Here's
a great Republican idea: Let's privatize air traffic control. Don't you want corporate profits to be a factor in your safety in the air?
Republicans point to delays on the Federal Aviation Administration's technology upgrade from radar to NextGen as a reason to privatize. Business could do it faster!
"In the same amount of time FAA has been working on NextGen, Verizon has upgraded its wireless network four times,” [House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster] added.
Thing is, dropped planes are a little more worrying than dropped calls. And why is it taking the FAA so long to complete the new technology?
“For years, the FAA has been faced with unstable, unpredictable funding where interruptions in the funding stream have negatively affected all aspects of the FAA,” National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Paul Rinaldi told the panel. “The agency has had to spread its resources thinly between fully staffing a 24/7 operation, as well as the modernization and daily maintenance required to sustain an aging infrastructure.”
Rinaldi said budget cuts that were included in the 2011 sequestration law that took effect in 2013 made the FAA’s funding situation worse.
“The FAA was forced to furlough its employees, including air traffic controllers, consider closing federal and contract towers curtailing air traffic services at smaller markets, place preventative measures on hold and cut other services,” he said. “The cuts also prevented the FAA from hiring new trainees to replace those certified controllers who retire, thus adding stress to an already understaffed workforce.”
Gosh, so Republicans force cuts and make planning for the future difficult because of uncertain funding, and then when there are delays, they use it as an excuse to privatize things—in this case pushing to have the people responsible for air safety also looking to squeeze profits out of the job. But this is nothing new, both in the sense that Republicans have been pushing to privatize air traffic control for years (at least in airports powerful Republicans don't
personally fly out of), and in the sense that "break it, then use the fact that it's broken to privatize it" is about 80 percent of the Republican theory of governing.