House And Senate Members Want To Avoid Fight, Partial FAA Shutdown Of The Previous Round

Members of the U.S. House and Senate seem to be anxious to avoid all the bad publicity that surrounded the partial shutdown of the FAA last month, which came as a result of the political bickering over funding the agency just before the August recess.

Senator Rockefeller, Congressman Mica

Another in a long line of interim funding measures called "continuing resolutions" seems to have some momentum, and could pass as early as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. It needs to, as the most recent CR expires on September 16th. House and Senate leaders have both presented continuing resolution bills that are devoid of the controversial measures which led to the shutdown in August. Some 4,000 FAA employees were furloughed as a result of the infighting, and hundreds of construction projects at airports ground to a halt.

A spokesman for House Transportation Committee chair John Mica (R-FL) says he expects the committee to be presented what he says is a "clean" bill, which does not include across-the-board budget cuts sought by some Republicans.

But there is nothing in the Washington climate that signals a break in the feud between the parties which has stymied passage of a long-term funding bill for the FAA since the last one expired in 2007. The long-term funding bill has become the rope in a tug-of-war between FedEx Express and UPS over how some drivers can be organized under federal labor laws. More recently, specific aviation safety measures have been inserted into the debate. All that to say that, while the agency may continue to be funded at 2007 levels for now, a long-term solution may continue to be particularly elusive.

FMI: http://commerce.senate.gov, http://transportation.house.gov