Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, the title of the bill just reported is the correct title. However, the legislation we are discussing inside that bill does not relate so much to the title. This is the FAA reauthorization bill, reauthorizing a wide range of programs in the Federal Aviation Administration. This is the fifth day we have been on the floor. Senator Rockefeller has been managing the legislation. He is necessarily absent now and asked me, as chairman of the aviation panel, to manage in his stead. He has said--and I agree--we have put together a piece of legislation that has substantial modernization pieces in it that will modernize the air traffic control system, provide substantial improvements in safety, improvements in the airport improvement program to invest in and expand the infrastructure in aviation. It contains a lot of things that are so very important.

I worry now, on the fifth day on this legislation, that if we don't get it done today, we may not get this bill done at all. That would be a shame because this authorization has languished for a long time. Rather than reauthorize the FAA with a new authorization, we have extended it 11 straight times. That describes how difficult it is to get things done.

Finally, Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison have brought the bill to the Senate floor. Senator DeMint and I, as chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee, worked on the bill with them. We have now been here 5 days. The question will be, between now and the end of today, will we get this done or does this dissolve as unfinished work? We made a good try, but we just didn't make it happen, so it gets extended again and all of this work is for nought.

The fact is, every single Senator and every constituent of every Member has a big stake in getting this done. Anybody who flies on commercial airlines--and that is a lot of Americans--has a big stake in the issue of air traffic control modernization, improvements to safety, and the things that are included in this legislation. The failure to do this would be a great disappointment, not only for us but for the American people.

We have cleared a lot of amendments. As has been the case recently with a lot of legislation, there has been a lot of delay. We have worked on amendments en bloc that have been cleared. There is an additional group of amendments we hope we will clear.

At 2 o'clock today there will be votes on two amendments side by side, offered within the rules, although they do not relate to this particular legislation. But we will vote on those and try to dispose of those issues.

There is another issue, probably the last significant issue that is there. That is the issue of the slots and the perimeter rule at National Airport in Washington, DC. The slots and perimeter rule is controversial, complex, difficult. We have a number of amendments filed representing different interests of how many additional flights should be added to Washington National, how many flights might be added that would extend beyond what is a perimeter rule at Washington National. I hope those who have filed those amendments will agree to stand down and allow us to try to resolve that in some way in conference.

The House, in its legislation, does address in part the slot rule. If we get to conference with the House, if we can pass a bill through the Senate, it will be something we will need to resolve there.

What my great concern is, if this afternoon, following the votes, we get into long, protracted debate about the various amendments that have been

filed on the slot and perimeter rules, this bill will not get done. A number of people who have offered amendments dealing with slots have great interest in making certain this bill gets done. My fear is, if it is not done today, it probably will not be done. We will probably not complete this legislation.

I will be visiting and talking with those who have offered those amendments, asking if we can work with them as we go into conference and try to address the slot and perimeter rules with the House. It has to be a part of our conference because the House has a number of provisions in their legislation dealing with those issues.

The frustration for 200-plus years in the Senate is nothing moves very quickly. That remains a frustration in 2010. Nothing here moves very quickly. That is part of the charm of the Senate, perhaps, and part of the abiding frustration of the Senate. At least on important issues during important times things really should move. There are certain things that are urgent to get done.

One year has now passed since the last commercial aviation accident in Buffalo, NY. As a result of that accident and the investigation that ensued, a number of new safety recommendations are included in this legislation. It is important for us to understand the urgency of passing legislation that will substantially improve aviation safety. To ignore it is to shortchange the American people.

We are working through the amendments. I expect this afternoon we will have these votes. I also hope we can work with our colleagues on the slot or perimeter rule amendments that have been offered in order to resolve them. My hope is we will resolve them not by protracted debate, which will probably doom this bill because we will likely not have additional time on the Senate floor after 5 full days, but resolve them in a way that allows those who care about this to work with us as we go into conference with the House on the slot and perimeter rules.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

First, let me say I support the Senator's amendment. Both amendments have some merit. It is not unworthy to be talking about trying to tighten belts in every area of public spending, but some public spending is more important than others, and we ought to be judicious as we deal with it.

The difference, as I understand, between these amendments is one says, Let's cut spending in one area, which is domestic discretionary spending, which is a rather small part of the budget, and it doesn't address the other issues of the spending that goes on through the Tax Code, the entitlement spending, and other larger issues as well. Even as we vote on these issues--and I intend to vote in support of your initiative, which I think is the right initiative--I have to say I don't think this is complicated in terms of what has happened to our country and what we have to do to put it back on track.

You can't send kids off to war and then say we are going to charge all the costs of war. We have been involved now in the war against terrorism, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and not paid for a penny of it because throughout the last decade the President said we are going to make all of this emergency spending. Some of us said, Well, let's pay for it? And President Bush said, If you try to pay for it, I will veto the bill.

So it is not particularly complicated to understand what has happened here. Government has to pay its bills. Dealing with the entire area of public spending here is very important, and I think the Senator has offered a piece of legislation, an amendment, that has great merit and I hope will get the substantial support of the Senate.

Madam President, before the Senator leaves the floor, let me say that the families of the victims of the Colgan crash--the tragedy that occurred just about a year ago now--have been unrelenting in coming to the Congress, appearing at every single hearing, meeting with Members of Congress, saying: We want these changes.

I just wanted to say I know the families know but New Yorkers should know the work Senator Gillibrand has done, and Senator Schumer as well, to try to include in this legislation, the FAA Reauthorization Act, some very needed changes, safety changes, that resulted from what we learned in investigating that accident.

Senator Gillibrand talked about the fact that 2 people entered the cockpit of a commercial plane that evening, and then a number of people--45 people--entered from another door and filled that commercial airplane and set off at night, in bad weather, with icing conditions. The two people in the cockpit--the person flying in the left seat, the captain, had not slept in a bed for 2 nights, and the copilot had not slept in a bed the night before. As Senator Gillibrand indicated, she had deadheaded from Seattle, WA, which is where she lived, to go to work, to a workstation in La Guardia. This is a young copilot who was paid between $20,000 and $23,000 a year in salary deadheading across the country to get to her duty station, not feeling particularly well, sitting in the crew lounge, where there is no bed.

The point is, we have learned that is just the fatigue issue and the commuting issue. We learned about training issues in that cockpit with the stick pusher, the stick shaker, icing conditions, and other things. So I want to say we have learned so much from that tragedy.

Our hearts go out to the victims of the crash, and, yes, the pilot and copilot lost their lives as well, and our hearts go out to their families. But it is important for us to learn from this. The diligence of Senator Gillibrand and Senator Schumer, especially, and I would say especially the witness exhibited by the families of the victims over all of these months have been extraordinarily important in putting in this bill some very needed safety changes. So I thank Senator Gillibrand for her diligence.

We are on the FAA reauthorization bill. I want to comment on the discussion of my colleague from Arkansas, but I will do that briefly.

I did want to say before that, however, that we really threaten to lose this bill. We have been on the floor now 5 days. We have a number of amendments. We are going to vote at 2 o'clock today on a couple of amendments that are properly filed, but they have nothing to do with the underlying bill. We have some other amendments still waiting that have nothing to do with the underlying bill. And then we have this issue of slot rules and perimeter rules with National Airport, which is unbelievably complicated. I think we have eight amendments, and my hope is that we can convince people not to offer those amendments. We will try to deal with them in conference because the House has a couple of provisions. But if we do not complete this bill today, after 5 days, then I worry we will never get back to it and once again the issues of aviation safety and airport improvement funds and all of those issues will be left at the starting gate.

We have extended this 11 times. Rather than reauthorizing the FAA bill, we have extended it 11 times.

Now we finally have legislation that deals with aviation safety, which is so unbelievably important, a passengers' Bill of Rights, AIP improvement funds. Let's get this done today. I urge colleagues, if they have amendments to offer, offer them.

As to the vote at 2 o'clock, Senator Pryor has offered an amendment that one of my colleagues described as a cover amendment, not very serious. That is unfair to Senator Pryor. His amendment is not only serious, it is so much better than an amendment described as a baby step. It is OK to take baby steps, but we don't exactly face baby challenges. We have unbelievable fiscal policy challenges. It should not surprise anybody that we face these unbelievable challenges. Ten years ago, we had a budget surplus. President George Bush said: I want very large tax cuts, the bulk of which will go to the wealthiest Americans. Some of us said no. I said no. Katy bar the door, it happened. It accounts for about 50 percent of the current deficit, as a matter of fact, going forward.

Then we had a recession. Then we had a 9/11 attack. We had a war against terrorism, a war in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and now back in Afghanistan. None of that was paid for. All paid for with emergency money stuck on top of the Federal debt. This is unsustainable. There is no question how serious it is. But when we do address it, let's address it in a way that tends to grab this problem and begins to fix it. My colleague seemed to suggest, let's clean house, and we will only do the smallest room. That doesn't make any sense to me. Senator Pryor has offered an amendment that says: Let's look at all areas. I know why it is the smallest room. Because the minute you talk about taxes, some people here have an apoplectic seizure. What about asking people who aren't paying their fair share to do so. What about asking those earning the highest incomes in the land and paying a 15-percent tax rate to begin paying what the rest of the American people pay? How about that? Is that a tax increase? I suppose for somebody who makes $3.6 billion in a year, which is $300 million a month or $10 million a day, and that person, who incidentally was the highest income earner running a hedge fund in 2008, that person not only got $10 million a day in income but, because of the generosity of this Chamber and others, gets to pay a 15-percent rate, one of the lowest income tax rates.

Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed piece some while ago. I like Warren Buffett. I have known him for some years, one of the world's richest men. They did a little survey in his office in Omaha. Of the people who work in that office, if you take a look at the taxes paid, income taxes and payroll, the lowest tax rate paid was by one of the world's richest people. A higher tax rate is paid by his receptionist than by him. Think of that. Warren Buffett is the first to say that is not fair. It is not right. You need to straighten that out. Under what we are going to vote on proposed by the Sessions-McCaskill amendment, you couldn't do that. They want to keep that over here because that would be trouble if you decided to ask those folks to pay their fair share.

It is not a tax increase to ask others to pay what most Americans pay. If you want all the benefits America has to offer, how about meeting the responsibilities to your country?

That is a lengthy way of saying, Senator Pryor has offered an amendment that says: Let's look at everything. Let's ask those who are not paying their share to pay. Let's look at discretionary spending but not only that. Look at all of it: Defense, entitlements, do it all, and do it in a serious way with the seriousness of purpose that says to the people looking to the future, we are going to get this under control. We are going to seize this deficit and debt problem and tame it. We don't have a choice. If we don't reestablish some confidence in the future among the American people, this economy will not recover.

I briefly taught economics in college. I used to teach that this is all about confidence. If people are confident, they do things that are expansive to the economy--buy a suit, a car, a home, take a trip. They do things that expand the economy. When they are not confident about their families, about the future, they do exactly the opposite. They delay the purchase. That contracts the economy. We need to do some things that will give the American people some confidence that we are not going to stay on this path. This path is unsustainable. It requires us to look at every aspect of fiscal policy and domestic policy and find a way to tame these deficits.

I strongly support the amendment offered by the Senator from Arkansas. I don't agree it deserves to be called a cover amendment. It has a much greater seriousness of purpose than the Sessions-McCaskill amendment. I hope the Senate will see fit to support the amendment offered by Senator Pryor.

I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

Let me observe that we were able to get that bill out of the Commerce Committee because we did not deal with the slot issue. I understand there is an appetite for slots and perimeters. The only way we will get an FAA reauthorization bill done is if

we get it out of the Senate and get into conference somehow. That is the dilemma. If we get involved in a lengthy debate with multiple amendments on slots and perimeters, we may never get the FAA authorization off the floor. We will never have the opportunity to get all the other things that relate to that bill.

It seems to me we could in conference, even as it goes to conference, work on a solution that would resolve some of the issues the Senator mentioned.

I am required to object. By a unanimous consent previously ordered, we have a 2 o'clock vote, and the Senator from New York has asked for 5 minutes.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, that is the pending amendment. We have other amendments that have been filed, properly filed, and we are hoping to have additional votes this afternoon.

What we hope to do is complete this bill this afternoon. We have a number of issues that I think are being resolved in meetings off the floor. It is now 3 o'clock, and I know the majority leader would very much like to complete this bill. This is the fifth day we have been on the floor trying to pass an FAA reauthorization bill that should have been passed 11 times previously but was extended 11 successive times. This deals with commercial aviation safety, airport improvement, infrastructure improvement, a passengers' bill of rights, so many very important things. Some have said: Well, this will not get done this year either. But after 5 days on the floor of the Senate, I remain with some hope that we can get this done if we could get a bit of cooperation from our colleagues who have amendments to come over and offer them and we will have votes on them and the Senate will make decisions and we will have a final vote on this bill.

This bill should not be controversial. It is bipartisan. It came out of the Commerce Committee with support from Republicans and Democrats, so we ought not have controversy on the floor of the Senate about when we will get this bill completed.

I know one of the issues that remains unresolved at this point are amendments dealing with what are called the slot rules at National Airport and the perimeter rule, kind of a complicated set of rules with respect to how many slots are allowed for takeoffs and landings at National Airport per hour and also how far those airplanes can fly because there have been some limitations with respect to the perimeter. There are fewer nonstop flights from Washington National. Most of the nonstop flights, particularly coast to coast, happen from Dulles Airport in this region.

There are amendments on the slots and the perimeter rule with respect to National Airport. I hope we can get this resolved. We decided not to address that issue in the Commerce Committee because it is very controversial and it is an open issue when we go to conference with the House because the House does address it.

The best approach, in my judgment, would be for those who wish to offer amendments on the slot and perimeter rules to withhold those amendments here, and we will reach an agreement when we go to conference on how we can create the Senate position in terms of what we want to do on these issues. It is an open issue and, undoubtedly, we can resolve it in conference. If we have eight amendments on slot rules and perimeter rules and debate them for a few more days, this bill may very well be a casualty of time.

After 5 days, I think the majority leader feels--appropriately--and I feel and I know Senator Hutchison and others feel as well that we want to get this bill done today. If people have amendments, come down and offer them and debate them. If they do have amendments they want to offer, I hope some epiphany will occur to suggest to them they do not need to come down and offer them.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, while we are waiting for colleagues to come and offer amendments to the underlying bill, let me speak in morning business for as much time as I may consume.

I will relinquish the floor if colleagues come and wish to offer amendments to the FAA bill. That is what I prefer happen at the moment.

Travel to Cuba

Mr. President, I wish to visit in morning business about legislation that Senator Mike Enzi from Wyoming and I have worked on now for some long while. It has 38 cosponsors, 38 Senators cosponsoring, Republicans and Democrats. It deals with the question of travel to Cuba.

