Political Quotes

“I really can't dispute many of the previous speakers' comments. The bottom line is that the aviation industry, the aviation mode of transportation is the safest mode of transportation. It is the safest way to travel. And the United States has the gold standard in regard to aviation safety. However, we are all aware of two very tragic accidents that resulted in 346 lives that were lost, 346. Just because we have the best, we have the safest, does not mean that we should ever stop striving for better, we should ever stop striving for perfection. Mr. Speaker, we had five hearings on this legislation. There were numerous expert panels that were put together to review this, to extract every single lesson learned. I thank the acting administrator at the time, Dan Elwell--and I want to congratulate him on his retirement--for his steady hand in ensuring that, as we move forward, we base our decisions on facts. I thank him for some of the changes within the FAA to ensure that we apply lessons learned. Mr. Speaker, as previous speakers noted, this legislation is the result of all of these nonpartisan, independent expert reviews. We took the lessons learned and we adapted it into legislation to make sure that we can, as I said, continue to strive for perfection; to continue to focus on, as my friend Mr. Larsen noted, the families; to keep a face on this; to ensure that we never subject future families to the same losses that we had in this case.…”