Senate appropriators want to cut FAA NextGen funding

July 28, 2010 — 10:41pm ET | By David Perera

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The Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic modernization effort known as NextGen is set for a budget reduction in the coming fiscal year if the Senate Appropriations Committee gets its way.

Mark ups from both the House and Senate appropriations committees on a bill to fund the Transportation Department in fiscal 2011, which starts Oct. 1, both make reductions in some areas of the FAA request, with the Senate committee giving the FAA request a considerable trim. The House committee made reductions of $7.2 million, but more than made up for it by adding $21.3 million for ADS-B implementation.

Senate appropriators also voted to plus-up the FAA's ADS-B request--in their case by $12 million--but subtracted $85 million for various NextGen engineering and development programs. In the their report accompanying the mark up, Senate appropriators said they cut those programs out of "concern about whether the FAA will be able to make decisions at the pace it had anticipated."

Appropriators chided FAA for managing individual FAA programs but not together as a portfolio--criticism also shared by a July 27 Government Accountability Office report.

House appropriators also sounded a note of disapproval, noting that the Transportation inspector general "continues to raise concerns about FAA's workforce readiness to oversee and integrate the many complex technologies" involved in NextGen.

Both bills still require votes by their respective full chambers and then ultimate reconciliation of their differences.

NextGen is a series of projects that collectively should replace today's radar air traffic control system with a satellite-based system capable of automation and of handling up to three times more air traffic than is currently possible. A June 2010 Transportation Department inspector general report charged that current FAA management of NextGen "ultimately puts billions of taxpayer dollars at risk."

	Fiscal year 2010 enacted	Fiscal year 2011 request	House Appropriations markup	Senate Appropriations mark up
Network Enabled Weather (NNEW)	$20,000,000	$28,250,000	$28,250,000	$23,250,000 (-$5m)
Data communications (DataComm)	$46,700,000	$153,300,000	$153,300,000	$153,300,000
Engineering, development, test and evaluation, other	$391,914,500	$480,002,000	$472,802,000 (-$7.2m)	$395,002,000 (-$85m)
ADS-B national airspace system-wide implementation	$201,350,000	$176,100,000	$197,400,000 (+$21.3m)	$188,100,000 (+12m)
System-Wide Information Management System (SWIM)	$56,548,000	$92,000,000	$92,000,000	$92,000,000
National Airspace Voice Switch (NVS)	$26,600,000	$30,200,000	$30,200,000	$30,200,000
Collaborative Air Traffic Management Technologies (CATMT)	$18,100,000	$35,900,000	$35,900,000	$35,900,000
Next Generation Very High Frequency Air/Ground Communication System (NEXCOM)	$64,200,000	$49,850,000	$49,850,000	$49,850,000
Voice Recorder Replacement Program	$11,900,000	$9,400,000	$9,400,000	$9,400,000
TOTAL	$837,312,500	$1,055,002,000	$1,069,102,000	$977,002,000
Total difference from FAA request			+14,100,000	-$78,000,000