congressman micah, the chair of the house transportation committee says the f.a.a. administrator randy babbitt assured him today that he will, quote, clean house and improve training for air traffic controllers. shep? shepard: molly helpberg live in washington. thanks. speaking of washington, the deal is done. finally. your government will not be shutting down at least for the next few months. the house and the senate passed a bill to keep the lights on until the end of this fiscal year. that s september. the white house reports president obama plans to sign it tomorrow. and congress is already moving on to the next budget battle. and it will be a doocy. our chief political correspondent carl cameron is up on the hill. how did the votes go, karl? well, they were comfortable margins? both cases. the big battle was really in the house where there was some concern that democrats might not support it and republicans might ultimately rebel against it. that was not the case. here are t
saying the failures are off the chart. no accountability. if you have private screeners and good supervision of them, it couldn t get worse than it is now and probably could get better. jamie: what happens when the t.s.a. misses something in would it be different with a private security firm? sure. in ancient times when i was with an airline we had responsibility for a sweeping check point. if a screener fails, they get fired and move somewhere else. we wouldn t have them there. if a t.s.a. look at what happens when there is a major sweeping failure. the t.s.a. claims there is no failure and b says we will retrain the employee. the point of the matter, private screening the benefit would be you have some accountability at the screening check point. jamie: you mentioned congressman micah, the incoming chair of the house transportation and infrastructure committee. so perhaps he will be vocal on this. he has written letters to 200 of the nation s largest airports saying let s mak
comprehensive in terms of security as it is now? was at it good concept initially but the time has come? which is it? the t.s.a. to start with stood back and let congress create this giant bureaucracy not a security organization. the people in the in blue shirts a in the airport are not the problem. they re nicest people. but at the top we need a security organization not giant bureaucracy. the problem i ve got congressman micah was in charge the last time the republicans were there. he talked about it. but he didn t do anything. will he come to party now and demand things be done? that is the question. jamie: mike, there is no question how you feel about this issue? is there anything that the t.s.a. is doing right in your opinion? well, keep in mind, the
now, we ve got to get those timelines concurrent instead of consecutive. we ve got to speed up the bid process. there s so much we can do when the will is there. and i m proud that pennsylvania was congressman oberstar ranks the states in how quickly they obligated and spent the money, we were number one in the nation. but that s because i got my contractors together at the beginning of the stimulus and said, look, this is going to put people back to work, it s going to put money in your pockets, but we ve got to move, we ve got to roll on this. you ve got to be ready to go. i m shortening the bid time on every single contract. there s a way to get it done if there s a will to get it done. and look, everyone agrees that congressman micah wants the broad six-year bill reenacted. we need to get that done, no question about that. but in the short-term, we need to get this bill passed to put americans back to work and back to work quickly. if we don t if we wait until february or march
and again, i know this sounds like i m a naive fool, but i believe that we ve got to act in the best interest of the country. and this works. this absolutely works. we can show it, state by state. we can show the significant number of jobs that were produced, again, on the construction site, back in the factories. it s great for american manufacturing. and it fulfills a substantiative need. do you want to hear a shocking statistic, rachel? the army corps of engineers needed to spend a little under $700 million to repair the levees in new orleans before katrina. we didn t get the money and now we ve spent $16 billion in new orleans, the federal government. john micah, who you described correctly as the ranking member on the transportation subcommittee there was one of the republicans who came out today after the president s event and poo-pooed it, immediately said, no, this is never going to happen. i wonder if because there was some infrastructure spending in the stimulus, we had abo