As you know, what we have at the moment and have had since 1962 is a prohibition on the American people's ability to travel to the country of Cuba. Cuba rests about 90 miles off our shore. We have, obviously, had massive disagreements with the Castro regime for many years. In order to punish the Castro regime, we have restricted the rights of the American people to travel.

We can travel unimpeded to many other countries. We can travel to Communist China. We can travel to Vietnam, a Communist country. We can travel to North Korea, if you can get a visa to get in. No restrictions there. The American people just cannot travel to Cuba.

Let me describe the absurdity of this which leads Senator Enzi and me to offer this legislation. We have not offered it on the underlying bill today, but we will offer it on an authorization bill in the near future. With 38 cosponsors, we feel this bill would pass the Senate with some ease.

Let me point out that the New York Philharmonic Orchestra is the oldest symphony orchestra in America, founded in 1842. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra is one of our most renowned cultural ambassadors around the world. In 1959, the New York Philharmonic played in the Soviet Union in Moscow. Last year, the New York Philharmonic has also played music in Communist Vietnam. In 2008, the New York Philharmonic played music in North Korea. By the way, if anyone has a chance to go to YouTube and/or the Internet and look at the reaction of the North Koreans to the New York Philharmonic playing music in Pyongyang, it is extraordinary--quite a cultural experience for our country to send this philharmonic orchestra to those countries.

The only place they were not able to play was Havana, Cuba, in October 2009. Plans for those concerts had to be canceled. Think of that: the New York Philharmonic was able to go and play music in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, in North Korea, in Vietnam, but it wasn't able to play in Havana, Cuba.

Why? Well, we have had now, through 10 Presidencies, an embargo in place. An embargo has been in place that not only embargoes the movement of goods to Cuba but also punishes the American people by saying: You can't travel to Cuba. That is what Senator Enzi and I and 37 other Senators wish to say is inappropriate, and we want to lift those travel restrictions.

I understand the Castro government has restricted the freedoms of the Cuban people. I understand this country has no use for the Castro government. I have no use for the Castro government. I want the Cuban people to be free. I think the most likely approach to freedom for the Cuban people is to allow them to hear other voices, other than just the Castro government. Opening up Cuba to travel by Americans, it seems to me, will provide those other voices.

Mr. President, this chart shows we have under the current U.S. policy, criminal penalties for violating sanctions of travel to Cuba: 10 years in prison, $1 million in corporate fines, and $250,000 for individuals.

Well, let me show a few people who have run afoul of the law against traveling to Cuba. This is Joni Scott. Joni Scott went to Cuba. She went to Cuba with a church group to distribute free bibles in the rural areas--free bibles, distributing free bibles to Cuba. She got back to our country and, guess what. Our country sent her a letter because she was honest and said she had been in Cuba distributing bibles. She got a letter saying: We are fining you $10,000.

So we fine an American citizen $10,000 for going to Cuba to distribute free bibles? That is unbelievable.

But it is not just Joni Scott. Here is another Joan. This is Joan Slote. I have met both these women, by the way. Joan Slote was in her mid seventies when she went to Cuba. She was a Senior Olympian. She is a bicyclist, and she joined a Canadian cycle group to go ride a bicycle in Cuba. She came back and found out that her government was going to levy a $10,000 fine. Then, by the way, they decided to try to attach her Social Security payments because she hadn't responded. She hadn't responded because she had gone to her son's side, who was suffering from brain cancer, and she didn't get the mail. So this woman, for cycling in Cuba, was told she should pay her government $10,000 in fines.

This is Sergeant Lazo--SGT Carlos Lazo. We actually had a vote about Carlos Lazo on the floor of the Senate on an amendment I offered one day. He fled from Cuba on a raft, joined the U.S. Army and went to Iraq to fight for our country. He won a Bronze Star Medal fighting for America in Iraq. He came back to this country and discovered one of his children--he has young children who, by the way, were still living in Cuba--one of his children was sick. Sergeant Lazo wanted to go to Cuba to visit his sick child. Having won a Bronze Star Medal on the battlefield in Iraq, he was told by his government: You have no right to see your sick child in Cuba. Unbelievable.

So that is what we have, this restriction on travel to Cuba. Senator Enzi and I believe it is past the time, long past the time to eliminate it; to stop punishing the American people by restricting their right to travel.

The last chart I have is a photograph of an airplane that flies around distributing television signals into the country of Cuba. We have spent $\1/4\ billion in our country sending television signals that the Cuban people can't receive because they are routinely blocked by the Cuban Government. We send television signals to the Cuban people to tell them how wonderful freedom is, when they know that by listening to Miami radio stations. We have spent $\1/4\ billion doing it, and I have tried to eliminate that expenditure time and time again and have been unsuccessful.

Talk about government waste. Government waste even has cosponsorship in the United States on this issue.

The point is very simple. Senator Enzi and I, and many other Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, believe we ought to stop punishing the American people for the actions of the Cuban government.

Many years ago, we also had a complete embargo on all shipments and goods to Cuba, which included food, which I felt was immoral. So I and then-Senator Ashcroft sponsored a resolution that passed the Congress and became law that opened up just a bit in the embargo to say: You can sell food into the Cuban marketplace and ship medicine into the Cuban marketplace. You can do that, but it has to be paid for in cash, and you can't run the cash through an American bank. So running these transactions through European banks for cash, our farmers now have sold a substantial amount of commodities in the Cuban marketplace, just as the Canadian farmers have always done, and just as the European farmers have always done.

So just that little bit of change in the embargo, opening up opportunities to sell food and medicine into the Cuban marketplace, was a significant step. But I think this embargo has been an unbelievable failure, through 10 Presidencies, and I think it is time for us to decide the best way to promote freedom in Cuba--and I think 39 of us believe this in the Senate, having cosponsored the legislation, and many more would vote for it--is to stop punishing the American people, to stop restricting travel.

The Castro government will have a very difficult time if an onslaught of Americans go to travel in Cuba, and

Cubans hear other voices other than the Castro government. Again, we have tried to address this issue of travel for a long while. I would hope most who are engaged in this would hang their heads with some shame that we are spending our time tracking down someone who is under suspicion of taking a vacation to Cuba so we can levy a $10,000 fine.

What an absurd contradiction for a country that measures its health and freedom. What an absurd contradiction.

We have something down at the Treasury Department called OFAC Office of Foreign Assets Control. OFAC has the main mission of shutting down the flow of money to terrorist organizations. That is what they are supposed to be doing. The fact is, they have a Miami office, and for a good part of the last decade they spent 60 percent of their money trying to track American citizens who were suspected of vacationing in Cuba. Again, are we daft? Have we lost all sense? That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

We had a couple of colleagues from the Senate in the newspaper the other day encouraging people not to go. There is a trip to Cuba described in the paper--I believe they have a license to go--but some colleagues were encouraging people not to go. Well, with respect to China, for example, a Communist country, we have always said that constructive engagement through trade and travel is what will lead to greater human rights in China. That has always been the belief of this country. It is the way we deal with China, the way we deal with Vietnam, it is the way we would deal with North Korea if they would allow Americans in because we don't restrict the American right to travel to North Korea or Vietnam or China--only to Cuba.

Some of us believe it is an archaic, absurd contradiction for our country to continue doing this. I hope, perhaps, in the name of Sergeant Lazo or, perhaps, Joni Scott, or any number of others--and I didn't mention the young man from the State of Washington whose father died. His father had previously been a minister at a church in Cuba. This young man, when his father died and was cremated, took his ashes to Cuba to have the ashes placed on the grounds of the church his father served in in Cuba. He did that. That was his father's last wish.

When he came back to this country, he was tracked by his government and levied a fine. That is not what this government ought to be doing. So if the Congress can and will pass the amendment Senator Enzi and I have constructed, which has wide support in the Senate, I think we will have done something that is important.

Having said all that, I expect there will be things written tomorrow by those who watched these proceedings to say that this amendment is somehow sympathetic to the Cuban government. It is not. That is an absurd proposition. It is not sympathetic to anything except sympathetic to freedom for the American people. Let's stop punishing the American people for others' transgressions.

The fact is, the American people ought to have the right to travel where they wish, where they choose--and they generally do, with this exception. But what is happening now is that the Office of Foreign Asset Control--which is supposed to be tracking Osama bin Laden and other known terrorists and tracking their finances to try to shut down the financing of terrorism--is diverting its attention to see if they can't nab a couple of Americans who went to take a vacation in Cuba.

This country is better than that, and we can do better than that by passing the legislation I and Senator Enzi have authored.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time until 4:15 p.m. be equally divided and controlled in the usual form and that at 4:15 p.m., the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the following amendments in the order listed; that prior to each vote there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that the second vote in the sequence be a 10-minute vote and no intervening amendments be in order: Inhofe amendment No. 3549; McCain amendment No. 3475.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

We will be voting at 4:15 on two amendments. Following that, we have 17 amendments en bloc that have been agreed to by both sides. We can't get them here and have them voted on because of objection, but by and large, they have been agreed on by both sides. Following that, the issue of the slot rules and perimeter--if we can find a way to resolve that, we should be able to finish the bill this afternoon. If not, if there are some who insist they intend to offer amendments, that will be problematic and we probably will not be able to finish this bill. This bill is about aviation safety, modernization, a passenger bill of rights. I hope that we will be able to have some cooperation by Senators--this is the fifth day we have been on the floor with this bill--to get this done today. I hope that will be the case.

Madam President, I yield back the time.

I make a point that the pending amendment deals with matter within the Budget Committee's jurisdiction.

I raise a point of order that the pending amendment violates section 306 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Mr. President, Senator Reid has asked I announce to Senators that there will be no further votes this evening and there will be no votes tomorrow. We expect the next vote to be Monday at 5:30 p.m. We do expect finally that we are near an agreement by which we would be able to finish this FAA reauthorization bill with a final vote Monday evening. That is our expectation.

I indicated I would describe the circumstances. We are hopeful, as I indicated earlier, that we would be able to reach conclusion on this bill. We were hopeful in doing it tonight. That was not possible. But we expect to have final passage on the FAA reauthorization bill on Monday at 5:30. But let me describe the discussions we have had more recently with Senator Kyl and Senator Warner and many other colleagues--Senator Hutchison.

There remains very little to be done on this bill. We have 17 amendments that have been agreed to on both sides that would be offered en bloc. We were not able to offer those until we were able to resolve another issue or at least begin discussion of another issue. And then there was an issue dealing with slots and perimeter rules for Reagan National Airport. It has been controversial in the past--for many, many years--and some colleagues on both sides of the aisle have offered amendments dealing with slots and the perimeter rule. So it has caused a lot of discussion for some long while. We have people on both sides of these issues, for and against increasing slots and expanding the number of flights beyond the perimeter at Reagan National.

What we have discussed more recently is that an amendment would be offered by the minority. They would perhaps modify an amendment that is now filed, and they would offer an amendment on the slots--I guess slots and the perimeter rule--and have that debated.

One of the things we discussed is that we understand, going into conference with the House, that the House has provisions to increase slots at Reagan National. So that will be an issue in conference. The question is, What is the Senate's position going into conference? It can be determined by a vote on the floor of the Senate--yes or no--or it can be determined in good faith by discussions with all of us who understand there will be modifications, some kinds of modifications on slots and the perimeter rule. What will they be? Those conversations, it seems to me, can also become, between now and Monday, a part of the discussion and good-faith negotiation on how to approach a conference that reaches the

interests and needs of the broadest group of Senators.

So that is what we have done. We expect to have a new amendment filed that will modify one previously filed and have a debate about that. My hope is that we would not have a vote on that and instead reach some common understanding that we would work together on the slot and the perimeter issue in a way that can satisfy the broad interests here in the Senate and take that position into conference in a very assertive way and hope the Senate provision would prevail in conference.

Mr. President, that is my understanding of where we are, and with that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we do not yet have a script with respect to an unanimous consent on the Monday 5:30 vote, but all of us are understanding we want to conclude this legislation Monday, beginning with the 5:30 vote. I think that is a good result.

As Senator Hutchison indicated, this is a big bill with many important parts--safety, modernization, so many issues. I am frustrated, as is everybody, in the pace of the Senate. This is the fifth full day on this bill, but Monday at 5:30 we understand we will finally resolve this issue, and it will be good for this country. We will have done some good things passing this bill and getting to a conference with the House.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2010, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room 406 of the Dirksen Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2010, at 2:15 p.m., in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on March 18, 2010, at 10 a.m., in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2010. The Committee will meet in room SDG-50 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building beginning at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2010, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 18, 2010, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, Senator Rockefeller will be back on the floor shortly. We are on the FAA reauthorization bill. This is the fourth day in the Senate that we have been trying to pass the FAA reauthorization bill. We have accepted many amendments. We have had many amendments offered that have nothing at all to do with this legislation. I understand that. I think we voted on three or four of them last night. But the process of trying to get something through the Senate these days is slow and difficult. It is a little like watching paint dry to see activity on the floor of the Senate. We are trying very hard to do this.

This is not and should not be a controversial bill. Every American who gets on a commercial airplane in this country has a stake in this bill. This bill includes modernization of the air traffic control system which will allow people to fly in the skies more safely, more direct routes, save energy, and save pollution.

Modernization of the air traffic control system, to go from ground- based radar to a GPS navigation system--we should have done that a while ago. We have not. We need to catch up with the Europeans and others. We need to move with some dispatch.

This bill should have been done long ago, but it has been extended 11 times.

I am happy to yield.

Other countries are making good progress on this, going to a GPS system. GPS is not a new technology, as many of us know. You see many vehicles, automobiles around town using a GPS to navigate. You have people using GPS on their cell phones. But on a jet airliner flying across the country, hauling a couple of hundred people behind the cockpit, they are using World War II technology, ground-based radar for navigation, not GPS, which is the modernization approach.

This is called NextGen, modernizing the air traffic control system. Europe is moving on it, other parts of the world are moving on it, and we need to move. This is about safety. It is about modernizing the system. But more than that, it is about investing in the infrastructure for aviation in the country, building the airports and the runways. It is about the issue of the passenger bill of rights, which is in this bill, saying to the airlines: Here are the new rules. You can't have somebody in an airplane 6 or 7 hours sitting on a runway someplace; 3 hours and then you have to bring them back to the gate. I know some do not like that, but that is the passenger bill of rights, giving passengers some rights as well.

I have spoken at length about this legislation, as has Senator Rockefeller. I guess our hope would be that, if there are those who have additional amendments and wish to debate them, they might come to the floor or engage in the discussion on the floor so we can get this piece of legislation passed. It makes no sense for us to continue to talk and to continue to wait and not pass legislation when we have so much ahead of us to do.

Cobell Settlement

I want to mention a couple of other issues we need to address while I am waiting. One is the proposed settlement of the Cobell v. Salazar litigation. The parties to the Cobell settlement asked Congress to pass legislation approving the settlement by April 16th. It needs to be done by April 16th or the parties may return to litigation.

