Political Quotes

“I rise in support of the Specter amendment. I understand, just listening to the Senator from Arizona, that this is a complex issue and there are a lot of carriers involved in bankruptcies or financial distress. For this carrier timing is the issue. They have to file this complete reorganization by the end of March. We have a situation where hearings and study by the Commerce Committee, Finance Committee, HELP Committee--whatever--are great for looking at the overall picture of pensions and what we are going to do with funding of distressed plans, but that doesn't solve the problem of US Airways. US Airways went about solving their own problem, and they did so by working in a very aggressive fashion with a labor union that is most involved, which is the pilots, and got enormous concessions. They got enormous concessions from the pilots union, in this case, to dramatically reduce their pension benefits in order for the airline to survive. This was actually a model of labor-management cooperation.”