[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 161 (Thursday, December 15, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13627-S13629]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SPENDING CUTS
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have traveled throughout my home State
of Washington throughout the past month. A lot of people have told me
time and time again they want our country to be strong again, and to be
strong we need to invest right here at home, in our people, in our
infrastructure, and in our communities. But today the Republican
leadership is trying to push us in the wrong direction by cutting those
critical investments. Republicans today are attempting to interpose an
across-the-board spending cut that will hurt our families, it will hurt
our local communities, and it will even jeopardize the housing and
safety of the American people.
I am speaking out today to explain how those misguided cuts will
affect housing for vulnerable families and the safety of every American
who plans to fly this holiday season.
I thank Senator Byrd for his tremendous leadership and his speaking
out about this misguided Republican plan.
[[Page S13628]]
As the ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on
Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development,
and related agencies, I am here today to tell my colleagues that an
additional 1-percent to 2-percent cut across the board will not be
harmless. It will chip away at the Federal safety net that protects our
vulnerable neighbors, and it will undermine the safety of our
commercial aviation system.
Before I turn to those details, I want to make a broader point about
priorities. There is something very wrong with the idea behind these
broad, across-the-board cuts. Here is what the leadership in the
Republican Party is saying with these cuts: When we need to rebuild in
Iraq, we will pay for it out of the Treasury. But when we need to
rebuild American cities such as New Orleans and Biloxi, we can only do
it on the backs of vulnerable Americans. We can only do it by cutting
other priorities at home.
That is the wrong message. It is the wrong priority, and America can
do better than that. That Republican idea should offend every American
taxpayer who believes that the first and greatest responsibility of our
Federal Government should be the well-being of our own people.
Nonetheless, that is the position of the Republican leadership in this
Congress. As a result, we are now being told that, if we want to help
the victims of Hurricane Katrina, we have to cut every Federal program
across the board, no matter how much those cuts will hurt our safety,
our economy, or our security.
Some Senators may try to suggest that a small cut will not have a big
impact. I can tell you, as a member of the Appropriations Committee,
that is not the case. Let me talk about some of the specific ways these
cuts will undermine American families in areas such as transportation
and housing and in aviation. I know those areas well because I have
worked on them as the ranking member on the Transportation and Treasury
and HUD committee.
First of all, these cuts will mean less progress in reducing highway
congestion. We will lose more than $720 million in highway construction
funds, and with that 34,000 good-paying jobs. Americans will waste more
time in traffic, businesses will lose productivity, and our economy
will suffer.
Second, those proposed Republican cuts will make life harder for the
victims of Hurricane Katrina and for the vulnerable families throughout
our country. Hurricane Katrina revealed the harsh truth about poverty
in America in 2005. Many people lost what little they had. There are
still thousands of victims of that hurricane who are without adequate
housing. Some of them are living in tents. Some are still in hotels,
wondering when they are going to be thrown out. Others are doubled up
with their relatives. And still others have been dispersed all across
the country, wondering how they are going to pay for housing when they
are earning no income. Neither FEMA nor HUD have done an adequate job
addressing the critical housing needs of these Americans.
So here we are trying to address those needs with a supplemental
appropriations bill, and Republican leadership is saying if you want to
help these Katrina victims, you have to cut housing assistance for
other vulnerable families. I think that is the wrong way, to say the
only way we will help the victims of Hurricane Katrina is by taking
housing away from other needy families. Those cuts would mean that more
than 35,000 families will lose the help in housing that they get today
through HUD's tenant-based housing assistance program.
Those cuts also threaten to eliminate transitional housing for 1,200
homeless citizens. Think about it. Cutting housing for the homeless,
taking help away from 35,000 vulnerable families right before the
holidays--that does not reflect my values and that does not reflect my
priorities.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, public housing
agencies across America opened their doors and sought to make emergency
housing available to the citizens who had to evacuate New Orleans. I
saw it even in my home State where housing agencies worked hard,
thousands of miles away from the gulf coast, to help these families.
Most of those housing agencies already had long waiting lists of low-
income families waiting for a unit or for a voucher. By accommodating
those Hurricane Katrina victims, those housing agencies effectively
pushed their own local citizens further down that very long waiting
list.
We should not now make it worse by eliminating vouchers for 35,000
families in order to pay for the additional aid for the Katrina
victims. We must not come to the aid of victims of Hurricane Katrina by
creating still other victims around the country through these misguided
cuts.
These cuts will hurt jobs and transportation. They will hurt the
homeless and other families who are living on the brink. And these cuts
will affect the safety of our air travel in this country.
I addressed the Senate on this issue of aviation safety on October 6,
and I did so because I thought it was critical that all Senators
understand the relationship between the funding levels we provide to
the FAA and the ability of that agency to ensure that the American
people are safe when they board an aircraft.
The holidays are upon us. Thousands of American families are going to
board planes shortly to gather with their families across America. When
they do, they have the right to expect that we in Congress are doing
everything in our power to ensure that they will continue to benefit
from the safest aviation system in the world.
Yet the reality is that the FAA is facing an unprecedented budget
challenge in adequately staffing its air traffic control facilities
with fully trained professionals. And the agency is also challenged
when it comes to deploying an adequate number of fully trained aviation
safety inspectors to oversee the safety practices of our Nation's
airlines.
As I explained back on October 6, over the last few years our
national aviation enterprise, airlines, airports, and the FAA, have
been under an unprecedented amount of financial pressure. We now have
no fewer than six airlines in bankruptcy, and that number could grow.
In the interest of cutting costs, airlines have been cutting back on
staff, renouncing their pension plans, and outsourcing an increased
percentage of their aircraft maintenance.
