Free Republic

... k Obama chided Republicans on Saturday for approving a plan to ease air-traffic delays caused by federal spending cuts while leaving budget cuts that affect children and the elderly untouched. The Senate and the House of Representatives backed a plan this week to give the Department of Transportation flexibility to cover immediate salaries of air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration who had been furloughed as part of budget cuts known as "sequester.

WASHINGTON – Legislation to end furloughs of air traffic controllers and delays for millions of travelers is headed to a House vote after a dark-of-night vote in the Senate that took place after most lawmakers had left the Capitol for a weeklong vacation. The bill passed late Thursday without even a roll call vote, and House officials indicated it likely would be brought up for quick approval there. Under the legislation, the Federal Aviation Administration would gain authority to transfer up to $253 million from accounts that are flush into other programs, to "prevent reduced operations and staffing" through the...

The Senate took the first step toward circumventing sequestration Thursday night with a bipartisan vote that would put furloughed air traffic controllers back on the job. The House is expected to take up the measure Friday, and the White House has promised to consider any bill which it receives. The Senate vote came in response to passengers angered this week by long delays at several major airports. If the Senate bill wins House approval and is signed into law by President Obama, the furloughed controllers are not expected to return to work before Saturday

That’s the simple reality of Friday’s vote to ease the pain for the Federal Aviation Administration. By assenting to it, Democrats have agreed to sequestration for the foreseeable future. In effect, what Democrats said Friday was that in any case where the political pain caused by sequestration becomes unbearable, they will agree to cancel that particular piece of the bill while leaving the rest of the law untouched. The result is that sequestration is no longer particularly politically threatening, but it’s even more unbalanced: Cuts to programs used by the politically powerful will be addressed, but cuts to programs that...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, has told Richard Cordray not to bother. This is part of the recent evidence that government is getting some adult supervision. Barack Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But a federal circuit court has declared unconstitutional three other recess appointments made the same day because the Senate was not in recess. So Hensarling has told Cordray not to testify before his committee: “Absent contrary guidance from the United States Supreme Court, you do not meet the statutory requirements of a validly...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama is clearly playing a nasty political game with the air traffic controller furloughs that have forced severe airline delays across the country. It's not the first time he's exploited the budget-cutting sequestration law for political purposes. Earlier this year, he tried to stir up fears that our economy would be hit by fiscal Armageddon if the Republican House didn't submit to his tax-hiking, big-spending demands. But his hysterical claims that our food would be unsafe, America's defenses would crumble and the elderly would lose their benefits have proven to be groundless. A headline in Thursday's Washington...

This chart is brought to us courtesy of Guy Benson/Freedom Works, see Bensons piece on this here.

That was fast. After barely a work week of hours-long airport delays and missed international connections, both parties have slunk away from the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts that were lopping $637 million from the Federal Aviation Administration’s budget. But wonks shouldn’t forget the FAA cuts too quickly. President Obama has unwittingly made the best case for privatizing the nation’s aviation-control system since controllers went on strike 32 years ago. Air passengers were outraged this week — but they should have been doubly outraged. Unlike, say, Medicare, the FAA is supposed to be fully funded by the users of its...

What is it with Martin Bashir and his proclivity to strut salacious language with women guests? A couple of months ago, we noted the MSNBC host claiming to guest Karen Finney that Marco Rubio, in his questioning of a hearing witness, was seeking to show that he had "very strong testicles." This evening, taking things a vulgar step further, Bashir told another Dem woman that Americans so detest Congress that they "would rather contract gonorrhea" than show respect for that institution. View the video here.

On a slow news day, this qualifies as breaking news. Democrats and Republicans have come together in rare bipartisan fashion to slap down the FAA’s sequester antics by increasing the spending flexibility of the agency to deal with a 4% reduction of a budget that’s gone up almost 10% over the last six years: In rare bipartisan accord, normally quarrelsome U.S. lawmakers passed a measure designed to end budget-related air traffic controller furloughs blamed for widespread flight delays.The House of Representatives approved the legislation, capping a major congressional initiative as delays snarled traffic at airports. The House vote comes a...

