[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 132 (Thursday, October 4, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10259-S10261]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL SECURITY
Mr. KERRY. Madam President, as one of the original authors and
cosponsors of the Aviation Security Act, I take a moment to underscore
where the Senate finds itself at this moment, which I find distressing
and deeply frustrating and less than an adequate response to the
compelling requests made by the President of the United States a few
days ago in a joint session of Congress. Only a few days ago, the
Senate came together with the House to listen to the President describe
a war, to describe the most compelling circumstances this Nation has
faced certainly since Pearl Harbor, and perhaps in its history in the
context of the nature of the attack on New York City and the Pentagon.
There is a danger in raising the level of rhetoric and not meeting it
with the actions that the American public understand are required of a
nation facing urgent circumstances. It is extraordinary to me that the
Senate is in gridlock. That is where we are, essentially, stopped cold
in our capacity, not just to do the Airport Security Act and let the
Senate vote its will, whatever that may be--I don't know what the
outcome will be--but let the democratic process of the Senate
work, Rather than trying to hold it up completely, to subject it to
some kind of prenegotiation that appears to be impossible when we even
have meetings canceled and there is no negotiating going on.
We tried to go forward on the foreign ops bill. I cannot think of a
bill, second to the Department of Defense authorization we just passed
a few days ago, that is more important in the context of the
circumstances in which we find ourselves. But we are not even permitted
to proceed forward with that because, essentially, once again politics
and ideology are rearing their heads with a stubbornness that suggests
that a few Members of the Senate are unwilling to allow the entire
Senate to work its will. What an incredible display at a time when the
world is watching the greatest deliberative body, and the greatest
nation on the face of this planet with its democracy, try to work
effectively to respond to these needs. What is even more incredible to
me is that common sense tells us what the realities are with respect to
airport security and, I might add, rail security in this country.
We woke up this morning to the news that an airliner apparently has
exploded and gone down over the Black Sea, a Russian airliner. We do
not know yet to a certainty that it is terrorism, but we do know the
early indicators of an eye witness report from the pilot in another
aircraft is that he saw it explode and saw it disintegrate and go down
into the sea. And Russian President Putin has said it appears as if
there is some act of terrorism.
Leaving that aside, we have promised the American people we are going
to provide them, not with a level of security, not with some sort of
half-breed sense that we have arrived at a notion of what is
acceptable, but we are going to provide the best security, the fullest
level of security we are capable of imagining, that is well within the
reach of this country and well within our capacity to afford.
I might add, what we are suggesting we want to provide to Americans,
in terms of security, they have already suggested they are willing to
pay for several times over. This is not a question of cost. It is not a
question of our inability to afford this. It is a question of politics,
ideology.
We have some in the Senate who do not like the idea that there might
be more Federal employees, that there might be more people who might
join a union even, that there might be more people who somehow might
not have their political point of view but who nevertheless might
perform an important function for our country. When I was in the
military, what I learned about, sort of a hierarchy and about authority
and about training and management, is that there is a brilliant
effectiveness to the chain of command and to the manner in which a
Federal entity is organized or a law enforcement entity is organized.
I do not think anybody in this body would suggest we ought to be
contracting out the responsibilities of the Border Patrol, or
contracting out the responsibilities of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, or contracting out the security of the Capitol,
the security of the White House, or the security of a number of other
efforts. But they are prepared to contract out to the lowest bidder,
with unskilled workers, the security of Americans flying,
notwithstanding everything we have learned. That is just unacceptable.
It is unacceptable.
I hear all kinds of excuses being made: There are transition
problems; you might have contractors quit in the meantime. First of
all, at a time of high unemployment and rising unemployment, I think
common sense would tell us most of those contractors would leap at the
opportunity to have a better-paid job and to get more training and they
will stick on the job because they will be part of an important
security corps of the United States of America and they would want to
be part of that. And, incidentally, they would want to be part of it
because they would then have the possibility of having benefits they do
not get today, which is one of the reasons we have employees,
notwithstanding all of their best efforts and all of their best
intentions, who are, many of them, simply not fully enough trained or
prepared to do the job they are being asked to do. It is not their
fault, but it is the nature of the pay scale.
