[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 21223]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



       FEDERALIZED SYSTEM PROVIDES UNIFORMITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

  (Ms. NORTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, everybody knows we are in a recession. What 
America knows is that this body is deepening that recession by the 
delay in our airline security bill. There is a new fear of flying and 
there are enormous disincentives to flying that are having an atrocious 
effect on our economy.
  What will it take to make the pictures of September 11 and the Twin 
Towers recede? People want something close to a guarantee that it will 
not happen again, guarantees we cannot give them.
  What we can give them is a uniform system of public accountability 
for screening and airline safety. By definition, private contractors 
are not uniform. That, indeed, is one of their advantages. They give us 
diversity. It is not diversity we need when it comes to screening and 
airline safety.
  What the public is demanding in order to get them back in the air is 
that we maximize uniformity and that we maximize accountability. The 
only way to do that is to federalize in the air the way law enforcement 
operates on the ground.

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