After thousands of flight delays across the country this week, the United States Senate voted Thursday night to give the Federal Aviation Administration the flexibility to keep the nation’s airports running smoothly. The delays were caused by the furlough of air traffic controllers, who were rotating off the job because of sequestration’s automatic budget cuts that began taking effect on March 1. The Senate legislation, which passed the House today and will be signed by President Obama, will allow the FAA to shift the burden of its cuts around, removing the need for controller furloughs and the delays that come with them.

That means lawmakers will be able to fly home for recess this weekend without any delays — and tourists and people who travel for business won’t have to experience the delays either. Unfortunately, though, Congress has shown no willingness to provide similar relief for the families that are being hammered by sequestration in other ways. Here are 12 programs that have experienced devastating cuts because Congress insists on cutting spending when it doesn’t need to — and that have been ignored by the same lawmakers who leaped to action as soon as their trips home were going to take a little longer:

1. Long-term unemployment: There are 4.7 million Americans who have been unemployed for longer than six months, but sequestration cut federal long-term unemployment insurance checks by up to 10.7 percent, costing recipients as much as $450 over the rest of the year. Those cuts compound the cuts eight states have made to their unemployment programs, and 11 states are considering dropping the federal program altogether because of sequestration — even though the long-term unemployed are finding it nearly impossible to return to work.

2. Head Start: Low-income children across the country have been kicked out of Head Start education programs because of the 5-percent cuts mandated by sequestration, as states have cut bus transportation services and started conducting lotteries to determine which kids would no longer have access to the program, even though the preschool program has been proven to have substantial benefits for low-income children. In all, about 70,000 children will lose access to Head Start and Early Head Start programs.

3. Cancer treatment: Budget cuts have forced doctors and cancer clinics to deny chemotherapy treatments to thousands of cancer patients thanks to a 2 percent cut to Medicare. One clinic in New York has refused to see more than 5,000 of its Medicare patients, and many cancer patients have had to travel to other states to receive their treatments, an option that obviously isn’t available to lower-income people. Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) proposed restoring the funding, but the legislation so far hasn’t moved in Congress.

4. Health research: The National Institutes of Health lost $1.6 billion thanks to sequestration, jeopardizing important health research into AIDS, cancer, and other diseases. That won’t just impact research and the people who do it, though. It will also hurt the economy, costing the U.S. $860 billion in lost economic growth and at least 500,000 jobs. Budget cuts will also hamper research at colleges and universities.

5. Low-income housing: 140,000 low-income families — primarily seniors with disabilities and families with children — will lose rental assistance thanks to sequestration’s budget cuts. Even worse, the cuts could likely make rent and housing more expensive for those families, as agencies raise costs to offset the pain of budget cuts, and sequestration will also cut from programs that aid the homeless and fund the construction of low-income housing.

6. Student aid: Sequestration is already raising fees on Direct student loans, increasing costs for students who are already buried in debt. The budget cuts reduce funding for federal work study grants by $49 million and for educational opportunity grants by $37 million, and the total cuts will cost 70,000 college students access to grants they depend on.

7. Meals On Wheels: Local Meals on Wheels programs, which help low-income and disabled seniors access food, have faced hundreds of thousands of dollars in cuts, costing tens of thousands of seniors access to the program. Many of those seniors have little access to food without the program, but Congress has made no effort to replace the funding.

8. Disaster relief: The Federal Emergency Management Administration will lose nearly $1 billion in funding thanks to sequestration, jeopardizing aid for families, cities, and states right as the spring storm season begins. The aid package Congress passed for Hurricane Sandy relief will also see more than $1 billion in reductions.

9. Heating assistance: The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) helps nearly 9 million households afford their heating and cooling bills. Sequestration will cut the program by an estimated $180 million, meaning about 400,000 households will no longer receive aid. These cuts come on top of $1.6 billion in reductions since 2010.

10. Workplace safety: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has long suffered from a lack of funds, which means its staff is so stretched that many workplaces go without an inspection for 99 years. The fertilizer plant that exploded in West, Texas, for example, hadn’t had a visit from OSHA since 1985. That will get worse, as sequestration will cut the agency’s budget by $564.8 million, likely leading to 1,200 fewer workplace inspections.

11. Obamacare: Sequestration cuts a number of important programs in the Affordable Care Act: $13 million from the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program, or CO-OPs; $57 million from the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control program; $51 million from the Prevention and Public Health Fund; $27 million from the State Grants and Demonstrations program; and $44 million from the Affordable Insurance Exchange Grants program, or the insurance exchanges.

12. Child care: Child care costs can exceed rent payments or college tuition and waiting lists for getting assistance are already long. Yet sequestration will reduce funds even further, meaning that 30,000 children will lose subsidies for care. For example, Arizona will experience a $3 million cut to funding that will force 1,000 out of care.

The Federal Aviation Administration last week announced that it was closing 149 air traffic control towers at small regional airports across the country due to automatic budget cuts that went into effect on March 1. The FAA took the brunt of 60 percent of the cuts from the Dept. of Transportation, and though it originally proposed 189 closures, it narrowed it down to avoid some pain from the lost funding.

