Privatization Is the Best Response to the FAA’s Deliberate Attempt to Inconvenience Air Passengers

In an interview with Neil Cavuto earlier this month, I mocked proponents of big government for their hysterical predictions of bad things happening under sequestration. And cartoonists had a field day making the same point (see here and here).

The White House obviously wasn’t happy about the sequester, in part because they like bigger government and also because sequestration was a big defeat for the President.

Well, now the Obama Administration sees a chance for revenge and redemption. The President’s appointees, by choosing to furlough air traffic controllers, are seeking to turn air travel into something akin to a visit to the Post Office or DMV. It’s clear that the White House hopes to recreate momentum for a tax hike as an alternative to sequestration.

But they’re not exactly being subtle.

The Wall Street Journal exposes the White House’s political motivated chicanery, starting with the very important point that the FAA’s budget – even after sequestration – is as large as it was in 2010. Yet the White House is manipulating the sequester to cause the maximum amount of inconvenience for taxpayers.

The sequester cuts about $637 million from the FAA, which is less than 4% of its $15.9 billion 2012 budget, and it limits the agency to what it spent in 2010. The White House decided to translate this 4% cut that it has the legal discretion to avoid into a 10% cut for air traffic controllers. Though controllers will be furloughed for one of every 10 working days, four of every 10 flights won’t arrive on time.

The Obama Administration is pretending that it’s merely following the law, but the WSJ editorial debunks that notion.

This is a political pose to make the sequester more disruptive. Legally speaking, the sequester applies at a more general level known as “accounts.” The air traffic account includes 15,000 controllers out of 31,000 employees. The White House could keep the controllers on duty simply by allocating more furlough days to these other non-essential workers. Instead, the FAA is even imposing the controller furlough on every airport equally, not prioritizing among the largest and busiest airports. …ever since Al Gore launched a training initiative to increase the productivity of air traffic controllers in 1998, productivity has continued to fall. A larger workforce is now in charge of a smaller workload as the number of flights has dropped by 23%.

I didn’t realize that controllers were doing less work over time, but I’m not surprised to learn that superfluous bureaucrats at the FAA are being protected.

But the WSJ doesn’t go far enough. My Cato colleague Chris Edwards has a column in the Daily Caller that outlines the inefficiency of the FAA.

The federal budget sequester is interfering with the air traffic control (ATC) system and snarling up air traffic. As usual, politicians are pointing fingers of blame at everybody but themselves. But politicians are the ones who have strapped the ATC system to the chaotic federal budget. And they’re the ones who have insisted on running ATC as a bureaucracy, rather than freeing it to become the high-tech private business that it should be. …Last year Bloomberg reported: “More than one-third of the 30 contracts critical to building a new U.S. air-traffic system are over budget and half are delayed, a government audit concluded.

Chris then takes the logical next step and says the system should be privatized. Which is exactly what happened in his home country of Canada.

To run smoothly and efficiently, our ATC system should be given independence from the government. We should privatize the system, as Canada has done very successfully. …Canada provides an excellent model for U.S. reforms. Canada’s ATC system is run by the nonprofit corporation Nav Canada, which is separate from the government. Like any private business, it raises revenues from its customers to cover its operational costs and capital investments. The company’s financial statements for 2012 show revenues and expenses of $1.2 billion, with $125 million allocated to capital expenditures. Unlike the U.S. system, Nav Canada is self-supporting and not subsidized.

I’ve already written on this topic, citing some good analysis from Canada’s Financial Post, and the evidence is overwhelming that the private system in Canada works much better than the inefficient bureaucracy we have in the United States.

Let’s close with a Michael Ramirez cartoon. The “politics” and “waste” markings are very appropriate.

Lost in this controversy, by the way, is any recognition that sequestration barely makes a dent in the federal budget. There are some small first-year cuts in a few programs, but the wasteful behemoth known as the federal government is barely nicked.

To be more specific, the net effect of the sequester is that the burden of government spending grows by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years rather than $2.5 trillion.

So don’t pay any attention to the hyperbole and hysteria from the special interest groups in Washington. The sequester is a tiny – and desirable – step in the direction of fiscal responsibility.

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Immigration, Terrorism, and Welfare Tourism

So we’ve now learned that the Boston Marathon terrorists were welfare bums. Why am I not surprised?

“Thanks for the handouts, suckers!”

Heck, it was only a couple of days ago that I announced the Moocher Hall of Fame and included terrorists from the United Kingdom and Australia (and I could have included a taxpayer-subsidized terrorist from France as well).

I’m tempted to joke about al Qaeda including welfare applications in their training manuals, but I’m worried that might give them new ideas.

Anyhow, here are some of the predictable details from a story in the Boston Herald.

Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned. State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012… In addition, both of Tsarnaev’s parents received benefits, and accused brother bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were recipients through their parents when they were younger, according to the state.

All this raises a broader point about why the United States has a policy of letting people in the country who are not self supporting?

This is the point I made in my Fox Business News debate about immigration. Like most other libertarians, I’m very sympathetic to immigration, but I want people with initiative and ambition, not welfare tourists.

Speaking of welfare tourism, even Europeans realize it’s a problem when people come for handouts rather than opportunity. Here’s a blurb from a Daily Telegraph report.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has convinced her counterparts in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands to campaign for tighter restrictions to migrants’ access to welfare handouts and other state-funded services. In a joint letter, the countries have warned that migrants from EU members states are putting “considerable strain” on schools, healthcare and the welfare state…David Cameron has said he wants to restrict migrants’ access to housing benefit, legal aid and the NHS. The letter sent by the four countries warns that the EU free movement directive must not be “unconditional” and that major towns and cities “are under a considerable strain by certain immigrants from other member states”.

Of course, it’s hard to have much sympathy for the politicians in the UK, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. After all, they certainly have the power to reduce their overly generous welfare systems.

But instead of taking that sensible step, they want to restrict immigration.

Which brings us back to Milton Friedman’s warning about the incompatibility of opens borders and the welfare state.

But the real reason to pare back the welfare state is that dependency is bad for poor people, regardless of whether they’re native born or immigrants. Even some honest liberals have acknowledged this problem.

If we want to help the less fortunate, economic growth is the best approach. That means free markets and small government.

And the combination of more growth and less welfare will ease concerns about immigration, so it’s a win-win-win situation. What’s not to love?

P.S. Better economic policy is desirable for many reasons, but I’m not under any illusion it will stop terrorism. As I wrote recently, there’s no way to create a risk-free society, particularly when there are people motivated by anti-modernity.

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