The Federal Aviation Administration could avoid furloughing air traffic controllers by cutting costs elsewhere, but the Obama administration “has made choices that appear designed to have the greatest possible impact on the traveling public,” a Republican Congressman charged.
“The FAA’s management of sequestration is quickly going from bad to worse,” U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said in a statement. “Given that the FAA’s budget increased more than 100 percent over the last 15 years, finding five percent in savings shouldn’t need to significantly impact our nation’s aviation operations. Businesses and families across the country face these issues in their budgets every day without massive impacts.
“…What’s perhaps most troubling is that the FAA has known about the sequester for almost two years and gave Congress and the airline industry less than a week’s notice about its implementation plans,” added Shuster, chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. “This disregard for the American public is indicative that the Administration views the sequester as an attempt to score political points rather than address real issues and find real savings in a bloated federal bureaucracy.”