Let me tell you what the Cobell settlement is. It is about American Indians, the people who were here first in this country, the first Americans. American Indians ceded certain property as a result of treaties and other agreements, and reserved lands for their communities. The federal government promised to manage these reservations and hold the lands in trust. Well, over the last century, Indians watched as timber companies would come in and produce timber from those lands, mineral companies would come in and produce minerals, and drill for oil on those lands. All the while, the government was managing these lands and holding monies earned from that land in trust for the Indians.

Then the Indians asked the question: What has happened to our money? We see all these timber, grazing, and mineral activities going on and we are supposed to get money from these lands--that the government is holding in trust--but the money never quite shows up.

The Cobell case is named after a remarkable woman, Elouise Cobell, from Montana. She is an American Indian, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, and a banker. She filed a lawsuit against the United States and she asked for one thing. She said to the Federal government: Give me an accounting of the monies that you collected from my lands, my lands that you held and managed in trust for me. And do the same for all other Native Americans.

The fact is, nobody knew how much money was owed her. When they took a look at the records that the Federal government had, and held for Indian property and income, it was shameful.

For example, Mary Fish, an Oklahoma Indian, lived on her land in a very small, humble house, and she lived next to an oil well pump that was constantly pumping oil off of her land. She received just a pittance of money from that oil. Where did the money go? Who would account for that money? Why is it that Mary lived in such a humble manner, in a very small home, when on her land, an oil well was producing oil. Why is it that the money being managed by the Federal Government somehow never got to Mary?

When the lawsuit was filed by Elouise Cobell, the judges in the Federal courts asked: Where are the trust records for all these timber, grazing, and mineral activities?

Here is what they found: the Federal Government could not produce the records necessary for an accounting. For example, there were 162 boxes of case-related documents that were shredded after the trial began--a procedure that the U.S. Justice Department lawyers withheld from the court for 3 months. Other records were in Louisiana, and in a rat- infested warehouse in New Mexico.

Still more records were in North Dakota, and scattered in sheds across the country. I have photographs of what they saw when they opened up the warehouses in North Dakota. You can see piles of worn and damaged boxes of what were supposed to have been records. And, this is how the Federal Government cared for the information that was going to tell American Indians how their trust lands were used. It is unbelievable.

After years of litigation, the Parties in the Cobell case have reached a $3.4 billion settlement. The settlement needs to be approved by Congress, and the parties have an April 16th deadline for Congress to approve the settlement. I have mentioned this on the floor of the Senate before. This Congress has a responsibility to proceed by the April 16th deadline to avoid further, unnecessary litigation.

The President, the Secretary of Interior--whom I commend, by the way, who negotiated this settlement--have asked us to get this done, and we have a responsibility to get this done.

Disability Claims

I also have another point which we will get to in a short period of time on appropriations. I will mention those Americans who have filed disability claims under Social Security and are now waiting over 16 months to have the Federal Government determine whether their claims are valid, waiting 490 days after a claim is filed. That is pretty unbelievable to me. This Congress has included about $2.5 billion of additional funding for the Social Security Administration in the last 4 to 5 years. The expectation was that we would reduce the giant backlog that existed of cases, disability claims filed by people who have paid for this insurance.

American people pay for disability insurance out of their paycheck under

OASDI. When someone who is disabled files a claim in this country, on average it takes 491 days to process it. That, after we have given more than $2.5 billion in increased funding to the Social Security Administration.

Precious little progress has been made. They say it used to be 514 days, now it is 491 days. That is not much progress as far as I am concerned if you are disabled and you are expecting to file a claim and have a claim processed in a reasonable period of time.

In my State there are 2,800 claims that are awaiting action. The number of administrative law judges--we have two vacancies now out of five. One gave his notice almost a year ago and has not been replaced.

None of this makes any sense to me. Congress should expect, of an agency like this, especially when you get $2.5 billion in extra funding over five years, to understand why has no progress been made. I sent a letter to the head of Social Security asking what happened to the $2.5 billion. On the appropriations side, I want some understanding of what happened to that money and why significant progress has not been made in these disability claims that resulted from the funding given the administration by the Congress.

Let me withhold for a moment and yield the floor so my colleague can take the floor with an agreement.

Mr. President, In the remaining couple of minutes, let me say it is my hope and the hope of Senators Rockefeller and Hutchison that we will be able to make progress and complete the FAA reauthorization bill. This is the fourth day. We have seen so many interminable delays in the Senate. Let's not delay legislation that has bipartisan support, that deals with the issue of air safety in this country, and has so many important provisions. Let's not at this point decide to delay this, of all pieces of legislation, something that should have been done long ago and has had 11 extensions instead of a reauthorization bill, when we finally have a bipartisan reauthorization bill brought to the floor of the Senate.

It is my hope if we are going to get cooperation on anything, at least we could expect it on this piece of legislation. My hope would be in the half-hour debate--I guess 1-hour debate and subsequent vote on the judge, we might make some progress in seeing whether we could get cooperation to be able to complete this bill today.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I will withhold.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that time be charged equally.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, while we are continuing to wait, as we have basically waited all day for amendments to be offered and debated and voted on to the FAA reauthorization bill, Senator Rockefeller has remained on this floor most of this day. This is a very important piece of legislation. It is disappointing that it has slowed down, as have most of the issues we have dealt with in recent months, in the past year.

Apparently, we will vote either later tonight or likely tomorrow on an amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill that has nothing to do with the bill. It is so characteristic of the Senate that we bring a bill on air safety and modernizing the air traffic control system, on essential air service, on passengers bills of rights, and an amendment is offered that has nothing to do with those subjects. The rules of the Senate allow that.

Let me at least talk for a moment about an amendment that will be voted on probably next and probably tomorrow, I guess, by Senator Sessions and Senator McCaskill. I know Senator Sessions spoke about this recently. He used a very large chart to show the growth in Federal budget deficits and also debt. There is no question that the level of budget deficits and debt are unsustainable and dangerous to this country. There is no question about that.

What we ought to do is understand, No. 1, how did we get here and, No. 2, how do we get to a different direction that addresses these issues. Let me describe briefly the first part and then the second part.

Ten years ago, there was a budget surplus in this country--the first time in 30 years, a budget surplus 10 years ago. Then President Bush was elected, and President George W. Bush said at the time: There is a budget surplus, and it is expected now there will be a surplus for the next 10 years. He had Alan Greenspan, then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, whispering in his ear and saying: And, by the way, if we have surpluses for 10 years, I worry

a lot about paying down the Federal debt too quickly. I worry that may be a real problem for our economy. I hope he did not spend a lot of sleepless nights worrying about that. He needn't have, I guess.

The President then, with that kind of counsel, said: I am going to cut taxes, and I am going to cut taxes for 10 years at least. What I am going to do is cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans because I believe this economic engine works best by putting something in at the top and letting it trickle down to everybody else.

We had a tax cut proposal that was very generous to the people at the top. I stood on this floor and said: I don't think that makes any sense at all. I think we ought to be a little conservative. First of all, these are budget estimates of surplus. They don't exist. They are just estimates by economists who cannot remember their home telephone numbers, let alone what is going to happen 3 years from now. So let's be a little conservative.

The President and those in the Chamber who voted for it in 2001 said: Nonsense. Katy, bar the door; we are going to have budget surpluses forever. We are giving big tax cuts and, yes, we are giving big tax cuts to the wealthiest because they are the ones who make this economic engine hum. And they did. I did not vote for it.

Very shortly then we found out we were in a recession.

That was a problem. Six months after that, we found out terrorists were bent on injuring this country, and we had the 9/11 attack that killed several thousand innocent Americans. Then we were at war with terrorists--at war in Afghanistan and then at war in Iraq--none of it paid for, not a penny. We sent men and women off to fight and did not ask anybody to pay for a penny of it and put all of those costs on the Federal budget debt. Just put it right on top of the debt.

In the meantime, as that decade--which I think will be known perhaps as ``the lost decade'' of lost opportunity in some ways--moved on, we also had people come into this town who were to be regulators and were paid to be regulators who boasted: We are going to be willfully blind for a few years. You do what you want. We won't watch. We won't tell.

The result was a field day for the biggest financial interests in America, creating the most exotic financial instruments, such as credit default swaps, CDOs, derivatives--by the way, synthetic derivatives. What does that mean? That means you have an instrument that has nothing on either side. It is just flatout gambling.

We have some of the biggest financial institutions that were spending a decade trading trillions of dollars of derivatives, synthetic derivatives, much of it by hedge funds and other financial entities that were unregulated.

Again, Mr. Greenspan said, when those of us in the Senate pushed for regulations: No, they don't need to be regulated. It will all work out fine. Self-regulation--they are not going to do anything stupid. Self- regulation will work just fine.

In the meantime, we had the home loan scandal, massive amounts of money in subprime loans put out there to people who could not afford them by companies that were making billions of dollars. Mr. Mozilo ran Countrywide, the single largest home lender in America. He left with a couple hundred million dollars. He is now under investigation. They were putting teaser loans out.

They said: By the way, you have bad credit, no credit, don't pay your bills, no pay, slow pay. They said: Come to us. We want to give you a loan.

All of us understand that does not work. Yet that is what was going on. They were awash in money by moving all these assets and securities around. Unbelievable. That is the subprime loan scandal.

All of this transpired, and then it collapsed. When you create a house of cards, the slightest little wind blows the house of cards down. That is exactly what happened. We discovered that some of the biggest financial institutions in this country had much more leverage than they were able to sustain, and the entire thing came crashing down.

The Federal Reserve Board now has spent untold amounts of money-- untold because they would not tell us. We asked them. They said: You don't deserve to know nor do the American people deserve to know how many trillions of dollars have gone out the back door to sustain investment banks and others who made bad judgments. Those too-big-to- fail institutions, no-fault capitalism, they were too big to fail, and the American taxpayers got stuck. The American taxpayers and American citizens lost about $15 trillion in value, and at the same time had to bail out big financial institutions that made massive amounts of money.

By the way, right now they are paying, once again, bonuses of $120 billion, $140 billion in some of those same industries, and they are showing record profits while some 15 million, 17 million people went out to look for work and could not find it. Small- and medium-size businesses are still having difficulties. Those at the top, too big to fail, who received massive amounts of government help, are now making record profits and paying record bonuses. All of that exists.

When we hit this ditch, this financial wreck, we lost a substantial amount of income coming into the Federal Government--about $400 billion. The economic stabilizers we have, such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, and others, the cost of them went way up. Had Barack Obama, winning the Presidency, done nothing--walking across the threshold into the White House for the first day, had he done nothing for the next 10 to 12 months he would have had a $1.3 trillion Federal budget deficit not of his making. That was his inheritance when he won the Presidency.

We have these giant budget deficits. I find it interesting, people come out and talk about these big budget deficits who have spent the last 10 years saying: You know what. Let's go ahead and send men and women to war, and we will just charge it. We will not ask anybody to pay for it, ratcheting up this deficit, helping create these problems.

Now, all of a sudden they are having an apoplectic seizure over budget deficits and the increased level of debt. We should have a seizure over it because it is unsustainable, and we should fix it.

We need to understand what happened to create it and making sure we fix it so that it does not happen again. That means financial reform. That means paying for wars we are fighting, and so on, which is not happening yet. Even more than that, the question is, What is the medicine or the solution? So our colleagues bring an amendment that we will vote on tomorrow that says what we should do is to freeze domestic discretionary spending for 3 years--domestic discretionary spending. Well, people who don't work around here don't know what that means so much. What it means is they are proposing to freeze that portion of Federal spending that has not blown through the lid here. What is out of control are the entitlements--massive increases in Medicare and Medicaid. What is out of control is the substantial increase in defense spending that is not paid for. What is out of control is the dramatically less revenue that comes from giving tax cuts to people who didn't need it.

If you have a million dollar income a year--which would be a good thing to have--and somebody says: You know what, you just won the lottery. Our government says: We are going to give you a $79,000 tax cut. So a proposal that says: You know what we are going to do, we are going to take that smaller portion of the budget and we are going to freeze that for 3 years--you know, the kinds of things that educate kids, the sort of things that invest in people's lives, human capital, human potential, the kinds of things that make life better. We are going to freeze all that, but we are not going to touch anything on the revenue side. No, we want to protect those tax cuts for the biggest interests. We are not going to do anything in the entitlement areas, despite the fact that we have dramatic growth in Medicare. There is nothing in this that says: Let's take a look at all spending. They say: Let's take a look at a bit of spending. And there is nothing in here that says: Let's take a look at revenues.

You have to look at all of these things. If you are serious, if you are a deficit hawk and you are about getting your hands around this deficit problem and getting rid of this problem, then

you have to be serious out here and say we are going to do it all; that we are going to take a look at every single area of spending and we are going to take a look at revenues as well.

Let me mention one example. In 2008, the highest income earner, pure income, in America is a man who made $3.6 billion--$3.6 billion-- running a hedge fund. So he goes home at night and his spouse says: How are you doing, honey? Pretty good. I made $10 million today. It is a lot of money for a day, isn't it? Well, $3.6 billion is $300 million a month, and so $10 million a day. But that is not his only success. It wasn't just that he made $3.6 billion. It was that he gets to pay a lower income tax than almost anybody in the State of Minnesota--the State of the Presiding Officer--because most of the constituents of the Presiding Officer pay income tax rates that are much higher than 15 percent. But that $3.6 billion earner gets to pay an income tax rate of 15 percent because it is defined as carried interest. That is a loophole that you can drive a Humvee through, and it is one that we ought to close right now.

You say you want to do something about deficits. How about making somebody like that pay a fair share of taxes? If somebody is going to work all day as a drill press operator and come home and shower after work and try to figure out how he is going to pay the bills and so on, if that person is paying a 20-percent, 28-percent, 30-percent, 35- percent income tax rate, how about the person who is making $3.6 billion?

Somebody will listen to this and say: That is that old populism again. That is not populism, to talk about things that are necessary and right. It is not populism. It is deciding that everybody ought to be treated fairly, and it is not fair if those who are at the low end of the income ladder are paying the highest tax rates and those who are at the high end are paying the lowest tax rates.

Warren Buffett, the second or third richest man in the world--a guy I like and whom I have known a long time. He is a wonderful man. He did an experiment at his office in Omaha, NE. I think he said they had something like 20 or 40 or 50 people working at Berkshire Hathaway at the office. So he asked them, I believe voluntarily, to disclose what their income was--although his company pays them--and what their tax rate was. What he discovered was this: Of all the people in his office, the person who paid the lowest combined tax rate of income taxes and payroll taxes was the third or second wealthiest man in the world: Warren Buffet. He paid a lower tax rate than his receptionist. Warren Buffett said to me: That is so unbelievably wrong. It has to change. You all have to change that. I am paying what I should pay, but he said: It is not right that you have a Tax Code that has me paying a lower tax rate than the receptionist in my office.

