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| Lawmakers Pass Short-term FAA Funding Bill Without Aviation User Fees | Oct '08 |
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| By Karen Di Piazza |
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On Sept. 23, the United States Senate passed a bill (H.R. 6984) that will keep the Federal Aviation Administration's doors open for business through March 31, 2009. The FAA Extension Act of 2008, via a voice vote, passed the Senate by unanimous consent. Current FAA authorization expired Sept. 30, which closed the fiscal year. That same morning, the House passed the six-month extension bill.
Temporary legislation, which has been signed by the president, allows the FAA to continue collecting and spending tax revenues that keep the aviation system functioning. Aviation excise taxes, which support the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, will remain in force. In recent years, the trust fund has provided nearly 80 percent of the FAA's budget.
Now enacted, the bill provides $1.95 billion in contract authority for the Airport Improvement Program. AIP funding for the first six months of FY 2009 will enable airports to move forward with safety and capacity projects. When annualized, lawmakers said that the level of AIP funding equals $3.9 billion, consistent with both the House and Senate FAA reauthorization bills and the FY 2009 concurrent budget resolution. The bill also includes $4.5 billion for FAA operations, inclusive of operating the nation's air traffic control system.
The previous long-term FAA reauthorization act, Vision 100-Century of Aviation Reauthorization Act, expired on Sept. 30, 2007. On Sept. 20, the House passed bill H.R. 2881, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2007, to reauthorize FAA funding through fiscal years 2008 through 2011. However, the Bush administration threatened to veto the bill, as the House refused to include aviation user fees.
The Senate hasn't been able to agree on a long-term FAA reauthorization bill. Some of its members sided with commercial airlines in pursuit of imposing a user-fee system, which would cripple the general aviation marketplace. Several FAA funding bills have been introduced, yet the only action taken by our two-term Congress has been to pass short-term funding legislation.
Further bickering over FAA funding and user fees is an issue that lobbying groups will fiercely take up with members of the House and Senate committees.
Because lawmakers were focused on a bailout deal for failed financial institutions, FAA funding, again, was put on the backburner. Ed Bolen, president of the National Business Aviation Association, believes that legislators shouldn't drop the idea of stable FAA funding.
"At the same time, we think it's also important for Congress to send to the president, as soon as possible, a completed reauthorization package that provides long-term stability and builds on the work already being done to modernize America's aviation system," Bolen said.
Andy Cebula, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association executive vice president of government affairs, warns that the short-term FAA bill has opened up the battleground for renewed user-fee fights.
"A new Congress means new FAA funding bills will have to be introduced," Cebula said. "And user-fee proponents haven't gone away. With rising deficits, the federal government has even more pressures on its spending and the need for new revenue sources."
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