Tax On Bonuses Received From Certain Tarp Recipients
Floor Speech
Tax On Bonuses Received From Certain Tarp Recipients
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Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield myself 30 seconds.
If I had my way, I would eliminate the antitrust altogether, but we're providing a process by which the benefits of alliances that have been given antitrust immunity can be evaluated, determined whether there was a balance of benefits to the traveling public; if so, if they prove their case, they show that there are benefits, then the antitrust immunity continues in place.
I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the full committee and Chairman Costello. These two chairs have done what can only be called heroic work twice. To do heroic work once, perhaps we'll say that's what chairs do. But this bill through two Congresses has only been improved by what they have done. The merits are not so much what this amendment is about, although there is a very important amendment in this bill.
I do want to say that this is a real jobs bill because it's an infrastructure bill at heart about updating our airline and airport infrastructure. But the bill is full of what the country yearns for and why it was so popular here and in the other body. It's just got the whole panoply of what is necessary to update the FAA: consumer protections that people yearn for, especially as the summer months approach; very much improved safety for the flying public, including the number of training hours for commercial pilots, and we've learned that one the hard way, with airline accidents, while this bill has been winding its way through both Houses.
We have a very aged air traffic control system. This bill brings all of these moving parts together and the committee chairs and the ranking members deserve very special praise for putting together so complicated a bill.
I want to comment on one matter that still is in conference and that has to do with the perennial matter of the slots and the perimeter and the desire of some in the other body, certainly, to save a few minutes by coming to overcrowded Reagan Airport rather than to Dulles or to BWI. For two decades, there was a statutory limit on the number of slots, and then there began to be inroads into it. This has to do with the perimeter where planes can arrive or depart to this airport, in order to even out the air traffic with the three airports in this region and to abate noise and traffic congestion on the ground.
Since 2000, we have had to fight every time this bill came up in order to save the perimeter rule. The perimeter appears to have been saved, and I appreciate the way the chairman worked on this; no modification in the perimeter, although there are going to be more flights, it looks like, with big planes coming in. We have offset the flights from beyond the perimeter by using 10 slots within the perimeter that were unused.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield the gentlewoman an additional minute.
Ms. NORTON. We have been very fair in trying to keep this an even system on the air and on the ground. I understand that, in the other body, Mr. Warner and Mr. Webb are working still on this issue in conference. What has given them the best head start, Mr. Chairman, is what you did here to save the perimeter rule. I think by the time it got there, they knew that that could not be overcome. And if we work together, I think we can finally call this the year of the FAA bill.
I thank both sides for how well you've worked together on this very important bill.
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