Friday, July 22, 2011

FAA Shutdown Costs uh, Saves Something About Money?

The Federal Aviation Administration is possibly shutting down. Air Traffic Controllers stay on the job, but pretty much everyone else kicks bricks until Congress can be bothered to re-authorize the FAA's funding.

Who loses?
  • Tickets for air travel will be $60 cheaper because they can't collect taxes if the tax collector is out of a job.
  • The other side of that coin is about $200M of taxes not being paid to the government, per WEEK.
  • Up to 32,000 non ATC jobs might be put on furlough, which sucks for those employees
  • If they make $1500/week, that's $48M we don't have to pay them per week

So what's the hold-up? Senate Democrats are unwilling to compromise on language about union rules and subsidizing rural airports in the authorization bill. Because unions' re-election contributions are more important than aviation safety for you the flying public, apparently.

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