Bipartisan “fix” for the FAA furloughs.
The Democrats and the Republicans are equally guilty on this one.
My money’s on the bureaucrats who picked the most sensitive area to make cuts and decided that high-traffic airports and piddly ones should be cut equally, in order to “send a message” that you can’t reduce their funding without inflicting Grievous Harm.
Complaints from all those delayed fliers are reaching Congressional offices so naturally they’re paying attention (in addition to being affected themselves).
I am an air traffic controller, and I agree with you completely. On the “solve the air traffic issues only” part, not the entire sequester part.
The whole point of pain coming out of the sequester cuts was to force some kind of overall budget agreement. Instead, it looks like Congress (GOP and Dems alike) are just going to come along with piecemeal band-aids to fix the things that bother them the most. Delays in catching my flight home for the recess? Unthinkable! We must fix that by carving out special permission for the FAA to move funds around! Cutting services at national parks, or reducing medical assistance to the poor? That’s the sound of crickets you hear.
The federal debt is unthinkably huge, and I agree it would be smart to start taking steps to reduce that. A blunt-force sequester cut across the board is not smart. And does anybody seriously believe we can simply cut our way out of debt? Seriously? Without increasing revenue at all? Can I have some of what you are smoking?
(Oh, wait … I’m an air traffic controller. I can’t smoke that. Get it away from me!)
That’s how the sequester was designed. It was a blunt-force instrument deliberately written to apply across the board, and take away discretion in where you could make cuts and redistribute money.
Don’t blame the FAA bureaucrats for this (at least not entirely). Blame the people who wrote the sequester bill. Remember, the entire point of the sequester in the first place was to be a Doomsday device to force a budget deal. It was never intended to actually go into effect.
I personally think if the Republicans want to crow about these cuts and take credit for reducing spending (like they were doing a couple of weeks ago), they need to also stand up like grown men and women and take the hit when those reductions cause real impacts on the American public. Like sitting in an airplane on the ramp for an hour.
One last thing … these delays this week weren’t even all that bad. The FAA claimed for one day there were close to 900 delays blamed on staffing, while there were something like 2000 blamed on weather or other conditions. And we had pretty decent weather this week, for the most part.
I tell you what, if we got a complex of thunderstorms affecting O’Hare, or a big storm sitting over the Northeast … combine the weather delays with the staffing issues, and you would be looking at flight delays of Biblical proportions. Biblical, I tell you! A veritable plague of delays!
I think I must be one of the few people who think this is working out pretty well.
Can’t agree on what to cut? Just cut everything and then fix things that prove to be real pain points. End result is we get the budget cut that everyone agreed was necessary, but no one could agree where to put it, and we restore the budget for things that turn out to be universally wanted. The path is a little messier than the ideal process of making a good informed decision, but the end result is where we should want to be.
Now, the fact that “real pain points” are “things that hurt the rich” more than “things that hurt the poor” is definitely a problem. But it’s hardly a problem unique to the sequester.
This just pisses me off. I do work for the FAA and it’s not going to change what happens to the rest of us. Quite frankly this is what was supposed to happen! It was supposed to be hard and inconvenience people, that was the point, to show the government actually does something. I like how 100% of them voted on it, none of them had the balls to stand up and say, no, this is what we wanted, lets take what’s coming to us.
It’s not going to fix a damn thing, there’s still going to be plenty of problems, they just will not be seen as much. Funny how people were saying that the sequestration wasn’t going to be a big deal, then the second day after it began for the FAA it was causing problems.
Surely you are not suggesting that both parties negotiated in equal faith, and were equally willing to compromise, are you?
Really, when one party is willing to flush the country down the toilet in order to preserve the lowest tax rates the wealthy have enjoyed in decades, the “equally guilty” line is just pure bullshit.
The sequester idea was in response to republican stonewalling, and it was republican stonewalling that forced it to happen. Any honest analysis would call it the republican sequestration.
Latvia Congress stupid. Tax everything. Tax ox cart. Tax limousine. Take back tax limousine. Everybody sad.
Hey, Bucky, did you know John Mace got your password somehow?
Well, that’s just the sort of typical partisan remark one might expect from you, isn’t it?
“A Bloomberg Government analysis of the FAA’s staffing shows that the agency has more than enough air-traffic controllers to operate without flight delays – provided the furloughs are restricted to airports that are overstaffed. (The agency would need the cooperation of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, but given the public pressure, their opposition hardly seems viable.) Instead, the FAA is applying furloughs equally across all airports.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-25/help-frequent-flyers-and-the-poor-too.html
Since Congress has acted to oblige the FAA to use its money more wisely, this kerfuffle now seems moot. Perhaps now bureaucrats and Congress can get past the political posturing and back to work on budgeting, since the public has failed to rise en masse to demand higher taxes in response to flight delays.
A mod should merge our threads. Your title is more descriptive, so gets my vote.
The individual idiots in Congress, and there’s not that many of them, will continue getting away with their bullshit as long as, when bad things happen, people say “Rabble rabble CONGRESS!” instead of taking names. I’ve had it up to here with this societal disconnect whereby our approval for the House remains forever in the shitter while we keep reelecting most of the same assholes every two years.
Not really directed at anyone in either sequestration thread. Just frustrated with everybody missing the trees for the forest.
I don’t want to fly in an airplane when the pilot can’t see over the dashboard.
You are so right. And many people who complain about how Congress is “running things” didn’t even bother to vote in the first place.
The way I figure it is, if you don’t vote, you don’t have a right to bitch. And if you did vote, and are bitching, take notes, and don’t vote for the same people every time.
Also, make phone calls or send emails to your representatives and let them know how pissed off or happy you are. It actually does make a difference when enough people call.
I agree totally. Let’s cut everything x% with instructions to the administrator to keep services as close to current levels as possible. Fire middle administrators first. You know the ones. The guy who does nothing but drink coffee and “coordinate” things. Fire his ass first. In fact, just fire him without the budget cuts.
Then if someone is shown to be unsustainable at these levels, and after investigation of the administrator’s job in trying to implement the above, we pass a bill to fund the program more.
I have never understood why when there is a time limit on the President (to keep him from becoming a king) why a similar limit wa not imposed on these douchenozzles to keep them from becoming earls and dukes and marquis (which basically they are)
Sad LOL, but the fact is, the Democrats acquiesced on the FAA furloughs and one strongly suspects they were avoiding inconvenience and were afraid of wealthy voters.
There are cuts that hurt people more, that even will cost lives, but since there is no impact on the influential, those cuts are allowed to stand.
I agree the Republicans have been more intransigent than the Democrats on budget issues which is why they are the Teahadists.