours each month. that's 23, 12 hour shifts. at 276 hour limit made its way into the rsia, and was signed into law. the rsia did contain provisions for two pilot projects, sponsored by fra for improving work schedules, employee notification. we've urged all the class one railroads to participate in the pilot project but haven't had a single railroad would agree to do that. i suggested a solution to the employee fatigue provides three options. number one, give the employee

that works and safety political service a regular start time so he or she knows days in advance when they must come to work. a large majority of our members have a regular start time and do not consider fatigue to be a safety issue. employees with regular start times are not the employees who are dying in fatigue related collisions. number one is not a table. the second option that we are proposing is to notify the employee before going off duty. what time it will be required to return to work for the next tour of duty. this option actually improves availability of the employed by i employ to return to service after only 10 hours off duty. if neither one or two options are available then, with suggesting move the required 10 hours of undisturbed rest that now the meat of the false service to 10 hours of rest in italy preceding service. this is a 10 hour called that

provides a significant improvement in the predictability of the work schedule. the result is the employed has at least 10 hours to rest and prepare for service. the high level of professionalism and dedication of the operating crews running our roads today are the only reasons that accidents like the one in missouri and the other was highlighted here today are not more frequent. positive train control, there are a few segments of her industry as you've heard that asking congress to grant a blanket extension of three to five years. the current required date for an limitation is more 30 months away today, and seven years and three months from the time rsia was passed. if congress chooses to grant a blanket extension for ptc, the railroads that are behind on their implementation schedule today will further slow or just

stop the process until the new extension also expires. some railroads, including amtrak, bnsf, and metrolink, and the last of the road have announced they will be able to meet the statutory deadline. others will be partially complete. they key point here that i haven't heard any other testimony is that if ptc were applied today to the industry, it only requires implementation on 39% of the total mainline track. so with mr. hamberger and others refer to 20,000 locomotives and thousands of miles of track, keep in mind that the current regulation only requires 39% of the track to be implemented. ptc also would end a very unsafe practice of using after a rival blocs. that's a separate topic that was discussed in my testimony. and also want to point out that

bnsf ceo matt rose is in the room. earlier this morning. he had to leave. i think he was embarrassed that mr. hamberger wouldn't give him his seat. [laughter] but i encourage this committee and each individual senator to discuss with matt rose the thought processes and how they arranged to have the deadline complied with by the nsf. thank you. >> thank you, mr. stem. commissioner redeker. >> good morning, senator blumenthal, senator blunt, senator johnson. i'm honored to be his mind representing connecticut department of transportation, as well as the chair of the northeast corridor commission. connecticut's rail freight and passenger freight system is significant. the busiest rail line in the country for commuter trains. we also have shoreline east, several branch lines and amtrak

intercity operates on the northeast corridor and to the inland route to springfield. stated it as unique role in the northeast corridor as were the owner of 46 miles of the northeast corridor said onto amtrak in ownership. as on we've invested significant amounts of money into infrastructure to provide a safe infrastructure but in the last 10 years alone we've invested over $3.2 billion in the new haven line while amtrak has only invested 64 million. of the 3.2 billion, $2 billion comes from state of connecticut bond of dollars while the remainder is federal transit administration real formula over discretionary funding. despite the progress that's a $4.5 billion backlog in critical state of good repair that needs to be addressed in the near term. a critical priority is the replacement of catenary replacement drink until. while this is effective, it must be upgraded and visitors at the

same time of implementation of positive train control. which has both financial and implementation challenges. i should note that ptc ss matter to cost connecticut $130 million in addition to signal upgrade that will impact our ability to continue to face investment and state of good repair. connecticut is not alone in addressing the backlog of state of good repair investment. the northeast corridor relies on over 1000 bridges and tunnels but many of which were constructed over a century ago and in desperate need of repair. key segments are at capacity all over capacity in 2010, the northeast corridor infrastructure master plan identified a need for an expenditure of $2.6 billion in annual expenditures over 20 years to achieve stated good repair. the northeast corridor commission is not updating that capital plan report, critical music for such report that

identifies long-term needs that will be delivering a five year plan at the end of this year. turning to the maintenance and operation of the new haven line, connecticut has operated a great with metro-north to provide for the delivery of operation as well as the maintenance of facilities, track, bridges, power and signals, and rolling stock. amtrak maintains its portion. metro-north track inspection programs all comply with relevant federal guidelines and standards are all track is inspected twice a week or more, all bridges are inspected annually at our track inspectors are trained to identify deviations and defects and critically they have the responsibility and authority to take track out of service or to repair it immediately if necessary. metro-north also inspects with specialized equipment sperry rail cars twice a year. our track inspectors need all the qualifications of f. r. a. thethere are all four men possessing high level of experience and experience so they can detect deviations from

track standards. and were in compliance with all of the rail safety improvement act of 2008 programs that have deadlines established for them. with regard to employ safety, metro-north has worked to completely transform the safety culture and has been commended through the apta audit of safety and given kudos for excluded demonstrated leadership in the state and security of customers and employees as a top priority. the derailment that occurred in may 17 has been talked about before. when we look at what happened, i should note that service had to be suspended on the entire northeast corridor in connecticut. the derailment destroyed of track, signals and cabinet and the remaining two tracks that could have and use were out of service due to long-term repairs that connecticut is investing in to do with the backlog of state of good repair. amazingly we put 2000 feet of track packages a couple of days

and within five days full service was restored. a critical point. connecticut's level of investment in the state of good repair is program over the next decade to take care of that backlog. but it will take a decade where two tracks may still be out of service on the northeast corridor's busiest commuter rail line. two out of four tracks for a decade. the incident with a track form and that was struck and killed was an unfortunate incident. metro-north has taken many procedures in place to try to address the safety protocols to prevent and end of future. a preliminary report on june 4 noted that metro-north inspectors failed to look, they found a defect two days before the tournament but as noted, that was not a requirement to any of the taken out of service. it was just rather put into a priority for future mean is, as all inspections in terms of their protocols. with regard to the latest ntsb finding and recommendation,

metro-north has acted on it immediately. they are taking both technological and procedural aspects of their protocols to prevent any future incidents. i'll commitment to know for taking action well in advance of any ntsb findings, and working with transportation technology center, doing extra inspections in increasing the right-of-way inspections, exploring solutions to better employ safety. and i'm convinced that together connecticut duty, metro-north and ntsb will work together to significantly and even more improve the code and safety of our right-of-way and our service. i appreciate the time and appreciate any questions at the end of it. >> thank you, commissioner. and now ms. teel. >> thank you, chairman poe missile, ranking member blunt and senator johnson. i'm pleased to their toshiba expense. missouri has a long history with railroads, from chain seeds

build the first mississippi river railroad bridge crossing, to the jesse james gang robbing trains, today's unit trains carrying oil from northern hydraulic fracturing operations. missouri's railroads have seen and done it all. missouri is the fourth most real intensive state but in 2012, missouri railroads carried 438 million tons of goods, more than any other mode in our state, even trucks. missouri is home to the second and third largest u.s. rail hubs in kansas city and st. louis, respectively. missouri has 4000 miles of mainline track, 7000 public and private rail crossings, for intercity passenger railroad, and six other nations seven class one railroads operate industry. with such a massive amount of rail traffic, the potential for danger is around every corner and then every rail yard. as you've heard, just through a

