[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 10012]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, we will vote tonight to bring long-
overdue permanent leadership to an agency in urgent need of reform and 
culture change, and that is the TSA. I wish the White House hadn't 
waited 6 months to send us a nominee to lead this troubled agency, but 
now that the administration finally has, we are pleased to see a highly 
qualified candidate such as Peter Neffenger.
  It is never easy to ensure a Senate review process that is 
appropriately thorough yet necessarily expeditious in the face of so 
many months of White House delay, but that is just what Chairman Thune 
and Chairman Johnson achieved with the nominee before us. I thank them 
both for their good work.
  If confirmed this evening, Vice Admiral Neffenger will certainly have 
a tough job ahead of him. We are all aware of the recent inspector 
general report that questioned the TSA's ability to meet its security 
mission without some significant changes. The American people will be 
counting on Mr. Neffenger to validate the trust their elected 
representatives place in him tonight by pursuing every necessary reform 
in the wake of such troubled findings. The Senate appears to have 
confidence that he can achieve those goals. There is no doubt the 
Senate and the American people will be expecting that he will.

                          ____________________