This isn't sufficient of course but when the FAA repeatedly demonstrates incompetence, when do we eventually just tell them no, you can't have any more of my money, you're obviously wasting it and making us worse off?
The previous president significantly cut the FAA's budget, maybe we're just seeing now how that affects us in the long term
Presidents don't pass budgets.
FAA funding has increased, not decreased.
I can criticize my government all I want. You're turning this into a political party thing when it's a government service failure.
Relevant quote:
"President Trump’s support for a plan to lop more than 30,000 Federal Aviation Administration workers from the federal payroll gives fresh momentum to an effort that stalled in Congress last year.
The proposal is included in Trump’s 2018 budget, which would cut funding for the Transportation Department by 13 percent."
The FAA's budget was not "significantly decreased" as the comment above claimed.
No, they propose, sign, use the veto threat to shape the legislative process on, and use various administrative powers and means to rearrange the actual spending resulting from them, but “passing” budgets is the name for a step in the middle of the process done by someone else.
Not sure what your point is; the President is by a very wide margin the single most powerful actor in the shaping of both nominal budgets and actual federal spending.
Seems to run in the family. The voters in Wyoming appear to agree.
Liz Cheney is completely irrelevant here.
Post FAA's ACTUAL BUDGET over the last 8 years and let us judge.
I'm just contesting the idea that the President has no power over the US Federal budget.
(I'm of the general opinion that the FAA is fairly well funded, has been very effective at its mission, and could still do with some specific capital projects to modernize non-sexy stuff like NOTAM and METAR handling.)
Yes there is.
> The president recommends and Congress passes budgets for internal purposes
This is simply false.
> but they do not carry the force of law.
Yes, budget bills, like other bills, have the force of law once passed and either signed by the President or vetoed and the President’s veto overridden by both Houses (the President’s budget proposals do not have the force of law, just like other unpassed legislative proposals.)
> The numbers that matter are how much Congress appropriates
“The budget” is just the aggregate of tax and appropriations bills (sometimes, there is an annual package entitled a “comprehensive” or “omnibus” budget bill that covers some tax policy and most or all of the annual appropriations, but that’s rare, and even in that case there are typically continuous and multiyear appropriations and tax policies that are left untouched and outside of it, but which are considered part of the “budget” even though they are aren’t part of the “budget bill”; more commonly, this doesn’t occur.)
> if Congress appropriates $X dollars for something the executive branch is expected to spend it, not second guess Congress and say we really didn’t want to spend that money.
While this is true, and more than just a soft expectation, since Train v. City of New York and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, it is not invariably the practice notwithstanding the expectation and the law (cf., the withholding of funds appropriated for Ukraine aid that was central to Trump’s first impeachment.)
First of all congress generally does not pass budget bills, they pass budget resolutions, and congressional resolutions are not submitted to the president for his signature and do not have the force of law.
As far as budget bills (like the Budget Act of 1974) are concerned, it is impossible for a previous congress to pass laws that govern the actions of succeeding congresses in a binding fashion because such laws have the character of congressional rules not statutes, and under the Constitution each house has complete authority over its own rules. So Congress can simply neglect to pass a budget resolution and the only remedy is for individual representatives to raise points of order. The executive branch cannot indict or prosecute anyone in Congress for neglecting to follow congressional rules or laws that have the character of congressional rules.
On the other hand, if you wish to refer to an appropriations bill as a "budget bill" you are merely disagreeing with me (and with congressional practice) over nomenclature. Personally, I have never heard of an appropriations bill referred to as a "budget bill", but I am sure someone does it.
The budget resolution is a planning framework for the appropriations bills that make up the budget. It is not a “budget”.
> and congressional resolutions are not submitted to the president for his signature, and congressional resolutions are not submitted to the president for his signature and do not have the force of law.
That's not true. All Congressional actions are resolutions (e.g. the USA PATRIOT Act was "House Resolution 3162" of the 107th Congress), and many end submitted to the President and with the force of law. Some are even primarily characterized as "resolutions" after they are signed and have the force of law (See, in terms of the budget space, the use of "continuing resolutions".)
There are types of resolutions that are nonbinding, and do not have the force of law, and the "budget resolution" (which, again, is not the same as the budget) is one of them, but this isn't generally true of "congressional resolutions".
> As far as budget bills (like the Budget Act of 1974) are concerned, it is impossible for a previous congress to pass laws that govern the actions of succeeding congresses in a binding fashion
The 1974 Budget Act is not (relevant to this discussion) a budget bill, it is a meta-budget bill, or maybe even a meta-meta-budget bill (that is, a bill on the process by which Congress will plan future budgets.) You are correct that it is not binding on future Congresses, but this has no bearing on the budget not being binding, merely a past Congress's plan on how to plan annually to arrive at a budget is not binding.
