[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 171 (Tuesday, December 11, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H9168-H9170]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION POLICY RESPONSIBILITY REALIGNMENT ACT
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
bill (H.R. 3441) to amend title 49, United States Code, to realign the
policy responsibility in the Department of Transportation, and for
other purposes.
The Clerk read as follows:
H.R. 3441
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. REALIGNMENT OF POLICY RESPONSIBILITY IN THE
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION.
(a) Section 102 of title 49, United States Code, is
amended--
(1) by redesignating subsection (d) as subsection (g);
(2) by inserting a new subsection (d) as follows:
``(d) The Department has an Under Secretary of
Transportation for Policy appointed by the President, by and
with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Under
Secretary shall provide leadership in the development of
policy for the Department, supervise the policy activities of
Assistant Secretaries with primary responsibility for
aviation, international, and other transportation policy
development and carry out other powers and duties prescribed
by the Secretary. The Under Secretary acts for the Secretary
when the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary are absent or
unable to serve, or when the offices of Secretary and Deputy
Secretary are vacant.''; and
(3) in subsection (e) by striking ``Secretary and the
Deputy Secretary'' each place it appears in the last sentence
and inserting ``Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and Under
Secretary of Transportation for Policy''.
(b) Section 102 of title 49, United States Code, is further
amended by striking subsection (g), as redesignated by
subsection (a)(1), on the date that an individual is
appointed to the position of Under Secretary of
Transportation for Policy under section 102(d), as added by
subsection (a)(2).
SEC. 2. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
Section 102(e) of title 49, United States Code, is amended
by striking ``4 Assistant
[[Page H9169]]
Secretaries'' and inserting ``5 Assistant Secretaries''.
SEC. 3. POSITIONS IN EXECUTIVE SERVICE.
(a) Section 5314 of title 5, United States Code, is amended
by inserting before
``Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration.''
the following:
``Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy.''.
(b) Section 5315 of title 5, United States Code, is amended
by striking
``Assistant Secretaries of Transportation (4).''
and inserting the following:
``Assistant Secretaries of Transportation (5).''.
(c) Effective on the date that an individual is appointed
to the position of Under Secretary of Transportation for
Policy under section 102(d) of title 49, United States Code,
as added by section 1(a)(2) of this Act, section 5316 of
title 5, United States Code, is amended by striking
``Associate Deputy Secretary, Department of
Transportation.''.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Clement)
each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette).
Mr. LATOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3441 realigns transportation policy responsibility
within the Department of Transportation and was requested by the
Department. As the Department of Transportation reorganizes and
refocuses its efforts to ensure America's transportation security, it
is important that it is able to develop policy across transportation
modes.
Under the current organization of the Department, policy development
is spread over three offices within the Department of Transportation.
This results in a fragmented approach to policy development. The
purpose of this bill is to provide a seamless, long-range and strategic
approach to development of policy in DOT by establishing a new Under
Secretary for Transportation Policy, who will be appointed by the
President and confirmed by the Senate.
In order to ensure better communication with the public and the
press, the bill will also create an Assistant Secretary for Public
Affairs. This will round out the management team for the Secretary to
allow for better management of the Department.
This bipartisan bill, Mr. Speaker, is also strongly supported by the
Department of Transportation. Transportation policy is too important to
be undertaken in a haphazard manner in this day when transportation has
become so essential to our economic well-being. Proper lines of
authority and communication are vital to the continued operation of the
Department.
For that reason, I strongly support this bill. I urge my colleagues
to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in strong support of H.R. 3441, the Department of
Transportation Policy Responsibility Realignment Act.
The most important provision in this bill creates a new position in
DOT of Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy. The person
selected for this important position will be the third-ranking
executive in the Department and will be responsible for coordinating
the Department's domestic and international policies for all modes of
transportation. This type of coordination is the very reason the
Department was formed. We certainly should have an official responsible
for integrating and coordinating all transportation policy, and
developing intermodal transportation.
I am pleased that the administration has announced that if this
legislation is passed its nominee will be Jeffrey Shane. Mr. Shane has
a long and distinguished career in transportation and was the
Department's Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs
in the George H. Bush administration. He is superbly qualified for this
position, and we are extremely fortunate that he has been willing to
give up a successful law practice to return to the government.
I am also pleased that Secretary Mineta has asked Mr. Shane to
rebuild the Department's policy staff, especially the aviation policy
staff, which has been drastically reduced in recent years. Secretary
Mineta has directed Mr. Shane to develop ``a world class think tank''
at DOT. I enthusiastically support this objective and look forward to
working with Mr. Shane on all issues of transportation policy.
I urge my colleagues to support the bill.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman
from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure, who has distinguished himself in so
many ways in keeping the committee moving forward in the 21st century.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for those kind words and for
yielding me the time.
Mr. Speaker, I am delighted the leadership of the committee has moved
quickly to bring this bill to the House floor. I strongly support the
initiative to create a new position of Under Secretary for
Transportation Policy. It will help this Department to carry out its
very significant and far-reaching responsibilities to develop
integrated domestic and international transportation policies.
I have had the good fortune of being present at the creation of the
Department of Transportation in 1966 when I was administrative
assistant to my predecessor in Congress, John Blatnik, who then was
chairman of the Executive and Legislative Reorganization Subcommittee
of the House Committee on Government Operations. He was asked by then
President Lyndon Johnson to manage and bring to the House floor
legislation to create a Department of Transportation, out of
recognition that what we had was a fragmentation, a great diversity of
modes of transportation, each with their own stovepipe means of
operation but without a single overarching transportation policy.
It was President Johnson's objective to bring all these entities
together in one new department that would be able to deal with
transportation as an entity. We did that. It took quite some effort to
bring together modal administrations that for years had operated on
auto pilot, without any coordination, without interaction among them.
