Unintended Consequences

This past week the federal government staffing cuts hit the FAA. While air traffic controllers seem to be exempt from the cuts, the people that support the system were not. The people that keep the software and the hardware running, the people that maintain the facilities where air traffic controllers work, the people that inspect the airplanes that the public flies, the people that test and monitor the systems that make the US air space the envy of the world -- those people have had staffing reduced to dangerous levels and let go the people that were training to replace them.

Halts to hiring and training are not new to the FAA. Such moratoriums happened during my career as a controller. Although they were supposed to save money, they never really did. They just put advancement farther behind and expenses farther ahead.
And the FAA always maintained the standard line -- Safety was never compromised.

Bullshit!
Safety was always compromised. It took some pretty extraordinary work by those left holding the system together with duct tape and software patches to keep the system users alive from airport to airport and day to day. 

I am all for reducing the size of government and cutting unnecessary waste (Is any waste necessary?), but these cuts are removing vital parts of the system to find more money for the richest among us.
I wonder how many winning lottery tickets I need to move me into the class of people that will actually benefit from these cuts.
Damn.

John