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LaHood: Lawmakers shouldn't fly home until they end FAA partial shutdown
If members of the House and Senate do not agree to end the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration before they go on recess next week, they should not fly back home to their districts, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday.
Continuing to press lawmakers to end an impasse that has led to 4,000 FAA workers being furloughed for 10 days, LaHood traveled to New York's LaGuardia Airport Monday to spotlight airport construction projects that have been stalled by the shutdown.
“Members of Congress should not get on a plane to fly home for vacation without passing an FAA bill and putting thousands of people back to work,” said LaHood said in a statement released by the Department of Transportation. “Congress needs to do its job for the good of these workers, for the good of our economy and for the good of America’s aviation system.”
During the shutdown, LaHood has stressed that air-travel safety has not been affected.
Air traffic controllers have largely been unaffected because they are not typically paid out of the Aviation Trust Fund that the FAA authorization bill covers.
Money has not been deposited into the trust fund for more than a week now because the last appropriations bill for the FAA expired last Friday at midnight. The House and Senate could not agree by then on a new measure, and the chambers were still gridlocked Monday.
The problem is a provision in the House version of a short-term extension of the FAA funding bill that eliminates some subsidies for rural air service through the Essential Air Service program. A longer-term bill has been bogged down by a House effort to undo rules on unionization of railroad and airline employees that would make it harder for them to vote to collectively bargain.
The FAA has not had a long-term authorization bill since the last measure that was passed in 2004 expired in 2007.
