Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I ask consent that the pending managers' amendment, the Hollings-McCain amendment be considered agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, that the amendment be considered original text for the purpose of further amendments and that the Daschle-Carnahan amendment No. 1855 remain in its current status as a first-degree amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask that the pending Hollings-McCain amendment be considered agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, that the amendment be considered original text for the purpose of further amendments, and that the Daschle-Carnahan amendment 1855 remain in its current status as a first-degree amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I have an amendment on behalf of the Senator from Vermont, Senator Leahy, which I send to the desk.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The amendment is agreed to on both sides.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the events of September 11 forever changed how we feel about the security of our world, our Nation, and our families. We are wrestling with tough issues here: Balancing safety and security--against convenience and the tradition of our free, open, and democratic society. But one thing is clear. We need to make our skies safe. The American people deserve it--and they demand it. Securing our skies is becoming a Federal responsibility that needs the full resources of Federal law enforcement, immigration services, and intelligence agencies. Making our skies safe is a complicated endeavor that we cannot leave just to the airlines and the private sector. We do not contract out our Nation's defense or law enforcement to private security guards. Likewise, we must not contract out the security of our nation's skies or the vulnerable structures and people on the ground. The American people are willing to contribute to the cost of making our skies safe. A recent poll of 900 people found that 68 percent of Americans are willing to pay $25 per airline ticket to increase security. By those standards, airline passengers will find our plan to be quite a bargain. I have worked closely with Senators McCain, Rockefeller, Hutchison, and many others in a bipartisan effort to fix what has been a long- standing problem in aviation security. I believe the legislation we developed will close our current vulnerabilities and create new safeguards to stop those that would harm our American way of life. Our legislation will professionalize the more than 18,000 screeners in our Nation's airports who are now employees of the airlines and private screening companies. We will give the screeners better training and advanced security equipment. Our bill will increase the number of Federal Air Marshals on both international and domestic flights. It will enable the Transportation Department to deploy Federal Air Marshals on every flight. Our legislation mandates cockpit doors and locks that cannot be opened during flight by anyone other than the pilots. The new cockpit doors will be able to withstand forced entry. With our pilots safe, they can better keep our nation's passengers safe. These measures also will help restore Americans' confidence in the safety of our airlines. When passengers feel safe, they are more likely to fly, which will revitalize tourism in America--and the local economies that rely on it. The terrorist attacks last month demonstrated that airline safety is an issue of national security. Other countries have had extraordinary success using the tactics called for in this legislation. Our American citizens deserve the same. Mr. President, right to the point, let me thank Senator McCain, our ranking member, Senator Hutchison of Texas, who is the ranking member on our Aviation Subcommittee, and Senator Rockefeller. We have banded together in sort of an emergency situation. Right to the point, a lot of this could be done, and should be done, and was to be done under present law. For example, you could get an order for securing the cockpit. I called the distinguished Secretary of Transportation 2 days after the 11th--on that Thursday--and I said: I am going to have a hearing. But do not wait for hearings. Let's secure that cockpit. You can order that immediately. You can order marshals. Now, what have we seen? Three weeks after 9-11 we find a plane being apparently taken over on its way from Los Angeles to Chicago. The fellow was distraught and upset, mentally sick, but he charged the cockpit. So the cockpit was opened, and the pilot immediately called about a hijacking, and the passengers had to overpower him. First, why weren't there marshals on that plane? We have an authority right now for marshals. What I am trying to say is, somehow, somewhere this administration has to work just as diligently--and they are to be commended on their diligence on correlating a coalition abroad--they have to correlate a coalition here in the country; and we have not done that. This bill, in other words, is absolutely urgent because they seemingly want to wait for this intramural to work its way out with respect to the fixing of accountability and authority here. And that is what we are all for, in a bipartisan fashion agreed upon. We do not want to