Faa Reauthorization Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman and ranking member for taking our amendment and including it in the en bloc amendment. It is a GAO study of revenue diversion by airports.

I think it is important for three different reasons:

One, it ties to the very heart of equity or fairness, the idea of all entities under law being treated equally. What we have now is a 35-year tradition wherein 20 airports have been exempted in a way that the other 380 primary airports in this country are not.

Two, this is about recognizing that you can't use that which you divert. In 2015 alone, more than $1 billion was diverted from airport operations to other, and if we are going to say we need more money, let's use first some money we have, which would bring me to my final point: You should always spend what you have before you go asking for more. I think this is particularly important when you talk about $130 billion of need within the airport system; that you simply spend within the system first before you go to the taxpayer asking for yet more.

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