Hated by most Democrats, considered a genius by most Republicans, Motley is a highly partisan politician whose level of success and notoriety in Washington is a rare achievement. Before last May, he was the leading political voice for the National Federation of Independent Business, the trade group of small business that last year vehemently opposed the Clinton administration's attempted overhaul of the US health care system. Motley and NFIB won, handing Clinton the worst defeat of his presidency to date.
Even though he raised NFIB's profile, Motley lost a battle for the top spot at the organisation. His services were sought by many interest groups attempting to mollify the new-majority Republicans who were angered after years of lobbyists dismissing them as Washington's minority party.
The surprise winner in the competition was the Air Transport Association, the trade group representing US major airlines. 'This was a major coup,' says Carol Hallett, ATA's president, who cannot hide her pleasure with the hire. Hallet, also relatively new and with strong Republican credentials, still pays tribute to the tradition of bipartisanship on aviation issues in Congress. But when she hears concerns voiced by Democrats that the hiring of Motley could imperil such cooperative ties, she becomes exasperated: 'Oh, come on. Our destiny is now literally in the hands of the Republicans. In this Congress he [Motley] will be effective.'
For now, there is more portent than substance to the divisions between Republicans and Democrats in the committees and subcommittees on Capitol Hill that deal with airline issues. Although many things appear to be the same, there is a new game in town that has changed the dynamic between parties in Congress and that body's relations with the Department of Transportation. The players in this game, including House Speaker (and representative of the Georgia district that is home to Delta Air Lines) Newt Gingrich, are already making moves that suggest that business will not be as usual.
Issues like reform of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), appropriations funding of that body and other DOT programmes, and the pending 4.5 cent fuel tax on airlines are highlighting the Republicans' new power. They also have the potential of bringing Republican-Democratic rancour to aviation lawmaking, says the government affairs official at one major carrier: 'I see the traditional bipartisanship changing.'
This reversal may well have begun when Larry Pressler of South Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, began 1995 with a flurry of attacks on FAA oversight of aviation safety. A series of aircraft accidents towards the end of 1994 had heightened the travelling public's awareness of aviation safety, and Pressler launched a hearing and took secretary of transportation Federico Peña to task for an alleged slack oversight of FAA. The stridency of Pressler's attitudes was unexpected, and Democrats were alarmed at his public hostility at the time towards Peña.
Though safety concerns are paramount to Pressler, he has been active with regard to international aviation as well, along with John McCain, the Arizona senator who now chairs the Senate aviation subcommittee. On these issues, it is McCain who has been the more combative of the two senators, while Pressler's early antagonism towards DOT seems to have mellowed. Still, with the two making jabs at Peña, the ironic result is that Kentucky senator Wendell Ford, McCain's Democratic predecessor and last year a consummate critic of Peña, now defends the secretary.
Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, friendly relations between the two parties appear solid, though ideological differences have certainly surfaced. Soon after the safety hearings, the House aviation subcommittee held hearings on the regulatory burdens placed on the airlines. Now considered by both sides of the aisle as a symbolic gesture by Republicans, the event focused on the 1993 findings of the national airline commission that airlines shoulder $5 billion in regulatory burdens. Democrats, not denying the figure, simply said the costs were mainly associated with safety oversight and were spread out over a 10-year period.
For the chairman of the subcommittee, Tennessee representative John 'Jimmy' Duncan, the debate on finance and the cost of oversight was in keeping with the direction that he wants lawmaking to take. Several airline government affairs officials in Washington may be hesitant to praise the Republican Congress, but they do tend to like the fact that 'they haven't done, and don't plan to do, much taxing and regulating,' one source says. Adds Duncan: 'Congress has become much more pro-business, and most people in the aviation community like that.'
Duncan takes over from James Oberstar, the Democratic congressman from Minnesota who is arguably the most knowledgeable, and certainly the most interested, official in Congress on airline matters. He is still considered an important player by industry lobbyists, simply because he has significant influence on the committee. When, for example, Oberstar railed against Japan's recent refusal to permit FedEx beyond rights from Tokyo at a subcommittee hearing on the US-Japan aviation relationship, he enunciated an anger that was echoed and referred to by Duncan and by Bud Shuster, chairman of the House public works and transportation committee.
However, there is a distinct change in style, and Duncan has not shown an Oberstar-like interest in aviation policy issues like international bilateral relations unless, as with the US-Japan controversy, something has a negative impact on his home-state favourite FedEx. This is analogous to the Senate, where McCain has yet to become the imposing figure that Ford tended to be.
