Norton Sees Presidential Use of Constitutional Power as Only Way to Get Furloughed Employees to Work

August 4, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and of the Aviation Subcommittee, said today that President Obama may have no option but to use his constitutional power to require Congress to come back to Washington from its month-long recess to pass a short-term Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorization bill, and that he should do so "If this shameful spectacle of 74,000 FAA employees and construction workers furloughed without pay while Congress vacation with full pay continues. Congress was able to raise the debt ceiling only with the hammer of a catastrophic default over its head, and before that to pass the 2011 budget only when the entire government almost shut down. The 112th Congress has demonstrated that even when confronted with near economic death for our country, it will not move until the death threat is imminent. There is no such threat in the FAA stalemate and no reason to believe that even a short-term extension will be forthcoming when Congress reconvenes on September 7. There are no Members of Congress in town to continue negotiations while FAA employees and construction workers and their families remain hapless victims of congressional paralysis being hung out to dry, along with our air safety system and up to a billion dollars in vital airport construction funds that may never be recovered. We are now close to two weeks of no action and no wages for these workers. I see nothing to compel a short-term extension vote in the near future except a presidential threat to recall Congress, and even recalling it."

The Congresswoman said that the president and the Democrats are trying to focus on jobs, which have been virtually wiped out of the national discussion since Tea Party Republicans took control of the House and forced a deficit-dominated agenda. "There will be no credibility to press a jobs agenda if no action is taken from Washington to eliminate joblessness caused exclusively and needlessly by Washington itself," Norton said. She said that it was recklessly irresponsible for House Republicans to, for the first time, insert a poisonous provision in a short-term extension bill in the face of a warning that it would not get through the Senate, but that the back and forth accusations between her party and Republicans are simply prolonging needless hardship on these workers and their families. Short of an ultimatum that a recall of Congress provides, Norton said that this dispute could drag on even after Congress returns.

Last week, Norton and Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) of the Rules Committee introduced a bill to allow the 4,000 furloughed FAA employees, including 1,000 from the region, to return to work immediately and to receive back pay for the period they have been furloughed. Norton also led a press conference with the ranking members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Aviation Subcommittee in the hope that exposure of the FAA disaster, the being overshadowed by the debt-ceiling drama, would lead her Republican colleagues to end their shutout of these workers. However, only now is there a focus on the FAA employees and construction workers, the delay in $6.2 billion of infrastructure upgrades, and the $30 million a day in uncollected federal airport improvement taxes. Since the FAA authorization bill expired in 2007, Congress had passed 20 clean short-term extensions.