just hire a bunch of people. That isn't the problem. The problem is absolute security. This war is not a military war. And the headlines are misleading: so many aircraft carriers; so many B-2 bombers; so many this; so many helicopters; so many that. The truth is, if you are going after terrorists who are spread amongst 50 countries--and they are zealots, they are fanatics--if you are going after them, you have to go on sort of an individual way; and it is an intelligence war. Now, No. 1, if we had secured that cockpit, then you save the F-15 that was necessary. Are we going to have F-15s flying all over everyone's domestic flight; have military flights on top, domestic flights on the bottom? Is that America? Is that what we are going to have? Absolutely not. So how do you forestall that? Secure the cockpit. But they have not done it. Boeing said within 2 weeks they could retrofit all the doors in their airplanes, until you get a steel or a kevlar door put on such as they have in Israel. But they are waiting on studying and studying and everything else. Our first conference--I say this advisedly--dismayed me, when we conferred with the administration authorities on this particular bill. They were talking about its implementation 9 months to a year--can you imagine that--literally. That is what has gotten this Senator disturbed and exercised, along with the Senator from Arizona, about the urgency. We don't want to have F-15's and everybody in the Guard and everybody in the Air Force flying over all the domestic flights in America. So you secure that cockpit and there is one thing they know: They are not going to run it into a building. And if it is a hijacking, that pilot doesn't open the door but he calls wherever he is going to land immediately, and have law enforcement there. You wipe out the expense and the calling up of the F-15 pilots and the expense of the F-15 planes. These are the kinds of things that ought to be done immediately, but they are not being done. I am introducing and pressing for it on this bill. I don't want to have to agree to any set-aside for another bill. There is too much procedural intramurals going on. We have been agreeable, agreeable, agreeable. And in that context, I guess I have to, with a smile, say I don't mind being a little disagreeable in order to get this one done. I emphasize again the intelligence. Suppose you had someone and you were with the intelligence of one of these Middle East countries, be they Muslim or not, and you had information, you know it, whatever it is, but if you finger ``X'' on a watch list and know if it can get through now, that is the communications, it isn't high tech--high tech, everybody wants to get bam, bam, bam and you have the computer, and it immediately goes in. No. You have the Central Intelligence Agency not telling the FBI because they are afraid of a leak, and it will reveal their source. I saw this 40 years ago when I served on the Hoover commission investigating the Central Intelligence Agency. That is just inherent. What you want to do is protect your sources. So do you give the information ahead and give it to unreliable sources and everything? While the FBI is absolutely reliable, certainly the screeners aren't, the ones we have. Everybody will agree to that. So you have to have high-tech personal, professional. It has to be a federalization where we can check these people, recheck them, not have any labor difficulties. I supported President Reagan on the controllers. You can't have them striking and negotiating and everything else. This is a war of intelligence. The people at the airports, if they are going to stop would-be terrorists, have to be positioned to receive that watch list information. And they are not going to be giving it to them until our Government can guarantee they are secure. That is just bluntly put. In that light, the President of the United States has to get in not whether we are going to get first the Amtrak, no; we have to do the seaports, no; we have to do benefits, no; we have to do counterterrorism and get into all of these procedural things. He has to tell the country to bug off, relax. You are not going to get a heck of a lot of information. I am your President. I have a team and we are working and if we can get this bin Laden fellow, you might know of it days or weeks afterwards. We might get him but we might not want to reveal how we got him for a period of time. That is the kind of war we are in. You don't have to satisfy this media crowd and everything else like that that wants the story of the day, the headline. This is a war not to be run on the 7 o'clock news. They can relax, take weekend leave and everything else of that kind and, like the President says, go to Disney World. But forget about all this information to be had. We need this bill. We can't tarry around. We need professionalism in it. It is not like the Israelis have, where intelligence is the outer rim, but it goes all the way down, as I have said before, to the person vacuuming the carpet in the middle of the aisle of the plane, because that person, with access to the plane itself, could put in a weapon like we found a bunch of these cardboard cutters and everything else of that kind, as we are finding in some other planes now on a diligent inspection. My distinguished colleague from Texas is here. I will yield because she has been a leader for several years on this particular score. I am grateful for her leadership. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I urge the adoption of the amendment.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask colleagues to find out the disposition of the leadership and how they want to wrap up because we are ready to go. But pending that, I will say a word about another concern I have. (The remarks of Mr. Hollings are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, on behalf of the distinguished Senator from Arizona and myself, Senator Hutchison of Texas, Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia, and Senator Kerry of Massachusetts, I send the managers' amendment to the desk.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HOLLINGS. On behalf of the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Senator Ensign, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I see the distinguished Senator from New York is here. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I will conclude with a thought I just expressed about stimulus. This measure would stimulate the airline industry--exactly what we are trying to do all over America. When you get people traveling, when you get them on the airlines, when you get them in the hotels, when you get New York going again, and when you get all of these other places back to normalcy, the best way to stimulate the airlines is to get safety for them. What the bureaucracy has done up here with the procedural hangups is to give $15 billion to keep the airlines alive and then guarantee that they go broke by not giving them the safety and, therefore, ensure that the traveling public is not on the planes. This is the best way I know of to not just stimulate the airlines and air travel but to stimulate the economy. Please come forward. Let's move on this particular bill. I thank the distinguished Senator from Delaware and the Senator from Alaska for indulging me the extra moments. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Right.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I agree with that assessment, and part of that assessment should go right to the lobbyists. This is actually a headline: Airport firms form alliance. Well, they did not form an alliance for safety or security. They formed an alliance to feather their own nests. They are not interested in security, and that is what the hold-up is over with that political stand-off of ``get rid of the Government.'' They are thinking about their reelection campaigns next year. They are not thinking about the security of airline travel in America, I can say that.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Exactly. Exactly. We are bogged down in here and they all seem to be enjoying it. I do not understand. I understand you have to be considerate. We are not ramming anything. We do not want to, for example, ram this bill through the House. They are going to have their say, and they do have their say. But heavens above, let's move it over to them so they can have their say. We want to be considerate--and you have been too generous to me. The point is with respect to seaports, 9 out of 10 containers coming in are not even looked at. If Senator Nelson and Senator Hollings wanted to get into the drug business down in Colombia, we would fill up 10 containers full of cocaine and send it in. I can tell you right now, you have 9 of them that would go through and we would have made a fortune. We don't mind one getting caught; that is the name of the game. What they have been trying to do is brag how fast they could move cargo through. Up there in New Jersey they not only go to the port, then they go to a staging area 25 miles farther. In between the time they go from the port, actual dock to the 25-mile site, some of them, they never see those trucks again. They don't know where they went or whatever happened to them. They just do not show up for the inspections. The DEA says, no, it is the Customs' fault. Customs say, no, it is the port's fault. The port says, no, it is the Coast Guard's fault. The Coast Guard says you are running the port and you are in charge. But no one is in charge. That is where we have had it with these contractors. We are not going to give this the runaround. We are going to fix this responsibility once and for all. With the seaports, under the law, the captain of the port is the responsible officer. You cannot just put in one bill and wave a wand and all of a sudden you have security. You have to give them time and money and let them change the culture and get in step. Labor is absolutely concerned about background checks of those working the docks, just as they were in El Al. They had trouble, the El Al security people and the El Al chief pilot said, yes, we had problems too with labor, and we finally got past that and everybody is subject to these background checks and periodic spot checks for security. When you mention FAA--and that is one of the reasons we put it under a Deputy Secretary of Transportation and not under the FAA--last week I had the distinction of meeting, if you please, with the former chairman, on the House side, of the Transportation Appropriations Committee of FAA. He