[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 169 (Thursday, October 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6779-S6781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        FAA/Consumer Protections

  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I think by any standard, as we conclude 
this Congress, the House and Senate, working together, have put more 
legislation on the President's desk that has long-term impact than at 
any time in a long time, whether it was the opioid legislation or 
healthcare research funding.
  I want to talk a little bit today about the Federal Aviation 
Administration extension that, just last week, the Senate passed and 
the President signed. I believe the 5-year reauthorization is the 
longest reauthorization since the 1980s. So the traveling public, the 
FAA itself, the Department of Transportation, and the airline carriers 
of both people and freight have an understanding of what the next 5 
years should look like.

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  One of the things that will happen during the time that begins right 
now--the Senate and the House listened and the President listened to 
the traveling public about their concerns about what happens on 
airplanes and in airports. This is a bill that I worked on in the 
Aviation Subcommittee, along with Senator Cantwell, Senator Thune, and 
Senator Nelson. We worked for almost 2 years to get this bill to where 
it was when the President signed it, to address the safety, security, 
and comfort of the traveling public.
  In the wake of consumer complaints about the shrinking seat size on 
airplanes, the law directs the FAA to set minimum legroom standards and 
width and length requirements for airline seat size to ensure passenger 
comfort and safety. I think all of us have had some experience with 
seeing seats get smaller all the time. Like every other Member of the 
Senate, when I am flying back and forth every week, usually in one of 
those coach seats, somebody says: I thought you came back and forth on 
a private plane. Actually, only a few Members--maybe less than a 
handful--are able to do that. Most of us fly just like everybody else 
does, with no particular benefit. But you can sense those seats getting 
a little smaller and the legroom getting a little tighter. We have 
given new responsibility for the FAA to set standards, so the traveling 
public knows somebody is paying attention to them and how long they are 
going to be in that seat and what it is going to be like when they are 
there.
  We also have a provision that you can't take somebody off an airplane 
once they have been allowed to board because you somehow oversold. If 
somebody is on that plane, they can't be taken off that plane unless 
they agree to be taken off that plane or the passenger acts in a way 
that the safety and security and the health of other passengers could 
be a problem. So there is no more involuntarily bumping of passengers 
who are on a plane.
  The law prohibits placing live animals in overhead compartments. More 
and more people seem to travel with pets, and people have had bad 
experiences with that in the last few years. So overhead storage is not 
appropriate storage any longer for your pet if you are traveling with a 
pet.
  It also sets minimum standards for service animals that are allowed 
on flights. We all see that more all the time, too--a pet not in a cage 
but important to the individual who has a service animal. Many veterans 
now have a service animal. There are now standards on what that animal 
can be and how it has to behave on a plane.
  It bans in-flight cell calls. If you have ever sat by somebody before 
the plane takes off and learned way more about them than you want to 
know, you can imagine what it would be like if you had to learn way 
more about them based on every call they could make all the time you 
were flying. So that is not going to happen. The next time you are on 
the ground and somebody continues to talk until they are told they 
can't do that any longer, just be grateful that can't continue once the 
plane gets in the air for the whole time of the flight, which would 
technically have been allowed with Wi-Fi or whatever allowed that phone 
to be connected. That is not going to be the case now.
  Airline fees have changed. I don't like airline fees. Most people 
don't like airline fees. But if you pay a fee and you don't get the 
service--if you pay for a seat assignment that doesn't work out to be 
the kind of seat you paid for or early boarding, and that didn't happen 
or baggage that somehow wasn't handled the way your special fee was 
charged--the airlines now have to keep track of that and get you that 
money back as soon as they reasonably can or face a penalty.
  The law requires air carriers to submit to the Department of 
Transportation a one-page summary of passengers' rights, including 
compensation for flight delays, cancellations, and mishandled bags. 
Every airline has to have that available for you to look at.
  By the way, the Department of Transportation is going to have a 
Consumer Aviation Advocate. There will now be somebody at the 
Department of Transportation--it will be their job, their only job, to 
respond to you; they and their team will respond to you if you have had 
