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Futuremodal...it was a question, not an attack, concerning what was the deficit level when Bush began his 1st term. Everyone will be affected by the current trends of doing away with this, in support of that, etc. For most of the country, maybe the elimination of Amtrak wouldn't make much of a difference. For example, to the northeast corridor, it would make a huge difference. We've lived thru it all before when any U.S. president who was in office proposed cutting Amtrak, and, we've always said before if that's how the gov't. feels, then, go ahead and eliminate us. Lets see what happens then. I do know on the east coast when the airlines are snowed in, their tickets are honored on Amtrak - but, we just don't want to be a "fair weather" service. Most of us here have been with the company for over 20 years on average, and we are sitting now in our 5th year without a labor agreement - no raises. We've seen that before where we sat 4 years without an agreement. But, we've stuck it out always hoping. Cost of living raises - I don't call getting 3¢ an hour, 12¢ an hour (yes, that was 3 cents, and, not 3%) a cost of living raise. But, we wait, we hope. Myself, I think I've seen 5 different presidents at Amtrak. Pres. Gunn is the 1st to say it like it is, fund us properly, or, shut it down. I don't want to lose my job, I have a wife and kids, too. But, President Gunn is correct - it was Congress who had enacted Amtrak after Conrail was formed. Conrail's actual name was Consolidated Rail - a consolidation of all of the bankrupt freight roads on the eastcoast and where-ever else. Conrail said it then, we're not going to provide a passenger service because there's no profit in that. Congress said "oh yes you will". So, Amtrak was formed, a splinter group from Conrail, to provide some kind of passenger service. The Amish depend on the rails for their long distance travel - it's against their religion to fly. Then, there are those who are afraid to board an aircraft. I don't know if that's enough justification to keep all of our Amtrak trains, but, I do know this - once we were very close to striking because of sitting another "x" amount of years without a labor agreement (we don't have contracts that allow us to walk out at mid-night at the expiration date), we were ordered by the U.S. President not to strike because we are - get this - vital to national security. And, this was years before the Sept. 11th attack on New York (I'm thinking around 1985 when this had happened).
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