Kevin Brady: “This bill is an appropriate one. It is important in the airline infrastructure to find the right solutions. As America…”

“This bill is an appropriate one. It is important in the airline infrastructure to find the right solutions. As America continues to grow, the aviation infrastructure needs to grow and upgrade as well. I appreciate the gentleman from Massachusetts and the gentleman from Illinois' leadership on this issue because it is so vital to our future in America. Equally important, I think, though, is the cost of energy in this country. It seems to me that while America has done less and less to take responsibility for our energy needs, we've seen prices go up and up. Under President Carter's Presidency, at the time of the last energy crisis America was only importing one-third of the oil that we needed each day. Today, it is the reverse; we import nearly two-thirds of what we use each day and we are now, unfortunately, subject to the whims of the global market on energy prices. As a result, in the airline industry we're seeing each day we can't open the newspaper without seeing the cuts to some community that depend upon service from airlines. We don't see some notices of layoff. I know in Continental, we're going to lose 3,000 jobs, 3,000 families being laid off through no fault of their own, except this Congress has not acted.”