Partisan gridlock in Congress over the budget extended this week to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), resulting in 4,000 government employees getting furloughed without pay and lawmakers blaming each other for the failure to act.

 

For four years Congress has failed to craft a long-term funding plan for the FAA. To keep the agency running, lawmakers have had to pass temporary extensions, and it was one of these stopgap measures that needed to pass so the FAA had sufficient monies to pay salaries.

 

But the Senate refused to adopt a controversial House-passed extension of taxes that help fund the FAA. Representative John Mica (R-Florida), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said it was “unbelievable” that the Senate failed to approve the plan just because it sliced “a few million dollars” from the budget for airport subsidies.

 

At issue was a provision that House Republicans included in the extension that would have prohibited federal subsidies from going to three small airports in Montana, Nevada and New Mexico (the subsidies artificially reduce the high cost of plane tickets to the little-trafficked locations).

 

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) shot back at House Republicans and accused them of playing politics with the FAA’s funding.

 

“I am disappointed and stunned by their failure. We had negotiated in good faith for four months, but when senior members of the House leadership admitted that they would try to gain political ‘leverage’ over the Senate, they effectively turned the aviation system into a political prop,” Rockefeller said.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

FAA Furloughs 4,000 Workers after Funding Expires, Congressional 'Inaction' (by Pete Kasperowicz and Jamie Klatell, The Hill)

U.S. House Stops Voting for Week With No Action to Keep FAA Operating (by Lisa Caruso, Bloomberg)

Partisan Dispute to Partially Shut Down FAA (by Joan Lowy, Associated Press)