The presumptive next House Budget Committee chairman wants a major new appropriation to overhaul an FAA still running on 1980s technology — and he's daring fiscal hawks to spend right alongside him.
Rep. Brendan Boyle's pitch is the permanent Washington spending ratchet in plain view: government neglects critical infrastructure for decades, then points to the resulting decay as proof taxpayers must pony up. Failure doesn't trigger accountability. It triggers the next appropriation.
Boyle told MS NOW's "The Briefing" that the FAA system is "built on using floppy disks and the latest technology of 1989." His solution: "I certainly would be willing to vote for a major appropriation to do this overhaul."
The Pennsylvania Democrat also took a shot at DOGE advocates who pushed deep cuts and now find themselves needing to spend: "I'm glad that the crowd that was bragging about DOGE a year ago and making all sorts of deep cuts now actually wants to spend the resources. Fine, I'm willing to work with them, I accept that. Let's actually get this problem fixed once and for all."
What Boyle doesn't explain is where the money went for the last 35 years. The FAA has been funded every single budget cycle since floppy disks were cutting-edge. Congress appropriated. The agency spent. The system still runs on Reagan-era hardware. Nobody was fired. Nobody was audited. Nobody had to explain why modernization funds disappeared into the bureaucracy year after year.
Now the same institution that presided over the neglect says the only answer is a blank check. Boyle frames bipartisan cooperation on spending as a victory — the crowd that wanted cuts now agreeing to spend. But that's not a deal for the public. That's the two parties finding common ground on the only thing they ever agree about: sending taxpayers the bill for Washington's failures.
The FAA couldn't keep its systems current on the budget it had. The response isn't an audit, a firing, or a restructuring. It's a "major appropriation" from the man who wants to chair the committee that writes the checks.
Thirty-five years of failure, and the only consequence is a bigger line item.
