Transportation Security Administration

Floor Speech

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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.

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