The first Secretary of Transportation, Alan Boyd, took to the task with
great vigor and enthusiasm and his successors have done the same. It
has taken well over 30 years to craft a spirit of transportation within
the Department.
In the passage of ISTEA, we brought this concept of a Department of
Transportation with a culture of transportation to its, I think,
logical conclusion. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency
Act really culminated years of effort of creating a transportation
spirit and policy and need for intermodal communication within the
Department, culminated all in one piece of legislation. It was an
extraordinary step forward in the history of transportation in America.
The new Under Secretary will be the third-ranking official in the
Department. He will manage all Department-wide offices dealing with
policy and with intermodal transportation to develop comprehensive,
sound and interrelated transportation policies. I might say that 16
years ago I introduced the first legislation to create a position of
under secretary for intermodalism in the Department of Transportation,
and it is now coming to be.
Both because the position has been created and because of the person
who has been nominated to fill that position, Jeffrey N. Shane, I would
say that never in the 35-year history of the Department has a person
been named for a position at DOT with better or more appropriate
credentials than Jeff Shane, with the sole exception of the current
Secretary of Transportation, Norm Mineta.
Jeff comes to this position with the sweep of intellect, with the
personal and professional integrity, and with more than 3 decades of
professional experience in the Department of State and the Department
of Transportation on international aviation trade and policy matters,
qualities that will enable him to take command of the duties of the
office on which he is about to enter with clarity of purpose, with
alacrity and, best of all, without a learning curve.
{time} 1945
My experience with Jeff Shane dates back to well over a decade and a
half, to his service at State and DOT in both the Ronald Reagan and
George H. Bush
[[Page H9170]]
administrations. I worked with him extensively on international
aviation passenger and cargo trade matters, as well as domestic
aviation matters, in my capacity then as chairman of the Subcommittee
on Investigations and Oversight and Aviation authorizing subcommittee.
I found Jeff Shane always to be the very model of intellectual
integrity; thoroughly knowledgeable on a wide range of issues on which
he was called to testify before our committee, well-informed, and, very
importantly, a consistently vigilant, vigorous advocate for U.S.
aviation interests and a skillful negotiator.
Jeff was the architect of our government's original Open Skies policy
to promote competition in our bilateral aviation trade agreements.
Under this policy, a great many competitive agreements were negotiated
during the first Bush administration, and the Clinton administration
continued the policy with great success. The result has been that
aviation trade markets in passenger and cargo, in which we once had 30
percent of market share, we now have 60 to 70 percent of market share
and are the dominant aviation trade partner.
Jeff Shane's experience extends well beyond aviation to other modes
of transportation, as exemplified by a discussion he and I had shortly
after the enactment of ISTEA in 1991. Jeff said, ``This is one of the
most extraordinary, innovative transportation measures ever enacted. It
has had the exceptionally beneficial effect of causing all of us at the
Assistant Secretary-Policy level to come together, share our thoughts,
understand each other's mode of transportation better and to begin
thinking, as well as acting, intermodally, something we have long
needed to do in this department.''
That is an extraordinary observation and admission to make on the
part of a policy person in any department, and that reflects the candor
with which Jeff approaches his service in the public sector.
Secretary Mineta has said to me several times that he would like Jeff
Shane to work to upgrade the department's policy office, and, as he put
it, make it a ``world-class think tank.'' We need that. We need that
kind of support at the policy level of the Department of
Transportation.
Two years ago, I met with Jeff Shane and Charlie Hunnicutt, who had
held the Assistant Secretary position during the Clinton
Administration, to explore means of upgrading the Department's aviation
policy staff, a staff that deals with the most important issues in the
department in negotiating international aviation rights for our
airlines, providing expert advice to the Department of Justice when the
department is considering airline mergers, and carrying out the
department's regulatory responsibilities, including predatory
practices, computer reservation systems and adequate competition in
Internet ticket sales.
It is deplorable that over the past 15 years, the DOT aviation staff
has been eroded by budget cutting decisions. The staff has decreased
from 166 at the time of the Civil Aeronautics Board sunset in 1985, to
fewer than 100 today. Furthermore, as many as half of the staff could
well retire in the next few years.
It was a great tribute to Jeff Shane that in his career outside of
government, he was concerned about the quality of government service
among those who continued in the department. He and I took many
opportunities over the past few years to raise awareness on the Hill
and within the aviation community of the critical importance of this
unique staff, and it is so encouraging to me that Secretary Mineta has
recognized the problem and is giving Jeff Shane a mandate to correct
it. I can think of no one better to do this, no one better qualified to
attract the staff, to inspire that staff and to keep them interested
and motivated, than Jeff Shane.
In these perilous post-September 11 times and in the aftermath of
enactment of our most recent aviation and transportation security law,
DOT needs at the policy level a person with Jeff Shane's experience,
intellectual capacity, honesty and openness to new ideas, as well as
energy to pursue and implement innovation. Jeff Shane's reentry into
public service will produce better transportation policy decisions, to
the great benefit of the Nation's economy and to all who use our
transportation systems, as well as to the benefit of the Department of
Transportation.
This new position is long overdue, much needed, and will serve our
country and our transportation policy well. After all, transportation
does represent 11 percent of our Nation's gross domestic product. That
is $1.1 trillion, an impact that we must nurture and strengthen, and
this legislation will help do that.
Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time
just to say that one of the treasures and great assets of not only the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, but the Congress is the
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar). The remarks that the gentleman
just made, going through the entire history of the Department of
Transportation, indicate why we rely on him so heavily, and why our
committee continues to prosper in a very bipartisan way.
It is thanks to his efforts that I continue to learn from him.
I urge passage of the bill.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ose). The question is on the motion
offered by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) that the House
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 3441.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor
thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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