[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 24913-24915]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



   DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION POLICY RESPONSIBILITY REALIGNMENT ACT

  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 3441) to amend title 49, United States Code, to realign the 
policy responsibility in the Department of Transportation, and for 
other purposes.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 3441

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. REALIGNMENT OF POLICY RESPONSIBILITY IN THE 
                   DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION.

       (a) Section 102 of title 49, United States Code, is 
     amended--
       (1) by redesignating subsection (d) as subsection (g);
       (2) by inserting a new subsection (d) as follows:
       ``(d) The Department has an Under Secretary of 
     Transportation for Policy appointed by the President, by and 
     with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Under 
     Secretary shall provide leadership in the development of 
     policy for the Department, supervise the policy activities of 
     Assistant Secretaries with primary responsibility for 
     aviation, international, and other transportation policy 
     development and carry out other powers and duties prescribed 
     by the Secretary. The Under Secretary acts for the Secretary 
     when the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary are absent or 
     unable to serve, or when the offices of Secretary and Deputy 
     Secretary are vacant.''; and
       (3) in subsection (e) by striking ``Secretary and the 
     Deputy Secretary'' each place it appears in the last sentence 
     and inserting ``Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and Under 
     Secretary of Transportation for Policy''.
       (b) Section 102 of title 49, United States Code, is further 
     amended by striking subsection (g), as redesignated by 
     subsection (a)(1), on the date that an individual is 
     appointed to the position of Under Secretary of 
     Transportation for Policy under section 102(d), as added by 
     subsection (a)(2).

     SEC. 2. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

       Section 102(e) of title 49, United States Code, is amended 
     by striking ``4 Assistant Secretaries'' and inserting ``5 
     Assistant Secretaries''.

     SEC. 3. POSITIONS IN EXECUTIVE SERVICE.

       (a) Section 5314 of title 5, United States Code, is amended 
     by inserting before
       ``Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety 
     Administration.''
     the following:
       ``Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy.''.
       (b) Section 5315 of title 5, United States Code, is amended 
     by striking
       ``Assistant Secretaries of Transportation (4).''
     and inserting the following:
       ``Assistant Secretaries of Transportation (5).''.
       (c) Effective on the date that an individual is appointed 
     to the position of Under Secretary of Transportation for 
     Policy under section 102(d) of title 49, United States Code, 
     as added by section 1(a)(2) of this Act, section 5316 of 
     title 5, United States Code, is amended by striking 
     ``Associate Deputy Secretary, Department of 
     Transportation.''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Clement) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette).
  Mr. LATOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3441 realigns transportation policy responsibility 
within the Department of Transportation and was requested by the 
Department. As the Department of Transportation reorganizes and 
refocuses its efforts to ensure America's transportation security, it 
is important that it is able to develop policy across transportation 
modes.
  Under the current organization of the Department, policy development 
is spread over three offices within the Department of Transportation. 
This results in a fragmented approach to policy development. The 
purpose of this bill is to provide a seamless, long-range and strategic 
approach to development of policy in DOT by establishing a new Under 
Secretary for Transportation

[[Page 24914]]

