Aviation Financing Solvency Act. Keep America Flying Act. Air Travel Safety Maintenance Act. Aviation Financing Stability Act.
Again and again, members of Congress have rejected the same idea: ensuring that federal workers who control air traffic and screen passengers and bags at American airports get paid during government shutdowns.
Bills to make it happen continue to be introduced in one form or another, sometimes with Democrats and Republicans alike as a co-sponsor. However, session after session, the result has been the same – agencies receive their annual allocations, public outrage over long security lines and flight delays fade, legislation weakens, and workers have no guarantee their wages won’t stop.
“Once the crisis is over, people assume the good times are back,” said Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve law professor whose research includes risk management in the aviation industry. “It’s easy to pass the next big bill when you’re still in the throes of the financial crisis, but once the shutdown is over, people have a relatively short memory of the problems it created.”
Since 2019, after a partial shutdown that spanned the holiday travel season, lawmakers have drafted, revised and reintroduced multiple proposals to pay aviation workers who would have to continue reporting for duty in the event of another budget impasse.
The Aviation Financing Stability Act of 2019 — and 2021 and 2025 — and the bipartisan Aviation Financing Solvency Act introduced after a government shutdown last fall would protect air traffic controller pay. The Keep Travel Safe Act, introduced in October, expanded protections to Transportation Security Administration agents. The Keep America Flying Act, also from October, would cover both TSA personnel and some Federal Aviation Administration employees.
Broader proposals, like the Shutdown Fairness Act introduced in January, would preserve the pay of essential federal workers across the US government. Those bills are also stuck.
“Congress cares about headlines, and as a result, that means they don’t always make changes that would be really helpful,” Chaffee said.
Political deadlock
The shutdowns impeding air travel have continued along with the push for aviation-specific wage protections. The 35-day shutdown that arose over funding for a wall along the US-Mexico border during President Donald Trump’s first term resulted in delays at East Coast airports and extended waits at some airports after air traffic controllers and TSA agents went unpaid.
Last fall’s 43-day shutdown broke the record for the longest funding shortage and reignited concerns over the fallout from demand. air traffic controllers to work for free. The FAA, citing risks to aviation security, took the extraordinary step of ordering US airlines to shorten flights at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports as unplanned absences deepened existing staff shortages at air traffic control facilities.
TSA officers who worked during that shutdown also found themselves working through a brief shutdown started on January 31st and another when funding for just the Department of Homeland Security expired on February 14. Thousands of people started missing shifts every day as the gridlock entered its second month.
Carlos Rodriguez, a TSA agent and local union leader in New York, said many workers had not recovered financially from last year’s shutdown when it hit.
“Part of the American dream that I was sold on was that working for the government was honorable and stable,” said Rodriguez, a second-generation Dominican American. “But that’s not honorable or sustainable.”
On Friday, the 42nd day of the DHS shutdown, Trump signed an emergency order directing Homeland Security to immediately pay TSA agents. The action came after House Republicans defeated a Senate deal that would have funded the TSAThe US Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. The House later in the night passed its own bill to fund the entire Department of Homeland Security through May 22, but senators had already left town.
Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the TSA division of the American Federation of Government Employees, said union members resent having their livelihoods used as tools and talking points in a fringe political game.
To them, the machinations of Congress feel like “let’s checkmate the queen with the TSA hostage here and then we’ll break them whenever we feel like it,” Jones said. “We are on the chessboard.”
Public pressure builds
Unions, airline executives and airport executives have issued open letters, taken out newspaper ads and made direct calls to urge lawmakers to act on at least one of the existing bipartisan proposals to pay government workers that are essential to the aviation and travel industries.
“Congress has the power to end this dysfunction once and for all and must use every legislative tool to accomplish that goal,” the Modern Skies Coalition said in a joint statement this week. The broad coalition of more than 60 organizations pointed to the Aviation Financing Solvency Act, the Aviation Financing Stability Act and the Keeping America Flying Act as possible options.
The president and CEO of Airlines for America, a trade group that represents major U.S. airlines, made a similar case in a Washington Times op-ed this week, writing that Congress “must come to the table immediately” and pass legislation that would prevent more scenes of frustrated passengers, overcrowded airport terminals and donation drives for public employees.
“Right now, lawmakers are sitting on their hands doing nothing with three workable, bipartisan bills that could prevent this mess,” wrote Chris Sununu, a former New Hampshire governor hired to lead the trade group last year.
The American Federation of Government Employees joined more than 30 unions this week in urging Congress to pass the Shutdown Fairness Act, warning that funding mistakes undermine morale, recruitment and retention.
Breaking the cycle
Some TSA employees have reported sleeping in their cars or considering selling them for lease. Union leaders have described workers being unable to fill refrigerators or gas tanks.
Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer who runs a travel newsletter called Gate Access, said the officers he’s spoken to are eager to get all their back pay quickly because they are fighting to pay bills and accumulated debt. But without greater security, more officers may miss shifts or decide to leave, he said.
If the president’s emergency order only funds a single pay period, “that’s not enough to bring them back,” Harmon-Marshall said. “It has to be an extended salary for them to come back or want to stay there.”
Previous legislation with bipartisan support struggled to cross the finish line. The Aviation Funding Act of 2019 that was introduced by Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, had 13 co-sponsors, eight of them Democrats. It never got out of commission. A House version introduced by Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio eventually had 303 co-sponsors and cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but never received a floor vote.
The current political environment in the U.S. could bring legislation to Congress now with the same fate, Chaffee said.
“We live in a society right now where things are very polarized,” he said. “Whether any of these bills pass or not, there’s going to have to be some political momentum behind it, which means it’s going to have to be something that the public really wants to see happen.”
By RIO YAMAT AP Airlines and Travel Writer
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