James Oberstar

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to address the issue the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) raised in the well about the rest of the flight crew, the flight attendants, on board the…

Mr. Speaker, the legislation pending before us, as the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) has just described has as its purpose to speed up construction of runways, taxiways, airside improvements at airports that have dragged on far too…

Mr. Speaker, I have reviewed a number of documents in the form of letters or memos issued just on the eve of the consideration of this legislation, and I want to make four points to reassure those who have expressed concerns about the…

reclaiming my time, they entered into an agreement fully knowing what that entailed; and if the gentleman from Mississippi and I enter into an agreement for me to buy his car, and I come back and say, gee whiz, I paid too high a price for…

I listened again with great attention to the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee, who made a very compassionate, or passionate, argument, compassionate for those 20 airports who are going to be windfall beneficiaries. This idea that…

I am fully willing to support the forward-looking part of this bill, because I think we ought to do this, but I can't have a reachback provision. It is just not good national policy. And this is not partisan, I say to the gentleman. This…

let us throw out all of the other extraneous matters. These airport authorities signed an agreement with the FAA. This is not about Federal dollars, local dollars, who is in charge or whatever. They signed an agreement that said they will…

No. We want them to live up to their contract. That is the point. Furthermore, the reason that the tower was not approved to be built with FAA funds is that it did not meet FAA benefit cost requirements.

reclaiming my time, it is fair because, in the first place, that tower cannot qualify for the tower program. It did not meet the benefit-cost analysis. The airport authority knew it, and said, we will build the tower, and you operate it…

Enactment of this Maritime Transportation Security Act, otherwise known as the Port Security bill, will close another hole in the security network of the United States, and a critical one. We have already dealt effectively with aviation…

I have an interest only because of my many, many years of action in the aviation sector as the former Chair of the Subcommittee on Aviation and a desire to do the right thing.

this afternoon I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to visit with high school students from Becker, Minnesota who are participating in the Close-Up program. As a result of our visit, I was unable to record my vote during the consideration of…

H.R. 2804 is a bill to designate the courthouse located at 95 Seventh Street in San Francisco, California, as the ``James R. Browning United States Courthouse''. I commend our colleague, Congresswoman Pelosi, for her diligence and hard…

I rise in support of H.R. 2869, the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act. This important bipartisan, bicameral brownfields redevelopment legislation, a long time in coming, will help significantly in the…

our long struggle to improve the lot of the Nation's 250,000 railroad workers and 700,000 retirees and to provide relief for our Nation's financially ailing railroad industry is finally coming to an end. The Senate is to be congratulated…

I do want to observe, though, that the manager's report contains a listing of over 100 airport projects that managers want to see funded out of FAA discretionary funds. In the past, there have been listings of projects for specific…

Reclaiming my time, the sky marshal program was established by President Nixon by executive order issued on September 11, 1970, with funds appropriated not out of the airport and airways trust fund, not out of an aviation account, but out…

Mr. Chairman, I do so for the purpose of responding to the chairman's question where these funds are going to come from, and the implication that the point of order made by the gentleman from Illinois struck the money. In fact, the point…

Steel is the basic building block of an industrial society. In 1947, author John Gunther wrote that what makes America the greatest industrialized Nation in the world is its ability to roll more steel than the Soviet Union, Germany…

I think that the important work of the aviation security measure that we enacted which is now law can go forward. It is unfortunate that some sky marshals, frankly, have not been paid. I have been made aware of situations where sky…

Those dollars are committed to acquisition of air traffic control technologies, as the chairman well knows. The operations account is to pay for the air traffic controllers and for the professional systems repair personnel, and were not…

If the gentleman from Ohio will continue to yield, my question simply was, did the Committee on Appropriations understand in crafting this language that they were, in some sense, removing from the Subcommittee on Economic Development…

I share the chairman's great concern, and I appreciate that the Committee on Appropriations wants to give this authority in the emergency circumstances, but it is authority that is not necessary. The chief administrative officer now has…

the point is that the surcharge is to pay for those acquisitions, and payment of sky marshals is to come out of the $20 billion. We should have had this dialogue long before this moment, before coming to the floor with this legislation.

I think we have here an extraordinary product that will serve the American people well for decades to come. No longer are we going to try and buy security on the cheap, driven by the airlines who were fatally conflicted between keeping…