This afternoon, proponents of a proposal claiming to privatize air traffic control (ATC) are joining with labor activists to continue pushing what amounts to a labor union giveaway. \u00a0Alongside a number of conservative groups, CFIF remains concerned about the proposal, which upon closer scrutiny doesn’t constitute true privatization at all, because it would maintain monopoly power over ATC without sufficient accountability to taxpayers, as well as expanded gold-plated compensation and benefit guarantees to the National Air Traffic Controller\u2019s union.<\/p>\n
Instead of real privatization through open competition, pricing transparency and increased efficiency, the union-supported proposal would create a federally-chartered nonprofit corporation similar to current inefficient and bloated public\/private entities like Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service, which have long required massive subsidies and bailouts from taxpayers while struggling to manage legacy union contracts. \u00a0Under the proposal, air traffic controllers would receive additional taxpayer- and passenger-funded guarantees with diminished legal consequences for labor pressure tactics. \u00a0It\u2019s therefore little wonder that the union\u2019s bosses push the proposal so aggressively.<\/p>\n
If that wasn\u2019t bad enough, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined last year that creation of a nonprofit ATC corporation would widen the federal budget deficit by $20 billion between 2017 and 2026.<\/p>\n
This type of proposal could lead to a vicious cycle of increased user fees, more aggressive union contract demands and potential taxpayer bailouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This afternoon, proponents of a proposal claiming to privatize air traffic control (ATC) are joining with labor activists to continue pushing what amounts to a labor union giveaway. \u00a0Alongside a number of conservative groups, CFIF remains concerned about the proposal, which upon closer scrutiny doesn’t constitute true privatization at all, because it would maintain monopoly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4939,4951,3657],"class_list":["post-24293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-air-traffic-control","tag-atc","tag-faa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24293"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24297,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24293\/revisions\/24297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}