John Joseph Moakley: “I want to publicly congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), my chairman, my dear friend, for bringing…”

“I want to publicly congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), my chairman, my dear friend, for bringing this totally open rule to the floor. May every one of his rules be as open as this, Madam Speaker. It is a great, great start. Madam Speaker, last year the House passed a bill to improve our airports. Unfortunately, the Senate did not pass a similar bill. If we do not pass this bill, the Federal Aviation Administration will not be able to issue grants after March 31 of this year. That will mean, Madam Speaker, that the much-needed airport construction that is already under way will have to stop, and the new expansion and improvement of programs will just not get off the ground. Madam Speaker, according to the Air Transport Association, the United States had 605 million airline passengers in 1997. In 1998 we had about 2 million passengers a day. In the next 10 years, Madam Speaker, that number is expected to increase to 1 billion people flying in and out of our airports each year. The airline delays in this country's 18,000 airports cost the airline industry about $2.5 billion each and every year. Most of that ends up as ticket costs for consumers.”