Tammy Duckworth

Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member Cruz for holding today's hearing.

What specific steps is Southwest implementing over the course of this year to earn back the trust of your flight crews?

Please explain this specific benchmark Southwest must hit in the coming months and years to fulfill your promise.

I am working on legislation to require the Department of Transportation to audit air carrier website accessibility.

Clearly, Southwest failed to heed the warnings of its frontline personnel.

Next month actually marks my 30th year as a pilot from when I first showed up at flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

It is actually illegal.

We need to be reminded that the air crews are responsible for people's lives.

Maybe they need to come to a senator and we will call a hearing, and then we will hand you pieces of paper with names and phone numbers on them.

What happened over Christmas was appalling.

We saw this again in 2005 in the Sauget community of St. Louis, which is an area of importance to Senator Duckworth.

Protecting our Nation's public health requires achieving clean air for all Americans, yet our current air monitoring system is woefully deficient, both in terms of capacity and capability.

It is outrageous that in the wealthiest Country in the world, communities of color are exposed to 63 percent more air pollution than they create.

We have to do more to keep our community safe. We have to get rid of assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and so many other additional common-sense reforms that wide majorities of Americans are crying out for.

There`s no reason to have these weapons on our streets. Not for hunting, not for self protection. It has to end.

The assault weapons ban alone was -- by allowing it to expire has allowed the mass -- the deaths for mass shootings to triple in this country.

There’s a lot that we can do right away. And frankly, my colleagues care more about a check in their account than they do about babies being killed while they’re supposed to be at school.

This is about politicians who care more about a check, a pay day, a payoff from gun manufacturers than they do dead babies.

95 percent of Americans support universal background checks, getting rid of the gun show loophole.

I’m calling for us to suspend the filibuster and pass sensible gun legislation at the 50 vote minimum, at the 50 vote threshold, 51 vote threshold.

Sickening, nauseating, but it’s true to form because they care more about checks from the NRA than they do about 19 massacred children.

And they’re coming for birth control pills next, guys. They’re coming for that. Count on it.

The women who are most likely to be affected by this are women who are -- who are off the lower socioeconomic spectrum, who can’t afford to take days off from work to drive 1,000 miles for access to reproductive choice.

We cannot let this happen across the country.

I do fear that, and I -- because they have been as good as their word when it comes to the state legislatures.