cigar in southeast missouri, two trains collided at a railroad a diamond intersection. wendy's trains collided also hit a missouri beauty bridge causing it to collapse. a total of seven people were involved in the incident and, amazingly, the worst injury was a broken bone. but this incident speaks to the importance of redwood city and the need to systematically and constantly work to improve it. one week after this incident a barge care industry and the large crane rogue loose, floated down river and became wedged under a missouri river rail crossing in st. louis. it took nearly three days to remove the screen. interstate commerce as a driver of the missouri and u.s. economy, and incidents like these can have our reaching consequences. missouri is one of a handful of states with strict state railroad safety regulations that includes requirement property practices, reporting, grade

crossing safety, tariffs, trade equipment and training. missouri ss is each operating railroad for intrastate revenue to fund for railroad safety inspectors. these inspectors also enforce federal regulations so we coordinate closely with the federal railroad administration inspectors. another area of concern is grade crossing safety. from 2008-25, there were 192 grade crossing accidents resulting in 41 fatalities in our state. this but missouri asked if the worst in the u.s. the funding congress provides improving these crossings makes up approximately 80% of the funds modot has available for this purpose but railroads have never been safer, but there is still so much to do. missouri is also home to four fr passenger rail routes, the missouri river writer is a state-sponsored route from kansas city to st. louis.

there are also two national routes, the texas eagle and the southwest chief. finally, illinois state sponsored route, the lincoln says, originated in st. louis. these rows are experiencing high ridership growth, and the missouri river runners growth is exceptional. since 2007, ridership is up 74%. ticket revenue is up 112%. on time performance is around 90%. and customer satisfaction for this round has gone from the last in the country to seven. missouri was awarded $15 million in the and flores high speed intercity passenger bill program funding. this leveraged another $20 million of investment from railroads in our state. these investments target on time performance and safety for both freight and passenger rail. missouri, illinois, california, michigan all work as a team to acquire new and safer passenger rail equipment, which is

currently in the procurement process. without federal investment, this new equipment would not be possible. >> warning on time spent thank you again for the opportunity to share information on this original and african pastor rail safety. the opportunity for additional rail investment are tremendous. missouri recently completed a rail plan that identified $1.4 billion in unmet needs for passenger and freight rail in our state. i urge you to continue investing in railroads as it is key to the success of america's transportation system and economy. thank you. ..

the investment that has a cost and the cost is investment in other areas of safety and my other concern and again i want whoever wants to be in this given that opportunity. there seem to be challenges technologically whether there's challenges in whether the spectrum will be made available so i would just like starting with you mr. redeker to speak to that point and is this possible and as congress trying to force something that simply can't be done? >> i would like to point out that the capital program identifies ptc is a priority but i think the timeframes are unrealistic in terms of being able to achieve them. i also should note that on the new haven hartford's ring field intercity corridor route that includes the installation of the new signal system and positive train control which frankly would have been borne by amtrak

if it wasn't being borne by the state of connecticut in that corridor but we have as a result had to spread out some of our other investments for the state of good repair projects over a longer period of time. so it's a trade-off that we have made it to turf burying some additionaadditiona additional investments be it for capacity or for state of good repair with a priority being ptc and we are partnerinpartnerin g with metro-north because we are part of their overall system and being part of the first pilot segment for the metro-north system so connecticut is leading in that. we are committed to safety and we have made trade-offs and timing for other projects and we are frankly struggling with all the issues everyone else is struggling with in terms of spectrum and radios in integration and cost. >> ms. waters? >> i would like to speak specifically to a few member railroads and what they are doing and what their challenges are.

southeast pennsylvania, southeastern pennsylvania transportation authority operates commuter rail as well as other transit modes in the philadelphia region. it is one that is anticipating to meet the target. they have said that as a priority. you had read recently earlier this week they are putting a bridge out of service probably next month. that is because in order to spend -- they have already spent $130 million to stay on track to meet the 2015 deadline. much more expenditures to come between now and then, but to get there they had to differ their bridge replacement program. and so there is a bridge over -- their trains will not be running most likely next month and that means the service on that line will be disrupted for some indeterminable amount of time with alternate bus transportation and most of us

know that compared to the travel times between the bus and they rail that those customers will be back in their single occupancy vehicle on the highways. we have another member that spoke i think ms. hersman spoke about alaska railroad being one that expected to be on time and they certainly do and are continuincontinuin g to work aggressively to meet the deadline. they are having significant challenges with the spectrum. in fact, they are having an interesting challenge and that apparently they are negotiating with ptc 220 and they cannot obtain or afford the insurance that is required. hopefully they will be able to work through that but that is potential delay nonetheless for one row road that is committed and expecting to be on time. we have a small northwestern

commuter railroad bed about a year ago essentially went on record to say they just do not have the funds. it's a small operation, about 30 trains a day pretty much in the a.m. and p.m. peak. they operate on a short line railroad with very light freight traffic. they said we just simply cannot afford to do this and there are alternatives are one, to reduce their service by about two-thirds, to come under the threshold required to ptc which i believe is 12 trains a day or simply on december 31, 2015 to discontinue service. >> so mr. hamberger quickly. >> thank you and i want to get in on the record we are not seeking appeal of this mandate. we have $3 billion into this and

we have too much work into this and this is a decision from the ceo level on down. we are committed to getting this done and we need more time to do it. back in 2008 you said how can you spend $10 billion improve safety? ptc would be part of the mix but it would be more of the roadside detectors and more of the capital projects and maintenance projects that i reference. we have a safe row road but the list of projects is never-ending and so we will be spending even more money on the basic tackling along with some of these other technologies. >> thank you mr. chairman for your indulgence. >> thank you very much senator johnson. senator blunt. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you chairman for doing that and also a great panel. thanks to all of you for being here. lots of good information and i'm sure i will have other questions you ask in writing for your response later.

mr. redeker on the choices you said you are having to make about more customer service and maintenance, if you didn't have the ptc requirement even though mr. hamberger says the railroads want to finish this up, would you have chosen to prioritize ptc? i am going to have to have pretty quick answers here. >> would have a very efficient and effective signaling today. it needs to be upgraded and that would be our top priority. >> ms. teel thanks for being here. every state thinks they have the top of whatever the hearing is about. i think we do have the busiest rail stayed in the country and if you look at a railroad map of the country i believe it would bear that out. but the accident where i think a bridge went down, a highway bridge. it was the overpass bridge. who takes care of replacing that

ridge and how is that process going? >> that process is going well. the railroads have indicated that one in particular is going to take care of the cost for that and once the investigation is final all of those determinations will be finalized but we have a really good partnership with those class 1 railroads and we feel confident that those costs will be taken care of by the railroad. >> did you say that crossing accidents were the big percentage of the accidents that happen in our state at least? >> correct. >> and i believe mr. hamberger between crossing and trespassing you get almost a 100%. >> 95%. >> crossings and people who shouldn't be on the track who are on the track. >> unfortunately research shows that about one third of those trespassers -- >> they intend to be on the track about one third.

