Paying FAA Employees Back Pay without New Legislation is Legal, Norton Says

October 1, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC -- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today applauded news reports that the administration has decided to use authority granted to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the August FAA extension bill to pay employees who were furloughed for two weeks during the congressional standoff. Norton argued in an August 18 press release that the text of the House bill, ultimately passed by the Senate, in fact authorized paying furloughed FAA employees, without need for a new bill providing for back pay.

Norton, a tenured Georgetown law professor, who still teaches a course there, said that the House-passed FAA short-term extension bill, which eventually became law, explicitly stated July 23 as its effective date, the day the previous extension was set to expire. Although the bill did not become law until August 5, it continued to state July 23 as the effective date, and therefore, she said, the FAA should pay the workers now. "The FAA workers deserved every benefit of the doubt and there is no doubt that the text of the statute says July 23," said Norton. "About the last thing Congress needs or these workers deserved was another congressional fight over the two weeks' pay that these workers lost only because Congress could not get its act together. Enough of the angst. Pay these workers!"

Norton, who led a press conference with the ranking members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and of the Aviation Subcommittee in the hope of ending the Congressional standoff, signed onto the back pay bills but continued to argue that the administration should not wait for Congress to resolve the issue because the FAA extension legislation had already settled it. She said that a quick resolution was owed "to the nation's indispensible, hardworking FAA workers who have needlessly lost pay in the midst of a troubled economy."

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