On the recordJune 30, 2010
Why don't we stop this sort of thing? It is unbelievable to me how dysfunctional this place is. I say to my colleague, we have worked on this issue for months and months. I wish it had been done in January, but it was not. But we are very close to getting this done the right way. We have a couple things we have to do together, and I hope we would not be debating this. We need to extend the authorities for the FAA--and do it now--for 30 days. I expect--and the Senator knows me because I have had conversations with Senator Kyl, the No. 2 person on his side. We all had conversations with the Senator from South Carolina and his staff. He knows we have been involved in finalizing at long last just the few remaining issues in order to get a conference report to the floor of the Senate. I have talked with and met with the families of the victims on the Colgan flight many times. I do not know that anybody here has done much more than I have done to reach out to them, to hold hearings, to listen to them, to compliment them, to say to them: Because of what you are doing as families of victims, other people are going to have their lives saved because of aviation safety. I do not take a backseat to anybody in my interest and concern about that and what I have done about that.
