Josh Barro, Columnist

Airport Fight Shows Who Washington Works For

The air-traffic control fix shows that Congress isn't broken for elites: Their problems can be fixed in under a week.

April 26, 2013 at 1:14 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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Last night the Senate passed the Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013, which would allow the Federal Aviation Administration to move money between accounts so it can stop furloughing air-traffic controllers. The House is expected to pass it today, and President Barack Obama will have little political option but to sign it. The ongoing mess of flight delays is about to end.

This episode shows whose problems Washington takes seriously. The FAA debacle is bad for the whole economy, but it particularly hurts people who fly a lot, who tend to be affluent. Members of Congress themselves also happen to fly a lot. As a result, we've gone from problem onset to legislative solution in about five days.