(Washington) Increasing flight delays and cancellations are feared in the United States due to the budgetary blockage which has paralyzed part of the federal state for a week, while Congress still did not manage to break the deadlock on Wednesday.
The Senate rejected for the sixth time a Republican text which proposes a simple extension of the current budget until the end of November, as well as a Democratic text which plans to maintain certain health spending.
A week after the start of this “shutdown” which has put hundreds of thousands of civil servants on technical unemployment, concern is growing to see queues lengthening at airports due to increasing absenteeism of air traffic controllers and transport security agents.
Air traffic controllers are considered to have an “essential” public service mission and are not laid off during a “shutdown”.
But since, like all federal civil servants, they are not paid as long as the paralysis lasts, some prefer to call in sick rather than work without pay.
The upheaval in air transport due to a lack of controllers was one of the major reasons for the end in 2019 of the previous budgetary blockage, during Donald Trump’s first term.
PHOTO JULIA DEMAREE NIKHINSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
United States Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy
“Little Rebellion”
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Wednesday urged air traffic controllers to “do their job”.
“They have to control the airspace. The problem is that when I talk to them, they are stressed, they wonder how to put food on the table, how to pay their mortgages if their salary does not come,” he told CNN.
Sean Duffy specified that “over the last 9 or 10 months”, around 5% of delays were caused by a shortage of staff in control towers, compared to 53% today.
“We may have a little rebellion from air traffic controllers because of the shutdown,” he said.
Staffing problems are already affecting nearly a dozen airports across the country, including Chicago and Boston, according to the FAA, the US civil aviation regulator.
“As Minister Duffy has said, there is an increase in staffing shortages across the air transport system,” the agency said in a statement.
“When this happens, the FAA slows down traffic to certain airports to ensure safe operations,” she said.
“On the back foot”
Since the start of the budget impasse in Congress, each camp has entrenched itself in its positions, and no end is in sight for the moment.
Some federal civil servants will miss their first salary on Friday, and pressure is mounting on elected officials to end the crisis.
The leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, told the press on Wednesday that the Republicans were “on the back foot”. The New York senator pointed to numerous polls which, according to him, show a lack of support for the arguments of the presidential majority.
At the same time, Donald Trump continues to threaten serious consequences if the opposition does not give in. He thus affirmed on Tuesday that federal civil servants placed on technical unemployment would not automatically receive their salary arrears, despite a law to this effect adopted during his first mandate.
A position to which many officials, even the majority, were opposed.
On Wednesday, it was the turn of more than 1.3 million military personnel not to receive their pay as planned, a significant deadline in a country where they have a special place in the minds of the general public.
