FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I have offered this amendment whenever the opportunity presents itself because it tests whether there is any program in the Federal budget that Congress can bear to cut.

Essential Air Service is perhaps the least essential program in the entire government. It is a direct subsidy paid to airline companies to fly empty and near empty planes from small airports to regional hubs nearby. There was supposed to be a temporary program to allow local communities and airports to readjust to airline deregulation in 1978. Instead, it has grown to include 173 communities and a program that has doubled in cost in the last decade.

I want to emphasize, this program has nothing to do with emergency medical evacuations. It solely subsidizes regular scheduled commercial service that is so seldom used that it cannot support itself.

And why can't it support itself? In many cases, the small airports in the program are less than an hour's drive from regional airports. Essential Air Service flights are flown out of Merced Airport near my district in the Sierra Nevada of California; yet, Merced is less than an hour's drive from Fresno Regional Airport, offering regular scheduled commercial air service.

Subsidized service is available from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, just 31 miles from Harrisburg International Airport. Subsidized flights from Pueblo, Colorado, are just a 45-minute drive from Colorado Springs Regional Airport, and I could go on and on.

There are supposed to be subsidy caps of $200 per passenger and a minimum of 10 passengers per day, and yet, every request to waive these requirements has been granted--every one--for passenger subsidies that can go as high as nearly $1,000 per passenger. Now, by comparison, you can charter a small plane for around $150 to $200 an hour.

Over the next 5 years, this program will cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion in direct appropriations, which this amendment would cease. The program also gets another $100 million a year from overflight fees that would otherwise be available to fund high priorities in the aviation system, like 21st century air traffic control technology.

The argument for abolishing this program is simple: if a route cannot generate enough passengers to support its costs, that means that passengers themselves are telling us that it is not worth the money to them.

Perhaps we should listen.

Our country is drowning in debt. It now costs us $475 billion a year just to pay interest costs on the $21 trillion that we have already borrowed. Debt and taxes are driven by one thing: spending.

In the last 10 years, inflation and population combined have grown 26 percent. Revenues have more than kept pace, growing 29 percent in the same period; but spending has grown 46 percent, and it has doubled under this program. If we don't get control of spending soon, our Nation could enter a debt spiral that threatens our very future; and the Orwellian-named Essential Air Service is a prime example of nonessential programs that we just can't afford.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, three points:

First, these amendments don't cut the fee support, only the $1 billion in direct taxpayer subsidies that would be paid into this program over the next 5 years. Under the so-called reforms referenced by the chairman, this program has doubled in cost over the past decade, and all Americans do not benefit from this program.

Let's take the remote communities, like those in Alaska. This program subsidizes 61 small communities in a State with 259 airports. That means there are roughly 200 airports and 350 local communities in Alaska, alone, that seem to do just fine without Essential Air Service.

If Alaska or any State believes that air service should be subsidized within their State, they certainly have the ability to do it themselves. So do individual towns. The States choose not to pay for the service; the local communities choose not to pay for the service; and, most importantly, the passengers, themselves, choose not to pay the actual cost of the service. Perhaps as we approach $1 trillion annual deficit, we should consider choosing not to pay for it either.

We hear that it helps prop up small airports and small airlines that service them. Well, sure, if you hand somebody wads of cash, that person does very well. The problem is that the people you took that cash from do very poorly to exactly the same extent.

A $275 million program out of a $4 trillion Federal budget seems like a drop in the bucket, and I agree we are not going to balance a $1 trillion annual deficit just by cutting programs like this. But if we can't cut a 40-year-old temporary program that has doubled in cost over the last 10 years--this is the kindest and easiest cut of all--then I fear that we will never summon the courage to get our budget back to balance before we bankrupt our country.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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