Of Debt Ceiling Debates, Non-Denial Denials and Non-Default Defaults

Perhaps I am sounding more doom and gloom than I am about the future of the United States. While I truly believe that we will emerge from what has been, in my view, a period of tornadic uncertainty and trauma, I also believe that the underlying truth of our recent days is simple, and very disheartening. It’s not a secret that Washington has been inefficient, overspending and regulating misguidedly for years now. The difference is that before the new realities of the 21st-century we could better afford our largesse. But somehow America is poorer now than it was before, and just like every household in this great country, we need to tighten our belts, without throwing the dinner plates at our spouses or kids.

And just in case the debt ceiling antics weren’t absurd enough, here’s a final tidbit of what Congress did—or didn’t do—before it recessed for the month of August. For what would have been the 20th time since 2007, the FAA needed a temporary funding extension (naturally, why it needed 20 separate funding commitments in four years is another very long and very silly story). Heretofore, FAA funding extensions, like debt ceiling increases, had been strictly perfunctory. This time was different. It didn’t get it, the story goes, because the slash and burn boys found $14 million in local aviation subsidies they didn’t like (others point to an anti-union provision that was slipped into the bill by the right). This means that for the duration of the congressional recess—about five or six weeks—airport construction projects will be halted, 4,000 FAA workers will not get paid, while (get this) approximately $1.2 billion in airline and airport fees and taxes will not be collected. Well, maybe security and continued functionality of air travel in America isn’t so important. But while the FAA hangs in limbo, the government has announced, thank goodness, that the investigation of DB Cooper—the infamous hijacker who collected $200,000 in ransom and then parachuted into the Pacific Northwest woods in 1971—is ongoing, even though the principal suspect in the case has been dead for at least 10 years.

In other words, our government can find the money to go after dead hijackers, but can’t find money to pay the people that keep us safe in the air—who pay for themselves anyway.

To paraphrase a famous columnist, “Only in America, kids.”

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