My point simply is this: We could change that, and should, and increase some revenue as a result by making the tax system fairer and having those who should, pay their fair share. That is one way to reduce the deficit, isn't it? Except it will never be done with this resolution because it looks at that portion of the budget that would be used to fund a school or to build a water project or to build a flood protection project--just that domestic discretionary in which you invest in America. Well, that doesn't make any sense at all.

Senator Pryor came to the floor and said he is going to offer an alternative, which I am going to support, which includes all of these things. It says: Yes, tackle this budget deficit, do it now, don't delay, but tackle it with seriousness, seriousness of purpose, not just taking one piece that hasn't exploded and ignoring the other pieces. Take the piece of domestic discretionary spending that has not exploded and say: Let's take all the savings out there. I don't understand that.

I understand the motive. The motive is to say: Well, we have a bunch of people who don't want to touch taxes in any way, even asking the $3.6 billion person who pays a 15-percent rate to start paying his fair share. I understand they want to protect that. I don't. I want that person to pay a fair rate of taxes to our government. They would call that a tax increase. I don't. I think it is just evening up the score, saying: You want all the benefits America has to offer but don't want to pay the full obligation of being a citizen? The same is true with some corporate interests that decide they want everything America has to offer them but they want to run their employees through the Grand Caymans so they can avoid paying payroll taxes.

By the way, the same people who are paying a 15-percent income tax rate on carried interest running hedge funds are setting up deferred compensation accounts in the Bahamas to avoid paying even that 15 percent. So is that something we can shut down? Of course. Would that help reduce the budget deficit? Yes. Is that tackling domestic discretionary? No. It is more effective than doing that, because we know where this money is and we know how we could reduce the budget this way.

I am in favor of tackling every part of the Federal budget and seeing what works and what doesn't. There are a whole number of things this government does that it doesn't need to do anymore.

I know Senator Kaufman wants to speak, but I want to mention one thing first. I have been here at this desk a long time now, and let me describe how unbelievable it is that even waste has its constituency in this Chamber--even waste. We are doing this: We broadcast television signals into the country of Cuba every single day that the Cuban people can't see. We do it every single day. We have spent $\1/4\ billion doing it. We broadcast from 3 in the morning until about 7 in the morning and the Cubans routinely block them. The purpose of it was to broadcast--under what is called Television Marti--and to inform the Cubans about how wonderful freedom is. They are pretty well aware of that by listening to Miami radio stations. And we know they understand freedom because they get on rafts trying to find their way to this country. But we have Television Marti, which is a big group of people that is pretty well funded, about $20 million a year, or $25 million a year now, and so we send television signals to the Cuban people that they can't see. We first did it with a big blimp called Fat Albert, way up in the air shooting signals down that the Cubans could block. Then Fat Albert got off its tethers and landed in the Everglades, and what a mess that was. Then they bought an airplane and they send the signal by flying these planes, which the Cubans routinely block.

I have offered amendment after amendment after amendment to try to stop spending to send television signals to no one, but you can't get it done. Isn't that unbelievable? I will continue to do that because that is an area of spending, it seems to me, where it takes a nanosecond of thought to say: That is just stupid. That is just dumb. So stop it. Except government doesn't quite work that way, or that well.

But if the Pryor amendment is offered tomorrow, I fully intend to support that aggressively because we are on an unsustainable path. Most of us know how we got here, but not everybody yet knows how we are going to get out of it, and I think that is a decent step in the right direction. I would say that the Sessions-McCaskill amendment is seriously deficient and is not, in my judgment, the serious way to address what is a very serious problem.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I have just visited with Senator Rockefeller. Of course, we, along with Senator Hutchison, are trying to pass an FAA reauthorization bill, which is not as easy as it sounds. This is not one of the most controversial or difficult or passionate issues that divide America. We have plenty of those issues around. But this is about modernizing our air traffic control system, about reauthorizing the Airport Improvement Program, improving air safety--a wide range of issues. Still, anything that is brought to the floor of the Senate these days slows down--way, way, way down--and that is the case with this bill as well. I have described it as similar to trying to walk through wet cement to try to get something through the Congress.

We have amendments pending dealing with school vouchers, putting discretionary caps on budgets, earmark reform--things that have very little or in most cases nothing to do with this underlying bill. It is just that this is an authorization bill open for amendment, so we have amendments on a wide range of issues. We also have other amendments that have been offered that are germane and relate to this piece of legislation, and we have been working through trying to put together an en bloc amendment with our staffs and Senator Rockefeller's staff, working through, with other colleagues, some of the suggestions. They make a lot of sense. I think we are making progress there.

I have described before the need for this legislation. Last year, I met with some of the Europeans who are putting together the modernization program in Europe. This issue of modernization of the air traffic control system--I think I heard Senator McCain talk about World War II vintage air traffic control. It is the case that for those who are now taking off this minute from National Airport, when that airplane leaves the runway and is in the national airspace, it is the case that someone in a control tower somewhere is watching that airplane. Why? Because there is a lot of traffic up there.

This is the most complex airspace in the world here in the United States, and I think the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, does a terrific job in operating the most complex system in the world. We have the safest skies in the world, there is no question about that. We have had one particularly fatal accident in the last year. That tragedy occurred in Buffalo, NY, with Colgan Air, in which 50 people tragically lost their lives, including the pilot and copilot and flight attendant. But the fact is, we have safe skies, and I would be the last to come to the floor of the Senate and say the American public should be worried about safety. It is the case, however, that the Colgan crash gave us a roadmap to some changes that I believe are necessary and that I and Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison have put in this bill. The issues we have discovered from that tragedy persuaded us that a number of things needed to be done.

The FAA itself has worked on aviation safety for a long while. The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aviation accidents, has made recommendations. In fact, they have a most wanted list. There are some recommendations that will improve air safety that have been on the most wanted list for a long, long time, some for well over a decade and not yet adopted. So the Administrator of the FAA, Randy Babbitt, has worked with us. I know he is working diligently to try to address some of those issues.

Let me mention safety in just a moment, but let me talk for a moment about modernizing the system.

When people say: Well, what is that about, it means we are moving from the tracking of that airplane that just left National Airport--I think we have about one a minute that is authorized at that slot airport, so every minute, an airplane is leaving that airport. When that airplane is at cruising altitude and on its way up to cruising altitude, it has a transponder, and that transponder is sending signals. That signal shows up on a screen. That screen is in front of an air traffic controller. That screen shows that airplane, in most cases by number, and that air traffic controller is directing that airplane with its traffic through other routes flown by other airplanes. It is all about safety, making sure airplanes can fly in a congested, crowded sky.

The dilemma--by the way, it has been relatively safe. It certainly is safer than in the old days when they first started flying at night. During the day, they would fly by sight, years and years ago. Then, at night, they would fly to bonfires. They would fly to a bonfire and then fly 50 miles to another bonfire as they carried the mail at night. Eventually they would fly to lights, and then eventually they would fly to ground-based radar. It has been around a long time.

The problem is, ground-based radar only shows where a jet plane is right at that moment--any airplane, for that matter, but a jet moves very fast, so at that nanosecond when that sweep of the radar shows that airplane in that airspace, that is exactly where it is. But a nanosecond later, it is somewhere else. Especially with a jet, with the next 5 or 7 seconds it takes to sweep the radar, that jet is somewhere other than where the dot showed it on the screen. Now we have the capability to know much more precisely than that where the airplane is, but because we only know about where that airplane is, we have to space airplanes for a margin of safety and we fly less direct routes. The result is, we use more fuel in that plane by flying a less direct route. We have to have much wider spacing of airplanes in a congested airspace. We are polluting the skies with more fuel used. We are costing the airplanes and the passengers the extra fuel. We are also taking extra time for the passengers to get to where they are headed because of less direct routes.

All of that can change with a new system of global positing, GPS. Everybody understands what GPS is. You have GPS in your automobile in many cases. You type in an address and it shows you where your car is and where the address is and it takes you right to the address. If your child has a cell phone, in most cases they have access to GPS in their cell phone. In many cases, your child with a cell phone has

the opportunity, with some of the providers, to link with their best friends--their five best friends, for example--and each of them with their cell phone can have GPS locators, so they can access their five friends and know exactly where each of the five is. We can do that with children and cell phones. We cannot do it today with commercial airplanes. We cannot know exactly where that airliner is with GPS technology. That is because we have not yet modernized.

That is what this is all about--modernization of the air traffic control system. When we do--and we will--we will be able to fly much more direct routes, have a greater margin of safety, save fuel, save the environment. We will do all of these things. Other parts of the world are doing it, and so must we. That is why Senator Rockefeller and I have brought a bill to the floor that moves directly and aggressively toward what is called modernization of the air traffic control systems. It sounds complicated. It is less complicated than one would think. It needs the FAA to build the facilities on the ground, and it needs the airplanes to have the equipage in the jet or the airplane itself. When we do that and have the procedures and the developed process, we will have modernized the air traffic control system. That is what the legislation is about.

The legislation is also about building infrastructure across the country. If you are going to fly, you have to have someplace to land and someplace for passengers to embark and disembark. It means runways and terminals. It means a wide range of things. This also includes the Essential Air Service Program, which provides essential air service through contracts to smaller communities. As I indicated earlier, it addresses the issue of safety.

Let me describe safety for a moment, as I have done a couple of times on the floor because I think it is very important.

One-half of the flights in this country are by regional airlines. The passengers do not necessarily know it is a regional airline. They get on, in most cases, a smaller airplane, and it says United, US Airways, Delta, Continental, but it is not that company at all. That is just the brand on the airplane, and it is a regional company, in most cases, that is flying for the larger carrier. In some cases, the larger carrier owns the regional, but in most cases, it is a regional flying under contract to one of the major carriers.

What we have discovered in several hearings, in the aftermath of the Colgan accident, is some very difficult circumstances in terms of mistakes that were made and things that we think we need to improve and correct. Some of it we do in this bill.

The pilot who was in charge of the Colgan plane that evening--flying at night, in ice, in the winter, into Buffalo, NY, from Newark Airport--that pilot, we discovered later, had failed a number of pilot exams along the way. We have learned that the CEO of this company, Colgan, indicated: Had we known about these multiple failures along the way of this pilot's credentials, we would not have hired the pilot. But they did not know because they did not have access to all of that information. This legislation provides that access shall be made available. So those hiring decisions will be better decisions.

The issue of fatigue is very important and was very evident as part of the cause, I believe, of that Colgan accident in Buffalo. There is almost never a circumstance where there was an airplane accident in this country where the accident report says definitively: This was caused by fatigue. But we know, of course, there are a number of tragedies that were caused by fatigue.

Let me point out something we learned with respect to this particular flight, and my assumption is it is not peculiar to this flight. This chart shows the Colgan Air pilots' commuting prior to a flight. On this particular flight, on that evening, when the passengers boarded that flight, the copilot, who got in the right seat of that cockpit, had flown from Seattle, WA, to Newark Airport in order to reach her duty station. She lived in Seattle and she worked out of Newark. She flew all night long, deadheaded on a FedEx plane to Memphis, changed, and flew to Newark all night long. The pilot commuted from Florida to Newark. So you have two people in the cockpit: one from Florida who commuted to Newark and one from Seattle who commuted to Newark.

What we now have heard from testimony from the National Transportation Safety Board is the pilot of that airplane had not slept in a bed the two previous nights, the copilot had not slept in a bed the previous night. Was this crash caused by fatigue? There will never be something that definitively suggests that, but if you were a passenger on an airplane and in the cockpit sat a pilot and copilot, neither of whom had slept in a bed the previous night or two nights, would you believe fatigue was the cause of perhaps a misjudgment in the cockpit? I would. I would.

The question is not, Can you end all commuting? I do not expect you can probably end all commuting. But the question is, Does some of this commuting invariably cause fatigue? I believe it does. And how do you begin to address that? The FAA Administrator has now sent to the Office of Management and Budget, I believe, his rulemaking on fatigue, so that is a step forward because we have to address that.

As shown on this chart, this quote is from a discussion by a regional pilot in the Wall Street Journal of September 12, 2008. He said:

Take a shower, brush your teeth, pretend you slept.

That is what a regional pilot says about the kind of work on regional carriers, where you have a lot of stops, small routes or short routes: ``Take a shower, brush your teeth, pretend you slept.''

Again, I think it raises the question--and a reasonable question-- about how do you make this circumstance change. How do you promote greater safety in circumstances where there is so much commuting, where you have duty time that often allows for less than is necessary to sleep at night? There is the full 8 hours, to be sure. But by the time you get to a hotel somewhere during duty time, it is quite often the case you have not slept a full night.

In this case of the Colgan flight, we have now learned the copilot on that airplane not only traveled all the way across country to reach her duty station, but she is someone who made in the neighborhood of $20,000 to $23,000 a year. Does anybody believe a copilot on a commercial carrier paid $20,000 to $23,000 a year is going to be able to afford hotel rooms when they get to their duty station prior to taking a flight? I don't think so. That is not an unreasonable thing to expect to have happen.

Let me say, my discussion of this is not to tarnish regional airlines. They play a very important role in our air traffic system in the commercial aviation system--very important. My hope is, though, working with the regional carriers, these safety provisions we have included in this piece of legislation will substantially improve safety and avoid the kind of circumstances that existed on that particular Colgan flight.

I mentioned previously the families of the victims on that Colgan flight have been real champions for aviation safety. They have never missed a hearing. They have shown up at all the events in Washington, DC, whether it is a hearing or other activities, to say: I am here on behalf of my son, my daughter, my brother, my mother who perished in that crash. The fact is, that diligence and that effort has made a difference and shows itself in this legislation.

We also, in this legislation, are addressing the issue of pilot hours as qualifications. I will talk about that some other time.

I think there is a lot here to commend this bill to my colleagues. It is urgent we get this passed through the Senate, get to conference, be able to reach a conference agreement with the House, and get the bill signed. We will, by that, I think improve the infrastructure in this country, substantially increase jobs--we are estimating 150,000 new jobs as a result of it--and dramatically change the air traffic control system from an archaic system to a modern system. All that is good for the country.

There is way too much that is needed to be done in this country to improve things, especially in areas of infrastructure and modernization, that is

left undone. Let's at least get this piece for commercial aviation and for all aviation completed.

I have mentioned almost exclusively the issue of commercial aviation. I do not want to leave the floor again without saying there is another component to aviation in our country; that is, general aviation. Many of us fly on small planes a lot. I learned how to fly a small plane years and years ago. General aviation plays a very important role in the area of aviation in our lives.

In States such as Alaska, the Presiding Officer's State, or perhaps West Virginia or North Dakota, in States such as that, the ability to get on a Cessna 210 or a King Air, if we are lucky, or perhaps even a Mooney or a 172 Cessna and go someplace and get there, sometimes in circumstances where there are not a lot of roads, as would be the case in Alaska, and other circumstances where you have wide distances to travel on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday--general aviation is so important and they do so much good work.

