WASHINGTON • Sen. Roy Blunt said this afternoon he is "deeply troubled" by the FAA's announcement that automatic budget cuts will close 149 contract towers at airports around the country, including several in Missouri and southern Illinois.
Sen. Claire McCaskill said this week that it probably won't make a difference in the traffic flying in and out of those airports — with the possible exception of the airport at Branson.
In Missouri, the Columbia Regional Airport and the Branson Airport showed up this afternoon on the FAA list of airports with towers closing starting April 7.
In Illinois, the towers at St. Louis Regional Airport, the Southern Illinois Airport serving the Murphysboro/Carbondale area and the Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington-Normal were listed as slated for closing.
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The FAA said that towers that involve cost sharing would remain open at the Jefferson City Memorial Airport and the Joplin Regional Airport, as well as at the Williamson County Regional Airport in southern Illinois.
Blunt, R-Mo., said in a release this afternoon that he had "deep concerns" about the closings. Blunt took part in an unsuccessful effort by GOP senators this week to avert the closings.
He said that the toweres in question operated when the FAA was getting less money four years ago than the agency will receive now under sequestration.
"There’s no reason the Obama Administration shouldn’t be able to figure out a 2.5 percent spending cut without interrupting Americans’ lives and air travel to communities like Branson and Columbia," he said.
McCaskill, D-Mo., told reporters this week that there was little to be concerned about.
She said that with the possible exception of Southwest flights to Branson, none of the airports she had heard about would lose traffic or be without controls.
"It's not that air controllers are not going to be covering that area. It's just from where they're going to be covering it," she said, speaking on Wednesday
McCaskill aimed remarks at Blunt and other Republicans who seeking to change terms of several across-the-board sequester cuts on spending that took effect March 1.
"You can't have it both ways," she said. "You can't say 'I'm going to cut discretionary spending to 4 percent of our total revenue, but it's not going to touch anything in my state'. That just doesn't work. There's going to be some pain."
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, said that efforts are underway "to stop sequestration" with a combination of cuts and revenue increases — efforts that thus far have been fruitless.
Durbin said in a release that he'd been hearing from airport managers.
"I share their concern that these serious steps will increase delays, reduce capacity and potentially compromise the safety of the airspace in the areas surrounding these airports," he said.
Bill Lambrecht is Washington bureau chief for the Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com. He covers politics, Congress and Missourians and Illinoisans in Washington.
