Posted on 11/01/2001 4:28:54 PM PST by FairWitness
Edited on 05/11/2004 5:33:17 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House rejected a plan Thursday to turn airport screening operations over to federal employees, handing a major victory to the White House and its Republican allies.
The 218-214 vote to defeat the Senate-passed, Democratic-backed alternative set the stage for passing a GOP aviation security bill that would allow screening to be contracted out to private employers. A vote on the Republican bill was to come later Thursday evening.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
That was the vote to reject the Senate version of the bill.
The vote for the Republican version was 286 yeas vs. 139 nays. Something like 70 DemocRATs voted for the Republican version. Two Republicans voted against it.
This was a major victory for President Bush. Now if he can get McCain and any other Republican Quisling Senators to change their vote, he can take the day.
The Conference Committee that will merge the Senate and House bills won't start until sometime next week. If I were President Bush I would enact an Executive Order that would impose federal supervision on baggage screeners and be done with it.
JW, what is with this Ganske guy? He wants to be a Senator. Going to run against Tom "Dung Heap" Harkin. Ganske, I believe, voted against Bush's version of the patient's bill of rights (or the proceedural motion), he voted against the tax stimulus a few weeks ago (dont know if he voted against Bush's tax rebate this spring) and now is working with Gephart to kill Bush's airport plan. This guy in the Senate WILL be another MCSHAME. Keep Harkin. At least he's an honest (albeit stupid) liberal.
Bull- there is no 'victory for the people' by adopting a federalized force of incompetant people like we already see in Federal service- since firing incompetant people is virtually impossible in the Federal government. If it was going to be federal, it should be through the military, where the people would be subject to military discipline and NOT unionized. It is better to avoid the federal employee crap entirely because that sort of thing was tried in Europe and there were enough hijackings to make it an obvious disaster.
Now, instead of immediately having an improved federal force checking luggage, we have to wait for a committee to reconcile the two bills, then a further vote, etc. etc.
There would be no IMMEDIATE improvement, much less a long-term improvement, if it were wholly federalized. It takes 3 months to hire a gov employee, and longer to train them. And in the meanwhile, no security would be improved but we would waste a lot of money.
The patriotic thing to do would have been to swallow a loss for the country and vote for the Senate bill in its entirety, politics and political ideology be damned.
What is patriotic about approving an inferior product?
At least we could fly safely immediately.
Bull. There would be a 3 month delay and once in place, the people serving would be essentially nothing more than political appointees, like most government employees already are- patronage jobs and nothing more. We'd have people like Chandra Levy and Monica Lewinski hired for the jobs- hired on the basis of how well they perform in BED or how well they scratch congressional backs during the campaign.
Once again, the Republicans prove that they are no better than the Democrats: only in it for themselves, the people be damned.
As one of the people, I am extremely pleased.
I've got NEWS for you- there is no such thing as 'safety.' It is an illusion. People who think they are safe are in fact in their greatest peril, because they get lazy and apathetic. People who feel safe will let their defenses down- as we have seen by the relentless emasculation of the American military and intelligence services over the past decade. People who feel safe will do everything they can to perpetuate the illusion of security and will trade their liberty away to live like cattle inside little fences. The slaughterhouse is always there, but it feels safe and the food is good, so they stay.
While we are fretting over people carrying scissors into airport terminals, we ignore the single greatest means we have of protecting our aircraft- the common everyday American citizen. By taking down a terrorist on board, American citizens accomplished several things over Pennsylvania: they foiled the terrorist's attempt to target a populated city; they did it without taking anyone's freedom away; and they did it without making the country live like kenneled animals. They did it because they were willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater purpose. If Americans had always reacted that way to hijackers, rather than trusting the government to negotiate with hijackers and get them off the aircraft safely, hijacking would not even be an option for terrorists. The WTC attack would not have occured because US citizens would have rendered the threat of boxcutters useless. In all probability, the WTC attacks would not even have been tried using hijacked aircraft, because the hijackers would have had to plan for an entire uprising of people on those flights and the plot would not have been feasible. They would have been forced to find a different way, like a truck bombing, to accomplish it, and the damage would not have been so great.
Our weakness in this country is PSYCHOLOGICAL. If we don't change our 'safety-first' self-centered thinking, we will regulate ourselves to death and destroy our economic capacity and industries as well. This country is not safe because a free society can NEVER be 'safe.' If made safe, it ceases to be free.
One thing hasn't changed since 9/11. The heroes are the same and the idiots are the same.