ms. teel the working relationship between what you do at the missouri department transportation and both the ntsb and the fra, how would you explain that? >> senator it's a great working relationship. in fact we also enforce the federal railroad administration regulations and works closely with the regional office in kansas city and have also worked with the ntsb on the investigation in missouri and we are part of the -- proud of the partnership we have not only with the agencies but the railroads in our state. >> mr. stem is there any difference between the work schedules that go out for passenger rail and freight rail? >> passenger rail has its own hours of service regiment based on predictable work schedules and they do have to buy regulation applied both. >> your testimony focused in on making those even better. they are already different that

your testimony was focused that they should be even better? >> my testimony indicates that the problem is with the freight hours of service and a totally unpredictable work schedules and the new pressures that are being applied by the railroads in an attempt to significantly reduce the numbers of safety critical employees that they have to have on staff to continue the level of services president. >> so you think the passenger service efforts are actually better than the freight? >> yes, sir. they are a model for us to aim for with improvements in the mitigation strategies and plans that are now being required. >> mr. hamberger on that topic and then the topic of only needing to apply at the 39% and i want to be sure i have your sense. >> my sense is that 39% is low.

we are putting ptc on 60,000 miles. that is quite equal to 39% by my math. mr. stem is correct that is something that labor and management are working on corporately across-the-board in many areas. with the respect to the predictability of our network and freight railroad is not a passenger railroad. we do have predictable times for yard four-yard service and local service but they are over the line long-distance trains that can be dependent upon what our customers want and what they are ready to have their shipments go. we cannot have a 10 hour call window by someone who is scheduled to report at 12:00 and calls up at 10:00 and says i'm ill and i can get there. then what? we have to give someone else a 10 hour notice so that trend that has to leave at 12 has to wait for 10 hours until the replacement crew can get there? we are 143 miles including short lines outdoor assembly line. we have mudslides, snow when

washouts all of which makes the schedule on predictable. we support the 10 hour i'm interrupted called but right after the work ends in the first place. >> thank you and i will have some questions, a few more questions for some of you. thank you all. >> senator if i may add ,-com,-com ma 39% figure is not my figure. that's thus the federal railroad administration estimate to 140,000-mile network including some short lines that will be required to apply ptc and i think mr. hamberger is closed. it was 60,000 miles of 140,000-mile segment and they have been able to negotiate that mileage down to 50,000 miles. >> since we have come back to this, does the system mr. hamberger had to be interoperable? >> yes sir, so that a railroad union pacific locomotive that

goes to chicago has to be interoperable with metro. the commuter rail fare and with amtrak operating there and every other class road railroad track operating there and union pacific we have what what is called run-through power. if our locomotive goes to chicago and continues on his csx track it has to be a will to talk to the cs x. office and that is one of the challenges. we don't even have that software yet in the back office and it will be delivered sometime this summer. >> thank you senator blunt and thank you mr. stem for clarifying that point. let me begin my questioning if i may with mr. redeker. you made what for me is an extraordinarily important point about the investment in connecticut taxpayers are making in these lines. i think the numbers that you used for $3.2 billion over the last 10 years as compared to

60 million invested by amtrak, which i think attests to the leadership that you have provided along with the governors and the continuing vision and commitment going forward to make the investment by state taxpayers which i think is done in other states as well. maybe not to the same extent is certainly not without great fiscal challenge and difficulty at a time when state governments face tremendous deficits. we talk a lot here about our federal deficit but obviously the states have been extremely challenged fiscally, and so let me begin by asking you about the continuing work that is ongoing on the northeast corridor which has reduced capacity in certain

areas from four tracks to two. did that production incapacity exacerbate or aggravate the disruption that occurred as a result of the collision and derailment? >> yes, senator. we have about 15 miles of two tracks out of service center bridge structures which are being rehabilitated concurrently with replacement are to track structure so in that section we are doing several bridges and that means those tracks are out of service. they have been for almost two years and we are ready to complete that this year but we have 80 more miles of catenary and several more miles and many more bridges to do which means that at the pace of the investmeninvestmen t that the state has been able to make, which is significant nonetheless the backlog is extraordinary and it will take another decade to bring that system to a good state of repair. that is a historic anomaly in some sense because the state of connecticut shows to be unique

among many and only northeast corridor instead of amtrak in a time period when those decisions were being made. as a result of legislation we have not then part of the amtrak capital plan. we are not eligible for that funding source although the new high-speed rail program in its latest incarnation does allow connecticut to apply for high-speed money and we are preparing to do that if there is a resource available and an appropriation that comes forward. so we have got a lot to do and we are committed to doing it because of the important economic engine that the northeast corridor means for the state of connecticut kerry carried. >> some of those bridges are more than 100 years old. is that right? >> that is correct. 100 years is probably her average. >> and the funding responsibilities may be anomalous but the aging state of our infrastructure is common across the united states is it not? >> that there's correct.

the nature of that infrastructure and the need for rehabilitation and some of the capacity constraints which are felt not just by connecticut tracks but to track systems in new in new jersey and to track systems in baltimore that in the long run are really the constraints for the corridor to grow and to have redundancy in cases where you need to rebuild. so the corridors are challenged. working through the commission we are trying to identify the next five-year capital program to address the most critical needs based on the utilization and priority which is unique for the commission. it's a new challenge that we think we will be able to be up to that and deliver a capital plan that both states and the federal government and the freight rail partners can invest in to bring that system as quickly as possible to the state of good repair. >> thank you. ms. teel let me ask you also on the issue of state commitment and the impacts of these kinds

of incidents. i look at the picture of what happened in chaffee missouri on may 25 and miraculously apparently nobody was killed in this incident but i can see from what happened to the highway as a result of the train collision and the bridge collapse there that there must be very substantial state costs in repairing this major highway. is that correct? >> mr. chairman the railroad has worked very closely with the state and we are confident that the railroad is going to fully reimburse the state for those costs. in fact they have the bridge that you have that photo of removed in a day. it was absolutely remarkable to see the work that the railroad has put into making this as

efficient as possible and making the lines correct again. i am confident that because of the strong partnerships and because of, well certainly we will have to wait for the investigation to be complete but i'm confident that the railroad will indeed have those expenses and not the state of missouri. >> and are you faced in missouri with the same kinds of need for great infrastructure, not just routine maintenanmaintenan ce but also bridges that are aging, track that is in need of replacement? >> correct mr. chairman. certainly we have is infrastructure needs in our system in missouri. we have a large highway system in missouri 32,000 rows of highway and 10,000 bridges. we do not own any rail track in the state however we have the grade crossings, 7000 grade crossings in our state. half of those are public. only half of those have lights and gates so there is a huge

opportunity for federal investment to make those crossings safer and also the inspection role we have all of the track in our state that we work together with the federal railroad administration. certainly missouri is no different from any of the other states. we have critical funding needs. the aging infrastructure and it is an absolute concern in our state as well. >> mr. stem you may have heard ms. teel talk about the missouri virus and she said the missouri railroads have seen and done it all. i have a feeling that you have seen and done it all in the course of your career in working on the railroads and i wonder if you could give this committee your personal view of the current state of safety on the railroads particularly as it affects the men and women who do the kind of work that you have done?

