Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I, too, want to recognize the staff on both sides and the Members. Early on, this did appear like it could be a contentious piece of legislation, but in the end we all came together in the public safety interest for needed reforms to this Federal agency and the process by which we certify aircraft. I thank the investigative staff of the committee, who put together an extraordinary report. I also thank the aviation staff on both sides of the aisle for their work. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the tragic deaths of 346 people on two Boeing 737 MAX jet crashes in October 2018 and March of 2019 were entirely preventable. As was said in the final report prepared by the Majority Staff of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on ``The Design, Development & Certification of the Boeing 737 Max'' released on September 16, 2020, ``The MAX crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake, or mismanaged event. They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA--the pernicious result of regulatory capture on the part of the FAA with respect to its responsibilities to perform robust oversight of Boeing and to ensure the safety of the flying public.'' The 737 MAX tragedies require us to make sure that certification alone can never become a legal shield for aircraft design or manufacturing defects. Even with the enactment of this legislative reform, it will be impossible to eliminate all risk. Indeed, as the Committee's report shows, ``FAA management has undercut the authority and judgment of its own technical experts and sided with Boeing on design issues that failed to adequately address safety issues and appear to have violated FAA regulations or guidance, in some instances.'' We need to incentivize the industry to do everything possible to ensure the safety of their planes and components. H.R. 8408 seeks to accomplish this goal by making both manufacturers and regulators responsible for updating and upgrading safety and technology standards as new systems and information are developed and become available. I also want to make it clear that this bill is not meant, in anyway, to interfere with victims' or their families' access to the judicial system and all available remedies when tragedies occur. Compliance with the provisions of H.R. 8408 will not adversely affect any existing remedies available to families of the Boeing victims and any other future victims under state or Federal statutory or common law. Families, who have already suffered tragic loss, must be able to seek compensation when their loved ones are injured or killed in aircraft crashes due to negligence or other wrongdoing. Many of the families of the Boeing 737 MAX crashes attended hearing after hearing as the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure conducted a comprehensive review of everything that went wrong with the 737 MAX. They were there to remind us of the human element--that we are here to work for the people. The bill does nothing to interfere with or affect the ability of the families of victims of air tragedies to hold industry accountable, now or in the future.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 8408, the bipartisan Aircraft Certification Reform Accountability Act, today because a U.S. commercial airplane manufacturer and, candidly, the Federal Aviation Administration broke the public trust. 346 innocent people died on two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes in October 2018 and March 2019. Despite the crashes, both Boeing and the FAA found that the certification of the 737 MAX was compliant with FAA regulations. It was compliant with regulations, yet 346 people died. I believe that that shows that there are problems with the regulatory system that need to be addressed. Ranking Member Graves, Aviation Subcommittee Chair Larsen, Aviation Subcommittee Ranking Member Graves, and I actively worked on this bill over a number of months. I think I can speak for all of us when I say our intent is to ensure a U.S.-manufactured airplane never again crashes due to design issues or regulatory failures. The Boeing 737 MAX has been grounded since the second crash, that of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on March 10, 2019. This has been the longest grounding of a transport plane in the history of commercial aviation and will likely end this week when the FAA judges that Boeing's modifications to the deadly system that caused the crashes are sufficient. The FAA and Boeing have spent the last 20 months doing what they should have done before the 737 MAX ever entered service, so consideration of this bill is timely. There is a long litany of negligence, recklessness, corporate greed-- particularly at the executive level--and errors in the design and certification of the 737 MAX that culminated in the crashes of Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 and, ultimately, this legislation. I am not going to go over all of the stunning acts and omissions within Boeing and the regulatory capture that prevented the FAA from detecting and correcting those acts and omissions because they have been laid bare in numerous reports since the accidents, including those of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which recently concluded the longest and most comprehensive investigation in the committee's history with a nearly 250-page report on the technical and regulatory failures in this story; the Joint Authorities Technical Review, a team of U.S. and international safety regulators who assessed the design and certification of the 737 MAX; the National Transportation Safety Board; a special committee convened by the Department of Transportation to evaluate the FAA's certification process with respect to the 737 MAX; the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee, which investigated the crash of Lion Air flight 610; and the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority, which investigated the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302. Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian flight 302 crashed, ultimately, because of a system called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, which forced the airplane into dives with forces so great the pilots were physically unable to counteract them. Through numerous investigations, we know Boeing intentionally concealed the existence of MCAS in cases from the airlines and pilots, partly to save money on pilot training and partly to avoid increased regulatory scrutiny by the FAA. Level B non-simulator pilot training was a design objective for the 737 MAX from the outset, according to Boeing's former chief project engineer; and as early as 2014, 2 years before the FAA made a pilot training determination, a Boeing press release and marketing materials declared this level of training for prospective 737 MAX customer airlines. In one case, they promised to pay a penalty of $1 million per plane to a purchaser if a higher level of training was necessary. We also know that Boeing's safety assessment with respect to MCAS was horribly incomplete. MCAS activated on both flights because of a tiny, fragile vane, called an alpha vane, protruding from the left side of the nose. The alpha vane measures the angle of attack between the airplane and oncoming air. When it failed, as these tiny, fragile vanes are wont to do, it triggered a complex computerized response, which included a jarring stick shaker, which vibrates the column so violently that if you are holding onto it, your teeth are going to rattle to warn of a stall; unrelated other cautions and warnings, and this plane has a primitive alert system unlike all Boeings made in the last 25 years, as the dozens of prioritized things; and warnings that airspeed, altitude is unreliable. More importantly, the MCAS system, an invisible system, left out of the first manual, or deleted from the first manuals distributed with the plane, forced the nose down repeatedly and inexorably toward the Earth. Now, Boeing assumed pilots would respond to all that and apply the proper corrective procedure within 4 seconds. I would challenge most experienced pilots to sort through that blizzard of alerts in 4 seconds, not knowing of the existence of the system, to determine what is going on and apply proper procedure. A Boeing test pilot in a simulator in 2012 couldn't do that, as the committee staff investigation revealed. It took that pilot more than 10 seconds to respond correctly and found the condition to be ``catastrophic,'' meaning the situation would have been unsalvageable. The plane would have crashed. The simulator crashed. And it did not share that information with the FAA or its MAX customers. But Boeing and the FAA never assessed the airplane-level effects of an alpha vane failure, how it would trigger erroneous MCAS activation, and how pilots would respond; not that there wasn't plenty of opportunity within Boeing to stop and think about MCAS and the hazardous situations it would create. At one juncture, a Boeing employee was authorized by the FAA as part of the ODA, Organization Designation Authorization, to determine the plane's compliance with the FAA requirements, asked in an email if the airplane was vulnerable to a single alpha vane failure. The employee was given a summary assurance that MCAS was not vulnerable, but that assurance was incorrect. The eyes and ears of the FAA on the ground at Boeing left the FAA largely in the dark regarding issues that affected the airplane certification. We uncovered numerable instances of similar missed opportunities in our investigation. The culture of profits at any cost with the company may well have been a factor in the failure to root out safety problems. According to a 2016 internal survey of similar Boeing employees, who, at the time, were called authorized representatives of the FAA, 39 percent said they felt undue pressure from Boeing management to make decisions in the company's interest. And then there was the FAA, whose complacency rendered the agency virtually a nonpresence in this story until then-Acting Administrator Elwell grounded the airplane after the second one crashed and after virtually every other agency in the world had grounded these airplanes. The FAA was either unable or unwilling to conduct rigorous oversight of Boeing during the certification process. A Boeing employee wrote an internal email in 2015 that, during a presentation of the 737 MAX, FAA officials were like ``dogs watching TV.'' And they hid the mention of MAX in two lines in a very lengthy presentation of MCAS. Throughout our investigation, we learned the FAA and Boeing separately performed an analysis after the first crash, that of Lion Air, which concluded that, if left uncorrected, the design flaw in the 737 MAX could result in as many as 15 future crashes. And despite the calculations and the agency's own Transport Airplane Risk Assessment Methodology, or TARAM, the FAA let it continue to fly. In fact, the head of safety for the FAA came to my office in February after the first crash and said that was a one-off, there is no problem with this plane. But that report had been produced before he came to see me. Now, when we finally got him to a 7-hour recorded testimony, he said he never heard of