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Case in Point:
This reminds
me of Reagan’s under-funding of OSHA, which pleased the idealogues but created
many unsafe workplaces as industry realized their were not enough inspectors on
the payroll. Who knows
whether this is another case of pushing an economic theory beyond good common
sense or if it’s just another over-reaction to something Pres Clinton did or a
misguided tribute to Reagan? Maybe it’s
just another item on the To Do List before Campaign 2004 hits the airwaves. I can see it now, “Bush Tried to Shrink
Big Gov’t: Give him both Houses of Congress and he will” - KWC Congress and Bush Split on
Privatizing at F.A.A. By Matthew L. Wald, NYT National, June 20,
2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/national/20PRIV.html?ex=1057105864&ei=1&en=6b08db292481e8ce WASHINGTON, June 19 — Air traffic control has become a
flashpoint of the Bush administration's effort to contract out hundreds of
thousands of federal jobs to the private sector. Both
the House and Senate voted last week to forbid further privatization of the air
traffic system,
after vigorous lobbying by the controllers' unions, supported by a group
representing private pilots. Soon, negotiators for the two houses will iron out
differences in the bill to which the measures were attached. The underlying
bill authorizes the Federal Aviation Administration to spend money for the next
few years; the House version is for $58.9 billion over four years, and the
Senate version is for $43.5 billion over three years. The
administration is threatening to veto the bill over the privatization
provision.
On June 11, it announced that "restrictions are unnecessary and would
hinder" the ability of the aviation agency to manage the air traffic
control system. In May, the administration said that of 850,000 government jobs
that it says could be handled by private contractors, it would like to open 15
percent of them to private-sector competition in the current fiscal year, which
ends on Sept. 30. Officials have said they would like to find some of those
jobs at the F.A.A. …The controllers argue that their jobs cannot be done by
private workers. "Air traffic control is too important to the public's
safety to be sold off to the lowest bidder," John Carr, president of the
National Air Traffic Controllers Association, known as NATCA, told a House
panel in March. Mr. Carr has repeatedly cited Sept. 11,
2001,
when, he noted, government air traffic controllers safely brought 4,500
airplanes to landings around the country in just over two and a half hours. In contrast, he has argued,
suicidal terrorists were able to seize four planes because of a privatized
security system. |
Congress and Bush Split on Privatizing at FAA.doc
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