Senate Majority Leader Reid says he and House Republicans have reached a deal on FAA funding that will end a partial shutdown, which threatened to drag through the month of August.
“I am pleased to announce that we have been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the House and the Senate to put 74,000 transportation and construction workers back to work,” Reid noted in a Thursday statement. “This agreement does not resolve the important differences that still remain. But I believe we should keep Americans working while Congress settles its differences, and this agreement will do exactly that.”
Democrats and Republicans remain at odds on a permanent extension of FAA programs. Republicans have held up an agreement on that bill, demanding new rules to make it more difficult for rail and airline workers to unionize. Specifically, they say workers who abstain from voting on whether to unionize should be counted as having voted against unionization.
That impasse ultimately resulted in a partial FAA shutdown, and Democrats and Republicans have since been unable to come to terms on a temporary reauthorization. In a push to win the broader fight over unionization Republicans would only agree to a temporary reauthorization that included funding cuts to rural airports. The compromise they’ve reached, whereby the Senate will pass the House GOP bill, would allow Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to waive at least some those provisions, and the parties will return to the fight over union rules in September.
House Republicans gave up nothing in their bill language here — but Reid seems to have received assurances from LaHood that some of the provisions in the GOP bill will be waived.
