Hal Rogers: “Mr. Speaker, let me speak briefly to the motion that is before us insofar as it relates to parts of the supplemental…”

“Mr. Speaker, let me speak briefly to the motion that is before us insofar as it relates to parts of the supplemental that are not the military branch part; specifically, the Transportation Security Administration, which our subcommittee deals with. The House-passed bill includes some $3.8 billion in the supplemental for the TSA. We have yet to receive from the TSA the justifications for those figures. Yet the Senate bill, if we go along with this motion, if this motion passes and we have to go to the higher figure in the Senate bill, some $4.7 billion, we have no justifications for it. I cannot show to my colleagues the documents that say, this is what we actually have to have. In the House-passed bill, we already gave more than was requested for several items. For example, we said, here is $20 million. Replace all of the magnetometers in 429 airports in the country, because the new state-of-the-art magnetometers will save the need for a lot of hand wands that are now searching you as you go through. The new machines will do that work for us. It will save many of us taking our shoes off as we go through the airport and having somebody, a federally paid employee, carry your shoes to be searched. Those requests were not in the administration request. Yet, we put it in there, because we think it will save money down the pike.”