Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I rise to announce that Senator Reid of Nevada and I will be introducing legislation that is the President's emergency funding request to respond to the Zika virus. I have been on the floor many times talking about the ravages of the Zika virus. It is up to 91 cases in my State of Florida. Fortunately, none of them originated in the State. It is all because of a mosquito bite or some other means of transmission, such as sexual contact, that has been done outside of Florida. That is particularly true in the warmer climates of the Caribbean, Central America, and Latin America. We know the devastating consequences of someone getting this virus-- not as a virus, because it has the effects of a mild flu, but if a mosquito infects a pregnant woman, the researchers understand that if it is any time during the 9 months of the pregnancy, it has the disastrous consequences of severe deformities. What is the result of that? The result is not only trauma to the family involved, enormous tragedy, but look at what the social cost is going to be. The World Health Organization declares this a public health emergency of international concern. The last time the World Health Organization declared such an emergency was for Ebola. Last week our CDC announced that it is ``scarier than they had initially thought'' and that it could be linked to other birth defects, not just the shrunken head and brain that is so horrendous to see pictures of. This isn't just in Florida; 800 Americans in 40 States and territories have been infected. Of course, my State, with 91 cases, has been hit the hardest, and it has spread across 15 counties. The three most recent cases were in the Miami area, and in Florida it includes five pregnant women. Now we are going into the warmer summer months, and this is when the mosquitos breed all the more. This particular mosquito carries the dengue virus, which has its own drastic consequences. This mosquito is all over Puerto Rico. There is an estimate that 20 percent of the population of Puerto Rico may eventually be infected. If that is the case, you can wonder, out of that 20 percent of the population, how many are pregnant women. In a territory of the United States where American citizens reside, you can start to see the extreme depravity and social cost that will result, all at the same time that Puerto Rico is going through this tremendous financial crisis. Yesterday I spoke at length to Senator Hatch, the chairman of the Finance Committee. I believe he and his staff director are quite sincere about trying to do something about the financial condition of Puerto Rico, but now, on top of that, this additional plague is added. At the end of the day, we have to do whatever we can to help Puerto Rico in its financial crisis but now especially to help curb the spread of this virus. It is also in Haiti. It just so happens that we have a large Haitian American population in Florida. It is particularly running rampant throughout South America, including Brazil. Guess what is going to happen this summer. The Olympics will be in Brazil, and people from all over the world will be going. It is time to address this problem head-on with the administration's request for $1.9 billion in emergency funding. There are rumors that the Appropriations Committee is looking at a figure of $1.1 billion by stripping out the $250 million that would go through CMS because of the Federal Medicaid assistance increase to support Puerto Rico's Medicaid Program. What have I just said? They are already in crisis, their Medicaid funds have already been cut, and now we are not going to give this assistance to a population where 20 percent is going to be infected? The Appropriations Committee shouldn't cut out that $250 million. There is also the rumor that the Appropriations Committee is going to cut out some $589 million of the request that would go back to replenish the Ebola crisis fund; that in order to meet the emergency, the administration took that money--just under $600 million--over to address the Zika crisis until we can get off our duffs here in Congress and appropriate the emergency appropriations. I hope the Appropriations Committee will think twice before they cut out the money for Medicaid in Puerto Rico and replenishing the Ebola fund. That crisis still goes on, but the success of our being able to get on the Ebola crisis from 2 years ago is why we need to receive that added source to stop it. Otherwise, the consequences will be that the Ebola crisis will come back to the United States. This is truly an emergency. I am calling on our colleagues to approve the President's $1.9 billion emergency funding request now, in the immediate future, not later. The cost of inaction would be great and the consequences devastating. We don't want to have to say in the future: I told you so. I am introducing this legislation. More than likely, it will later be considered possibly as a stand-alone bill but possibly also as an amendment to one of these appropriations bills. I urge our colleagues to support this $1.9 billion emergency assistance request.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, we are trying to get clearance for a package of 26 noncontroversial amendments that Senator Thune and I put together in a package. They are noncontroversial. They are amendments sponsored by a multiplicity of Senators, a whole array of different things that are needed. We have one Senator objecting to proceeding with the package of 26 amendments. We are trying to get that objection removed; otherwise, we are going to be in a position of going to the bill, which we will have the votes to pass, but without these 26 amendments. These are amendments by Senators Hatch, McCain, Thune, Moran, Brown, Murphy, Kaine, Feinstein, Johnson, Leahy, Inhofe, Cornyn, Markey, Kirk, Cornyn, Durbin, Moran, Warner, Sullivan, Hirono, Hoeven, Heitkamp, Isakson, Murray, and Tester. All are noncontroversial. But we have one objection with regard to this package, which is noncontroversial. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, we are close to the vote on the FAA bill. I want to underscore the importance for the Senate because it contains some of the most significant passenger-friendly reforms and airport security enhancements that we have seen in years. To get to this point has been no small task, especially in this era in which it is so difficult to find consensus and a bipartisan way to pass something. We have been able to do it with the able leadership of the chairman, Senator John Thune. The two of us have felt like we needed to focus on areas where we agree, and as a result the entire Commerce Committee came together to get this done. Now we are about to pass this and get it on to the House. In a complicated bill like this, it doesn't contain everything that everybody wants, but we hope our counterparts in the House are going to take up and pass this bill without delay. We have given them a good bipartisan blueprint to follow and one they ought to pass easily. If they add controversial or partisan measures such as privatizing our air traffic control system, this bill will fail. The U.S. Department of Defense is unalterably opposed to private controllers controlling our military aircraft. If that path is taken in the House, it is going to be a big loss for consumers and for the safety of the flying public. When thinking about some of the irritations of passengers, such as the growing list of airline fees and charges, consumers feel they are nickel-and-dimed to death. This bill is going to require greater transparency and relief. Building on a minority Commerce Committee report that was released last summer, it requires fee refunds for delayed baggage. It requires refunds for ancillary services, such as seating fees that are paid for by a customer and then not delivered by the airline. It requires new standardized disclosure of fees for consumers and increased protections for disabled passengers. There are important safety reforms. Last night's national news was led by an international news report from London about an inbound British Airways flight into Heathrow that was struck by a drone. Computer analysis has been done. What would happen if the drone is sucked into a jet engine? It can certainly cause it to be inoperable and might start an explosion. Remember what happened when two seagulls were sucked into the engine of a flight called the Hudson River miracle, when captain Sully Sullenberger was able to belly it in because he had no power. That was caused by a seagull with feathers, webbed feet, and a beak. Imagine what the metal and plastic of a drone being sucked into a jet engine could do. Do we need any more reminders? This bill has a pilot program to test and develop technologies to intercept or shut down drones when they are near airports. Remember the tragedy in Brussels. Remember the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt because somebody was on the inside and snuck a bomb onto the airplane. There are parts in this bill that will help reduce the insider threat that terrorists have previously exploited, including the soft targets in the queues at the TSA lines and at the ticket counters. This bill will improve the background checks and security screenings for airport workers and prevent hackers from potentially gaining control of an airplane. This bill also requires that the FAA develop standards on how aircraft manufacturers can keep flight control systems separate from inflight passenger entertainment systems. Remember what was shown on ``60 Minutes'' about the takeover and control of a car by someone going on the Internet and hacking into the car's entertainment system. The bottom line is, this is a good bill. It is the result of a hard- earned collaborative effort. I thank Senator Thune and his staff for their good work and their good will in our negotiations. I also thank the Members of our staff who worked endlessly to get us to this point. After the vote, I am going to read a list of their names because I want them to be recognized. To our colleagues in the Senate, I thank you for working with Senator Thune and me on the creation and development of the bill up to this point and now the passage of the bill. I suspect the Senate will respond overwhelmingly and I certainly urge that result. Madam President, we have just a couple minutes until the vote. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Very fine. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, I would like to find out how long the Senator from North Carolina wants to speak because I need to wrap up a matter on the FAA bill, which we are voting on in 15 minutes.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, the feeling is mutual. I made my comments earlier, so I won't go into the substance of the bill. Senator Thune has certainly been a delight to work with, as was his committee staff. I wish to personally thank our staff: Tom Chapman, Jenny Solomon, Chris Day, Mohsin Syed, Melissa Alvarado, Laura Ponto, Dan Hurd, Renae Black, Maria Stratienko, Nick Russell, Christian Fjeld, Brian No, Peder Magee, Meeran Ahn, Brad Torppey, and our staff director Kim Lipsky. I also wish to thank the Democratic staff here on the floor--they make this place run day in and day out--Gary Myrick, Tim Mitchell, Trisha Engle, Dan Tinsley, and all the cloakroom staff. I thank the Senate for responding so affirmatively to this FAA bill. Now let's get the House to understand the importance of this bill so we can get it into law.