At midnight, the Federal Aviation Authority went in to partial shutdown mode after Congress adjourned for the week without reconciling its differences over $16.5 million of rural subsidies and a hurdle to unionization. From (hold your breath) Fox News:
The subsidy cut was included by Republicans in a House bill extending operating authority for the FAA, which has a $16 billion budget. Senate Democrats refused to accept the House bill with the cuts, and Republican senators refused to accept a Democratic bill without it. Lawmakers then adjourned for the weekend.
But underlying the dispute on rural air service subsidies was a standoff between the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate over a provision in long-term funding legislation for the FAA that would make it more difficult for airline and railroad workers to unionize.
On Thursday, House Democrats provided a chart explaining the scope of construction job losses that would occur if the shutdown were to take place. California (4,573), Florida (3,061), Illinois (3,141) and Alaska (2,424) are the hardhest hit job-wise. California, in addition, stands to lose $131 million in construction funding.
Another byproduct of the disagreement is the government loss of $200 million per week in airline ticket taxes:
If that happens, airlines would no longer collect federal ticket taxes. About 4,000 FAA workers whose jobs are funded with ticket tax revenues will be furloughed, LaHood told reporters at a news conference.
"This is no way to run the best aviation system in the world," LaHood said. "Congress needs to do its work."
The union organizing aspect surrounds the voting process. Republicans have been accused of trying to count workers who do not vote as "no" votes in union elections: Here's Political Animal:
In the House version of the FAA measure, Republicans included a measure to make it much more difficult for aviation and rail workers to unionize. The larger dynamic can get a little complicated, but the bottom line is this: under the status quo, workers can get together and hold a vote. The majority wins. Under the Republican proposal, workers who don’t participate in the vote would be counted as “no” votes. The point, of course, would be to make it extremely difficult for workers to organize.
In the Senate version, the FAA is funded without the union-busting measure.
The rural subsidy aspect has been a bit tougher to pin down in news reports. Some frame the subsidies are favoritism to certain Congressmen home states, for instance Nevada Senator Harry Reid.
The method behind the madness of divvying up the subsidies is as follows:
Entitlements – Entitlements are funds that are allocated based on statutory formulas, based on actual airport activity levels.
Primary Entitlements – Primary entitlement funds are calculated based on actual number of passenger boardings at each airport with more than 10,000 passenger boardings annually. Maximum annual primary entitlement for an airport is $26,000,000. Minimum annual primary entitlement for an airport is $1,000,000.
Non-Primary Entitlements – Non-Primary entitlements funds are available to airports with fewer than 10,000 passenger boardings annually, up to $150,000 annually.
Cargo Entitlements – Cargo entitlement funds are a fixed percentage (3.5%) of Airport Improvement Program (AIP) funds, and distributed proportionally among airports serving cargo-only aircraft with at least 100 million pounds each year.
State Apportionment – State apportionment funds are allocated by state based on land area and population, and available for non-primary airports within each state.
Discretionary Funds – Discretionary funds are the remaining funds which have not been allocated for entitlement and state apportionment. Discretionary funds are subject to statutory distribution among specific set-asides at specific percentages for noise, military airport program, and relievers. 75 percent of the remaining discretionary funding must be used for preserving and enhancing capacity, safety, security and carrying out noise compatibility planning and programs at primary and reliever airports.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal takes a crack at explaining how this effects airports in Nevada:
Improvement grants that are made available to individual airports based on size would be put out of reach until the FAA is fully operational again. For Nevada airports, that amounted to $3.55 million, according to agency figures...
The House passed a short-term bill this week that made cuts in the Essential Air Service Program, which subsidizes commercial airlines that fly into 109 remote communities at a cost of $163 million annually.
The House set a $1,000 per person cap on the subsidy. That effectively would cut off Ely, where Great Lakes Airlines gets what amounts to a subsidy of $3,270 per passenger -- the highest in the nation -- for its daily flight to Las Vegas.
Other communities affected included Alamogordo, N.M., where the subsidy is $1,563, and Glendive, Mont., with a subsidy of $1,358.
The House bill also would have limited eligibility to communities that are more than 90 miles away from a hub airport. That would have cut off another 10 destinations.
The subsidy limits proved to be a showstopper for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other senior Democrats who refused to pass the FAA bill with such restrictions that were not negotiated in advance.
House Republicans refused to consider a bill without subsidy limits.
For more on this complicated conflict, google "FAA Shutdown."