Political Quotes

“I agree with about 99 percent of this bill, but there is 1 percent of the bill I do not agree with, and that, of course, is the portion of the bill that gives a reimbursement to these airports who built towers, knowing full well that the Federal Government was not going to pay for the construction of these towers. In AIR-21 we passed the law saying that if a local airport, a small local airport, wanted to build a tower, the Federal Government would then pay for the contract air traffic controllers. That was the law. That is still the law today. What we are doing here really is changing the rules of the game after the game has been played. These local small airports signed an agreement with the FAA saying that they would build the local tower with their money, knowing full well they would never get reimbursement for it, if the FAA would pay for the contract air traffic controllers. That is what has happened. These small airports receive about $150,000 a year from the AIP fund. If we grant them reimbursement, they will be spending their AIP money for the next 7 or 8 years on something that they constructed a number of years ago. The worst part of this piece of the legislation is the fact that these same airports have requested $258 million in security improvements because of 9/11.”