[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 21200-21202]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                             AIRLINE SAFETY

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, we are fiddling while Rome burns. The

[[Page 21201]]

headline in this morning's Washington Post, ``Airport Security 
Crackdown Ordered,'' particularly galls this Senator. I have been with 
the FAA since its creation. I have been on the Commerce Committee for 
right on 35 years. I worked with the old Civil Aeronautics Board. We 
tried our best to get this entity in ship shape over many years.
  It was only the year before last that we finally got the monies that 
should have gone to airport safety and improvement to go to airport 
safety and improvement.
  We had, in 1988, Pan Am 103. We had extensive hearings. And what did 
we come up with? What we came up with is exactly what they write in the 
editorial here, that what we really need is more training and more 
supervision--``help wanted.'' And then we had further hijackings.
  We had the TWA Flight 800 in 1996, and we had further hearings. We 
had the Gore commission. What did they recommend? The same old, same 
old of more training and more supervision, more oversight. Got to get 
stern about this. Crackdowns.
  Last year, we passed the FAA authorization bill. And what did we call 
for? We called for more supervision, more training, and then 5,000 
people were killed. And we have folks over on the House side, most 
respectfully, who do not understand that we have lost these 5,000. 
Terrorists came along with cardboard knives and committed mass murder, 
and everything else like that, but they say don't worry about what 
happened on 9-11.
  What happened just this last week? Last week, a man boarded a plane 
with a pistol down in New Orleans. The individual remembered he had the 
gun and said: Oh, my heavens. Then he turned it over to the airline 
crew, or otherwise. And the same airline security firm that was fined 
last year in Philadelphia for hiring criminals is still hiring 
criminals.
  The Senate reacted. We got together. We had hearings. We had the 
airline pilots, the airline crews, the assistants, the airline 
executives--everyone connected--and they endorsed the approach of 
federalization; that this was a public safety role, need and 
responsibility. This coalition determined resolutely that we could not 
toy with this anymore after that tremendous loss on 9-11 and continue 
to play games with more oversight and more supervision and more 
training.
  And ordering crackdowns: Can you imagine that, ordering a crackdown 7 
weeks afterwards? Why not that afternoon, that night, or the next 
morning? A crackdown? Oh, no, they had to think of the airlines first, 
while the airlines themselves are begging for safety because they 
realize that ensuring passenger safety is essential to reviving the 
industry. The Senate passed our bill 100-zip; every Republican, every 
Democrat voted for it. Our measure is, more than anything, an airline 
stimulus bill.
  Americans are not going to get on these planes as long as there is 
fear, and we have the insecurity that we have. They are not going to 
get on the planes as long as they have U.S. Air Force planes flying 
over them ready to shoot them down.
  With our bill that stops immediately. Once you secure that cockpit 
door, not to be opened in flight, there is no reason for hijackings 
because you can't.
  All you can do is start a fight in the cabin, knowing that the order 
to the pilot is to land at the nearest airport where law enforcement is 
going to be there and you are going to prison. That is the Israeli El 
Al approach. We outlined it. We provided the diagram for the El Al plan 
that I still have. If I had time this morning, I would show it. It is a 
perimeter defense. In 30 years El Al has not had a hijacking.
  Don't talk to me about European private airport security. Sure, 
European security personnel is better paid because all the European 
folks are supported for retirement and health care. These minimum wage 
folks have no retirement, no health care, no security, no anything. And 
the security firms are worried that they may quit. They all are 
quitting. That has been the experience at the Hartsfield airport in 
Atlanta. There has been over 400-percent turnover there. They don't 
stay there longer than 3 months.
  Yet the opposition to real airport security has stories going around. 
The reason I came to the floor is to again bring attention to the 
commonsensical, thorough, and bipartisan fashion with which the Senate 
approached airline security. They are still talking about the 
Democratic bill on the House side. You can't get it any more bipartisan 
unless we are going to let the pages vote. Maybe we ought to do that. I 
mean, can't we get the truth to the American people that we are ready, 
willing, able, and glad to pay for it, $2.50 per flight? The polls show 
people would be willing to pay $25 added to a ticket, glad to do it. 
But we can take care of it with $2.50 so there is no question about 
being paid for.
  The fundamentals of safety have to be hammered home to our colleagues 
on the House side. We are not playing games anymore. None wants to 
contract out the FBI. I wonder what the President wants? We were told a 
month ago that the President would go along with our bill. We felt 
absolutely secure. But they have some political machinations going on 
over there with Mr. Armey and Mr. DeLay. And Mr. Armey says: I don't 
want them all to join a union. Well, they all can join the unions under 
the private contractor. In fact, a third of them have. The reason the 
other two-thirds have not, is they can't read the application in order 
to join. They are refugees and immigrants. The application is in 
English. Go ahead to the airports. I go through there regularly, almost 
every week. They just cannot speak the language. That is no fault of 
their own. They are getting what jobs they can. But we can't do this 
with Americans' and the airline travelers' safety at risk.
  We would not contract out the Capitol Police or the Border Patrol or 
the Secret Service or the FBI or defense. What is the matter with the 
Government? You just heard about a bill--all the defense workers at the 
Charleston naval shipyard, all the ``navalees'' belong to a union. You 
just heard the majority leader talk about laying down to conservative 
interests. I am not talking pro-union or anti-union. I am saying 
federal public safety officers cannot strike and they can be fired. 
This particular Senator supported President Reagan when he had to take 
that approach with the airline pilots. But we fiddle while Rome burns.
  Would we ever not just contract out? Would we ever give our safety to 
foreign corporations? Can you imagine taking the defense and 
contracting it out, or the FBI, to the Swedish company or the Secret 
Service to the Netherlands company? These are the firms responsible for 
airline security now. The airlines get the lowest bidder, and they 
couldn't care less.
  That English company, they were fined for hiring criminals and 
falsifying their background checks. And since the time of the court 
fines, they have continued to hire criminals and not give the 
background checks. Yet they say: Well, let's see what they want. Let's 
get flexibility. You aren't going to have flexibility with the FBI or 
Secret Service or the Capitol Police. There is not flexibility. It is 
safety. That is what they have to understand over there, that we are 
not going to give it to the foreign companies.
  We are not going to have the momentary safety checks or the European 
system. We are going to have the El Al, the Israeli system that has 
worked, proof positive, for 30 years. Once you secure that cockpit and 
they know there can't be a hijacking, you can take all these F-15s and 
F-16s and National Guard reserves that are flying all night long over 
Washington and New York and wherever and say: Save the money and save 
the time. Let them go back to their work. There is not going to be a 
hijacking. There is not going to be a plane shot down. If there is an 
attempted hijacking, it is down to the first landing and on to jail. 
That is where they are headed. They know that. So our terrorist 
adversaries will find some other way, like the mail and anthrax, but 
not the airlines.
  Security has to be comprehensive. Under El Al, they check thoroughly 
and rotate the screeners from the boarding gates, to the tarmac and to 
cleaning out the aisles.

