FAA Reauthorization Act of 2007

Floor Speech

FAA REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - May 01, 2008)

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Mr. DURBIN. My thanks to my colleagues from Massachusetts and Michigan for bringing to our attention the struggle this economy presents to many families across the United States.

You would almost find it hard to imagine that this Senate could meet with such regularity and not address these issues directly. But this administration and its economic policies have not focused on working families. They have focused on tax breaks for those in the highest income categories in America. That is something they do without embarrassment. They suggest that if the wealthy people in America have extra money to spend, it will be good for everyone else. That is a hard message to deliver and even harder to believe.

Elizabeth Warren is a professor of law at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA, and has become a good friend and adviser to many of us. She recently made a presentation to a number of Senators and showed an analysis which she had done relating to the middle of the middle class. Professor Warren took a look at real middle-income families and basically asked the question: What has happened to them during the last 7 years?

Her findings are troubling. From 2000 to 2007, she writes, the American family lost ground. Measured in real dollars, incomes declined while basic expenses skyrocketed. By the time today's family makes a few basic purchases--housing, health insurance, food, gasoline, and phone--it has about $5,700 less than it had been in 2000.

Now, this is a family that is making in the range of $40,000 to $45,000. So a decline in buying power of $5,700 over the last 7 years causes real hardship. By every measure, incomes are down for the same hypothetical family for this same period of time; down for fully employed males, fully employed females, down for households.

Adjusted for inflation, median household income has declined across America by $1,175. Prosperity has not arrived to the working class, the working families of America. In fact, the opposite has been true.

Of course, the biggest thing we face going home is the increasing cost of gasoline. The increase in the cost of gasoline has more than doubled since President Bush became President. In that same period, the profits of the oil companies have more than quadrupled. It is no coincidence. They are making more money as families, rich and especially poor, reach deeper into their pockets to pay for gasoline. Families have reduced driving. They have to spend an average of $2,000 more a year for gasoline than they did back in the year 2000, when President Bush was elected. Our friends on the Republican side of the aisle like to talk about cutting people's taxes, sending out rebate checks. Of course, those are all well and good. But it turns out the expense which has been passed along to working families for the cost of gasoline since President Bush became President is more than $2,000 a year. There is a tax. It is a tax families have to pay if they have to drive to work or if they want to take their family on vacation.

Increases in mortgage costs took another big bite out of middle-income families, almost $1,700 each year. Health insurance, food, telephone, appliances, another $750 a year knocked out of the family budget. The increases mean the average family is spending $4,564 more for basic expenses now than they did in 2000. How about families with kids? Childcare costs under this President have gone up by $1,321 a year, more than $100 a month; afterschool care, $511 a year. All parents, regardless of the age of children, see the rising cost of college. Under this Presidency, the net cost of college, including scholarships and grants, has increased by more than $1,000. Is it any surprise, when Members of the Senate and the House go home over the weekends and run into these families, they want to talk about the latest outrage, which happens to be the price of gasoline?

My understanding is ExxonMobil made its report of quarterly earnings public today. It was a little bit off for them. Their earnings only increased 17 percent, hardly keeping pace with the recordbreaking percentage increases of the past. But trust me, there will be no tag days for those CEOs and members of the executive board and management of the biggest oil companies in America. They are doing quite well. The question is whether this Congress can do well by American families who pay the price for those profits. That is a challenge we will face.

President Bush is going to send us a supplemental appropriations bill. It is because of the emergency in Iraq. He is going to ask for $108 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. He is not going to ask for the emergency in America, and there is one. He will not be asking for increasing unemployment compensation for families out of work, watching unemployment rates rise by the day. He will not be asking for tax breaks for those struggling families I have described. He focuses on the Middle East.

I am from Illinois. I focus on the Middle West. I try to look at the whole Nation, but I start with my obligation at home. When I look out the window in the morning, I see America. When this administration looks out the window in the morning, it sees Iraq. So when it comes to emergency spending, drop everything, highest priorities, it is not about America. This administration focuses on the Middle East.

I think that is unfortunate. We need to understand a strong America begins at home. It begins with a strong economy, strong families, strong churches, strong temples, strong neighborhoods, strong cities, strong communities that build a great nation. They are suffering at this moment.

