Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this en bloc. It includes a number of provisions that will improve the bill, including:

A proposal from Representative Manning to advance the recommendations of the Youth Access to the American Jobs in Aviation Task Force, particularly on increasing access to information and enhancing collaboration;

A proposal led by Representative Rouzer with bipartisan support to prohibit the Department of Transportation from purchasing drones from foreign adversaries, including Russia and China;

A proposal led by Representative David Scott to increase the FAA's community outreach to aviation-impacted communities;

A proposal by Representative Sherrill with bipartisan support for the FAA to study national security implications of unmanned free balloons and the technical feasibility of having an electronic emitter on board;

A proposal from Representatives Thompson and Vasquez requiring the DOT to study the loss of commercial air service in small communities and providing recommendations for restoring that service; and

A critically important proposal from Representatives Yakym and Titus to ensure maximum air traffic controller hiring for the next 5 years.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I recommend that folks vote for this en bloc, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I claim time in opposition to the amendment.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves), the chairman of the full committee.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I don't know that I could add much to Chairman Graves' comments. He clearly is a leader--if not the leader--on aviation in this Congress. He has more expertise on the vagaries of the general aviation airplane market, and I stand behind his comments.

Mr. Chair, I will address a comment made earlier by the proponent of the amendment, and that was the implication that this bill seems to be only about this issue when we should be dealing with air traffic controller staffing, pilot staffing, or manufacturing.

I have said that this bill is not about issue A, issue B, or issue C. This bill is a whole alphabet of issues that we have to deal with with the FAA.

In fact, this bill does address air traffic controller staffing by requiring the FAA to staff up to the maximum number, according to the staffing model that the FAA has.

It makes investments in the aviation workforce with aviation workforce development programs to increase the amount of talent in the pipeline for pilots, maintenance workers, and manufacturing workers in aviation.

It makes critical changes and improvements to accessibility for people who are wheelchair-bound or need to use mobility aids when they travel.

To imply this bill is only about one issue, and this particular issue, is not an accurate description at all of this legislation nor of the work of the full Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to bring this bill to the floor to get the FAA reauthorized.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves).

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by Representative Perry.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. As Representative Perry knows, he is showing great leadership on the T&I subcommittee that oversees public building use, economic development, and emergency management. In fact, we had a hearing last week with a couple of witnesses to discuss the very issue of office use space with the General Services Administration.

There is quite a bit of agreement on the committee right now about the fact that we have a problem of empty office space and there is not a good alignment between the use of the space and telework policies. We are trying to get the GSA, the General Services Administration, to take a look at that hard and come up with a better balance.

Representative Perry is leading that effort, and I congratulate him for that. It is because of his leadership on that that we have some bipartisan agreement approaching that issue.

That said, the FAA telework policies that are under fire from this amendment existed prior to COVID-19, and they exist today. The FAA itself--as many agencies are--is trying to find that new balance post- COVID. I continue to support the agency's ability to establish and revise, as needed, their commonsense telework policies.

We have achieved a bipartisan, commonsense approach to dealing with and overseeing FAA telework coming out of this pandemic, and I urge Members to reject this amendment, which will take us backward.

Section 802 of the underlying bill addresses the core concern that Representative Perry has presented in this amendment, that the FAA should review the agency's telework policies. The underlying bill ensures FAA considers in its review aviation safety, employee training, the global leadership of U.S. aviation and performing oversight responsibilities.

Creating additional burdensome requirements on the FAA, as contemplated in the amendment, to get OMB approval for any telework policy changes will hinder FAA's ability to adapt to changing conditions.

This bill has already given the FAA a lot of things to do, and it doesn't seem to make sense to give them more to do when they are already, essentially, trying to get done what the spirit of the underlying bill is asking it to do.

This amendment would also undercut the FAA's existing collective bargaining agreements and force it to take up valuable time renegotiating these agreements when it should be focusing on its critical safety work.

Additionally, this amendment upgrades the FAA's ability to create a competitive workplace so we can attract people into the FAA and attract new talent.

For these reasons, Mr. Chair, I am opposing the amendment, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. I retain my commitment to working with Representative Perry in his role as the chair of the subcommittee to continue looking at how we can get the GSA to best balance the use of federally owned office space and leased space with the Federal employee workforce.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, first off, I want to be clear. I think government unions should be legal. They are legal in the United States, and I am very pleased they are legal so those unions can represent the women and men who go to work every day on behalf of the taxpaying public to do their job in service.

In that vein, too, there is no indication that FAA employees are en bloc not showing up to go to work. They may not be going to the workplace because we have telework policies in place. That does not equate--it does not equate to people not doing the work that we ask of them. In fact, this bill, the FAA reauthorization bill, the Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in the American Aviation Act, asks the FAA to do even more to improve the already gold standard that we have in U.S. aviation in the United States.

We are giving the FAA employees plenty to do, and our committee will commit to ensuring that the FAA does just that through our oversight responsibilities.

Mr. Chair, with my remaining time I do want to thank the chair of the full committee, Sam Graves, for his leadership to get us to this point. We are on the verge of passing a comprehensive, bipartisan, negotiated- in-good-faith, important, policy-based bill, I presume in a bipartisan manner, which may not make the news because it wasn't exciting enough for the news. We pride ourselves on being a boring committee and a workhorse committee, just trying to get our work done, and Sam Graves, in my view, deserves all the credit for that work and the great work of his team to make that happen.

I thank the team standing behind me on the committee staff, as well for their work to help make this happen. They are a critical part of ensuring that we got to this point today.

Should we pass this bill, we have some work to do with the other body and White House, but I expect that we will do that.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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