[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 177 (Wednesday, November 1, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H8303]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON OUR AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Louisiana (Mr. Abraham) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I have a map beside me. It is not a Verizon 
or an AT&T map showing its coverage. What this is is a snapshot, a 
moment in time, of the number of airplanes in the United States' 
airspace at any moment, over 90,000 flights a day. Think about that. 
That is over 200,000 takeoffs and landings.
  We, in the United States, have the safest and the busiest airspace in 
the world; yet there are some in Congress who want to privatize this to 
a board made up of 13 members only. I personally think it is more of a 
monopolization, not a privatization of our airspace.
  This is the taxpayers' airspace. This is not the airspace that we 
should be giving away to a 13-member board, or the control of.
  Those who want to pass this AIRR Act, H.R. 2997, want us to compare 
it to Canada. Well, I have flown in Canada. Look at the map: below the 
line in the United States, above the line in Canada. It is not even 
apples to apples. It is not apples to oranges. It is apples to 
elephants.
  And you say, well, that makes no sense. No, it doesn't. It does not 
make any sense to give control of this airspace, where our wonderful 
men in uniform and women who fly the military aircraft, the pilots like 
myself, but, more importantly, the carriers that carry all of us to 
here and there, the ability to control this airspace.
  I am a small-government guy, Mr. Speaker, but there are three 
instances where government needs to be involved in the lives of our 
citizens: national defense, national intelligence, and national 
airspace.
  I would argue that I have probably been in more control towers than 
any Member of Congress, and when you walk in, there are wonderful 
controllers who are looking at modern equipment, computer screens, 
display lights, who are moving aircraft here and there, very 
efficiently, very professionally.
  There are those who have stood at this podium, Mr. Speaker, and held 
up pieces of paper like this and have scared our people into saying: 
Oh, this is the way controllers transfer control of airplanes from 
airspace to airspace.
  That is a gross mischaracterization of what is happening. They use 
this as a backup if a grid goes down, but they don't use it to move 
traffic. They use modern computers.

  The NextGen, or what we call the next generation of modernization of 
FAA, is called ADS-B, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. It 
allows separation of aircraft to come down. It has saved billions--that 
is with a B--in fuel and other costs, and yet we want to give all this 
modern equipment to the control of a 13-member board? I think not.
  We have all had delays in airports. Most of them, I will tell you, 
are weather. But how many of us have pulled up in a plane and we are 
waiting for another plane to back out of a gate? That is not an air 
traffic control issue. That is an issue with controlling the gates at 
the airport, and that goes back to the airlines.
  How many of us have been delayed because they come on and when we are 
just fixing to board the plane, oh, you have a maintenance issue, or we 
are waiting for another pilot crew to get off one aircraft to pilot 
your aircraft? Again, those who would want to pass this act would make 
you believe that that is air traffic control's fault. No, it does not 
have to do with air traffic control.
  CBO has said that if we give this airspace control to a 13-member 
private board, it will cause a $100 billion deficit addition--$100 
billion. The Congressional Review Service has said that if we do that, 
that automatically allows sequester to take place. We don't need that. 
We are trying to get out of that now. Our wonderful men and women in 
uniform are having a hard enough time meeting quotas, meeting 
equipment, meeting training, everything, because of the sequester.
  This would hurt military retirement funding. This would hurt our 
Border Patrol, men and women there protecting us from terrorist 
activity on a daily basis.
  Mr. Speaker, we need modernization, but we don't need privatization. 
It is a bad idea any way you look at it.
  We do need to pass a long-term FAA reauthorization act. I am all for 
that. Our FAA needs to have the stability of funding where they can 
look down the road more than 6 months at a time and plan for what is 
coming down and what they need to do to keep our airspace safe.
  So, Mr. Speaker, we don't need this H.R. 2997 passed. We need just to 
fund FAA for a long time.

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