Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2016--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, at the moment, we are considering the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, and I am disappointed by what we are about to do today, although at this point there appears to be no option. This extension fails to accomplish significant and important reforms in the aviation world, and it is something we were able to do, should have been able to do, and almost accomplished. As a result of our failure, I will oppose the reauthorization legislation we will vote on in just a few moments.

Three weeks ago, I came to the Senate floor to express my concern with what was happening, and my plea and request to our House colleagues to act on the FAA reauthorization bill as the Senate sent it to them--the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2016, which in April passed the Senate by the unusual vote of 95 votes in favor--broadly supported.

I serve on the Commerce Committee, and Chairman Thune and Ranking Member Nelson worked hard with all of us on that committee to see that a wide variety of interests, a wide variety of opportunities were explored for us to make improvements in the world of aviation.

The way it works is, we have a piece of legislation that is in effect and will soon expire, and we are up against a deadline for that extension, but we knew that. In fact, we went to work early. The Senate Commerce Committee began hearings a long time ago--months ago. We worked hard to find consensus, and we did. Our product came to the Senate floor not just with a simple reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration but with items that were so important to this country's economy, to those who utilize general aviation, to communities that care about their local airports, and to those--in my case in Kansas--who care about how many jobs we have and can continue to have and how many more we can create as a result of the manufacturing of aircraft in this country. So we did what we were supposed to do in the Senate. We worked together and found solutions. We found compromises, and we passed legislation overwhelmingly.

Unfortunately, when it went to the House of Representatives, no action was taken in the House. As I said, the clock is ticking and the FAA will no longer continue to have legal authority to exist. Once again, as has happened in years gone by, we are left with a take-it-or- leave-it situation. We either take the House-passed extension or the FAA shuts down. There is no need for us to be in the position we are in today, and the extension we are going to vote on will be missing many important provisions included in the Senate-passed bill.

My perspective on this certainly is as a Kansan, but it matters no matter what State you live in. Kansas is an aviation State. General aviation is our State's largest industry, and our largest city is Wichita, which is appropriately known as the air capital of the world. Kansas aviation workers have supplied three out of every four general aviation aircraft since the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, and today some 42,000 Kansans make a living manufacturing, operating, and servicing the world's highest quality aircraft.

So what does the FAA reauthorization--the extension we are about to vote on--have to do with those jobs in Kansas? What does it have to do with jobs in this country? If we have a goal we ought to be working on together to achieve, it would be to create more opportunities for more Americans to have better jobs. We need--and we all know it--a strong manufacturing sector in this economy. Yet we will fail to take advantage of the opportunity to increase the chances of more manufacturing jobs, more general aviation jobs, more airplane manufacturing jobs in the United States--more jobs for Americans, better jobs for Americans, more secure jobs for Americans--because we aren't able to do today--the House was unwilling to include in the extension those things that increase the chances the aviation industry in our country can better compete with those in a global economy that are our competitors.

What the manufacturing side of aviation needs, what aviation manufacturers in Kansas need is the ability to compete in a global marketplace so the industry remains our country's No. 1 net exporter. This requires significant reforms at the FAA, particularly in their certification process and improvements in the regulatory environment.

These provisions that are so helpful were contained not just in the Senate-passed bill but also in the original House FAA bill that was approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee earlier in the spring. So here we have a situation in which the House Transportation Committee, the Senate Commerce Committee--in fact, the full Senate--approves things that matter greatly to our country and, most importantly, to its workers, and yet today we come to the Senate with a relatively simple extension that ignores those important reforms and improvements.

These provisions that are not included in this extension would streamline aircraft certification, significantly improving efficiency, and better focus the FAA's valuable resources someplace else. These reforms would have had a positive impact upon our economy, on job security, and job creation. Both the House and Senate recognized the importance of this issue and advanced nearly identical certification reform language, but, as I said, for some reason that language no longer appears in this bill.

In addition to certification, there were lots of other issues we agreed upon. Among the members of our committee and among Members of the Senate, overwhelmingly popular bipartisan provisions were included in this bill originally in the Senate but are not included now in this simple extension, including things such as strengthening our Contract Tower Program, which is so important, particularly to rural communities.

Again, while I come from a State where we manufacture planes, I also represent a State in which general aviation, our pilots, and the airports which they utilize are important to communities across my State as we again try to compete in a global economy. The ability to bring a business customer to a small community that has a manufacturing plant is dependent upon airport and air services.

The language from section 1204 of the Senate-passed bill would have significantly reformed the cost-benefit eligibility rules for contract towers--again, this is a way we provide air safety for communities that are small and have small airports--strengthening the program and providing certainty once and for all for the 253 contract towers that handle nearly one-third of our tower operations nationwide. It was a good idea. It was broadly supported--supported in the House in the Transportation Committee, supported in the Senate in the Commerce Committee and on the Senate floor--but not included in today's simple extension.

Apparently, the reason these important reforms were excluded was so they could, at a later date, be used as a political bargaining chip. The House held these popular reforms hostage in an attempt to gain leverage and to later promote an effort to privatize our Nation's air traffic control system.

By putting on hold these long overdue, noncontroversial certification reforms, the Contract Tower Program, and others, Congress is damaging the business aviation industry and the people who work therein.

Not too long ago I spoke on this floor defending general aviation from the Obama administration's repeated attempts to end the accelerated depreciation schedule for general aviation aircraft. In my view, the proposal came as a clever political sound bite--the so-called corporate jet loophole--but in reality it would have meant thousands of jobs would be gone and the unemployment lines longer. The President's proposal would have accomplished nothing for the economy--not even a meaningful increase in tax revenues--and only would have hurt 1.2 million Americans who make their living building and servicing airplanes.

This makes today all the more disappointing. It is one thing for me to come to the floor and complain about an Obama administration proposal, but today I come to the Senate floor to complain about a Republican-controlled House that was unable to take advantage of an opportunity to pass a strong, long-term reauthorization bill and instead leaves us with a simple, short-term extension.

Of course, I believe fully that the leadership of my Commerce Committee--Chairman Thune and Ranking Member Nelson--worked very hard at crafting this Senate-passed FAA bill. I am here in support of their efforts and express my disappointment that their efforts were not rewarded by the House of Representatives. I regret that because we did not have a willing partner in the House, we are left with a watered- down extension so we can further entertain other ideas at some other point in time while uncertainty continues.

While that uncertainty continues, the rest of the world can advance their efforts, particularly in airplane manufacturing, while we wait for improvements, efficiencies, and modernization in our own. While we wait for Congress to do its work, the rest of the world moves on, with the potential of taking away jobs from the manufacturing sector here in the United States.

Americans rightfully should expect, and do expect, leadership from their officials in Washington. At a time when this partisan dysfunction puts us in places in which we constantly find barriers in the legislative process, it sure seems to me to be a waste that this opportunity to pass meaningful bipartisan reforms and improvements that could have an immediate positive impact on our economy is foregone.

We have enough other problems around here in the way this place works. Here we had, in my view, a chance to grasp victory for the American people, for its workers, and for our economy. We failed to do it, and in the process and as a result of that failure, the ability of American manufacturers to create jobs is diminished and Kansans are more at risk for their futures as a result of our failure to do our jobs.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair for the opportunity to address my colleagues in the Senate, and I express my dissatisfaction and disappointment with the end product, recognizing the circumstance we now find ourselves in.

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