>> thank you senator blumenthal for the question. i agree with mr. hamberger's initial statement that safety is improving in our industry today. we still have work to do. we are reducing the number of federal debts. we are focusing on reducing the minor incidents and we are being successful with that. my testimony dictates that the big ticket items, the fatal collisions, are going up, not down. there is a majority, there is a whole menu of reasons for that. as you heard mr. szabo and ms. hersman testified earlier human factors or the number one cause of accidents. sometimes those human factors aren't accounted for in design or a piece of equipment that was manufactured is malfunctioning. it also doesn't address specifically preferred

maintenance on tracks but knowing what we know today about positive train control and fatigue mitigation, that is where the low-hanging fruit is. that is where the best opportunity for significant improvement in the overall safety. it's not just for the employees. every time we have one of these major collisions that kills an employee, the surrounding community is also involved. many times in the evacuations the amount and the number of hazardous material products that are moving by rail today is growing. that's the safest form of transportation's for those products and that is exactly where they should be but that means that anytime there is an incident, anytime there is a collision the local communities equity goes up in that collision. so i encourage the committee to continue to work on that and to help us with fatigue mitigation.

from the employee standpoint that is exactly why ptc was mandated and on that 61% of the mainline track that will not be equipped with ptc, some of which will be short line tracks, we will continue the same level of operation that we have today and the same fatigue mitigation failures that we have today unless congress acts. >> your view is that the fender benders have diminished in frequency but the higher costs and more disastrous kinds of incidents are occurring more frequently? >> yes, sir. that is correct. the statistics show that safety is improving and i am thankful for that and we are overall reducing the number of employee owned totality's and many of

those were the result of switching accidents which are still occurring, but fatigue, positive train control was designed to help us get those fatal injuries to employees down. >> ms. waters and ms.-- do you agree with that view? >> no. the employee injury rate which is i believe the single best indicator are we getting safer in terms of our employees continues to go down. and when i said it was the safest year in record in 2012 and 11 and again in 10 the employee injury rate is one of those three indicators to say is the safest record and that continues to go down. 2012 there was an unfortunate 16 employees killed. that is 16 too many. we are dedicated to getting that to zero but it is something we are focused on.

some of those it's my understanding in fact were fatalities of employees in automobile accidents and so we are focused. i want to say to mr. stem you said that the professionalism of our employee base is what helps drive safety and that is absolutely right. it is professionalism and dedication peer-to-peer counseling and those are important programs and so we are looking forward to continuing on fatigue management. if an employee training and employee education, any number of issues that we are working together on so it is something we take very seriously and are indeed focused on it. so hopefully i will be back here next year to tell you that 2013 was even safer than 2012 in terms of employee injuries.

>> i hope so too. ms. waters? >> i would concur with that. i'm not i am not going to expand on that. >> i have a couple of more questions. just briefly mr. redeker on the bright side of infrastructure investment, am i correct in the view that the investment in the m. gates cars which were involved in the derailment collision is probably prevented more catastrophic injuries and even deaths because of the structural advances that those cars reflect? >> yes. we invested and partnered with metro-north on the newest cars manufactured to the most, the newest standards for strength for a commuter rail coach. they certainly held up well in

that accident against what would have happened were they not there but i think it's a measure of our commitment to safety, our investment in that. that was another 100% state-funded investment to bring the latest standards to the commuters in connecticut. >> and reference has been made to the inspection by sperry rail cars. could you describe a method and why it is superior to the high rail method? >> i think it's just another means for inspection. we have terrific inspectors. they are well qualified. their experience within a high rail vehicle is probably unmatched in terms of what they can bring to an inspection report. they can feel it and they know they have the experience. technology brings the not a lot more to the table and adding significant layers of additional inspection helps but not every

defect is going to be found via sperry rail car and not every defect will be found necessarily by a high rail vehicle so i applying several techniques with redundant inspections and maximize what we can prioritize and address the defects that are found as quickly as possible in priority order is the practice in compliance with the current guidelines from fra. >> have you had an opportunity to review the inspection report that was made part of the record that was done on may 15? >> yes, and in fact i got it yesterday. >> and are you concerned by the finding spare as to the defects and the balance in the support of rail joints and other various -- >> actually no. that is a standard inspection report and the kinds of things that were found and noted are addressed on a regular routine basis and they are just quickly. any defect and i think it was mentioned any defects found on

the front of the page required immediate attention and is done immediately and if anything is found that was identified as a real safety hazard that track would have been put out of service and repairs done immediately. i think it is a measure of a system that constantly needs maintenance. it's the heaviest utilized commuter railroad in the country and it has significant freight over it each and every day. it requires this kind of inspection and regular program each and every day. >> do you receive these inspection reports regularly? >> no, do not. they collect those and maintain them and connecticut is seen as the contractor and has oversight responsibilities and we inspect those regulars and order them on a regular basis. we go on a monthly basis to the offices and review all of their practices and files in terms of how they operate and maintain the system. >> do you check on whether the repairs are made? >> we do on an audit aces. otherwise we leave that to

metro-north. we will pull a full -- not pull a few samples. >> do you know whether this routine practice is in accord with what other states due? >> i am sure it is because it is a routine track inspection and maintenance program. it's a guideline from fra and that is what all railroads are following at this point. >> thank you. i want to thank the entire panel. if this has been an excellent morning and oath panels but articulately your panel for the excellent hands-on views that you have provided and the respective you have given us and we appreciate you taking time and being with us today. >> mr. chairman? if i might come it's been a long morning and mr. stem and i don't always agree on every detail that today is his birthday so please join me in saying happy birthday. >> congratulations on your 35th birthday. [laughter]

we will take all of your statements for the record along with the exhibits and keep the record open for a week in case you want to submit anything further. thank you very much. >> thank you senator. >> the u.s. senate continues work on the immigration bill. now to the senate floor on c-span2. d the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. o god, who inhabits eternity, help us to honor your name. today, inspire our senators to do your will. may they remember that life is a rehearsal, a pilgrimage, and a time of testing. remind them, therefore, of their accountability to you, who will bring every work into judgment,

with every secret thing, whether good or evil. lord, enable them to be in the world but not of it, as they understand the vanity of the temporal and the glory of the eternal. may gratitude to you be the motive for their work, as they make a renewed commitment to excellence in everything they do and say. we pray in your righteous name. amen. the president pro tempore: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. mr. reid: mr. president? the president pro tempore: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks, if any, the senate will resume consideration of the immigration bill. mr. president, we finished here late last night. we had a lot of issues that were unresolved then. we have just a couple this morning, and we hope we can resolve those very quickly. so i certainly hope that's the case. i'm going to ask a consent agreement that will put us into some activity here for the next several hours but i hope we don't need to use all this time. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the time until 2:30 this afternoon be for debate only, equally divided and controlled between the two senators or their designees, with senators permitted to speak for up to ten

minutes each with the exception of senator sessions who will control up to two hours. at 2:30 i be recognized. and further, mr. president, i would ask that consent be approved by the -- the president pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. reid: mr. president, senator sessions has always been very courteous to me. if i have some agreement that we have as to that amendment, i'm certain he would let me be recognized. but if he doesn't, i'll wait for the two hours. we're going to -- until he uses the two hours. we're going to try to wrap this up very quickly. but very quickly in senate time is sometimes not like everybody else's time. we'll do the best we can to move as quickly as possible. i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

mr. reid: the time is equally divided. i would ask -- i ask consent that the quorum call be terminated. the president pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. reid: i would further ask consent the time be modified so if someone suggests the absence of a quorum it be charged equally against both sides. the president pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. reid: i note the absence of a quorum. the president pro tempore: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. sessions: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: i would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of s. 744, which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 80, s. 744, a bill to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and for other purposes. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the time until 2:30 p.m. will be for debate only, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees and with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, except that the senator from alabama,

