The FAA Reauthorization

Floor Speech

Mr. BENNET. I thank the Senator from Alaska for allowing me to jump ahead in the queue. I will have a word to say about the issues raised by the Senators from Iowa and New York at the end, but I am rising to talk about an issue that is actually separate. I have been out on the floor week after week talking about the debt limit and debt reduction negotiations, but today I want to talk about another absurd and needless Washington-inflicted, what I can only think of as a mistake, and that is the partial shutdown of the FAA. This shutdown--while buried in the headlines--is affecting Colorado jobs and the economy across the United States. Unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, Congress's inability to resolve this impasse has caused the furloughing of thousands of workers nationwide and put at risk several very important summer construction projects at our airports in Colorado.

Earlier this year, the Senate worked together to pass a long-term FAA reauthorization bill. This important bill, which I supported, will modernize our Nation's air transportation system and reduce frustrating and costly delays. The American people would be astonished to learn how antiquated our system is right now. But the House and Senate conference committee have been unable to finalize the bill.

Last Friday, Congress failed to pass a short-term authorization measure to buy negotiators more time. Now certain FAA functions have been shut down. This shutdown makes absolutely no sense to the people in Colorado who rely on this industry for their livelihoods, their businesses, and travel.

I know the same is true in Alaska. It is more than that. Colorado has a short summer construction season--probably not as short as Alaska's, but nevertheless short--and many airports set aside the summer months to complete much-needed improvement projects, so this shutdown has come at the worst time for them.

In Loveland-Fort Collins Airport in Colorado, they are very near cancelling a planned runway improvement project. Loveland-Fort Collins is a one-runway airport. Officials had already canceled summer flights to accommodate a $7 million runway rebuilding project. Now they could be forced to shelve the project, which was bringing around 150 jobs to the area.

At Pueblo Memorial Airport--by the way, keep in mind this is about Washington's dysfunction. There are not big policy debates here. It is Washington turning its back on the rest of the country once again. At Pueblo Memorial Airport, officials have said they may be forced to delay a $12 million runway rebuilding project.

At the Durango Airport, officials are concerned that an ongoing $3 million apron rehabilitation project--which currently employs 30 Coloradans--will receive a stop-work order next week if Congress refuses to act.

At the Denver International Airport, one of the crown jewels in this country, officials are concerned that the shutdown will affect scheduled concrete and asphalt work on a runway and maintenance on passenger loading bridges.

These delays could affect the overall safety of Colorado airports and they are affecting jobs right now.

Nationwide, an estimated 3,500 FAA workers began to be furloughed this past Saturday; 27 of these workers are in Colorado. They were either sent home or forced to work without pay.

To his credit, Chairman Rockefeller recently introduced legislation that would allow the FAA to continue to pay those workers during the shutdown. I have cosponsored the legislation. I hope the Senate considers doing it today, but we need to do more than that. We have been asked to do more than the bare minimum by our constituents. We have gotten to the point around here where just keeping the lights on somehow is a success. That is a pretty low bar. It is a low bar to Heather Hilgers of Englewood, CO. She is an engineer. Airports hire her to complete construction projects so they can meet FAA safety standards. She wrote to my office:

Next week, if there is no one to reimburse the contractor, the job has to stop. The stall is affecting engineering contracts. The visible impact would be the construction contractors' jobs.

Andrew Vogt of Denver, CO, is also an engineer. He wrote:

It's a frustrating experience that this whole industry has gone through. We are hoping a long-term solution can be achieved in short order.

As a professional engineer, certified construction manager for airport improvement projects, there is literally no work to do this year. ..... Put me back to work.

Jeff Campbell, also of Engelwood, CO--these are not government employees, by the way. We are talking about private-sector employees whose jobs and expectations and salaries and plans for their families are being put on hold by the games that are being played here in Washington.

Jeff Campbell, also of Engelwood, CO, is an aviation engineer who is involved with five projects that are being affected by the shutdown. One is the failing runway at Fort Collins-Loveland. He said 150 people, expecting to begin work next week, are about to be put on hold and the project will have to be rebid for the third time.

A lot of people in Congress talk about putting people back to work. They talk about fiscal responsibility. But this delay is costing thousands of jobs and an estimated $30 million a day in lost revenue. If this shutdown continues, these losses could dwarf the entire yearly budget of the EAS Program, which some claim is holding up the bill. Congress must not allow the debate over our debt limit or deficit to prevent action on a short-term FAA extension. Such inaction only proves once again to the American people how broken this place is.

It would be a terrible shame for Members of Congress to resolve this debt debate, adjourn, and board their planes home for recess without resolving this issue. What a slap in the face to people all across this country. On behalf of our constituents who make a much more forceful case than I ever could, I implore my colleagues and Members of the House to resolve this impasse and reauthorize FAA now.

THE DEBT LIMIT

With the indulgence of the Senator from Alaska, I want to take the opportunity to say a word or two about this debt limit discussion we are having right now. We face enormous challenges in our country right now. Our economy is almost producing what it was producing before we went into this terrible recession, but we have 14 million people who are unemployed. The great productive American economy has figured out how to produce what it was producing before with fewer people. But we have not figured out how to put people back to work. My own view is that we need to look hard at our Tax Code, our regulatory code, and other things to make sure we are inspiring innovation and job growth here in the United States and we are not just shipping it overseas and saying it is too bad for everybody who is here.

We are at the end of a decade when median family income has declined for the first time in our country's history. It never happened before. The cost of health care has gone up. The cost of higher education has gone up. It is harder and harder for the middle class in this country to survive. If you are a child living in poverty in the United States, your chances of getting a college education are 9 in 100 in the 21st century in the greatest country in the world.

There are countries all over this globe that sense weakness, that are trying to out-compete us, trying to out-educate us, trying to out-invest in their infrastructure while we play foolish political games. They are not waiting for permission from us to out-compete us.

One of the single greatest assets this country has had since almost its founding has been our bulletproof credit rating. It has been the fortress that is our full faith and credit of the United States. Financial transactions all over the globe, spanning decades, centuries, have been financed based on the strength of our credit, the full faith and credit of the United States, and generation after generation of politicians has done everything they could to protect it, as any mayor in my State, as any superintendent

of schools in my State, would do anything to make sure they protected the credit rating of their city or of their school district.

Now we face, for the first time in our country's history, a threat of downgrade, a threat that our interest rates would spike. That is not a political observation; that is coming from the credit rating agencies. They are not politicians. What the math tells us is that every 1-percent increase in our cost of borrowing adds $1.3 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years, making the problems we face today even harder to solve.

The President knows I have supported for a long time a comprehensive approach, one that would actually make a meaningful difference to our debt and to our deficit, and I will continue to fight for it, as will, I know, the Senator from Alaska. But it is time for Washington to move past these political games and reassure our capital markets that we are not going to be the first generation of Senators to blow up our credit rating over politics, to reduce the full faith and credit of the United States to rubble--for politics. I don't want to be somebody who, 30 years from now or 40 years from now where somebody comes and says: Hey, we detect you were once in the Senate, you were 1 of 100 people here when we compromised one of the greatest assets this country has.

I implore the leadership of both parties, both here and in the House, to work this out. Then let's get on with the tough discussion we have to have about our debt and deficit.

Mr. President, I thank again the Senator from Alaska for allowing me to speak ahead of him, and also for his leadership throughout this entire debate. He, like a number of us, has been working hard with Members across the aisle to try to get a bipartisan solution that is balanced and that makes sense heading toward the future. I thank him for his leadership.

I yield the floor.

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