A liberal political action group has produced an ad and fundraising campaign that claims “Republican cuts” to infrastructure spending and Amtrak funding have “killed again.” The Agenda Project Action Fund, which has been behind such campaigns as the ad featuring a Paul Ryan look-alike pushing an elderly woman off a cliff and another with the slogan “F*ck Tea,” is raising money in the wake of the recent derailment of an Amtrak train near Philadelphia that has killed eight people and injured hundreds more.
“Year after year, Republicans have run for office almost exclusively on cutting spending,” reads the group’s fundraising page. “Many of those cuts have been utterly reckless. It is high time someone points to the real human costs of this kind of irresponsible governance. The egregious and utterly unnecessary cuts to Amtrak prevented vital upgrades to our aging railways and crippled the system that transports more than 30 million American citizens each year.”
The Agenda Project’s 60-second ad, which it says it hopes to run in Kentucky and Florida, strings along various clips of Republicans saying the word “cut” and some reports suggesting more funding might have prevented the crash. This, despite the fact that investigators say the engineer of the derailed train was traveling at more than double the speed limit at the time of the crash. The ad concludes with a morbid message, “Republican cuts kill,” followed by the sound of a train horn. Watch the ad below:
“While the details are still emerging about the central cause of the crash, it is clear that additional funding could likely have prevented the tragedy,” writes Agenda Project founder Erica Payne in a fundraising email. Payne is a longtime Democratic party veteran and a co-founder of the Democracy Alliance, a group of progressive donors that help fund various left-wing political groups like the Center for American Progress, Organizing for Action, and Media Matters for America.
A reporter attempted to ask House speaker John Boehner Thursday about the issue of infrastructure spending as it related to the Amtrak crash. “Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?” said Boehner, interrupting the reporter. Watch that exchange below:
