A Georgia-based employee of the Federal Aviation Administration blasted congressional Republicans this afternoon for skipping town after voting to raise the debt ceiling without coming to an agreement to re-authorize the FAA. The agency’s resulting shutdown, now in its 11th day, left 74,000 FAA employees and affiliated construction workers without work, is costing taxpayers $200 million a week, and will likely last at least another month until Congress reconvenes in September.

The impasse resulted from House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s (R-FL) decision to insert an anti-union measure into the re-authorization package. The measure would make it harder for workers to form a union by counting workers who don’t vote in union elections as “No” votes, a practice Democrats have long fought to prevent.

FAA engineer Neil Bolen, who is also the vice president of his union, blasted the GOP for being “totally unaware” of the workers’ struggles and for the absurdity of the anti-union measure:

BOLEN: It’s incredibly frustrating. The whole concept that they’re saying, ‘Oh, this um, railroad act of how to vote in unions —

HOST: Right, the sticking point comes down to language over airline unionization rules.

BOLEN: That doesn’t pass the weasel test. They’re saying if you don’t vote, then it counts as a no. [...] That’s just silly. And the worst part is so many of these congressmen are not working for their constituents. A number of the airline employees live in [Rep.] Lynn Westmoreland’s [R-GA] district, here in Atlanta. And he’s not looking out for his constituents, which are the airline employees.

HOST: I mean, if you look at the situation, you have thousands of people out of work, important construction projects on hold — very important projects — and then you have Congress on vacation. [...]

BOLEN: I’m having a great time on my vacation. Without pay by the way. I’m not on a congressional junket. I’m sitting at the house watching the grass grow. So no, I’m not terribly pleased with what they’ve managed to accomplish.

Watch it:

President Obama and Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood have repeatedly called on Congress to re-authorize the agency, and Obama today signaled that an agreement may come by the end of the week. While Bolen would surely welcome that, he’s frustrated that Congress left town in the first place. “The debt ceiling argument ended Monday and Tuesday,” he said. “Well, where you at on Wednesday? You don’t have to go on vacation. Take another day. Get it finished. ‘Cause you’re sitting around, gnashing a great amount, about cutting a few billion here over 10 years. But you’re losing 1.2 [billion] this month. How do you figure that, folks?”

Yesterday, President Obama signed into law the debt ceiling deal that will cut trillions from the federal budget over the coming decade. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the cuts included in the bill, as well as the expiration of a payroll tax holiday at the end of the this year and the failure of Congress to extend unemployment benefits, will cost the economy about 1.8 million jobs next year.

But that’s not the end of the damage fiscal policy will have on the already weak economy. According to an analysis by JP Morgan Chase, contracting fiscal policy — a combination of the stimulus ending, the debt ceiling deal, the payroll tax cut expiring, and aid to states slowing down — will cost the U.S. 1.7 points of GDP growth next year:

This drag may appear fairly small, but it is on top of the substantial tightening that was already in place prior to the passage of the debt deal. Most of that fiscal tightening comes about through the automatic expiration of temporary stimulus measures. The table below details those measures, the largest of which is the one-year 2%-point payroll tax holiday, which expires next January. Other large programs that are scheduled to expire or phase out are emergency unemployment benefits, accelerated depreciation, increased transfers to the states, and much of the remaining spending associated with the 2009 Recovery Act. All in all, by our estimates federal fiscal policy will subtract around 1-3/4%-points from GDP growth next year. Given that GDP growth has been 1.6% over the past four quarters when fiscal policy has been much less of a drag, this doesn’t bode well for next year.

With unemployment still above 9 percent and long-term unemployment still horrifyingly high, growth coming in below one percent is unacceptable. But with Republicans controlling the purse strings in the House, the government will be actively holding back growth, even as America struggles to shake off the lingering effects of the Great Recession.

Click here to sign our open letter demanding that Democratic members of the super committee formed by the debt ceiling deal fight for jobs and revenue.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) has a curious justification for vetoing a tax break last week for 240,000 Iowa families making $45,000 or less a year: the plan didn’t also include a tax break for corporations. Members of both parties in the Iowa House and Senate agreed to increase the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which reduces the amount of income taxes lower-income families owe:

The change would have saved Iowa families an estimated $28.5 million in taxes over two years.

Branstad vetoed that part of the bill writing that it is his desire to approach tax policy in a more comprehensive and holistic manner. [...]

Branstad additionally campaigned last year to slash Iowa’s corporate income tax rate by 50 percent, which he said would attract businesses while costing the state about $200 million a year in lost revenue. That proposal also failed.

