Frank Lautenberg: “I want to discuss what we think is coming over soon from the House. Contrary to the remarks my friend and colleague from…”

“I want to discuss what we think is coming over soon from the House. Contrary to the remarks my friend and colleague from Mississippi made, in terms of his objection, I agree totally that we do not want to hold up the funding of this bill. I want to get the money invested. We have to take care of the requirements of our aviation needs. While we want to make sure we get these funds on their way, we want to make sure we don't throw a blanket opportunity out there to terminate 23,000 loyal, hard-working, safety-oriented employees from the FAA control system; that is, those in the towers, those who are service operators, those who are technicians, because we have a system that has been so safe. We handle over 700 million airline passengers a year. The numbers are incredible. We saw them, when our FAA controllers were called upon on 9/11, bring 5,000 airplanes out of the sky safely. What I propose to do is say let's just have a 6-month extension, not permit the commercialization of the FAA system to take it away from Government hands.”