James Oberstar: “we have come to the close of a very agonizing debate, a very fair, very open exchange. But you cannot have it both ways.…”

“we have come to the close of a very agonizing debate, a very fair, very open exchange. But you cannot have it both ways. The last speaker said, you do not have these protections. You do not have all these safeguards for Federal workers. But it was the majority that has said time and again you cannot have Federal workers because it is too hard to fire them. It is too hard to move them around. So we give you the flexibility to write the rules the way you want to do it; and then you come and say, oh, you do not have all the protections. You cannot have it both ways. We have heard some spurious numbers here. The CBO number estimate is 16,200 screeners. Then there are supervisors and managers and ground coordinators and senior-level security and perimeter security and aircraft security personnel. That is all up to the Department, the Department of Justice or up to the Department of Transportation. You decide. That is the flexibility. Then I heard them complain, oh, you do not trust the President of the United States to do the right thing. What do you mean? On the other hand they say, you do not have any mandates to make all of these things happen because we do not trust the rulemaking. Now let us cut that stuff out. What we have got before us is the essential issue, the Achilles heel of aviation security. I served on the Pan Am 103 commission in the aftermath of that tragedy at Lockerbie, Scotland.”