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, in about 8 minutes we are going to start the vote on a motion for cloture, moving forward on the FAA bill. We have had a lot of debate about this. It passed with very little objection in the Commerce Committee. We have a package of 26 amendments, all of which have been cleared. We hope that can go as a separate amendment, almost like a managers' package. They are all noncontroversial. I am quite encouraged that we are making a number of reforms in the FAA that I have spoken about at length and that the chairman of the committee, Senator Thune, has spoken about at length. It is a good bill. Its previous adoption on a motion for cloture was something like 94 to 4. So you see where we are going. Then we will get into conference with the House, although it is my understanding they have not passed their bill. They passed it out of committee, but they have some controversial things. Hopefully, they will get it out, and we will be able to come to terms and get this reauthorization of the FAA, which we had to extend in a short-term reauthorization, because the clock is ticking. So I just wanted to share that with the Senate. Protecting the Manatee Now, Mr. President, since we have some time and no Senator is seeking recognition, I want to tell the Presiding Officer about a creature we have in Florida. We have lots of interesting creatures. There are things that come in that are like alien species, such as the Burmese python that they estimate--the Superintendent of Everglades National Park has estimated that there may be as many as 150,000. They got one 15-foot female, and she had 54 eggs in her. So you see how prolific they are. You cannot find them. The only way you can really find them is if there is a cold snap, because they will come out of the water, out of the river of grass where they are so exquisitely camouflaged. In a cold snap, they will come out of the water and up to the tree islands. Of course, you have seen some of those monsters--18 footers. Well, they had another critter that we have, because in Florida we do have alligators. Lo and behold, you may have seen this alligator. This alligator was 800 pounds and 15 feet long. He had been in a lake that was created in a cattle pasture, and he had been eating cows, so he had plenty of food. Well, this alligator, of course, is a critter that is native to Florida. It is the crocodile that is imported. You can tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile because the alligator has a rounded snout and the crocodile has a pointed one. All of this is to tell you we have another critter that is the most loveable critter, and we have had it on the endangered list. This is the animal called the manatee; some people call it a sea cow. These adorable creatures breathe air but live in the water. They have little flippers and a big body. Of course, they have these lovable faces. They have been endangered primarily because of boat propellers cutting them up. So we have had a serious effort at reducing the speeds of boats to a slow idle in manatee areas to protect them. They also get bothered by cold water. When there is a cold snap, they will migrate to warmer water. Pollution is another cause of the manatee being endangered. There has been a comeback. Around 20 years ago, there were only 1,200 of them in the world. That population has grown upward to 6,000. Here is the point: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to take them off the endangered list and put them into a lesser category. Those of us who want to protect these critters don't want them to come off the endangered list. If I had thought enough in advance, I would have brought a picture of a manatee. They are the most loveable critters. You can get in the water, you can swim with them, and you can feed them. When you feed them a pellet of food, they nibble like a horse nibbles sugar out of your hand--all of this under water. They are the most adorable critters. They love to be rubbed on their tummies. They love fresh water. In a brackish water system, where you can take a fresh water hose, they will come up and just drink the water, and then they will roll over so you can spray them underneath their flippers. Thank goodness they have rebounded, but there is a lot more to rebound. So, I wanted to share our crusade--our efforts to try to keep the manatee on the endangered list and to protect them. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 3680

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Madam President, in the same spirit of the chairman of the committee, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be called up and reported by number: Boxer No. 3489 and Markey No. 3467; further, that there be 45 minutes of debate to run concurrently on the amendments, equally divided in the usual form; and that following the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed, with a 60-affirmative-vote threshold required for adoption of the amendments; and that no second-degree amendments be in order prior to the votes.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from South Dakota. He has been a real friend and a champion in being able to work together in the best traditions of the Senate in trying to craft--and I think we have successfully--a bipartisan piece of legislation that continues, as the Senator has quoted from one of the papers, to advance the FAA in a way that we should be sensitive to the needs of the flying public. It is also this Senator's hope that where we have disagreements on just a few amendments, that after we have a big vote invoking cloture so we can move on with the bill, that a package of 30-some amendments-- noncontroversial, bipartisan--would then be allowed to be adopted by unanimous consent, and then it is possible that we could move on to the final passage early this afternoon. That is this Senator's hope. Let me underscore what the Senator has already said. There are a lot of challenges in how we conduct ourselves in the airspace of this country. There are a lot of important things that we have to do, such as modernizing the air traffic control system, the next generation of technology in moving us efficiently, and in the process it has to be safe. Therefore, as we see new kinds of challenges because of technology-- for example, unmanned aerial vehicles, drones--we have to approach that with great caution and make sure we know what we are doing so the flying public is safe. I hope we get a big vote on this motion for cloture. I yield the floor. Cloture Motion

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding. I just want to bring to the Senator's attention that I am very hopeful that we are getting an agreement that there will be a vote on the Senator's amendment and some other amendments. I thought the Senator would be happy to hear the news that it looks as if we are coming to an agreement where there will be a vote on the Senator's amendment.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during quorum calls be charged equally.

