Kay Bailey Hutchison: “we now have, I think, a glidepath to passing this important legislation. We worked late into the night, Senator…”

“we now have, I think, a glidepath to passing this important legislation. We worked late into the night, Senator Rockefeller and I did, to try to accommodate needs, concerns, amendments of Members. Now we have the cloture motion in play and hope we can come to a real agreement on the Reagan Airport perimeter issue so we could even do it before cloture is invoked--but hopefully, if we are not able to come to a complete agreement, we would at least be able to get cloture and move on. I hope our Members know we are going to continue to work to address everyone's concerns. We have concerns of western Senators and concerns of Senators within the Washington, DC metropolitan area. We have small community concerns and we have eastern seaboard community concerns. We have been working for years, actually--but months and then weeks to address concerns. We are open to do that. But it is time to wind this bill up so we can go to conference with the House with a strong Senate position and do the big picture policy issues that need to be addressed. We must have the next generation of air traffic control started. We must have a satellite-based system that is for the whole world--for the people coming into our country and the people using our airspace. We need to have the safety and the consumer protections that are in this bill.”