Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Guess A Billion Dollars Is Now Real Money Again

Okay folks I need you to temporarily suspend your disbelief to understand the argument surrounding the funding for the FAA, which for some reason is starting to move to the top of the Next Thing to Cause Armageddon list.

All through the debt, budget, interns slush fund debate we have heard arguments how cuts of less then eleventy thirty trillon is just chump change and hardly worthy of recognition. Well now comes news that an agency that has been run on month to month budget for over 4 years is now costing the government $1 billion dollars because of the loss of tax revenue.
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.

The airlines certainly didn't do themselves any good when after the tax authority had expired decided to continue charging the tax and putting it into their coffers and thereby handed the liberals one of the best arguments they have to deny any sort of serious tax reform in the country. Any argument which revolves around fewer taxes meaning companies can reduce their prices sort of got rendered mute due to the bad actions of these players. Thanks Delta. Again.

So let me get this straight. Cutting $350 billion from defense is called a modest cut with much deeper cuts required but the unrealized loss of $1 billion from tax revenue from the FAA is going to somehow cripple life as we know it.

The big sticking point in approving their budget by the way is how Democrats want to change the rules for how airlines and railroads can form unions. The current method involves having employees votes and those that don't vote count as "No" votes. The Democrats want to change this so that only actual votes cast count. It is cute they way they want to keep railroad employees in this like they are some sort of viable industry. Oh wait that's right liberals are having some sort of love affair with trains lately.

Of course the world champion poker player in charge has vowed to veto anything which has a union busting language in it.
The White House warned in March that President Barack Obama would veto an FAA bill containing the labor provision.

1 comment:

DirtySex&Politics said...

My father worked for the FAA his entire life.  He had a stroke at 60 simply caused by stress from his job. With all the talk about the boneheaded things recently controllers have done, I have to say for the most part they are not all that way.  But it is a ridiculously stressful job working for the FAA.  They always seemed so strapped and overloaded.  But it is ridiculous that Obama is making this Armeggedon Du Jour.  The Defense spending cuts frankly scare the (fill in the blank) out of me!  To me it's a MUCH bigger deal.