Political Quotes

“it is always painful to be against an amendment by one of your colleagues, and particularly a friend. But I think under the circumstances it is a little premature to go with this when the Environment Committee has asked that this come through their committee and not be offered on the floor. But attacking noise is a difficult problem that requires a coordinated effort involving research, airport grant money, flight paths, and phaseout of noisy aircraft. The FAA has been successful in its efforts to reduce airplane noise. In fact, the FAA has spent in the last few years $2 billion for sound insulation and property purchase around our U.S. airports. And duplicating the expertise of the FAA within the EPA and costing the taxpayers some $21 million would be wasteful, in my opinion, of government resources. It would complicate and confuse efforts to deal with and better understand community noise concerns. And it would, Mr. President, create a judicial ambiguity that could have real problems as we reduce aircraft noise worldwide. Since 1993, the Federal Interagency Committee on Aircraft Noise has worked successfully to advance cooperative noise research among the various Federal agencies with an interest in this area.”