told me some of the horror stories. For spot checks he had the individual given the pictures and told: We are going to make spot checks down in Florida next week, so you go to these particular airlines and show them the pictures because these are the fellows coming through making the spot checks. That is how incestuous the FAA has become. That is why the airlines continue to say they want to be able to provide the money. No, no, they are going to be Federal employees with Federal pay. It is going to be subject to appropriations. Why? Because we know already, under the Airport and Airways Improvement Act, we owe them $15 billion because you and I and the Government have been using that $15 billion to balance the budget, to cut the deficits down and try to get surpluses. We have not given them airport security. We have not given them airport improvements. So when we look at this, our distinguished colleague and friend, the Senator from the State of Washington, Mrs. Murray--she has that committee. She is going to have the oversight. With Senator Byrd, the full committee chairman, along with Senator Stevens, the ranking member, we are going to have it subject to appropriations. The gamesmanship is stopped. We have gotten dead serious about this situation. We are going to fix the responsibility and have accountability, accountability, accountability. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, let me correct a statement I made sometime last week when we were checking into the practice of other countries with respect to airport security. We were told that of the countries in Europe, all were Government employed. That should be corrected. That is not the case. In fact, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and England, those four countries, have contracts, but they have the health benefits and the guaranteed vacation and other benefits guaranteed by the Government. It is a sort of hybrid situation. Of 102 countries around the world with significant air travel systems, only 23 use contract screeners. I think that is not the point I want to make this afternoon. No one would suggest that we take the security for the President of the United States; namely, the Secret Service, and privatize it, contract it out. Nor would anyone recommend privatizing the security that the distinguished Chair, myself, and other Senators receive, the Capitol Police, who incidentally have been working around the clock, doing an outstanding job. You can go on down the list, whether it is Customs, whether it is the Border Patrol, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service that has some 33,000 personnel, no one in the House or Senate has suggested that we contract that out. No one has suggested we contract out the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the thousands of professionals conducting the investigation right now. No one suggests that they take some 669,000 civilian workers in national defense and contract them out. In fact, there was a suggestion by the OMB earlier this year to do just that. The OMB folks called over to the Pentagon and said: We are looking at downsizing and we want to get some contracting out of 5 to 10 percent of your civilian workers. And the Department of Defense said: That will never happen. We are in the security business. Yet the big hangup is federalization, the Government taking over the responsibility of security for air travel in America. Now, we have tried after Pan Am 103 back in 1988, with more training, more hours, more supervision, extra this and extra that, to no avail; we had TWA 800 in 1996 and again the Gore commission with more training, more supervision, and what have you. And now we have 6,000 killed and 13,000 casualties. To me, it will take unmitigated gall, with the recent experiences in mind, to come forth with a contracting out proposal. Only a while ago did I learn why we are having to put up with this nonsense. All you have to do is read Roll Call, ``Airport Firms Form Alliance.'' The airport firms formed an alliance with a Swedish company and call themselves the Aviation Security Association. And who do they have as members? The contractors that want to keep continuing their misdeeds. For instance, one of the association members, Argenbright had the contract for the Dulles and Newark airports. Now, let's read about Argenbright. I find in an article on September 13 in the Miami Herald: The security company that provides the checkpoint workers at the airports breached by Tuesday's hijackers has been cited at least twice for security lapses. In its worst infraction, Atlanta-based Argenbright Security pleaded guilty last year to allowing untrained employees, some with criminal backgrounds, to operate checkpoints at Philadelphia National Airport. In settling the charges, Argenbright agreed to pay $1.2 million in fines and investigative costs. . . . Argenbright was also found to have committed dozens of violations of Federal labor laws against its employees at Los Angeles International Airport, an administrative law judge ruled in February 2000. Here we are trying to do the work of the people of America, and we don't have any Senators listening. They are listening to the lobbyists, the K Street crowd, who are down here working the different Senators, and I can't