The Obama administration has finally found religion when it comes to the transportation bill. It’s all about jobs is the new mantra. In Washington, what has been ignored in terms of the FAA bill for seven years is now couched as a jobs program and may still be forgotten.
When I came to Washington to start the Consumer Travel Alliance, the same time that the Obama administration took over, this city was filled with a we-can-do-it attitude. It was palpable in my first House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing.
There was no doubt in my mind that the stalled FAA reauthorization bill — the key to passenger rights and the funding for the next generation of air traffic control system — was going to pass. Everyone, I mean everyone, both Republicans and Democrats, both the Senate and the House, were in support of the program and virtually every facet of its legislation. The bill’s time had come.
What happened?
I still don’t know.
Even when both the House and the Senate were in the hands of the Democrats, nothing moved forward. There were always small problems that could be papered over with another extension. There was another study to be done. This wasn’t partisan wrangling. It was non-wrangling, treading water, asleep in the control tower.
It seemed that there was always something else, another project more important for the leadership than taking care of the air traffic control system and the funding of our aviation programs.
The stimulus bill came and went and the FAA projects were excluded. Infrastructure construction that was the highlight of the congressional debates and touted as the main way to get people to work ended up being a small percentage of the package. Tax cuts, government and entitlement programs got the lion’s share of the eventually, trillion-dollar pie.
Heavens knows, that the Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, did his mightiest to get those “shovel-ready” jobs out the door of his department. He did just that, even if the jobs were not as shovel-ready as sold to the public. His mantra was getting people to work. I’ll bet not one of us has missed the flurry of road maintenance that has re-blacktopped highways, improved intersections and repaired bridges across the country.
Someone should award the Secretary an orange-cone-award for keeping as many Americans working as possible through these tough economic times. If he had been in charge of more of the stimulus money, I’m sure more would have been done; more lasting infrastructure improvement that will help with the future.
However, one shovel-ready project — the FAA Bill that funds airport construction, air-traffic improvements and airline safety — studied for decades, planned for extensively, for-the-most-part permitted, certified to save taxpayer and industry money over the long run and agreed to by both sides of the Hill as vital for the overall economy, never got a green light. In fact, it has foundered on the shoals of disinterest.
Worse, after two years of inaction under the current administration when the Republican-controlled House committee suggested that a section of the pending legislation that deals with the Essential Air Services program be modified and attached to an extension bill, all hell breaks loose and the government manages to lose half-a-billion dollars in tax revenues and inadvertently funnels it to the airlines.
Even after two-and-a-half years of inaction, when the President seems to be launching a new jobs initiative, touting exactly the same jobs that his minions didn’t have time for the last time around, the FAA legislation is a poor stepchild to the overall Surface Transportation Bill, which funds construction of roads, bridges, mass transit systems, and other infrastructure projects with gasoline taxes.
While the headlines will go to the “highway bill,” the “FAA bill” evidently will get short shrift. We can, more-than-likely, expect another series of extensions — Extension 23 is probably being penned as I write this.
Photo: Boston, Logan Airport Rocking Chair ©Leocha
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
