Nick Lampson: “In my opinion, the ideology difference that we had in the House came down to politics. It is clear to me that 49…”

“In my opinion, the ideology difference that we had in the House came down to politics. It is clear to me that 49 Senators and 50 Democrats and one independent coming together in the Senate on one bill was not a political statement. It was a statement in belief of the American people. When it came to the House, the House was broken on ideological grounds and that broke down to party lines. That is unfortunate. That is what I am talking about. The biggest concern that I had during that whole debate was not that people are not going to be hired; people will be hired. We need that experience to be the same regardless of what airport it is. As you were just saying, the training has to be much more significant than what it has been. And if we leave the people in charge of the process who have been a part of the process, and I might add that before the Transportation Committee just 2 or 3 weeks ago, we had some of the major airport security companies represented at a meeting, three of the five present were foreign-owned businesses. If we are going to allow people working in our airports for foreign-owned companies to be in line with our Federal security agencies, with information that is critical to the security of the United States of America and allow them to come into this loop, I think that is a ludicrous thing. But at this point, we just have to have a bill before this President to sign so that the country can get back to traveling and feel safe in doing so.”