The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SPECIAL ORDERS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H807-H810 on March 10, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SPECIAL ORDERS
______
AGENCY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NATION'S AIRSPACE SAFETY HAS NO DIRECTION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Wolf] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I am deeply concerned about the state of affairs at the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA].
Vacancies at the highest levels have left the FAA leaderless, rudderless, and unable to meet its responsibilities to the aviation industry and the flying public. Last summer, then FAA Administrator David Hinson announced his plans to return to the private sector before the end of the year and in November he was gone. Since that time--and despite the months of advance notice provided--the position has been vacant.
It's now March and there is no appointed Administrator. The President has not even nominated someone for the position. Not only that, Deputy Administrator Linda Daschle, who had been serving as Acting FAA Administrator, left the agency in January. Another interim Acting Administrator was recently named, but there is now no appointed Administrator and no Deputy Administrator. Compounding that, the department heads of regulation and certification, and airports have each been on the job for less than a year.
The agency responsible for keeping the Nation's airspace safe has no direction. What's more, career employees with experience in some of the most critical departments at the agency are leaving. But I do want to make clear that there are many dedicated, experienced career personnel who, day in and day out, keep the FAA running and our skies safe under very trying conditions. Since last July, I have been urging the President to nominate a qualified permanent Administrator for the FAA. I have written to the President on three separate occasions--July 30, 1996; November 18, 1996; and January 27, 1997--urging him to act quickly on this important nomination, and I ask unanimous consent that these letters be included in the Record. Again today, I implore the President to act.
Last year, Congress included provisions in the FAA reauthorization legislation to establish a National Civil Aviation Review Commission to study safety, airport capital needs, and ways to meet those needs, and FAA operational needs and ways to meet those needs. The Commission must report back to Congress with detailed analysis and recommendations no later than 1 year after the date of enactment--no later than October 9, 1997. Guess what? The Commission has not begun work because its members still haven't been named. Thirteen of the 21 members of this Commission are to be appointed by the Secretary of Transportation and not a single commission member has been appointed. Only 7 months are left for the Commission to do its work. This is a critical assignment and yet nothing is happening.
Meanwhile, there's the issue of aviation taxes. We have lost $5.2 billion in aviation taxes due to funding disputes over FAA financing. These taxes expired at the end of 1995, were reinstated briefly in August 1996, expired again at the end of the year and were just recently reinstated but only for 6 months. And the FAA didn't even notice that these taxes were not being collected last year, resulting in a near crisis. Shouldn't the FAA have been working to avoid this current crisis? Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
Last year's ValuJet and TWA accidents underscored the need to improve aviation safety and airport security. The media has reported frightening tales of how fraudulent, bogus parts get inside our commercial airliners. Last year, air traffic centers all over the country experienced breakdowns in important radar and communications systems. Who at the FAA is looking at this? Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
Not only is the FAA plagued by a leadership and experience void which continues to grow, I believe the FAA is spinning its wheels and wasting too much time, attention, and energy on matters not really crucial to its critical mission of ensuring aviation safety.
Far too much time has been spent arguing about new organizational arrangements for the FAA. It happens almost like clockwork. Six months go by--so it must be time for the FAA to reorganize. Since then mid-
1980's, various groups have recommended changes ranging from the creation of an independent FAA to the establishment of a private, nonprofit corporation. This was typified by a late-1980's study by the National Academy of Sciences, which included a 60-page appendix titled,
``Organizational Options for the FAA.'' Since then, for at least 10 years, we've been arguing about how the FAA should be organized, and where it would get its money from, instead of debating how the FAA could be more efficient and effective at improving aviation safety.
More recently, after 3 years of extraordinary financial losses in the airline industry, Congress in 1992 created the National Commission to Ensure a Strong Competitive Airline Industry. That Commission's final report, issued in August 1993, recommended with little supporting evidence that the FAA be converted to a Federal corporation. With no additional evidence, the National Performance Review, headed by Vice President Gore, endorsed this recommendation in its report, issued 1 month later.
The push was then on to build support for the new Federal corporation initiative and ongoing efforts for FAA reform were shelved. Reform was seen as undermining support for the new corporation because, if effective reform were possible, maybe a corporation was not needed after all. So all reform efforts in the agency were effectively stopped during the 1992-93 timeframe.
The problem is, neither the Commission, the National Performance Review staff, nor the administration checked with the Congress to see if this corporation idea had any chance of being enacted. If they'd bothered to ask, they would have soon learned that the idea had no support on Capitol Hill. Finally, a year later, the administration realized the corporation concept had gained little support among either Democrats or Republicans in Congress. But rather than go to the heart of the problem and start the reform process, they developed a new
``mega-proposal''--user fees to fully finance the FAA.
