House passes bill to avert second FAA shutdown
The House passed extensions of the FAA and highway funding on Tuesday, staving off another FAA shutdown at least through January 2012.
The bill will extend operating authority for the FAA through January 2012, and continues highway and transit programs through March 31, 2012.
The Senate is expected to vote on the bills later this week.
The FAA funding bill would have expired at the end of this week, and the surface transportation funding would have expired on September 30th.
The FAA shut down for two weeks over the summer when Congress was unable to reach a compromise on extending the FAA's operating plan. The standoff led to the furlough of several thousand FAA employees, and an estimated 70,000 other private-sector workers were also affected. Air traffic controllers and safety inspectors remained on the job, since the agency still had money from another pool of funds to pay them.
