Congress Takes August Break

Everybody deserves a vacation. I certainly would not begrudge anyone a little time off after the hectic lives everyone has been leading the last few years. One of my favorite late season haunts is the Outer Banks after the hurricane season has passed.

The catch for me is that in the weeks before I go on vacation, I normally increase my hours to the point that I have almost made up for any vacation time I was going to use up. My work includes making sure that all of my staff have sufficient work to stay productive during the period that I am off.

Recently I have heard a lot from congress about the balanced budgets and how as business owners themselves, their businesses would not survive if they were run the way the government works. Where is some of that homespun common sense when dealing with the FAA crisis?

Congress is leaving on vacation with over 4,000 FAA workers out of work and the aviation fund losing over $200 million per week in lost revenue. The August break will cost the avaition fund over a billion dollars. I understand that we can not rush complex spending bills through congress just so that it can be passed before the legislative break, but let's remember that we have had 20 practice runs extending this particular program. The clauses that caused the Senate to reject this spending bill weren't important enough to be raised in the previous 20 extensions, but suddenly became so critical on the 21st extension that the jobs relying on the passage of that bill  became expendable.

Representative Guinta is a member of the important House Transportation and Infrastructure committee. Unfortunately I am not in his district so I can not contact him directly to better understand why these jobs are being lost from our state. I ask that civil engineers within the 1st district question the Congressman so we can all better understand this failed extension and the reasons why a clean bill was not forwarded to the Senate.