[release](AP) WASHINGTON - Republicans late Monday blocked a bipartisan Senate plan to end the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, making it increasingly likely Congress will be unable to resolve the legislative standoff before September.
Having resolved the federal debt crisis, Congress is expected to leave at the end of the week for its August recess. If that happens, lost revenue from uncollected airline ticket taxes could exceed $1.2 billion before lawmakers return to work a month later, senators said.
The Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House are at odds over proposals to cut rural air service subsidies and to change a federal labor rule to make it more difficult for airline workers to unionize. Unable to resolve their differences, the FAA's operating authority was allowed to expire at midnight on July 22.
The showdown began last month when the House passed a GOP bill to extend the FAA's operating authority that cut air service subsidies by $16.5 million. Democrats said the House was trying to impose policies that hadn't been negotiated with Senate and using the subsidies as leverage to force them to cut a deal on the labor issue. The labor provision is in a separate, long-term FAA funding bill.
On Monday, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the committee that oversees the FAA, and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the senior Republican on the committee, floated a proposal to restore full operating authority to the FAA while cutting air service subsidies $71 million. The plan fell apart when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he would use parliamentary procedures to tie up the Senate in an effort to prevent a vote on the measure.
Hutchison questioned the logic of allowing a stalemate over relatively small savings in subsidy cuts to prevent the government from collecting many times that amount in revenues designated for the operation of the nation's air traffic system.
"This just does not make sense," Hutchison said.
The subsidies program was created after airlines were deregulated in 1978 to ensure continued air service on less profitable routes to remote communities. The program has grown to provide service to about 150 communities, from Muscle Shoals, Ala., to Pelican, Alaska, and costs about $200 million a year. Critics say the subsides are too high and some of the communities are within a reasonable drive from a hub airport.
Coburn told reporters earlier in the day he would block any bill to end the shutdown that doesn't eliminate air service subsidies for communities that are within 90 miles of a hub airport. The Rockefeller-Hutchison plan used a different formula for deciding which communities would be eliminated from the program.
The Rockefeller plan would spare subsidies for Morgantown, W.Va.; the GOP plan would eliminate them.
Later, Rockefeller sought a vote on a "clean" bill to end the shutdown that didn't include any subsidy cuts or other policy provisions. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, blocked the vote, saying he was concerned about the labor issue, although the bill didn't contain a labor provision.
The FAA's long-term operating authority expired in 2007. Since then, Congress has been unable to agree on a long-term funding plan. The agency has continued to operate under a series of 20 short-term extensions.
When the FAA's operating authority expired, airlines also lost their authority to collect the ticket taxes that provide the majority of the trust fund's revenue, costing the government an estimated $200 million a week.
The FAA has been forced to furlough nearly 4,000 employees and issue stop-work orders on more than 200 construction and other projects paid for with trust fund monies. Work on another $2.5 billion in airport construction grants has stopped because employees who handle the grants have been furloughed. Tens of thousands of private sector workers have been affected.
The agency has a budget of more than $16 billion this year and employs 47,000 people. Air traffic controllers have remained on the job. Administration officials have vowed that safety won't be compromised and travelers won't be inconvenienced.
But FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt revealed Monday that airport safety inspectors nationwide have been working without pay and shouldering travel expenses themselves since the shutdown began.
The 40 inspectors are in charge of regular checks covering runways, navigation aids and other systems at dozens of airports and airlines. A typical inspector may travel to five airports in a two-week period and rack up thousands of dollars in hotel and airline tickets, Babbitt said.
"We're asking for them to put the balance on their credit cards," he said. "It's not right to ask them to do that, it's just not."
Babbitt and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited New York's La Guardia airport, where work has stopped on a $6 million project to demolish an old control tower. The old tower blocks the view from a new control tower built a few hundred feet away.
Furloughed engineering technician Gerard Cook, who worked on the new tower, said the shutdown took employees off guard and many families were not prepared to go without paychecks. With a new month beginning, many will be struggling to pay their rent and other bills, he said.
"People think all government employees just sit behind a desk and push a pencil," said Cook, 40. "They don't realize we're out here in the manholes and the mud and the heat and the bugs, working hard."
Also Monday, Delta Air Lines said it will refund the ticket taxes charged for travel during the shutdown, although it's not yet clear when travelers will see the money.
The refunds will apply to people who bought their ticket before the shutdown began, but who traveled during the shutdown. People who bought their ticket after the shutdown began didn't pay the taxes anyway — although they paid higher fares instead.[/release]
[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/01/national/main20086665.shtml] Sauce[/url]
:911: We cannot win. About to default on the debt, now its going to cost MORE to not have the FAA running.
Oh no 1.2 billion. They'll need to make another Potter film!
whats another 1.2 billion on top of nearly 15 trillion
we'll have to order chinese one night
[editline]2nd August 2011[/editline]
pun intended
[quote]"People think all [B]politicians[/B] just sit behind a desk and push a pencil," said Cook, 40. [B]"They would be correct."[/B][/quote]
Fixed.
Why the fuck would you shut down FAA, those guys enforce safety rules and make sure airline companies aren't cutting corners with replacement parts
[QUOTE=Murkrow;31485441]Why the fuck would you shut down FAA, those guys enforce safety rules and make sure airline companies aren't cutting corners with replacement parts[/QUOTE]
Try having a pilot for a brother. He is really fucking upset with the US government for more reasons than this even. Especially the part where they want to make it 1500 hours of private license flight time to get a commercial license.
[QUOTE=GoldenGnome;31482603]whats another 1.2 billion on top of nearly 15 trillion
we'll have to order chinese one night
[editline]2nd August 2011[/editline]
pun intended[/QUOTE]
dont get it.
