Martin Sabo: “my congratulations to my friend from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), again…”

“my congratulations to my friend from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), again, on their ability to apparently pass a bill that gives their committee jurisdiction of funding priority over everything else. My only wish would be that their committee had jurisdiction over housing so we could deal with what is a true need in this country. This, in my judgment, is one of the worst bills I have seen go through the Congress. It is wrong because of what it does within FAA. It says the top priorities are concrete; the lowest priorities are people. It is plain and simple. The lowest programs for funding are air traffic controllers, personnel who deal with safety. They compete with other people for funding, but the people who pour the concrete do not. The people who buy facilities and equipment do not, and we have had a history in this agency of having a terrible time bringing any contract in on time or in an appropriate fashion. It does the wrong thing for FAA. Then at the very day that the House Committee on the Budget is meeting to deal with the budget resolution for this session, where we hear we are going to have very tight restrictions on discretionary spending, we are going to say the first priority above everything else is building more runways, more runways, more important than anything else on the agenda. That is what we are doing with this bill.”