Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this is a nearly 50-year-old temporary program. It is indicative of everything in Washington: Nothing ever dies here. We just spend more and more money.
The DOT literally picks winners and losers, where neighboring airports have to compete against the Federal Government, which subsidizes routes for the very same market. Approved subsidies include funding leisure routes. That is not essential. That is leisure.
Flights on EAS routes are relatively empty compared to nonsubsidized flights, and the obvious outcome of subsidizing these routes is that they are not economically viable. That is why they are subsidized. It is because nobody really needs them. There are other options that are reasonable.
The industry continues to suffer from a pilot shortage, a mechanic shortage, labor all across the board, ATC, et cetera. All we are doing is making it worse by misallocating these resources.
Pilots are flying planes to places where there aren't any customers, and they are canceling routes where people need to fly.
The bill does make significant improvements. However, the program remains inherently unfair and represents a significant misallocation of resources at a time when we can ill afford to do so.
Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment strikes the section that allows the administration to consider expanding the CLEEN Program.
Now, as a reminder, in the CLEEN Program, the FAA provides awards to industry to develop and integrate technology that will reduce noise, emissions, and fuel burn.
Now, looking over some of the projects, some of them aren't completely useless: improvements to wing performance and thermal efficiency for turbines may well contribute to cost savings. But that actually begs the question: Why can't these projects be funded by private industry alone?
Surely, if they improve fuel efficiency, that is a clear profit- driven motive to invest in new technologies.
The program also funds the development of ``alternative'' jet fuels which is just another facet of the left's crusade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet completely arbitrary and unscientific targets.
The administration aims to achieve ``net zero'' greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector by 2050.
Mr. Chairman, I want you to think about that because you won't be flying when that happens.
The so-called sustainable aviation fuel is critical to achieving this foolhardy goal.
However, this fuel doesn't change the physics of an engine. The engine still emits carbon dioxide. Instead, emissions are actually produced out of waste products cooking oil and agricultural waste instead of fossil fuels, and then the engine burns that. That is what you are paying for, Mr. Chairman. The program makes taxpayers pay for that fuel.
These fuels are extremely expensive and not widely adopted, as low as 0.1 percent at last counting. The CLEEN Program acknowledges these shortcomings.
Phase II simply furthered the understanding of key biofuel properties in demonstrating the viability of them. So it acknowledges it is actually not really changing anything, but we are just spending a lot of money burning cooking oil in an aviation engine.
There is absolutely no reason we should actually be expanding this program that is pouring taxpayer dollars into technologies into which the public sector is unwilling to invest.
They are unwilling to invest because there is no money in this. The only way it works is if the taxpayers pour all their money into it.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, my friend on the other side of the aisle is a good man. He is just, I think, misdirected on this occasion.
I will be clear. I don't want the administrator to be spending time approving this contract or that contract. I don't want him doing any of it.
As far as hydrogen, I marvel at this premise that somehow the government is the only one that can figure this out. Somehow this country figured out and invented the internal combustion engine, the lightbulb, the airplane, and went to space.
But heaven forbid we figure this out without the government and without these taxpayers being forced to pay for it.
The third phase of the CLEEN Program is awarding more than $100 million for aircraft and engine companies to develop and demonstrate aircraft technologies that reduce fuel use, emissions, and noise. Relating to sustainable aviation gas, CLEEN funds are trying to research higher blends of biofuels to petroleum-based fuels which can affect seal performance.
On average, this fuel costs three to five times more than conventional jet fuel. We already have the jet fuel. It is already efficient. It is already clean. We have already reduced emissions more than all the other countries combined. We already met the Paris climate accords requirements without being in the accord.
Now, other barriers to adoption include risks related to adoption, including safety.
Mr. Chairman, as a person who has sat behind the stick and who has been up in the air, I can tell you the pucker factor is pretty high when the engine quits. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be experimenting with fuel while I am up in the air, and I don't want the pilots up front to be forced to experiment with it because the government says so.
We have something that works. The private sector can figure this out. They can invest in it, they can pay for it, and they can perfect it.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, we don't need to provide more subsidies to support this climate smart agriculture practice and production of aviation biofuel feedstocks.
It actually makes your food more expensive because we are burning your fuel in an aircraft instead of pumping it out of the ground where the fuel has come from and has worked very, very well.
There are up to $3 billion in DOE loan guarantees. I want to win the race, too, but the Federal Government picking winners and losers ensures that we probably will lose the race because we are going to pick the wrong one, as the Federal Government normally does.
Once again, this is an absurd policy. If it were viable at all, the private sector would invest in it.
Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Just like the last amendment, this amendment recognizes the fact that our country is out of money. We are borrowing money to pay our bills, and we are paying for things that we can't afford. We are paying for things that these folks can't afford.
Mr. Chair, this amendment reduces the authorization levels in section 101, which is airport planning; section 103, which is operations; and section 1111, which is research and development.
The authorization levels in the underlying bill represent a significant increase from the levels set by Congress in the 2018 reauthorization bill.
For example, the underlying bill raises the authorizations by significant amounts from FY 2023 to FY 2024: 101 by $650 million, 103 by $1.2 billion, and 1111 by $41 million.
This amendment reduces the growth of these authorization levels while still increasing the funds authorized for FAA, resulting in a net savings of nearly $5 billion.
If we are going to raise the level, understanding and recognizing inflation caused by out-of-control spending in this place, we are going to recognize and understand that the FAA still has to continue to operate, but we are not going to raise it so much.
Our national debt is out of control, and it is this mindless, rapid growth of spending in Washington that has put our Nation on the brink of catastrophe.