[QUOTE=Fish_poke;31485482]Try having a pilot for a brother. He is really fucking upset with the US government for more reasons than this even. Especially the part where they want to make it 1500 hours of private license flight time to get a commercial license.[/QUOTE]
Yea, my uncle is pissed about this too.
[QUOTE=Murkrow;31485441]Why the fuck would you shut down FAA, those guys enforce safety rules and make sure airline companies aren't cutting corners with replacement parts[/QUOTE]
Do you think a company who's only goal is to make money would risk the image of their company through cutting corners? Do you think they would jeopardize their money makers to save a few dollars? Companies certainly want the largest profit possible, but they certainly understand that risking safety and image is not an option.
Also, if we assume that the current technology is relatively safe, but a new device could cut the airplane related deaths in half, should we force the airlines to incorporate this device? What if it costs a trillion dollars for each device? How about a billion? A million? A thousand? Ten dollars? The issue with focusing on price is that you must also assert that there is a price for the device shouldn't be forced for implementation and it also assumes you can put a price on life.
This week on :fox:
Are airlines safe anymore? 227,000 crashes within 3 days. More at 11.
[QUOTE=Fish_poke;31485482]Try having a pilot for a brother. He is really fucking upset with the US government for more reasons than this even. Especially the part where they want to make it 1500 hours of private license flight time to get a commercial license.[/QUOTE]
Jesus Christ that is outrageous. I had to give up my flying career because it got too expensive :smith:
Well, as long as it keeps the workers from organizing against their rich corporate overlords, the GOP says its worth it.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;31498731]Well, as long as it keeps the workers from organizing against their rich corporate overlords, the GOP says its worth it.[/QUOTE]
You mean the FAA or ATC? Because the rich corporate overlords of the FAA are Congress.
[QUOTE=Pepin;31491957]Do you think a company who's only goal is to make money would risk the image of their company through cutting corners? Do you think they would jeopardize their money makers to save a few dollars? Companies certainly want the largest profit possible, but they certainly understand that risking safety and image is not an option.[/QUOTE]
Companies will cut corners though, if it saves them money. If no company tried to, why do we have regulatory organisations to make sure they don't?
[QUOTE=Pepin;31491957]Do you think a company who's only goal is to make money would risk the image of their company through cutting corners?[/QUOTE]
Yes.
Shut down something [I]else[/I] that's uneffective. Not the FAA. Or the FCC. Or NASA. For example, the U.S. Botanic Garden would do just fine in the history books. ([url]http://www.usbg.gov/[/url])
My country is full of the stupidest people.
[QUOTE=Ridge;31498877]You mean the FAA or ATC? Because the rich corporate overlords of the FAA are Congress.[/QUOTE]
This happened because the airlines lobbied the GOP to remove union rights in the aviation industry.
Though, on second thought "rich corporate overlords" describes most of Congress as well.
The main problem with the government is that the people who regulate industries aren't from the industries that they're regulating, so they don't know what they're really doing to them.
My mom is a doctor.
In the last couple of years, she's gotten to work more often with fewer cases actually bringing money into the hospitals, so even less gets to her.
[QUOTE=Camundongo;31498921]Companies will cut corners though, if it saves them money. If no company tried to, why do we regulatory organisations to make sure they don't?[/QUOTE]
Just to establish this, a company would risk its existence through cutting corners? I don't think so, especially considering that a companies reputation means a lot. Look what happened with Toyota and their recall, they knew that if they didn't respond to the problem very seriously that they would likely have huge huge issues. It ends up the reported issues did not exist and that Toyota was even aware of this and stated it, yet this still took all of this action to prevent a bad image. One way to think of it is that they weigh the potential losses with the projected gains.
Do companies cutting important corners happen? Yes of course but it is hard to argue that it is a majority problem. Why enforce something on the whole when it is only a minority problem? It's like if some dumb kid in chemistry class lit his hair on fire, should everyone be forced to wear hair nets, or should it just be the dumb kid?
Second argument is bad, I wish I knew what kind of argument it was. It's often used in anti drug threads, like "if drugs aren't bad then why are they illegal?". Going back to the kid analogy, it is often because someone did something dumb. Sometimes there are other reasons. Sometimes it is corporatism. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for across the board regulation. I'm completely fine with a lot of regulation and licence requirements. As far as airlines go, I think they can take care of themselves.
To also note, there is a difficult with getting a grasp of how effective certain regulations have been because in most of the gains have come from new technology as opposed to the regulation. This is a big factor in the farming industry. Again, certain regulations have done a lot of good, I'm not at all saying that all regulations are bad.
[QUOTE=Pepin;31491957]Do you think a company who's only goal is to make money would risk the image of their company through cutting corners? Do you think they would jeopardize their money makers to save a few dollars? Companies certainly want the largest profit possible, but they certainly understand that risking safety and image is not an option.
Also, if we assume that the current technology is relatively safe, but a new device could cut the airplane related deaths in half, should we force the airlines to incorporate this device? What if it costs a trillion dollars for each device? How about a billion? A million? A thousand? Ten dollars? The issue with focusing on price is that you must also assert that there is a price for the device shouldn't be forced for implementation and it also assumes you can put a price on life.[/QUOTE]
This all depends on the shitbag in charge is and how smart they are.
"Grade 8 bolts for half of what we're paying now? JOHNSON!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Have these bolted tested and make sure they're not passing Grade 5 as Grade 8!"
"Right away, sir!"
vs.
"Grade 8 bolts for half of what we pay now? Sign me the fuck up, DealExtreme!"
They had that exact analogy on CSI once...
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