And money talks. Hoeven has seemingly expressed little public concern about the rail industry since the East Palestine derailment. In 2021, however, he, Cramer, and Armstrong did send a letter to the Surface Transportation Board advocating for the Canadian Pacific, or CP, and Kansas City Southern, or KCS, merger. As The American Prospect reports, Hoeven was rewarded with $3,000 from the Association of American Railroads, which includes CP, KSC, and BNSF as members.
As far as Cramer goes, he applauded the merger between CP and KCS on Wednesday. Since the East Palestine derailment, he’s used the accident to advocate for building more pipelines, rather than making railroads safer. When asked about a bipartisan effort in the Senate to pass railroad reform, Cramer expressed a fairly lax analysis of how he and other Republicans felt. “Nobody jumped up and said, ‘Sign me up,’” he told The Washington Post. “I didn’t hear anybody say, ‘Hell no, we won’t go,’ either.”
Meanwhile, Cramer has previously signed off on a bill to prohibit the Department of Transportation from issuing any regulation to limit the transportation of liquefied natural gas by rail.
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