a problem on an airline and want to see what can be done about it.
  Provisions are included to address disability issues on planes, 
whether restrooms are accessible, whether anything happens that would 
harm a disabled passenger or damage their wheelchair or the other aids 
they have.
  We have a 3-year reauthorization of the Transportation Security 
Administration. There are some real needs there in both TSA Precheck 
and TSA generally that are met with this. One of those needs is more 
access to dogs. We all see dogs in airports, but every study since 9/
11--and there have been a lot of them--indicates that nothing is more 
effective than a dog for finding most of the things you are looking 
for. Some of us have gone through security lines lately where the line 
moves pretty fast, but a dog checks everybody in that line. We will see 
what happens there, but dogs generally are doing the kinds of things 
that need to be done.
  So whether it is the FAA Reauthorization Act or America's Water 
Infrastructure Act, which we passed yesterday--I think the vote on that 
was 99 to 1, but that doesn't mean it was easy to get it to the floor, 
and it doesn't mean it normally gets done by a Congress. But that has 
happened as well.
  The insurance policies that Democrats voted to take away yesterday 
have been mentioned here this morning. Those short-term health policies 
were available until the very last days of the Obama administration. I 
don't know the reason the administration had to suddenly decide that it 
didn't want that ability that several hundred thousand--maybe a couple 
of million--people had to get short-term coverage at a rate they could 
afford. For people in a job transition or something else, those were 
available that entire time.
  The Urban Institute says that 1.5 million people who otherwise would 
have no insurance will be able to have insurance under those short-term 
policies. The policies under the Affordable Care Act are still 
available; they are still subsidized; they still do everything that is 
the maximum of ObamaCare. If that is what you want to have, 
particularly if you are subsidized in that marketplace, that is 
probably where you should be. But a lot of people aren't, and a lot of 
people don't have immediate access, and a lot of people are in 
transition.
  The Urban Institute is not normally seen as a conservative watchdog, 
but they said that 1.5 million people will have insurance with these 
policies, which will continue to be available for people who wouldn't 
have insurance if they hadn't have been. So you can say anything you 
want to say. You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not 
entitled to your own facts, and I think the facts on the vote we took 
this week on those short-term policies are pretty clear.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, I want to acknowledge what Senator 
Blunt just said about the success of this Congress over the last 2 
years. It has been remarkable. What they did on FAA is tremendous. I 
enjoyed working with them on that. But I want to rise and talk about 
our veterans and what we have done for our veterans and what we need to 
do for our veterans.
  Before I do, my State of Georgia had a tough day and a tough night 
last night. The hurricane hit about 10 o'clock last night. 
Unfortunately, we lost one 11-year-old with a tree crashing through the 
roof. The Governor has declared a state of emergency for 108 of our 159 
counties. We have 1,500 National Guard troops activated and ready to 
deploy if needed to help law enforcement, emergency medical, and 
hospitals to see to it that we meet the needs of the people in our 
State. There is a lot of search and rescue going on. We are blessed 
that a lot of things didn't happen, but we were certainly hurt by those 
that did.
  For families who have lost property and families who need help, our 
sympathy is with them, and we are taking action. GEMA and FEMA are 
working hard. Governor Deal is working extremely hard. We have 
recovered a couple of times already in the last 5 years from 
hurricanes, and we will do it again. But on behalf of myself, Senator 
Perdue, and the United States Senate,

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I send our best wishes to our people back in Georgia and also to our 
people in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida. Florida was hit 
worse last night. But now the storm has passed Atlanta and is going 
over South Carolina, and then North Carolina, which just came back from 
almost the worst storm in history, in which we had 48 inches of 
rainfall in one county. I couldn't believe that much water fell in one 
day, but it did. They are recovering and doing it nicely. They have 
done a good job. But all of us know these acts of nature and acts of 
God we have gone through affect our citizens, and we need to keep them 
safe. I urge all of our citizens in Georgia and in every State in the 
Union to play close attention to what their Federal emergency 
management people say. If they tell them to evacuate, they should. If 
they tell them to hunker down, they should. They should do whatever 
they can to follow the rules the best they can. Everybody we have to 
rescue takes a law enforcement officer and a medical person out of play 
to help somebody else.