House Approves Bill Seeking End to Flight Delays

Larry Downing/Reuters

The measure passed by the House on Friday is intended to end the furloughs of airport workers that caused airport delays.

WASHINGTON — President Obama and Congressional Democrats on Friday abandoned their once-firm stand that growing airport bottlenecks would be addressed only in a broader fix to across-the-board spending cuts, accepting bipartisan legislation that would bring the nation's air traffic control system back up to full strength.

With remarkable speed, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation to give the secretary of transportation enough financial flexibility to shift as much as $253 million to the air traffic control system, less than a week after the onset of politically problematic flight delays driven by across-the-board spending cuts. The money will be shifted from airport improvement funds, and none would come from additional revenues, once a key demand of Mr. Obama and the Democrats. The 361-to-41 vote came less than 24 hours after the Senate rushed the measure through.

Republicans claimed victory. "Consider that the Democrats' opening position was they would only replace the sequester with tax increases," Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in a memo to members before the vote. "By last night, Senate Democrats were adopting our targeted 'cut this, not that' approach. This victory is in large part a result of our standing together."

The Congressional action effectively undoes one of the thorniest results of "sequestration," the $85 billion in spending cuts that took effect March 1 and have rippled across the federal government. With the president's promised signature, Democrats will lose significant leverage they had hoped would force Republicans into a larger agreement since the flight delays were seen as the sort of inconvenience that could force a reversal of the cuts.

The action also brought charges that lawmakers known for gridlock could move only when affluent travelers like themselves felt the sting of Congress's indecision and that the struggles of lower-income Americans affected by the spending cuts were being ignored. House members who have cleared precious little legislation this year made swift work of the air travel bill minutes before flying out themselves for a weeklong break, a pile of cars stacked up behind the Capitol waiting to ferry them to Washington's airports.

"We're leaving the homeless behind," said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont. "We're leaving a lot of National Guard folks behind. We're leaving seniors who depend on Meals On Wheels in the dust. Children who rely on Head Start can teach themselves to read. That's basically what's happening."

The shifting of $253 million from the airport improvement program to air traffic operations in the Federal Aviation Administration should be enough to stop further furloughs and keep the air traffic control system operating at a normal pace through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

"This is a Band-Aid solution," said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, even as he said Mr. Obama would sign it. "It does not solve the bigger problem."

Republicans — and some Democrats — had been pushing for much of the month for a rescue of the air traffic control system. But lawmakers who wanted a separate budget rescue for the F.A.A. met resistance from some lawmakers who questioned why air travel was being rescued when children were being thrown out of early education programs, food safety inspections were being curtailed and checks to the long-term unemployed were shrinking.

With those cuts largely invisible to most Americans, some Democrats argued that mounting delays at airports might be the only pressure point left to force Republicans to negotiate a broader deal to reverse the cuts, with a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases.

That position held sway with Democrats into Thursday evening, when Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, cornered Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader.

"We made the pitch that this wasn't about elite Americans. This is about all Americans," Mr. Udall said, singling out hotel and restaurant workers, airport workers and others who would be affected by a sharp decline in air travel.

Opponents also feared that a rifle-shot rescue of the air traffic-control system would open the floodgates for other supplicants seeking relief from the cuts. That fear was realized almost the moment the bill cleared Congress. Cancer clinics, Head Start administrators, housing advocates and teachers all demanded that their programs be addressed next.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting.

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