President Barack Obama
on Wednesday sent to Congress a proposed fiscal year 2014 budget that includes
a new aviation system user fee and raises the minimum for the existing Aviation
Passenger Security Fee.
"As risk changes,
so too must the way in which we fund our aviation security efforts,"
according to the budget plan, noting that the passenger security fee, currently
limited to $2.50 per enplanement (with a maximum of $5 per one-way trip),
"recovers less than 30 percent of the Transportation Security
Administration's aviation security costs."
As such, Obama's
proposal would replace the existing per-enplanement fee "so that
passengers pay the fee only one time per one-way trip; remove the current
statutory fee limit and replace it with a statutory fee minimum of $5, with
annual incremental increases of 50 cents from 2015 to 2019, resulting in a fee
of $7.50 in 2019 and thereafter."
According to the budget
proposal, the change to the fee structure would "collect an estimated $9
billion in additional fee revenue over five years, and $25.9 billion over 10
years. Of this amount, $18 billion will go towards debt reduction."
The budget plan also
proposes "a $100 per-flight fee, payable to the Federal Aviation
Administration, by aviation operators who fly in controlled airspace." This
would impact both commercial and private aviation. The goal, according to the
budget, is "to reduce the deficit and more equitably share the cost of air
traffic services across the aviation user community." As proposed, the new
fee would generate about $7.3 billion during the next 10 years. "Total
charges collected from aviation users would finance roughly three-fourths of
airport investments and air traffic control system costs," according to
the budget proposal.
Overall, the proposed
budget for the Department of Transportation during fiscal 2014 is $4 billion,
about 5 percent higher than the enacted 2012 amount.
"Nearly $1
billion" would go to development of the Next Generation Air Transportation
System, an effort to improve air traffic control.
The plan also includes
$4.8 billion for the Transportation Security Administration "to sustain
critical investments in aviation security."