Transportation
Floor Speech
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Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about the importance of aviation and continuing to focus on the workforce employed in aviation. I want to speak about the importance of the thousands of workers, including pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, baggage handlers, mechanics, catering workers, and many others, who are feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I believe we should continue to address the very important issues of the health aspects of the pandemic and the economic impact of the pandemic, but while we are working on developing a vaccine and developing better therapeutics and testing and stopping the spread of this virus, we also need to keep in mind that we do need transportation.
Prior to the pandemic, the aviation industry supported nearly 11 million American jobs, put $1.8 trillion to work in our economy, and contributed to about 5.2 percent of our GDP. In fact, civilian aviation is the seventh leading contributor of overall productivity. These are skilled, high-wage jobs that are critical to our economy that cannot be easily replaced. Maintaining our aviation sector is vital to the long- term economic success of our country.
When the pandemic hit, we saw a 96-percent drop in air travel, which instantly jeopardized thousands of jobs in this sector. We worked very hard in the CARES Act to create the right balance of capital for the aviation sector to continue because it is essential. We also have workers who are essential to their jobs, so we must keep moving to solve these problems from the pandemic.
The Payroll Support Program, which was created in the CARES Act and is being administered through the Department of the Treasury, was designed to compensate aviation industry workers and preserve jobs in order to help protect the essential aspects of aviation and airline services. The program continues to cover the costs of keeping people employed and keeping this vital piece of transportation moving. This is critically important because, in just a very short period of time, September 30, this program is going to expire.
Congress needs to act to extend the program. It is important that we provide this support through the PSP program for the aviation workers who are so essential to continuing to deliver these services. Aviation not only helps people move around the country for personal reasons and essential business reasons, but it also delivers good medicine and essential mail services. The fact is that most people probably have forgotten how important airlines are to delivering the U.S. mail, but they are important.
The CARES Act included requirements to ensure that smaller markets continue to receive air service and its associated benefits. As you can see, many of the airlines, in the uncertainty of what is happening with the CARES Act extension, are now cutting services to those communities. Doing another CARES Act bill would help us to keep those services in these smaller communities. It was announced that as many as 50,000 airline jobs will be at risk if we don't continue the Payroll Support Program.
Now is not the time to be uncertain. Now is the time to give the airline sector the importance that it deserves by having airline workers continue to do their jobs. Every job lost means a worker earns less. It means the slowdown of the economy as a whole. It means that consumer spending, which is a big engine of our economy, will slow down, and 70 percent of our GDP comes from that consumer spending. So these programs are important.
If the Payroll Support Program is not extended, the cost for workers who will lose their jobs will simply be shifted to the States in the form of unemployment benefits, and since we aren't solving the problems of the States, the States also add to the GDP, so we are not helping the GDP unless we come to a resolution within the CARES Act. Unemployment doesn't cover the cost of a full salary. Each worker would have less to spend on gas and groceries, on a mortgage, and on medicine. In the downturn of the economy that we have been facing, we can't afford more loss.
Our economy is showing some signs of modest recovery as the result of the economic stimulus from the CARES Act, but many of those benefits are expiring. I can tell you, as a Member from the Pacific Northwest, I hear a lot from businesses that didn't get help and support in the PPP program and want it to continue so that they, too, can be on par with some of their friends and neighbors who have been able to succeed economically.
Right now, we are at a turning point at which we need the PSP program to continue and to help give certainty about transportation. Nationally, on average, we know an aviation mechanic takes home about $1,600 per week in pay, but when these jobs are cut, the weekly incomes are cut. Let's look at a few States and a few examples.
Right now, in North Carolina, the weekly income for a mechanic is only $350 a week in unemployment benefits, and that worker is facing a 79-percent cut in weekly income. So I ask our colleagues to consider, as you think about shifting these transportation workers from these salaries that they are getting now to unemployment benefits, how dramatic these cuts will be in some of these States.
I am proud that I come from a State in which we have a pretty robust unemployment benefit. I thank our State and the people who vote for and support a robust unemployment benefit, but if we continue to not act on the CARES Act and the PPP, we will be sending people home to States with unemployment benefits that will be much less robust than in my State. Right now, to face a 79-percent cut in one's weekly income I don't think is good for the aviation sector.
On average, when you look at the weekly income for ramp agents in Georgia, it is about $850, but now that any additional weekly benefits have run out, these workers face a 57-percent income cut. In State after State, we see these cuts in these weekly incomes. This means, as I said, less money to spend on groceries and less money to spend on essentials at home. Without any additional weekly benefits, in Florida, pilots will see a 92-percent drop in income, flight attendants a 75- percent drop, mechanics an 83-percent drop, and ramp agents a 68- percent drop. In Texas, pilots will see an 85-percent drop in weekly income, flight attendants a 52-percent drop, mechanics a 68-percent drop, and ramp agents a 48-percent drop.
My point here is to think about the need for us to continue this program in that not all States are going to be treated equally in how aviation workers will be affected. We have to think about how we are going to keep that important air travel moving for our economy.
Without the extension, flight crews, flight attendants, and others will be impacted in another way, in that, when you stop air transportation services, people, after a period of time, will have to come back and be retrained and recertified. Many times here, I have participated in debates about tax credits or tax policy. Oftentimes, we go past our deadline of December 31 and into the new year. Even though we can't reach a conclusion, most people think: Well, that is OK. We will make it retroactive, so going past our deadline doesn't impact anything. In this case, it does impact something because, once we hit the October 1 deadline and we start seeing these people in unemployment situations, the time starts ticking for the cost of recertifying them to be in that cockpit or to be of service.
For example, pilots have to meet certain flying requirements to maintain currency in their pilot licenses. So, without an extension of the PSP, flight crews and flight attendants would need to be retrained at the cost of starting up again. A PSP extension also means supporting their wages and making sure that they have available healthcare during this time period.
I don't want to see one more American lose one's healthcare benefits because of COVID. We are in a COVID crisis. We want people to be covered with healthcare so that we can help to fight this pandemic. I know people here in Congress are looking at the very short time period that we have left before September 30. I call on my colleagues to set aside our differences and come back to the table and make sure that we address these issues before this major layoff.
This is important because, as I said, this affects the GDP of our country. We still have an opportunity to sustain 950,000 frontline aviation workers, which is important to helping our economy recover. As I said, it is important because aviation helps to grow opportunities for the future.
My colleague Senator Scott and I will tomorrow be announcing other aviation legislation that we, too, think will help the aviation sector. For every 10 percent of travel that returns to aviation, it drives more than $1.5 billion into our economy. Those are salaries and wages and other aspects of this sector. That is the economic impact that we will have by returning flight service.
The original premise around the COVID bill was for us not to decimate the airline industry so much, because of the COVID impact, that it wouldn't recover and so that we wouldn't be there to retrain and take advantage of the upside as the public responds. We have now gone from that 95-percent loss of travel to, right before the Labor Day weekend, about 40 percent of airline capacity and travel. We want to continue being ready to serve the public who has to fly, and we want to make sure it is safe for the public to fly. Getting this extension of the COVID bill done before September 30 still remains a key priority.
On the point of aviation, I would say to my colleagues, besides the Cantwell-Scott bill we will be dropping tomorrow to help focus on more aviation safety, my colleague Senator Wicker and I remain committed to continuing to work on aviation safety as it relates to certification legislation. I hope all of our colleagues on the Commerce Committee will continue to focus on that as well.
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