I'll bet you're right. I use to cut McCain some slack but no more. He's politicking while we're at war. Not good.
jackbill: That was the vote to reject the Senate version of the bill.
The vote for the Republican version was 286 yeas vs. 139 nays. Something like 70 DemocRATs voted for the Republican version. Two Republicans voted against it.
Thanks for the data. I am very glad to hear that passage of the House version was so "bipartisan". That will make it harder for the Senate Democrats/RINO's to demagogue (but they will anyway).
Wake up! Its the Democrat version that sucks up to big business. By federalizing the screeners they relieve the airlines of paying the bill. This amounts to a single mom in Idaho subsidizing some rich fat California businessman's airline ticket.
You've got that right!
Hooray! The Feds running it would merely ensure the absense of accountability. There is an inherent conflict if they actaully run it, for then the Feds are both running and monitoring it. For the same reasons the Air Traffic Control system should be privatized, ASAP.
What kind of logic is this??? I've worked for the Federal Government all my life, and I can tell you plainly, on the CIVILIAN side, they are some of the laziest, uncaring bunch one ever saw. They would be no better then our postal employees, and BTW, they would be the SAME people who presently work for the contractors. Furthermore, they could NEVER be fired for bad performance. They have NO incentive to do a good job. Now on the police or military side, I'd say the quality of employees improves quite a bit.
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted against putting the nation's airport baggage screeners on the government payroll in the wake of the Sept 11 hijacked plane attacks on Washington and New York.
In their biggest legislative fight since Sept. 11, U.S. lawmakers voted 214-218 against a bill that passed the Senate 100-nothing three weeks ago.
The defeated measure would have overhauled aviation security system by requiring law enforcement officers to screen bags at the 140 largest U.S. airports, adding some 28,000 people to federal payrolls.
The House was next expected to vote on a Republican-sponsored measure, backed by President Bush (news - web sites), that would keep the screeners in the private sector under stricter federal oversight, while giving Bush the latitude to make them government employees if he chooses.
But if the Republican bill, sponsored by Alaska Rep. Don Young and Florida Rep. John Mica , is approved by the House, it will have to go to a conference committee to be reconciled with the Senate bill before a measure can be sent to the President to be signed into law.
Before voting on either bill as a whole, the House approved, 223-202, an amendment containing language intended to court wavering lawmakers to the Young bill.
The amendment would limit lawsuits arising from the hijacked airliner attacks -- extending protection to companies such as Boeing Corp., which built the planes; the landlord of the World Trade Center's towers leveled in the attack; and even firms which made the glass for the towers' windows.
Some Democrats attacked the provision, saying it would also protect private companies that did the baggage and passenger screening on Sept 11.
``It would virtually exonerate them from the Sept. 11 failings -- preventing victims of Sept. 11 from holding them accountable for allowing terrorists to get on planes with box cutters,'' Rep. Martin Frost (news - bio - voting record), a Texas Democrat, said.
Much of the debate was acrimonious.
Mica warned that if the House decided to make baggage screeners government workers, ``you can go home and tell your constituents, 'What we did is, we created the biggest bureaucracy in a generation'.''
But Iowa Republican Rep. Greg Ganske (news - bio - voting record), co-sponsor of the House bill to make baggage screeners government employees, asked why doing that should be considered ``an evil thing.''
``Here's the real story,'' Ganske told the chamber. ``All those great firefighters and police in New York City who lost their lives (on Sept. 11), were government employees.''
REPUBLICANS WITHDRAW AIRLINE EXECUTIVES AMENDMENT
Under a barrage of complaints, the Republicans withdrew a proposed amendment to the Young bill that would have relaxed restrictions on airline executives' pay that were only approved last month in a $15 billion airline rescue bill.
Earlier, House Minority leader Richard Gephardt had denounced it as ``breathtaking'' that the Republicans had wanted to help airline executives when Congress had not yet helped airline workers who were laid off after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the last few days Bush has launched a concerted lobbying effort for Young's bill. But Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, said over the weekend that Bush would sign the competing version that passed the Senate if the House approved it too.
Young's bill would create a public-private partnership in screening, requiring the adoption of new stricter federal standards for screening and having federal supervision of private companies doing the work.
It would also establish a new Transportation Security Administration for security on all modes of transport.
The bill that passed the Senate unanimously on Oct. 11 would have put the Justice Department (news - web sites) in charge of hiring and training baggage screeners.
But the competing bills had much in common. Both would allow pilots to carry guns if they are trained and choose to do so. Both would strengthen cockpit doors, screen checked bags and deploy more air marshals on flights.
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