Still, the closures have one Texas Republican congressman fuming. Rep. Blake Farenthold (R) wrote a letter to FAA head Michael Huerta this week saying he was “deeply troubled” by the closure of airports that help the Texas economy, the Houston Chronicle reports:

“I am deeply troubled for your public statements and proposed actions regarding the effect of the sequester on smaller, local airports. These airports have long played a vital role in economies across the country,” Farenthold said.

There’s a small problem with Farenthold’s anger: he voted for the Budget Control Act of 2011, the law that instituted caps on federal spending and, eventually, the automatic budget cuts that caused the airport closures. Since then, he has repeatedly blamed Democrats for failing to replace it with smarter cuts, but House Republicans refused to negotiate with President Obama and Democrats over a replacement that included new revenues in addition to cuts.

What is more problematic, however, is that Farenthold has only now realized that budget cuts are harming programs that help the economy. In fact, Republican efforts to cut the budget have held back the country’s recovery from the Great Recession, and Republicans continue to demand more even though spending on domestic programs is now at lower levels than it was before the recession.

The automatic budget cuts set to take effect March 1 will likely mean significant flight delays for travelers across the country. Forced spending reductions at the Federal Aviation Administration could lead to closures of air traffic control towers, furloughs of federal workers, and slower maintenance and safety response times.

The Department of Transportation will lose $1 billion, $600 million of which will come from the FAA, due to the sequester, leading to the possible closure of more than 100 regional and municipal airports that will not be able to pay their air traffic controllers, the agency warned last week. Meanwhile, most of the FAA’s 47,000 workers will face one- or two-day furloughs each pay period, putting a burden on safety officials, maintenance staffs, and airports that could delay flights by 90 minutes or more, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said:

“[Safety] is our top priority and we will never allow [more than] the amount of air travel we can handle safely to take off and land, which means travelers should expect delays,” LaHood said. “Flights to major cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco and others could experience delays of up to 90 minutes during peak hours because we have fewer controllers on staff,” which would ripple across the country.

Cuts also mean preventive maintenance and quick repair of runway equipment might not be possible, leading to more delays, he said.

“And once airlines see the potential impact of these furloughs, we expect that they will change their schedules and cancel flights,” the outgoing transportation chief said. “So we are beginning today discussions with our unions to likely close more than 100 air traffic control towers at airports with fewer than 150,000 flight operations per year.”

Without its workers on the job, the FAA will likely be unable to manage the current volume of air travel, as the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly detailed in August, leading to delays that will make the airport yet another place where Americans will feel the effects of sequestration.

Airline manufacturer Boeing’s newest plane, the 787 Dreamliner, is grounded around the world due to concerns over the lithium battery on which it relies. On January 7, a battery caught fire inside a parked Dreamliner in Japan, raising concerns that similar problems may be prevalent in the new planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the airline industry’s regulator, relied heavily on data provided by Boeing showing that the lithium batteries “featured redundant safeguards that were essentially foolproof,” the Wall Street Journal reported this morning. And though the airline industry is safer today that it has ever been, the FAA is increasingly relying on airline manufacturers to regulate themselves because it has “neither the budget nor the expertise” to test battery systems and other aircraft features itself:

Such reliance on manufacturers in certifying new planes is the standard approach for the agency, which today oversees the safest airline fleet in history. But barely days after vouching for the jet’s safety, the FAA’s about-face is focusing renewed attention on how cutting-edge aircraft are brought into service. [...]

The aircraft-approval process has long been a give-and-take between manufacturer and regulator, with the two sides collaborating and sharing information. Compared with the industry, the FAA has neither the budget nor the expertise to do extensive testing on its own. Instead, it often designates company teams to do the bulk of the work, with FAA participation and oversight.

Lithium-ion batteries have never before been used in aircraft, but when Boeing developed its new system for use in the Dreamliner, it ultimately “had the lead in certifying the safety and reliability of the batteries,” the Journal reported. After 200,000 hours testing, the system received final approval from the FAA, which never re-evaluated its 2007 decision to approve the battery’s use. And so, last week, Boeing debuted an aircraft featuring never-before-used technology that it seemingly developed, certified, and regulated itself, with the FAA performing only in an “oversight” role.

The FAA isn’t alone. Allowing industries to self-regulate has become an increasingly common practice in an era of crunched budgets and shrinking staff sizes at enforcement agencies. The Department of Energy has considered outsourcing fracking regulations to the natural gas industry, even as concerns about the environmental implications of the practice continue to mount. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has tested food safety reforms that would shift much of the responsibility for regulating poultry to manufacturers. Trial runs of the program found far higher rates of defects in approved poultry products than there were in samples reviewed by government regulators.

In the financial industry, regulatory agencies can’t afford to fill their staffs or enforce regulations, a problem that played an extensive role in the collapse of the housing market. With less oversight and more responsibility, banks rubber-stamped mortgage applications and foreclosure documents, committing fraud, abusing homeowners, and bringing the American economy to the brink of collapse in the process. Lack of oversight and regulation also played an extensive role in interest rate-rigging and money laundering scandals at large banks.

Some responsibility for regulation will inevitably fall to private companies, no matter how well-funded, staffed, and trained regulatory agencies are. But the concerns that have emerged with the Dreamliner are yet another indication that our regulatory agencies need to be fully-funded, and that leaving too much of the regulatory responsibility to private companies is a recipe for disaster for consumers.