[[Page 21202]]

  I flew out of Dulles last week. And what do you do? You get seat 9A. 
So I can call out to my friend who has been working on the tarmac for 
the last 2 years who is in cahoots with me as a terrorist. I say: Paste 
a pistol underneath seat 9A, loaded. I get on. I got through all the 
screeners and everything else. And afterwards, they wonder why, because 
you have to have the same kind of security on the tarmac. You have to 
have the same security for the people who cater. You have to have the 
same security with the people who clean. This is a safety/security 
responsibility and not a game of playing around on whether they are 
going to join a union or not.
  A third of airline security workers join unions now and have the 
right to strike. Yes, they can join our union, but they can't strike 
and they can be fired.
  On contracting out, 669,000 civilian personnel work in our defense 
forces and at the Pentagon. Some of them were lost on September 11. 
Give us a Senate bill or something very similar to it because that is 
the overwhelming sentiment. The captain of the airline pilots appeared 
with us again yesterday and said: Please pass the Senate version so we 
can get on and move with it and get the cockpit doors secured, get 
thorough background checks, and then be ready, willing, and able to 
give the watch list to the screeners so they will know what to look 
for.
  At the present time, you wouldn't give the watch list to these 
foreign companies, agents at minimum wage. You wouldn't give it to 
them. You would try to keep that security knowledge to yourself and 
send somebody out. If I had a watch list and was trying, I would have 
an FBI agent at the likely airports where they may board, but I 
wouldn't give it to the present screeners. We have to clean that out 
entirely and come down to the reality that this is totally bipartisan. 
It is not in the sense of trying to be pro-labor or anti-union, pro-
Democrat or pro-Republican, or anything else like that.
  We have finally learned at least one lesson from 9-11--that we can't 
play around any longer with airline security. We have to get on with it 
and not fiddle here some 7 weeks as ``Rome" burns, and we wonder what 
to do and put all this political pressure on to change the folks around 
and not bring it up and not allow them to vote common sense.
  I yield the floor.

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