[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 69 (Tuesday, April 29, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3467-S3469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAA REAUTHORIZATION
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, imagine this: gridlock in the skies;
passengers delayed for hours and hours on a runway; an aging,
antiquated air traffic control system just struggling to keep up with
the growth of air traffic; a fight over how to pay for the billions of
dollars needed to address airport infrastructure, infrastructure in all
of its manifestations. I could be talking about the present, but I am
not. I am talking about the years 2000 and 2001, prior to 9/11.
Then 9/11 did happen. It changed our country forever, and it changed
it in countless ways. It forced us to understand how important aviation
is to our Nation, our economy, and, in fact, very much our way of life.
It also showed how fragile our system is and, I will argue, how fragile
our system remains as it further deteriorates.
This Congress has worked diligently to address the security
weaknesses. That was the TSA that took place a long time ago. That is
working. It is not perfect, but it is working. I think people feel safe
with it, but we have not adequately addressed any of the other
weaknesses.
We have completely inadequately funded the Federal Aviation
Administration. We have a chronically unprofitable commercial aviation
industry, which is the backbone of our Nation's commerce. We have an
inadequate investment in aerospace research. Because of this, we face
the same problems we did in 2000 except they are worse. I want to spend
a couple of minutes discussing why we have made so little progress in
addressing this significant aviation system, and this is really my
introduction to the bill. It is just not done in sequence.
Perversely, the attacks of September 11, which brought the commercial
airlines system to its knees, flat to its knees, properly to its knees,
solved the crisis of gridlock in the skies, to say the very least. The
enormous dropoff of air travel in 2002 and 2003 reduced the stress on
our Nation's 1950s air traffic control system. We are the only ones in
the industrial world--and I have another comparison to make which is
even more stunning later on. So delays and congestion were not issues
for travelers. We felt pretty good about it. Passengers were not daring
to fly yet. They didn't want to fly that much yet, so there was not a
lot of congestion. Not so good for the airlines but good for people who
wanted to get to places on time.
As is often the case, the urgency surrounding the need to modernize
the air traffic control system and turn it from basically an x-ray and
ground radio system into a digitalized, highly modern system, as every
other industrial country has, the interest in that system becoming
current, safer, more efficient, able to handle more passengers on time
and more delivery of cargo, waned because the air traffic control
system is not easily understood. It is assumed. It is taken for
granted. People assume it is the most modern because it is America;
therefore, it has to be. In fact, it is the least modern of all systems
in industrial countries.
So interest waned, and in the 2003 FAA reauthorization, which I
helped author with then-Senator Lott, we laid a foundation to build a
modern, digital satellite-based air traffic control system. We
authorized a significant increase in the FAA's capital budget to meet
the ATC modernization needs, an increase based upon the
administration's own request, in fact. But instead of investing in the
system in 2004 and 2005; that is, speed of landing, parallel landing,
all of those items, even taking into account wind shear, which every
other country has except us, instead of that, in 2006, the Bush
administration proposed dramatic cuts in the FAA's facility and
equipment account, which is precisely the account which funds the
modernization of our air traffic control system.
I have to say, Congress complied. I am not proud of that fact. I am
not quite sure the reason for that, but facts must be stated.
Over this period, Congress therefore appropriated $600 million less
than the 2003 FAA bill authorized for the FAA's capital accounts. It is
a sad story on the part of the administration, and it is a sad story on
the part of us. Neither of us were living up to our obligations.
Obviously, people didn't see the future.
Under the leadership, however, of Senator Murray, the Senate has
begun fully funding the FAA's modernization needs, but the damage of
underfunding the FAA is not easily repaired. It is a large battleship.
We just cannot turn it around in a couple of years.
The budget surpluses that we once had are gone, but by the FAA's own
estimates the development of the next generation of air traffic control
system, NextGen--when I say that, I mean the digitalized GPS system--is
going to cost between $20 billion to $40 billion through the year 2025.
I might add, we are going to have to not only maintain our analog
system because that is what we are using, inefficient as it might be,
but build a new system at the same time.
Despite the popular misconception that we are building a new system
that the FAA will turn on one day in 2025, NextGen is a program that
will then employ multiple technologies over time. I will discuss
NextGen in detail later. I will discuss a lot of items in a lot of
speeches later. But we cannot just shut off the ground-based radar
system. That is all we have, crummy as it is, pathetic as it is. The
FAA will need to operate that system for years to come, probably 10 to
12 years to come.
By late 2006, it was clear that air travel was returning to pre-9/11
levels. That took some time, but in 2006 there we were. The ATC's
system ability was again overtaxed to meet the demands being placed
upon it. Gridlock in the skies returned, and it is only going to get
worse.
