Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise today in strong support of H.R. 5056, the Airport Perimeter and Access Control Security Act, sponsored by Congressman Bill Keating. In recent months, we have seen attacks at airports and aircraft overseas and, in every instance, the integrity and effectiveness of the airport security infrastructure and the insider threat has been concerning. For this reason, we must scrutinize the security of our Nation's airports and ensure that the public has confidence that their travels will be safe and secure in this high-threat environment. Specifically, H.R. 5056 directs the TSA to update its official risk assessment for the aviation sector to reflect the latest available threat intelligence. Moreover, the bill mandates that TSA's comprehensive risk assessment of perimeter and access control security is more regularly updated and that TSA conducts a sectorwide assessment of airport access control vulnerabilities and mitigation efforts. All of this information is required for an updated national strategy for airport perimeter and access control security, which TSA has failed to update since 2012, despite multiple access controls and perimeter security breaches at airports across the country. As this bill demonstrates, we cannot focus solely on the effectiveness of our passenger screening checkpoints while allowing lax security around the airport perimeter and within the sterile areas of airports. Mr.…”