Stephanie Herseth Sandlin: “the administration, as the gentleman from Oregon who also serves on the committee knows, has brought forth absolutely no…”

“the administration, as the gentleman from Oregon who also serves on the committee knows, has brought forth absolutely no testimony, no evidence of any sort showing that there is a need to move this from a governmental function into a private function. In fact, if the gentleman wants to follow the reasoning presented to the committee, it is exactly the opposite. If we want to say that the private companies were not doing a good job of screening the baggage and we agreed to move that into a governmental function with government employees because of the danger presented to the traveling public, why then should we move the opposite way and say our extremely efficient, well-trained and hard-working government employees that keep our skies safe, that are the envy of the entire world? Why should we move that from a position of government trust where we are protecting the public into the lowest bidder, the person that comes in that says, I can do it the cheapest would be the person that would get the job. I think the American public deserves more than that, and I think the administration needs to bring testimony or evidence to show why the cheapest instead of the best should get the bid.”