America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. today the Senate vote on the following amendments in the order listed: Thune No. 3512, as modified; and Heinrich No. 3482, as modified; further that at 1:45 p.m. today the Senate vote on the Schumer amend-ment No. 3483 and that no second-degree amendments be in order to any of the amendments prior to the vote and that there be 2 minutes equally divided prior to each vote.

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Mr. THUNE. 3458, as modified; Heller No. 3495; and Bennet No. 3524.

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, if I might just speak to amendment No. 3512, which we will be voting on momentarily, I know Senator Nelson has already spoken on this issue. We worked very hard on a series of security bills that we could bring to the floor. We are trying to move them separately, but I think they fit nicely into the debate we are having on the FAA reauthorization.

Senators Nelson, Ayotte, Cantwell, and I have been leading oversight of airport and airline workers abusing their secure area access badges. This oversight led our committee to approve bipartisan legislation--S. 2361, Airport Security Enhancement and Oversight Act--to tighten the vetting of airport workers with ties to terrorists and serious criminal behavior that should disqualify them from accessing sensitive airport areas.

Just in the past few weeks, a number of badged aviation industry workers have been caught in the act of helping criminal organizations. On March 18, a flight attendant abandoned a suitcase with 68 pounds of cocaine after being confronted by transportation security officers in California. On March 26 in Florida, an airline gate agent was arrested with a backpack containing $282,400 in cash that he intended to hand off to an associate.

As we work to address the threat of an aviation insider helping terrorists, criminals who break laws for financial gain and those with a history of violence are a really good place to start. It is high time that we start cracking down on these types of offenses for people who are working in sensitive areas of our airports.

U.S. terrorism experts believe that ISIS is recruiting criminals to join its ranks in Europe, and some of the perpetrators in the deadly attacks in Brussels were previously known to authorities as criminals. Ensuring that airport workers with security credentials are trustworthy is especially important, considering that experts believe an ISIS affiliate may have planted a bomb on a Russian Metrojet flight leaving Egypt with the help of an airport employee, which killed 224 people on board. The recent attacks by ISIS in the unsecured area of the Brussels Airport also underscore the vulnerability of airport areas outside of TSA security screening checkpoints.

The House of Representatives and the Commerce Committee also approved legislation--H.R. 2843, the PreCheck Expansion Act--in December of 2015 to expand the PreCheck program by developing private sector partnerships and capabilities to vet and enroll more individuals. These private sector partners would be required to use an assessment equivalent to a fingerprint-based criminal history record check conducted through the FBI. These changes would increase the number of passengers who are vetted before they get to the airport. As a result, more passengers would receive expedited airport screening and get through security checkpoints more quickly, ensuring they don't pose the kind of easy target that the ISIS suicide bombers exploited at the Brussels Airport.

In addition to the bills approved by our committee on March 23, the House Homeland Security Committee approved H.R. 4698, the SAFE GATES Act of 2016, which would strengthen security at international airports with direct flights to the United States. Specifically, the bill would require TSA to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment of all last- point-of-departure airports, a security coordination enhancement plan, and a workforce assessment. It would authorize the TSA to donate security screening equipment to foreign last-point-of-departure airports and to evaluate foreign countries' air cargo security programs to prevent any shipment of nefarious materials via air cargo.

I believe these bills will help make air travel more secure, and they should advance in the full Senate in this amendment to the FAA bill. I encourage my colleagues to support the Thune-Nelson amendment and then also follow-on with the Heinrich amendment, which will come up shortly after a vote on that amendment. I think the Heinrich amendment also makes a number of important security improvements that will also strengthen airport security.

There has been a discussion about whether there ought to be more VIPR teams. I think there are 30 or so at this point, and the amendment would allow that number to go up to 60. Yesterday we had the opportunity to question the TSA Administrator, Admiral Neffenger, about whether additional VIPR teams would be useful. He said they could put to use anything they were given in terms of additional units that might be deployed to places around the country where they think there is a need. So that is the principal component of the Heinrich amendment, which also addresses some of the security issues.

I don't think we can understate how important security is in light of everything that is going on in the world today. We have people who want to harm Americans, and it is our job to make sure we are giving those authorities who are there to prevent those types of attacks against Americans all the tools they need in order to do their jobs effectively.

I encourage our colleagues here in the Senate--when we have an opportunity to vote here momentarily on both of these security amendments--to support those amendments. They improve and strengthen security at our airports around this country, and I think they fit nicely within the context of the FAA reauthorization bill and the debate we are currently having on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I yield back whatever time remains.
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Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Further, if present and voting the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I urge my colleagues to support the Heinrich amendment.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

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Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

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Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``nay.''

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