Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
republican Sen ted cruz It threatened Monday to withhold funding to keep the federal government open after the end of January if reforms are not made to tighten rules on military flights and help prevent deadly accidents such as collisions between aircraft and aircraft. Army Washington DC. helicopter above, killing 67 people.
Cruz and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell held a news conference Monday with families of some of the victims and urged Congress to remove provisions from a massive defense bill that would free up military aircraft to return to operations without broadcasting their precise location as they were before the Jan. 29 crash.
It is unclear whether the Republican leadership will allow amendments to the defense bill as that would send the bill back to the House and delay troop pay increases and other key provisions. But if the defense bill as written now passes, Cruz said, he would block government funding until a bill introduced last summer to fix the problem passes.
Cruz said the defense bill provision “was rushed in at the last minute,” noting that it would have preempted actions taken by the President. donald trump and asked Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to make the airspace around DC safer.
“The special carve-out is what caused the January 29 crash that took the lives of 67 people,” Cruz said.
Before the crash, military helicopters routinely flew over crowded airspace around the nation’s capital without using a vital system called ADS-B to broadcast their locations. The Federal Aviation Administration began requiring all planes to do so in March.
National Transportation Safety Board Speaker Jennifer Homendy, senators, airlines and major transportation unions all drew sharp criticism last week when new helicopter security provisions in the defense bill came to light.
Cruz and Cantwell said they only learned the massive military bill would contain that language after it was finalized by congressional leaders last week. As soon as they realized that it included exemptions, they began to protest strongly.
Families of crash victims said the bill would weaken safety measures and set back aviation safety.
“Our families know the consequences of systemic failures, and we cannot accept a policy change that makes our skies less safe,” the families said in a statement.
The NTSB won’t release its final report on the cause of the crash until sometime next year, but investigators have already raised 85 near misses around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the crash and several major concerns about the helicopter route, which allowed the Black Hawks to fly dangerously close to planes landing on the airport’s secondary runway.
The bill proposed by Cruz and Cantwell would require all planes to broadcast their locations, which has broad support from the White House, the FAA, the NTSB and victims’ families.