Joe Barton: “Mr. Speaker, I really did not plan to speak on this bill, but some of my good friends on the minority side from Texas…”

“Mr. Speaker, I really did not plan to speak on this bill, but some of my good friends on the minority side from Texas have been up talking about alleged abuse of funding or power in terms of homeland security officials attempting to find some missing State legislators who went down to Austin and then left Austin and went up to Ardmore, Oklahoma, hung out at the Holiday Inn for a couple of days while the Texas legislature was considering a redistricting bill for Congress. The Inspector General of the homeland security has done an investigation of this allegation and found no substance to it, no merit. As it turns out, the information in terms of the tail number and things like that are available to any citizen in this country who wishes to call the FAA. If they have a tail number, and if that airplane is in the air, FAA will tell a person where that particular airplane is. That is public information unless they have changed the protocol in the last 2 or 3 weeks, and is available to anybody who wishes to try to track where somebody is, that is, if they have the tail number.”