‘This vote should give all members in the Senate a sense of déjà vu’



Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday regarding the DeMint amendment. The amendment would have ensured continued flexibility for the TSA to protect our country from terrorists:



“The vote we’re about to have should give all members in the Senate a sense of déjà vu. We’re been here before. We are about to vote on an amendment that is reminiscent of a rather significant debate we had in the fall of 2002 in connection with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.



“The issue at that time, as is the issue this morning, is the question of whether we’re going to have collective bargaining for the Transportation Security Officers. The public spoke rather loudly in the fall of 2002 in the form of the Senate elections that year, that they thought collective bargaining for transportation security workers was not a good idea. The public was correct then. I think that is the public view today.



“In the ongoing debate over Iraq, it’s easy to forget the successes we’ve had in fighting terrorism: and chief among them is the fact that America hasn’t seen a terrorist attack at home in the five and one-half years since 9/11.



“There’s one reason for this: and that’s the heroic work of our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq — and the tireless efforts of our homeland defenders in detecting, preventing, and discouraging and disrupting those attacks.



“Yet today these two pillars of our post-9/11 security are being put at risk by those who have the audacity put union work rules above national security.



“Now, it’s no secret Big Labor expects something in return for the November elections. But America’s security should not be on the table.



“It’s ironic that Democrats who campaigned on the pledge that they’d implement all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission are now forcing us to consider something that wasn’t in the report and blocking us from considering something that was.



“I’m talking about the proposal to give all 43,000 airport screeners the ability to collectively bargain. Not only was this proposal not in the 9/11 Commission report, it would end up undermining the commission’s recommendation.



“A key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission was this:

‘The United States should combine terrorist travel intelligence, operations and law enforcement in a strategy to intercept terrorists, find terrorist travel facilitators, and constrain terrorist mobility.’



“We saw this during the U.K. bombing threat in August. TSA workers who showed up for work at 4:00 that morning in the U.S. were briefed on the plot and trained immediately in the new protocols. Within 12 hours, we’d taken classified intelligence and adapted to it. There was no noticeable impact on U.S. flights.



“It was a different situation in Great Britain, where unionization is the norm. Dozens of flights had to be cancelled as they worked out an understanding on how they’d respond to the new threat, travelers were delayed, and backups ensued, literally for days.



“We saw the importance of mobility earlier that year too, when TSA acquired new technologies for bomb detection. It trained nearly 40,000 airport screeners in the new methods in less than three weeks. The TSA says that under collective bargaining, the same training would take two to six months. Well, we’re not going to let Big Labor compromise National Security.



“The President has said he’ll veto a 9/11 bill if it includes collective bargaining. We have the votes to sustain that veto; the House has just announced it has the votes to sustain a veto; this bill will not become law, Mr. President — not with this dangerous provision in it.



“The only question now is why we’re being kept from passing a 9/11 bill that focuses on security alone. The President has made it clear he’ll veto the bill if it includes a provision that compromises security. And the American people have already made clear where they stand on collective bargaining.



“Remember, we’ve been down this road before. We had a huge debate in Congress over collective bargaining when we created the Department of Homeland Security. Americans didn’t like the idea of labor slowdowns among security personnel then; and they said so at the polls.



“The answer, I’m afraid, is clear: this new attempt to insert it into the 9/11 bill now is a show that was meant to appease a voting bloc.



“We know how this charade is going to end. Republicans won’t let security be used as a bargaining chip. We aren’t going to let it happen. It’s just too bad Americans will have to wait even longer for this bill to be signed into law because of the efforts to satisfy organized labor.”



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