anything that said 15 of the planes would crash. Well, what does the head of safety do at the FAA? Seriously. Now, here is the most outrageous indication of a broken safety culture within the very agency that is supposed to be the leading champion of strong safety cultures. In a recent survey of FAA aviation safety employees, 56 percent of those involved in certification activities believed there was too much external influence on the agency and that this influence was affecting FAA safety decisions. This is 25 years after the horrible crash of Value Jet in Florida, when I finally got the law changed to say that the FAA is not to promote and regulate in the public interest and safety; it is only to regulate in the public interest and safety, not to promote the industry. All of these factors alone, and more, all part of a broken system that broke the public's trust culminated in 2018 and 2019 MAX accidents. And the bill we are considering today will fix that broken system. It requires the FAA to approve authorized representatives at all aviation manufacturers by examining their qualifications and character so that, when they are considering a proposed design, they will remember that public safety rests on their shoulders. Any person who interferes with an authorized representative's performance of his or her critical duties on behalf of the FAA will be subject to civil penalties going forward. It also imposes civil penalties for a manufacturer's failure to disclose the details of a system like MCAS that manipulate flight controls without direct pilot input and for a manufacturer's delivery of an airplane that does not conform to an FAA-approved design. The bill requires two FAA rulemakings that, together, will require manufacturers to provide the agency with thorough assessments measuring the risk created by changes to existing aircraft designs so FAA can ascertain whether a manufacturer has sufficiently minimized any given risk. The bill requires the FAA to hire more staff to rigorously review new designs and authorizes enough funding for 100 of them. It also requires the FAA to implement a nonpunitive voluntary safety reporting system for FAA employees to report safety concerns, prohibits agency officials from talking with manufacturers about formal objections to FAA career employees' decisions unless publicly disclosing information about those communications, and it extends to manufacturers' employees the same whistleblower protections that apply to airline employees today, and much more. I want to make it clear that this bill is not meant in any way to interfere with the victims or their families' access to the judicial system and all available remedies when tragedies occur. Compliance with the provisions of H.R. 8408 will not adversely affect any existing remedies available to families of the Boeing victims and any other future victims under State, Federal, statutory, or common law. Families who have already suffered tragic loss must be able to seek compensation when their loved ones are injured or killed in aircraft crashes due to negligence or other wrongdoing. The 346 sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers who died on Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian flight 302 placed their trust in a broken system. Today, we take the next big step toward fixing that system. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Graves, Aviation Subcommittee Chair Larsen, and Subcommittee Ranking Member Graves for their partnership in advancing this legislation, and I look forward to continuing to work with them and our Senate colleagues, and hopefully we can get it enacted into law this year. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 8408) to direct the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to require certain safety standards relating to aircraft, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 8408, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen), the subcommittee chairman.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 8266) to modify the Federal cost share of certain emergency assistance provided under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, to modify the activities eligible for assistance under the emergency declaration issued by the President on March 13, 2020, relating to COVID-19, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 8266, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have no additional requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I thought we just had that one additional speaker, or I wouldn't have yielded back all my time. I would like to point out that after Katrina, the gentleman's home State got 100 percent. In this case, when we are talking about COVID, there were unprecedented invocations of the Stafford Act for every State and every territory of the United States of America, and I believe that warrants the 100 percent for COVID, which has already occurred and is past tense. In addition, COVID has devastated local revenue sources for States that have sales taxes. Mine doesn't. You know, their revenues are down phenomenally, and for other reasons. I don't really want to belabor this. We are going to win overwhelmingly. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding his time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 8266, the FEMA Assistance Relief Act, as amended. H.R. 8266 is a bipartisan bill I introduced with Subcommittee Chair Titus, Representatives Thompson, Lowey, Roybal-Allard, Walden, and several other Members representing districts ravaged by natural disasters this year. Simply put, this legislation would increase the Federal cost share of certain assistance provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, under the Stafford Act. Specifically, the bill would address the Federal cost share for all declared disasters in the year 2020, the year of the pandemic, the year of record wildfires, the year of record floods, the year of more hurricanes than any other time in history, from 75 percent to not less than 90 percent and further adjust the Federal cost share for COVID- related declarations to 100 percent. Communities across this country, including my district in Oregon, continue to struggle to recover from the twin crises: Combating the COVID-19 pandemic while also facing extreme weather events, fires, and other issues that science has linked to climate change. State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments are seeing their public health emergency management resources stretched thin or outright depleted and overdrawn. It is Congress' responsibility to ensure they have the financial support necessary to address these crises. I first implored President Trump to direct FEMA to authorize a Federal cost share adjustment back in March when he invoked a rarely used clause in the Stafford Act to declare the pandemic a national emergency and issue a Presidential emergency declaration for each State and many protectorates and Federally recognized Tribes. Thus far, both the President and the agency have not taken action to shift the cost share more equitably on to the shoulders of the Federal Government, who invoked this clause in an unprecedented way. While Federal regulations allow for Presidential or administrative cost share adjustment, the requests from the National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, National Emergency Management Association, International Association of Emergency Managers, and others for this much-needed assistance have gone unanswered in a time when States and locals have seen their revenues all but disappear due to the impact of public health measures taken to combat the pandemic. On several occasions during the last 15 years, Congress has seen fit to statutorily increase the Federal cost share of FEMA assistance, notably after a couple of hurricanes. This year has already seen the busiest tornado, hurricane, and wildfire seasons on record. The burdens of response and recovery to an unprecedented number of natural disasters are compounding atop a global pandemic. If ever there was a moment for another statutory adjustment, 2020 is the year in which that should happen. Further, by establishing a national emergency and pulling FEMA into the response in mid-March, the President invoked section 501(b) of the Stafford Act, which declares the ``United States exercises exclusive or preeminent responsibility and authority.'' One would think that exclusive and/or preeminent responsibility and authority would justify the 100-percent cost share for COVID-related expenses. H.R. 8266 would provide much-needed assistance to ease the financial burden on State, local, Tribal, and territorial communities that have been granted Stafford declarations this year. Additionally, this bill clarifies and encourages FEMA to reimburse for personal protective equipment and disinfection costs for public schools, public transit, courthouses, and other traditionally eligible nonmedical entities, which were excluded from eligibility in FEMA's September 1 interim policy--for some unknown reason--on eligible public assistance expenses tied to fighting the spread of the global pandemic. Mr. Speaker, I thank, in particular, Congressmen Payne and Malinowski, members of the committee, for their efforts to address this with a stand-alone bill. I am glad we are able to address the matter here. Just to reflect for a moment on the wildfires in the West, these were wildfires of a magnitude and intensity never seen in recorded history and, according to some scientists who have been studying our forests through history, prehistory. In my district, we had three major conflagrations, one just upriver from my house, which took out the entire town of Blue River, and toward the McKenzie River Corridor. The winds were gusting to hurricane force. Humidity dropped to 6 percent. That is the Sahara Desert; that is not Oregon. They blew down the McKenzie River Corridor. Forest scientists say there has never been what is called a stand-replacement fire event in that corridor in history or prehistory. It is wet, it is damp, but not this year. These conditions were unbelievable. In the north part of my district and in Kurt Schrader's district, we lost three towns and had massive damage. Then down in southern Oregon, not in a forested area, in Representative Walden's district, the towns of Phoenix and Talent were dramatically impacted. Many, many residences and businesses were lost. One of the fires was set by a transient in a field, but again, the winds were blowing at a level never, ever seen before out of the northeast. The city manager of Talent said to me: You know, I grew up in southern California. This looks to me like the worst that southern California ever had in the past. This doesn't look like Oregon. These things are due to the changing climate. There are going to be more of them, and we have to be ready. This bill at least will help with this year's response. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I rise to offer legislation that would extend the extraordinarily successful scandal-free payroll passthrough for airline employees. It reviews the airlines as our--