mr. sessions, will control up to two hours. the presiding officer: mr. sessions: madam president, i thank you for getting us started this morning. to me, it's rather astonishing the extent to which we are discussing this historic immigration bill and how little our focus has been on the real impact of it, what immigration means, how to make it better, how to serve the national interest to do the kind of things that the american people want us to do. we really talked a lot about the hot-button issues but we've not focused on the substance of what we're doing, how many people the country can absorb legally every year. we do a million legally now. how much more of that -- how many more can we assimilate effectively, have reasonable expectations that they would find good work in america to be

able to have them find work but not put americans out of work? what kind of skillsets do we need most? will our system of enforcement work? and many other questions like that. so i -- i would say to some degree, we've missed that discussion. we're told today, now we're going on 11:00, that we still will see today a magic amendment, the amendment that fix everything, that we can just relax and go home and take a good nap because we've got an amendment that's going to fix all the problems in the legislation. well, that's odd because we were told when the bill was announced that it was the toughest legislation ever and it fixed everything, it didn't need any improvement, we're all okay with it, you should just all pass it and if you raise questions about it, as i did, then you're not a good fella, that you're --

you're not being nice. that if you point out problem problems -- so apparently now, the sponsors of the bill have realized that they've got a lot of problems and that as the bill has been examined and actually read, the 800,000 -- a thousand pages of it here. it's been read and studied, more and more problems have been found with it. now, we've had a great deal of discussion about the border. the border security issue is a very, very important issue but it's one of the issues in establishing a good, lawful immigration system that serves the national interest. it's just one of the issues. and it was nothing like the bill sponsors promised. it would not have accomplished the job. and those of us who were asking the tough questions and -- and

were trying -- people tried to dismiss the concerns, finally had to deal with the issue that it didn't do what they promised. it's a big problem. so now they've accepted legislation, it appears, that would change the matter quite a bit, at least with regard to the border, because that was talked about a lot because it's always symbolized whether or not we're serious about enforcement. and it was so weak in the legislation. so when the bill first started, they -- they proposed to spend $6.5 billion on border security. then as it went through committee and complaints arose, they went up to $8.3 billion, about a 30% increase. then the bill hit the floor and the american people began to find out how weak it was and our phones started ringing in almost

panic, it seems, a group has met in secret and they've announced the corker-hoeven agreement to spend $38 billion, to add 20,000 agents. and now we all -- it's all fix fixed, vote for the bill now. you've got no excuse, you have to vote for the bill. but if you're holding a bucket of water and it's got a bunch of holes in it and you close one of the holes, all the water's still going to run out of the bucket. there are other problems with the legislation. this was just one that was so dramatic and so plainly contrary to the promises that the sponsors had made for their bill that it was really devastating. and now in total retreat and capitulation, they've talked about adding 20,000 agents and spending $38 billion on the border, because we don't want to hear you guys complain any more.

anymore. now you just hush and pass our bill. don't talk about what else is in it. don't talk about the policy issues that are raised by the legal flow of immigration that we have. you just pass the bill now because we answered the border security problem. well, this is not the way it's going to be. i hope -- i will say this, you should be able to do dramatic things and effective things at the border with $38 billion. but as i'll point out in a little bit, we're not sure at all that that's going to happen in an effective, smart way. especially when it's come up in this fashion and especially since we've passed laws repeatedly that plainly require certain things to happen and then they never happen. like fencing. we said last time we passed a bill, build 700 miles of

double-layer fencing. well, that was in 2008, i believe. today we've got 36 miles of double-layer fencing. about 300 miles of pedestrian fencing. so now they say they've got their 700 miles. well, it remains to be seen if that will ever happen, number one. but, number two, it's not double-wide, as we passed in law previously that never happened. it's just a single-layered fence, which is much easier to penetrate. a double-layered -- a double-fence system with a vehicular ability to move between the fences, is very, very effective. it iit has proven effective bef. that's why it was put in the bill. not because somebody wanted to sound tough, because it will work. and things that really work tend to be blocked in this senate. things that would actually make the system transform from

illegality to legality have always been blocked, in my experience since i've been in the senate. it's just amazing to me to that regard. so we haven't seen the amendme amendment. we were told we'd have it last night at 6:00. we were on -- on track to have a series of amendments last night voted on, some important amendments to be voted on. and we were getting ready to do that. and all of a sudden it was announced that an agreement had been reached and a new bill had been offered, new amendment. and this amendment was going to fix the border and is going to spend more money than ever and nobody now had any right to complain about the immigration bill before us, s. 744, we had it fixed. and those amendments evaporated. no votes were cast on them.

actually, the night before, a tentative agreement had been reached to vote on as many as 16 amendments and that would have been a nice start to begin to discuss, allow people to pointed out that there's a weakness in the bill and propose a solution to fix it. and that's the way legislation is supposed to go. you bring forth an amendment, you say, this bill lacks this, this amendment in the bill's wrong. i've got a fix for it. this is my offer. this is my amendment. that's the way good legislation should be processed in the senate, and that was all stopped. so we waited 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00. i think it was 10:30 when we departed. still no magic amendment that's going to fix every problem with the legislation. no more -- no magic amendment. now, here we are at 11:00 and we still haven't seen it. so, frankly, i'd like to read

it. i am going to read it. we read this one. it didn't do what the sponsors said. they had good talking points. i could have voted for the talking points. i liked what they said, basically, in the talking points. but it wasn't in the bill. that's the problem. you know, i was a -- been a federal prosecutor for many years. it's the law that gets enforced, not some senator's talking point. that is worthless. it's what's in the bill. it requires and directs agents to do this and that. it requires judges to do this and that. it requires law enforcement officers to do this and that. so it -- that's what counts, is what's in that bill. so with regard to this new amendment, i'd like to ask a couple of things to the -- senators hoeven and corker. does your amendment put

enforcement before the legality? does it put enforcement before amnesty? before the first legalization is allowed to occur? or is the amnesty still first? they told us initially that they were going to have enforcement first. by a 4-1 margin, the american people have said they are prepared to treat compassionately people who've entered the country illegally, who've been here a long time and done otherwise right things, and we're prepared to be compassionate and deal with th them. but we don't trust washington, we want to see you do the enforcement before you go and give this legal status, this amnesty. that's common sense. there's nothing wrong with that. the american people aren't mean spirited when they say that. they've seen this game before. they've scene how it's played,

been played before. they don't, they don't -- they don't have confidence in us. and i can cite example after example after example after example of laws, rules, promises made never carried out. and that's why we have such a massive illegal flow into america and how we've accumulated 11 million people, many of them wonderful people. but we aren't -- this isn't the way we want the system to work. so i think that's the question. do we have amnesty first again? as senator grassley, our ranking member on the judiciary committee has repeatedly said, i was here in 1986. i voted for amnesty in 1986. i thought it was going to work and it was a mistake. we should have seen it was not

going to work. we had the amnesty first. we promised to do all kinds of enforcement in the future, and that never happened. and this is why we're at this spot again today. that's the history of it. well, what about this fencing as promised in the bill? does the amendment require any fence to be built before the amnesty is granted? i'd like to know that when we see your amendment. do we have any confidence that we'll ever see the fence built any more than we saw it when we passed laws previously to build fences that never occurred? does your amendment require a biometric exit system as required by current law? under current law, the congress of the united states has required that the executive branch create an entry-exit visa

system that's biometric. that basically means you use your fingerprints and your fingerprint read so you can't bring in a document to say i'm john doe and not be john doe. you come into the country, your fingerprints are recorded. when you come out of the country your if i fingerprints are reco. you're clocked out like many companies do at the workplace. you put your card in and your time is accounted for. we know when you came, when you left, did you overstay, or did you depart as required by law. well, current law says we will do that. you'll be fingerprinted when you enter, and that is done. i mean that's done. you are fingerprinted when you've entered the country. but what's never been done is the exit system when you depart the country. and every kind of excuse has been made for that, but the truth is there's no excuse for

not doing that. so does this amendment fix that problem? and the experts tell us, and the congressional budget office reported just a few days ago that we're going to see an increase in visa overstays under this bill and the trends that we're facing. there are several reasons for that, and one big one is the legal flow of workers into our country, guest workers that come to take jobs, work for certain periods of time will double. and c.b.o. predicts that you're going to have an increase of the number of people who overstay their visas. and since we have no ability to clock in people when they come and when they depart, we don't have any idea and it becomes unenforceable. i think they're exactly right about that.