Policy, who will be appointed by the President and confirmed by the 
Senate.
  In order to ensure better communication with the public and the 
press, the bill will also create an Assistant Secretary for Public 
Affairs. This will round out the management team for the Secretary to 
allow for better management of the Department.
  This bipartisan bill, Mr. Speaker, is also strongly supported by the 
Department of Transportation. Transportation policy is too important to 
be undertaken in a haphazard manner in this day when transportation has 
become so essential to our economic well-being. Proper lines of 
authority and communication are vital to the continued operation of the 
Department.
  For that reason, I strongly support this bill. I urge my colleagues 
to do the same.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I rise in strong support of H.R. 3441, the Department of 
Transportation Policy Responsibility Realignment Act.
  The most important provision in this bill creates a new position in 
DOT of Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy. The person 
selected for this important position will be the third-ranking 
executive in the Department and will be responsible for coordinating 
the Department's domestic and international policies for all modes of 
transportation. This type of coordination is the very reason the 
Department was formed. We certainly should have an official responsible 
for integrating and coordinating all transportation policy, and 
developing intermodal transportation.
  I am pleased that the administration has announced that if this 
legislation is passed its nominee will be Jeffrey Shane. Mr. Shane has 
a long and distinguished career in transportation and was the 
Department's Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs 
in the George H. Bush administration. He is superbly qualified for this 
position, and we are extremely fortunate that he has been willing to 
give up a successful law practice to return to the government.
  I am also pleased that Secretary Mineta has asked Mr. Shane to 
rebuild the Department's policy staff, especially the aviation policy 
staff, which has been drastically reduced in recent years. Secretary 
Mineta has directed Mr. Shane to develop ``a world class think tank'' 
at DOT. I enthusiastically support this objective and look forward to 
working with Mr. Shane on all issues of transportation policy.
  I urge my colleagues to support the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman 
from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking Democrat on the Committee on 
Transportation and Infrastructure, who has distinguished himself in so 
many ways in keeping the committee moving forward in the 21st century.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for those kind words and for 
yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I am delighted the leadership of the committee has moved 
quickly to bring this bill to the House floor. I strongly support the 
initiative to create a new position of Under Secretary for 
Transportation Policy. It will help this Department to carry out its 
very significant and far-reaching responsibilities to develop 
integrated domestic and international transportation policies.
  I have had the good fortune of being present at the creation of the 
Department of Transportation in 1966 when I was administrative 
assistant to my predecessor in Congress, John Blatnik, who then was 
chairman of the Executive and Legislative Reorganization Subcommittee 
of the House Committee on Government Operations. He was asked by then 
President Lyndon Johnson to manage and bring to the House floor 
legislation to create a Department of Transportation, out of 
recognition that what we had was a fragmentation, a great diversity of 
modes of transportation, each with their own stovepipe means of 
operation but without a single overarching transportation policy.
  It was President Johnson's objective to bring all these entities 
together in one new department that would be able to deal with 
transportation as an entity. We did that. It took quite some effort to 
bring together modal administrations that for years had operated on 
auto pilot, without any coordination, without interaction among them. 
The first Secretary of Transportation, Alan Boyd, took to the task with 
great vigor and enthusiasm and his successors have done the same. It 
has taken well over 30 years to craft a spirit of transportation within 
the Department.
  In the passage of ISTEA, we brought this concept of a Department of 
Transportation with a culture of transportation to its, I think, 
logical conclusion. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency 
Act really culminated years of effort of creating a transportation 
spirit and policy and need for intermodal communication within the 
Department, culminated all in one piece of legislation. It was an 
extraordinary step forward in the history of transportation in America.
  The new Under Secretary will be the third-ranking official in the 
Department. He will manage all Department-wide offices dealing with 
policy and with intermodal transportation to develop comprehensive, 
sound and interrelated transportation policies. I might say that 16 
years ago I introduced the first legislation to create a position of 
under secretary for intermodalism in the Department of Transportation, 
and it is now coming to be.
  Both because the position has been created and because of the person 
who has been nominated to fill that position, Jeffrey N. Shane, I would 
say that never in the 35-year history of the Department has a person 
been named for a position at DOT with better or more appropriate 
credentials than Jeff Shane, with the sole exception of the current 
Secretary of Transportation, Norm Mineta.
  Jeff comes to this position with the sweep of intellect, with the 
personal and professional integrity, and with more than 3 decades of 
professional experience in the Department of State and the Department 
of Transportation on international aviation trade and policy matters, 
qualities that will enable him to take command of the duties of the 
office on which he is about to enter with clarity of purpose, with 
alacrity and, best of all, without a learning curve.

