[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18704-18705]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        TRANSPORTATION SECURITY

  Mr. DURBIN. I would like to address this issue of aviation security, 
which has been addressed on the floor by my colleague from 
Massachusetts, Senator Kerry. I note that Senator Torricelli is also in 
the Chamber. We were in a meeting yesterday to discuss security 
transportation security, not just aviation security. There are many of 
us served by Amtrak who believe that George Warrington, the CEO of 
Amtrak, has given us fair notice that he needs additional resources to 
make certain that Amtrak continues to be one of the safest ways to 
travel in America.
  I believe there are over 600 Amtrak stations across this country. 
They are putting in place the kind of security we want, to make certain 
that no terrorist will see a target of opportunity in the metroliners 
or Amtrak trains that crisscross America.
  I am happy, as I have noted at the beginning of my statement, to be a 
cosponsor of S. 1447 on aviation security. There are many provisions 
that I think are excellent. I am happy to join Senator Hollings and so 
many others, on a bipartisan basis, to support the bill. But we would 
be remiss to believe that passing a bill on aviation security takes 
care of our obligation, our responsibility. Beyond that, we have to 
look to the traveling public and other vulnerabilities.
  I agree with my colleagues who also have Amtrak service that we need 
to give to Amtrak the resources and the authority to make certain they 
can upgrade their security and take a look at a lot of their vulnerable 
infrastructure.
  In this Chamber yesterday, Senator Torricelli talked about some of 
the tunnels. George Warrington of Amtrak has brought this to my 
attention. Many of these tunnels date back to the Civil War in their 
construction.
  They do not have adequate safety in the tunnels so that if anything 
occurred, the people on the train would be in a very perilous 
situation. As these trains pass in the tunnels, literally hundreds if 
not thousands of passengers are trusting that we are doing everything 
we should do for the security of their transportation. I don't think we 
are doing enough. In fact, I believe we should include in this aviation 
security bill the authorization for Amtrak to receive additional funds 
for security.
  I am troubled--I have to say this with some regret--that a lot of my 
colleagues in the Senate who have had a very negative view of Amtrak as 
a governmental function are translating that into a reluctance to 
address these security and safety measures. I am not one of them. If we 
take a look at the annual expenditure for transportation at the Federal 
level, we spend roughly $33 billion a year on highways, $12 billion a 
year on airports--before the crisis--and about $500 million a year on 
Amtrak. Anyone in the State of Illinois and in many States across the 
Nation knows that if we are going to have a balanced transportation 
system, we need all three. We need aviation, good highway 
transportation and mass transit, and a national rail passenger 
corporation such as Amtrak.
  It is no surprise to me, as I have been on the trains more often 
since September 11 than before, that more and more Americans are 
turning there.
  We have an obligation to protect them, not to wait until there is an 
accident or something worse. I hope my colleagues will reconsider their 
opposition to Amtrak security authorization and appropriations. We 
should do it, and we should do it now without question.
  Our commitment should be to every American to make their 
transportation as safe as humanly possible.
  Let me address the aviation security issue for a minute. Yesterday, 
in my office I had representatives of the three major international 
corporations involved in aviation airport screening and security. They 
told me an interesting story. For those who may not be aware, until 
this moment in time, we have given to the airlines the responsibility 
to contract out the security and screening stations at the airports. We 
have found, as we have looked into it, that going to the lowest bidder 
in some circumstances meant that you didn't have an employee who was 
adequately compensated or trained.
  I will quickly add that in my hometown of Springfield, IL, and many 
airports I have visited, the people working the screening equipment are 
doing an extraordinarily good job. Any one of us who has been through 
an airport at any time in the past few years knows that too often you 
have found at those security stations employees who were not taking it 
seriously.
  Examine the analysis from the GAO, and it turns out that the turnover 
in some of the airports is 100 percent a year, 200 percent a year and, 
in the worst case, over 400 percent a year. The employees come and go 
if they are given an opportunity to take a job at Cinnabon or anywhere 
else in the airport. They are quickly gone from the screening stations. 
We have not taken this responsibility seriously, nor have the airlines.
  Now we face a new day. The private contractors who came to me 
yesterday said that it is a different world altogether overseas. In 
fact, one of them

[[Page 18705]]

noted the fact that in Israel it is a private company that handles the 
security at the airport with certification by the Government and 
supervision by the Government, as is the case in many European 
capitals. I don't know if we can safely move in our own minds from what 
we see today with these same companies to a model using those companies 
in a different context.
  When I asked Secretary Mineta last week to describe for me how this 
might work, the details were still forthcoming. That left me a little 
bit cold. Many of my colleagues share the belief that the safest way to 
address this, as we do in the bill, is to say that we will federalize 
the security and safety at airports. This bill goes beyond the 
screening station and talks about the responsibility under this bill. 
Let me quote from it on the security operations:

       The administrator shall establish and enforce rules to 
     improve the fiscal security of air traffic control 
     facilities, parked aircraft, aircraft servicing equipment, 
     aircraft supplies, automobile parking facilities, access and 
     transition areas at airports served by other means of ground 
     or water transportation.

  The important thing is that this bill goes far beyond the screening 
stations at the airports. I believe if we are going to maintain safety 
at airports and on our airplanes, it has to be a secure environment. 
That means we are not only conscious and sensitive to what passengers 
bring onto airplanes but every single person who has contact with an 
airplane. A caterer, a clean-up crew, refueling personnel, someone who 
is a mechanic coming on board, or baggage handlers, all of them have to 
be supervised to make certain that those airplanes are secure. This 
bill does it. It does it through federalization.
  I think we should view the safety of our airports and airplanes as 
matters of national security. After September 11, we can do no less.
  I hope we enact this legislation and do it very quickly so that we 
can have in place a system that will help to restore confidence in the 
flying public.
  I am happy to report in my own personal experience more and more 
people are returning to airports. I am glad that is the case.

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