right now entry -- the visa system is responsible for 40% of illegal entries into the united states. overstaying visas is 40%. i think we can expect with the large increase in guest worker programs, i think we're going to see visas well over 50% in the future responsible for illegality, illegal entry into the country. so does this amendment fix that? senator coburn and corker? that's half of the problem, more than half of the problem, frankly, if this bill passes. i don't believe it's likely to do so. so current law, current law said there shall be a biometric entry-exit at all land, sea and airports. what does this bill say? the toughest bill ever, they say. does it make that stronger? does it fix the weakness in the

current system? no. it says you have to have an electronic system. much weaker than biometric. it says you have to have it only at air and seaports, but not at land ports. so this bill is plainly weaker than current law. i'll ask this to the amendment sponsors. does it actually have a mechanism to require those who receive the amnesty to pay back federal, state and local taxes? is that part of the deal? that's what's been touted for it. we've been told repeatedly they're going to pay back taxes. let me tell you, it's not going to happen under this legislation. there's no way this is going to even create an attempt by the i.r.s. to go back and try to investigate persons to see who owes more taxes.

that's just a talking point. that's a talking point. and talking points aren't law. talking points aren't reality. they're political weapons used to advance the agenda of those who have an agenda. i would ask this question: does your amendment require those who receive amnesty to learn english? they say our bill requires people to learn english. but it really doesn't, as you can plainly tell if you read the legislation. only by the time you've been here ten years and you get a legal status immediately, you want to convert to permanent legal status, and you can do that for some within five years, some in ten. so at the end of ten years, if you speak english, okay. if you're not speaking english and you are in a course, they have to give you permanent legal

status. you don't have to pass the course. all you've got to do is in your ninth year, the tenth month sign up for a course somewhere in english and you get your legal status under the bill. would that loophole be fixed? does the amendment, my colleagues, prohibit people with multiple d.u.i.'s from receiving amnesty? do you do anything about that loophole? does your amendment require that anyone applying for amnesty actually be interviewed? this is one of the big shocking weaknesses in the legislation. when a person is transformed from a person in illegal status to an r.p.i. status, the legal status, which happens within a few months, when you're transformed to that, what do we do to make sure that person

isn't a known criminal, that person could be a terrorist. what do we do about that? normally one of the most valuable things that can be done in these processes is to interview the person. it appears quite plainly this bill -- well, the bill certainly does not require interviews. and what we're seeing now with regard to how homeland security is handling the daca people, they're not interviewing them face-to-face. this is a big weakness in the system. nobody is even going to be interviewed face-to-face. and actually examined to see if the paperwork they're submitting has any validity at all. many times that meeting can identify a weakness in the paperwork and lead to further investigation. but if you don't have interviews and you otherwise aren't smart about how you administer it, large numbers of people can get

status they don't deserve through utilizing fake documents. we can expect that to happen. and it should not happen. we're being generous under this bill with regard to the people who would be given legal status, and they ought to -- but only those who qualify should get it. people who don't qualify shouldn't get it. or we're perpetuating illegality again indefinitely into the future. doesed amendment prohibit -- does the amendment prohibit those who had domestic violence convictions from receiving the legal status? not so in the bill today. does the amendment ensure that those who do not receive amnesty would actually be deported in the future? a lot of people don't qualify. they should not have amnesty. you come -- you find out they have been convicted of a felony, drug dealing, ahe salt with intent -- assault with intent to

murder, robbery. should they be given amnesty? no, you say. do they get to stay here if they have been arrested for some other crime? should they be deported? we need to be sure the persons are going to be deported who are here illegally. i have an amendment that's a serious amendment that would help move us from this present failed system to one that could actually work to deal with internal enforcement -- internal enforcement and deportation in a proper manner. well, i notice, madam president, a letter that just came in, june 19, addressed to senator corker and hoeven from the national immigration customs and enforcement council of the afl-cio -- american federation of government employees, signed

by mr. chris crane, their very able, competent president. this is what mr. crane said. he's writing on behalf of the 7,600 agents and officers -- quote -- "according to the national journal you're working on an amendment to the gang of eight bill. your amendment is to help pass the bill 'i am concerned that your amendment as outlined in the article not only provides immediate legalization before enforcement, but also appears to neglect interior enforcement. 744 reduces the ability of i.c.e. officers to do their job while providing legal status of convicted criminals including gang members, drunk drivers and sex offenders. i can assure you these are not

the types of reforms sought by the american public. in fact, these are not reforms at all, but instead provisions written by special interest groups concerned only with their own political agenda and future financial gains." close quote. now, this is a man that heads the law officers association. he's had his officers blocked from enforcing the law by political directors from the supervisors. that's a plain fact. they have negated the ability of the law of america to be enforced. he goes on, "any plan is doomed to fail that does not empower i.c.e. agents to enforce the laws enacted by congress, and that does not put an end to the unlawful abuse of prosecutorial discretion by political appointees." close quote. there's some history to this.

the i.c.e. officers are just in an uproar. the morale of the i.c.e. officers was ranked near the absolute bottom of 170-something government agencies. they're out there risking their lives, dealing with criminals and people in violation of the law, and what do they hear from their political supervisors? don't enforce the law. don't follow through on what you're required to do by congressional inaction. so, they have actually filed a lawsuit against their supervisors because they're being told by the supervisors not to do what they took an oath to do, which is to enforce the law. mr. crane goes on to say this. "yet instead of cracking down on the administration's abuse of power, 744 places unprecedented new restrictions on interior enforcement, making the current

situation much worse and much more hazardous. it is as if s. 744 were explicitly written to handcuff law enforcement officers. " binding their hands while giving virtually unchecked authority to executive branch officials to prevent future removals, including removal of criminal aliens." close quote. these are the people doing the job every day. they were never talked to. they asked to meet with the gang of eight. no, they didn't want to hear from them. the gang of eight wanted to hear from their special friends. they wanted to hear from, on the special business groups who who wanted cheap labor. they wanted to hear from big labor. they wanted to hear from la raza. they wanted to hear from special interest groups. and they heard from them. the chamber of commerce and ag

industrial groups. that's who met with them. that's who wrote the bill. that and along with the immigration lawyers' association, who i will assure you have put in place after place after place in this bill where now they can file cases, appeals and create disorder within the normal operating system of immigration. mr. crane goes on to say, "absence dramatic -- drastic improvements to the interior enforcement provisions, there is no doubt that s. 744 will undermine the constitutional rule of law, guarantee future illegal immigration and place the public at risk." that is a dramatic statement. and i've not seen it anywhere

close to being refuted. and as to the question, "does it guarantee future illegal immigration?" look, the congressional budget office, they did the report for us. they're nonpartisan. they serve all of us. we've got a democratic senate majority that they -- that mr. elmendorf was picked by them but he's a fair man. he said we'd only see a 25% reduction in the number of illegal entries into america if this bill is passed. they promised us it was going to end the illegality, it was going to be the toughest bill ever. the congressional budget office this week said this legislation will reduce illegality only by 25%. that's just not acceptable. that's not acceptable. we've been told so much different. and mr. - chris crane says the same thing.

