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Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. President.

We just heard Senators Romney and Manchin talking about our Nation's economic woes and legislation they are handling on a bipartisan basis. I think it is always a good and positive thing when we can approach our work in a bipartisan way. It is what the American people are expecting us to do.

Yesterday, in our Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, we had bipartisanship at work again. We were carrying out one of the duties we have in Congress, which is to conduct oversight and to make certain that not only the processes of government and the fiscal health of our government are on a firm footing but also to look at things like consumer protection and public safety.

Our hearing yesterday dealt with these deadly and disastrous crashes that happened with the Boeing 737 MAX. We know that those crashes occurred and remember that one occurred in Indonesia and one in Ethiopia.

I will tell you that, in my opinion, the executives from the Boeing Company tried--and they failed--to explain to members of the Senate Commerce Committee why they allowed the 737 MAX aircraft to reach the commercial market.

We discovered that the company's highest echelon neglected a responsibility to ensure that the aircraft met their highest safety standards. It was of concern to us. I don't know, and I think many of us were left trying to figure out, whether this was something that was a corporate culture problem, whether it was a communication problem, or whether it was a negligence issue.

Until a few weeks ago, executives, including president and CEO Dennis Muilenburg, had not read emails revealing how Boeing officials convinced the FAA to approve training materials and delete troublesome flight systems data and had not read text messages showing that employees lied to regulators about safety problems with the plane's MCAS system. That is the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. They had not read the text messages that spelled out there was a problem.

When asked at the hearing for technical details on the science and systems behind the MAX's approval, Muilenburg and his cohort were unable to even give a straight answer. We did not get the answers we needed on questions about their process, test pilots, or simulators.

Yesterday's hearing made it clear that Boeing leadership cannot provide the answers we are looking for, not for ourselves but on behalf of the victims and their families and on behalf of the flying public who, yes, safety is their priority.

The Senate really needs to look at this issue again. Our Commerce Committee should schedule another hearing on the people and the procedures and hear from the engineers and the test pilots behind Boeing's MAX program.

Perhaps these engineers and pilots will be able to do a better job than the executives did yesterday, and perhaps they can explain to the families of these 346 crash victims how so many people ended up dead after choosing one the world's safest modes of transportation.

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