Coburn Offers FAA Easy Alternatives To Closing Towers, Cutting Air Traffic Controllers
Photo Credit: Daily CallerIn the latest installment of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn’s letter-writing campaign for administration sanity in implementing the sequester, the Republican is taking on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) spending cut priorities.
In a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, Coburn called on the FAA to cancel upcoming conferences, stop nonessential hiring or reform low-priority programs before cutting elements that could harm flight safety.
“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today that it will close 173 air traffic control towers, effective April 7, and could furlough nearly 47,000 employees, ‘including all management and non-management employees working within the Air Traffic Organization,’” Coburn wrote in the letter, dispatched Wednesday. “All of the 173 towers closing April 7 are privately run under contracts. The department’s inspector general, however, reported that these same contract towers are both cheaper and safer than towers operated by the FAA.”
Under sequestration, the FAA is expected to cut $600 million — or just 4 percent of the agency’s nearly $16 billion budget for fiscal year 2012.
According Coburn, if a reduction in conference expenditures can stop “even one day of furlough for one air traffic controller,” then the FAA should be moving forward with it.
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