James Oberstar: “once again I want to express my great appreciation and admiration for the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske), who stood on…”

“once again I want to express my great appreciation and admiration for the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske), who stood on a matter of principle and stood against some very powerful forces within his own party. On a matter of this significance, it is important to have a useful and far-ranging debate. We had that today. I offer as the motion to recommit a bill that we worked on in committee on a bipartisan basis, and on which we came to disagreement on a major point of divergence on the Federal screener workforce. No matter how many proposals I offered to the chairman of the full committee and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation, to which they were agreeable, when they brought it to the political leadership of their party, they were vetoed. We attempted to achieve a bipartisan agreement, but what we have in the motion to recommit is a proposal that I think is superior not only to the motion that was just defeated, but also to the underlying bill. It creates a transportation security administration, an intermodal security administration, transfers all modal functions within the Department of Transportation to the Transportation Security Administration. It designates an Under Secretary as a liaison to intelligence and law enforcement communities.”