Moreover, this massive increase in funding is not resulting in a safer or more efficient FAA mission. That is their mission: safety, more efficiency. It instead represents a significant misallocation of resources to woke and green missions at the expense of safety and financial sanity.
We must reorient the FAA back to its original mission and ensure the funding we provide to them is appropriate to meet the moment while not wasting taxpayer resources.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman from the other side of the aisle, but I want to clarify. It is not a cut. We are actually increasing the spend; just not as much.
Now, I know in Washington, oh, my goodness, who knew the request was up to $4 billion? I imagine they would take more than $4 billion if we gave it to them.
We are broke. Hello, America. Wake up, everybody. I have a news flash for you. We don't have anymore money. We are borrowing money to pay the bills. We are borrowing money to pay for things that we can't afford. That is what we are trying to fix here.
If you want to save some money somewhere else and spend it here, I am all ears. Let's talk about it. Something has to give. These people can't afford any more. They are not getting more out of this.
I have been in the room. I used to sit on appropriations in the State House. I know how it goes. Well, we spent this much this year or last year. We are just going to add some more this year.
Nobody goes through line by line and says, oh, well, this costs this much more because concrete costs X and labor costs Y. Nobody does that. They just add money to it.
It is all arbitrary, and we know it. Everybody in this place knows it. That is why we should spend less because we don't have the money to spend.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, since my good friend brought it up, it was a bipartisan agreement. So the world knows that it was a bipartisan agreement here, known in Congress as what is called a four-corners deal: two on their side, two on our side.
There are 435 Members of Congress. I wasn't involved. I wasn't one of the four. You weren't one of the four. Nobody else here was one of the four.
They decided to spend all these billions of dollars. They didn't come to me and say, well, we need this much for concrete and this much for research, because they decided, and this is what is in the bill. Heaven forbid anybody challenge it.
Mr. Chair, we do not have the money. We should reduce the authorization. It is still an increase, just not as much, and it recognizes the fact that our country is broke.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment strikes the word ``vertiport'' from the definition of ``heliport'' for the purposes of AIP funding, the same funding that the gentleman on the other side of the aisle just mentioned that we need so much of.
As a helicopter pilot, I am very interested in the funding for heliports, but vertiports are going to use some of that funding; meanwhile, not paying anything in.
Let me tell you, Mr. Chair. Vertiports exist for the purpose of advanced air mobility and electric vertical takeoff and landing or eVTOL vehicles, which only exist in prototype and other nascent stages.
Mr. Chair, eVTOL is so immature in its development that there is a reality index that actually exists--an Advanced Air Mobility Reality Index.
The reality index ranks companies and essentially determines whether there is a reality that these things are ever going to even come to the market, be produced, and be viable. Is that something we should be investing in?
These are ranked and combined to describe the likelihood of the aircraft certification and production on scale. Again, this is a ranking of the likelihood that these things even get produced, much less used.
Furthermore, if these vehicles become the norm, Jetson style like their proponents envision, allowing AAM vehicles to receive the benefits of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund without paying into it, evokes the same debate we are currently having about the government- mandated transition to electric automobiles which don't pay into the highway fund. They don't pay in, but they use it.
The same thing here. These vehicles want to use it, but they don't want to pay into it. They are robbing from everybody else that has to use it that actually currently exists and are used.
I haven't even gotten into the drawbacks of the potential vehicles, but how about being concerned about adequate storage for hazardous materials to respond to lithium and other critical mineral-related fires?
The fires are challenging enough for firefighters to address on the ground or at sea, let alone having them occur between skyscrapers.
If you wonder, do these fires actually exist, you can just search the internet. It is widely known. You can see the electric vehicles burning at the charger, burning people's garages, burning and burning and burning. There is a problem because they are unstable.
If you want to get in the air and fly in one of these things, God bless you, but your money is going to be transferred to deal with these things that don't pay into the fund. They don't pay anything in, yet they are going to draw money out.
This system works when the users pay into it. That is how it works. Otherwise, these folks up here are going to have to pay extra because there is not going to be enough money in the fund to pay for all of it.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the clarification, and I marvel at the fact that we can include the definition and the term in preparation for something that right now doesn't really exist practically. It is in people's minds, and it is on a computer. There are prototypes out there.
We can do that, but we can't find any way to charge and make sure they are paying their fair share into the fund that they are going to use the infrastructure of, right? The infrastructure is created by the fund, and they are going to use it, but they ain't going to pay. We can't figure that out, but we sure can make sure that they have access to everything else that everyone is paying for.
Ladies and gentlemen, in Washington, D.C., this is how things go awry. This is how you go broke. This is how you can't afford things that you need to do, like pay for your highways, filled now with electric vehicles that are not paying into the system, paying nothing for the roads that they are on, weighing thousands of pounds in excess of most of the regular cars that are using the road now and are paying the fee.
Do you know what we are going to do because we are so brilliant and because that is working so well? We are going to double down and do it in the air, as well. That is awesome.
It is not awesome, ladies and gentlemen. Do you know what else is not awesome? Most of the materials sourced in this stuff come from the Communist Chinese, made by slave labor, whether it is the actual slave labor in concentration camps in east Turkistan or whether it is the child slave labor in the Congo feeding the Chinese machine, feeding the machine here so we can virtue signal that we are doing everything clean, that we are electrified and are not going to charge anybody for it. Somebody is going to pay.
Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Graves of Missouri) having assumed the chair, Mr. Flood, Acting Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 3935) to amend title 49, United States Code, to reauthorize and improve the Federal Aviation Administration and other civil aviation programs, and for other purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.
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