During the course of this week, there has been precious little done on the floor of the Senate. Senator after Senator has come to talk about their concerns about energy costs. That is good. We should raise awareness of this particular issue. But we need to do more than give a speech, come up with a quick gimmick or a quick idea. We have to focus on changing some fundamentals, and it ought to start with the Tax Code and programs that help working families.

Mr. President, I have a friend in Illinois whose name is Harold Ramis. Harold Ramis and I share a birth date and a lot of friends. Harold Ramis has done quite well for himself. He ia a writer, a producer of movies. Harold got started writing ``Animal House,'' went on to write ``Caddyshack'' and a few others. But one of his most famous movies, which he released over 15 years ago, was a movie called ``Groundhog Day.'' I bet every American has seen it. It is hard to believe it has been more than 15 years since it was released. In that movie another Chicagoan, Bill Murray, wakes up every morning in Punxsutawney, PA, and looks over at the clock radio as Sonny and Cher are singing ``I Got You, Babe,'' and relives the same day over and over again, until finally it stops at the end. A fascinating movie, it has been analyzed by so many people. What is the message of the movie? I am not sure. I sure enjoy it and continue to watch it. I drive my wife crazy when she says: How many times have you seen that movie? But I like it a lot.

I am reminded of that movie when I think about what is going on in the Senate. It is almost like ``Groundhog Day'' around here because every day that you get up in the Senate and every week, it is the same music playing. It is the same script playing. The script that is playing is the strategy on the other side of the aisle, on the Republican side of the aisle. Their strategy is very simple. It involves the use of a filibuster.

A filibuster is a uniquely Senatorial institution that says, historically, any Senator can stand up at any time and stop anything--a nomination, a bill, anything. It gives us a lot of power. But unfortunately, that power can be misused. ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' Jimmy Stewart on that famous set, the brandnew Senator who stood up and filibustered until he dropped right next to his desk, we all remember that image. It doesn't quite happen that way anymore. I have not seen anybody fall to the floor in the middle of a filibuster, but it does eat up a lot of time, and it slows things down.

In the history of the Senate, there is a record book. The record book says that in the history of this great body, in a 2-year period, the maximum number of filibusters is 57; 57 times in 2 years there was an effort to stop the debate, stop a nomination, and a filibuster was initiated.

For those who follow the history of the Senate, they are watching a historic session. Because in the last year and 4 months, the Republicans in the Senate have broken the record. They have gone beyond 57 filibusters. At this point, they are now up to 68 Republican filibusters and still counting. On 68 different occasions, they have initiated a filibuster to stop us from taking up legislation.

You say to yourself: Maybe that had to be done. Not until you look at the legislation involved. Two weeks ago, we had something called a technical corrections bill. This is a bill that notices there were spelling errors and grammar errors in a highway bill that passed several years ago. They change it with technical corrections. It usually is a bill which passes with no debate, no comment, and not even a record vote. It just goes through when we have to clean up some problems we had in previous legislation.

In this new era of Republican filibusters, they decided to filibuster the technical corrections bill. If there was ever an embarrassing moment in the history of the Senate, it is the notion that we would filibuster a bill that corrects grammatical and spelling errors, but they did it. They held the Senate in session for a full week while we waited to complete the technical corrections bill. Then came the veterans' health benefits bill. Veterans' health benefits? Is this an issue anyone contests, that we would not provide all the benefits promised and all we can afford to the men and women who have served our country so valiantly and continue to? We brought this bill to the floor figuring this was an easy one, a bipartisan bill. It would pass. It was the subject of a Republican filibuster that held that bill on the floor for a full week.

Time and again, we came to the floor and said to the Republicans: Let us call up this bill. If you have an amendment, if there is something you want to change, then let's do it. No. Day after weary day this ``Groundhog Day'' script played out. We got up every morning. We didn't hear Sonny and Cher. We heard the Republican minority leader singing the same song every morning: We are going to try to get around to looking at this bill. Days passed.

If the Senate was paid for piecework as opposed to a general annual salary, we would be hurting at this point. We don't do much around here, and that is unfortunate. By the end of the week, after they had burned another week off the calendar, a week where we didn't consider the problems with our Nation's energy policy, where we didn't do a thing about gasoline prices but were stuck in a Republican filibuster, we had one vote on one amendment and passed the bill virtually unanimously when it was all over.

There was no controversy.

The object from the Republican side: Slow everything down. Stop it if you can.

