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lost revenue, when the Airport and Airway Trust Fund was not authorized. FAA employees were left without pay for a significant period of time. Although Congress later restored employees' lost pay, those aviation safety professionals experienced funding uncertainty at a personal level, which resulted in low morale and a loss of confidence in the funding system. 2013 SEQUESTRATION CUTS Sequestration, which was the result of a money-saving agenda, cut nearly $493 million from the FAA's Operations budget with no regard for the safety or efficiency of the NAS. The law has had many negative effects on the NAS. For example, delayed preventative maintenance means engineers and technicians operate on a fix-on-fail policy, forcing them to wait until equipment breaks before replacing it. Until Congress finds a way to resolve sequestration or modify the funding stream, our NAS is in jeopardy of falling behind on efficiency, capacity, and most importantly, safety. 2013 SEQUESTRATION FURLOUGHS AND THREATENED TOWER CLOSURES In April 2013, sequestration forced the FAA to furlough employees, including air traffic controllers, and consider closing towers in order to achieve the mandated spending cuts. These furloughs led to massive delays: during the week of April 21-27, 2013, delays jumped to 13,694, nearly triple the 5,103 delays in the same week of 2012 and the 5,110 delays in 2014. 2013 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN In September 2013, at the end of F Y 2013, Congress still had not passed appropriations bills to fund the government for F Y 2014. On October 1, the government was forced to shut down, shuttering much of the FAA along with it, which resulted in more FAA furloughs. LACK OF APPROPRIATIONS BILLS In recent years, Congress has come to rely on temporary, short-term funding measures called continuing resolutions. A stand- alone THUD Appropriations bill has not been enacted since 2006. Subsequent years have relied on omnibus spending packages (a funding bill that combines multiple appropriations bills together) or continuing resolutions to fund the government, or some combination of the two. The FAA cannot be expected to fulfill its obligations without a stable and predictable funding stream provided by regular order appropriations bills. POLITICAL CRISES CAUSING THREATS OF A SHUTDOWN Federal employees, including those employed by the FAA, are all negatively affected when manufactured political crises threaten an agency shutdown, even when a shutdown is averted at the last minute. This affects employee morale and the Agency's ability to plan for long-term projects. Due to contentious budget debates, the government has frequently been on the brink of a shutdown the past several years. NiW Today n i w . n a t c a . n e t STOP-AND-GO FUNDING continued 22

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