FAA bill sent to Obama by Senate

The political gridlock that triggered a partial shutdown of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration last year was broken yesterday as the Senate passed legislation funding the agency for four years.

The compromise measure, which includes a faster timetable for upgrading the air-traffic control system, passed 75-20 over the objections of some Democrats to what they called anti-union provisions.

The bill goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The House passed the measure, which authorizes $63.4 billion in FAA spending through 2015, on Feb. 2 by a vote of 248-169.

"Many compromises were made to get us here," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the commerce committee, said during debate. "Compromises in the present atmosphere are not easy. And while no one got everything they wanted, the bill will permit us to achieve our shared goals."

The bill would become first long-term law guiding FAA policy and spending since the last such measure expired Sept. 30, 2007. The agency has since operated under 23 short-term extensions.

One sticking point preventing passage last year was a Republican-sponsored provision in the House version that would have overturned a 2010 U.S. National Mediation Board decision making it easier to form a union at airlines and railroads.

Labor Compromise Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, brokered a deal they announced Jan. 20 that stripped the provision from the bill. Reid agreed to other changes in NMB election rules that would make it more difficult to unionize.

The legislation creates a position to oversee the NextGen program, requires aircraft flying in congested airways to use the new technology by 2020 and orders the FAA to develop more efficient routes into the busiest airports.