Confirmed: While a few Republicans are making noise about increasing regulations on freight rail companies in the wake of the train derailment and toxic chemical burn-off in East Palestine, Ohio, this is not about to become a real Republican issue on which they take action. Republican Sens. J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio may try to ride this issue into getting the media to describe them as populists, but they’re not bringing their party along—and the noise they make about it publicly has to be understood as noise made in the confidence that their fellow Republicans won’t do anything wild and wacky like pass serious reforms.
Republicans have been screaming about the federal government responding to the derailment too slowly (the EPA arrived the day after the derailment, which happened late in the evening) and attacking Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for not showing up in East Palestine in person sooner (although transportation secretaries rarely go to the site of a non-fatal train derailment). But they’re also making clear that they are in absolutely no rush to pass the reforms Buttigieg has called for to prevent future accidents.
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Buttigieg has called on Congress to increase the maximum fines the Transportation Department can impose. “The current maximum fine, even for an egregious violation involving hazard materials and resulting in fatalities, is $225,455,” a DOT press release notes. “This is a rounding error for a company that reported an astonishing record annual operating income in 2022 of $4.8 billion, and has posted operating margins approaching 40%.”
Additionally, he suggested stronger rules governing high-hazardous shipments, modernizing braking regulations, and speeding up the phase-in of a new, safer type of tank car from the current congressionally mandated date of 2029. It’s a solid set of proposals, but not exactly a radical agenda.
It’s also too much for Republicans. “The rail industry has a very high success rate of moving hazardous material — to the point of 99-percent-plus,” Rep. Troy Nehls, who heads the House Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, told Politico. “Let’s not have more burdensome regulations and all this other stuff.”
Not even a higher maximum fine than $225,455.
It’s “probably a little premature at this point” to consider any policy responses to the derailment, Rep. Rick Crawford said. He wants to wait for more detailed expert information on the causes of the derailment “before we start speculating on what legislative fixes might be offered, if it’s necessary, and if so what would they be.” Yes, that’s a Republican wanting to go slower and listen to the experts, and yes, it’s very humorous. It’s all a dodge, of course.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigations take a long time, while the agency does full and meticulous work. That’s a good thing. Here, Republicans are using it as a delay tactic so that by the time the final report comes out, the East Palestine derailment will have faded from public attention and Republicans won’t be feeling political pressure over it.
While Republicans say it’s too soon to take action on strengthening rail regulations, it’s never too soon to attack a Democrat—in this case, Buttigieg. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered up a Mad Libs of Republican attacks on Buttigieg, accusing him of being “more interested in pursuing press coverage for woke initiatives and climate nonsense than in attending to the basic elements of his day job” while refusing to name any policy responses to the derailment he would support.
Then there’s J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, who are playing more the Susan Collins role on this issue. Vance is, with Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, preparing a bill addressing staffing levels and train length and speed limits, and Rubio has signaled interest in joining on that bill. But again, if Vance and Rubio know that such a bill will not get the Republican votes to break the filibuster in the Senate and will not come up for a vote in the House at all, it’s an empty gesture. They’ll get credit for it the day they support such a bill at a time when it will get a House vote, and they’re seen putting pressure on their Republican Senate colleagues.
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