Keep in mind that only a couple of years before, the issue of financing for the agency itself was not an identified concern. We have annual budget hearings and financing concerns were never mentioned. But all of a sudden, in the late spring 1994, financing became the preeminent issue. Not aviation safety. Not management reform. But long-
term funding stability.
It is still the administration's view that FAA should be made more
``business like'' by converting to a rate setting agency, like the old Civil Aeronautics Board, and the President's budget just recently submitted proposes to begin collecting billions of dollars in unspecified fees about 18 months from now. The administration has changed its focus, rejecting the corporation concept in favor of the push for user fee financing.
We are witnessing something very much like the legend of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. What has happened at the FAA over the past 5 years? The fiddling goes on while the agency deteriorates. While the administration stalls on nominating leaders to run the FAA, draws and redraws FAA's organizational chart, and debates who gets to foot the FAA's bills, the agency responsible for the safety of the flying public spirals downward.
Let me offer one example. Over the past 3 years, FAA cut over 5,000 people from its rolls because the Department of Transportation gave them a disproportionate share of the total reductions needed for Governmentwide downsizing. These cuts were quick and severe--allocated by a department claiming to desire ``business like'' operations for the FAA. Understandably, morale plummeted. Morale was so low that when buyouts were offered, the FAA was surprised at how many of its experienced people left. And all this was happening while air traffic was rising, new air carriers were being approved for operations, and economic competition in the industry was becoming more cutthroat. In short, the need for FAA safety was never more necessary.
When the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee added funds to FAA's budget in June 1993 to hire more safety inspectors and to buy spare parts for radars and other air traffic control equipment, the agency refused the funds. They said the money wasn't needed and could not be accommodated, given the FAA's downsizing plan. When funds were added to move controllers to those locations where air traffic was increasing, the FAA said the funds were not needed.
Why was this happening? The agency's focus was not on improving its field operations, but on lobbying for corporate status. We heard in last year's testimony on the ValuJet accident about how safety inspectors in the field were told they had to work harder because the agency had no more staffing. These problems were known to employees in the field, and they could have been fixed with stable, focused management attention.
Now, suddenly, surprise--the FAA is decrying the insufficient staffing levels at the agency. In the fiscal year 1997 transportation appropriations act, Congress provided funding to support hiring 500 new air traffic controllers, 367 new aviation safety inspectors and other regulatory oversight personnel. As of January 31, 1997, only 17 new controllers had been hired. As of that same date, 133 controllers left the job.
For fiscal year 1998, the administration again proposes to increase staff in several areas deemed critical: Air traffic controller staff is to increase by another 500; safety inspectors and the certification work force is slated to increase by 273; and the security work force is to increase by 173. What happened? Why is the FAA suddenly facing a staffing crisis? Who was running the FAA and why weren't they focusing on these critical management concerns? Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
Even when the FAA has been afforded a real opportunity for management attention and reform, it has been slow to take advantage. Congress freed the FAA from what the agency said were burdensome procurement and personnel rules about 18 months ago. Yet we've seen no significant personnel reform since then, and recent GAO reports indicate that procurement reform is going slowly. We were told that such fundamental reforms would address two of the agency's major problems, and would lead to more efficiency and cost savings. Yet, because so little has been implemented, there is little evidence of improvement or savings. An independent financial assessment of the FAA said the same thing--the agency has been too slow to take advantage of these fundamental reforms.
And what about the third problem so much discussed over the past 2 years--the need for fundamental financing reform? You might remember the FAA claims that a $12 billion budget gap in their long-range forecasts required a totally new way to finance the agency. They talked of a crisis, in order to get more money to spend. But before the ink was dry, the GAO found flaws in FAA's estimates. Soon after, the FAA acknowledged the estimate was perhaps not as precise as it could be. Both general aviation and commercial airlines were clearly skeptical. To help get to the bottom of this mess, Congress legislated an independent assessment of these costs, which will be considered by a Civil Aviation Review Commission--the very Commission I mentioned earlier which has yet to be named. The assessment, conducted by Coopers and Lybrand, was recently completed and is extremely critical of FAA's financial management. It proved that the FAA's estimate of a budget gap is very soft, and there are significant opportunities for cost savings which the agency has not yet explored. They said, and I quote, ``the FAA can't manage money.'' Coopers and Lybrand made a number of startling findings in its report, including the following: The costs to operate the FAA are uncertain; the FAA's program managers have not demonstrated an understanding of financial management; opportunities for cost savings exist in staffing and personnel as well as facility consolidation and closures. Here, too, we have a failure of management, a failure at the highest levels to deal with basic issues at the FAA.
