James Oberstar: “I believe the chairman and I share an opinion, and that is that the greatest threat to today's civil aviation is…”

“I believe the chairman and I share an opinion, and that is that the greatest threat to today's civil aviation is explosive devices. There are several ways in which the explosive devices can get on the plane. One is cargo. We have already talked about the inadequacies there. This bill does nothing to deal with that. Another is baggage. I had hoped this bill would deal with that. In fact, our committee dealt with it. We doubled the annual investment in in-line automated baggage screening, but, strangely enough, that money disappeared before this bill came before us today. That is unfortunate. When you link that to the fact that the majority party has arbitrarily limited the number of screeners we can have so they are not even utilizing the inadequate trace equipment and other things they have, and we have reports on how sometimes they cannot even operate the machines they have because they do not have enough people, we are not investing in the people and we are leaving gaps. The bill does improve and begins to deal with the threat of suicide bombers and carry-on explosives, $30 million a year. We should do more.”