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

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, the Zika virus is getting very serious. Today one of the officials at the Centers for Disease Control said that ``this is scarier than we initially thought.'' As to a pregnant woman who is infected with the Zika virus, it may not only cause the fetus to be deformed with a much smaller head, but they are finding other birth defects as well as premature births. Normal, otherwise healthy people who become infected with the virus usually have relatively mild flu- like symptoms, but there are devastating consequences when the virus is contracted by a woman who is pregnant. Today the CDC said: ``Most of what we've learned is not reassuring.'' They also said: ``Everything we look at with this virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought.'' That is coming straight from the experts at CDC. When you look at where this virus is, unfortunately, there are more people in my State of Florida who have the virus than in any other State in the country. Nationwide, there are multiples of hundreds who have the virus. In the State of Florida, we have identified just under 100 people who have the virus. Thankfully, of those who were infected in Florida, none of them contracted it in Florida; they contracted the virus someplace else. There is a vast amount of traveling that goes on between Florida and Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is one source where the virus is coming from. When that mosquito bites you, it transmits the virus, and that mosquito is quite prevalent in Puerto Rico. So the island is having its own trauma with the Zika virus manifesting there, but there is also a source in other countries throughout Central America, the Caribbean, and Latin America. What do we need to do? Well, one little bit of good news I can give you is that the bill we passed in the Senate before the Easter recess is now in the House, and it will be taken up by the House tomorrow. They should pass it and send it to the President's desk for signature. What that bill does is give financial incentive to the drug companies by adding Zika as a virus to the list of tropical diseases for which the drug companies have a financial incentive to go and find a cure or a vaccine. This bill is complicated as far as what the financial incentives will be. I could explain that, but for purposes of discussion here, I just wanted to share that little bit of good news. We are going to have that bill in law, and we want to unleash the creative potential of our pharmaceutical industry to go and find a cure or vaccine that will take care of it. The other side of it is what the CDC is saying is scarier than we thought, and that is the fact that it is having such devastating societal and medical consequences for a woman who is pregnant and gets the virus. We can imagine the trauma to that family with a deformed child being born as a result of the virus. We can imagine the expense to society of a child who is severely handicapped. As a result, we are talking about major effort. There is something else we can do about it; that is, the President's budgetary request has $1.9 billion specifically targeted for helping to do the research on the Zika virus. It is my hope, and I know I have the cooperation and, indeed, the considerable help and energy of my colleague from Florida, Senator Rubio, in wanting to seek this and to get successfully in the appropriations bill for the Department of HHS the $1.9 billion to continue the research and all of the ancillary expenses that are coming as a result of it. Down the road, we will find a vaccine. Down the road, we will be able to manage this problem. But, in the meantime, there is a great deal of trauma, some extraordinary heartbreak to some families, which should be, again, the warning: If you are pregnant, do not go anywhere exposing the skin to a mosquito bite, particularly in those regions with that variety of mosquito that carries the Zika virus. So I hope by this time tomorrow night, we will say one hallelujah that the House bill has passed, the Senate bill has passed the House, and it is on the way to the President's desk for signature. Then, let's take up this issue in the appropriations bill when it hits the floor in another few weeks. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, while we are waiting for members of the Judiciary Committee to come and speak to the judicial nomination we will vote on shortly, I want to take the opportunity to talk about a pending amendment which is being offered by Senator Bennet of Colorado and which I would recommend to the Senate that they favorably consider. It is dealing with families traveling on airlines. As you know, things get very specific about seats and how much they charge for the seats. You pay extra for some baggage and other services, and then you get into seats that are getting increasingly smaller. It is even worse for a woman who is pregnant or is traveling with small children. Senator Bennet's amendment is a family-friendly amendment. If a parent has a minor child who is going on the plane by themselves, it would require TSA to allow the parent to accompany the child throughout the screening process. To a small child, that can be quite intimidating. Secondly, it would require the airlines to provide pregnant women with the opportunity to preboard the flight. How many times have we seen everybody queueing up to get on the flight? The special advantage passengers get on, the first class passengers get on, the members of the frequent flyer program get on, and here is a lady who is quite along in her pregnancy still standing. That is just common sense. That is being gentlemanly about the rules of airlines. Thirdly, the amendment tries to keep families together because it would require the airlines to make sure that at least one adult of the family who is traveling together can sit next to the child on the plane without the airlines saying the parent will have to pay an extra fee in order to guarantee having a seat next to their minor child. This is common sense, and it is encouraging family travel. I certainly urge my colleagues to support this amendment as we will be taking up the FAA bill after this judicial nomination confirmation vote. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, in just 5 minutes we will have our first series of votes on amendments on this bill. This is a good start to the FAA bill. It is improving the underlying bill that has a lot of attention to security already in it. But these are clearly amendments that will improve the bill. I spoke about it earlier today. I certainly commend these amendments to the Senate. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up Schumer amendment No. 3483 and ask that the Schumer and Bennet amendments be Nelson for Schumer and Bennet.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, we have the FAA bill on the floor. I would like to discuss some of the amendments that are proposed and, hopefully, a couple that we will be voting on this morning. There are a couple of amendments--one offered by Senator Thune on behalf of himself and this Senator, the ranking member of the Commerce Committee, and another offered by Senator Heinrich. Both amendments deal with the issue of security but in different arenas. Let me explain. The Thune-Nelson amendment applies to the question of perimeter security, of allowing employees to get into an airport--not the sterile area controlled by TSA, although, as I will explain, it can definitely affect the sterile area as well. On the other hand, the Heinrich amendment addresses security in the areas where passengers bunch up outside of TSA security, such as in a queue-up line going through TSA security, or passengers bunched up at the ticket counters, checking in their luggage. Either way, as we saw from the experience of the Brussels airport explosion, those are very tempting targets for a terrorist. Therefore, the proposal in the Heinrich amendment, which I would commend to the Senate, is to increase the level of security, particularly with what are called VIPR teams, which, in essence, are not only at airports but at seaports and at transportation hubs. Remember that in Brussels there was a bombing in one of the train stations as well. So we need to increase the surveillance and the security there, including dogs. As a matter of fact, our K-9 friends are some of the best that we have when it comes to protecting us because their noses are attuned to being able to sniff out the explosives that you cannot detect with metal detectors or with the AIT machine that we go through where we hold up our hands to see if we have anything on us. It can detect if you have a package, if you have an explosive that is somewhere in one of your body cavities. It is going to be very, very difficult. Dogs, because of their God-given sense of smell, can detect that. A properly trained dog is just amazing to watch. Now, interestingly, concurrently there is research going on at NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, for an artificial dog nose, a mechanical item or a piece of software and hardware that would actually do the same job. But that has not been perfected yet. That is going to be really interesting to see what they come up with. This Senator will report to the Senate later on that. But for the time being, the Heinrich amendment, which I hope we will vote on this morning, is concerned with that security that we have seen as a result of the Brussels bombing. We certainly want to enhance security in our airports. Thank goodness we have the intelligence apparatus that we do in this country to be able to smoke out the terrorist before he ever does his dirty deed. It is more difficult for them to do it here in America than it is in Europe because of the alienation of those communities that then harbor the terrorists. We see the result in Brussels as well as Paris. That is the Heinrich amendment. That is a broad characterization of it, but basically that is the thrust. The Thune-Nelson amendment is going at the perimeter security. OK, think Egypt and the Russian airliner. It was an airport employee who smuggled the bomb onto the plane, not as a passenger but as an airport employee. Think the Atlanta airport, 2 years ago. In a gunrunning scheme over 3 months, over 100 guns were transported from Atlanta to New York. The police in New York could not figure out how all of these guns were getting on the streets in New York. They kept checking the trains, and they kept checking the interstates. They could not figure it out. Here is how they did it. An employee at the Atlanta airport--because Atlanta was not checking their employees--would smuggle the guns in. Then that employee had access in the terminal to get into the sterile area--the TSA sterile area--and he would go into the men's room, meet the passenger who had already come through security and was clean, and give the guns to him to put them in his empty knapsack, his backpack. This employee, over the course of 17 times, over 3 months, smuggled over 100 guns. Thank goodness it was a criminal enterprise, not a terrorist, because you can imagine what would have happened. The Miami International Airport 10 years ago figured this out. What they did was, instead of having hundreds of entry points into the airport for airport employees in a very large airport like Atlanta, in Miami they boiled it down to a