A great many publications have failed to draw attention to the fact that the President's budget for Fiscal Year 2013 contains the first appropriation of a five-year plan to allocate between $35 and $50 billion for the development of high-speed rail in the United States. At last, our nation would take decisive steps to fund a high-speed rail corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco, another along the west coast of Florida, one in the state of Michigan, and in other important and heavily populated areas. That kind of economic stimulus would not only create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but would set us on the path towards becoming a modern, efficient and prosperous nation in the field of transportation.
 
It should be noted, in my view, that this is not a partisan issue. A great many Republicans, including the one Republican cabinet member in the Administration, Secretary of Transportation Ray La Hood, enthusiastically support this national initiative. This week, Ray La Hood is in California, urging that legislators of both parties there stay firm in their insistence on creation of a high-speed rail corridor along the coast of California.  
 
So we are at a turning point.  Are we to remain a horse-and-buggy nation, mired for hours on end in traffic jams, condemned to waste valuable time at crowded airports with planes stacked up in the skies, or are we to become a modern, efficient, economically-prosperous nation of sensible transportation? This, to me, is not a partisan goal, but should be advanced by people of all political persuasions.