explain to them the problem of security at the airports. Mind you me, those who are falsifying records, if you please, are now saying what we have to do is have contracting out; we can't federalize. Of course, that appeals to the crowd that comes into public service by promising to get rid of the Government. ``The Government is not the solution, the Government is the problem.'' That is all they all talk about. They are thinking of what? Of next year's reelection. They are not thinking of security. They are thinking: Wait a minute now, I was going to downsize and get rid of the Government, and now I supported 18,000 screeners and some 10,000 other airport personnel--some 28,000 I am going to put on the Government payroll, and my opponent is going to say: He promised to get rid of the Government, and he went and voted to add 28,000 more Government jobs. That is the problem--along with the blooming lobbyists. They are trying to carry out their political commitments. They are not looking out for the safety of the traveling public in America. The worst thing we have ever done is give the money to the airlines. They didn't take care of the employees. I had Herb Kelleher, of Southwest Airlines, tell me he did not furlough a single employee and maintained 100 percent service. But they were all going broke. Why? Because the lobbyists took over--the same crowd that came running around hollering they were all going to go broke. Here I am fighting to do the people's work, and Senators are gathered together in their offices with all of these airline lobbyists. This is the fifth week since September 11, and we can't pass airline security. All of America wants this responsibility fixed within the Government. No one for a second, as I say, would suggest that the FBI and the Secret Service, the Border Patrol, and Customs, or any of the other security agencies--no one would suggest that the 669,000 civilians in defense be contracted out. According to the lobbyists the Government is too big, the Government can't do anything. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Look at what is happening. Turn on your TV if you want to see what Government can do. Look at these attacks on Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. I don't know--there are some 31 different military targets, with 2 countries involved, B-2s coming all the way from Missouri, ships stationed in the Indian Ocean, planes coming off Diego Garcia--all Government, Government recruited, Government fed, Government housed, Government trained, Government deployed, with precision work that we all praise--but we can't get a Government airport security screener. Oh, no, no, that would be against my ideology. No, we want contracting out, privatization. We now know what we are putting up with in this lobbyist crowd and the silly ideology that the Government can't do anything. Well, I am proud of our Government; I am proud of our deployment. We are going to correct this situation, and we are not going to have an Executive order. I have heard word that the administration might implement an Executive order to take care of it and say Congress is dragging its feet. We are trying to go along and be bipartisan and everything else because this is a bipartisan bill, reported unanimously out of the Commerce Committee. We have been ready to vote and take amendments, consider them and vote upon them. But they are going to say now that we are going to have to get an Executive order because we are dragging our feet and can't get security out of the Congress, mind you me.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Right.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Senator. It is proper to mention the leadership of Senator McCain, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, and it has been bipartisan; this was not a partisan approach. We have tried over the past 15 years to set professional standards for airline security, more hours of training, more supervision. But even with all of the contract standards, with all the training, with all the supervision, they are falsifying the records and putting people with criminal records in as the screeners, and they say: Let us keep doing it. Give us some more standards. Give us some more training. Come on.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I am happy to yield.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana. He has been the most diligent of all. He has been to every one of the hearings, all the briefings with El Al, and has been a wonderful supporter to get responsibility fixed. That has been his theme. And whether we do it in Justice or whether we do it in Transportation, or wherever, I always tended toward trying to get it done. And the White House wanted it in Transportation. Transportation has a follow-on with respect to railroads and the seaports. So I thought the one entity of Transportation would be it. But there is tremendous logic in what the Senator has pointed out. I cannot thank him enough for his support, so we can move to let the majority's will govern. We ought to be embarrassed. Five weeks after September 11, and we are still dillying around, with an empty Senate Chamber, arguing about maybe benefits and maybe about the railroads and maybe about something else. I am ready to move to this and have it done and then take up railroads. Let's take up the question of the seaports and take up counterterrorism and all these other measures. But I think in trying to engineer around and satisfy this Senator and satisfy that Senator, we have been doing that for 3 weeks, and we have gotten nowhere. I thank the Senator for his leadership.