The Democrats’ argument is that the slightest cut to the federal government’s spending will be unbearably painful to the general public, what with the stingy $3.7 trillion of funding being so effectively and essentially apportioned, and when they blundered into “sequester” cuts of $44 billion from planning spending increases they seized the opportunity to prove their point. They couldn’t affect the promised end of the civilized world, but they made sure that minor inconveniences ranging from cancelled White House tours to campground closings were imposed and prominently blamed on those awful budget cuts.
Inflicting some of the pain on America’s air travelers has apparently proved politically counter-productive, however, as the Democrat-controlled Senate voted on Thursday to allow the Federal Aviation Administration to keep air traffic controllers on the job. A previous policy calculated to cause flight delays at several of the country’s busiest airports was unpopular, as per plan, but the weary travelers waiting around the airport lounges weren’t blaming the right people.
Despite the best efforts of much of the media, it was hard to hold the Republicans responsible. The idea of the sequester originated with the White House, could have been avoided by a White House concession on further tax increases, and could have been more painlessly administered by the White House under legislation offered by the congressional Republicans. Nor did the relatively slight cuts in the rate of increase in spending have to be noticeable at all. The FAA’s post-sequester budget of $15.999 billion is more than it requested, for example, and should be more than sufficient to carry out its duties. When the Republicans offered a specific remedy to the FAA’s feeble claims that it had no choice but to furlough air traffic controllers without regard to the traffic at the airports where they worked, the Democrats faced a public relations debacle if they resisted.
Not that the Democrats liked doing it, of course, and they seemed especially galled that the air travelers were spared the pain of budget cuts while other programs to suffer the cruel cuts of sequestration. Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington complained to C-SPAN that “no 3- or 4-year-old is going to call my office and say, ‘I’ve been kicked out of Head Start, replace that money,’” and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island groused to Politico that “I doubt the most disadvantaged citizens are flying on commercial aircraft.” Larsen hasn’t considered the possibility that even 3- and 4-year-olds are shrewd enough to question the value of Head Start and wonder if there aren’t some administrative costs that can be trimmed in its mammoth budget, and Whitehouse apparently doesn’t fly coach, where the guy in the next seat might well be wearing a barrel these days, but no matter. Even if Head Start weren’t a boondoggle, and even if the “Jet Set” were still a meaningful term, it would still be a peculiar notion of fairness that everyone has to be miserable even when it can be easily avoided.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 