In addition, very few people talk--it is true of general aviation and also commercial aviation--about the mercy flights, flying a heart for a donor on a mercy flight, or flying someone who needs desperate treatment to save a life. It goes on every day all across this country--corporate jets, private planes, and, yes, even with commercial airliners.

We are in the process right now of beginning to fight a flood in Fargo-Moorhead. That river will go up 20 feet in about 10 days. It is going to be 20 feet by Friday from 2 weeks ago. I recall last year when the flood occurred, then Northwest Airlines, now Delta Airlines, flew some very large planes into Fargo for relief purposes. They never asked for anything. They just said they were coming. There is a lot of work that goes on by some of the major carriers, as well as corporate and general aviation, that is very important.

Again, I thank Senator Rockefeller for the work he and Senator Hutchison have done. I, as chairman, and Senator DeMint, as ranking member, of the Subcommittee on Aviation are pleased to be working with them.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, as the Senator from West Virginia said, we are on the FAA reauthorization bill, that is reauthorizing the programs that deal with aviation safety and air traffic control and airport improvement funds and essential air service--all of these issues. For the last hour we have been hearing debate about a school voucher program in the District of Columbia. Why would that be the case? Because this is an authorization bill and anyone can come and offer any amendment to an authorization bill. So Senator Lieberman and the cosponsors of his amendment are well within their rights to do that. It has nothing at all to do with the bill on the floor of the Senate, however.

Because we are going to vote on it, however, let me say a few words about it. I have spoken about the FAA reauthorization bill previously this afternoon and will again later, but let me talk for a moment about the issue of school vouchers. First, this is not the place to do it. This is not the place to offer the amendment. They have the right to offer the amendment but we are trying to get a bill done here.

The rest of the world is moving forward to modernize the aircraft control system and we, with the most congested and complicated air traffic control space in the world, we have extended the FAA authorization 11 straight times because we have not been able to get a bill done.

We will probably have three or four votes today and none of them have anything to do with the FAA. I hope we will clear some amendments. Senator Rockefeller has been working hard to clear some amendments, but the votes we will have today have to do with earmark reform or school vouchers or any number of other subjects, discretionary budget caps, having nothing to do with the underlying bill. But if we must vote on them, let me at least take a couple of moments to respond to what we have heard for the last hour.

I know the people who came here to support the voucher amendment are enormously passionate about their support. The amendment is providing vouchers paid for by the American taxpayer for about 1,200 students in the District of Columbia, to attend private schools. In short, it provides public funding for certain students to attend private schools.

I am a big supporter of education. I believe education is our future. I believe when Thomas Jefferson said that anybody who believes a country can be both ignorant and free believes in something that never was and never can be. I understand that. I think education is the building block and foundation for America's future. In fact, it has been the success of America, that we designed education from the very start differently from many other countries. We said we are going to have a system of public education--public education, that means public schools that allow every child to go into that school and come out of that school with whatever their God-given talents allow them to become. We are not going to move people off, in the sixth grade or eighth grade, based on ability. That is not the way we are going to do it. Every child can enter those classrooms and decide to graduate with whatever their God-given talent allows them to achieve in this education system.

That is public education. I know people say to me America's schools do not work. Oh, really? Really? If you get to the Moon, anybody, would you please tell me whose bootprints are on the Moon? They are not Chinese or Russian, they are bootprints made by an American, made possible by people who were educated in America's public school system, who helped us to understand the science and math that allowed us to learn to build airplanes and learn to fly them and then build rockets and walk on the Moon and plant an American flag on the Moon. Public education has been remarkable for this country.

I walked into the oldest House Member's office the first day I came to the Congress. His name was Claude Pepper and he had two photographs behind his chair, at his desk, that I have never forgotten. Claude was in his mid- or late eighties. One photo was of Orville and Wilbur Wright making the first airplane flight, December 17, 1903, 59 seconds off the ground, the first human-powered flight. The photo was autographed ``To Congressman Claude Pepper with deep admiration, Orville Wright,'' before Orville died.

But just behind it was a second photograph of Neil Armstrong stepping gently with his boot on the surface of the Moon. I thought to myself, what is the distance measured between those two photographs? About four inches. But think of the distance in education, to learn to fly and fly to the Moon. Someone else didn't do that. We did that, with a network of public education that says to every kid: You can become whatever your God-given talents allow you to become.

Universal education in a system of public schools. Is it perfect? Certainly not. Has it worked? You bet. I am so tired of people trashing public schools. I go into a lot of classrooms and I almost never leave the classroom without thinking to myself: What an American hero teaching in that classroom. They didn't choose the profession that pays the most, for sure. But that teacher, that man or woman who is teaching those kids, what a remarkable person that is. I always leave classrooms feeling that way.

Let me talk about this program very quickly. This program, a voucher program to create public funding for a certain number of students here in the District of Columbia to attend private schools, was established as a 5-year pilot program in 2003. That is 7 years ago; a 5-year pilot program. It has now been extended twice through appropriations bills in order to minimize the disruption for students already in the program and a plan to wind it down is now in place. Reauthorization is not needed to keep current students in their schools.

In my judgment, public dollars should be spent on public schools. Yes, there are improvements that are needed in public schools. Why don't we invest in those improvements. Here in the District of Columbia they are $40 million short of what is needed. Yet we are using public dollars to support vouchers for private schools. I know it is not a lot of money but this is a program that, 7 years ago, was authorized for 5 years. It demonstrates how hard it is to shut down any program. At a time when education budgets are being slashed for public schools, we ought to be directing the money we have in the public domain for public schools.

Those who wish to attend private schools, they pay private tuition, I understand that. But our public funding ought to be devoted to strengthen our public schools.

Let me talk for a moment about a study that has been done of this voucher program. It has produced very mixed results. The Department of Education did a study that was mandated. After 3 years, no statistically significant achievement impacts were registered for students coming from the lowest performing schools. The reason that is important is that was the target of this program, low-performance schools, to allow those parents to get those kids out of those schools and give them a voucher to go to a private school. What we have discovered from the Department of Education study is for those very schools, the target schools, the lower performing schools, there is no

statistical achievement impact for students who came from those schools going into this voucher program.

Some of my colleagues said you have to give these people a choice and a chance. How about giving them a choice? The District of Columbia already has choices. There are choices available to parents on where to send their kids. There is a robust public charter school network with 60 charter schools here in the District of Columbia. Unlike voucher schools, public charter schools are open to all students, subject to the same accountability as all other schools, public schools; the same accountability standards. So the parents in DC already have some of that flexibility about which schools their children shall attend.

This program has not gone through the full committee process since 2003. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has yet to mark up this legislation in this Congress. More important, this amendment has nothing at all to do with the bill that is on the floor of the Senate.

I do not support this on its merits. I didn't support it in the Appropriations Committee. I do not support it now. I believe we ought to defeat it at this point, not because I do not support education but it is precisely because I support public education that we ought not be spooning off money here into a voucher program, taking public funds and moving them into private schools with, as I indicated, very mixed results as reported in a study that was done by the U.S. Department of Education.

I want for our children, for all children, to have the best education they can have. Our public school system has served this country well, but we have a lot of challenges. I will, finally, say this: One of the significant challenges of the public school system is not that teachers are poor teachers; it is not that the school is a bad school; it is, a school inherits virtually everything that exists in that town or that neighborhood and has to deal with it. That is just a fact.

So it is a challenge sometimes to, in public schools, do all that we want to do. But if we look at a couple of hundred years of history in the United States of America, it is pretty hard to conclude that we, as opposed to all other countries, we are the ones with universal education. We are the ones who supported public education. It is pretty hard to conclude that we have come up short relative to other countries.

Let me make one other point and perhaps boast just for a moment. If North Dakota were a country and not a State, a country not a State, we would rank second in the world next to Singapore in eighth grade math scores.

Does good news get reported very often? Not very often. It is just bad news that sells. This is an old saying: Bad news travels halfway around the world before good news gets its shoes on.

We ought to spend a day talking about the good news of education and then spend time as well addressing the challenges because there are some difficulties that we need to address. But I did want to say I am not going to vote for this voucher amendment. I do not think it is the right choice. I believe the proper choice is to strengthen public education, address the challenges of public education. We can do that. Our parents did it, our grandparents did it, and we can have the same kind of impact on our future as they did.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on March 18, 2010 at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing to examine Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal police recruitment, training, hiring, and retention.

Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.

Would the Senator from Nevada yield?

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for such time as I may consume.

I assume we will report the FAA reauthorization bill shortly, and I believe Senator Rockefeller will be on his way. He is chairing the Commerce Committee hearing right now. I will go over and chair the hearing in his stead when he comes to the floor.

Prior to bringing the bill to the floor today or prior to making it the order of the day, let me just speak in morning business before we get to the bill.

I wanted to talk just for a minute. Yesterday, I talked about what is in the FAA reauthorization bill. Much of what we will discuss today is about commercial aviation--getting on an airliner someplace and flying across the country or across the world. But I wanted to mention that there is another component to this, and that is what is called general aviation.

General aviation is a very large and increasingly important component of air travel in this country. In a State such as my home State of North Dakota, which is a very large State and one that does not have a great deal of interstate commercial airline service, the use of private planes is very prevalent, and general aviation plays a very significant role in our economy.

I learned to fly many years ago. I am not a current pilot at all. I was not even very good at it, I don't think. But I learned to fly and got out of the airplane one day, when the instructor said: You are ready. And I took off and wore this metal suit with an engine attached and got up about 5,000 or 6,000 feet and practiced stalls, steep turns, and the things that you do. So I understand a little about flying an airplane. It is an extraordinary thing.

The private pilots who have an airplane in their hangar out on the farm or in a town and the small business man or woman who has a Cessna 210 or perhaps a Cirrus or a Piper or any number of other small airplanes, single-engine, twin-engine, use those planes every day in every way for very important purposes--to travel around the State and the country to do commerce, to haul parts, to haul people. It is a very significant contribution to our economy. It is estimated that $150 billion annually is added to our economy by general aviation. It is also estimated that there are about 1.2 million jobs in America from general aviation.

I know the thoughts people have about general aviation are immediately to go to: OK, here is a big corporation flying a G-5 and sipping Cristal and eating strawberries dipped in chocolate, flying across the country. The fact is, big corporations do have airplanes that move their executives around. In most cases, they do that because they want to be at a meeting in Los Angeles in the morning and in Dallas in the afternoon and an evening meeting in New York. The only way they do that is through the use of private planes. It makes them much more effective and much more efficient. I understand that.

But much more than the large corporate jet that is flying people around this country, it is the smaller planes of general aviation that are used in all of our States in many ways across this country. You know, it is true that, yes, the corporate planes and the smaller private planes in general aviation every day are flying organ transplants around, flying hearts and so on around to be transplanted at a hospital; to reunite combat troops with their families; to take someone for cancer treatment, to an urgent appointment with a cancer specialist. All of that is the case. I understand that.

So what I wanted to say is that the use of general aviation and the extensive impact it has on our economy is

something we also should discuss and describe in this bill. The legislation we have created has things that are so important to all of aviation--yes, commercial aviation, but to general aviation and to private pilots as well.

The investment, for example, in airport infrastructure, the building of and maintaining of runways in communities that don't have scheduled airline service but do have a lot of activity with private pilots flying in and out is very important. The general aviation portion is important. Six hundred general aviation airplanes have now brought fresh doctors, relief services, workers, equipment, and supplies to the country of Haiti. Six hundred private airplanes have flown in and landed at airports--in most cases, airstrips--other than the airstrip at Port-au-Prince. That is a story that needs to be told. I have great admiration for the pilots, particularly the older pilots who have been around and used to fly those airplanes when there weren't many rules. They kind of chafe at the rules. When you meet with pilots, the older they are, the more they chafe at the fact that there are now rules because in the old days you would jump in an airplane and run off, and you could do almost anything.

We do have rules and regulations and general aviation subscribes to them willingly and ably. It is an important part of our aviation system.

I wish to mention as well Senator Rockefeller, chairman of the committee, is now in the Chamber, and I will chair the Commerce Committee hearing that is underway. I would like to take a couple minutes to retrace what I described yesterday. This legislation, the FAA Reauthorization Act, has been extended 11 times. Rather than passing the bill, we have extended it 11 times. Finally, at long last, with the leadership of Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison and the work that I and Senator DeMint did on the Aviation Subcommittee, we have a bill on the floor, and we want to get it done. We want to get to conference and finally reauthorize FAA programs. We are talking about investment in infrastructure, jobs, aviation safety. All that is critically important. I have held a number of hearings now on the issue of aviation safety.

The skies, particularly with respect to the record of commercial airlines, are very safe. We have a great record with respect to aviation safety. There is no question about that. But we are learning as well along the way from the last accident that occurred in this country that tragically killed 50 people, landing on a winter evening in icy conditions going into Buffalo, NY. I have held hearings on that. I have studied it. I have read the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder. I know a fair amount about the crash. What I know is pretty disconcerting. Let me describe a few things.

That was a Dash 8 propeller airplane, flying in ice at night. The pilot had not slept in a bed for the two previous evenings. The copilot had not slept in a bed the previous evening. The copilot was a person earning somewhere between $20,000 and $23,000 a year, living in Seattle, and the work station was flying out of Newark.

That copilot flew all the way from Seattle, deadheaded on a FedEx jet that landed in Memphis, flew all night to go to work at Newark. The pilot flew up from Florida in order to fly on that Colgan route. But you had two people in the cockpit, according to testimony, the captain of which had not slept in a bed. There was no record of his sleeping in a bed. He was in the crew lounge, where there is no bed. The captain hadn't slept in a bed for 2 days and the copilot for 1 day. They had inadequate training, with respect to stick shakers and other related issues. The fact is, there are a series of things that have now led us to understand that fatigue is an issue. There is a rulemaking on fatigue going on right now.

Administrator Babbitt has now sent that to the Office of Management and Budget. That is important. Training is an issue, critically important.

Commuting is an issue. I wish to put up this chart. This shows where Colgan pilots commute in order to go to work. They commute from all over the country to Newark. There clearly is a fatigue factor. There has to be some action taken on a range of these issues--training, fatigue, sterile cockpits, which were violated on this flight, training in icing, a whole series of things such as those. There is a most wanted list at the NTSB that has said: Here is what you must do. That most wanted list, for 15 or 18 years, has had icing and fatigue on that list, and the FAA has not taken appropriate action. I will speak more about this, but I do have to go spell Senator Kerry, who is now chairing the Commerce Committee.