I said yesterday the FAA is forecasting that 1 billion passengers
will pass through our Nation's aviation system by the year 2025. That
is a 300 million person increase from this year. We cannot ignore this
issue anymore and, hence, this bill.
The United States is losing its position as the global leader in
aviation. As the Economist magazine noted--this is so horrible I cannot
even say it, but I am going to because it is true--the United States is
behind Mongolia in the adoption of new air traffic control
technologies. That is a national disgrace, and there is also a reason
for it. Mongolia did not have an air traffic control system of any
sort. So when they decided to do it, they did it digitally, GPS. So
they are ahead of us.
I think it is a national embarrassment that a major carrier has to
inconvenience 200,000 passengers--that is what we have been reading
about for the last several weeks--because the FAA was not properly
overseeing the airlines' maintenance.
Our Nation's aviation system is, to be quite blunt, on the brink--it
is on the brink. It is at the cliff. We must move boldly into the
future or we risk losing a lot of safety and a lot of lives.
I cannot emphasize the importance of a vibrant and strong aviation
system. I want people to hear this point. They take it for granted. You
get on an airplane, and you go do something. No, you get on an
airplane, you go do something, but it is also the bellwether of the
Nation's economic underpinning. It is not the U.S. highway system.
People don't drive to States to look at industrial sites or to make
decisions; they fly. What you cannot do over the Internet, the next
closest step is aviation, and it bears our attention. It has never
gotten it in the 24 years I have been in this body.
It is fundamental to our Nation's long-term growth. It is also vital
to the economic future of countless small and local communities,
something the distinguished Presiding Officer from his very roots
understands very well.
For example, in West Virginia, people who work in the automotive
industry need easy access to Asia to facilitate their business. Yes,
that is West Virginia, but that is very important to me. West Virginia
is like every other State. There is no State in this country that does
not have rural areas. All
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of our future is tied to a modern aviation system, if we would only
have the will to build it. In this bill, we begin to.
We have all witnessed the fragility of our Nation's aviation system
firsthand. It has been all over the news. People are furious. The
waiting lines, the stories about planes bumping into each other or
almost bumping into each other on the runways as they move around--it
is just too much, too many people. Go into any airport. As I said
yesterday, I came back into Washington National Airport from some city
in the North, and you couldn't move. You could barely move. The whole
airport was just packed with people--not just around the counters, not
just around the gateways, but the whole place was packed. I was saying
to myself: This is Washington National, the Nation's Capital, highly
prosperous, definitely growing. What is it going to be like 10 years
from now?
If we do everything we want, we will not have this system in place by
10 years. It was scary.
Our constituents are very frustrated about flying and they have every
right to blame us, the administration and the Congress. It is easy to
blame the airlines. That is always everybody's choice of blame--blame
the airlines. There is no question that the airlines have a lot to do
to improve their customer service, and the bill addresses that issue.
All kinds of things have to happen in the airline industry. But I am
going to give a speech this afternoon which talks about the airline
industry and how absolutely desperately close it is to collapsing. I
exaggerate not.
We must address the core problem facing the system and the lack of
capacity to allow more aircraft to use the skies. When the weather is
clear and our Nation's aviation infrastructure operates perfectly, most
travelers get to their destinations on time. It just seems the weather
is not clear very often these days, and people are frequently shuttled
to other places to get to where they are going, the original place, or
they have to sit on the tarmac for a long time and they get in a very
bad place--and indeed they should.
It is a conundrum. I heard this morning a couple of airlines are
thinking about raising their prices. They have the price of oil and
their fuel. The prices of oil and their fuel are, in fact, two very
different numbers. What are they going to do? How are they going to get
out of this? If the equipment fails to work properly because the
weather is bad, or even for a few minutes, the system often grinds to a
halt, and delays in key airports such as JFK and O'Hare Airport are
felt through our entire system.
You can take eight runways--Senator Durbin and I tried to do this a
number of years ago. You can fix the eight runways at O'Hare Airport,
which was built back in 1962 with very few people traveling and the
runways were not built in the modern sense, with modern flow in mind.
It would take about $10 billion to $12 billion to do that. But if you
did it, air congestion in the United States would probably clear up by
about 25 to 30 percent instantly. So it is not a large, complicated
thing. Sometimes it is an air traffic control system you need,
sometimes it is a reconfiguration of runways, sometimes it is how do
you handle the New York-New Jersey area. But these are not problems
beyond our reach. Aviation gridlock is not just an inconvenience, it is
becoming a threat to our economic well-being.