So this week comes another bill. This bill is 288 pages. This is the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration. Unfortunately, it is now subject to a Republican filibuster. A motion for cloture is about to be filed. This week in the Senate, for those who want to keep up with the ongoing and developing saga of our ``Groundhog Day'' script, Republicans are blocking safer, more efficient air travel. We have spent the entire week here and had one vote. I know it is not a secret. It is in the Congressional Record. But it is embarrassing. We tried time and again to get Senate Republicans to give us an amendment, call it up for a vote. Let's get moving on this bill. No, let's wait until next week.

Is there anything else we could have been considering in the Senate this week? We should have passed this in a hurry. First, it is a bipartisan bill. Is it necessary or important? For those of us who live on airplanes, you bet it is. Twenty-five million more passengers flew on U.S. commercial air carriers last year than the previous year. Almost 800 million passengers flew on U.S. commercial carriers in 2007, double the number of 1985. The FAA predicts the aviation system will transport more than 1 billion airline passengers annually by 2020. There is a problem though. As modern as the airplanes may be, as new as some of the airports may be, we are running our air traffic system on radar that was established during World War II. This technology is not equipped to handle the volume increase in air travel we anticipate. We are already seeing it in airports across the country. Passengers are feeling it in my home State in the great airport at O'Hare, where I spend a large portion of my waking hours.

U.S. News and World Report placed O'Hare recently at the top of the airport misery index. In defense of that great airport, we are in the process of modernizing it and things will get better. But it is fat. The magazine cited that almost 30 percent of flights in and out of O'Hare are delayed. One of the main reasons is the incapacity of our air traffic control system to deal with this increase in volume. We need to move to a more modern, satellite-based air traffic control system. This technology, known as NextGen, will give pilots and air traffic controllers the ability to accurately pinpoint aircraft in the sky to avoid any problems, to monitor traffic, to move things more smoothly and efficiently.

The second reason for the increase in delays comes from the lack of capacity in our airports. O'Hare Airport was designed in the 1950s and built in that era. It doesn't handle, as it should most efficiently, the aircraft of today. We have a big expansion under way. But the bill that has been held up all week in the Senate, a bill that was brought to us on a bipartisan basis by Senator JAY ROCKEFELLER of West Virginia, who has worked his heart out to pass this bill, and Senator KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON of Texas, who helped in crafting this bill, will provide funding for programs to give airports the money they need to expand and handle the growth in air traffic.

Lastly, the FAA bill also provides important provisions giving passengers rights when they are stuck in airplanes on the tarmac. Has it ever happened to you--stuck out there for an hour, if you are lucky? It used to be a lot longer. There are some horror stories that have come out of this. I will not go into the details other than to tell you we try to provide in this bill basic protections for airline passengers. We never want an airline to hurry into a circumstance that might compromise safety, but we do believe they should inform their passengers about what is going on and be mindful of the need for basic human comforts that passengers need when they are stuck on the runway for hour after weary hour. That is in this bill. You will not get a chance, if you look at the Congressional Record of this week, to hear any debate about it. We did not get to it. We were stuck in a filibuster--stuck for I think it will be the 69th filibuster of this senatorial session.

I believed when I came here that this was the world's greatest deliberative body. Maybe it is self-promotion for us to continue to say that because we have precious few amendments, very little debate, and we really lack the kind of legislative activity that has, I guess, been the hallmark of the Senate for as long as it has existed. We have ground to a halt because we are facing the slowdown strategy from the other side of the aisle.

When you think about how many important issues we need to work on for this country, for the families of this country, important decisions we need to make, it is sad that the Senate rules allow this to continue.

Well, we will return next Tuesday, after a long weekend. After having one vote this week, we need a rest. I hope you understand. We will come back Tuesday in the hopes we can start up this bill again. Maybe in the second week this bipartisan bill just might draw an amendment from the other side of the aisle, just might draw some debate on the floor, and just might get passed, so we can move on to the next issue, which I believe will be energy policy. And I can just guarantee you, it is likely to face another filibuster from the Republican side of the aisle.

The GOP is the, I guess, nickname for the Republican Party. It stands for the ``Grand Old Party.'' When you watch the progress, or at least the strategy of the Republicans in the Senate, you come to believe that GOP stands for ``Graveyard Of Progress.'' That is what they see the Senate. That is unfortunate.

There is a lot of work we need to do. The American people sent us here to do it on a bipartisan basis. I hope we can get it done.

I yield the floor.

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