Deal Reached on FAA funding

[LSN80]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/08/04/congress.faa/index.html

According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, a bipartisan "compromise" has been reached in order to allow the Federal Aviation Administration to be fully funded once again. Reid formally submitted the following written statement regarding the deal:

"This agreement does not resolve the important differences that still remain," "But I believe we should keep Americans working while Congress settles its differences, and this agreement will do exactly that."

The origins of the impasse? Democrats and Republicans are claiming different issues that have caused the issue. The Democrats are insisting that the dispute is solely about the issues Republicans have in labor issues between the American worker and government, which in this case has been because more of these industries are looking to unionize. The Republicans have countered that a deal has been passed by the House, only to have the Democrats sit on it for two weeks because there were issues that they didn't want included. With the Deocrats recessing for summer on Tuesday until September, the Rebuplican lead House passed a short-term extension that included some of the very issues that the Democrats have been opposed to. The deal as is is hoped to be completed by Friday.

The real victims here have been employees of the FAA, as approximately 4,000 aviation workers have been laid off, along with over ten thousand workers in the construction industry finding themselves laid off as well. According to a spokesman for the FAA, the following hits have been levied against them since the impasse begin:

"The FAA has been unable to collect federal taxes on airline tickets, which has lead to a revenue loss of approximately $30 million a day. If the dispute continues until Congress returns from its summer recess in September, the federal government will be out more than $1 billion in revenue and layoffs could be doubled, possibly tripled.

I genuinely feel for the people who have lost their jobs and income essentially over a big government labor dispute. Many of them have noted that theyve had to dip into their savings, their childrens college funds, and even re-mortgage their homes. I want the final word here to go to Mark LePlasco, one of the furloughed employees:

"We're pretty much going to burn through all of our savings within a month and ... now we're working on programs out there to give us no-interest loans.
I don't think any of us can even fathom going without a paycheck for another month and a half or even longer."

Some questions here to drive discussion:

Does this serve as a sign that we are headed into a deeper recession then we're already in?(Consider the Dow crashing today)


Is this an issue that could have been avoided in some way? How so?

Any other thoughts or things to add to this story I may have left out?

Lets talk about this!

 

[klunderbunker]

The lines about how this is costing 30 million dollars a day and 4,000 jobs sums this up for me.

It says to me that the GOP isn't about the economy. They're about themselves. They were the ones ranting and raving about the debt and "jobs jobs jobs" according to I believe Boehner. Now they have no problem letting 4000 people be furloughed and losing that much money a day over union rights. The Dems didn't want them in there but the GOP insisted. That's the GOP's fault, not the Dems'. This is using Americans as political pawns and it happens way too often on both sides, but lately the GOP has been very guilty of it.

 

[RockFan89]

Has this even effected the airline industry? Have flights been cancelled? Have there been major problems?

If the FAA remained unfunded, would anyone have noticed (besides the people who lost their jobs)?

If the main function of the FAA is to collect taxes, why can't we just get rid of it and move that function to the IRS?

Seriously, I'm sorry that people lost their jobs, but they're just among the millions in America looking for work. Why should we single these people out as if their situation is worse?

Also, one of the issues Republicans were arguing against is subsidies for small airports (most which are in Democratic states). Guess who used these airports the most? The rich. So Democrats want us to subsidize small airports so that the rich don't have to use major airports like the rest of us. Let the rich pay for the costs of these airports since they use them.