A tax, by any other name:
After almost 9,000 people urged the president to take damaging aviation user fees off the table, the administration on Jan. 13 offered its response: No way.
In a response to a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, Office of Management and Budget Associate Director for General Government Programs Dana Hyde reaffirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to a proposed $100-per-flight fee for use of air traffic services, claiming that the fee would both “ensure that everyone is paying their fair share” and help reduce the deficit.
“We are disappointed but not surprised that the administration continues to seek a $100 user fee on general aviation flights,” said AOPA President Craig Fuller. “Congress has repeatedly said that a GA user fee is an unacceptable method of funding the air traffic system. Pay at the pump has worked since the dawn of powered flight and it still works. The last thing we need right now is to create an expensive new bureaucracy to fix what isn’t broken.”
Mr. Fuller should know that there is no intent here to “fix” anything. The the national airspace infrastructure is in place, and – unlike roads and highways – air routes are famously indifferent to government-funded “repairs”. Aviators already pay at the gas pump for their privilege to fly, with those who use more paying more.
No, it takes money to own and operate an airplane, and money implies success. As a point of moral order, success should be penalized, in order to subsidize deficiency.
Having no expectation of success themselves, some people more readily vote for a share of someone else’s money.
Because of the “fair share”, and that.
Yeah, but:
“The proposed $100 per flight fee would generate an estimated $11 billion over 10 years…”
Maybe in their effing imaginations. Not after half of owners do what TS did. Kill the industry, morons.
Once more, in their static calculation mode….which fails to include the behavior of those who used to fly…quitting. They will then, a few years hence, with higher unemployment, and coffers with money that is a mere trickle of what they figured, once more, scratch their heads and say: “Well, the numbers told us we’d have it….”
One more good reason to want to piss in their collective wheaties. Just another variation on class warfare in their little socialist envious minds. What this will do is make GA a rich man’s domain and drive the middle class out. With 100LL over $6 a gallon it’s bad enough as it is.
I already voted on this. Sold our airplane and happily fly flight sims.
Anyone care to estimate how many businesses (aka people) that affects? FBO, fuel company, radio shop, mechanics, etc?
Just like cigarette taxes were supposedvto generate more income, so we spend more in anticipation…
If you dig into that story, the “Lion of the Senate” pushed that process in order to get funding for poor children’s health care. Think about it: First leverage off the current profits (FOR THE CHILDREN!), while in parallel crippling the industry, to get rid of it’s badness. Now, when the anticipated funding begins to wane, when happens? We can’t possibly not fund THE CHILDREN!, so, it becomes a backdoor access to tax revenues for a program no one will want to go on record as voting against THE CHILDREN!
I’m not against children, have a few of my own, but I am against the politicians raping the tax base, to get what they want, when the majority says that’s not a priority for the use of the tax funds….if we need it, and it’s a good idea, it will be allocated. The politics of grievance….amplified.
Greetings:
That “help reduce the deficit” bit, that was the punchline, right ???
This story is also covered over at Aero News Network by Jim Campbell, Editor-in-Chief…
http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&ID=8431C765-152F-4119-902C-1D3E59067A5E
Punish success, reward failure. It’s what’s for dinner.
America borrowed a lot of money to finance bailing out during the recession. Tax increases are inevitable now that the economy is growing again.
The Lefties have a very tortured notion of what is a “fair share.”
In the real world, fairness is exhcanges of equal value. In Lefty world it’s whatever is convenient at the moment.
This will Kill GA in the US, how small and short sighted. It wont generate smuck rather than a gradual winding down of an industry that generates – exports. Talk about an own goal.
let me get this straight. I got a 172, and take it up- I pay 100$ plus gas and storage fees at the small less than urban, closer to rural airport? But have atc availability from a nearby urban a/p
Apparently they weren’t paying attention during Bush the Elder’s first term, when he agreed to the “Luxury Tax”, and the luxury industry… yachts, private jets, etc… promptly laid people off in response to decreased orders.
History…well, The WON! is history, he don’t need to read no STINKIN’ HISTPRY!
Just what I was thinking. At least Pres. Bush #41 had the mettle to repeal the luxury tax when it became evident is was self defeating. I’m not so sure that will happen this time. According to AOPA this is driven by the airlines. They would rather pay the fee rather than higher fuel taxes because it’s cheaper that way. There was also a provision where those that pay the most into the system (the airlines) would have a greater say in how the ATC system is run. Basically all of the air ways just became a toll road and the trucking companies get to write the rules.
This is going to make getting to CFI a lot more expensive. It will also kill flight training across the world because everyone comes here to train. The pilot shortage will become even worse.
The WON! will never back down. It would be for him to admit defeat, and, for the personality type he has displayed, ain’t gonna happen. Not only that, for the personality he has displayed, it will always be GWB’s fault if it doesn’t work…to his dying day, and in all his next books (with huge advances he will pocket, for Michelle’s use). Not to mention the accusations of helplessness on the rubber chicken dinner circuit at, say $120/pop.
At what point will he be considered part of the 1%?
Just another skirmish in the class warfare long war.
See, “the evil rich always object to paying their fair share!”
“We recognize these shared sacrifices are not easy, but together with investments in our economic growth and job creation, they will make us stronger and more competitive for the future.”
Reminds me of the Obamanator cartoon in which he says “I won’t allow the half of Americans who pay no taxes to bear the burden of the other half who aren’t paying their fair share”.
Anyone interested in half of a PA-32?
Michelle Antoinette
‘Have my pilot ready Air Force 2. I’m dropping cake on the huddled masses.’
Will be allowed, like the cake, to say “EAT ME!” to Marie Part Duex?
Fair share my foot. This is about the airline industry trying to get GA to foot the bill for ATC services.
It doesn’t help that FAA really stands for Federal Airline Administration…and it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the airline industry.
“a little rebellion now and then is a good thing”
Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787
I’m going to leave it at that as anything else I would add would get me in trouble with the currant regime.
Makes you wonder if the brain trust has even considered the implementation side of such nonsense. If a VFR flight from a non-controlled field gets a radio call from Approach, say for separation from inbound IFR traffic to a nearby controlled field, who collects the $100 from the VFR pilot since he “used” ATC services? The fees won’t begin to cover the cost of the bureaucratic expansion necessary to collect them. The monster grows yet again.
It’s already cost prohibitive to fly GA (unless you can score a Varga gig like Lex).
Here’s my view: Skydiving (and glider operations, and banner towing flights), will all be crushed. Along with that, drop zone owners will have to close up shop, and the fess they paid to store their planes and pay the mechanics for all those periodic and annuals will dry up. The parachute manufacturers will go away, along with the jumpsuit makers. The “rich” people, who, when they can, act as instructors, jumpmasters and tandem masters (better get you bucket list jump soon!) will all be cut out of a source of income, which, most often is 1099ed. The list goes on in the market where the products and services service that market. Think of each 20-30 minutes flight at a busy drop zone getting hammered with this tab? Even if you have a large AC, if the seats aren’t full, then amortizing the cost per jump will get beyond the reach of most every jumper. In my 28 years of trudging about DZs, I can’t say I met but a very few exceptionally well off jumpers. Most were work a day types, who just loved it.
These are short sighted measures, while he claims he is focused on creating jobs, it seems the only ones he’s out to make are public sector or union type jobs, which, generally are favorable to such treatment. I read only 7% of the US work force is union based. At some point, when no one can buy a new car from GM or Chrysler, then those industries will have to cut back, putting the same union workers on the unemployment lines. What then? As usually with liberals, it’s too late, when they come to understand their “plan” backfired an now they are in the same burn pit with the rest of us.
An accidental read from my teen years was “I Chose Freedom,” about a man who saw his father fight for the Russian Revolution. He himself, was part of the machine, at one point he tells a memorable story of having to go to collective farms and get the mandated wheat delivery. The horses/oxen were starving, the grain was ripe in the fields, but unharvested. The farmers asked to have some grain to feed the livestock, so they could get the grain and meet most of their quota. No, said their new masters, because they the quota wouldn’t be met. Net result of this “progressive thinking” was the grain rotted in the fields and the livestock became useless. None of the quota was delivered (to “redistribute” the wealth)….
