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Budget's Funding Requirements are ...A Missed Opportunity
Federal Administration Administrator Marion Blakey faced tough questions today as she presented the Bush Administration’s FY2008 budget for her agency to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation.
“The FY 2008 budget request represents the Administration’s first opportunity to come before this new Congress and clearly lay out its funding requirements. Unfortunately, I believe it is a missed opportunity,” said Rep. James L. Oberstar (Minn.), Chairman of the full Committee. “The threshold question before us today is: Does the Administration’s FY 2008 request support the FAA’s mission of operating the largest and safest airspace system in the world? On too many levels, the honest answer to this question has to be either ‘no’ or ‘we just don’t know.’”
Subcommittee Chairman Jerry F. Costello (Ill.) echoed Oberstar’s skepticism. He questioned the wisdom and utility of the Administration’s proposal to restructure the revenue mechanism that supports FAA’s capital program.
“While FAA has cited the need to finance a major new air traffic control modernization initiative as a reason for reforming the current tax structure, the Administration’s data indicates that in FY 2008, user fees and excise taxes under the new proposal would hypothetically yield approximately $600 million less in FY 2008 than maintaining the current tax structure and over $900 million less from FY2009 to FY2012,” Costello said. “I question the wisdom of moving to a new financing system that will not generate as much revenue as the current tax structure when we clearly need to make critical investments now to ensure that our nation’s air traffic control infrastructure is robust for the future.”
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