White House: ATC Proposal Vote Count Looks 'Very Good'

White House officials are hopeful that the U.S. air traffic control reorganization proposal will be brought to the House floor for a vote this month, and a key official expressed optimism that the measure will pass. “The vote count in the House is looking very, very good,” D.J. Gribbin, special assistant to the President for infrastructure policy at the White House, told the Airlines for America (A4A) Commercial Aviation Summit last month.

House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee Republican leaders had initially hoped to bring the measure to the House floor in late July as part of a comprehensive six-year FAA reauthorization bill. But controversy surrounding the independent ATC measure pushed a vote beyond the August break. After an intense lobbying campaign through August, the T&I Republican leaders were encouraged once more by prospects of bringing the bill to the floor.

Gribbin, the keynote speaker at the A4A conference on September 13, added that while this idea has been around for a long time, at “no other time in history have so many things lined up in favor of this proposal,” with the backing of the administration, the Department of Defense, the chairman of the T&I committee, the airlines and the controllers' union.

But the senior Democrat on the T&I Committee, Pete DeFazio (D-Oregon), has been skeptical about a dramatic shift in opinions on the bill. “It doesn’t seem to me that things have changed much,” he had said shortly after returning from the August break. Even if the bill were to progress in the House, DeFazio expressed doubts about chances of long-term passage, given Democratic opposition and opposition in the Senate. “It’s very unlikely,” he said.

Proponents in recent months have intensified their lobbying efforts and their rhetoric against opponents. During his speech, Gribbin reiterated arguments supporting the proposal, including the need for improved procurement and a more efficient system, and said that administration officials have tried to address key business and general aviation concerns by protecting access and including exemptions for user fees. The response, Gribbin claimed, is, “We just don’t like it.”

Other supporters, including those backed by A4A, also took aim at opponents, specifically the business aviation community. Some of these claims painted the industry as against ATC modernization, and a few others resurrected the argument that business aviation does not pay its fair share into the system.

Modernization Has Industry Buy-in

NBAA is among the organizations bearing the brunt of this criticism. Pete Sepp, president of National Taxpayers Union, said, “Rather than work toward a future that benefits everyone, NBAA is clinging to the past.”

But NBAA said the claims confuse modernization with ATC privatization. NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen told AIN that reform backers have pushed the message “that somehow privatization and modernization are connected. They are not.” Bolen added that, looking back over the years, “the reality is…the general aviation community, including NBAA, has been very much at the forefront of making NextGen a reality. GA has made modernization a top priority for several years.”

He also reiterated progress being made by the FAA in NextGen technologies and said GA has taken advantage of the NextGen infrastructure. “We were early adopters of GPS,” he said, adding that as a percentage of the fleet, the community is “vastly ahead” of the airlines on equipage. The challenge facing NextGen, he added, is airline equipage, yet the airlines “continue to push this idea of taking over the ATC system.”

Efforts to pit ATC reform opponents as against modernization “distract from the real motive, which is to promote ATC privatization, a risky scheme long pushed by the big airlines,” Bolen said separately in an opinion piece.

But NBAA emphasizes that the association is only one part of the opposition to the bill. In fact, NBAA joined four other associations in emphasizing to lawmakers the scope of the opposition. The five associations wrote lawmakers, urging them to strip the ATC measure from the comprehensive FAA bill. The ATC reorganization proposal still lacks consensus, drawing substantial support not just from GA groups but also from consumer groups, conservative mayors “and countless others,” they said in the letter to both House and Senate transportation leaders. “We believe that progress on modernization should continue by implementing targeted solutions to identified challenges and strongly support striking [the ATC proposal], to allow completion of comprehensive, bipartisan, long-term FAA reauthorization.”

While both proponents and opponents continue a full-scale push on the issue, they each touted recent studies from government watchdogs as bolstering their arguments. Proponents of the ATC measure pointed to a Transportation Inspector General report calling the FAA’s NextGen benefits estimate “overly optimistic,” noting that capabilities have not yet been implemented and face challenges. The report further questioned the lack of alternative outcomes.

Opponents, meanwhile, highlighted a Government Accountability Office study that found the FAA is incrementally implementing and addressing risks associated with NextGen, and that recent cost estimates are “within range” of estimates from a decade ago.

“This GAO study is among several that break through the host of dubious allegations being made by the airlines and their supporters about the need for ATC privatization,” Bolen said. “Equally important, the GAO and other congressional watchdogs are joined in raising serious concerns about this risky idea by consumer groups, 100 U.S. mayors, 100 business leaders, think tanks on the political right and left, members of Congress from both political parties and a majority of American citizens.”

As another showdown over ATC loomed, lawmakers last month were turning their attention to another short-term extension of the FAA’s authorization, which was set to expire on September 30. At press time, the length of the extension was still up in the air, with the Senate, House Democrats and the general aviation industry all favoring a six-month extension to provide NextGen and airport funding continuity. House Republicans, however, had remained quiet over their stance on length of time. They were believed to have preferred a shorter time frame, which would keep pressure on for passage of a more comprehensive bill.