It is a really dumb question.
Via MRCTV:
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) may be growing a bit frustrated with the political attacks blaming Tuesday evening’s tragic derailment near Philadelphia on a failure to give Democrats the federal spending they want for Amtrak and other infrastructure projects.
During the Speaker’s weekly press conference on Thursday, Ginger Gibson senior political writer at the International Business Times began to ask about the Democratic Party’s claim that part of the blame for the Amtrak tragedy belongs to the GOP’s refusal to spend more money on infrastructure. Boehner did not allow her to finish the question; instead he cut in with an angry rebuke:
“Are you really going to ask such a stupid question? Listen, you know they started this yesterday, ‘it’s all about funding, it’s all about funding.’ Well, obviously it’s not about funding. The train was going twice the speed limit. Adequate funds were there. No money’s been cut from rail safety, and the House passed a bill earlier this spring to reauthorize Amtrak and authorize a lot of these programs. And it’s hard for me to imagine that people take the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed around here.”
On Wednesday during a House Appropriations Committee meeting, Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) blamed GOP lawmakers for failing to make “safety a priority” and bringing up the Amtrak tragedy he said, “Last night we failed them. We failed to invest in their safety.”Mike Simpson (R-ID) shot back, “You have no idea, no idea what caused the accident, and to use that as a means of supporting the last amendment… don’t use this tragedy in that way, it was beneath you.”