The Fiscal Cliff and the “Draconian Cuts” to be enacted Friday through Sequester have been the topic of interest in Washington these days. Listening to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood (R-IL), one would think that the sky is indeed going to fall.

We should all keep in mind that the 2013 cuts amount to less than 2% of the federal budget and will do little to trim $1.8 Trillion deficit expected in 2013. Over the next nine years the Sequester cuts will amount to $984 Billion, evenly split between Defense and Non-Defense cuts. In the long term, the Sequester will harm the country, and certainly tap our defense readiness. In the short run, they will do little other than to provide additional political fodder for both political parties.

While the White House proposed the cuts, it was the Democrats in the Senate, and the Republican led House who agreed to pass the legislation. That said, lets not forget that the entire idea came from the White House, and it was the President who signed the legislation.

The idea was simple and was supposed to be so difficult to swallow, that both parties would reach a compromise. Only in DC would one hold a figurative gun to one’s head as a means of governing. While in retrospect it was a terrible idea, it is also difficult to imagine that the average taxpayer will actually feel its impact.

Secretary LaHood talks about closing the FAA controlled tower at the bustling Boca Raton airport. That will definitely affect the average American, and the TSA will be forced to have less people milling about than they usually have at the security checkpoints. Each cabinet agency, including DOT and DHS will see cuts, but the true effect remains to be seen. By the way, the Highway Trust Fund for Transportation is exempted from cuts, as are many other programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, VA and Food Stamps to name a few.

As a former federal agency head, it is difficult to imagine how even a 10% cut would be difficult to absorb. Yes, there is that much fat and inefficiency in the federal government. Moreover, all executive branch agencies can use a budgetary mechanism to ask congress to re-allocate money between the programs. An effective agency head will indeed use the “budget re-programming” request mechanism to adjust budgets to keep their agencies running.

The 2013 cuts also almost fall halfway through the fiscal year which began back on October 1, and the cuts fall on the smallest pieces of the budget on what is known as the program-project-activity (PPA) level. That means that the DoD will only see cuts to seven months worth of “unobligated” balances. This all translates into much lower cuts than they could have been and budget officers and comptrollers have already spent months obligating as much money ahead of time in order to minimize the FY-2013 cuts to their remaining budgets that couldn’t be obligated ahead of March 1.

Absent major reform, the bloated federal budget and the deficit will continue to grow in the coming years. According to the CBO, by 2027 the deficit would actually reach 100% of GDP, and that’s a rate that is clearly unacceptable.

The fact is that the government cannot keep spending money like a drunken sailor, and while there will be a few hiccups along the way, such a small cut will not cause the sky to fall, despite what the politicians are currently spinning.

Our country’s air travel system is at the forefront of the potential budget sequester. Since Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stated that if the FAA has to implement $600 million in budget cuts, the cuts it chooses to make will impact air travel by “lengthy delays and cancellations.” U.S. airlines safely and efficiently transport 2 million people and nearly 50,000 tons of cargo every day. It is these very passengers and shippers who provide a full two-thirds -- more than $12 billion -- of the FAA’s budget through the taxes and fees they pay.

And yet, the FAA is proposing to bite--or more correctly, delay and inconvenience--the hand that feeds it. In fact, passengers and shippers have continued to pay more into government coffers, even as air travel has declined. From Fiscal Year 2001 to Fiscal Year 2012, commercial aviation operations fell 15 percent but FAA revenue from commercial aviation rose a whopping 37 percent.
Air travel is too important a driver to our economy and jobs to be treated like a political football. We urge Congress and the Administration to work together to avert the sequester to ensure that the millions of businesses, passengers and shippers who rely on air travel are not negatively impacted. Every American, whether they travel regularly or not, is impacted by the level of efficiency in our national airspace system. Millions of tons of goods are moved by air every day and night, economic activity that supports millions of jobs across the country. The FAA warning of increased delays is particularly troubling considering that, by their own estimate, delays today cost our economy $31 billion annually in actual costs and lost productivity.

In the event the sequester cannot be averted, we urge the FAA to choose non personnel cuts in its $9.6 billion operating budget to meet the requirements of the sequester, without furloughing federal air traffic controllers. It is important to note that the airlines are not taking sides in what has become a political battle. A4A is on the side of businesses, passengers and shippers—those who pay for the FAA’s budget—and we think Congress and the Administration should be as well.

Thank you Robert Crandall for pointing out that many aviation activities — Air Traffic Control, for example — can be funded by user fees without the need for government funding. In Canada, Air Traffic Control is one of the services provided by NAV CANADA, a non-government corporation that owns and operates Canada’s civil air navigation services. Why not in the US?

Is not transportation, like food, water, and other essentials, too important to be left to the vicissitudes of politics? Should not transportation services be provided in response to consumer demand, and paid for by those who use them, like most other services in free societies?

Should not subsidies, if considered necessary, be provided locally? Why should farmers in Kansas pay to support the Washington Metro?

President Obama’s sequestration policy may, or may not be, a good idea. But it should have the positive result of encouraging those who use transportation services to seek to ensure that, in the future, they’ll be financed mainly by user fees, and thus insulated from politically determined congressional appropriations.

The public will always focus on what is visible, accessible and fixable.

