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End the Essential Air Service (EAS)
1-Year Savings: $200 million
5-Year Savings: $700 million

The EAS was created in 1978 after airline deregulation in an effort to retain air service in smaller communities. Intended to sunset after a decade, the EAS is now in year 44 of operation. Today, it provides subsidies to 175 rural communities in 32 states and Puerto Rico. Most designated cities are subsidized for more than $100 per passenger. Over time, what was intended to be a temporary program has morphed into a funnel for subsidies to support largely empty flights that otherwise would never leave the ground.

According to a March 21, 2022 Forbes article, eligibility is largely based on those cities where service was provided in 1978: “As a result, tiny Ogdensburg, NY with 10,000 people and Massena, NY with 12,000 people get subsidies. Yet nearby Watertown, NY, with over 25,000 people, gets no subsidies today. People in Watertown must drive the just over one-hour trip to Syracuse, NY for their flights while the much smaller subsidized cities can board at their local airport on the taxpayer’s dime.” Centers of population have changed over time, but EAS eligibility has not. According to a September 19, 2009, Los Angeles Times article, EAS “spends as much as thousands per passenger in remote areas” and “provides service to areas with fewer than 30 passengers a day.” Among the most absurd recipients of EAS subsidies is an airport in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, tirelessly defended by the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), from which just 18 flights leave each week. Johnstown is only two hours east of Pittsburgh International Airport by car. Indeed, a 2015 study from West Virginia University found “strong evidence that subsidies are higher in districts having congressional representation on the House Transportation Committee.”

Written by TaxConnections Admin | Posted in Citizens Against Government Waste • TaxConnections

Citizens Against Government Waste: The Prime Cut Series (#7)

Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
1-Year Savings: $414 million
5-Year Savings: $2.1 billion

Created in 1965, the NEA and NEH are the perfect examples of the government dabbling in fields that should be left entirely to the private sector. More than 50 years later, all efforts to reign in NEA and NEH spending have been rebuffed because special interest groups and their political allies have long fought for every drop of funding.

For example, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) helped defeat H.R. 1, the full-year continuing resolution for FY 2011, which, among other spending reductions, defunded the NEA and the NEH. On March 8, 2011, Sen. Reid described the proposed termination in a Senate floor speech as “mean-spirited,” stating that, were it not for the NEH’s federal money, the Cowboy Poetry Festival and “the tens of thousands of people who come there every year, would not exist.” This earned Sen. Reid CAGW’s Porker of the Month in March 2011.

Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) identified dozens of absurd NEA and NEH expenditures in his 2016 “Wastebook: Porkemon Go,” like $206,000 for monkey puppet shows and $1.7 million for a Hologram Comedy Club. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) identified additional silly spending in his 2017 “Federal Fumbles,” like a $30,000 NEA grant for the production of Doggie Hamlet and $20,000 for an adult summer camp focusing on climate change art. The 2019 version of Sen. Lankford’s report disclosed a $50,400 NEH fellowship paid to a professor at Sonoma State University to examine “the ways Russia used its wine industry to befriend Europe during the Russian Empire and the Soviet eras.”

Written by TaxConnections Admin | Posted in Citizens Against Government Waste