Jim Inhofe: “in a moment I am going to propound a unanimous consent request. Before I do, I would like to say what it is on so people…”

“in a moment I am going to propound a unanimous consent request. Before I do, I would like to say what it is on so people will understand the time and effort that has gone into getting legislation passed. I am referring now to S. 3268. When John Glenn retired from this body, that left me as kind of the last acting commercial pilot. Consequently, I ended up getting a lot more of the complaints and problems within the FAA and the way accusations are made and enforcement actions are taken. I have gone to bat for a lot of these people when I believed there was really a fairness problem. It was not until I had an experience, a personal experience, that I realized the depth of the problem. It is very hard for people in this room to understand. If you have been, as I have been, a private pilot, commercial pilot, and flight instructor for 55 years, what it would mean to have that license taken away from you if that were merely at the whim of some enforcement officer in the field. I think all of us know--when I was mayor of Tulsa, now and then we had a few police officers who could not handle the authority. It happens all the time. Certainly we hear about it with enforcement actions brought about by the FAA. What happened to me, and I will share this with you--I think it is very important--I have probably more hours than most airline pilots have and I was still active in aviation.…”