Progressive advocacy group demands the GOP answer for Amtrak tragedy.
Today, the Agenda Project Action Fund released a NEW AD connecting GOP budget cuts to the tragic Amtrak crash that killed 7 people and injured 200 more. See the ad HERE.
The ad includes Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House John Boehner and dozens of other GOP leaders who have called for slashing crucial funding to Amtrak and other programs.
Erica Payne, President of the Agenda Project Action Fund, said “Year after year, Republicans have run for office almost exclusively on cutting spending. Many of the cuts they demand are utterly reckless. It is high time someone points to the real human costs of this kind of irresponsible governance. Cuts to the Amtrak budget prevented vital upgrades that could have prevented this tragedy. Republican budget cuts crippled a system that transports more than 30 million American citizens each year. Shame on them.”
"The ad also aims to start a national conversation about the worldview too often expressed by our friends on the right: that all spending cuts are good,” added AP Action Fund Communications Director Erik Altieri, "This simply couldn't be further from the truth. Some cuts have dire consequences, some cuts can kill."
The ad comes the morning after GOP leaders – who are still not sure of the cause of the crash - voted to cut Amtrak’s budget by more than $250 million. According to officials who operate the Northeast Corridor, the route faces a $1 billion annual shortfall in capital needs. The company’s most traveled train line has a “state-of-good-repair backlog” of 11,100 major projects and 4,800 basic infrastructure repairs.
Republican Cuts Kill . . . Again is Part II of a planned multi-ad, multi-year attack on reckless GOP budget cuts.
Part I of Republican Cuts Kill was released in October, 2014 in the wake of the Ebola crisis. You can see that ad and the subsequent media coverage HERE. That ad blamed GOP of budget cuts to National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control for hampering efforts to fight the Ebola crisis. Senate testimony from the leaders of the two agencies affirmed this accusation.
The original Republican Cuts Kill infuriated GOP leaders. This latest chapter promises to do the same.
WATCH: Republican Cuts Kill...Again