We’re headed that way, yet, this measure will be defended, as noted, as getting the rich to “pay their fair share.”
Rich people buy campaigns…poor people do not. I guess The WON! has a large account building in an overseas, numbered account, otherwise, if he was a sane man, he’d not take such paths to “victory.”
Seems piston aircraft are exempt.
For now.
I quit jumping Cessnas in the 90s….mid-90s, unless it was a terribly slow day. Most modern DZs, that make the money (and therefore create jobs and tax revenue), fly turbines, like King Airs, Twin Otters or PAC750s. Toss in some Caravans, too, and Casa 212 and Skyvans.
Time is not far away when Mr. “Fair Share” will demand a fee for “using” some of the air–which will be imposed on all who breathe. But I’d like to see Obozo try and collect the fee from say my dog–who also “uses” the air.
Just one MORE reason to relocate the Duck Blind..
“Forexample, under current law, a large commercial aircraft flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco pays between twenty-one and thirty-three times the fuel taxes paid by a corporate jet flying the same route and using the same FAA air traffic services. This is why the Administration proposed to establish a new surcharge for air traffic services.” Punish the corporate jet owners . . . . the real agenda.
I don’t suppose the difference is because the commercial jet is …a lot bigger?…
How much has been added to the ticket price to pay for the “security” provided by the TSA sub-humans?
Consider the FAA police that will sit at every FBO and grass strip to make sure the Feds get their due…OH! JOB CREATION! I didn’t get it until now….minders….they aren’t just for your health care any more!
Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. That’s what this is based upon. I don’t seem to have much of that, thank the Lord. Now, I can really wallow in some Sloth; I am afeard I sometimes need a Sergeant-type person to yell “Get to work, you!” at me.
I was expounding sound proper classical ancient unexceptionable Christian doctrine there, and doing a little confessing (nothing sordid) and I GOT MODERATED! Methinks we have a prurient-minded anti-spam program here. I betcha it won’t even let me write “stamen” and “pistil.”
Understand that as far as these guys are concerned anyone who can afford to fly a private plane – whether owned, leased or whatever – is “rich”. And anyone who is “rich” has that money because of “unearned privilege”. That means that they are either white, male, had two parents, or any other situation that gave them an advantage starting out over people whose parents were black, poor, etc. People who got ahead because of “unearned privilege” therefore don’t deserve to be “rich” and it is therefor the government’s job to take their money away from them and give it to those people without “unearned privilege”.
I swear I’m not making this up. Do a search on the phrase “unearned privilege” and see where it takes you.
Ok. That’s it. You lousy 1% fat-cats have had a free ride long enough, so quit your complaining!
It’s time you paid your fair share in this world, which is, roughly … everything.
Now that’s economic justice…
At the family-owned DZ where I used to wrench, fly, and jump; In the summer (We’re in the Pacific Northwet), they might put-up 25 Twin-Otter loads and 25-40 Caravan loads on a nice sunny Saturday – and again on Sunday. They ALL have to contact Seattle Center. That’s $5K, $6.5K off the bottom-line/day for what SERVICE? This is really a load of crap that’s going put a LOT of folks out of work…
Oh well, He WON. Thanks, 52%!
And so it goes…
To elaborate on the last, as they break out of the pattern and start the climb to altitude;
Key-up and announce; “Seattle Center, Jump-52 off Shelton for 14.5″.
Those seven words cost you $100. WTF,O?
Think of it as a repayment for the money the jumpers and DZ owner illicitly gained over all the centuries of American rule of this land…merely compensating those who lacked vision and drive…
I’m sure nobody’s even delved into the cost of the bureaucracy that will be required to account, collect, and document the payment of those fees, either.
It’s for damn sure there’s no intent NOT to gin up a whole new division of the IRS to manage this – - it ‘creates jobs!’
Don’t you know that we private pilots are all corporate jet-owning, light our cigars with $100 bills, fat cats? I don’t mind the occasional $100 hamburger, but this makes it instantly a $300 hamburger ($100 per flight doesn’t count round trips with a brief stop as one flight). I always aspired to while away my retirement years teaching young people to fly. This will put private flying, thus my retirement plans, out of reach of almost everyone.