goes on to say this: "s. 744 not only fails to contain needed interior enforcement provisions but weakens interior enforceme enforcement." weakens it. "this is because powerful special interests involved in crafting the bill's language are opposed to interior enforcement, a fact i.c.e. officers are all too familiar with. the political agendas of these group place the public safety and security of our nation at risk." i believe he's accurate. i know he cares about what he's doing. mr. crane is a very impressive young leader, a marine. he loves his country. he believes this bill is bad for america and he's had the courage to state that and his association has backed him up with it. they're all in it together, i guess. goes on to say this -- quote -- --in addressing the sponsors of

the amendment, "as respected political leaders, i'm asking you both to work with me and others in congress and law enforcement in ensuring that this bill puts the safety of america before powerful special interests." i think that's a very important letter. it cannot be that our colleagues can propose -- promote a piece of legislation as being the most effective improvement in history when our own officers who are out there trying to say -- say -- enforce the law say it makes it worse. that's really, really disappointing. now, well, i wanted to kind of tease my colleagues a little bit

about this amendment that we're still waiting to see, hasn't appeared yet. thought we were going to have it at 6:00 last night, then 7:00, then 8:00, then 9:00, then 10:00, 10:30. now it's 11:00 the next morning, still haven't seen it. presumably it must be okay, though, it's going to fix everything we need to be concerned about. senator schumer at the markup in judiciary committee talking about enforcement said this -- quote -- this was all about senator cornyn, our able senator from texas, who offered an amendment in the markup in the judiciary committee to enhance enforcement at the border, do a lot of different things he thought were -- were important and add 5,000 new border patrol agents. so what did our colleagues who'd written the bill, the gang of

eight who said they were going to stick together and fight off any amendment that had any significance to it, and they all rallied and fought off the cornyn amendment, too. what did they say about senator cornyn's steps to make the legal system work better and to add some new agents to the border? being a texas senator, he's familiar with those issues. senator schumer said this -- quote -- "just on the border alone, senator mccain and i had an amendment a few months ago that -- a few years ago, rather, that spent about $600 million to $800 million on the border and effectiveness rate went up from 68% to 82%. we spent much more than that, as much as $6.5 billion." in other words, they spend in this bill they say $6.5 billion, as i told you earlier. this is what he goes on to say -- quote -- "the border will be effectively closed we believe

with these expenditures in the way they will be done." well, if he's going to spend a total on this bill of $6.5 million and effectively close the border, how is it that he's now supporting an amendment that would add 20,000 agents to the -- to the border? because the bill's in trouble. they're in panic mode, i would suggest to you. a little later in the same markup, referring to the border patrol agents, he said this -- quote -- "their numbers have gone way, way up and most people think they're an adequate number." why, that was just may 9, a little over a month ago. he said they're an adequate number, we don't need anymore border agents and attacked senator cornyn for having the temerity to suggest we needed 5,000 more. and now when the bill's in trouble, in panic mode, they've

come in with an amendment i think, maybe -- we haven't seen it yet -- they claim will add 20,000 border patrol agents. back in the markup on may 9 -- quote, senator schumer -- quote -- "look, our goal is to make the border much more secure and we do. we do it dramatically." well, if it does all that, why do we need a new amendment? the point i'm making here, what i'm saying to you is our talking points of the bill's sponsors have been positive, positive, positive throughout. they say the things that people want to hear. the question is: does their legislation do what people want done? that's the question. mr. sessions: so back then, he said, we're doing all you want. the border is effectively closed. we don't need anymore agents.

senator flake, talking about senator cruz from texas, he offered an amendment in judiciary on the border and ably did so. senator flake says this, "we add in our legislation 3,500 new customs agents. that's at a cost of about $6 billion, 3,500, and what we're talking about here is tripling the border patrol. it's currently at about 21,000. take it to 60,000." he's talking about the cruz amendment. "so 40,000 new agents we're talking about, $30 billion, $40 billion to do that. and i know it's sincere desire to put more resources at the border but we have fiscal constraints." at the markup on -- and so he opposed it, one of the gang of eight members. and senator schumer at the markup said -- quote -- "and so to simply for us to dictate when

we are not experts to quadruple border patrol is, in my opinion, something that you might accuse me of throwing money at a problem without really knowing what effect it would be." so he goes on to say on the floor on june 11, just a week or so ago, "make no mistake" -- he's talking about this bill -- "before the hoeven-corker amendment had ever been dreamed of -- he said. "make no mistake, our border will be secured as a result of this bill. we appropriate $6.5 billion upfront in this bill to bolster our security efforts, that is in addition to the annual appropriations made for each year for border security." well, must not have been accurate, huh? he said the bill is taken care of. they've got an adequate amount

in the bill as it is. and senator -- and they would add 20 -- 20,000 more border patrol agents. again, the point is, we get positive spin no matter what the circumstances are because they're out to sell this bill. they're out to promote their creation. and they've lost sight of what it actually does and really lost sight, in my opinion, of the fundamental responsibility of important legislation and that is not to achieve a political end but to achieve a better america, to serve the national interest. and i'm going to continue to a ask: does this bill serve the interests of the people of the united states of america? not economically and not legal legally, in my opinion. mr. sessions: now, senator mccain, on june 18, just the other day, "for those who think

we need more people, we do need more people to facilitate movement across our border." he says it's too slow, we want more people to come in quicker. "but we have 21,000 border patrol. today there are on the arizona-mexico there are people sitting in vehicles in the heat. what we need is not more people because we've gone in 1986, we had 4,000 border patrol to 21,000. but what we need is the technology that's been developed in the intervening years." so he said, what we need is not more people, what we need is we don't need more border patrol agents, we need some more technology. well, that's what they said last time when they undermined the fence. some of you remember the phrase they used then -- well, we're going to create a virtual fence, we're going to create a high-tech fence. and we don't need to build those old fences. that's not good. we're -- we're going to take care of it with technology. and we spent, as senator

mccain said on the floor, i think it was $980 million on a virtual fence at our borders that utterly failed. we got nothing for it. what else we didn't get? we didn't get the fence. we wasted a billion dollars on a failed technology and didn't build the fence that was promised. and this is why the american people are not confident that anything politicians tell them about immigration particularly will ever happen. and the american people are right. time and again, politicians have promised, promised, promised and never delivered, delivered, delivered and that's just a fact. this bill and these statements say a lot, i think. with regard to senator cornyn's amendment that would add 5,000 agents and do some other thing, this is what senator schumer said back in the committee in

may, just last month. "and what we've learned, and it was hit home to me when senator flake and senator mccain took me to arizona portion of the border, it's vast. we have more people on the border patrol. what's the number? 21,000. i think it was triple what it was five years ago. but you can't have -- if you want to have the whole federal budget, you guys figure out how you're going to spend and get that money, the whole federal budget on just the border patr patrol? you could probably have 100% operational control." so he's -- he was saying then, don't question our bill. it does all you need. we're going to have the money to spend more on it. and now apparently he's trumpeting the great bipartisan agreement that would add 20,000 more border patrol people.

