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| The Friendly Skies.... |
November 06, 2001 |
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Dear Friends,
When I returned to New Mexico from Washington D.C. on September 14th, I sat down with Jay Czar, the head of the Albuquerque Airport, as well as our local folks with the FAA and FBI assigned to the Sunport. We talked about how to make our airplanes safer.
Since then, I’ve sat with Sandians, law enforcement, various military elements, the Coast Guard, and even the Israeli Defense Force to talk about aircraft security and fighting terrorists.
Everyone agrees that we need to change the way it’s been done in the past. Baggage and passenger screening had been subcontracted from the airlines and the FAA standards were lax and generally not enforced.
There are a lot of ideas about how to improve security. Some suggested giving the responsibility to the Justice Department, some said to Transportation, some said to the Coast Guard, and some said to local law enforcement.
The Senate passed a bill that treated big airports differently than smaller ones and divided responsibility between the Transportation and Justice Departments, giving the lion’s share to Justice. After the Senate bill passed, Attorney General Ashcroft said the security mission didn’t belong in Justice and asked the House to pass a different bill that was already in the works.
Either approach is better than the current system and I didn’t like the partisan bickering that broke out about this issue. There is only one thing that matters: safety. Everything else should be put aside.
On Wednesday afternoon, the President called me. (That`s never happened to me before). We talked.
If I voted for the Senate bill as a substitute for the House bill, it would go straight to his desk and he would sign it. But there are some problems with it that would need to be cleared up later and it didn’t give him the flexibility he thought he would need. If I voted for the House bill, we could go to conference with the Senate, work out the problems and he would have a better bill to sign.
I don’t like to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and I didn’t agree with some of the reasons some of my House colleagues were pushing forward, but the President of the United States during a time of national emergency told us he felt we could make the airline system safer if we worked the bill for a few more weeks in conference with the Senate.
President Bush shoots straight. He is an honest man. I’ve never known him to say something he doesn’t believe is true.
I voted for safety first.
Wish You Were Here,
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