What Don Young, R-AK says about ATC privatization

"Chip Jones" wrote in message thlink.net...

HOST: One of the charges that seems groundless if you look at the bill
itself is that this bill requires privatization of the air traffic control
facilities. How do you respond to that?

DON YOUNG: If anybody would read the bill and quit looking at, I call it,
the fictitious ads on television, the bill itself does not require any
privatization.

Interesting how he doesn't mention that the House and Senate versions
contained protection from privatization, while the "reconciled"
version adds a sunset clause to the 94%.

In fact, the Inspector General came out last
week, Mr. Mead, with a new report that in fact the contract towers have a
better record than the FAA towers.

What a hypocrite! If he's convinced of this, why doesn't he want
contract towers pointing the planes at HIS hotel windows?

Of course the criticism of myself is that I exempted the state of Alaska and
there's a reason for that. One is the Juneau Field itself is going to be
under Capstone next year so it wouldn't be eligible to be contracted out
anyway. The Merrill Field is a real complex issue.

(Chips Comments)
If a contractor
can't handle the mix of traffic at Merrill (with 180,000 operations) how
could a contractor possibly handle places like Van Nuys (500,000+ ops),
Boeing Filed, Tulsa Riverside, Dekalb-Peachtree, etc? And if Juneau is
exempted because of the Capstone Project, what about contracted out towers
like Bethel, which is already under Capstone even as we speak?

Too bad the interviewer hadn't been primed with some tough questions
like that

Cheers,
Sydney