> So Congress can simply neglect to pass a budget resolution
…which isn’t a budget, but a plan for one…
> and the only remedy is for individual representatives to raise points of order.
Well, sure, but the budget resolution isn’t the budget. If Congress doesn’t pass a budget (or only passes part of one), then the remedy is “spending governed by the parts not passed stops” (that is, a government shutdown.) This is…rather noticeable.
> On the other hand, if you wish to refer to an appropriations bill as a “budget bill” you are merely disagreeing with me (and with congressional practice) over nomenclature. Personally, I have never heard of an appropriations bill referred to as a “budget bill”, but I am sure someone does it.
While it is common to refer to the aggregate of appropriations as a “budget”, its not usually used for individual appropriations bills as a “budget bill” unless they are a single consolidated bill, which is typically referred to as a “budget bill”. Budget bills are frequently introduced, but less frequently passed. But not having a single budget bill passed is not “not having a budget” or “not having a budget with the force of law”, its “not having a budget in which the annual appropriations were adopted in a single bill”. Which is…less significant.
Guess what the President's budget proposal says on the cover?
"Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2023"
And if we look inside do we find a list of congressional appropriations? No. Instead we find a list of appropriations requests and explanatory information for congressional appropriators. Typical chapter headings have language like this:
"The Budget requests $773 billion in discretionary funding for DOD, a $69 billion or 9.8-percent increase from the 2021 enacted level."
So I am sorry, I cannot take seriously the idea that appropriations bills are "budget bills" or specify a federal "budget" except in an informal sense, one contrary to that used by the federal government itself.
> All Congressional actions are resolutions.
I certainly agree in the technical sense, and since we are debating nomenclature here I should be more careful.
As far as Cheney is concerned, Trump had been out of office for months by the time she lost her leadership position. Anything he did was from the sidelines by that point.
A budget is a budget even if it is neither comprehensive (i.e., all functions in one bill) nor for a full fiscal year at a time nor uses the word “budget” in its title.
So a federal agency like the FAA generally prepares a budget recommendation that would be submitted to Congress as part of the president's budget, but then Congress would decide how much (if any) to appropriate for each activity, down to the level of individual programs in many cases. By the time Congress gets done with it becomes a list of appropriations, and the agency has no authority to transfer things around, spend money on what Congress did not authorize, or even purposely refuse to spend money (or spend less without a good reason) on what Congress has appropriated funding for.
Oh it's Trump fault Liz did what she did? Nope. Liz thought she'd make a name for herself, she did, and is reaping the results of her actions.
There's a neat trick people do nowadays where people claim anything that's unsuccessful (usually government related) was either "sabotaged" or "set up to fail" as a way of absolving them of any failures. Literally impossible to criticize.
Finally, the FAA's budget was $23 billion this year and $28 billion last year due to pandemic / infra surpluses, nearly double what it was the last 4 years, where it remained flat (not cut as you say). So it's funny how 2 years of double funding can't get it back on track, but flat funding has caused it to fall apart in the same time period.
Especially when evaluating the FAA would need to include the absolutely stellar commercial aviation safety record they and the NTSB have created over the last few decades.
Does your tax burden stay the same, and they just make sure your dollars only go to the programs you support? Do they give you a list of every active program? Every single one? What happens with 800 page appropriations bills where you don't support one line-item? Can I opt not to fund the salaries of specific members of Congress? If my neighbor is a veteran, and they annoy me, can I disagree with their VA benefits?
Wow, it could be. Can you share the FAA's budget this year compared to 2019 so we can see how it's been constrained?
Have you looked at the numbers?
Have you?
https://theblogbyjavier.com/2020/01/02/aviation-safety-evolu...
See the chart labeled "Evolution of accidents per million flights". Millions more flights, and a steady march towards zero deaths. We haven't had a commercial airliner crash in the US for over a decade.
The FAA's numbers look great.
If you did you’d be a consumer, not a taxpayer.
Imagine what NASA would do in ten years with Pentagon's budget swapped.
NASA's budget is now $0 though, since the military budget all went to Medicare with nothing left to spare for anything else. Along with the FAA and every other government department.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)
>In 2020, US federal government spending on Medicare was $776.2 billion.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_De...
>Annual budget US$721.5 billion (FY2020)[2]
Hopefully, I won't need a citation that $776 > $721
Anyone think the NSA budget for "defense" is included in Pentagon, DoD, Homeland Security?
Anyone think the trillion dollars in weapons being sent to Ukraine for our proxy war with Russia is in any visible budget?
Medicare meanwhile cannot hide all the spending, it's right there, even the fraud in the system is visible in the spending. But defense spending hides twice maybe even three times the spending.
> NASA's budget is now $0 though, since the military budget all went to Medicare with nothing left to spare for anything else. Along with the FAA and every other government department.
Meanwhile other first world nations pay about half that and get mostly better results...