No user fees, Appropriations committees advise President Bush
The bipartisan leadership of the Senate and House Appropriations committees has asked President Bush not to send them any user fee proposals when he submits his next budget to Congress.
The joint letter says that such a proposal is outside of their jurisdiction, would have "little or no chance of being enacted into law," and would be a "major impediment to Congress completing its appropriations (spending approvals) work on time."
"While there is currently little overt support for general aviation user fees in Congress, we can't relax," said Andy Cebula, AOPA executive vice president of government affairs.
"We understand that the airlines have a lobbying war chest of millions of dollars, and they view this as the BIG fight when the new Congress takes over. There will be a lot of arm-twisting and a lot of favors called in before Congress writes the new FAA reauthorization bill next year."
That bill will determine if the current tax system in continued, changed, or scrapped for a user fee system to fund the FAA.
November 22, 2006
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