Political Quotes

“Other countries are making good progress on this, going to a GPS system. GPS is not a new technology, as many of us know. You see many vehicles, automobiles around town using a GPS to navigate. You have people using GPS on their cell phones. But on a jet airliner flying across the country, hauling a couple of hundred people behind the cockpit, they are using World War II technology, ground-based radar for navigation, not GPS, which is the modernization approach. This is called NextGen, modernizing the air traffic control system. Europe is moving on it, other parts of the world are moving on it, and we need to move. This is about safety. It is about modernizing the system. But more than that, it is about investing in the infrastructure for aviation in the country, building the airports and the runways. It is about the issue of the passenger bill of rights, which is in this bill, saying to the airlines: Here are the new rules. You can't have somebody in an airplane 6 or 7 hours sitting on a runway someplace; 3 hours and then you have to bring them back to the gate. I know some do not like that, but that is the passenger bill of rights, giving passengers some rights as well. I have spoken at length about this legislation, as has Senator Rockefeller. I guess our hope would be that, if there are those who have additional amendments and wish to debate them, they might come to the floor or engage in the discussion on the floor so we can get this piece of legislation passed.…”