Ironically, given Branstad’s fondness for expensive corporate tax breaks, he said he was concerned about the cost of the measure, estimated at $28.5 million a year. Branstad explained that he would only support “an overall tax reduction package that both fits within our sound budgeting principles while reducing those taxes that are impeding our state’s ability to compete for new business and jobs.”

Tim Albrecht, a spokesman for the governor, reiterated that Branstad would have supported the tax break if it had been part of a “larger effort” that included lower taxes for corporations. But since this tax break was only for poor families, Branstad suddenly abandoned his “strong support for tax relief.”

Sen. Joe Bolkcom (D), the chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, points out that the EITC “is the most effective antipoverty program for working families.” Bolkcom said of Branstad’s veto, “He has again shown that he will only consider tax cuts that benefit Iowa’s wealthiest citizens and corporations.” The tax break for working families would have translated into more money for people to spend in Iowa’s economy, but Branstad apparently prefers “huge, unaffordable tax breaks for Wal-Mart and other wealthy out-of-state corporations.”

Branstad has the authority to veto individual items in spending measures. He also effectively shut down dozens of unemployment offices by vetoing language that would have prohibited the Iowa Workforce Development from closing 37 unemployment field offices across the state.

Thirty years ago today, President Ronald Reagan threatened to fire almost 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off their strike and returned to work. He then followed through on his threat, firing most of the workers — represented by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco) — and banning them from the federal workforce for life. Today’s GOP is celebrating by holding another group of airline industry workers hostage over the party’s radical anti-union stance.

Republican demands that a measure making it harder for workers to unionize be attached to the re-authorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has led to the agency’s shutdown, costing the government more than $200 million a week, leaving 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers out of work, and forcing airline inspectors to work without pay. And because Congress is now in recess until September, the shutdown is almost assured to last at least another month.

The FAA shutdown is the latest GOP effort to weaken unions at the federal and state level. And while Reagan broke Patco, a move that had many damaging and long-lasting effects on the American labor movement, today’s Republicans are going much further, according to Joseph A. McCartin’s editorial in today’s New York Times:

Over time the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan’s mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law — as Reagan portrayed it — but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.

As McCartin points out, Reagan did not oppose public or private workers’ right to organize or collectively bargain, only the ability of public workers to strike. Reagan himself was a former union leader and led the 1960 strike of the Screen Actors’ Guild.

The GOP’s attempts to further weaken the labor movement, meanwhile, come at a time when union membership continues to shrink, thanks in large part to Reagan’s 1981 effort and Republican policies of the last 30 years. And the moves come at a time when American workers could benefit the most from robust unions.

Union members make more than comparable non-union workers, and a recent study tied declining union participation to rising levels of income inequality. Other studies show that returning to 1980 union membership levels would add more than $1,500 to the income of the average middle-class American worker.

Republicans still insist that they care about workers and ending America’s job crisis. Unfortunately, by standing up for airline companies and against the 74,000 people they have put out of work, their actions continue to tell a different story.

Our guest blogger is Madeline Meth, a press intern with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Where did President Obama and the Democratic leadership go wrong? This is the question plaguing progressives following the passage of a debt-ceiling package that has been labeled, among other things, a Democratic surrender and a “ Satan sandwich.”

The principal players during the negotiations were Obama, Sens. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), and the six male senators who made up the Gang of Six (who offered their own budget plan, which Obama endorsed, right in the middle of the negotiations). But would Congress have voted on a more balanced debt ceiling plan if women had been offered a seat at the negotiating table?

Scholars of public policy, female business, political, and media leaders alike answer yes. They argue that women — whether because of biology, society, or some combination — bring a different and potentially more advantageous style to negotiations.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), whose campaign, Off the Sidelines, seeks to engage more women in the political process, suggests that women ”tend to be more results-oriented and less concerned with getting the credit.” If this is true — and scholars like Swanee Hunt the Director of the Women and Public Policy program at the Harvard Kennedy School say it is — then a debt conversation that included women may have sidelined some of the politics that distracted our lawmakers from reaching a balanced deal.

But for those who do not buy the Gillibrand argument that “the female approach is more conciliatory and less combative,” there is still reason to ask whether the debt deal being signed into law would look differently if women had played a more serious role in crafting the legislation. According to the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), nearly half of the $2.1 trillion proposed cuts will disproportionately affect women. She explains that “the agreement will impose $1 trillion in cuts to programs such as family planning clinics, food stamps, college tuition assistance, and child care.”

