Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am down here to speak in favor of the FAA reauthorization conference report that the Senate will vote on shortly. I thank Chairman Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison for their great work on this piece of legislation--a long time coming. It has not been reauthorized since 2007, so it has been a long time coming. So I am very excited about this opportunity. I think it is maybe a new trend for the year. Last week we passed the STOCK Act, and today hopefully we will pass the FAA bill. There has been a lot of work, a lot of compromise on these two pieces of legislation and this one particularly today. The last time Congress actually passed a comprehensive FAA bill was in 2003. The bill expired in 2007. Since then, the FAA has been operating on 23 short-term extensions. These temporary extensions have been detrimental. They have prevented progress on modernizing our air traffic control. I speak as someone who just literally flew in a couple of hours ago overnight from Alaska. We clearly understand air traffic. They did not give airports funding certainty for planning, runway, and safety improvements, and they resulted in a brief shutdown in which 4,000 FAA employees were furloughed for almost 2 weeks last summer. It is far past time that Congress pass a comprehensive FAA reauthorization bill. While this bill is significant for the entire country, it is particularly important for my residents, the residents of aviation in Alaska, and residents overall.…”