Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman and Mr. Aderholt, first of all, I want to thank you for recognizing me and also giving me this opportunity to speak on my amendment which in consultation with you, Mr. Chairman, I will withdraw and not offer. That is amendment, I believe it's numbered 543 as printed. Mr. Aderholt, first I want to thank you for your pledge to continue to work with your subcommittee and our full committee in your rigorous oversight of how the Transportation Security Administration is spending our scarce resources. {time} 1140 Unfortunately, the TSA bureaucracy has mushroomed since 9/11 from a workforce of 16,500 to 62,000 employees today. The purpose of my amendment is my concern about the growth and administrative overhead--a huge number of personnel. TSA has more employees than the Department of State, the Department of Education and Labor, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development combined. Now listen to this: TSA headquarters, which is within a few miles of where we're standing, has 3,776--latest count--administrative bureaucrats employed, and 27 percent are supervisors of them. The average pay of these 3,700-plus bureaucrats here is $105,000. Having helped create TSA in the aftermath of 9/11, I can tell you we never intended to support this kind of bureaucracy. Now listen to this: if you think the bureaucracy in Washington is bad, there are 9,233 non-screener employees at the airports across the country. There are only 400 airports in the program.…”