Aviation experts predict that these delays are going to go from bad
to worse--soon. By the year 2015, delays will become so bad--I hope my
colleagues will listen to this part--that none of the 1 billion people
who will be traveling on airlines that year will get to their
destinations on time--not one. That is what is being predicted. That is
not very far from now. That is what is being predicted. More planes
will be needed and they will lead to greater congestion in the skies.
The meltdown of the air traffic control system will put passenger
safety at unnecessary risk. S. 1300, our bill, authorizes approximately
$65 billion for all FAA operations and programs. Most important, our
bill lays the necessary foundation for developing NextGen air traffic--
that is the new air traffic control system--by providing it $12 billion
over the life of this bill for FAA's capital investment accounts.
Importantly, Senator Baucus and Senator Murray and I have agreed on
the creation of a new subaccount--this is not manipulation, it is a
perfectly proper thing to do--a new subaccount with the aviation trust
fund that will provide $400 million for the next length of this bill,
and then for bills after that because we will have to do it again, so
we can get our air traffic control system rebuilt.
I appreciate the hard work of our colleague. Senator Murray is
unbelievable on these things, as she is on virtually everything. A new
satellite-based radar system will allow airplanes to move more
efficiently, improve safety, improve the flow of commerce, reduce the
consumption of fuel which in turn creates environmental benefits.
The bill provides approximately $16 billion for airport
infrastructure--it is a boring word with large consequences. Since
2000, I am pleased we have been able to double the amount of funding
annually for airport infrastructure grants--that means lengthening
runways, that means improving conditions, that means upgrading what is
needed to handle air traffic in a rapidly growing traveling world. Our
investment in runway capacity has made dramatic improvements in safety.
I believe everyone in aviation recognizes the need to modernize our
national air transportation system in order to meet the growing surge
of passengers and to accommodate the enormous increase in general
aviation. I am going to have a speech to make about general aviation,
but I will not do it today--particularly high-end general aviation.
That is called jets. I am not talking about crop dusters. General
aviation is made up of lots of things--we only include 10 percent of
that 100 as our target, where we can rightfully and legitimately go.
Those people are getting a free ride. I will have a speech about that,
I guarantee you.
It is a very unhappy situation when people hear about it. It is
probably best explained on Jay Leno or David Letterman. That would
probably drive it home to people. Until then, it is sort of an abstract
quality. Until then, look at those big, fancy jets. We don't like those
big, fancy jets. What they are not doing is helping pay for all this.
They are paying for 3 percent of our air traffic control system even
though they are the majority of airplanes in the skies at any given
moment over the United States of America.
All this has been a long and very bitter dialog. In early 2007,
Senator Lott and I asked the stakeholders to come to an agreement on
FAA funding issues. It was a fascinating experiment, which we see very
often. No one wanted to compromise. So we said we will give you a
choice. You sit down in a room. We will provide the sandwiches and the
Coke or whatever. Then you come out with an agreement or we will write
a bill for you. They chose not to yield a single point, not a single
point. They all had to have exactly what they had. They didn't want to
pay anything more. Air traffic control--push that aside, you are not
going to tax me. It is the other guy.
So Senator Lott and I imposed a compromise on everyone. The
compromise sparked an absolutely fascinating but not pleasant
multiyear, multimillion dollar campaign against our lovely bill, S.
1300. Later on I will discuss, as I indicated, much more about that.
We have compromised. I have compromised--not happily but
necessarily--in order to reach a bipartisan bill that could actually be
signed into law and begin the work of modernization in earnest, along
with making such needed safety improvements.
Air traffic control modernization is but one of the many challenges
the FAA faces. Over the last several weeks, the FAA's ability to
oversee the airlines it regulates has undermined the public confidence
in the safety of our Nation's air traffic system, and nobody can
dispute that. People are in shock at what they have seen over the last
several weeks. Statistically, the United States has the safest aviation
system in the world. That is what they always throw at us. But
statistics do not always tell the whole story, nor do they say anything
about the future.
I am particularly concerned about the number of runway incursions.
That is when airplanes are on the tarmac
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and they are moving around, positioning themselves under the guidance
of the air traffic control system. They are constantly almost running
into each other--or in the air--or just missing. It is unacceptable. It
is horrible. It is heading in a much worse direction. It is not
something we talk about much, but once in a while stories of near
misses at our Nation's airports in fact do make the news.
Let's be honest. If it had not been for the quick thinking and action
of a few air traffic control people and our pilots, our Nation would
have had one if not several major accidents claiming the lives of
hundreds of people over the last several years.
