Thomas E. Petri: “In May of last year, the House passed H.R. 915, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009. Earlier this week, the Senate…”

“In May of last year, the House passed H.R. 915, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009. Earlier this week, the Senate passed its own FAA reauthorization bill, and, therefore, the two Chambers will soon begin negotiations to reconcile the bills. However, that process will take some time. Given that the current FAA extension expires at the end of this month, we need to again extend the FAA's taxes and authorities to allow time to get a final conferenced FAA bill. While the House considered and passed an FAA extension bill just last week, we are again considering an FAA extension in order to address a minor technical matter in the earlier bill that would have impacted the FAA's ability to fund airport projects during the next 3 months. Therefore, this bill, H.R. 4915, makes the technical correction and also extends the taxes, programs, and funding of the FAA to July 3 of this year.”