While Obama & FAA Fiddle, Congress Acts To Keep Planes Flying On Schedule

Senate & House Took Action -
Obama & FAA Without Excuses!

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 26, 2013:
The House moved quickly today and passed H.R. 1765 (361-41) — "To provide the Secretary of Transportation with the flexibility to transfer certain funds to prevent reduced operations and staffing of the Federal Aviation Administration, and for other purposes." Something that the President and FAA could have done on their own.

The also have passed H.R. 527 (394-1) "To amend the Helium Act to complete the privatization of the Federal helium reserve in a competitive market fashion that ensures stability in the helium markets while protecting the interests of American taxpayers, and for other purposes."

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement after the House passed the bipartisan bill to transfer funds within the FAA budget to alleviate the need for furloughs of American air traffic controllers:“The disruption to America’s air traffic system over the past week was a consequence of the administration’s choice to implement the president’s sequestration cuts in the most painful manner possible. It’s unacceptable that the FAA chose not to plan for sequestration or utilize the flexibility it already has. Americans were rightly fed up, and it’s unfortunate that the House and Senate were forced to step in and fix the problem when the President chose not to act.

“With this solution, Americans will no longer be burdened by President Obama’s flight delays and our economy will not take an unnecessary hit. This fix will prevent furloughs of air traffic controllers and do so without any new revenue and without adding to the debt. Just like we’ve done here in the House, the administration must learn how to do more with less. Sequestration is bad policy. That’s why the House voted twice to replace it with smarter cuts. But while it is here, the president has an obligation to implement these cuts in a way that respects the American people, rather than using them for political leverage.”The Senate is in recess until Monday, May 6th, when will return to vote on S. 743, the Internet sales tax bill. Yesterday, the Senate voted 63-30 to invoke cloture (cut off debate) on S. 743. Also yesterday, Senate Democrats dropped their demands for tax hikes and spending gimmicks and the Senate passed by unanimous consent a bill (S. 853) to give the FAA the budget flexibility to prevent air traffic controller furloughs and flight delays within its existing budget.

The New York Times reports today, Democratic senators, at a caucus meeting with White House officials, expressed concerns on Thursday about how the Obama administration was carrying out the health care law they adopted three years ago. Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of their party were getting nervous that they could pay a political price if the rollout of the law was messy or if premiums went up significantly.

“Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who is up for re-election next year, said, ‘We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law.’ In addition, Mrs. Shaheen said, ‘restaurants that employ people for about 30 hours a week are trying to figure out whether it would be in their interest to reduce the hours’ of those workers, so the restaurants could avoid the law’s requirement to offer health coverage to full-time employees. . . . Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said last week that the administration deserved ‘a failing grade’ for its efforts to explain the law to the public. ‘I just see a huge train wreck coming down,’ Mr. Baucus said then.”

Of course, Sen. Shaheen, Sen. Baucus, and every other Democrat quoted by the NYT fretting about the implementation of a 2700 page bill that has generated over 20,000 pages of regulations voted for this unpopular law. Any one of them could have voted no at any point in the process and stopped it, but not a single one did.

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