{"id":24556,"date":"2017-09-22T13:55:41","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T17:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=24556"},"modified":"2017-09-22T13:58:27","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T17:58:27","slug":"air-traffic-control-proposal-making-airlines-tax-collectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/24556\/air-traffic-control-proposal-making-airlines-tax-collectors\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Traffic Control Proposal:  Making Airlines Tax Collectors?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Beware policy proposals waving the &#8220;privatization&#8221; banner that don&#8217;t constitute true privatization at all, and threaten to actually worsen the situation.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">The latest example:\u00a0 Efforts to restructure the U.S. air traffic control system, which would likely repeat the mistakes of such federal boondoggles as Amtrak and the U.S. Post Office. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">Alongside numerous other conservative and libertarian <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 13px;\" href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/images\/pdfs\/Coalition-Letter-FAA-ATC-08-05-2016.pdf\">organizations<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">, CFIF has maintained serious concerns over <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 13px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/115th-congress\/house-bill\/2997\">H.R. 2997<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">, the &#8220;21st Century AIRR Act.&#8221; \u00a0Those concerns include, among other flaws: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Greater empowerment of air traffic controller unions, by maintaining centralized monopoly power over air traffic control while expanding their authority over such matters as personnel changes, salary caps and mandatory retirement age (currently at age 56, compared to 65 for pilots), which explains why the unions favor the proposal;<\/li>\n<li>It would <a style=\"font-size: 13px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/publication\/51362\">increase the U.S. budget deficit<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\"> by $20 billion between 2017 and 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) itself;<\/span><\/li>\n<li>The U.S. Department of Defense recently weighed in to say, &#8220;The establishment of a new entity separate from the FAA raises serious concerns regarding the disposition of certain unique National Defense procedures, programs and policy,&#8221; adding that, &#8220;it is significant to note that the DoD relies on FAA &#8216;command and control&#8217; capabilities in the execution of the national defense mission&#8221;;<\/li>\n<li>The proposed replacement air traffic control entity would possess authority to impose new taxes and user fees without Congressional oversight, meaning higher costs for American consumers, which is far from the sort of market competition that true &#8220;privatization&#8221; would offer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">On that latter point, Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty raises an ominous concern in his recent <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 13px;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2017\/sep\/13\/congress-shouldnt-deputize-airlines-as-tax-collect\/\">commentary<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\"> in <\/span><em>The Washington Times<\/em><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">: <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">[W]e&#8217;ve been told that the new entity will be self-funded, in this case by a user fee.\u00a0 As always, I&#8217;m skeptical taxpayers won&#8217;t ultimately have to bail out a GSE, but with the ATC proposal, it&#8217;s really about control. \u00a0Proponents have made clear that their real motivation is to shift the tax burden to other segments of the industry.\u00a0 Ian Adams, a proponent of separating ATC, recently argued that it would reallocate the tax burden among the &#8216;fees its users pay,&#8217; including general aviation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\"> <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">The only privatization will be that the authorization and taxing authority of Congress will be supplanted by authority of one segment of an industry to tax another with no oversight.\u00a0 If the airlines were granted more monopoly power and gained taxing authority from Congress, they have shown time and again that they would abuse that power.\u00a0 They have increased their fees on passengers by over $7 billion.\u00a0 Now they want to phase out their fuel and excise tax for a flat user-fee tax that would get levied disproportionately at economy class passengers.\u00a0 I&#8217;m always in favor of getting rid of taxes, but this is a tax by another name, without the political accountability to keep it from rising in perpetuity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">And, since there would be no accountability from anyone to stop it or make sure this entity is being managed properly, it&#8217;s a safe bet that ultimately all taxpayers will pay more in the form of a bailout.&#8221; <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">That is among the reasons the American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF) last week announced its <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 13px;\" href=\"http:\/\/conservative.org\/acu-opposes-h-r-2997-21st-century-airr-act\/\">opposition<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\"> to the proposed restructuring, saying that it, &#8220;would gladly stand in support of true policy efforts to privatize our air traffic control system that better reflect the ideals of privatization &#8211; those that align with a more robust free market and exhibit a true transfer of power from public to private hands.&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">Well said.\u00a0 At this point, the proposal simply doesn&#8217;t amount to the type of true privatization that merits support from conservatives and libertarians across America. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beware policy proposals waving the &#8220;privatization&#8221; banner that don&#8217;t constitute true privatization at all, and threaten to actually worsen the situation. The latest example:\u00a0 Efforts to restructure the U.S. air traffic control system, which would likely repeat the mistakes of such federal boondoggles as Amtrak and the U.S. Post Office. Alongside numerous other conservative and [&hellip;]<\/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":[4986,4939,4987,3657,4985],"class_list":["post-24556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-21st-century-airr-act","tag-air-traffic-control","tag-aviation","tag-faa","tag-hr-2997"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24556","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=24556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24558,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24556\/revisions\/24558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}