Mr. DeFAZIO. Yes, Madam Speaker, I have a unanimous consent request. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on Financial Services, Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Budget be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 8504, Payroll Support Program Extension Act, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, in plain English what you just said is that the Republican majority killed this legislation plain and simple. If they had just agreed, then tens of thousands of workers for the airlines--flight attendants, they don't get paid a heck of a lot of money; pilots, yeah, they do well; mechanics and gate agents; tens of thousands of those people have been furloughed as of yesterday. They have lost their jobs, they have lost their healthcare, and some of them are going to lose their homes. They don't know how they are going to make ends meet, feed their kids, or do anything else all because the Republicans in the House of Representatives would not agree and the Republicans in the Senate will not agree to a larger package which contains these provisions. These are vital provisions, and they are time sensitive. But the larger package would provide relief to tens of millions of Americans, the Heroes package. The Heroes package would extend healthcare to people who have lost it. The Heroes package would extend unemployment to people who have lost it. The Heroes package would send out individual checks. The Heroes package would send money to keep small businesses going. And this time, unlike the first package, it will include money for-- Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 1 minute since I see the Parliamentarian rattling around.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for an additional 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, I am sorry. I am not going to stop talking. I am tired of bureaucracy around here. It is time to do real things for the American people, and this is real. These people's lives are at stake.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 5139, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5139, the Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act, as amended. The number one goal in transportation of people, whether it is across town, across the ocean, in the air, on the ground, or on the sea, is that there should be comprehensive policies in place for those companies that are entrusted with their well-being. While it is estimated that 90 percent of U.S. companies have a sexual harassment policy on the books, one in five does not offer training to prevent such incidents. This can leave passengers vulnerable and personnel unequipped to adequately address incidents when they occur. Some people may wonder whether this problem is as rampant as many may suggest and ask if there is enough robust, organized data out there that sheds light on this issue. Unfortunately, I have to say no. That is exactly the problem. There is no accumulated data. There is no Federal clearinghouse for transportation-related sexual assault and harassment incidents. The lack of centralized data leaves the traveling public in the dark about the risk. But in reality, sexual assault and harassment constitute a growing problem in transportation. For example, FBI investigations of in-flight sexual assaults in passenger airplanes rose from 38 in 2014 to 119 in 2019. Those are only the ones that are reported. Many people don't report. According to a 2018 national study, 17 percent of all respondents experienced sexual harassment while using mass transportation. Since 2016, 260 sexual assaults aboard cruise ships have been reported to the DOT. It is by far the most frequently reported crime on cruise ships. In recent years, there may be no other industry that issue has plagued more than transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft. In September 2019, 14 women sued Lyft, citing the company's failure to address a sexual predator crisis among its drivers. Uber identified nearly 6,000 sexual assaults and attempted sexual assaults on its platform in 2017 and 2018 alone. Anecdotal evidence suggests that sexual assault is a big problem with transportation network companies and traditional taxis alike, but TNCs and taxi companies don't share the data that would provide a complete picture of the problem. In my own hometown--I live in Springfield, Oregon, but in our urban area of Eugene-Springfield, we had one of the TNCs operating. All of their drivers had been through their intensive background checks, which are laughable, but then the Eugene police insisted that they go through real background checks. They found 12 people totally disqualified by the own standards of that company, Uber: one murderer, one rapist, and 10 serious felons. They were picking up women alone from bars at 1 o'clock in the morning, et cetera. The company didn't know it. In fact, those companies have fought--we are the last State that isn't bound by State law. They have been lobbying all the States to say you can't keep track of this; you cannot require more vigorous background checks. Unfortunately, 49 of the States have caved in to them, under threat of losing their services. My State hasn't. And, you know, this has to stop. That is why the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure passed my bill, H.R. 5139, the Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act. This bill will: One, require transportation providers to establish formal policies addressing sexual assault and harassment; Two, direct employees to receive specific training for not just how to handle sexual assault or harassment incidents, but also how to recognize and respond to potential human trafficking activities, something that has been identified numerous times by flight attendants who have