Crowley Confronts LaHood: Post-Sequester FAA Budget $500 Million More Than 08

Crowley Confronts LaHood: Post-Sequester FAA Budget $500 Million More Than 08

CANDY CROWLEY: As far as we can figure out, the FAA budget – we’re not even talking about the transportation – is about $15 billion give or take. They’re going to have to cut $600 million, about 4 percent. Why is that enough to cause planes to be delayed for an hour and a half? There surely must be things inside the FAA budget where can you get rid of 4 percent.Absolutely fabulous question most of the media have been intentionally ignoring to support the administration’s fearmongering. Let’s see his answer:

RAY LAHOOD, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: And we’re going to do that, Candy. We have been spending the last several months looking at, and we will really focus on this now, every contract to see what penalties we might have to take. We’re going to cancel contracts. We’re going to look at everything we possibly can to get to where we need to be, which is about $600 million in cuts, but we can’t do it without also furloughing people. And we’re going to have to, the largest number of people…

CROWLEY: 4 percent is just, that’s a very big budget. And let me add something else. A Republican from Capitol Hill in the leadership office messaged and said, listen, the budget committee took a look at some of these numbers, and they found post-sequester, your post-sequester total at FAA ops and facilities and equipment is going to be about $500 million more than 2008 and the planes were running just fine. So, what’s, I’m trying to figure out, as you know, people are saying the administration is exaggerating this. So, if you’re going to be having totals inflation-adjusted at 2008 levels, why all of this [unintelligible] oh my goodness, all the planes are going to be late?

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