Senator Rockefeller, chairman of the committee is here, as is the Senator from Texas.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, the legislation on the floor of the Senate is the FAA reauthorization bill. Senator Rockefeller is here, Senator Hutchison has been here, and we are working now, trying to find a way to move the legislation. It has attracted a lot of amendments that have nothing at all to do with the subject. It is as if some believe this is not urgent or important. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. There is an urgency to this legislation.

I know it is not, perhaps, the highest profile legislation in the Congress these days, but we have a requirement to reauthorize the activities of the FAA. We have now failed to do that and instead had to extend their authorization 11 successive times. But because we extend it, we then do not improve the authorization and do the things that are necessary for improving airline safety, the things that are necessary to include the passenger bill of rights which is in this bill, airport improvement funds, and particularly modernization of the air traffic control system.

I mentioned yesterday the urgency of moving on what is called NextGen; that is, next-generation air traffic control.

In this country, we now fly to ground-based radar. We have all of these airplanes in the sky. Most of them have a transponder or something that puts a mark on a controller's screen somewhere in an air traffic control sector, and it says, this is where the airplane is. Well, that is technically right at that nanosecond, that is where the airplane is, but instantly thereafter the airplane is somewhere else, and for the next 7 seconds or so, as the sweep of the radar occurs, that airplane, particularly if it is a jet, is long gone from that little spot. So because we do not know exactly where the airplane is-- we know about where the airplane is--we have routes that are flown that are much less direct than they should be. We use more fuel than we should. Rather than have direct flights, we cost the passengers time and we pollute the air by keeping that airplane in the sky longer because we cannot fly direct routes because we do not fly by GPS. Our children can operate by GPS with their cell phones, but we cannot fly or we do not fly a system of GPS. We fly a system of ground-based radar for our navigation, and that has been around forever.

I mentioned yesterday the circumstances of being able to control air traffic in this country. When people began to learn how to fly and they started flying airplanes and figured out they could make money by carrying the mail, they could only do that when the Sun was up because they could not figure out how to fly at night. So they started building bonfires, and then they would fly to a bonfire, put a big-

old bonfire out there 50 miles away and fly to a bonfire and then land. Then they put up light stanchions with the lights into the air so they could fly toward the lights. Then they invented radar. Then they fly based on and guided by ground-based radar.

But we are way beyond ground-based radar right now. That is what we still use. But you do not drive a car out here with ground-based radar; you drive a car with GPS. Talk about all of the people who are driving their vehicles using this little monitor--that is GPS. Your kids have GPS on their cell phones, but if you are on a 757 with 250 people behind the cockpit flying from Washington, DC, to Seattle, you are not flying by GPS because they do not have the technology, they do not have the equipage in the planes, in most cases, and they do not have the capability on the ground through the FAA to convert from ground-based radar to GPS and something called Next Generation, modernization of the air traffic control system.

If we pass this legislation, finally, at long last, we will move in that direction aggressively. I have met with the Europeans and others who are moving aggressively on Next Generation, and we just keep extending--11 times--the FAA reauthorization bill.

So we bring it to the floor. It includes safety, which I will talk about in a moment, it includes investment in the airport infrastructure in this country, which means jobs, putting people back to work. But we bring the bill to the floor at long last, I think 3 years after it should have been done but we could not do it because it got extended.

Now we have amendments that have nothing at all to do with this-- earmark moratoriums, discretionary spending limits, school vouchers for Washington, DC, coastal impact programs for drilling. They do not have the foggiest thing to do with the bill that is on the floor of the Senate, which is why it is so hard to get things done.

I have often said, you know, the difference between a glacier and the Senate is at least you can see a glacier move from time to time. It is so hard to get things done. And this is a demonstration of it right now. People come trotting to the floor of the Senate and say: Oh, we are working on aviation safety. You know what. Why don't I offer an amendment on something that has nothing to do with it at all and then go back to my office. It is unbelievable to me.

Let me talk for a moment about safety because that also represents the urgency in this bill.

I chaired the hearing--several of them now--on the tragic crash that occurred in Buffalo, NY, 1 year ago. It took 50 lives--the captain, the copilot, flight attendants, passengers, and 1 person died on the ground. This is a case where, when we investigate it, as we have, a lot of things went wrong. We have a very safe system, very few accidents, but if you investigate what happened that night flying into Buffalo, NY, you understand we are not far away from another accident unless we fix some of these things.

Here is a Dash 8 airplane, propeller airplane, flying at night in icy conditions in the winter, about to land in Buffalo, NY.

Here is what we have learned. I don't know whether it is just this case, just this cockpit, just this airplane, but I doubt it. What we learned is the captain of the plane had not slept in a bed 2 nights previous. The copilot had not slept in a bed the night before. Two people in the cockpit had not slept in a bed the night before the flight. Why? The copilot flew from Seattle all the way to Newark to be at the duty station because that is where she went to work. She flew all night long on a plane that stopped in Memphis to get to the duty station. This is a young woman making between $20,000 and $23,000 a year in salary. Do we think a young pilot making $20,000 or $23,000-- which raises another question about compensation, low compensation--do we think that person, if that person travels all night, is going to have the money to pay for a hotel? I don't think so. Two people in that cockpit flying at night in the winter with icing conditions.

We now know that what are supposed to be sterile conditions in the cockpit, speaking only below 10,000 feet and only about what is happening with that airplane, that sterile condition was violated repeatedly, talking about other things, careers and so on. We know now there was a training deficiency with respect to the issue of the stick push and the stick shaker which engaged when the icing became significant. We now know that the most wanted list of airline safety requirements from the NTSB, they have had on their most wanted list several things that deal with fatigue, with icing that have been there for 10, 15 years. All of these things come together and raise questions about how do you fix this, how do you make sure this doesn't happen again.

I am not suggesting that regional airlines are unsafe, although I think evidence suggests that the most recent crashes have been regional carriers. There are questions about the number of hours required to be able to sit in the right seat on a regional carrier. There are questions about whether the majors that hire a regional carrier to carry passengers have some responsibility for that. I believe they should. But when someone gets on a regional carrier, which carries 50 percent of the passengers in the country, all they see is the fuselage and the marking that says United, Continental, Delta, USAIR. That is all they see. But that may not be the company that is transporting them. It may be a very different company, a regional airline company.

The question is, that trunk carrier whose brand exists on the fuselage, have they required the same set of standards? Is there one level of safety? That is a requirement dating back at the time in the mid-1990s, one level of safety. When you step on an airplane, you should have the opportunity to believe that in that cockpit, on that plane, with the training and so on, there is one level expected. I think this crash in Buffalo raises serious questions about whether that exists.

I had a chart that describes a combination of a couple of issues. One is duty time. The other is fatigue. The third is commuting. In this case, with this tragedy, I want to show what has occurred. It requires us to address this issue. I want to show a chart that shows Colgan Air pilots. This could be a chart of virtually any airline, the major carriers or the regional carriers. What it shows is where the Colgan pilots were commuting from in order to get to the work station at Newark, living in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and commuting to work all the way across the country. It is not unusual. Commuting has been going on for a long time. But the issue of commuting is a reasonable issue for us to try to understand and do something about.

It also relates to the issue of fatigue. Do you think in that cockpit on that airplane, with a pilot who hadn't slept in a bed for 2 nights and a copilot that hadn't slept in a bed the night previous, there was not fatigue? It seems pretty unlikely that that group was not fatigued. We don't in this bill address the issue of commuting. Randy Babbitt, the FAA Administrator, now has sent to OMB a rulemaking on fatigue which is important.

My point is, this crash, this tragedy a year ago raised so many questions. You can make the point that this is a very safe system. All of us fly all the time. Most every weekend we get on airplanes believing that we are being transported safely. I am not trying to scare anybody to say that is not the case. I am saying you can decide to ignore some of the things we have discovered about the Colgan crash, but we do that at our risk, at the risk of reducing that margin of safety.

Here is what a pilot said in a Wall Street Journal article on the subject. This is an 18-year veteran pilot describing the routine of commuter flights with short layovers in the middle of night: Take a shower, brush your teeth, then pretend you slept.

An important issue for those who fly airplanes, an important issue in terms of the question, are pilots fatigued? This shows a pilot watching a movie on his computer at a crash house in Sterling Park, VA. It houses up to 20 to 24 occupants and is designed to give flight crews from regional airlines a quiet place to sleep near their base. Many can't afford hotels.

The copilot made between $20,000 and $23,000 a year. That was her salary. She had a part-time job working at a coffee shop. She got on the airplane in Seattle to fly to Newark to begin her

workday because that is where her duty station was. She flew all night long to do it. The fact is, crews who are making that amount of money, particularly those who are flying right seat in an airplane, did not have the funding to get a motel room.

My point is, Senator Rockefeller and I and others have worked on this FAA reauthorization bill to try to address a wide range of issues. This is one, the issue of safety.

In addition, the captain of this plane had failed a number of different exams along the way to getting accredited. But the airline that hired the pilot was not able to have the information to understand that. This legislation changes that. This airline has said: Had we known about the failure of those exams, this pilot would not have been hired. But he was because the company didn't know. This legislation fixes that. If you want to hire a pilot, you know everything there is to know about the record of that pilot.

My point is, Senator Rockefeller and I, Senator Hutchison and others, have brought this bill to the floor of the Senate at long last hoping that perhaps we can get a bill passed. There is an urgency here with respect to safety and other things. I hope Senator Rockefeller and others can expect some cooperation. It is very hard to get cooperation here on the floor of the Senate, but if ever there is something we might decide to cooperate on, how about making certain there is an extra margin of safety in the skies by passing legislation that addresses, among other issues, aviation safety. If we do that, we will give the American people some measure of confidence on this important subject.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, I am pleased with the work the chairman and ranking member of the Commerce Committee have done. I am chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee and have worked closely with them to produce a piece of legislation that I think is bipartisan, is a very important and urgent piece of legislation that will strengthen this country's system of air travel. I want to talk some about that today.

A couple of things this legislation will do. I am not going to repeat everything my colleagues have said, but it will advance aviation safety, which I think is very important. It will accelerate the modernization of the air traffic control system. It is going to support jobs by investing in aviation infrastructure; that is, airports and runways and the kinds of functions that accommodate our air travel system. It will ensure that our rural communities in States such as North Dakota, my home State, have continued access to the Nation's aviation system.

So I am very pleased with this bill. Since the last FAA reauthorization bill expired in 2007, the Congress has passed 11 separate extensions of this law. There was a suggestion that we pass another 1-year extension, which I opposed. We do not need to extend this; what we need to do is pass new authorizing legislation that addresses the fundamental issues that we need to address with respect to air travel in this country.

The Federal Aviation Administration is charged with operating what I think is the world's most complex airspace system in the world. By and large, they do an outstanding job. The United States has the safest skies in the world. There is no question about that. But we have seen changes in the aviation industry, in the airline industry, that have impacted safety, and we need to take action to deal with and address it.

The FAA predicts that air travel in this country will increase by 50 percent in the coming decade. That brings it to probably 1 billion passengers a year. That is a big system, a system that is very strained at this point. As the economy recovers, we will see substantial increases in demand.

As we do that, we desperately need to modernize this system. Let me describe the circumstances of commercial air travel, and then I am also going to talk about general aviation.

I learned how to fly many years ago. I was not much of a pilot, so I did not keep it up. But I learned how to take off in an airplane and go fly up someplace and land. It is an extraordinary feeling. It is one of those moments in life that you never forget, when your instructor gets out of the plane and says: All right, now you go fly the airplane by yourself. When you take off wearing this metal suit with an engine, you think: Oh, my gosh, it is pretty unbelievable to be able to fly an airplane.

General aviation, people flying their own planes around for recreation, for business, is a very important part of our air travel system. I wish to talk about that at another time during this discussion.

Commercial aviation is the companies that put together the structure, the capital and the airplanes and then haul people around the country and the world at scheduled times and places. That is very important. It is significant that in many areas of our country now, such as in my home State, Bismarck, ND, when you go out and see that strip of runway, maybe 6,000, maybe 8,000, maybe 10,000 feet of runway, you are one stop away from anyplace in the world. Because you take off on that runway and one stop later change a plane and go to South America, go to Europe, go to Asia, you are one stop away from the world. That is what air travel has done for us. It is extraordinary.

Go back to the origins of commercial air travel. Airplanes were used originally to haul the mail. Go all the way back to December 17, 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright left the ground for the first time. It was only 59 seconds, but what an extraordinary achievement. They learned to fly. They didn't just learn to fly that day. They had tried 700 times, again and again and again and again, continually failing until one day at Kitty Hawk the engine took hold. The pilot was lying on the fuselage of this rickety-looking structure, and they flew above the ground in powered human flight for 59 seconds. It was quite an extraordinary achievement.

It was not too long after that, having decided we can shape a wing that can allow us, with power, to escape gravity and fly, we were flying in combat. American pilots were in Europe flying in combat. We began flying mail with commercial airplanes. Then you could only fly during the daytime because you couldn't see at night. So you couldn't fly an airplane at night because where would you land. As they

began to haul the mail, what they began to do was to build bonfires every 50 miles or 100 miles, big old fires. Then a pilot could fly in the dark of night toward a fire and land. So you hauled the mail at night. Then when they decided they could do something better, they put up light stanchions and shined lights into the sky. So the pilot would fly to the lights flashing into the sky.

Then they invented radar. Then you have ground-based radar so we can determine here is an airplane in the sky. We can direct that airplane and put a light on the runway. All that changed air travel 24 hours a day, during the daylight hours but also at night. Ground-based radar was extraordinary. So if you get up in an airplane today, there is going to be a control tower someplace. In your cockpit, you will have perhaps a transponder. Your cockpit from that airplane is going to send a signal. You have 125 people who are riding in the back, and you are sending a signal that goes to a control tower and is on a screen. It is a little dot on the screen that blinks, and that is your airplane, except all that does is say: Here is where that airplane is right this nanosecond. But in the next nanosecond, that airplane is somewhere else, especially if it is a jet. All we know is, at this moment, the airplane is here, and for the next 7 or 8 seconds, as the sweep goes around on the monitor, that airplane is somewhere else, perhaps 1 mile, perhaps 8 miles away, but the airplane is somewhere else. We know about where an airplane is based on ground-based radar. Because we don't know exactly where it is, we space those airplanes for safety and have them fly certain routes for safety.

Contrast that ground-based radar with your child. Your child has a cell phone. If your child has the right cell phone at this moment--and there are cell phones with this technology--your child can ask 10 of their best friends, do you want to track each other of our whereabouts with GPS. If the friends say yes, 10 of them could decide to link up with cell phones and figure out where their friend Mary is or where Lester is, and the GPS will tell them exactly where Mary and Lester are because they have their phones with them, so we know exactly where they are. Our kids can do that with GPS with cell phones. We don't do it yet with commercial airliners. Isn't that unbelievable? That is what this is about, modernization, next-generation air traffic control, ground- based radar to GPS. It is complicated. It is difficult. But it is where we are going. We are not going there in the next 20, 30, 40 years. We want to go there soon. I have met with the Europeans and others. They are moving in exactly the same direction.

