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One billion dollars? That's how much our benevolent govt spends every 2.4 hours.
Tea Party's Latest Hostage: FAA
The are essentially saying: "We want to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of waste out of the budget and are prepared to spend billions doing it."
WTF???
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The congressional standoff that has partially shut down the Federal Aviation Administration has some curious math.
Lawmakers risk losing more than $1 billion in revenue from uncollected airline ticket taxes in a quarrel between Senate Democrats and House Republicans who are demanding a $16.5 million cut in rural air service subsidies.
The shutdown is less than two weeks old and already the government has lost more than $250 million in revenue because airlines' authority to collect ticket taxes has expired. The entire annual budget of the rural air services program is about $200 million.
"I'm a fiscal conservative," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, told the Senate on Monday. "I'm trying to make the cuts that are necessary, trying to do the things that are right, but ... that just doesn't add up."
The Senate, with the federal debt crisis resolved, is expected to leave by the end of the week for its August recess. The House has already left. Unless the Senate accepts the House bill, lost revenue from uncollected airline ticket taxes could exceed $1.2 billion before lawmakers return to work a month later, senators said.
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 latest extension expired at midnight on July 22 after Senate Democrats rejected a temporary extension bill passed by the House that contained the subsidy cuts. Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic extension that didn't include cuts.
The lost ticket tax revenue is costing the government an estimated $200 million a week. The FAA has furloughed nearly 4,000 employees and issued stop-work orders on more than 200 construction projects.
Air traffic controllers have remained on the job. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has vowed that safety won't be compromised and travelers won't be inconvenienced
Democrats say the subsidies fight is actually a ploy to get them to accept a GOP labor provision in a separate, long-term FAA funding bill passed by the House. Republicans deny that's the case.
"Senate Democrats are also arguing that the House-passed extension is about a labor provision, but the fact is there is no labor provision in the extension," Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman, told colleagues in a letter last week.
Three times in the last 10 days, senators' efforts to pass a bill to end the shutdown without making air service subsidy cuts have been blocked by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Each time, Hatch has focused his remarks on the labor provision.
"I've been asked by our leadership to make these objections," Hatch explained Monday night. "What is important here — and it's not some itty-bitty little thing — is that you have labor regulators out of control."
To end the shutdown, he said, the Senate must agree to the House's labor provision. Then, the shutdown "would be solved in a nanosecond," he said.
The labor provision would overturn a National Mediation Board rule approved last year that allows airline and railroad employees to form a union by a simple majority of those voting. Under the old rule, workers who didn't vote were treated as "no" votes.
Republicans complain that the new rule reverses 75 years of precedent to favor labor unions. Democrats and union officials say the change puts airline and railroad elections under the same democratic rules required for unionizing all other companies.
The White House warned in March that President Barack Obama would veto an FAA bill containing the labor provision.
http://news.yahoo.com/cost-faa-shutd...071220597.html
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Spending a billion dollars to further weaken unions for the sole purpose of political stategy gains. Win at all costs at its worst.
One billion dollars? That's how much our benevolent govt spends every 2.4 hours.
Did you read the article, Darrin?
He's posted about it before. It's really nickels and dimes compared to where most money goes.
So you applaud losing $1 billion to "save" $16.5 million.
That makes sense.
Great time to buy airline tickets. I had my wife book a couple of trips.
Send in a shirtless Biden into the negotiation room. Only a shirtless Biden could save us form these tea partiers.
"Great time to buy airline tickets"
wrong. the airlines are upping their prices to pocket the suspended FAA taxes.
wow darrins is ok with losing revenue when our govt is broke... all for his to team to win! scoreboard baby! The tea potties temper tantrum costs the govt $ and causes us to go further in debt!
nice job
VRWC will spend any amount of (tax payer) money to bust unions.
Yep.
http://www.cnweeklynews.com/news/us-...pite-tax-break
You wouldn't expect them to actually pass that money on to consumers would you?
Airlines pocketed the difference. Not unexpected, tbh.
I hear they're raising prices too.
Wrong. The taxes are a line item above and beyond the fare. The airlines just have to collect it for the government like sales tax.
BTW, just because you found an article on the internet doesn't make it true, even if you are predisposed to believe it. She got some great sale rates (PLUS not having to pay the tax) on both Southwest and American.
Coorporations taking advantage of citizens to make an extra buck. Yeah that is so hard to believe!!
I read several articles over the weekend about various airlines raising their prices to match the FAA fees. This is how Repugs bust unions and enrich corporations.
Keeping the tax money
American Airlines
Delta Airlines (initially passes along the savings, but later followed other legacy carriers)
Southwest and AirTran
United Airlines
USAirways
Passing the tax savings to passengers
Alaska Airlines
Frontier
Spirit Airlines
Virgin America
Undetermined
Allegiant
JetBlue
http://www.consumertraveler.com/toda...to-passengers/
Actually, it was on ABC news 2 nights ago. Including a trade association representative (airlines did not want to discuss it) explaining what amenities the airlines are hoping to provide with the difference they're pocketing...
The tax is now included in the price.
Sorry you got gamed by the airline. Happens to all of us really.
That's not true. We all know lower taxes leads to lower prices.
and moar jobz. MOAR JOBZ!
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulli...7/shutdown-faaAIRLINES across America are reaping a financial harvest from the current shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Several companies responded to the suspension of federal airline-ticket taxes at the weekend by raising fares, though—as reported by Farecompare.com—Alaska Airlines remains a notable hold-out. So passengers are paying the same amount for tickets as they did last week, but the airlines are taking a bigger portion at the expense of the federal government.
The trouble came to a head at midnight on Friday when Congress failed to pass a short-term funding bill for the FAA. The expiration of the administration's authorisation led to the placing of some 4,000 staff on furlough and the suspension of ticket taxes bringing in some $200m per week, because the FAA no longer has the authority to levy them.
The New York Times detailed the money that the government is losing: “The main federal fare levies that expired are the 7.5 percent excise tax on all domestic tickets, the $3.70 federal charge on each flight segment, and the $16.30 tax on each international arrival and departure.”
That’s a reasonable set of savings that passengers have effectively been denied by the airlines' fare hikes. Given how tight margins are in the industry, it's hard to blame airlines for earning some easy money. But I wonder if they're missing a PR trick. At a time when Congress should be the butt of travellers' jokes, it is airline greed that is becoming the bigger story. I can only hope that Alaska Airlines benefits from its stance.
Two senators, Jay Rockefeller and Maria Cantwell, have written to the Air Transport Association in a surely doomed attempt to persuade the airlines to put the extra money aside into an escrow account so it can be returned to the government when Congress reinstates the taxes.
Bull .
When the authorization ended a few days ago, airlines promoted the flight savings. They cannot pocket a tax they cannot legally collect.
Who is making that up? You?
Airline fares are constantly changing. This is much-ado-about-nothing. Could be a normal seasonal change. How does it compare with last year changes?
I'm sure there are plenty of liberal journalists willing to sell those stories to people like you.
Prices on everything simply changes. I don't buy that this is more than coincidence. However, once one changes a price, the compe ion often follows.
Please show some evidence outside of coincidence.
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