January 31, 2012

Dear House and Senate Conferees:

As you prepare to conference on the Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act, Taxpayers for Common Sense Action urges you to include significant Essential Air Service reforms. Long-term reauthorization of the nation’s aviation programs offers the best opportunity to rein in this wasteful program. As we deal with a $15 trillion debt and $1 trillion annual deficits, we must ask: if now is not the time to end this wasteful program, when will the time ever be right?

The EAS program is a policy relic that has long outlived its original intent. Instead of serving as a transition after deregulation decades ago, the number of flights and cities receiving EAS subsidies has grown. Not surprisingly, so have budget deficits and the strain on the Airport and Airway Trust Fund. Subsidizing flights that serve only a few yet cost all of taxpayers of hundreds of dollars per flight does not make any sense. While reforms adopted under the last FAA extension were a modest first step, you need to go much further. We believe the EAS program should be eliminated in the lower 48 states, saving taxpayers approximately $815 million over five years.

It’s time for members of Congress to make the hard look what really makes a program ‘essential’ and this starts with reforming the non-Essential Air Service program.

If you would like additional information, please contact me or Erich Zimmermann in my office at (202) 546-8500.

Sincerely,

Ryan Alexander
President