This legislation and the managers' amendment I have offered contain
provisions to improve the safety of the Nation's aviation system and
the FAA's oversight of that system. The AMAC, as we call it, includes a
number of provisions to improve safety, providing the FAA with the
resources to conduct thorough oversight of air carriers and foreign
repair stations--this is a very controversial subject so expect to hear
more about that--and upgrade the existing safety infrastructure at our
airports.
Later in our debate--not today, not this morning--I will outline the
important facts of the safety provision in the bill.
The bill addresses the other core challenge which will be facing our
aviation system, and that is keeping America's small communities
connected. The Presiding Officer and I understand that. So does every
Senator in this body; if they choose to focus on it, they should be
able to understand it. The continuing economic crisis facing the U.S.
airline industry absolutely imperils, in stark and terminal terms, the
future of hundreds of small rural communities across our country as
area carriers drastically reduce service to small rural communities--
which is exactly what is going on. That acceleration is going to pick
up.
Then you have to say years ago we did this e-rate thing to make the
Internet available to everybody in every classroom; no different rural
and urban, everybody had it. We went from 15 percent connection to 97
percent.
Not so on aviation. We are going in the other direction. While small
and rural communities have long had to cope with limited and unreliable
service, we are grateful to have limited and even unreliable service.
We are grateful to be able to get into a little prop--because that is
what we have--and get from here to there because we can connect in the
hub-and-spoke system.
All of these problems have been exacerbated by the weakened financial
condition of most U.S. airlines. I am going to talk about that this
afternoon. The reduction or elimination of air service has a
devastating effect on the economy of small communities. Having adequate
air service is not just a matter of convenience or pride, it is a
matter of survival: economically, psychologically--self-esteem. Without
access to reliable air service, no business is willing to locate its
operations in these areas of the country, no matter how attractive the
quality of life, no matter how much less the housing costs, no matter
how much land may be available. They will not go there. Airports are
economic engines that attract critical new development opportunities
and jobs.
West Virginia has been able to attract firms from around the world.
Why? Because corporate executives know they can visit their operations
with ease--for no other reason. As I will explain in my next speech
about the state of the airlines, which is a very depressing speech and
therefore important, that is in jeopardy. Rural and smalltown America
must continue to be adequately linked to the Nation's air
transportation network. That is all we can do. We can't get from here
to an important place directly, but we can link into the hub-and-spoke
system, which has been what we have always done.
I wind up. Small and rural communities are the first to bear the
brunt of bad economic times and the last to see the benefit of good
economic times. That is not fair. Americans are Americans. The general
economic downturn and the dire straits of the aviation community have
placed exceptional burdens on air service to our most isolated
communities. The Federal Government must provide additional resources,
and our bill does that.
The bill also reaffirms our commitment to rural America by increasing
the essential air service--the Presiding Officer well knows what that
is--and also to the Small Community Air Service Development Program,
for 4 more years, and we also have a passenger bill of rights which
will be discussed later.
The industry would be required to provide a number of things: Telling
people about what planes are on time, what are not, what the pattern
is; sort of to get a sense of all that, but there is a lot more. So all
of us recognize there are no quick and easy solutions to this timely
and timeless problem that plague our aviation industry.
Aviation incorporates so many things that are so critical to all of
us. It connects people to distant family members, links businesses to
businesses, allows people to interact easily on a global scale. We are
a global world, but it is still amazing to me to be able to get on a
plane in the morning in West Virginia and be in Asia that same day.
So what railroads were to the 19th and 20th centuries, air
transportation is to the 21st century; with all due respect to our
interstate highway system. So given the challenges our Nation's
aviation system faces, I think we must pass S. 1300, which is called
the Aviation Investment and Modernization Act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I would like to inquire as to how much
time I have.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 37 minutes remaining for the use of
the minority at this time.
Mr. INHOFE. First of all, let me say to my friend from West Virginia,
we have done a good job in the areas you are talking about because it
was not too long ago that all the AIP concentration was going to big
regionals. Due to our efforts, we now have given greater power to the
State aeronautic boards, who have a better idea as to what the needs
are in the State of West Virginia, my State of Oklahoma.
I think we have come a long way. I would certainly echo what you say.
I am a little privileged to be the last active commercial pilot in the
Senate, so I take a personal interest in these things.
But there is nothing that can help a community be more viable than a
good general aviation airport, an airport that can serve the commercial
community. In fact, you can look through our State and see where the
communities are not doing well and tie that to the capacity they have--
air traffic capacity.
So I think we are going to be doing a good thing by addressing that
this afternoon. That is not why I am here though.
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