Press Releases

House Republican leaders today secured the defeat of the ROTOR Act, aviation safety reform legislation drafted in response to last year’s fatal accident in the skies above DCA that claimed 67 lives. As family members of victims looked on from the House Gallery, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Majority Whip Tom Emmer all voted against the legislation, along with other members of the House GOP leadership team. They closed the vote as members were still arriving in the Chamber; when the gavel came down, the bill was just three votes short of passage.

Rep. Don Beyer, who represents a Northern Virginia district that includes National Airport (DCA), said:

“Mike Johnson and everyone on his leadership team should be ashamed of the way they treated the families of the victims of this tragic accident. The ROTOR Act passed unanimously in the Senate, and its opponents in the Department of Defense and Republican leadership had ample time to raise potential issues in a constructive manner. Instead, they chose to wait until these families had flown in from all over the country to honor their loved ones to inflict a shocking and heartbreaking defeat on them in person.

“The National Transportation Safety Board’s final recommendations on its investigation of the collision made clear that having access to Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) In technology would have given the pilots a fighting chance at avoiding the collision. They recommended these fixes 17 times, dating back years before last January’s accident. The families of the victims said repeatedly that the ROTOR Act was the most important and urgent legislative response to that accident that claimed the lives of their loved ones. It is one thing to oppose the bill that makes these reforms, but engineering its surprise defeat as the family members looked on from the gallery, voting against it, and even closing the vote as Members were still voting is needlessly underhanded and disgraceful.

“We need the safety reforms in the ROTOR Act, and today’s vote shows that these reforms have the support of large, bipartisan majorities in both chambers. Committee leaders must take prompt action to resolve differences without further delay. My heart goes out to the family members who were just put through new anguish entirely unnecessarily, and they will have my support as we work to fix this. We cannot and will not let this disgusting failure be the final word – the families deserve better, and the country deserves better.”