Steve Cohen: “I am standing in lieu of the ranking member Mr. Larsen, who can't be here, and he asked me to do this as I am the…”

“I am standing in lieu of the ranking member Mr. Larsen, who can't be here, and he asked me to do this as I am the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Aviation, which this bill came out of. I was here earlier today on a veterans' bill, and I mentioned that people sometimes don't think we work together, but military and veterans' issues are a place where Democrats and Republicans come together. We also come together on transportation issues generally, and this time we most assuredly did. There was an overwhelmingly large majority passing this bill on the floor, and it was because of the work of Chairman Graves, Ranking Member Larsen, and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves). This is a good bill. It protects the flying public. It takes care of consumers who have been left in the breach either on the tarmac or left for hours with the plane not leaving or getting in late, giving them the right to get refunds, compensation, water, all those other things they would like to have. It takes care of trying to see that our air traffic controllers have a larger group of people to choose from, opening it up to minorities who have not really been encouraged and/or permitted so much into the air traffic control system. We need more and more air traffic controllers, so this bill encourages more people to get involved in that because when we have a lack of air traffic controllers, we have got potential safety problems.…”