Ultimately, the unbalanced nature of the debt plan is not only a result of the lack of cooperative bargaining styles, but also because the negotiators were not a representative sampling of the American people. The only woman even tangentially involved in the negotiations, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), not only wasn’t directly connected to many of the talks, but can’t be expected to represent more than fifty percent of the U.S. by herself.

Just as the opportunity to improve the debt ceiling deal has not disappeared, neither has the chance to engage female leaders more seriously in the process. As Congress appoints members to a special congressional committee charged with finding ways to further reduce the federal deficit, it can strengthen the debt ceiling deal by taking a hammer to the glass ceiling.

According to the conservative narrative about civil servants, they’re “unelected, unaccountable,” “faceless bureaucrats” that will “tell[] us which light bulbs to buy,” “ration health care,” take “charge of the thermostats,” and, of course, “pull the plug on grandma.” The “career Washington” bureaucrats are also lazy, underworked, and overpaid. They’re always trying to “come between” things, especially “you and your doctor,” and are generally bad for “liberty” and one of the main obstacles to job creation.

Completely ignored in this narrative is that civil servants perform vital functions to keeping a modern society functioning, as made evident by the latest House-created government shutdown crisis.

The FAA is partially shut down right now because House Republicans are insisting on including an anti-union provision in the agency’s re-authorization bill. But air travel continues, and while air traffic controllers are exempt from the shutdown, safety inspectors are not. In order to keep the system functioning, these faceless bureaucrats in the FAA are continuing to work, without pay, and are even paying for their official expenses out of their own pockets:

Those inspectors are the primary individuals responsible for ensuring that commercial airports comply with federal regulations. They also support runway safety action teams, oversee construction safety plans, investigate runway incursions and ensure that corrective action is taken on safety discrepancies.

“The reason they are out on the job is because of the risk to operational safety or life and property,” [F.A.A. administrator Randy] Babbitt said. “We can neither pay them nor can we compensate them for expenses. We are depending and living on their professionalism at this point.”

It is unclear how long the inspectors can continue to pay the bills for their own travel and hotel expenses. Typically, each of the roughly 40 regional inspectors travels to up to five airports in each two-week period, F.A.A. officials said.

The government allocates a minimum of $76 per night for lodging and another $46 per day for food an incidental expenses to employees — up to $295and $71, respectively, for more expensive places like New York City — which adds up quickly when inspectors are asked to travel so frequently. At even the minimum per diem rate, that’s $610 in travel expenses on employees’ credit cards every two weeks — not including airfare. Aviation Safety Inspectors are paid between $70,000 to $92,000 a year, according to job listings on USA Jobs.

And it’s unclear how long it will be before they’re reimbursed, since the GOP-controlled House recessed yesterday without solving the issue and is now heading home enjoying the air travel system kept safe by these inspectors they refuse to pay.

With Congress officially in its August recess, the Federal Aviation Administration will remain shut down for at least a month, furloughing 4,000 federal employees, stopping construction projects that employ tens of thousands of workers, and costing the government more than $1 billion in uncollected airline taxes. Airport inspectors are currently working without pay.

Much of the media coverage of the shutdown has framed it as simply another example of “Capitol Hill gridlock,” or has focused on cuts to rural airports that the House GOP included in the bill. But the crux of the matter is that House Republicans refused to reauthorize the FAA without the inclusion of a union-busting provision that would make it harder for workers at airlines and railways to organize. The cuts to rural airports — as House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) freely admitted — were simply meant to stick it to Democratic senators (as they’re concentrated in states those senators represent).

The anti-union provision upon which the GOP is insisting has been desperately sought by big airlines, including Delta. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) correctly summed up the story during an interview yesterday with NPR:

“The House has tried to make this a battle over essential air service,” he says. “It’s not a battle over essential air service. It’s a battle over Delta Airlines, who refuses to allow votes under the new rules that have been passed by the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board].”

The issue, Reid says, is Delta’s “non-union” stance. The bill to fund the FAA, as crafted by House Republicans, includes language that sets new rules for aviation workers’ votes on labor representation.

Reid isn’t quite right on the details, as the issue revolves around a rule crafted by the National Mediation Board, which oversees airlines and railroads, not the National Labor Relations Board. But his larger point is correct: the GOP is insisting on legislative union-busting and is willing to shut down the FAA in order to get its way.

Even some Republicans see through this charade, with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) saying “it’s not honorable” for the House GOP to attach extraneous policy riders to the FAA bill. The revenue that the government will lose over the next month dwarfs the cuts to rural airport subsidies that the House included in its bill.