John Mica

I consider Amtrak our Soviet-style train system.

I am the strongest advocate of high-speed rail in the Congress.

I think we had every right to get all of those documents.

We have the same role except from a legislative standpoint, investigations and oversight.

If we could move people after 9/11 through in 15 minutes, having had that risk at that point, here we are 10 or 12 years later, and I now aviation is still a target, but we are holding millions of Americans hostage and they are not getting…

The slow rolling is not going to work. I am probably going to let you stew in your juice a little bit longer but I can tell you that folks are getting fed up with the whole thing.

I will tell you what is coming. As you heard here today, the frustration is bipartisan.

It should be 95 or 99 percent.

We spent over $1 billion on training and more than half the people who were trained have left.

I want people to have a living wage. This is not about wages.

Not in our wildest imagination did we ever think you would get to 66,000.

If the private screening is not working as well in some instances, you get rid of them or it is corrected.

As I told the Ranking Member, the decision on Sanford was to put out an RFP last week.

They tried to intimidate him, they were rude, offensive and threatening which prompted me to get re-engaged.

The report said that private screening under federal supervision performed statistically significantly better--not my words, their words.

The government failed for several years to put in place standards for screening.

Let me say at this conjuncture, I have never advocated going back to having the airlines do that or take away the government's responsibility.

We needed to act, we needed an effective transportation security operation.

99.9 percent of Americans have never caused a problem.

The mandate by Congress was pretty clear. It should not take two years to get this moving, which it has done.

I want them to be able to compete honestly but they cannot do that unless they get honest answers and the public should be able to see your exact costs.

I know also that they are the last for service of some of that equipment, for answers from TSA which never come.

I have no problem with the Federal Government setting standards.

Again, there is no discounting for the number of personnel you do not need when you have a private operation.

That is not acceptable. That is a slow roll, dragging your feet as I described in the beginning.