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, it is an honor for me to pay tribute to my former Senate leader, Mike Mansfield. The State of Montana and the United States have lost a great man, a valiant soldier, a dedicated statesman, and a gentleman of a breed we don't see enough of these days. Mike Mansfield was a revered figure whose distaste of partisanship led the Senate to accomplish great deeds for civil rights, voting rights, and foreign relations during Vietnam, the cold war, and the Watergate scandal. His leadership emphasized equality, cooperation, and fairness which were marked by his personal style of leadership. He was considered a quiet man who did not care for self-promotion, often answering questions with a ``Yep,'' ``Nope,'' ``Maybe,'' or ``Can't say.'' Although he was not known as an orator, his simple statements and words were extremely effective. He said in eulogy for John F. Kennedy, ``There was a sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.'' In his quiet manner, he managed to guide a exceptionally productive Senate during a turbulent political era which could have become bogged down had he not been able to work with both Republicans and Democrats alike. Mike was a Representative and Senator from Montana who came to Congress after dutifully serving his country in the military during WWII. At 14, he stretched the truth about his age in order to enlist in the Navy. He then went on to serve in both the Army and the Marine Corps. Having returned from duty in 1922, he worked as a ``mucker'' in the copper mines of Butte, Montana where he met Maureen Hayes. In 1932, he married Maureen who is said to have played an essential role in his remarkable career. She was the person who convinced him to go back to school, run for Congress, and become U.S. Ambassador to Japan under President Carter and President Reagan. He was elected as the Senate Majority Leader in 1961, 5 years before I was elected to the Senate from South Carolina. I remember in 1971 when I was in Canada on my honeymoon with Peatsy, Mike's office called and asked us to come to Europe. Peatsy and I left Canada immediately and spent our honeymoon traveling around Europe with Mile and Muareen. Mike served as Senate Majority Leader for 16 years-longer than anyone in Senate history. He was extremely involved in the civil rights movement, a critic of the Vietnam conflict, and an advocate of health care legislation. He was a man who was convinced that the true strength of the Senate lay in the center and not on the right of the left. Partisan politics was not his style, and his success lay in the fact that he was an honest, straight shooting individual who cooperated and worked with both sides of the aisle. We have lost a great statesman and a fine man who served his country well. The distinguished Senator from Montana was my role model. He believed in getting things done. In order to get things done, you have to listen and let everyone be heard. But once done, then move on. He was particularly kind to me because I was just a freshman Senator in 1966. He had me immediately on what we call the policy committee. I then, in 1971-1972, chaired the campaign committee for the Democrats on this side of the aisle. It so happened that I was off on a trip just after my wedding in 1971. Senator Mansfield was asked by President Nixon to coordinate and communicate the 10-percent surcharge on imports with about 10 country heads in Europe and in Africa and Morocco. He called me. I was in Canada. He called and I came immediately back down to the Andrews air base. We boarded the plane, and we went to Helsinki, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Morocco, of course, London, several, a couple other countries, he and his wife Maureen and my wife Peatsy and myself. Watching him, how he responded and acted and more or less chaired those meetings with the heads of state was really an inspiration to me. He was so direct, so much to the point. We have so much in the field of political correctness now. Mike Mansfield was always politically correct, but he didn't bother around with all those nuances. He was the finest of Senators and leaders in the history of this body. The best of Mike Mansfield was more or less said by himself in a eulogy to his wife at the time of her funeral just last year. I included that eulogy. He permitted me to put it in the Record because I knew he had friends all over the country and the world. They wanted to be with him in that trying moment. I knew that they would, more than any, appreciate the real Mansfield flavor if they could just hear him. The most eloquent of all tributes to be paid to Mike Mansfield was sort of paid to himself when he made the eulogy to his charming wife Maureen, and I ask unanimous consent that that be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Chair. Madam President, we have the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the airport security bill