In the meantime, though, the FAA is still managing its programs as if the shortfall were real. They are stretching out or terminating modernization programs because of a presumed lack of funding. They propose to slash airport development grants by one-third, and at the same time telling airports to now buy their own landing aids and lighting systems. They are proposing drastic reductions in human factors and aviation weather research--the two leading causes of aviation accidents. They terminate safety programs like the ASDE-3 radar which provides enhanced safety for aircraft maneuvering on the ground.
In short, we are seeing a retreat on our commitment to modernize air traffic control equipment and airports around the country while large increases in the safety work forces cause the budget to spiral out of control. New user fees are on top of the assumed continuation of existing user fees totaling $100 million approved in the fiscal year 1997 appropriations act, yet no such fees have been collected thus far. What are the details of the FAA's user fee proposal? I have asked both the FAA and the Department of Transportation for details but have received no additional information. How can we responsibly assess the administration's proposal without the fine print?
The FAA is adrift in turbulent waters, leaderless and rudderless. Although Congress helped the agency rid itself of the antiquated procurement rules, the FAA has not used that freedom to much advantage, and they have lost considerable ground in the administration's internal battles of the budget. The FAA's capital budget is going down just as the requirements are going up, and user fees are not making any difference. We have spent years arguing about how to finance and organize the air traffic control system. We have wasted years arguing whether or not this kind of tax is better than that kind of tax. If we don't stop looking--and start acting--soon, the FAA will run out of time. Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
One final point. A study prepared by Boeing suggests that based on the current rate of air travel, by the year 2015, there will be a major crash every 8 days somewhere in the world. A major crash every 8 days. What is the FAA doing to change this horrific projection?
It is imperative that steps be taken now to shore up the FAA. The President must act now to nominate an administrator and institute necessary leadership and management at the highest levels in the FAA. The FAA must focus on its critical mission--aviation safety and airport security. The flying public must be confident that the FAA is on the job, committed to fulfilling its mission of ensuring the best possible air traffic control systems and the safest skies and airports. We must be assured that the FAA is there and the FAA does care about the safety of the flying public. We will accept nothing less.
House of Representatives,
Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC, January 27, 1997.Hon. William J. Clinton,The President,The White House, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. President: On two previous occasions, I have written to you regarding the nomination of a permanent Administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration. In the first of those letters, dated July 30, 1996, I outlined my views of the essential qualities which the FAA Administrator should have during this critical time in the agency's history. In the second letter, dated November 18, 1996, I urged the nomination of a new Administrator as soon as possible. I have enclosed copies of those letters for your review, but in summary they suggest the following qualities of leadership for the next administrator:
1. A clear vision for the future of aviation based on a lifetime of experience and association.
2. Skills in leadership and management of a large and diverse organization.
3. Someone who is willing and able to stay in the position for at least four years, with even longer tenure being desirable.
There are now rumors circulating that individuals being considered for this position have backgrounds not steeped in aviation, safety, or management of a large and diverse workforce, but in general policy development. I hope you will consider beforehand the disastrous effect that a weak nomination could have for this agency, including its relationship with the Congress over the next few years.
It has now been nearly three months since Administrator David Hinson left the agency. This Friday, Deputy Administrator Linda Daschle (who has been serving as Administrator in an acting capacity) will leave the agency. With these departures, the agency is in desperate need of permanent executive leadership. I am very disappointed in your administration's failure to nominate a qualified individual for this critical position in a timely manner, especially since former Administrator Hinson made public his plans to leave approximately six months ago. I believe only negligence could allow this situation to continue, and I urge in the strongest terms that you nominate a qualified individual for the position of FAA Administrator within the next two weeks.
Frank R. Wolf,
Chairman, Subcommittee on
Transportation and Related Agencies.
Enclosures.
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC, July 30, 1996.Hon. William J. Clinton,The President,The White House, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. President: I am writing about the position of administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. I understand that the current administrator, Mr. David Hinson, plans to return to the private sector at year's end. Having worked closely with the FAA and its administrators since my appointment in 1985 to the Subcommittee on Transportation of the House Appropriations Committee, I want to share with you some thoughts on this important posting.
