John Mica: “I returned to the floor really to try to eliminate some of the myths. The previous speaker tries to couch this as a…”

“I returned to the floor really to try to eliminate some of the myths. The previous speaker tries to couch this as a bailout to the airlines and talks about billions of dollars. Let us look at the billions. There are $5 billion for direct costs. The airlines must prove direct costs of incidence from the September 11 tragedy. Today, $5 billion will barely replace a few number of airplanes. The gentleman does not have to worry about bailing out the airline industry, because there will be no airline industry. They will not have the insurance. They will not have the credit. They will not be in business. So we will not have 100,000 people out of work, we will have hundreds of thousands of people out of work. The rest of the package, the $10 billion, is not a loan program, it is a loan guarantee program. They must pay back the funds. So this is not any big handout. The language on the compensation, the limits we took from the other side, in trust, to put some limits on compensation for overpaid airline executives, we took that in good faith from the other side. The safety issue. There is $3 billion in this legislation for safety and security. We gave the President another $40 billion, of which he has complete discretion.”