at 10:30. I say, in the few minutes allotted me, I wish everyone could have been at the Commerce Committee briefing we had with the El Al airline security chief and Israeli government security officials. You would immediately understand that when the plane went down over the Black Sea this past weekend, even though the plane came from Israel, the explosion had to come from somewhere else because it is veritably impossible to get a bomb aboard a plane at airports in Israel. The United States military is now working with Ukrainian and Russian officials to verify evidence that a Ukrainian missile may have gone astray during military exercises on the Black Sea coast. I only mention this incident to emphasize the thoroughness of airport security in Israel. They call their security plan the ``onion ring'' perimeter defense. Their plan effectively addresses not only security during the boarding of the plane, but security surrounding the airport and on the tarmac. But we continue to talk more narrowly about security in the cockpit and the need for federal screeners and U.S. marshals on board. As inexperienced as we are on these matters, this is where our minds are focused. However, we need to expand our work on airline security to the airport and airline personnel working on the tarmac. At some point during pre-flight preparation, you have not only the screeners, cargo handlers, caterers, and general airport perimeter officials, but you have the individual who vacuums underneath the seats, who all have access to the airplane prior to take-off. Because of this access, all personnel need to go through an FBI check, in our opinion. That is what this bill provides. Take the following scenario for instance. A terrorist checks in ahead of time online and the airline staff says to the person you have seat 9A. All a terrorist has to do is pick up that mobile phone and call a friend who has been working 2 years on the tarmac out there and say it is a 12 o'clock flight to Charleston, seat 9A. That is it. They tape a pistol or a weapon of some kind under seat 9A. But even there at the counter, all you have to do is get out there a little bit early, get your ticket, and then sit down and be calm. Then just give a motion up at the window because your friend has already been told that this is the flight you are going to take. The bill itself has been released to the Senate after a full day's hearing we had at the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee with nearly all of the Senators in attendance. In a bipartisan fashion, Senator McCain, and I, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has been working on this over several years, along with the chairman of our Subcommittee on Aviation, Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia, all got together with some two dozen cosponsors to develop this legislation. We do have a managers' amendment that really takes care of some of the flexibility needs that we found out about from the FAA with respect to restrictions on parking 300 feet from the airport building--that kind of thing. As the Senator from North Dakota says, I think if you move 300 feet from the airport building in North Dakota, you will be in Senator Dorgan's cow pasture. We must be careful to maintain reasonable and flexible oversight of airline security in order to ensure the continued efficiency of the industry. Those kinds of judgments can be made from time to time by the administering agency. These efforts will be paid for. Right now, we are studying the exact cost. Senator McCain and I have tried to hold costs down--including the passenger security fee itself. What we have agreed upon at the moment, of course, is $2.50 per ticketed passenger which would add up to $1.5 billion. But they are saying, no, if you are going to take care of the 18,000 screeners and some 10,000 other personnel around the tarmac and out on the sidewalk, you are going to really get into about $1.7 billion or maybe $1.9 billion total cost. So we might have to raise the passenger fee up to $3. I don't know. We are currently trying to obtain the best CBO figures. The airline executives favor this bill; the airline pilots favor the bill. You go right on down the list, all the personnel involved; the mayors have sent us resolutions. I think we made a mistake in calling it airline security. We should have used the word ``stimulus,'' the ``airline stimulus'' bill, because if we had used that word, we would not have had any trouble at all in passing this measure. Everybody is around here trying to stimulate, stimulate, stimulate--these fancy words we get up here in Washington. I know of no better measure to stimulate airline travel and get the airlines back to normal. We give the airlines $15 billion and then guarantee they go broke by keeping the airports closed or extending the idea that there is no security, that there are no marshals on the plane, as the Senator from California told me early this morning. We are going to have marshals. We are going to have security with this airline stimulus security measure. I yield to the distinguished Senator from Montana. He has worked closely with us on this issue, and perhaps he would have an observation.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President. I suggest the absence of a quorum.