While the tea party radical Republicans were winning their manufactured debt ceiling crisis they were creating the next one. After four years of Congress extending the authorizations and the basic rules governing the Federal Aviation Administration (you know the body that regulates our airports, our national security on planes, the safety of our air traffic) the tea party radical republicans are holding an extension of that basic authorization hostage to a pet proposal of theirs to make it more difficult for labor to unionize Delta Airlines (the only non-unionized major airline in America).
Because the Senate won’t go for the anti-union rules change that the House proposed the bill is deadlocked. No one will believe it but what the radical tea party right wing Republicans are holding out for is the counting of abstentions as no votes in a union recognizing election (a change in forty years of rules and giving Delta a boon that no other airline or major industry ever had in such elections).
As we learned in school the two houses are to have a conference. Well one hundred days ago the Senate appointed conferees; the House hasn’t done so yet. And now the House of Representatives has adjourned until after Labor Day.
So 4,000 employees of the FAA are being furloughed (including engineers and safety specialists); and work on new construction and repairs at airports has stalled leaving 70,000 construction jobs are at risk. This is the radical right wing tea party Republican version of a jobs bill (to cut jobs and increase unemployment). But more dangerous to create an unsafe environment in our air traffic and put America at a disadvantage among world powers when it comes to air transport.
And the taxes that the federal government collected, from ticket buyers, to finance most of the functions of the FAA, are not being collected. The government will lose almost $23 million a day or $1.3 billion in August. Are the airlines reducing ticket prices? No!
So all this money goes into the corporate profits of the big airlines – another radical right wing tea party Republican gift to the super rich.
The House could have passed a simple one month extension and conferenced with the Senate. No the House tells the Senate you take our bill with the anti union provisions or you get no bill. This is not the way Congress was supposed to work according to the framework designed by the Founding Fathers who the tea party folks are always claiming to defer to.
What is the President of the United States going to do about this. There is one thing he has the power to do. He can call a special session of Congress - make them come back to DC (they could fly if they risk it) and put one item on the agenda -the FAA. Tell the American people what’s going on and put the responsibility where it lays with the radical right wing tea party Republicans.
The radical right wing tea party Republicans have already announced that they will use the Sept. 30th deadline for a 2011-2012 budget or continuing resolution (a CR) to demand other things from the President and the Senate and they expect to get them. And unlike the debt ceiling crisis when the President had his 14th amendment option he has no options come Sept 30 except to face these guys down and let the government close down (Clinton had the courage to do that and won).
If he calls a special session and beats these radical right wing tea party Republicans up on the FAA issue they may pull back from a Sept 30th manufactured crisis and cooperate; possibly not use the Nov. 23 deadline for the super committee to come up with phase 2 of the debt reduction plan as another manufactured governmental hostage crisis.
When the Wright brothers took off at Kitty Hawk at the turn of the 20th century there was an immediate consensus in the country that the national government should govern the airways not the fifty states. So Mr. President, what are you going to do about this? Will America fly in the 21st century or crash. The ball is in your court or to put it another way the plane is on your runway!
4 August, 2011
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