National Defense Authorization Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. I would like to turn now before I get to healthcare, Mr. President, to come to the floor to speak about the National Defense Authorization Act. I see it was just delivered here from the House. I was hoping that our House colleagues would have stopped that legislation and actually made a fix to it. That is section 373, of this year's Defense Authorization Act, which really undermines our critical commercial aviation safety and it exposes the gaps that we saw when we had the January 29 DCA air collision.

So I hope that my colleagues here will help us make changes to this section of the Defense Authorization Act. We know how important this is, the Flight 5342 passenger families, the Lilley family, along with myself and Senator Cruz, have been trying to sound the alarm bells around the Capitol in the airspace about why we shouldn't let the military fly without this important broadcast system, so that people know when they are in the region and can translate that communication, so that air traffic controllers and other aircraft in a busy airspace know when the military is there.

We know what happened when a Black Hawk involved in the January 29 collision wasn't actively transmitting its location. We know what happened. We know that we have seen since then much from the NTSB. In fact, tonight, a letter from the National Transportation Safety Board is expressing their strong opposition to the inclusion of section 373, in the National Defense Authorization Act. It basically is saying that it significantly reduces the safety of the airspace around Reagan Washington National Airport by allowing the Secretary of the military Department to operate, transmitting its missions to the DCA airspace in a manner that is basically how we got in to the collision to begin with--basically with it not transmitting.

So I don't know why we have to have a letter from the NTSB telling us what we are doing in the National Defense Authorization Act is making the airspace less safe. I don't even know how this got in the bill because I guarantee you, Senator Cruz and I didn't approve of this being in the bill. I am pretty sure my colleagues in the House, Congressmen Larson and Graves, didn't approve of this being in the bill. So how is it that this is now in the bill that we all have to respond today, including the National Transportation Safety Board, basically saying this language should not be there.

It is so important, that the families that have had to come together to support legislation that Senator Cruz and I do support, had to put out their own tweet. They basically said that it doesn't fix the failed system that produced the accident in January. So the families are having to lobby.

So who is not listening? Who is not listening to the ranking members of committees? Who is not listening to the NTSB? Who is not listening to the families of the victims? Who is jamming this into a bill just because they think that DOD still deserves to fly in a crowded airspace without people knowing that they are there?

So I hope my colleagues will take this issue seriously. I hope my colleagues will understand that this is not the way to fix legislation. I mentioned my colleagues, Senator Cruz, and I have passed the ROTOR Act out of committee, important legislation that does fix the problem, that is endorsed by the families, that is endorsed by the NTSB, that is endorsed by other groups. And yet we couldn't get that into this legislation. But yet, somehow, mysteriously, without anybody knowing how or why, this language is stuck into this bill. Listen to the Lilley family, who lost their son, First Officer Sam Lilley in the crash. They recognize this provision creates another loophole and stated: ``Safety that depends on exemptions cannot be the foundation of [a secure] airspace system.''

So not only does this provision fail to rein in the training flights properly, it will keep making it more difficult for commercial aircraft to see military training flights flying so close to the flights around DCA.

Now, I will say it is astounding to me that in this last big bill, other stuff was stuck in there, my colleague from the Commerce Committee might realize, that some of our colleagues wanted to be able to sue the Federal Government because the Department of Justice had looked at their phone records. Have we struck that provision?

I am pretty sure these families who have lost loved ones would like to be able to sue the Federal Government, the DOD or the FAA, who basically make it hard to have safety provisions and have somebody in the dark of night put another exemption in for DOD, which is what caused the accident in the first place.

So we don't allow these families to have any recourse with the government, but we are still here with a provision that some Senators thought was important enough that they get off and can basically sue the government for millions of dollars. And yet this kind of behavior that makes it more dangerous for the flying public, they get no recourse. We don't even know who stuck it in. People should be asking: Who stuck in this language? Who is standing by it? Who is committed to it? Who thinks it is a good idea? Because none of the safety advocates think that it is a good idea. I hope my colleagues will be as outraged as I am, over this provision, outraged, along with the families, with the NTSB Administrator and help us fight this issue.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source