handful. There the employees went through similar security that passengers do to check to see if they had any weapons. They had a special identification card that they would have to stick into an electronic machine and put in their code, which was another way of checking to make sure that the employee was who they said they were. Miami solved the problem after having a problem with drugs 10 years ago. Interestingly, in the interim, the Orlando International Airport, likewise, about 4 years ago had a similar drug problem. They did the same thing. They boiled down hundreds of entry points for airport employees to a handful. They had those checks. I have gone to see those checks at those two airports. That is exactly how they do it. The fact is, we have 300 airports in the United States. There were only two that were doing this kind of perimeter checking. Atlanta then became the poster boy of what can happen in a gunrunning scheme. I am happy to report to the Senate that, in fact, the Atlanta airport has now done exactly what Miami and Orlando have done. But we have 297 other airports that need to do the same thing. So the Thune-Nelson amendment is exactly getting at that kind of perimeter security situation. I highly commend both the Thune-Nelson amendment as well as the Heinrich amendment. There are a whole bunch of cosponsors--bipartisan--on each of these. I highly recommend both of these to the Senate. I hope we will vote on those today--hopefully, this morning. Now, there are going to be, of course, a series of many other amendments, some very well intentioned that have some technical glitches, and we have our very expert staff right now starting to try to work out some of these technical glitches. Then we can get moving with this FAA bill. I would mention one other amendment that this Senator will be offering, and that is on a cyber security bill. Did the Presiding Officer see the ``60 Minutes'' segment where people with a laptop could take over an automobile by going through the electronics of the automobile? They can speed it up, they can make it stop it, and they can make it turn and completely take over the operation of an automobile. Can the Presiding Officer imagine somebody being able to do that with an airliner with 250 people on board? Therefore, whether we want to face it or not, we better face it because we are in an era that what we need to do is to make sure technically that the systems in an airliner are separate, that there is an air gap, and that whatever those systems are--it might be Wi-Fi for the airplane, it might be music, or it may be whatever it is--there is an air gap so that someone cannot go into that system and suddenly get into the aircraft controls. That is super important. One other thing I would mention is what we know as unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. They have become quite popular. But, obviously, one of the things that is already in the bill, which Senator Thune and I have insisted on as we approach this FAA bill, is that we have to come face-to-face with the reality that drones are now impairing the safety of an ascending or a descending aircraft. We have seen--the two of us--an operation where you can now take over the operation of a drone. Education can do so much. People have to understand that you basically have to not fly a drone within 5 miles of an airport. Just recently, at Miami International Airport, there was an inbound American Airlines plane, and there was a drone about 1,000 feet off on the left side. Remember Captain Sully Sullenberger, when a flock of geese suddenly got sucked into the engines and all power was lost. Fortunately, he had the Hudson River that he could belly it in after he had taken off from LaGuardia. You put a drone with plastic and metal, let that get sucked into the engine, and you will have a catastrophic failure. You don't want to put your passengers in that kind of operation. Therefore, education is one thing, but there is always going to be a young person that does not know about this. We don't know the answer. We know we can take over the operation of the drone, send it over here, have it set down, and have it land. The technology is there, but how do we apply that technology so we avoid this aircraft collision? There is an increasing use of drones that are so helpful for so many commercial purposes, not to mention the pure pleasure of flying a drone around, which we are seeing has become exceptionally popular. We address that in the bill by giving the appropriate direction to the FAA to start coming up with the solutions of how we are going to protect aircraft in and around airports. On down the line, there are going to be so many different issues with regard to drones, far beyond the scope of the FAA bill. On the question of privacy--a drone suddenly coming down and coming at eye level outside your bedroom window snooping--there are all kinds of questions about privacy. What about the fact that you can now put a gun on a drone? We know in a war zone we have the capability of doing that with very sophisticated weapons, such as Hellfire missiles, but now some people are experimenting with putting a gun on a drone. We have the ramifications of what that means for society to deal with in the future. For the immediate future, the FAA bill on the floor--we have this problem of avoiding drones colliding into aircraft, and that is in the bill and it is addressed. We have a lot of interesting issues to talk about. Let's get the Senate on it, and hopefully we can get agreement so we can at least vote on two of these amendments this morning. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I obviously support the agreement. This is a good first step in moving this FAA bill along.