admin
The men and women who keep our skies safe are being forced to choose between paying their bills and doing their duty, and that is a disgrace Washington should be ashamed of. Air traffic controllers are working long, mandatory shifts—often six days a week, 10 hours a day—without pay while staffing levels hover at dangerously low numbers, a situation the union and Transportation officials say is already producing delays and stress across major hubs.
Travelers are feeling it at Newark, Denver, Las Vegas and even small regional towers where sick calls have ticked up and flights have been slowed to protect safety when controllers are stretched thin. When essential workers start to miss paychecks, absenteeism spikes and the system strains; that’s not conjecture but what the FAA, union leaders, and multiple reporting outlets are already documenting as this shutdown drags on.
This isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a national-security-level staffing crisis that predates the current funding lapse. The controller corps is roughly 3,800 positions short of where it needs to be to run the National Airspace safely and efficiently, and training and modernization efforts get paused during shutdowns, making the problem worse the longer the impasse lasts.
We’ve been down this road before: during the 2018–2019 lapse, similar spikes in sick calls and morale breakdowns produced crippling delays and a political pressure point that ultimately helped force a resolution. Nobody wants chaos in the skies, and history shows how fast frustration among essential workers can become the deciding factor that ends a funding stalemate.
The union has done the right, if awkward, thing by telling members to keep working — job actions are illegal and risking safety or careers won’t help anyone — but the reality is that keeping America flying without paying those who make it possible is a moral and practical absurdity. Lawmakers who hide behind procedural games while air traffic controllers and TSA officers go unpaid are playing politics with public safety, and hardworking Americans will not forget who refused to do their jobs.
Conservatives should be unapologetic in defending both the rule of law and the men and women who enforce it: insist on immediate back pay for essential employees, push for emergency funding to keep the hiring and training pipeline moving, and force the swamp to stop weaponizing the budget process. This is common-sense governance — fund the mission, protect the lives that depend on it, and stop the Washington theatrics that leave families scrambling and the national airspace at risk.
If Congress won’t act, voters must. Support the controllers, hold the squeamish politicians accountable, and demand that our federal government prioritize safety and pay over posturing. The brave Americans watching over our skies shouldn’t be bargaining chips; they deserve pay, respect, and a government that actually governs.
