Airlines Step Up Bid to Loosen Purse Strings On Aviation Trust Fund's $5.8 Billion Surplus
WASHINGTON -- A year ago, the nation's airlines, in an effort to mend their tattered image, hired Burson-Marsteller, a giant public relations firm, for a three-year campaign to build political support around the country. The cost could reach $15 million.</br></br>A few weeks ago, the airlines hired Black Manafort Stone & Kelly, a high-powered lobbying firm with strong ties to the incoming Bush administration, to try to gain access to high-ranking officials to press the industry's political goals at the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and the Transportation Department.</br></br>These carriers already were represented here by individual lobbyists and the Air Transport Association, a trade group that has six lobbyists of its own. So why the need for this mushrooming army of lobbyists and image-makers?</br></br>For a massive offensive. The airlines are preparing to launch their most determined effort yet to get the government to spend the $5.8 billion surplus in the aviation trust fund, which is funded by an 8% passenger ticket tax, a fuel tax and other, smaller taxes. They want the money to pay for new airports, better air-traffic-control equipment and other aviation needs, and charge that the government has been hoarding it to make the federal budget deficit look smaller.</br></br>"The administration and Congress have been playing games to attain short-term objectives," says Gabe Phillips, executive vice president of the Air Transport Association. "But we need that money to modernize the system and move ahead with the National Airspace System Plan," the Federal Aviation Administration's $16 billion overhaul of air-traffic-control facilities. Critics say that the airlines are oversimplifying the issue and that aviation needs are being adequately funded.