Mike Pence: “I am very pleased to join this debate over airline security today on the floor of the House, and set aside the remarks…”

“I am very pleased to join this debate over airline security today on the floor of the House, and set aside the remarks that I came to make. My friends on the other side of the aisle would have us believe that this is a choice between one party that is interested in airline security and another party that is not. But Mr. Speaker, that is simply and plainly and baldly not the case. The reality is that the proposal that has been passed in the other Chamber, the proposal that my Democrat friends support, would create 28,000 new Federal employees. Our proposal is to do what the President, Mr. Speaker, has called for from the very beginning; that is, new and higher standards, new Federal resources. But let us not create a new class of Federal employees. Let us not have the people who run the post office or who run our immigration and naturalization and border services providing the security at our airports. It has been tried in Europe. It was rejected and failed. What we need is to strengthen our private security system, create accountability, provide resources. This Republican will fight to give President Bush the airline security program that he so richly deserves.”