[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5964]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           FAA FLIGHT DELAYS

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  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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