Democrats offer controller proposal
Plan would keep FAA intact but reform the embattled agency
WASHINGTON — As Senate Republicans voiced skepticism Wednesday with a Trump administration plan to spin more than 30,000 Federal Aviation Administration workers into a nonprofit corporation, House Democrats announced a counter proposal that would preserve the FAA.
There are bipartisan worries in both chambers that the plan to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system and its efforts to modernize air travel will be placed in the hands of a board that will prioritize airline service to major cities over the needs of smaller cities and rural areas.
“There have been many concerns raised regarding recent proposals for ATC reform and the potential impact on small community air service,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, RS.D., said.
“I was glad to see that the principles announced by the president this week underscore the need to serve rural communities.
Five rural states — including Thune’s South Dakota — with a land mass of more than 1 million square miles have one-quarter of the population of greater Los Angeles.
The White House dispatched Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to answer questions before Thune’s committee Wednesday, and she is scheduled to appear before the House Transportation Committee on Thursday.
The House bill, introduced by Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Rick Larsen, D-Wash., and co-sponsored by all of the committee’s Democrats — would seem to have little chance in a committee where Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., is the leading proponent of the privatization plan and where Republicans hold a 34-27 majority.
Shuster created the prototype for the White House plan in legislation he crafted last year and pushed through his committee, only to see it falter in the House and stir bipartisan opposition in the Senate. The question both in his committee and the larger House and Senate is whether alternative bill can gain traction with rural lawmakers who hold the belief that a congressionally-mandated program is the only reason commercial airlines serve many smaller airports.
“This has an actual chance of passing,” DeFazio said. “I don’t think (Shuster’s) bill has a chance of becoming law.”
The DeFazio-Larsen bill makes critical reforms to the FAA, while keeping the agency intact.
One of the two major unions that would be transferred to the corporation — the National Air Traffic Controllers Association — supported the Shuster bill last year because it would provide a steady and consistent funding stream not subject to the whims of Congress.