To whom do you complain about traffic congestion? What can you do about failing bridges? No one knows, letters to Congress elicit only form letters, and we all know that political deals of every ilk, involving a hundred other priorities take precedence over clear but non-compelling issues like maintaining our infrastructure.

But long waits at airport security, delayed and cancelled flights and a TSA that seems utterly unresponsive to either opinion or science are problems attributable to known players. In addition to writing our Representative and Senators, we can complain directly to the airport manager, we can grouse at the ticket agents, we can write or call our airline's CEO. Missing a meeting when the weather is perfect at both origin and destination, sitting on the tarmac for two hours when the sun is shining, vectoring for an hour and a half in clear weather -- these are soluble problems that impact travelers and commerce in meaningful ways. So we scream louder than we do about many other, more amorphous failings of government.

And we are right to do so, because unless we scream loudly, and insist on substantive change, things will only get worse. As the years pass and spending in the government's so called discretionary accounts wither away under the pressure of ideological resistance to new taxes and the continued growth of entitlements, general fund support for aviation activities will be under continuous pressure. To preserve the integrity and reliability of the system, we simply must get the Congress to put aside its ideological and parochial biases and realize that it's time to fix the way we finance and operate our primary intercity transportation system.

What should we do?

First, we need to separate politics and business. In almost every other advanced country, the air traffic control system is funded by user fees and operated by self-supporting entities known as air navigation service providers - ANSP's for short. These organizations - operating on behalf of all users including airlines, general aviation, airports, labor and consumers - are far better able to make sound business decisions than political organizations. In the United States, by contrast, we fund air traffic control operations partially with general fund appropriations and partially with excise taxes which apply to fares but not to the various fees now being collected by the airlines. The result is excessive political interference and inadequate revenue.

Creating an effective ANSP should also accelerate development and deployment of the new air traffic control system, or NextGen, that has been under development for two decades or more and which is lagging far behind schedule. The new system will reduce congestion in the air and on the ground, reduce delays and cancellations, save lots of fuel, increase safety and cut costs by allowing the airlines to more effectively use both aircraft and manpower. NextGen is a great example of focused investing that will reap big dividends - and we ought to get it done!

Second, we need to recognize that maintaining and increasing airport capacity isn't going to make the cut as the pressure on existing government revenue streams increases. The best solution is to allow the 65-70 airports categorized as medium to large facilities to finance their own projects using Passenger Facility Charges or PFC's. Allowing airports to set their own PFC rates, in conjunction with and after negotiation with their airline customers, would reduce government spending by about $1.2 Billion a year. While the airline industry has historically resisted this funding method, it seems likely to me that moving in this direction is a better alternative than either allowing our airports to deteriorate or driving airports to set higher landing fees and space rental charges for the airlines themselves.

None of this would impact safety, which would continue to be funded by the general fund and managed by the FAA.

Finally, it's time for the public to insist on reining in the TSA. The Agency spends more than $7 Billion annually, including large amounts on things like Federal Air Marshalls, Behavior Detection Officers and a Canine Program, all of which have been proven both ineffective and grossly uneconomic. Moreover, the TSA actively obstructs efforts by various airports to use private sector service providers rather than federal employees, is expanding the pre-check program to facilitate trusted traveler clearances at a very slow place and is moving it’s discredited backscatter x ray units into smaller airports as it removes them from large airports.

None of this is acceptable. The TSA spends too much and is far too unresponsive to the public's need to move easily and quickly through our airports. It can do much better, and it should be required to do so.

Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is right to bring up the effect that a sequester would have on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and air traffic safety in this country. But the untold story is more serious because cuts to transit, bus and train service will first impact low income people on their way to work.

Indeed, low-income people will be hurt by cuts to human services programs like Medicaid, but cuts to Amtrak, the New Starts program, which funds public transit projects and TIGER --the groundbreaking program that funds important sustainable transportation initiative --will hurt working people, forcing many to skip work, pay for taxis out of limited budgets or lose their jobs altogether because of absenteeism or tardiness.

In addition, nearly $1 billion of the $8 billion added to the highway trust fund in 2013 will be cut – impacting job-creating highway programs. When we look ahead to 2014, these bone-chilling cuts will be extended to all transit programs as well as highway programs.

These cuts promise to be draconian in nature and will hurt working families and the middle class first.

Last Friday’s announcement from the FAA unfortunately confirms the concerns we have been warning about for months – sequestration will significantly and perhaps permanently undermine the capacity of the National Airspace System. The fact that they will not just be furloughing critical FAA personnel but closing air traffic control towers means the system will be even more compromised than anticipated. We share the FAA’s commitment to preserving the safety of the system despite these draconian cuts. Safety is always the top priority of air traffic controllers, but the reality is this - safety will be preserved at the expense of operations across the country. Once towers are closed, the airports they serve may be next. Additionally, we believe the delay estimates provided by the FAA are conservative and the potential for disruptions could be much higher.

Every one of these actions by the FAA will have an impact far beyond inconveniencing travelers. Local economies will be diminished, military exercises will be cancelled and jobs will be lost. There’s no telling how long these effects will be felt because many of these service reductions may not be reversed. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association continues to urge the nation’s policy-makers to find a solution that prevents or mitigates the impact of sequestration in a way that does not diminish the world’s safest and most efficient national airspace system.