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Airline safety bill grounded in Senate

WASHINGTON - The Senate grounded the airline safety bill this week, making it a victim of political infighting and partisan wrangling.

WASHINGTON - The Senate grounded the airline safety bill this week, making it a victim of political infighting and partisan wrangling.

"The most frustrating week I have spent in the Senate in my 24 years here," Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who led the fight for the bill, said on the Senate floor. "It defines what the American people find so inadequate about Congress. Days go by, and nothing happens."

Democrats "bogged it down with extraneous provisions that do nothing to improve airline safety," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

The only vote taken was a 49-42, nearly party-line, procedural step Tuesday to end debate and bring the airline safety bill to a vote. But the largely Democratic backers needed 60 votes to be successful.

It was a defeat for consumer groups and labor, which backed mandates in the bill for tougher air-safety oversight and better passenger conditions. Airports also would have benefited by being able to raise more revenue.

The Federal Aviation Administration now will not have the money to hire more air traffic controllers, who safety advocates said are overworked and under stress.

Nearly a fifth of the workforce has left the FAA since 2006, plunging the number of experienced controllers to a 16-year low, said Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said 2,300 more were eligible for retirement.

"We need urgent trauma care to stop the bleeding," Forrey said at a news conference after the Senate failed to act on the legislation.

Inaction also will delay the agency's plan to modernize the air traffic control network by replacing radar with a satellite system.

The FAA bill included an "airline passenger bill of rights" to ensure decent treatment for people stuck on grounded planes. Among the rights: access to fresh water, food and clean restrooms in the event of long delays.

Another casualty was an attempt by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri to include a provision that would have demanded tougher FAA oversight of overseas airline repair stations.

In a report a few years ago, the FAA's inspector general said that the agency exercised little scrutiny over the overseas repair stations even as airlines were increasingly using the stations to do everything from minor repairs to overhauls.

The bill probably won't come up again until next year. In the meantime, Congress likely will approve temporary funding, but nowhere near the amount needed to do everything the bill had intended.

The irony was that both sides in the Senate supported the FAA bill, which the House passed last year. But political gridlock emerged during private negotiations over other issues that some senators wanted to toss into the mix.