FAA Flight Delays

Floor Speech

Mr. LaMALFA Mr. Speaker, we live in a representative Republic, and so the people expect us at our different levels of government to go to Washington, go to your local State capitols and get the job done and do it right. We appoint people to get these jobs done for us that you expect, whether the President does the appointments or somehow the House and the Senate approve them. And yet Washington, D.C., has fallen down on the job; this administration has fallen down on the job on this issue of FAA and air traffic controllers and delays that can affect real American people.

It's really shameful that we are manipulated in such a way, because what we've seen in recent years, actually since 1996, the budget for FAA has increased 110 percent. And now in this fiscal crisis, this country has seen where everybody is having to cut back, whether personally in our own lives or in government, that we're finding ways to try and trim the cost of doing business of government a little bit.

A 4 percent cut in FAA resulting in 40 percent of our flights being delayed, that's an outrage. It should be an outrage to every individual that we're being manipulated this way at a time, with a $16-plus trillion deficit, we can't get this right.

So, missed connections, we're hurting the American public with these delays. We've got to do better. I ask the administration to do better.

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