NATCA Bookshelf

2011 PARTIAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN When an agreement could not be reached on the 21st FAA authorization extension, the FAA experienced a partial shutdown for two weeks during the summer of 2011. This delayed modernization projects and cost the government nearly $30 million a day in lost revenue because 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 the 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 is the result of a congressional money-saving agenda to cut the federal budget across-the-board. It cut nearly $493 million from the FAA's Operations & Maintenance budget without regard for the safety or efficiency of the NAS. The law has had a tremendously negative effect 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, modify the FAA's funding stream, or simply exempt the FAA from this draconian fiscal policy, the NAS is in jeopardy of falling behind on safety, efficiency, and capacity. 2013 SEQUESTRATION FURLOUGHS AND THREATENED TOWER CLOSURES In April 2013, sequestration forced the FAA to furlough many employees, including air traffic controllers, and consider closing towers in order to achieve the mandated spending cuts. These furloughs led to significant 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. The FAA also threatened to simply close many low-level towers in order to comply with sequestration. A week after the furloughs began, Congress acted by passing the Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013, which allowed the Secretary of Transportation to transfer $253 million from other FAA accounts to the FAA's operations account in order to prevent reduced operations and reduced staffing of the FAA for the remainder of the fiscal year. 2013 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN In September 2013, at the end of Fiscal Year 2013, Congress still had not passed appropriations bills to fund the government for Fiscal Year 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 a regular order appropriations bill. POLITICAL CRISES CAUSING THREATS OF A SHUTDOWN Federal employees, including those employed by the FAA, are all negatively affected when political crises, real or manufactured, 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 38

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