Jay Rockefeller: “I indicated this is the largest increase in aviation spending in history. I did that out of a sense of pride because of…”

“I indicated this is the largest increase in aviation spending in history. I did that out of a sense of pride because of the urgency of the situation we face. This is not money which is being spent for the sake of money; it is money being spent so we will not walk into the disaster we are now headed towards. I remind my colleagues--the delays, the near misses, the pressure, the outdated equipment, the insufficient time for preparation at work, salaries, money for various purposes--we cannot take an air traffic control system or modernize an FAA in the way they want to do it, we cannot pay the many thousands of people who work to keep it safe in this country, without spending money. It has been said a number of times that the number of people who will be flying in this country will be a billion in less than 10 years. Cargo traffic on a worldwide basis, as well as in our country, will increase exponentially. The number of planes flying in the skies will increase by at least 50 percent in less than 10 years. Think about that. We have the same number of runways; we have 20- to 30-year-old computers trying to figure out what altitudes the planes are flying and figure out how to separate them; we look at all the different tracking systems we have in our aviation system and we would be embarrassed to have that equipment in our own Senate offices. It is a crisis. Therefore, it is a priority.”