Contact: Allison.Barker@mail.house.gov

Following the passage of the Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013, H.R. 1765, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) released the following statement:

“It’s unfortunate that the FAA chose to implement President Obama’s sequester in a thoughtless way, furloughing air traffic controllers and causing major flight delays when the agency could have simply transferred funds to prevent the furloughs. A five percent reduction in the FAA’s current operations budget makes it equivalent to the FAA’s entire budget in 2010 – proving that the agency can operate on this budget without having to furlough air traffic controllers. This again demonstrates the administration’s dedication to politics, rather than reasonable problem solving. I applaud both the House and the Senate for acting quickly, clarifying that the FAA does have the flexibility  to responsibly cut their budget without furloughing employees and causing major travel delays."

"We desperately need to cut federal spending, but I’ve always said that there is a better way to do it than through the across-the-board cuts brought on by the sequester. Instead, we must replace the sequester with common-sense spending cuts and reforms, giving agencies more flexibility to strategically reduce spending. Most importantly, we need to address the entitlement spending that dominates the federal budget and increasingly crowds out funding for defense and other national priorities.”