Lawmakers Move To Avert Another Shutdown

The U.S. FAA is poised to continue at flat funding levels through March 23 under another stopgap funding measure making its way through the House and the Senate today. Lawmakers reached a two-year agreement on budget cap levels yesterday, clearing the way for a vote on the latest continuing resolution as government funding was set to expire at the end of today. The agreement is designed to avert a repeat of last month’s government shutdown, which affected nearly 18,000 FAA employees and temporarily disrupted key activities, such as aircraft registration and aviation rulemaking.

The shutdown placed a spotlight on the fact that the U.S. aircraft registry remains vulnerable to a government shutdown, despite bills introduced in the House and Senate intended to shield it from such an event. Those protections are included in the FAA reauthorization package that has yet to make its way through Congress.

While the government’s Fiscal Year 2018 is nearly halfway over, lawmakers expect to hash out final funding levels for agencies for the year before March 23.

Under Fiscal Year 2018 funding bills already introduced in the House and Senate, the FAA was to receive a slight bump in its budget over Fiscal Year 2017. Those appropriations bills also included a number of other provisions of interest to the business aviation community such as a directive to improve use of organizational delegation authority, improved studies on Part 135 activity, and continued privacy protections for real-time flight tracking activity. The Senate version of the full-year bill also includes an outright ban on a transition of FAA air traffic control functions to an independent entity. That measure emphasized the clear opposition of Senate appropriators to the ATC proposal.