Unanimous Consent Requests-H.R. 2553

Floor Speech

Mr. President, I want to take a moment and add my voice to the voices who spoke earlier--the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from California--about this situation with the FAA.

I would imagine if you are a visitor to our Nation's Capitol and have come to see a little Senate debate, it is a pretty interesting day to be here. It was great news that the country avoided default today. Although it was an imperfect compromise, I was glad to vote for that. We still have obviously a long way to go on debt and deficits.

There is another issue that has not gotten as much attention as the debt ceiling debate, although it is clear that at almost any other time in our history this issue would be on the front page of every newspaper around the country and on every nightly TV newscast. I am talking about the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration--the entity that ensures the safety of our skies, the safety of our airplanes, the maintenance of our airports--has been in partial shutdown mode for over a week.

Close to 4,000 FAA employees, many from the Virginia/DC area, have been furloughed. These folks do not know when they are going to get a paycheck or when they are going to be able to go back to work. And they have not been furloughed as a result of anything they have done. This situation is not the result of complaints about the quality of service or about safety of the FAA. In fact this shutdown is the result of a dispute over a small FAA program that protects rural airports.

Only in Washington would a dispute over service to small rural airports force the shut down of all ``nonessential services'' in the Federal Aviation Administration. Only in Washington would we would put 4,000 people out of work, and affect the lives of tens of thousands of other folks who are depending upon FAA funding for needed improvement projects at airports around the country.

We have a number of airports in Virginia where construction has basically stopped as a result of this political standoff. With the FAA partially shut down, the airlines, which traditionally charge passengers a small tax to help fund the FAA to build, maintain, and keep airports safe, are no longer required to collect the tax. So, during this shutdown, especially if we go through the next month and do not enact an extension, the U.S. Government would lose $1.2 billion as a result of political back and forth about a program to support rural airports--a program that, in total, costs $14 million.

If people are scratching theirs head with this math, they have a right to scratch their heads. Only in Washington can not collecting over a billion dollars in airport ticket taxes because of a dispute about a program that costs $14 million make any sense.

The overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats and Republicans alike say we have to go ahead with an extension. We are saying if we have issues to dispute let's work those out. But let's not put nearly 4,000 FAA employees out of work and let's not, as the Senator from California said, halt the projects of tens of thousands of construction workers.

So it is my hope that, once again, cooler heads will prevail. I thank the chairman of the committee, Senator Rockefeller, and the ranking member, Senator Hutchison, and both Democrats and Republicans for working together to try and get this resolved. I know the American people have looked at Congress--understandably--in the last few weeks and have scratched their heads and said, what are these guys doing? Why can't they get their act together and negotiate a compromise, so they don't put our country into default?

We managed to dodge that bullet in a way that is a fixed but not a long-term solution. We will continue that discussion. As everybody heads back to their home States, dodging the debt and deficit bullet, how are we going to look as we leave town with 4,000 workers furloughed, tens of thousands of construction workers without the ability to continue projects that are needed, and the U.S. Government $1.2 billion deeper in debt--not because of a dispute over of too much tax or whether to collect but because we could not reach an agreement over a rural airport program?

I have cosponsored legislation--and I am sure the Presiding Officer supports it--to make sure that when the furloughed workers get back, they have to get paid. How can we leave town for a few weeks and leave this issue hanging out there?

I hope those folks in the House--and the chairman and the ranking member of the committee are working on this issue--will get this done. As the Senator from California said--and this is some of the technical process stuff that people scratch their head about--the House is in pro forma session, so there is a path here to resolve the issue.

We have to make sure we do our job not only for the public to make sure their airlines and airports stay safe, but also for the furloughed workers who need to get back to work. We've got to do our job so that airports all over the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can implement their much-needed airport improvements. The money has already been appropriated. It is not as though it is new dollars. Anybody who can read a balance sheet knows we shouldn't end up blowing $1.2 billion over a dispute for a program that costs $14 million total.

I hope we get this resolved this afternoon in a way that shows this Congress is more up to the task than we have been, unfortunately, over the last few weeks.

A closing comment. I know the Presiding Officer has worked hard on the debt and deficit issue as well. I will close with the statement that my hope is that we did take a step today, with about $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years, and we need to make sure those cuts don't slow down the economic recovery the Nation is still struggling with. But we have to recognize that even with this new supercommittee being created--and the Presiding Officer would be a great member of that committee when it is chosen--but even if that committee meets its goal of $1.5 trillion in additional cuts, that still doesn't get our country's balance sheet back in order. We didn't create this debt overnight. We will not get out of it overnight. It is not one party's fault. Both parties have unclean hands on this.

Candidly, a lot of our debt and deficit problems are due to the fact that we are all getting older and we are living longer through advanced medicine. The challenge we have before us is that we have to urge the supercommittee to look at something that will get us all out of our comfort zones. We have to recognize how do we make sure our entitlement promises we made to seniors with Social Security and Medicare and the least fortunate in terms of Medicaid--I know two-thirds of the seniors in nursing homes are on Medicaid. How do we preserve those programs? These programs need some reforms, because with an aging population--for example, in Social Security, there used to be 17 workers for 1 retiree. Now there are three. It is nobody's fault, but that is a fact. How do we make sure that promise exists?

We have to deal with entitlement reform, and we also need to deal with tax reform. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if we are spending 25 percent of GDP in Federal spending, that has to be brought down. If we are collecting revenues at only 15 percent, which is a 70-year low, we are never going to get that 10-percent differential, unless we find some way to generate more revenues and make cuts in spending. Along with entitlement spending, which is the fastest growing part of the budget, we have to do tax reform in a way that will generate more revenue. There are ways we can do that which will lower rates and cut back on some of the tax expenditures. It will take some hard choices.

My hope is that while this step of avoiding default was important--and it is a good day when America doesn't default, but we have much more work to do--the work of all the previous commissions that have been set up--and they have all kind of come out in basically the same scope of the problem--and, frankly, with about the same kinds of recommendations. A lot of that work of the so-called Simpson-Bowles commission, the President's deficit commission, the Gang of 6--or my hope would be the ``mob of 60,'' at some point in the not too-distant future--that was the framework we worked on, and we put everything on the table.

I say to the Presiding Officer and any other colleagues who may be still around, I urge them to join this effort. We have to make sure this supercommittee actually takes on the big issues and that we don't default back to a series of cuts come next year that, frankly, are not well thought through, or well planned, across the board, without regard to effectiveness. The only way is, yes, by additional cutting but doing entitlement reform and tax reform.

With that, I yield the floor, and with the hopes that we will see not only the hard work on the debt and deficit, but also the resolution of the FAA issue in the coming hours. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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