Rotorcraft Operations Transparency and Oversight Reform Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CARSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about the terrible midair collision at DCA on January 29, 2025. I continue to mourn the loss of 67 people who died because of this tragedy, including Asra Hussain, from Carmel, Indiana. The House needs to pass a comprehensive, bipartisan solution that will implement all 50 of the NTSB's recommendations, and which provides a holistic framework for meaningful, system-wide safety improvements.

I commend my Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman and Ranking Member, Sam Graves and Rick Larsen. They worked tirelessly to produce a bill that will implement all 50 safely recommendations from the NTSB, which just released their final report on January 29th. As the Ranking Member of the Aviation Subcommittee, I'm proud to join them as an original cosponsor of the ALERT Act, with our colleagues from the Armed Services Committee, Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Adam Smith, and many other colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, the House needs to follow regular order. Today's bill was added to the suspension calendar over the concerns of the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Committees of Jurisdiction. This bill has been mysteriously held and stuck at the desk since December--without being referred to the Transportation Committee or the Armed Services Committees for consideration, markup, and amendments. Yet, as soon as our two committees introduced a comprehensive safety bill, the Speaker green lights the other chamber's bill to fly off the desk and bypass our committees. That's not regular order, and it's not right. Our carefully crafted joint Transportation and Armed Services bill should not be railroaded out of floor consideration because of some backroom deal. Under regular order, our Committee should be able to bring our House bill, the ALERT Act, to the House floor before a Senate bill is pushed ahead of us. Especially when it's an incomplete bill.

Unlike the ALERT Act, which implements every one of NTSB's safety recommendations, the ROTOR Act addresses just seven of the 50 recommendations. While the ROTOR Act is a good first step, it doesn't fix the massive systemic problems that resulted in a crash that was 100 percent preventable. Safety is too important to break the rules and ignore regular order. I urge the Speaker to refer this bill to our Committee for consideration and markup.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source