now, maybe we need more border patrol and we need to use technology and we need to use fences wisely. but what we really need is a secretary of homeland security who knows what they're doing and who's committed to ending the illegality and using every resource we have wisely to confront this illegality and end it. and if you'd had that the last four years, we would have had far more reduction in illegality on the border than we've seen. we would be in much better position to go to the american people and say, let's talk about amnesty now because we've proven we've made real progress here. but they have never wanted to do that. they have been listening to the voices out there and the political interests and the special interests. and they have not done it. and so now we have 11 million people. and what's their solution?

surrender to the illegality. just give up. we'll just give amnesty to everybody here, and we'll pass a law, and we'll promise it will fix things, and we don't really worry whether it does or not. and i can tell you it won't. it won't fix it. well, there are a lot of things that are noteworthy, and i would like to talk about as we go forward in this legislation. one of them i think is interesting, and i'm just going to raise it because it's an issue we need to confront. you hear it a lot. people are talking like this out there. bill o'riley's talking points memo is consistently a high-quality memo. it has valuable insight that americans do well with -- would do well to listen to on a

regular basis, i think. very insightful individual. but in the regard that he made last night, i got a transcript of it, i think shows some of the misconceptions about the legislation that we simply have to correct. it's not sufficient to pass this legislation based on talking points, on spin from the sponsors of the bill. we have to say, okay, does it really do that? and how does it do it? and can it be made better? and are there weaknesses? okay, so this is what bill o'riley said last night -- quote -- "senator rubio told me on the phone today that it would be at least 13 years -- 13 -- before people in the country illegally right now could gain full legal working status, and even longer to achieve citizenship."

close quote. we'll talk about that. so he goes on to say, "talking points support immigration reform even though i well understand the new law will be somewhat chaotic and it will be a magnet for even more people to come heel illegally which is -- to come here illegally, which is why we need stepped-up security." let's go back to the first segment, "there would be at least 13 years before people in the country illegally right now could gain full legal working status." not so. not so at all. not even close. within a few months everyone applies for the r.p.i. status, the provisional status, will be given a social security card and the right to go to work and be lawful in the country and cannot

be deported unless they commit a serious crime. it's immediately, not 13 years. he says "even longer to achieve citizenship." well, that's not accurate either. it does take -- this is how the citizenship and green card status works, permanent legal status. within months everybody that qualifies under the 11 million will be given r.p.i. provisional status virtually immediately. they will be able to take any job in america, move anywhere they want to in america, displace workers in america, compete for jobs wherever. that's what will happen under the bill. but for about 2.5 million who are people who came here as

teenagers, the so-called dreamers, they get citizenship in five years. they'll have citizenship in five years. that's 2.5 million. and certain ag workers, those individuals who are illegally here become permanent legal residents permanently. they get their legal right to work immediately. but in five years they get permanent legal status. and the other eight to ten million illegal immigrants would be eligible for green cards or legal permanent residence in ten years. not 13. so there's an immediate amnesty that precedes all of this. the legal status and the right to work is immediate. it's not 13 years out there. and a large number of the persons will be able to have citizenship within five years.

25% maybe will be getting that. so i think our people who are commenting about this need to get away from the spin of the sponsors and spin of those who invested in trying to pass the bill and get down to what the bill actually says. that's very important. the sponsors of the bill, senator schumer and others, claim that the bill is paid for, and they've got all their money needed to fund the legislation, and they claim this congressional budget office report that came out the other day backs them up. but it does not. it does not back them up. we need to talk about that in

some detail because it's a very important matter. c.b.o. does not back that up. so it's just the c.b.o. report shows this bill reducing deficits in the next decade according to the sponsors of the bill. but in fact c.b.o. plainly states on page 12 of the report that the legislation will increase on budget deficits over that time. increase deficits of on budget accounts. why? because the newly legalized immigrants will be paying some payroll taxes -- will be paying the payroll taxes, social security, fica, medicare taxes that withhold from workers' pay. but they're not drawing social security benefits at this time because most of them are younger than that, and they're not yet past 65. so that creates a surplus flow;

right? it creates a surplus flow. of the $459 billion in new taxes and fees, only about half of that comes from the income taxes that these workers are going to pay. why? because most of the workers are low-income workers. over half of the people who were here illegally do not have a high school diploma and they're just not making real high wages. you have to make a pretty sizable wage before you pay any income tax, although you do pay your social security and medicare withholding, the payroll tax. so the number -- how do they then say they have money created to pay for all of this stuff? they count the money from the payroll taxes. that makes sense, you think, at first glance, which by rights, though, belongs to the social security trust fund.

that's not money available for the government to spend on trips to africa or some summit somewhere or for solyndras. that's social security money. using this money to offset other spending is an accounting trick that was used to pass obamacare. and it's not right. so let's go back over that again. so, the on-budget account, income tax coming in from the legalization, because some beam that are legalized are going to pay more income tax. but there's a lot of expenses out there too. the earned-income tax credit is a direct payment, not a tax deduction, a direct welfare means-tested payment to poorer workers. that is a big cost, and other costs. so the c.b.o. says the income taxes that are paid will be less than the cost of the immigration. therefore, adding $14 billion to the on-budget debt of america.

but the sponsors of the bill wanted to claim that their legislation pays for itself, says but they're going to be paying social security and medicare taxes. therefore, we want to count that money. and that will prove that we pay for the bill. really? aren't the individuals who are now given a social security number allowed to work and pay the payroll taxes, aren't those taxes supposed to be put into a trust fund for their social security and medicare benefits when they do get 65? absolutely. and any surplus money that goes into social security and medicare is not given to the united states treasury to spend to, pay for border patrol agents. that money is loaned by the medicare trustees. it's loaned by the social security trustees.

they get a treasury bill in exchange for it. the u.s. government pays them interest on the money that the social security loaned to them. it's their money. it's a trust fund. a lot of people try to deny that but there really is one. there are actual debt instruments that show the transfer of this money, and interest payments are made by the u.s. treasury. so you can't count the money that people pay into social security as being money that can be used to spend on other programs of the government. it's really an important issue. mr. elmendorf, the director of c.b.o., the night before the president's health care bill passed, i prevailed upon him to write a letter to explain that. and he wrote a letter and said you can't simultaneously -- what

had happened in obamacare was they cut medicare benefits and provider costs and used that money to fund his new health care program. and claimed that it strengthened medicare because it reduced medicare costs. and they claim it provided money to fund obamacare. and mr. elmendorf used a sentence that i thought was very powerful. i think i can recall it. he said you can't simultaneously use the money to strengthen medicare and pay for a new program. he used the phrase "double counting." the kind of things people in business go to jail for. he said that's double counting the money. this is exactly what's happened here. the money that goes to people's social security and medicare trust fund accounts isn't enough now to pay for the amount of money the individual will claim when they become 65 and start

retiring and using health care and social security checks every month. there's not enough now. so you can't claim that this is going to strengthen us and provide money. i feel pretty strongly about that. mr. president, i see no one else is here, but i will yield the floor at this time and reserve the balance of my time. and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call: