Skift Take
Shameful, as one of the most prominent industries in U.S. is held hostage to the partisanship, and the lawmakers don't even care enough to move fast before their holidays.
Updated: A tentative deal has been reached in Senate, see our new story.
The Senate halted efforts to legislate an immediate end to furloughs of air-traffic controllers, as delays blamed on staffing shortages continued at some of the largest U.S. airports.
The Senate won’t take up legislation before going on a recess that ends on May 6, said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.
Swelling flight delays since controllers began to be furloughed on April 21 have become the focus of the debate on mandatory spending cuts known as sequestration and fueled calls from airlines and airport operators for a solution.
Related: Check out all of Skift's sequester coverage, here.
“Common sense tells all of us that this can’t go on,” Southwest Airlines Co. Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said in an interview today. “It does need a quick resolution.”
Senators Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, introduced a bill today to let the Federal Aviation Administration use airport-improvement funds to pay air-traffic controllers, as efforts accelerated to end flight delays caused by forced budget cuts.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and South Dakota’s John Thune, the panel’s ranking Republican, worked on another proposal today that would have given the FAA more authority to move money around within its budget.
Jentleson
