Rob Portman: “Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, that almost brought a tear to my eye; but I have got to tell you, after Lockerbie, England went…”

“Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, that almost brought a tear to my eye; but I have got to tell you, after Lockerbie, England went for this technology that the gentleman wants to install. It took them 8 years to install it. Eight years. That was 12 years ago. That same technology is what he wants to buy, 20-year-old technology that does not work, or is not as good as other technology that is being suggested. Let me just clear the air here a little bit. First of all, I think it is irresponsible to try to scare the American people away from flying. The rhetoric on this floor is irresponsible in doing that. Let me just say that 100 percent, 100 percent of your bags today are being checked before they go on the plane. What this argument is about is buying a machine, a bomb detection machine to try to make it more efficient to check your bags. They want you to buy a 20-year-old technology that is wrong 30 percent of the time. Let us get how this works. Thirty percent of the time it is wrong; so when it is wrong, you have to take it off the machine and check it by hand, adding to the time of that plane taking off. What we want is technology that is ready, it just needs to be certified, that has less than a 5 percent error rate.”