Jay Rockefeller: “we are entering the second workweek of a partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration. I know the Congress…”

“we are entering the second workweek of a partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration. I know the Congress, the President, and the American people have been focused on the debt and deficit crisis, but behind that, and not in the shadows to those of us who care about aviation, I want people to understand that what has been happening to the FAA is causing enormous pain throughout the country, and the pain will only grow because of an apparent shutdown of the attempts to pass the Federal aviation bill, primarily because of the House. Because Congress has failed to pass the 21st short-term extension of the FAA--do you understand what that means? It is simply saying: I would like to have a clean bill of extension. That is all. No policy, just a clean bill. Give us another several weeks to work on some of the complicated issues. So 20 times we have done that over 4 years, and there has been no objection. The 21st time, there is content--suddenly, policy is injected into the request for a clean extension, or the response to the request. In this time, nearly 4,000 hard-working Federal aviation employees have been furloughed. That means they go without pay. If things follow their current course, as I believe they will, they will go at least another month or more without pay. I do not know how many of them continue to stay in their jobs. It has halted critical airport safety capacity and air traffic control projects.…”