No more politics with our planes!

You’ve heard about or perhaps even experienced long delays at airports over the last few days. President Obama and his appointees at the Department of Transportation were blaming the delays on those dastardly “sequester” cuts from a couple of months ago.

They argued that cutting two cents out of every dollar of government spending meant they had no choice but to blindly furlough crucial air traffic controllers, leaving millions of Americans delayed and waiting in long lines at airports.

But that just isn’t the truth, and the American people knew it. Yesterday Americans for Prosperity activists gathered at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport and D.C.’s Reagan International Airport to call out President Obama for “playing politics with our planes.”

It’s great to see how quickly your activism made a difference! Late last night and early this morning Congress authorized the Department of Transportation to prioritize spending at the FAA and eliminate controller furloughs and needless delays. They didn’t spend one extra dollar, but just got a little smarter with how they allocated the money they were given. 

Under a little scrutiny, the narrative from the White House, which claimed there was no way to avoid flight delays, collapsed like a house of cards. Just consider this the next time a friend or family member complains about the common sense sequester spending cuts: 

• The FAA received more money this year than President Obama requested in his budget.

• The FAA bureaucracy now spends $500 million on middle men consultants. Instead of cutting non-essential consultants, President Obama chose to furlough air traffic controllers.
• A recent study by Bloomberg found that the FAA was actually overstaffed at many airports, and could easily handle the effects of the sequester without causing flight delays. 

Like a child throwing a temper tantrum, the President has used every tactic at his disposal to make the common sense sequester cuts hurt and inconvenience Americans; from canceling White House Tours to massive delays at airports. 
He’s trying to self-fulfill his own dire warnings of doom and gloom, rather than show leadership by managing the budget properly and shifting the sequester cuts to eliminate wasteful or non-essential spending. All of this was designed to force Republicans to end the sequester.
Yesterday the American people called Obama’s bluff. We know that the truth about the sequester cuts – they’re modest and absolutely necessary to rein-in government overspending and waste.

It’s important to be on the lookout for the next time President Obama tries to use federal agencies that are supposed to serve American citizens to instead punish them for demanding fiscal responsibility.

http://americansforprosperity.org/