WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), U.S. Senator Joe Manchin and 32 of their Senate colleagues today called on President-Elect Trump and Vice President-Elect Pence to support the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Contract Tower Program. There are currently 253 airports and surrounding communities in 46 states benefitting from the enhanced safety and improved air traffic control (ATC) services provided by FAA contract towers. 

The senators wrote, “Not only do these contract towers provide an important safety service, but they do so in a cost-effective fashion as validated in numerous reports by the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General. This is demonstrated by the fact that FAA contract towers handle approximately 28 percent of all U.S. air traffic control tower operations but account for just 14 percent of FAA’s overall budget allotted to tower operations. Additionally, the contract tower program provides FAA and American taxpayers an annual savings of approximately $200 million.”

In the letter, they encourage the new administration to adopt regulatory reform measures to the benefit-cost analysis process used by the FAA in managing this program. These measures were included in both the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and the full Senate-passed FAA reauthorization legislation (H.R. 4441 and S. 2658) earlier this year. 

Click here to read the full letter.

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MANHATTAN, KAN. – U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) released the following statement in reaction to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issuing their final rule on small airplane safety certification standards today:

“The Part 23 rule is a commonsense solution that will empower the general aviation industry to innovate while continuing to improve aircraft safety. This rule will significantly decrease the regulatory burden and costs of certification for aircraft manufacturers in Kansas, strengthening their ability to remain competitive in the global marketplace.”

Sen. Moran is a member of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security.

Background

• Sen. Moran sponsored the Small Airplane Revitalization Act of 2013, legislation directing the process for establishing the Part 23 rule.
• The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was issued March 14, 2016, followed by a 60-day comment period. The FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016, which Sen. Moran supported, required that this rule be finalized before the end of the year. 
• The rule would allow manufacturers of certain small, private planes to self-certify, removing current overly prescriptive design requirements and replacing them with performance-based airworthiness standards. 

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Mr. President, I want to call to the attention of my colleagues in the Senate S. 290. S. 290 is a piece of legislation passed unanimously by the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. It’s a bipartisan bill that was crafted by the ranking member, the senator from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal and me. It deals with accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

This legislation has a number of components, but the one I want to focus this evening on is one that has a consequence to those in senior executive positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs who commit felonies in the scope of their employment at the Department of Veterans Affairs. And this legislation, S. 290, would eliminate their pension if convicted of a felony in a court of law and only that portion of their pension that was accrued after the conduct that resulted in the felony conviction. So, that’s the circumstance that was approved by the Veterans’ Affairs Committee a year ago this month. That bill has yet to come to the Senate floor, and during that time in which we’ve been waiting for consideration of this legislation, certain events – certain terribly unfortunate events – occurred at the VA hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas.

And I’ve been on the Senate floor speaking to this previously, but the basic facts are that a physician assistant committed sexual acts with his patients, veterans who came to the VA hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas, for care and treatment. And we learned of this conduct – this reprehensible conduct from newspaper reports in 2015.

So that conduct has affected many veterans in Kansas and Missouri who sought the care and treatment of a physician’s assistant who relied upon the VA to provide that care for them, and in fact, Mr. Wisner was never discharged from the VA, he resigned a month after the conduct was reported to the inspector general. And veterans have now sued Mr. Wisner in courts and at least a dozen veterans are seeking redress and criminal proceedings are pending in the district court of Leavenworth County, Kansas, against Mr. Wisner.

One of the things that the veterans who have called our office to talk about this circumstance – and we believe there are many other veterans who have suffered the consequence of this sexual abuse by a VA employee, a healthcare provider – one of the consequences has been phone calls to our office asking for our help. And one of the common conversations is: ‘It’s so difficult for me to get my pension, my benefits from the VA, why would Mr. Wisner, if convicted of these crimes, receive his?’ And so I have offered an amendment to Senate Bill 290 that would add an additional category of Department of Veterans Affairs employees who also would suffer the loss of their pension should they be convicted in a court of law for conduct they committed in caring for patients at the VA. And that reduction in pension would occur from the point of time of the conduct that resulted in the felony conviction of that VA employee. And what we’re talking about is adding positions such as physicians, dentists, podiatrists, chiropractors, optometrists, registered nurses and physician’s assistants to a language; the theory being: if it’s appropriate to remove the pension benefits of a member upper echelon on the executive team at the VA for felony conduct – conviction of felony conduct, why would it not be appropriate to also add those who can do even more damage to a veteran by felony conduct against them while seeking care and comfort and treatment from the VA?

And so what we now present to the Senate – and in fact we’ve asked for unanimous consent on two previous occasions for this to be considered. We’ve hotlined this legislation, it has cleared the Republican side twice, but has yet to clear the Democrat side of the Senate and so the request soon will be that S. 290, as amended by a Moran amendment that was negotiated – the language of which was negotiated between me and the ranking member, Senator Blumenthal of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee – be added to the original Senate [Bill] 290, the bill that Senator Blumenthal and I created to create accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 290 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I further ask that the Moran substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill be amended, be considered, read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered, made, and laid upon the table.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today called on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson to provide information about a criminal immigrant who was charged in September with the rape of a child in Kansas. In a letter to Sec. Johnson, the senators request Tomas Martinez-Maldonado’s full criminal and immigration history. They inquire about why he was able to re-enter and remain in the country despite his unlawful status and previous felony conviction for illegal re-entry into the United States.

“This is an extremely disturbing case,” the senators wrote in the letter. “In order for Congress to better understand the circumstances that led to this alleged rape of a child, we request information about Martinez-Maldonado’s criminal and immigration history, and why he was able to enter and remain in the country despite his unlawful status.”

The Associated Press reported in October 2016 that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that Martinez-Maldonado had been deported from the United States 10 times since 2010.

Click here to read the full letter. 

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