(Washington, DC) - On July 28th, Congresswoman Corrine Brown held a Transportation Committee roundtable on high speed rail manufacturing in the United States.  The event, which was widely attended by panelists in the transportation industry, as well as by many committee members, discussed high speed rail for America’s future and the possibility of establishing production lines for high speed rail engines and cars domestically.  At the event, Congresswoman Brown delivered the following statement:

"The Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included $8 billion for High Speed Rail, and the 2010 Transportation Appropriations bill that recently passed the House included an additional $4 billion. And the surface transportation bill being developed by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee included $50 billion for High Speed Rail over the next 6 years.

Just one week ago, the Department of Transportation announced that it had received 278 pre-applications for high-speed and intercity passenger rail funding, totaling $102 billion.  It is clear that there is significant support for High Speed Rail in Congress and throughout the country.

One great opportunity that will come from this new funding will be the ability to establish the production of High Speed Rail engines and cars right here in the United States.   We can replace many of the manufacturing jobs that are quickly disappearing in this country with well paying jobs building new locomotive and passenger cars to be used here in America and sold to other countries throughout the world.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.2 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6 percentage points.  Employment in manufacturing has been particularly hard-hit; it fell by 136,000 over the month of June and has declined by 1.9 million during the recession. 

No industry has been hit as hard as the auto manufacturing sector.  Auto and auto parts manufacturing jobs declined from 1.1 million to an estimated 878,000. Within this category, employment at just the auto assemblers, such as GM and Ford, posted an even greater drop of 29% during the same time period, falling from 228,800 workers to 163,000.

If realized, the goal of establishing the production of High Speed Rail engines and cars in the United States would prove to be a tremendous asset towards getting thousands of people back to work by creating quality jobs in the economy's manufacturing sector."

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