Why The Money For Air Traffic Controllers Is A Bad Thing

by Stuart Shapiro

I think sequestration is idiotic.  It’s not clear we should be cutting spending period, and doing so in an arbitrary way hurts the economy.  But as bad as it is, it got worse last week, when Congress (with Democratic complicity) restored money for air traffic controllers in response to complaints from air travelers.  Theda Skocpol explains the problem:

I teach an undergraduate seminar about Inequality and American Democracy and we go over all the new resarch — especially from Martin Gilens — showing definitively, statistically that government responds to the preferences of the privileged and pretty much ignores everyone else, including the middle-income citizenry as well as the poor. I know all this abstractly, but this particular Senate vote makes it concrete in a hit-you-in-the-gut way. Given the chance to, say, propose exceptions for BOTH Head Start kids and elite travelers, to use one to leverage the other, they just said to hell with it an went for the elites, instantly and unanimously, leaving all others to rot.

If we have to suffer through sequestration, then wealthy air travelers should suffer with everyone else.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.