The Obama administration's second installment of sequester scare tactics is working about as well as its first go 'round. Run away: The White House has endorsed a plan to eliminate FAA spending cuts that have cause air travel delays across the country. The agency has been forced to furlough air traffic controllers as part of the automatic budget cuts that kicked in this spring. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to end the cuts by claiming savings from the draw down of war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans reject his proposal calling it an accounting gimmick. Of course it's...

In congressional testimony on Wednesday, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Michel Huerta cited his agency’s Next Generation Air Transportation System — NextGen for short — as an example of the critical “investments” the federal government is making and must continue to make in air-traffic-control infrastructure, even as controllers are being furloughed, causing widespread delays and disruption at the nation’s airports. NextGen is an ambitious multiyear, multibillion-dollar project to increase air-traffic efficiency through technological innovation. Representative Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) asked Huerta whether, “in light of the current situation,” funding for NextGen projects should “have priority over the operation of commercial...

<p>WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate late on Thursday approved legislation to provide enough funding for federal air traffic controllers through Sept. 30 to end furloughs that have brought widespread airline delays. Several Senate aides said an agreement had been reached on a bill giving the Department of Transportation new flexibility to use unspent funds to cover the costs of air traffic controllers and other essential employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.</p>

As travellers nationwide are learning, the White House has decided to express its dislike of the sequester—otherwise known as modestly smaller government—by choosing to cut basic air traffic control services. We wrote about this human- rights violation on Tuesday in "Flight Delays as Political Strategy," but the story gets worse the closer we look. Start with the Federal Aviation Administration, better known as the Postal Service without the modern technology. Flyers directly fund two-thirds of the FAA's budget through 17 airline taxes and fees—about 20% of the cost of a $300 domestic ticket, up from 7% in the 1970s. Yet...

Government: The FAA has done an incompetent job of making tiny sequester budget cuts, leading to flight delays across the country. It's time for Congress to haul these people in and make them explain their real priorities. By the Federal Aviation Administration's logic, all it takes is a 5% cut in the FAA's $12.5 billion budget, as the 2011 Budget Control Act requires, to throw the whole air transportation system out of whack. The result? Three-hour delays for 1,200 flights at America's busiest hub airports — including all three in the New York area, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta —...

Washington, DC – House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) issued the following statement today after Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Michael Huerta announced that a five percent budget reduction due to sequestration would result in the furloughing of thousands of air traffic controllers and potentially disrupt the travel plans of the flying public: “The FAA’s management of sequestration is quickly going from bad to worse. Given that the FAA’s budget increased more than 100 percent over the last 15 years, finding five percent in savings shouldn’t need to significantly...

Rolling flight delays. Cancellations. Heavy sighs and grim smirks in packed airport concourses. Has the sequester, Washington’s much-debated automatic spending cut package, finally landed? In response to the sequester deal struck by President Obama and Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration this weekend began to furlough its entire 47,000-person workforce (including 13,000 air traffic controllers) to abide by some $637 billion in automatic spending cuts that have to be made by October. The cutbacks mean each employee has to stay at home, unpaid, one day every other week. The furloughs had an immediate impact on travel on Monday, contributing to two-hour...

Since the sequester was a cut in the increase, not a cut in the baseline spending, why is the FAA cutting $600 million dollars and blaming the furloughs on the sequester? Did I miss something? BTW, didn't Bob Woodward say that the sequester was Lew's idea and was jumped on by Obama?

It was a tough start to the week for many air travelers as federal budget cuts led to cascading delays along the East Coast Monday morning. Some flights out of New York and Washington were delayed by more than two hours as the Federal Aviation Administration kept planes on the ground. The federal agency has said furloughs of air traffic controllers could lead to delays if there weren't enough people to monitor busy air corridors. *** Government budget cuts that kicked in last month are forcing the FAA and other agencies to cut their spending. FAA officials have said they...

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Friday that it has formally approved Boeing’s design for modifications to the 787 Dreamliner battery system, clearing the way to end the plane’s three-month grounding. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency hasn’t changed the Dreamliner’s ETOPS (“extended operations”) certification, which means the 787 will have continued approval to fly up to three hours away from the nearest airport. Michael Huerta, head of the FAA, told a Senate hearing Tuesday that ETOPS approval was under review. The decision not to reduce the three-hour limit is crucial to the jet’s use for flying long routes...