WASHINGTON - Following another congressional report on waste duplication in the federal government, Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, and Mark Udall, D-Colo., introduced legislation last week to create a tool for assessing whether a proposed new program would duplicate an existing one.
The bill would require Congress' research arm to analyze bills for duplication or overlap and give the bills a "duplication score."
The Government Accountability Office - a nonpartisan auditing agency - recently completed its third annual report on duplication, overlap and waste. Coburn, who wrote the bill requiring the GAO reports, said the agency has now identified $300 billion in duplication.
"If individual members of the Senate fail to do the research to determine if their proposals are duplicative, this bill will ensure they receive that information," Coburn said. "No family would handle their finances in such a haphazard way, and I'm pleased many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle agree," Coburn said.
Udall said, "All too often, Congress focuses on creating new programs and regulations instead of updating existing programs or abolishing those that have outlived their purpose. The process this bill creates will force the federal government to be more efficient and give the taxpayers a better return on their dollar."
Washington waste?
Rep. Steve Daines, of Montana, was one of the speakers at a news conference held by House Republicans last week to criticize the Obama administration for furloughing air traffic controllers.
Daines noted that it is "tough" to fly out of his sprawling and rural home state and complained about the delays caused by the furloughs.
What he didn't mention is how expensive some flights in Montana are for U.S. taxpayers.
According to the Department of Transportation, the federal government is spending nearly $3 million a year to subsidize flights in the Montana towns of Lewiston and Miles City. In the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, that amounted to a subsidy of $2,009 per passenger for Lewiston and $2,337 for Miles City. That is, the government paid an airline that much money per passenger for flights in those towns.
Those subsidies are part of a program called Essential Air Service, which costs about $200 million per year for 117 small airports across the country, not counting Alaska. No Oklahoma airport receives the subsidies.
The program was created in the 1970s to help small communities adjust to airline deregulation. Critics say that, like many government programs, it has long outlived its original intent.
Coburn has been among the frequent critics of the program. And in the past few weeks, he has written letters to Department of Transportation officials saying that the mandated budget cuts that led to the air traffic controller furloughs could be managed by cutting programs such as Essential Air Service.
But it's Congress that keeps the program alive.
Last June, a California Republican House member offered an amendment to eliminate the program, but it failed by a vote of 164-238. A majority of Republicans voted for the amendment, while most Democrats voted against it.
Daines wasn't in Congress last year, but his Montana predecessor, a Republican, voted to preserve the program.
Congress did change some of the rules, and, because of those changes, Lewiston and Miles City were notified in March that they are no longer eligible for the subsidies because they exceeded $1,000 per passenger in the last fiscal year.
But Montana has five other airports at which customers are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group, recently compiled a database of all the airport agreements under the program and concluded that more airports are likely to lose subsidies because of the changes mandated by Congress last year.
However, the group said, "Eliminating service at these 11 airports would save $17 million, less than a 10 percent cut in the overall size of the program. Rapid cost escalation in recent years could itself wipe out these potential savings in future years, leaving taxpayers worse off than they are currently."
When asked last week at the Republican news conference about eliminating the program, Rep. Bud Shuster, the chairman of the House transportation committee, said it wasn't the time "to talk about big policy questions." Shuster, of Pennsylvania, voted last June against eliminating the program.
Written by: Chris Casteel
Original Publication URL: http://newsok.com/washington-notes-u.s.-taxpayers-footing-huge-bill-for-rural-airport-customers/article/3804016
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