Enough is Enough

By Ed Hoffman

In the wake of the Amtrak train derailment last week that killed eight people and injured more than 200, Democrats have followed the lead of the White House by spreading the message that the reason for this tragedy was a lack of infrastructure and transit funding. On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) made this argument:

“The United States of America is falling behind, dramatically, its global peers in terms of the quality of its infrastructure. And the accident that we saw happen, which the NTSB says could have been prevented should we have had positive train control – we should not be scrimping on investments in public safety.”

Except that we aren’t scrimping on investments in public safety. Not by a long shot.

It has not even been one year since the House rejected proposals from Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) to slash Amtrak’s funding from the federal government, which – for fiscal year 2015 – was to the tune of $340 million. In order to ensure that Amtrak could continue to operate freely and expensively (we’re talking about a company that pays it food and beverage employees up to $106,000 a year), Congress continued to throw money at Amtrak despite its deficiencies – and yet, this crash happened anyway. So enough is enough, Democrats: Stop spreading the false narrative that this event happened because Amtrak doesn’t get enough money. It’s a bold-faced lie.

But that’s not the only untruth that was told last week. The President’s comments at a poverty summit at Georgetown University last week, where he said he was concerned that families are abandoning public schools in favor of private institutions, was more than a little hypocritical. Wait a minute – don’t the first daughters attend private school? And not just any private school, but the famed Sidwell Friends school, with an annual tuition of more than $37,000 a year per child?

Furthermore, isn’t this the same President who completely pulled the funding from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program in 2009 – a program that gave private school scholarships to 2,000 low income students, most of whom were black? The answer to that is yes. The D.C. Opportunity program was implemented because of the D.C. School Choice Incentive Act of 2003, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush (but remember, he’s a horrible person.) After Obama cut the program’s funding in 2009, those 2,000 poor students were forced to re-enter the failing public school system in Washington, D.C.

But in 2011, the program had its funding restored – not thanks to President Obama, but to Speaker of the House John Boehner (a Republican) and then-Senator Joe Lieberman (a Democrat-turned-Independent). They worked together to introduce the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, which opened the door for new students to participate in the D.C. Opportunity program. But if you listen to the President, you’ll hear him say that Speaker Boehner isn’t willing to work with Democrats and that Republicans don’t care about poor kids. Considering the events described here, it looks like the exact opposite is true.

Ed Hoffman is the host of the Main Event on AM590, which airs Saturday 9:30AM- 10:30AM and Sunday 4:00PM- 5:00PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event 590.