                              {time}  1945

  My experience with Jeff Shane dates back to well over a decade and a 
half, to his service at State and DOT in both the Ronald Reagan and 
George H. Bush administrations. I worked with him extensively on 
international aviation passenger and cargo trade matters, as well as 
domestic aviation matters, in my capacity then as chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight and Aviation authorizing 
subcommittee.
  I found Jeff Shane always to be the very model of intellectual 
integrity; thoroughly knowledgeable on a wide range of issues on which 
he was called to testify before our committee, well-informed, and, very 
importantly, a consistently vigilant, vigorous advocate for U.S. 
aviation interests and a skillful negotiator.
  Jeff was the architect of our government's original Open Skies policy 
to promote competition in our bilateral aviation trade agreements. 
Under this policy, a great many competitive agreements were negotiated 
during the first Bush administration, and the Clinton administration 
continued the policy with great success. The result has been that 
aviation trade markets in passenger and cargo, in which we once had 30 
percent of market share, we now have 60 to 70 percent of market share 
and are the dominant aviation trade partner.
  Jeff Shane's experience extends well beyond aviation to other modes 
of transportation, as exemplified by a discussion he and I had shortly 
after the enactment of ISTEA in 1991. Jeff said, ``This is one of the 
most extraordinary, innovative transportation measures ever enacted. It 
has had the exceptionally beneficial effect of causing all of us at the 
Assistant Secretary-Policy level to come together, share our

[[Page 24915]]

thoughts, understand each other's mode of transportation better and to 
begin thinking, as well as acting, intermodally, something we have long 
needed to do in this department.''
  That is an extraordinary observation and admission to make on the 
part of a policy person in any department, and that reflects the candor 
with which Jeff approaches his service in the public sector.
  Secretary Mineta has said to me several times that he would like Jeff 
Shane to work to upgrade the department's policy office, and, as he put 
it, make it a ``world-class think tank.'' We need that. We need that 
kind of support at the policy level of the Department of 
Transportation.
  Two years ago, I met with Jeff Shane and Charlie Hunnicutt, who had 
held the Assistant Secretary position during the Clinton 
Administration, to explore means of upgrading the Department's aviation 
policy staff, a staff that deals with the most important issues in the 
department in negotiating international aviation rights for our 
airlines, providing expert advice to the Department of Justice when the 
department is considering airline mergers, and carrying out the 
department's regulatory responsibilities, including predatory 
practices, computer reservation systems and adequate competition in 
Internet ticket sales.
  It is deplorable that over the past 15 years, the DOT aviation staff 
has been eroded by budget cutting decisions. The staff has decreased 
from 166 at the time of the Civil Aeronautics Board sunset in 1985, to 
fewer than 100 today. Furthermore, as many as half of the staff could 
well retire in the next few years.
  It was a great tribute to Jeff Shane that in his career outside of 
government, he was concerned about the quality of government service 
among those who continued in the department. He and I took many 
opportunities over the past few years to raise awareness on the Hill 
and within the aviation community of the critical importance of this 
unique staff, and it is so encouraging to me that Secretary Mineta has 
recognized the problem and is giving Jeff Shane a mandate to correct 
it. I can think of no one better to do this, no one better qualified to 
attract the staff, to inspire that staff and to keep them interested 
and motivated, than Jeff Shane.
  In these perilous post-September 11 times and in the aftermath of 
enactment of our most recent aviation and transportation security law, 
DOT needs at the policy level a person with Jeff Shane's experience, 
intellectual capacity, honesty and openness to new ideas, as well as 
energy to pursue and implement innovation. Jeff Shane's reentry into 
public service will produce better transportation policy decisions, to 
the great benefit of the Nation's economy and to all who use our 
transportation systems, as well as to the benefit of the Department of 
Transportation.
  This new position is long overdue, much needed, and will serve our 
country and our transportation policy well. After all, transportation 
does represent 11 percent of our Nation's gross domestic product. That 
is $1.1 trillion, an impact that we must nurture and strengthen, and 
this legislation will help do that.
  Mr. CLEMENT. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time 
just to say that one of the treasures and great assets of not only the 
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, but the Congress is the 
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar). The remarks that the gentleman 
just made, going through the entire history of the Department of 
Transportation, indicate why we rely on him so heavily, and why our 
committee continues to prosper in a very bipartisan way.
  It is thanks to his efforts that I continue to learn from him.
  I urge passage of the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ose). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) that the House 
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 3441.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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