alerted authorities and other workers in transportation; and, Three, charge the DOT with establishing the first-ever Federal clearinghouse for transportation-related sexual assault, harassment, and child trafficking, to allow the traveling public to fully understand the scope of the problem and spur further action. We can no longer allow sexual violence and abuse to persist on our roads, on our waters, or in our skies. We must be doing everything in our power to ensure our transportation system is safe for those who work in it and for everyone who uses it. This bill, which will allow us to finally track, respond to, and ultimately prevent sexual assault and harassment within all areas of our transportation system, brings us one step closer to attaining that goal. I want to acknowledge and express my appreciation for the supporters of this bill. It has been endorsed by the American Association of Justice, the Association of Flight Attendants, the Air Line Pilots Association, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Rights4Girls, Survivors for Solutions, and the Transportation Trades Department. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC, February 7, 2020. Hon. Peter DeFazio, Chairman, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Defazio: This is to advise you that the Committee on the Judiciary has now had an opportunity to review the provisions in H.R. 5139, the ``Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act,'' that fall within our Rule X jurisdiction. I appreciate your consulting with us on those provisions. The Judiciary Committee has no objection to your including them in the bill for consideration on the House floor, and to expedite that consideration is willing to forgo action on H.R. 5139, with the understanding that we do not thereby waive any future jurisdictional claim over those provisions or their subject matters. In the event a House-Senate conference on this or similar legislation is convened, the Judiciary Committee reserves the right to request an appropriate number of conferees to address any concerns with these or similar provisions that may arise in conference. Please place this letter into the Congressional Record during consideration of the measure on the House floor. Thank you for the cooperative spirit in which you have worked regarding this matter and others between our committees. Sincerely, Jerrold Nadler, Chairman.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5139) to protect transportation personnel and passengers from sexual assault and harassment, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her support and the support of the other Republican members of the committee. There were some technical issues relating to particular modes of transportation, and the minority wanted to get this bill done, and we worked out those concerns. I think everybody should support this today. Hopefully, it will be unanimous. Mr. Speaker, there was a section that got left out of my opening remarks, and this is a stunning number. On U.S. airlines alone, 68 percent of flight attendants say they have experienced sexual harassment during their careers. In fact, on November 8, 2019, a flight of a major airline diverted due to a passenger groping another passenger. The risk of an unwelcome and even threatening environment is real for both passengers and transportation workers alike. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington, D.C. (Ms. Norton).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington, D.C. (Ms. Norton).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I have no further speakers. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (S. 4762) to designate the airport traffic control tower located at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the ``Senator Kay Hagan Airport Traffic Control Tower'', and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, during the week of September 14, 2020, I was unable to vote due to the devastating and deadly wildfires burning throughout my District. I am working with the White House, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Army Corps, U.S. Department of Transportation, and Governor Brown to help my constituents get the assistance they need. Had I been present for votes, I would have voted: On Roll Call Vote Number 183, On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass S. 4894, as amended, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 184, On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass H.R. 2193, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 185, On Ordering the Previous Question to H. Res. 1107, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 186, On Agreeing to the Resolution H. Res. 1107, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 187, On Agreeing to the Allen Amendment to H.R. 2639, I would have voted Nay. On Roll Call Vote Number 188, On Agreeing to the Moulton Amendment to H.R. 2639, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 189, On Passage of H.R. 2639, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 190, On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass, as Amended H.R. 7909, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 191, On Motion to Recommit with Instructions H.R. 2574. I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 192, On Passage of H.R. 2574, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 193, On Agreeing to Resolution H. Res. 908, I would have voted Aye. On Roll Call Vote Number 194, On Motion to Recommit with Instructions on H.R. 2694, I would have voted Nay. On Roll Call Vote Number 195, On Passage of H.R. 2694, I would have voted Aye.