[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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