If you were to compare the difference between the civilian nuclear
industry and the military nuclear industry--i.e., the U.S. Navy on
ships--we have not had major incidents on ships of the U.S. Navy. We
have had Navy ships running nuclear reactors, and highly successfully,
for years now: Submarines, aircraft carriers, cruisers, and others. But
the military has an unlimited human personnel capacity for redundancy,
for certitude in the human checks, and therefore is capable of
providing a kind of safety net that you cannot provide in the private
sector because the private sector is always thinking about the
shareholders, the return on investment, the cashflow, and the capacity
to do it. So you do not get that kind of redundancy often unless it is
required.
The same thing is true of the checking of the security process of
people boarding aircraft. Moreover, we have now learned that this is
something more than just a job, significantly more than just a job. It
is part of the national security framework of our country. It is the
way in which we will prevent a plane from being used as a bomb or a
plane from simply being blown up, or passengers from being terrorized
in some form or another. Passengers deserve the greatest sense of
safety in traveling.
For those who are concerned about the economy, there is not one of us
who has not been visited in the last weeks by members of the auto
rental industry, restaurant industry, travel industry, hotels, and
countless mayors
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who are concerned about the flow of tourist traffic to their cities. We
need to get Americans to believe in the level of safety that their
Government is providing for them.
It is extraordinary to me. We have been through this period of time
where government has been so denigrated. We have had a long debate in
this Senate with people arguing so forcefully the adage: It is not the
Government's money, it is your money and you deserve a refund. But at
the same time, you know, they are incapable of doing without the very
people who have put on displays of courage that have been absolutely
extraordinary over these last week. That was government people, paid by
government money, who ran into those buildings to save lives in New
York. It has been government people paid by government money who have
saved so many people in the course of these weeks. It has been
government people paid by government money who organized and managed
people who have been homeless, people who searched for their loved
ones, people who needed some kind of comfort. It has been a government
display, if you will, of the effectiveness of money well spent when we
invest it properly.
The same thing is true of airport security. I want to just highlight
the differences between what is being proposed by those of us who think
we need to have a Federal structure versus what the administration has
currently offered. With respect to turnover, we raise the wages. We
raise the wages to a level that would put the employees on a Federal
civil pay scale. That means you will attract more qualified people and
you will have a right to be able to raise the standards and raise the
demands of performance, which is precisely what the American people
want.
Under the administration's current proposal, they will only increase
the wages and benefits if the legislation specifically mandates a
living wage and health benefits for the employees. So there is no
demand that the wages be raised. They want to leave it to the lowest
bid process unless somehow there is a specific statement to the
contrary.
With respect to training, we create a stepped scale based on
management responsibilities and seniority so there is an incentive
within the structure for people to assume management responsibilities,
to become supervisors and to actually supervise with something more
than 3 months on the job. Currently the turnover rate at Atlanta
airport, Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, is 400 percent. The turnover in
New York, Boston, and Los Angeles ranges between 100 percent and 200
percent, 300 percent --extraordinary turnover rates.
You can't expect somebody to be on the job at low pay and be able to
provide the kind of skill necessary to read the x-ray machine properly,
to profile a person, to see suspect activity, or even to make the kind
of personal searches necessary when that is needed.
Under the administration's current offer, the wage scale and the
management decisions are left to the low bid contractor. Secretary
Mineta was in front of our committee just the other day. I asked him
specifically: Mr. Secretary, isn't it true that all of these companies
are basically in a position where they take on the lowest bid, and it
is a bid process that encourages low bids so that they can survive? He
said yes. Jane Garvey said yes. That is precisely what the current
proposal will continue.
It is simply impossible to build more rail, or gain the kind of
efficiency, or gain the kind of accountability and manage this process
effectively if we are not prepared to have a Federal civil service
structure for these employees.
I might add that while the Europeans have a slightly amalgamated
system, they have wage laws and they have labor laws that we do not
have that guarantee the kind of pay structures and accountability
structures which we are seeking in our approach.
While there is a distinction, it is really a distinction without a
difference because in the end they have achieved the kind of Federal
vision and the kind of employee quality which they have been able to
attract as a consequence of the ingredients they put together.
For instance, Belgium has an hourly pay of $14 to $15, they have
health benefits, and they have a turnover rate of less than 4 percent.
The Netherlands: $7.50 an hour; England $8 an hour; in France, they
receive an extra month's pay for each 12 months of work, and less than
a 50-percent turnover rate plus health benefits.