Ford's obstructionism towards Peña last year and Oberstar's interest in the minutia of aviation policy had been perceived as micromanagement by DOT officials. Now the DOT says its oversight of the airlines, especially regarding international decision-making, has been relatively free of congressional influence.
Indeed, one irony of the Republican takeover of Congress was that DOT officials felt they would finally get a fair hearing on Capitol Hill. Democrats in Congress, it seemed, never quite got over their role as the opposition majority to 12 years of Republican control of the White House. In particular it was thought that Peña would succeed with seemingly Republican-friendly ideas, for example privatising the FAA's air traffic control system, which many Democrats opposed despite strong support by the White House.
Republicans have proposed their own idea for FAA/ATC reform. Instead of corporatisation, Duncan wants an 'independent' FAA. The key point is that Congress maintains oversight of the agency via a proposed Federal Aviation Board that would control the new FAA's decision-making. A draft of the proposed bill to create the reformed agency has considerable support from a coalition of aviation groups, though by late July DOT had yet to voice its opinion.
FAA reform may be an area where congressional bipartisanship will be apparent: support from Democrats is likely. But it may only be a matter of time before schisms surface. Most pinpoint the issue of the fuel tax exemption as a dividing line. But other, less obvious issues have already begun to force lawmakers to abandon traditional respect for the others' party.
This is most apparent with regard to Norman Mineta, the top Democrat on the House public works and transportation committee who formerly chaired it. Still considered by lobbyists in Washington as a significant figure in the aviation arena, Mineta's displeasure with Republicans has been relegated to issues in other transportation sectors and environmental regulation. As a California Democrat, he has been angered at Republican attacks on water protection laws. And Republican plans to downsize radically the federally subsidised rail system Amtrak have been a source of frustration to Mineta.
However, there is more to the Amtrak debate than the killing off of mass public transport. It is the way in which it has been done that has made Mineta angry.
Taking away money from Amtrak has been part of the fiscal 1996 funding bill for transportation that is expected to see DOT's budget drop considerably from current levels. In deciding the form of the bill, Shuster invited Frank Wolf, the Virginia representative who oversees the appropriation of funds to transportation projects, to help out. This kind of cooperation, however, brings in questions of turf ownership, since it is not usual for authorising committees like Shuster's and appropriating committees like Wolf's to work together.
Mineta does not like sharing the turf. For him and other Democrats, ceding the authorisation for any issue means that there will not be a rigorous defence of existing federal regulation. It is a back door way of applying a cost-benefit analysis to lawmaking, an idea on which Republicans tried to legislate unsuccessfully in July. 'None of the chairmen are really doing anything to fight this,' Mineta told Congressional Quarterly. 'A lot of the dismantling as it relates to labour law, environmental law, is going to be done through the appropriation bills [and] tax measures.'
It is in the area of funding that Republicans have quickly differentiated themselves from their Democratic predecessors. After years of discussion under the Democrats, taking the transportation trust fund off budget may finally come to pass. The move, which would remove federal spending restraints and end the imposition of spending limits on the money, is supported by Gingrich. FAA funding for 1996 echoes the Republican mantra to cut federal spending: an $8.3 billion appropriation (including $1.6 billion from the Airport and Airway Trust Fund), is being whittled down by $49 million from this year and is $37 million under the amount the Clinton administration requested.
But it is the fuel tax controversy that has the most potential to impinge upon the bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans. In October 1993 the administration reprieved the US airline industry from contributing to a deficit-cutting budget plan that imposed fuel taxes on all other industries. The poor operational performance of the airlines, outlined by the national airline commission, allowed a two-year deferral of the tax.
As it stands now, the cost of a gallon of fuel will go up by 4.5 cents this October, costing airlines an estimated $527 million annually. The administration is supporting an end to the deferral, and is now citing record-breaking second quarter profits that have finally brought an end to industry losses. Carol Hallett of the ATA, with the aid of John Motley, is doing her utmost to convince legislators that profits are based on a tentative rebound only. So far, more than 200 legislators, including Gingrich, Pressler, McCain, Shuster and Duncan, have publicly agreed not simply to extend the deferral, but to repeal the tax altogether. Democrats, other than those that represent constituencies that include airlines, tend to support the administration.
It is the broad ideology of a Republican-controlled Congress that many lobbyists representing airlines tend to find comforting. Being representatives of management, they don't mind a lack of bipartisanship if it means less to worry about. Broad regulatory reform, restructuring of the litigious US legal system, and the lack of lawmaking in favour of labour are facets of the Republicans. Says one airline lobbyist: 'We're not sitting around worrying about new taxes.'
Source: Airline Business
