i would reverse the n.m.b. decision because i think it's wrong. however, what happened here is that after 20 extensions of the f.a.a. bill because of disagreements on several issues, the house decided to put this one -- well, actually, to be honest, the house didn't even bring up n.m.b., they put another issue on the extension language and it's the essential air service language, which we have been trying to negotiate but have not yet come to a full agreement among all of the parties. but it's really the n.m.b. issue that is causing the house to shut down the f.a.a. so the entire f.a.a. -- not the air traffic controllers, thank goodness, but 3,492 employees of the f.a.a. have been shut down. this affects 35 states. and they are on furlough without pay through no fault of their own. and interestingly, airports that were in the midst of building runways or adding to their infrastructure or repairing their infrastructure also have had work stoppages because of the house action. and the associated general contractors of america has estimated that 70,00

however, the new n.m.b. rules, national mediation board rules, changed that standard so that all it takes to unionize is a majority of employees voting. now, this means that the n.m.b. wants to count an employee who doesn't vote as voting for big labor. somehow organized labor is able to claim that it is democratic to appropriate someone else's vote without that person's input and participation, even though that's been the -- even though the rule that i'm talking about has been in place for 75 years. they just changed it in favor of the unions. and unions win, at least the nlrb proceedings, they win 60% of the unionize attempts. now, i personally have not had any communication with anyone in the industry. i'm here because i think what the n.m.b. did is absolutely wrong and someone needs to stand up to them. this issue is much larger than the n.m.b. itself and the airlines and railroads impacted by the n.m.b. ruling. if the n.m.b. succeeds and the administration is allowed to put their thumb on the scale in f

that seemed a little odd to us and the n.m.b. changed the rule that it's now 50-plus-one of the people who show up and vote kind of like the elections that we all run in every two years. chairman mica's bill in the house revoked or attempted to put it back to the old rule. i sponsored the amendment and argued on the floor that i didn't think that that change was appropriate. frank and i immediately in response to our friend's call went to work and we went to the majority leader and we went to the speaker of the house and even though speaker boehner was busy last week with some things that you might have read about he tasked his chief of staff, barry jackson, to negotiate with the folks in the senate, to see if we couldn't figure out a way to make sure that this problem went away before the august recess. a number of offers went back and forth without result, we weren't able to work it out last week and on monday, the date the house of representatives voted on the debt ceiling bill, we went to the speaker and barry again and said,

micah had chosen to put the n.m.b. language on this extension, we wouldn't be having this conversation. but what i think is disingenuous for the democrats who take that view is that, again, this language passed by voice vote, 87 senators voted for it and i guess some senators may not like it because it impacts their airports but this is not a poison pill. i know poison pills and this is not a poison pill. >> congressman, you said the speaker stands ready. in your recent conversations with him, did he give you he is willing to move to a u.c. and get this done in the next 24 hours or so? >> that's what he did last monday. i mean, we were there. but in that scenario, i mean, again, the house is just the house and in that scenario that's why i was tasked to go talk to senator coburn and senator coburn has made it clear that he will object to a clean extension that doesn't include his e.a.s. language. as i said, i don't disagree with him in terms of philosophy, if you look at the airports and what people are paying in exchan