Sequestration Flight Delays (Part II)

After a month or so of the sequestration budget cuts only affecting people Congress doesn’t really care about, the cuts hit home this week when mandatory FAA furloughs caused lengthy flight delays cross the country. Suddenly, sequestration was hurting regular Americans, instead of irregular (poor) ones! Some naive observers thought this would force Congress to finally roll back the purposefully damaging cuts that were by design never intended to actually go into effect. Those observers were.. sort of right! The U.S. Senate jumped into action last night and voted to… let the FAA transfer some money from the Transportation Department to pay air traffic controllers so that the sequestration can continue without inconveniencing members of Congress, most of whom will be flying home to their districts today. The system works! (For rich people, like I’ve been saying.)

We talked a little bit yesterday about how the sequestration budget cuts have been delaying flights for passengers around the country, and as Alex Pareene writes at Salon, some of those passengers include members of Congress, who have decided to figure out a way to pay air traffic controllers so they don’t have to sit around the airport. So they’re going to figure out how to fully fund programs that help the poor next, right?

Our flight is rerouting to fly over Canada so as to avoid parts of USA where FAA cuts are most at issue. #sequesterdelayed #facepalm

— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) April 26, 2013

Photo: David Jones

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.