I know many Senators like me who travel home every weekend have
noticed those changes in the services the airlines offer. Staffing is
leaner than ever, and flight delays and mechanical problems are on the
rise.
Airlines are now contracting out their aircraft maintenance work to
third parties, including, my colleagues should know, many overseas
vendors who are known as foreign repair stations.
Let me say that again.
Aircraft maintenance work is being contracted out to overseas vendors
who are known as foreign repair stations.
In the past, airlines maintained their planes with experienced
veteran unionized mechanics. Today, they outsource more than 50 percent
of their maintenance work to independent operators. Airlines, such as
Northwest, send some of their aircraft as far as Singapore and Hong
Kong for heavy maintenance. We have one major carrier, JetBlue, that
sends a large portion of its all-airbus fleet to be maintained in El
Salvador, Central America. That is where those planes have mechanics
that work on them. America West Airlines, now merged with U.S. Airways,
does the same thing. This outsourced work needs adequate oversight, and
it needs inspection if the American people are going to be safe.
How has the FAA responded to this growing threat to aviation safety?
Because of across-the-board cuts in the prior appropriations bills, the
FAA has actually downsized its safety workforce by more than 300
personnel, including more than 230 inspectors. That is right. We have
gotten rid of more than 230 inspectors, the very professionals who are
charged with ensuring that maintenance operations are meeting adequate
safety standards.
That was not the intent of the transportation appropriations
subcommittee in either the House or the Senate. Indeed, just last year
the Transportation appropriations bill provided every penny the
President requested for the FAA's safety office. But the FAA still had
to drop the number of inspectors because of the across-the-board cut
that was imposed by the Republican leadership.
[[Page S13629]]
It also resulted from the fact that Congress granted all civilian
Federal employees a higher pay raise than the Bush administration asked
for, but none of the appropriations subcommittees were given adequate
funding allocations to fully fund those pay raises.
Now we know the FAA's inspection efforts are falling short. We have
troubling reports today from the Department of Transportation's
Inspector General, from the Government Accountability Office, and the
National Transportation Safety Board.
Yet despite all those dangers, the FAA had to go ahead and decrease
the number of FAA safety inspectors dramatically last year because of
those across-the-board cuts. No one can stand up today and say that an
across-the-board cut has no impact.
Let us fast-forward to right now, this year. I am very proud to say
that the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have worked to
address this safety vulnerability. Both committees provided increased
funds over and above the levels requested by the Bush administration to
bring the number of safety inspectors back to reasonable levels.
In the fiscal year 2006 Transportation-Treasury-HUD appropriations
bill that the President signed a few weeks ago, we provided $8 million
dollars to boost employment in the FAA safety office by 119 inspectors.
That is not going to restore all of the safety inspectors that we lost
last year. But it will move staffing in this critical function in the
right direction.
But if Congress enacts an across-the-board cut, it will completely
eliminate all of the progress we just made in ensuring safety in our
skies.
An across-the-board cut that threatens to be included in the final
appropriations bill this year could cut the FAA's operations account by
over $160 million and then put the FAA's budgetary situation right back
where it was. That will require downsizing of the FAA inspector
workforce while the critical workload continues to grow.
The situation is almost identical when it comes to the FAA's efforts
to avoid the continued attrition in the ranks of our air traffic
controllers. It is estimated that 73 percent of the FAA's air traffic
controllers will be eligible to retire over the next decade.
In the fiscal year 2006 Transportation appropriations bill just
signed into law, we provided almost $25 million to hire an additional
1,250 air traffic controllers. That funding is essential in order to
replace the over 650 air traffic controllers who are expected to retire
over the course of the next year and to build that workforce back up so
we can handle retirements in the future.
Another across-the-board cut this year will completely nullify our
effort to hire an adequate number of air traffic controllers. Such a
cut will put America's flying public at great risk.
As I said, those across-the-board cuts have a meaningful impact, and
they recklessly eliminate initiatives that are critical to the safety
of American citizens.
If Senators don't want to take my word for it, they need to listen to
the word's of George Bush's FAA Administrator, Marion Blakey. I have
had several discussions with her about this topic in the last few
weeks. She recently sent me a letter. I will read a portion of it. It
says:
Over the past two years, we experienced a net loss of 1,000
controllers and 231 safety inspectors. I don't believe
Congress intended that to happen, but that has been the
impact of unfunded pay raises.
I am concerned it is going to happen again if Congress
adopts an across-the-board reduction in the final bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter I received
from the Bush administration's FAA Administrator, Marion Blakey, be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Federal Aviation Administration,
Dear Senator Murray: Before you complete work on the TTHUD
bill, I would like to speak to you about the FAA's budget.
Last fiscal year we significantly reduced costs, including
contracting our Flight Service Stations and eliminating more
than 400 non-safety jobs. Unfortunately, these efforts were
not enough to cover our shortfall. Over the past two years,
we experienced a net loss of 1,000 controllers and 231 safety
inspectors. I don't believe Congress intended that to happen,
but that has been the impact of unfunded pay raises and
rescissions.
I an concerned it is going to happen again if Congress
adopts an across-the-board reduction in the final bill.
Marion Blakey,
Admiminstrator.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, in conclusion, I want to implore my
colleagues to heed the warning of the FAA Administrator and me. We have
to reject this absurd and reckless policy.
If we can declare an emergency under the Budget Act and provide the
funding necessary to rebuild Iraq without offsets, then surely we can
do the same when it comes to rebuilding Mississippi and Louisiana.
We certainly should not be cutting essential services to all
Americans across the country, especially low-income Americans, for the
purpose of funding the needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Those
cuts will simply create another wave of victims.
As I just outlined, it will put the well being of Americans at risk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
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