John Mica: “I do want to apologize to the members of the committee because we want to make certain that if we offer the amendment…”

“I do want to apologize to the members of the committee because we want to make certain that if we offer the amendment that it was in the proper form as originally drafted. It was on a previous page. And I understand from the Parliamentarian that we could only do a limitation at this particular stage. So that's why I had the time to explain and striking the last word, my position and some of the history of my involvement with this. It's not that I'm just a Johnny-come-lately on the floor to do some mischief with TSA. It's that I helped to actually create the agency. I want it to be effective. I want taxpayer money to be properly expended. But when I see the results--and I've seen the way the TSA operates. They started with 16,500 screeners on 9/11. And what failed on 9/11 was not the private screeners. It was the Federal Government, because the Federal Government failed to put in place the rules, the protocols, the standards and the levels of operation. They were stalling for years, I found out, and never put them in place. And that's something we had to do. But what we did is, again, we set up two models. And airports have had the right to opt out from the very beginning and go to private screening under Federal supervision. Now, we've been there. We've seen how it works.…”