We are looking at an extraordinary difference between what European
countries are able to do as they face these kinds of terrorism, and
they have much stricter standards than we have for a longer period of
time.
It is imperative that we in the Senate get about the business of
responding properly to the demands we face with respect to the security
of our airports.
It seems to me that the transitional issues are easy to work out. It
is certainly, first of all, normal to assume that those people who are
under contract now will still be under contract. If they breach it, I
think the full wrath of the Government and the American people would be
ready to come down on them, not to mention the lawsuits for breach of
contract, and not to mention the loss of jobs for all the employees.
Those transitional problems that are being conjured up simply don't
hold up to scrutiny. The American public knows that if we had a Federal
civil service corps which we could put under homeland defense, or where
we could put it under the Defense Department, if the Department of
Transportation is uncomfortable with it, what better an area for the
security of our airports?
There is no distinction between providing security for our borders
with the Border Patrol on the ground and providing security for our air
traffic and for those people who fly through the air across those
borders. It is the same concept. I think most people in the country
understand that.
I hope the Senate is going to quickly get enough business of paying
attention to this issue and resolving it today. It has been 3 weeks
now. One would have thought this would have been one of the first
things we would have done almost by edict and that it would have
initially been on the table.
We have seen the extraordinary process of sort of back and forth
going on now as to whether or not we ought to do it. I don't think this
enters into the realm of politics. I don't think security has a label
of Democrat or Republican on it. It has a common sense label.
What is the best way to guarantee that you are going to have security
in an airport? If you have a whole bunch of different companies, each
of which bid, even if you have the Federal standards, even if you have
Federal supervision, they are hired by private sector entities. They
belong in one airport to one group and in another airport to another
group. You don't get the esprit de corps. You don't get the horizontal
and vertical accountability and management that you get by having the
civil service standard. That is why we have an INS. That is why we have
a Border Patrol. That is why we have an ATF. That is why we have all of
these other entities that are either State or Federal law enforcement
entities, because they guarantee the capacity of the chain of command,
they guarantee accountability, they guarantee the training, and they
guarantee ultimately that we will give the American people the security
they need.
I want to add one other thing. It is not on this bill. I think we
have to pass this bill rapidly. There is a whole different group within
the Senate who, because of their opposition to trains, Amtrak, ports
and so forth, somehow have a cloudy view of what we may need to do to
provide security for our rails. But there is absolutely no distinction
whatsoever between those who get on an airplane and travel and those
who get on a train and travel. In point of fact, there are more people
in a tunnel at one time on two trains passing in that tunnel than there
are on several 747s in the sky at the same moment--thousands of people.
We have already seen what a fire in a tunnel can do in Baltimore. We
have tunnels up and down the east coast. We have bridges. All of these,
if we are indeed facing the kind of long-term threat that people have
talked about--and we believe we are--need to have adequate security.
I was recently abroad, and I got on a train. I went through the exact
same security procedures to get on that train as I do in an airport
under the strictest examination--interview, examination of ID, and
thorough inspection and screening of your bags. You
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can walk down to Union Station, go to any train station in America, and
pile on with a bag. You can get off at any station and leave your bag
on the train. Nobody will know the difference.
We have an absolute responsibility in the Senate to be rapid in
resolving this question of train security just as we are trying to
resolve this question of airline security.
A lot of these ideas have been around for a long time. We have always
had the ugly head of bureaucracy raising its objections for one reason
or another against common sense. We are not even looking for the amount
of money that almost every poll in the country has said the American
people are prepared to spend. Ask anybody. Ask any of the families in
New York, or in Washington, or any part of this country who suffered a
loss on September 11, what they would be willing to pay on any ticket
to guarantee that they knew their loved ones were safe. We are talking
about a few dollars per ticket to be able to guarantee that we have the
strongest capacity and never again have an incident in the air,
certainly because we weren't prepared to do what was necessary.
There is no more urgent business before the Senate today. I hope the
Senate will quickly restore itself as it was in the last few weeks to
be able to discard ideology, discard politics, and discard sort of the
baggage of past years to be able to find the unity and the common sense
that have guided us these days and which have made the Nation proud. We
need to do what provides the greatest level of security in our country,
and that means a Federal system of screeners, and most of those people
responsible for access to our aircraft and other forms of travel.
I yield the floor.
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