eNews - September 16, 2011
Senate passes reauthorization bill
For the third time in the past six weeks the Oakland Port Authority held a press conference at the Oakland International Airport’s Control Tower Construction Site about extending the FAA’s reauthorization bill. That bill was set to expire at midnight, Friday September 16, 2011.
Secretary Lahood began by letting everyone know that the House of Representatives had passed a stopgap bill that would extend the FAA reauthorization bill until the end of January 2012. He said, “it’s now up to the Senate to pass this bill by this Friday, September 16 to avoid another shutdown of projects that put 4000 FAA employees out of work last time this happened along with over 70,000 construction workers." He continued saying “our work is not done. Once that reauthorization bill is passed, we need to ask them to pass the Presidents American Jobs Act and put Americans back to work.”
FAA Administrator, Randy Babbitt was also in attendance, taking the opportunity to point out that, “building infrastructure is what this is all about. We have a lot of things that are needed to improve our infrastructure, things that are critical for our future. Aviation is too much of an economic engine to play with. We need the Senate to make their move and pass this extension.”
On Friday, that bill was easily passed by the Senate with a vote of 92 - 6 to again, temporarily extend the bill through the end of January, 2012. Let's hope we are not back in Oakland again at the end of January for another press conference to again, temporarily extend the FAA reauthorizationi bill once again.
Watch the video below for more details on this Oakland press conference.