Because commercial aviation is undergoing spectacular growth, because technologies associated with aviation are developing with lightning speed and because existing control systems necessary to ensure safe, rapid and reliable air travel are approaching the end of useful and effective life and must soon be replaced at tremendous cost, it may be wise to reflect on what type of special person is needed to lead the FAA as it faces these formidable challenges. This is an especially critical time for the FAA with the renewed focus on and need for air safety coupled with today's threats of terrorism targeted at the flying public.
It seems clear that the future of the FAA will most certainly not be ``business as usual.'' Mr. Hinson's replacement must have a solid founding in the aviation community but not be a captive of it. He or she must have a clear vision for the future based on a lifetime of experience and association. There is little time to ``come up to speed''; responsibilities and decisions will not wait. Whomever is selected must be steeped in aviation, inculcated in the past but not wedded to it.
It is equally important to select someone skilled in management and leadership, not only to direct this huge and diverse organization, but to help it change course as necessary. Someone is needed who can anticipate the demands of tomorrow and instill teamwork and coordination at all levels of the FAA to get the job done. For example, the job of installing a new air traffic control system is alone a massive undertaking. But to do so while continuing to ensure safe and reliable flight during the proving and conversion period adds immeasurably to the difficulty of the process. Where safety is concerned, there is little room for error.
Of equal importance is to select someone with a long term commitment to the task at hand. If there has been a shortcoming in the selection of previous administrators it is that no one has been around long enough to get the job done. Each new person has approached the task differently with different priorities, different objectives and different ways of going about things. The technology learning curve is always too steep. By the time an administrator becomes comfortable in the job, he has moved on and the process must begin anew.
During the relatively short time I have been on the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Hinson is the sixth person to serve as administrator. This seems to me to be too much turnover and too little continuity and we can no longer afford to continue this practice. I hope you will look for someone who will accept the challenge of leading the FAA for four or five or even ten years. Someone should be chosen who will be able to take an idea from the drawing board, shepherd it through development, implementation and follow-up and see it become operational. Change takes time and an administrator is needed who will be accountable for the duration of the process.
I hope you will ignore the clamor of special interests and political expedience and select as the next FAA administrator someone with experience, vision, wisdom and skill to lead the aviation community and the traveling public who rely upon it, into a long period of safe and reliable operation. I hope these thoughts are helpful to you.
Best regards.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Wolf,
Member of Congress.
House of Representatives,
Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC, November 18, 1996.The President,The White House,Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. President: I am writing to urge you to appoint a new administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration as soon as possible. Given the serious outstanding issues of aviation safety, FAA reform, and aviation system financing, I believe it is imperative that a full-time administrator be in place quickly. Administrator David Hinson has left this position, and the agency is currently being led by Deputy Administrator Linda Daschle, who has indicated she would not accept the position of Administrator. Mr. Monte Belger, a career official of the agency, has been designated Acting Deputy Administrator during the interim period.
The new administrator will need some time to adjust to the position before wrestling with the many issues the agency will face over the coming year. For starters the aviation ticket tax will expire on December 31, 1996, and the airport and airway trust fund will be out of money sometime next summer. Because of this, the controversial subject of air traffic control user fees will be hotly debated this spring. The complexity of this subject and its impact on the various aviation interest groups would be a daunting task for any new administrator, and especially one who arrives in January, just as the new Congress begins working on the issues.
In addition, the FAA has many outstanding issues related to aviation safety which require full-time executive leadership. Safety and security improvements resulting from the ValuJet and TWA 800 crashes are only just beginning, and will require strong follow-up. Improved vigilance over suspected unapproved (including counterfeit) parts has started, but constant attention by top management is needed. And commissioning of new safety equipment such as the terminal doppler weather radar requires strong leadership due to local opposition in some areas.
Other important work which must be accomplished in 1997 includes development of a new compensation system and negotiation of new five-year union contracts for air traffic controllers and maintenance personnel; definition of the next generation ``National Airspace System Architecture Plan''; and coordination with the Gore Commission on Aviation Safety and Security and the National Civil Aviation Review Commission. Many of these activities are already underway and will require the new Administrator's personal knowledge and intervention to be successful.
In short, this year promises to be a very challenging one for the FAA, and it is no time for the agency to be without a full-time administrator appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. I have previously expressed my view that the next administrator should have strong aviation credentials, and I am enclosing an earlier letter to you which summarizes those views. I urge you to do whatever you can to ensure that a new FAA administrator is nominated quickly--before the Christmas holiday if possible.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Wolf,
Chairman, Subcommittee onTransportation and Related Agencies.
____________________