Here is what it will allow us to do. If we know exactly where an airplane is, as we know where a car is with GPS--a lot of people have GPS in their vehicles and get directions from it, so you know exactly where that vehicle is at every moment--if we do that for airplanes, we can have more direct routing from one city to another and less spacing between planes because we know exactly where they are. We save energy. We have less pollution in the air. We get there faster. It does all the things that are advantageous for everybody.

It is called NextGen, next-generation air traffic control modernization. We could have extended this bill for another year, as some wanted to do, but instead what I wanted to do, and what my colleagues, Senators Rockefeller and Hutchison and others want to do, is to get about the business of getting this done, modernizing our air traffic control system, bringing it into the modern age. That is what this is about.

I will describe briefly what we do with that. We set up timelines on such things as Required Navigation Performance, and the Area Navigation or RNAV system at 35 airports must be completed by 2014. We will create circumstances where the entire national airspace system is to be covered by 2018. We ask FAA to study providing best-served status for those providing the right equipage for their planes and come in with GPS, best equipped, best served. We create a NextGen officer at the FAA. It is a new position to help guide and create these programs for modernization. We are doing all these things. It is so important we complete them and truncate the time with which to complete them.

The other issue that is important is the issue of aviation safety. We have worked a lot on that. I have done now eight hearings on aviation safety, especially focusing on issues we have now discovered from the Colgan Air crash, which tragically killed 50 people in Buffalo, NY. The Colgan crash raised a lot of questions. Let me describe the circumstances.

As I do, I think I speak for all my colleagues on the committee that the relatives, the families of those who were killed in the Colgan crash have made it their mission to be at every hearing, to be involved in every decision about this issue of air safety. God bless them. The fact is, their diligence and work is making a difference. It made a difference in this bill. There are provisions in this bill as a result of their diligence and concern.

Let me describe the circumstances of that particular crash. It was an evening flight in weather that was not so good, with icing conditions for an airplane. They were flying a propeller airplane called a Dash 8. Colgan flight 3407, 2 pilots, 2 flight attendants, and 45 passengers lost their lives, and one person on the ground. It was a Bombardier Q400 airplane, operated by a captain and copilot.

What we discovered in reviewing the circumstances of that crash was quite extraordinary. The pilot had not slept in a bed the two previous nights. The copilot had not slept in a bed the night before. The pilot commuted from his home in Florida to his duty station at Newark in order to begin flying. The copilot flew from Seattle, WA, deadheaded on a FedEx plane that stopped in Memphis, TN, and then continued on to New York in order to reach her duty station at Newark, an all-night flight. There is no evidence, the night before the flight, that either the pilot or the copilot did anything other than stay in the crew lounge, and there is no bed there. For the pilot, it was two nights, no record of him sleeping in a bed. So you have two pilots who commuted long distances just to get to work without any evidence that they had a night's sleep in a bed prior to the flight and were on the airplane.

If you read the transcript of the voice recorder, a series of problems existed in that cockpit. There was not a sterile cockpit below 10,000 feet, which is supposed to be the case. There was visiting about careers and a range of things as they were flying through icy conditions, violative of the regulations. The copilot, it is said, was a young woman who worked two jobs in order to make ends meet.

The copilot was paid something in the neighborhood of between $20,000 and $23,000 a year, commuting all across the country just to get to work. When they ran into icing conditions, there was a stick pusher that engaged, a stick shaker as well. It turns out there had not been adequate training with respect to that. A whole series of things occurred with respect to that flight that raise lots of questions about training, about fatigue, a whole series of things.

As a result of that, just that case to try to understand what does this mean for others, what does it mean for regulations that are necessary. Randy Babbitt, new head of the FAA, someone for whom I have great respect, has just finished a rulemaking on fatigue. I believe that now exists at the Office of Management and Budget, awaiting action by OMB--a step in the right direction, in my judgment.

This bill has another piece that needed to be done that we discovered as a result of this crash. The pilot, over the years, had failed a number of competency tests and then subsequently succeeded or passed those tests. But nonetheless, he had a number of failures. The airline that hired that pilot didn't know that because the records were not transparent. The airline has since said, had we known that record of failures, that pilot would not have been hired by us. But they didn't know. This legislation will correct that. When you are hiring a pilot, you will know the entire range of experience that pilot has had, including the tests and the passage or failure of certain competencies along the way. That is a very important provision in this piece of legislation.

Pilot training and experience is another issue we are talking about and working with. It is not an irrelevant issue. There is supposed to be one

standard and one level of safety with respect to airlines.

Regional carriers are now carrying 50 percent of the passengers in our country. They get on the airplane, and they see the airplane, and it is painted Continental or US Airways or United or Delta, but that may not be the company that is flying that airplane. It may be Pinnacle. It may be Mesaba. It may be any number of other regional carriers. The passenger doesn't know. All the passenger sees is what is marked on the side of that fuselage. This legislation will also require information on the tickets of who is transporting that passenger.

There are a number of things this legislation does in the area of safety that are very important. We prohibit the personal use of wireless communication devices and laptop computers in the cockpit. We all remember the pilots who were flying to Minneapolis and flew well into Wisconsin, well past the city of destination, and didn't know where they were, apparently. They indicated they were busy visiting or they were busy on their laptop computers. But whatever the circumstances, while it is, in many cases, an airline requirement that they not do that, there is no FAA requirement that personal use of wireless communication and laptops in the cockpit is prohibited. We do that.

We also require enhanced safety oversight at foreign repair stations. That also is very important. The outsourcing of maintenance, repair, and overhaul work is now a routine practice. Much of it is outsourced in this country by the major carriers, and our legislation will require enhanced safety oversight and inspections with respect to that outsourcing.

So those are a few of the items that are included in the bill.

I should also point out this bill includes the passenger bill of rights, which I think is important. I have just mentioned a couple of the provisions, but one of them that has gotten the most attention is to say: You have a requirement as an airline and you have a right as a passenger not to be stuck on an airplane for 6 hours, sitting out on a runway somewhere. This is a 3-hour requirement, as part of the passenger bill of rights. They are not going to be able to keep you on an airplane 5 or 6 hours, sitting on a runway, waiting in the middle of a big storm. Three hours: back to the gate and allow the passengers to deplane.

We also have substantial amounts of airport improvement funding here. This authorizes the AIP. It streamlines what is called the passenger facility charge, the PFC. We provide greater flexibility of the use of the PFC.

We improve the airline service in small community service provisions. Some communities in this country rely on essential airline services called EAS, which is the way for them to get the services they were guaranteed when we deregulated in this country, which is, by the way, another subject for perhaps another day. Although I again say, as I have said on the floor previously, deregulation might have been a wonderful boon for those who live in very large cities and travel to other large cities. If you do, you are given a lot of opportunity. You are given many opportunities for different carriers and different pricing. I would bet if we left the floor at this moment and decided to go to one of these search engines and buy a ticket from Washington, DC to Los Angeles, in order to visit Mickey Mouse at Disneyland or we decided we will have two alternative tickets: We will purchase one from Washington, DC to Los Angeles to visit Mickey Mouse or we will go to Bismarck, ND, which is only half as far, to see the World's Largest Holstein Cow sitting on a hill over New Salem, ND, called Salem Sue. So the choice: to go twice as far to see Mickey Mouse or go half as far to see the World's Largest Holstein Cow--I will bet the search engine on the computer will tell us we get to pay half as much to go twice as far, and twice as much to go half as far.

So think of that. You get to pay half price to go double the miles or you get to pay twice the price to go half the miles. Yet that is the kind of circumstance we have in our country today. The higher yield tickets are on the end of a spoke in a hub-and-spoke system, where there is little or no competition. So we are not addressing that. It was just therapeutic for me to talk about that again. We are not addressing that on the floor of the Senate today. But it is something I think is of great concern. Because if you are flying from Chicago to Los Angeles, you have plenty of competition, plenty of price competition and opportunities to get better prices. That is not the case for a number of small States on the back end of a hub-and-spoke system.

Well, there are many other provisions. As I indicated earlier, I am going to speak some at another point on the subject of general aviation because while we focus a lot on the issue of commercial aviation, general aviation is a very important part of this country's air travel system. The folks who live out on a farm some place and have a small airplane in a shed--from those folks, to people who fly corporate planes and move people around so they can leave in the morning from Washington, DC, and fly to Los Angeles, down to Dallas, and get back-- that is general aviation and a very important part of our air travel system. I am going to talk about that at some point later.

Let me again say I think we have at last, at long, long last, put a piece of legislation together that avoids some of the controversy of past attempts, that will substantially improve infrastructure, substantially address the safety issues. I will talk a little later about pilot hours and some related issues we have been talking about that we hope would be in a managers' package.

But all of these things I think finally bring to the floor in this bill a victory for those who want to modernize the system. I know there will be some amendments. We have not addressed some issues that are in the House bill. But our concern is to try to get a bill through the Senate, into conference with the House, and get something signed by the President to get something done. We will be dramatically advantaged as a country if we can enhance the efforts in a shorter period of time to modernize the system and go to a completely different air traffic control system called NextGen, which works off of the GPS system. It will save energy, create safety in the skies, and allow people to be transported more directly with less time. I think it will be very positive for our country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I withhold that suggestion.

I did want to make one additional point. I did not do this when I talked about the issue of the Colgan tragedy. The larger question is not addressed directly in this legislation. We address many of these issues, but we do not address the larger question of commuting.

I want to show, if I might, something Senator Rockefeller and I and others have used in the Commerce Committee. This map describes where the Colgan pilots commute from. But do you know what. This chart could probably have been describing almost any regional airline or any trunk airline or major airline, for that matter.

Pilots live in one part of the country and work out of another part of the country. The fact is, with respect to this tragedy, the Colgan crash, I am convinced that mattered. I am convinced that flying through difficult nighttime icy conditions--with two pilots, neither of whom had slept in a bed the night previous--I am convinced this kind of commuting has caused significant difficulties.

There was a Wall Street Journal piece that pretty much says it all. This was an veteran pilot describing the routine of commuter flights with short layovers in the middle of the night, which is pretty typical. He said:

Take a shower, brush your teeth, pretend you slept.

That is something we have to pay some attention to. I am not suggesting today that you cannot commute. We do not in this legislation prohibit commutes. But I think these are instructive pieces.

As shown in this picture, this is what is called a crash pad. I was completely unaware of a crash pad until we began to hold these hearings. But this is a pilot watching a movie on his computer at a crash house in Sterling Park, VA. They can have up to 20 to 24 occupants at a time. They are designed to give flight crews from regional airlines a quiet place to sleep near their

base airports. Many cannot afford hotels so they use crash houses where the rent is $200 a month for a bed.

When I described the copilot of the Colgan tragedy--a copilot who is making $20,000 or $23,000 a year, traveling across the country, all night long, if that copilot had traveled the day before, are they in a situation to be able to purchase a hotel room at an airport when they are making $20,000 or $23,000 a year?

In fact, I believe there is a substantial cargo operator that pays for hotel rooms for their pilots who come in the night before. I do not believe there is an airliner that does that. But I did not make the point during the Colgan discussion. I wanted to make the point that I think fatigue, commuting, and other issues, are serious and significant.

I know Administrator Babbitt believes as well that we need to continue to look at these issues. We need to visit with pilot organizations and others to understand how we might see if we can reduce some of the risks here. We have a safe system of air travel, to be sure. But the Colgan crash and all of the details and circumstances of it should remind us not everything is as it seems, and we need to take action from time to time to address some of those important issues.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, let me just make a point. This is an authorization bill that is on the floor, the FAA reauthorization. We have waited a long time to get it here. We have had 11 extensions to get this bill to the floor.

The Senator who offers the amendment certainly is allowed to offer it on this bill. Of course, his amendment really doesn't relate to passing an FAA reauthorization bill, so I hope he will withhold at some point and do this at another moment on another piece of legislation because I fear that--at long last, trying to get an FAA reauthorization bill 3 years after it previously expired, with 11 different extensions, my hope is we can stay on the FAA reauthorization, have amendments that relate to this bill, debate them, and then vote on those amendments. That would be my hope.

I understand the Senator has a right to do that. Somebody could bring an amendment on abortion or whatever somebody wants to the floor of the Senate on an open authorization bill. The Senator has had two other opportunities to offer this. I hope he will find a third at some point.

The budget deficit is a very serious problem. We are on an unsustainable path. Let me give just a slightly different observation on the subject as long as I am on my feet.

It is true that 10 years ago our country was running a budget surplus. It is true that 10 years ago we had a budget surplus. It is also the case that when President George W. Bush came to town, he said: You know what, we have a budget surplus. Alan Greenspan is not going to sleep at night, he said, because he worried that the surplus was going to pay down the Federal debt too fast. He literally said that. He worried about paying down the Federal debt too fast, so we need to be a little careful about accruing these surpluses. So President Bush said: What we need to do is have a very large tax cut.

I stood here on this floor of the Senate and said: You know what, these surpluses exist this year only and the next 10 years of projected surpluses don't yet exist. They are simply projections. Let's be a bit conservative. What if something happens?

They said: ``Katy, bar the door,'' we are going to do this anyway, and did it--very large tax cuts, very substantial reductions in Federal revenue. About 50 percent of the structural budget deficit at the moment is as a result of reducing the revenue base 10 years ago--9 years ago.

I said on the floor of the Senate: You know, let's be a little conservative. What if something happens?

Well, guess what happened almost immediately. We passed the tax cuts--not with my vote--the majority of which, the bulk of which went to the wealthiest Americans. Very quickly, we discovered we were in a recession. Very quickly, there was an attack on our country on 9/11. Then we were in a war in Afghanistan and then a war in Iraq. We sent young men and women off to war and did not pay for one penny of it--not a penny. So we cut the revenue base very substantially. We experienced a recession, an attack against our country, engaged in two wars, sent men and women to other parts of the world to fight, and did not pay for a penny of it. We added it all to the debt and increased deficits.

I happen to think the Senator's presentation about the danger of the deficits is very real. I agree with that. But in order to reduce these deficits--this is not rocket science--if we are going to send young men and women to Afghanistan to risk their lives, if they are going to get up this morning and put on body armor because they are going to face real live bullets, pay for every bit of it. Pay for it. Let's ask the American people to sacrifice, not just the soldiers. We are going to cut spending? Then let's really cut spending.

I offered an amendment on the floor and lost it. I said: Let's cut TV Marti. I couldn't get it passed. TV Marti broadcasts signals into Cuba, spends $\1/4\ billion broadcasting television signals into Cuba that the Cuban people can't see. From 3 in the morning until 7 in the morning, we spend taxpayers' dollars broadcasting television signals into Cuba that Cuba blocks and the Cuban people can't see. We spent $\1/4\ billion, and we can't cut the spending? I don't understand that at all.

