Peter DeFazio

I appreciate your holding this hearing.

But I have got to say I still disagree, and I am hopeful that in the next FAA reauthorization we can correct this discrepancy.

As might have been noted, I am particularly concerned about lithium batteries on aircraft.

If that happened in the hull of an airplane, it would come down and people would die.

We ought to actually see what they produce and then review what their products are.

The gas explosion in San Bruno, California, killed eight people because of problems with the pipe and the pipeline itself.

The Enbridge Pipeline, which leaked for quite a period of time, 1 million gallons of tar sands, mostly unrecoverable, in the river, because simple leak detection was not effective.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will have an opening statement, because I think this merits a lot of discussion and scrutiny by this committee.

Over the past few years, 17 States have raised their gas tax, and nobody has been recalled.

We have an $836 billion backlog on unmet capital investment needs for highways and bridges; nearly 140,000 bridges need repair or replacement.

State-owned enterprises and governments that are acting in a mercantilist way are not really interested in competition.

I really think that we need to revisit the act. We need to revisit the assumptions that we are creating efficiency in market forces here.

The rumored $1.3 billion cut to build a stupid wall that won't make our country any safer would just be outrageous.

I mean, it is Pollyannaish to think, oh, these alliances are just to help make the industry more efficient.

We can't be the greatest nation on earth and a great maritime nation without any maritime under our own control.

If those cuts are a reality, it would be perhaps the most laughable thing, but serious, unfortunately, about the so-called budget proposals.

It is not going to solve any national security problem but it would open up the same route the Germans used to invade France to drug smugglers, human smugglers, and potentially terrorists trying to get a tactical nuclear weapon into the…

I am particularly interested in your description of the length of time it took to get certified to monitor the platforms in the gulf.

There was a provision that I got in the short-term authorization requiring the FAA to go forward with a pilot project, I hope to hear about that, to intercept or otherwise disable drones that are operating in controlled airspace.

I am very concerned about the abuse by some people. These are generally very casual recreational users who are operating outside the law.

We need to maintain America's lead in aviation and aerospace, and that is going to require a much more nimble and proactive FAA.

I think this is extraordinarily important and should be a bipartisan effort in reauthorizing the brownfields law.

If they want to leverage private investment and they are looking for a program that works, they should be proposing an increase in funding for this program rather than a decrease.

And, by the way, don't call the Federal Government because we won't be there.

To cut 25 percent of the budget for preparedness grants, to cut the pre-disaster mitigation funds, that is whistling through the graveyard.