LaHood: FAA furloughs will be necessary if sequester takes effect

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stressed Sunday that the Obama administration was not exaggerating the effects of looming sequestration.

LaHood, a former GOP congressman, had said at a White House briefing on Friday that the $85 billion in automatic cuts set to start going into effect on March 1 would require furloughs at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and throw air travel in the country into a tailspin.

On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, the show’s host, Candy Crowley, pressed LaHood over the need for furloughs, saying the FAA’s budget for operations and facilities would still be higher than 2008 levels. 

But LaHood said furloughs would still be necessary, even after the department ended contracts and found savings elsewhere. “This is not stuff we decided to make up,” he said.

"This sequester is very serious business,” LaHood added. “And it requires us to make the reductions that we’re making. It requires us, as painful as it is, to furlough the people that we’re going to have to furlough.”

LaHood also put most of the blame for the impasse over the sequester on his former Republican colleagues in Congress, though he did urge the two parties to work together on a deal. 

“I’m a Republican. My audience is trying to persuade my former colleagues that they need to come to the table with a proposal, which frankly they haven’t done,” LaHood said.

“I also at that news conference said: ‘Everybody around here ought to go take a look at the “Lincoln” movie, where they did very hard things by working together,” he added.

View Comments

View the original article here