The prescription drug amendment I offered on the floor of the Senate would have saved the Federal Government $20 billion in spending, and I lost it.

If we are going to cut the deficit, we have to cut real things. When those things come to the floor and we have an opportunity to really cut spending, let's do that.

By the way, it is not just spending. We need to work on spending, and I have offered amendments to cut spending, but it is also the revenues. I hope the Senator would agree with me that when the richest--well, let me rephrase that. When the person in America in 2008 who made the highest income--$3.6 billion running a hedge fund--when that person pays the lowest income tax rate, would the Senator agree with me that perhaps we ought to increase that rate?

This person comes home, and his spouse says: Honey, how are we doing?

He says: Well, pretty good--$3.6 billion.

That is $300 million a month; that is $10 million a day. Honey, how we are doing?

Well, pretty good. I made $10 million. But guess what. I get to pay the lowest income tax rate in the country because I declare it as carried interest.

Do we want to plug that loophole and ask that person to pay the same income tax rate that the people who get up and go to work and then have to shower after work because they have dirt under their fingernails have to pay?

How about making those changes? I am for all of those things. I want to work with the Senator from Alabama and every other Senator who wants to do all of these things.

What happened at the start of this past decade is, somebody put sand in the gas tank and the car will not run and we are up in the engine department trying to figure out how the carburetor works.

This is not difficult. You are going to go to war, pay for it. You are going to cut spending, then take a look at the most egregious abuses and pay for those by cutting the spending.

Take a look at the history on this floor. We have been through a long, tortured decade of what I consider irresponsible fiscal policy.

I understand it is not the case where one side is all to blame and the other side not. I understand all that. But I also understand this: I was on this floor saying: Let's pay for the cost of war. I did 20 hearings on the most egregious waste, fraud, and abuse in this country by contractors doing work in Iraq and Afghanistan. I spoke dozens of times on

this floor on those issues and could not get much support: cutting spending for contractors who were abusing the American people by sending contaminated water--more contaminated than raw water from the Euphrates River--to the military bases in Iraq for the soldiers to use and getting paid for it; getting paid bonuses to do electrical work at the military camps in Iraq and Afghanistan that was so shoddy--done by third country nationals hired by our contractors--such shoddy electrical work that Mr. Maseth, a Green Beret, goes in to take a shower and he is electrocuted, killed in a shower. We paid bonuses to that contractor for that work. It is unbelievable to me.

We have a lot to answer for--all of us do. Every single Member on the floor of this Senate has a lot to answer for. But we can work together on spending and asking those who are not paying their fair share of taxes--by the way, the President, when he gave his State of the Union Address in the House Chamber, said something I have had a vote on four times on the floor of the Senate and lost all four times. The President said: Let's shut down the tax break that gives tax breaks to companies that shut down their American manufacturing plants, fire their workers, and move to China or some other foreign country. Do you know we do that?

We have tried to shut that down. We give a tax break. If you lock up your manufacturing plant, shut the plant, fire every single worker, and move your manufacturing to China, we give you a big, fat tax break for doing it.

That is unbelievably ignorant. The President said in his State of the Union Address: Shut that down. I have been trying to shut that down for many years and have been unable to do it. It is not as if there are not candidates for some common sense and some sanity in fiscal policy to bring us back into some balance.

We need a revenue base that is a reasonable revenue base. We took a lot of that away about 9 years ago with a vote that I did not cast. Then we need to tighten our belt on spending and get rid of the things that do not work.

I know I have gone far afield, and the Senator from Alabama--I have not heard him gritting his teeth, but he probably is.

My point is this: He raises an important subject--an unsustainable fiscal policy. This President inherited an economic wreck; there is no question about that. We are trying to get out of this. But you cannot look out 5 and 10 years and see what we see without understanding this is unsustainable and all of us have to work together to fix it--all of us. I am committed to doing that.

I say to the Senator from Alabama, I hope he will find another vehicle in the next few days on which to offer this amendment because Senator Rockefeller and I have put together this FAA reauthorization bill along with Senator Hutchison. We have worked very hard after so many years to finally get it to the floor of the Senate. We want to get this bill passed. Air safety, modernization--all of it--depends on us getting this legislation through the Senate soon.

I thank the Senator from Alabama for staying and listening. I expect he will retort or respond. Again, these are all important issues, but we must get this FAA reauthorization bill done.

Mr. President, earlier today we passed some legislation in the Senate that is important and will create jobs in our country, and I filed an amendment that was not considered. I know that was the case with many amendments on the bill. One of the amendments I filed that was never considered, unfortunately, and I hope will be considered in the future deals with the recommendation the President made during his State of the Union Address.

In the State of the Union Address, the President spoke about jobs and said one of the things we ought to do to try to preserve and keep and create jobs in our country is to shut down or eliminate the tax loophole that rewards companies for moving jobs overseas. The President specifically asked in his State of the Union Address for the Congress to eliminate that tax loophole. I have tried to eliminate that loophole I think on four different occasions on the floor of the Senate. We have had four votes. On each occasion, I have failed.

One might ask, well, how on Earth can you fail on an amendment such as that? Well, there are a lot of big companies and groups in this town--the Chamber of Commerce is an example--that like that loophole and want it retained, and they fight very hard to keep the loophole.

Here is what we have. We actually do have a circumstance where if you are on one side of a street corner and you have a competitor on the other side of the street making the identical product you do, earning the identical income you earn, and you decide you are going to move your plant to China, fire your workers, put a padlock on the front door of your manufacturing plant and move to China, the only difference between you and the person across the street that you used to compete with and still do is that you now have lower labor costs but you also have a tax break given to you by the Federal Government. It is astounding that exists, but regrettably it does. The President's call to eliminate the tax break is very important, and we ought to heed that call.

I filed an amendment on the last bill, the one that passed today. I did not get a vote on it. I intend to file it again on other pieces of legislation because this Congress, at a time when so many millions of people get up in the morning and put on their clothes and go out looking for work and cannot find work, this Congress has a responsibility to deal with this issue.

Think of this issue of trying to find jobs that are necessary to put 17 million people back to work as trying to fill a bathtub. We are working on a faucet to incentivize and create new jobs, but the drain is wide open, the drain of existing jobs going overseas; in fact, going overseas in search of cheap labor because this country actually rewards you if you move your jobs overseas.

This is Hershey's chocolate. Many people have eaten York Peppermint Patties. York Peppermint Patties were made in a Pennsylvania plant but no longer. It is now Mexican food.

This is a newly built plant in Monterey, Mexico, now making York Peppermint Patties. On its Web site, Hershey's says:

That cool refreshing taste of mint, dipped in dark

chocolate will take you miles away.

Apparently meaning even Mexico. So an American brand goes south. That is not terribly unusual.

Hallmark Cards: ``When you care enough to send the very best.'' It is a privately held Kansas City company. It has been around 100 years. It was founded by a high school dropout who started the company in 1910 with a shoe box of postcards he sold while living out of a YMCA. It is an unbelievable success story, Hallmark Cards. The company became far and away the most successful greeting card company in America, with a reputation of treating its workers fairly--a very good company.

But under current management, with annual revenues over $4 billion, they started to move jobs from Kansas City to three plants in China. It moved thousands of jobs overseas, though it is not required to disclose the specific numbers.

What kind of a card do you send to a Hallmark worker whose job is now in China? The very best? We have a right in this country to be concerned about that.

I have talked at length about Radio Flyer, the little red wagon, gone from Illinois to China; Huffy bicycle gone from Ohio to China. I spoke about those at length. But there are new ones as well.

Whirlpool. At a time when we are losing so many jobs because of the deep recession, Whirlpool announced last year it was shutting down a 1,100-worker factory in Evansville, IN, and moving the work to a factory in Mexico. Whirlpool made this decision even though the company accepted a $19.3 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Recovery Act to develop ``smart appliances.''

By the way, this is a picture of a Whirlpool worker walking out of his place of employment, the last walk on the last day. One can wonder what was going through his mind as he understood he was going to have to tell his family he is now out of work. His job still exists, but it exists in a foreign country.

This is Natalie. Natalie worked for Whirlpool. She is 42 years old. She worked at the Whirlpool appliance plant in Evansville for 19 years and in November of last year was told her job is moving to Mexico; $17 an hour was too much to pay, and you can get cheaper labor elsewhere. She described that plant closing ``like a punch in the gut.'' You can imagine what it is like.

I am told local workers and local officials did everything they could to try to keep that Whirlpool plant in Evansville, IN, but they were unsuccessful.

We do see a lot of people wearing football jerseys. This is a Reebok Peyton Manning jersey. My guess is they sell a lot of those things. There is not a better quarterback in professional football. He is quite an extraordinary football player.

Reebok makes this jersey. This jersey is made in El Salvador by a Chinese-owned company. This jersey is sold for $80 in the United States and workers are paid 10 cents for the work they do in El Salvador to make it.

Let me say that again. The workers get 10 cents, one thin dime, and the customers pay $80 for the Peyton Manning Reebok football jersey.

Here is a photograph that shows the conditions of a sweatshop in El Salvador owned by the Chinese. According

to the National Labor Committee that investigates these things, workers are forced to put in 12 to 15 hours of unpaid overtime each week. They earn wages that are 77 percent lower than the basic subsistence wage for the region. This is the photograph of the home of a worker at one of the Chinese-owned sweatshops. You can see the repressive poverty that exists there, and they get a dime for a jersey the company is paid $80 for on the store shelf in the United States.

La-Z-Boy chairs announced it would eliminate 1,050 employees in Dayton, OH, and move production plants to Mexico. I have spoken about La-Z-Boy previously. A few days ago when I talked about jobs, I talked about how La-Z-Boy went to Pennsylvania and bought Pennsylvania House Furniture. Pennsylvania House Furniture is a high-end furniture company, using special Pennsylvania wood to make terrific furniture. They had great craftsmen who worked at that company. La-Z-Boy bought the company. They did not want to have competition for La-Z-Boy in the country, so they moved Pennsylvania House Furniture to China and shipped the Pennsylvania wood to China, put the furniture together, and shipped the furniture back to the United States.

On the last day of work at the Pennsylvania House Factory, a company that had been around for 100 years, on the last day the plant was open, all those craftsmen who were proud of their jobs and proud of their work, when the last piece of Pennsylvania House Furniture came off the assembly line, they turned it over, and on the bottom of that last piece of furniture, every single worker at that plant came over and took the pen and signed their name. Somebody in this country has a piece of furniture that they do not quite understand. It has, on its bottom, the signature of craftsmen who worked for a company that for 100 years made fine furniture in America. They wanted to do that because they wanted to sign their name to a quality piece of furniture made by an American worker who was proud of their job.

La-Z-Boy chairs sent Pennsylvania House Furniture to China. Now we understand La-Z-Boy furniture has announced it will eliminate 1,050 jobs in Dayton, OH, and move the production to a plant in Mexico. They moved other jobs to China. In a statement describing the 2008 layoffs, the company said: We regret the impact these moves will have on families and the lives of employees affected and so on.

I have demonstrated enough. I have a lot of examples of this, and I have, over the years, provided a lot of examples. But I wish to demonstrate that on Wednesday, today, 17 million or so people got up, wanted a job and couldn't find it, struggling to try to figure out how on Earth they can make a living, how they can provide for their family.

Here is part of what is happening. This shows the deepening trade deficits our country is experiencing. All this red demonstrates jobs moving elsewhere--American jobs moving elsewhere.

This is a description of our trade deficit with China, the largest, single bilateral deficit in the history of humankind. I know where some of these jobs have gone. I know where they make Huffy bicycles. I know where they make Radio Flyer little red wagons. I know where they make Etch A Sketch. I know where they went. They went to China, and I know why they went there. Because they can hire people at 50 cents an hour. They can work them 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The people in Ohio are told: You cannot compete with that. We have to pay you $11 an hour to make bicycles; you can't compete; sorry, you are out of here.

The question of a century, when we have developed safe plants, minimum wage, retirement benefits to lift America up, when we developed those standards, retirement programs, health benefits, the question at the end of a century is: Do we decide those standards don't matter, the lifting of those American workers to good jobs that pay well doesn't matter because we are now saying to them: You compete with Third World conditions, you compete with Chinese sweatshops in El Salvador making football jerseys, you compete with people living 12 in a room, sleeping at night, when they do get a chance to sleep, in cinder blocks in China in Shinsen making children's toys; is that what we are saying is the kind of competition with which we want the American people to have to compete? Because they cannot. Nobody can make a living working for 50 cents an hour here. You cannot make a living here if they strip away your retirement and health care and give you 50 cents an hour and tell you to work 7 days a week.

The reason I raise this point is because the President said a month and a half ago, when he spoke to the Nation and spoke to the Congress: Close this tax break that rewards companies that move their jobs overseas.

My position is not antibusiness. I want American businesses to succeed. I want them to make profits and create jobs. I just want an understanding that trade agreements must be fair agreements in order for us to compete. I will give an example.

This is an example of automobiles in Korea. Ninety-eight percent of the automobiles driven on the streets of South Korea are made in South Korea. Is that an accident? Of course not. That is exactly the way the Koreans want it. They want to ship Korean cars to be sold in America, but they don't want American cars to be sold in Korea. That has always been their position. The same is true with China.

We now have an agreement with China by which, in the next couple years, we will have a massive influx of cheap Chinese goods coming into this country in the form of automobiles. They probably want me to say less expensive automobiles from China. We have an agreement that when Chinese automobiles come here, we will impose a 2.5-percent tariff. If we ship cars to China, they will impose a 25-percent tariff, and we agree to that. That is fundamentally ignorant of our economic interests. Those are the kinds of issues we have to address.

If we care about jobs, we need to do two things: One, work on the legislation of the type we are working on. Senator Reid, Senator Durbin, myself, and others have worked very hard on legislation to try to incentivize the creation of new jobs in our country. We passed a bill about a week and a half ago and passed another bill today that is job creating. That is the faucet. We are trying to turn the faucet on to put jobs into this tub here. The problem is, the drain is wide open and we have jobs moving out just as aggressively. We have to plug the drain by saying: Trade matters, fair trade matters most. You must stand for the interests of good jobs that pay well in America. That is a fact.

I will speak more about this issue at another time. I did wish to say I filed the amendment on the bill we finished today and was not able to call it up, as was the case with many amendments. I intend to file it again on another bill. I hope very much we will get a vote on it, and I hope, when we get a vote on it, that given the things I just described that are happening to jobs in America, given the fact the President has said let us at least plug this unbelievably pernicious, ill-advised tax break for companies that ship jobs overseas, let's at least get that done. Let's try to save some jobs in this country. If we can do that, we will have done something very significant for the people who awaken in the morning jobless and who hope to find work at some future date as we restart the engine and start putting American workers back on the payroll again.

I yield the floor.