John Mica: “I am going to vote for this conference report, and I will get to why I am going to do it in a minute, but before I do, I…”

“I am going to vote for this conference report, and I will get to why I am going to do it in a minute, but before I do, I want to talk about the process that has gone on. When a bill leaves the House in a certain condition, and the certain condition in this case was the protection of the air traffic control system, and the Senate with the Lautenberg amendment does the same thing and goes a little further. When a bill goes to conference and comes back looking different, we are left on our side with the conclusion that can only come from one place. As a Member of this body, it concerns me that we need to have, and this message is really for my leadership, we are a coequal branch of the United States Government. And if we are just going to accede to what it is that the administration wants to do, I, as a Republican, have difficulty. I listened carefully to this debate, and the gentleman from Florida is right, during the Clinton administration the contract tower program was used extensively by the Clinton administration, and under the Bush administration, there have been no privatizations. The executive order that President Clinton issued as he left office, countermanded by President Bush, is why we find ourselves here today. The contract tower program, if run responsibly, does not mean the death of the aviation system in this country.”