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| Home Front: Politix |
| Obama signs bill to end aviation shutdown |
| 2011-08-05 |
| Hmmmmmm...I wasn't aware that aviation had been shut down. A White House official says President Barack Obama has signed a bill to end a two-week partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration and allow thousands of employees to return to work. And, yet, plenty of planes have flown over my house in the last two weeks. And none of them have crashed... Lawmakers reached a bipartisan compromise Thursday to extend the FAA's operating authority through mid-September. The Senate passed the measure Friday, using a "unanimous consent" procedure so lawmakers didn't have to return to Washington from their Okay, let's vote. Willie, the Capital cop. "Aye" Jose, the Capital janitor. "Aye" Okay. Motion passes... The shutdown has cost the government about $400 million in uncollected airline ticket taxes and idled thousands of construction workers. Ah, now I get it... |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #1 Yeah, I'm one of the engineers that got furloughed. The tax is kinda like a sales tax, if you fly a lot you help pay for the airports and all the support systems. If you fly a little or not at all you don't have to contribute to the infrastructure. We in my division of the FAA are mostly engineers and architects, and are funded through this usage tax, not through general fund tax dollars, those that use the aviation industry pay for its continual repair and research into its future direction, but it does result in problems like this. Political issues played the major role in the problem here, 16 million in rural airport subsidies and sneaky anti union blurb that Rep. Mica tried to sneak in there caused the loss of $400 million in money to maintain the nation's airway infrastructure. But hey, when you've received $620,000 in campaign contributions from the major airlines, you gotta at least try to hook them up. |
| Posted by: bigjim-CA 2011-08-05 18:20 |