FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member DeFazio and Chairman Shuster for their excellent efforts to work out this compromise on the FAA reauthorization and finding consensus with our Senate counterparts. I am glad to have successfully included four important measures in the final package.

Special thanks to Senator Nelson and Ranking Member DeFazio for keeping in many key Democratic priorities that support labor, airports, and consumers; and, most notably, preserve the safety of the flying public.

I should comment that the SEAT Act, which I am most proud of, a 3- year effort that I worked on with Adam Kinzinger, was accepted by voice vote in committee. I thank Mr. Shuster for that. It is a watershed moment for safety for the flying public. We have never before been forced to regulate seat sizes, but the reality is, the safety of the flying public is at risk unless we do.

Representative Kinzinger and I worked on this to see to it that we put an end to the shrinking sizes of seats on airplanes through the SEAT Act, or the Safe Egress in Air Travel Act, so it would become law.

Americans have become larger. Seats have become smaller. They have become more dangerous. There needs to be a study on the width and the pitch of seats to make sure that they are safe to be evacuated within the approximate 90 seconds they are supposed to be able to evacuate a plane. Flyers Rights and the National Consumers League also supported this.

I would like to thank Senators Blumenthal, Markey, Warner, and Whitehouse, and others. I look forward to voting for this bill, and I encourage everybody to vote for it.

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