Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his work on this amendment and on the bill. As the gentleman said, early last year, the FAA switched course on its hiring process by moving from the AT-SAT, which was a tried-and- true, knowledge-based test, to a bio-data assessment. The change had a tremendous impact on the 36 Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative schools. I have one of the best of these schools in my district, Lewis University. Lewis 2 years ago won the Loening Trophy as the best aviation program in the Nation. Maybe students chose to attend Lewis and these other schools because of the advantages that CTI schools provided under the old hiring system. They decided at a young age to enroll in a program fostered by the FAA and were given the opportunity to excel on the AT-SAT, which was unfairly pulled out from under them. Madam Chair, this amendment is a step in the right direction towards fixing the misguided policy change that had a negative impact on students and the universities that invested significant resources in training our future generations of air traffic controllers. But I need to emphasize that this amendment should not come at the cost of slowing down the hiring of air traffic controllers. We have already suffered from a hiring and training slowdown and cannot afford further delays to staffing an essential safety function of the FAA.…”