Bitter NYT Laments 'Gift to Travelers,' 'People With Money' as GOP Stops Politically Motivated Flight Delays



President Obama and Congressional Democrats on Friday abandoned their once-firm stand that growing airport bottlenecks would be addressed only in a broader fix to across-the-board spending cuts, accepting bipartisan legislation that would bring the nation’s air traffic control system back up to full strength.


Republicans claimed victory. “Consider that the Democrats’ opening position was they would only replace the sequester with tax increases,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in a memo to members before the vote. “By last night, Senate Democrats were adopting our targeted ‘cut this, not that’ approach. This victory is in large part a result of our standing together.”

Weisman played populist:

The action also brought charges that lawmakers known for gridlock could move only when affluent travelers like themselves felt the sting of Congress’s indecision and that the struggles of lower-income Americans affected by the spending cuts were being ignored. House members who have cleared precious little legislation this year made swift work of the air travel bill minutes before flying out themselves for a weeklong break, a pile of cars stacked up behind the Capitol waiting to ferry them to Washington’s airports.

“We’re leaving the homeless behind,” said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont. “We’re leaving a lot of National Guard folks behind. We’re leaving seniors who depend on Meals On Wheels in the dust. Children who rely on Head Start can teach themselves to read. That’s basically what’s happening.”


Republicans -- and some Democrats -- had been pushing for much of the month for a rescue of the air traffic control system. But lawmakers who wanted a separate budget rescue for the F.A.A. met resistance from some lawmakers who questioned why air travel was being rescued when children were being thrown out of early education programs, food safety inspections were being curtailed and checks to the long-term unemployed were shrinking.

Weisman eventually got around to the GOP's argument that Obama and the FAA were playing self-fulfilling politics with the delays, though he tried to refute it.

Republicans continued to assert that those delays were intentionally inflicted on the traveling public by a White House eager to press its political point.

“We’re here today because this administration has decided to put politics over passengers,” said Representative Rodney Davis, a freshman Republican from Illinois, who said the administration already had the flexibility to save the air traffic controllers.

But even Republican aides said that was not true. Under sequestration rules, all program categories faced cuts, and backfilling the narrow category “air traffic operations” at the Transportation Department took Congressional action.

The Times editorial page also favored Obama's plan to hurt travelers. Opinion Journal's James Taranto mocked an April 24 editorial:

In an extraordinary editorial the other day, they defended the administration for inconveniencing air travelers, and in the process opened up a new class-war front: The Times sobbed on behalf of "voiceless people" who supposedly benefit from "housing vouchers....Head Start slots....antipoverty work" whose spending is being trimmed as a result of the sequester. The idea is that it's somehow unfair to treat these as lower priorities than air traffic control. But why shouldn't Congress prioritize programs or agencies that benefit those who pay for government?

The Times issued another amazingly hostile class-war editorial on Saturday, "Congress Rushes to Aid the Powerful," snarling at "people with money" and "the gift to travelers" passed by Congress, as if business travelers had done something wrong, when in fact they're the ones paying for the programs the Times wants to pile on to the taxpayer's bill.




Does the Times truly think that a politically motivated plan to hurt business travelers with airline delays won't hurt the economy? And what's wrong with trying to help the people who actually pay the taxes that make programs like Head Start possible?

And since when is it a "gift" not be treated as a political pawn?
