Back in June 1999, Rep. Paul Ryan(R-Wis.), now House Budget Committee chairman, took to the House floor to ask
for federal funding for an airport in his district.
"The Rock County
Airport is in desperate
need of improving," he said at the time. "Rock County
began work on these improvements but federal assistance is needed to address
this immediate need. These improvements are critical not only to the local
businesses in the district I represent but also to the local economy and the
livelihood of the employees who work at these businesses."
The video surfaced briefly during the
2012 campaign, as evidence of a self-styled fiscal conservative hypocritically
pleading for federal funds. Now, the Rock
County Airport
is back in the news with officials there worried that it could be on the
chopping block should the sequester hit. As the GazetteXtra.com reported:
For the federal government, it’s just another small airport.
For Rock County, it’s a crucial part of economic
infrastructure that could take an operational hit — unless the elected officials
can reach a budget compromise.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it was making
plans for the possible “sequestration” — the automatic budget cuts that would
go into effect Friday, March 1, if no budget agreement is reached.
Those FAA plans include instituting furlough days for almost all
employees and closing more than 100 air traffic control towers at airports with
fewer than 150,000 flight operations or 10,000 commercial operations each year.
The Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport in Janesville falls into that category.
No comments:
Post a Comment