Posted on 08/02/2011 5:30:24 AM PDT by Libloather
Senators: The cost of FAA shutdown could exceed $1 billion if unless action taken this week
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, August 2, 3:33 AM
WASHINGTON — 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
What shutdown?
Less money for the government and more money for the productive private economy. That’s always a good thing.
I’m amazed that the FAA quit collecting taxes already. They were jumping the gun for a shutdown.
So, this is the new game. It’s either pass the bill yesterday or it’s the end of the world. Hurry up, time’s a wasting in the destruction of America.
I don't know, I quit flying somewhere around the time you could only carry sample size shampoo (well before they implemented sexual assault). Haven't seen any articles discussing the tax dollars lost by the TSA, however.
Ah, Another crisis!
How about the GOP passes a bill that implements rolling shutdowns for gov’t agencies. The FAA has been shutdown for several weeks and nobody has even noticed. How about every having a 52 week schedule of shutdowns for the alphabet soup known as Washington D.C. I’ll bet we’d save a lot of money and no one would even notice that the agencies in question were shut down.
The legislation authorizing the FAA’s budget expired while the whole debt crisis was happening, so the FAA had to stop all non-critical operations. Apparently they’ve left town without re-authorizing the new budget. (As far as why the FAA’s budget wasn’t authorized for the same amount of time as the rest of the gov through that continuing resolution back in March, I have no clue.)
My husband is a private pilot — that’s the only way I heard about it. This is the first story I’ve seen about it in the LSM.
Thank you for the explanation. I did not know that.
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.
Let me guess!! The FAA was shut down but educational grant checks to illegal aliens and research grant checks for the study of global warming went out on schedule!! Right??
I was looking at the actual bill and found the following increases enumerated in it. I also found the debt increase for this year, alone, can be $1.8 trillion. The following table shows the ADDITIONAL spending authorized in the bill for each year. It add 5% more every year.
| In $ Trillions | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
| Total | $1,936 | $2,107 | $2,319 | $2,570 | $2,668 | $2,854 | $2,899 | $2,945 | $2,992 | $3,039 |
| Social Security | $623 | $751 | $924 | $1,123 | $1,166 | $1,309 | $1,309 | $1,309 | $1,309 | $1,309 |
| Health and Human Services | $270 | $299 | $329 | $361 | $395 | $414 | $434 | $454 | $475 | $496 |
| Discretionary Spending | $1,043 | $1,057 | $1,066 | $1,086 | $1,107 | $1,131 | $1,156 | $1,182 | $1,208 | $1,234 |
Only in Washington is it a cost when they don’t spend. So what have we really lost??? Less fees paid on tickets. Planes still fly. So a few bureaucrats might loose their jobs. No skin off my back. And Congress is now on a 5 week vacation. Good. No more crap for 5 weeks.
It would seem to me that like any retailer subject to sales tax, the airline calculates the tax, then sends in an occasional check (or wire transfer).
All a shutdown should do is to generate a pile of uncashed checks, or a fattening bank account for the FAA. No loss of revenue at all.
Rolling 30 day whole agency furloughs. Every agency of the government has to close up and send everyone home for a month w/o any pay!
FAA Shutdown Because Dems Want to Protect Pork
Posted By Capitol Confidential On August 3, 2011 @ 8:29 am
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has basically been shut down [1] thanks to the Senate Democrats addition to pork. 4,000 FAA employees have been furloughed until further notice. 70,000 construction workers must now sit on their hands as all airport construction has halted. And the federal government is loosing $200million a week in airline ticket taxes because they are not authorized to legally collect the tax.
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