The transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said Friday that “as a matter of fairness, we will also do everything we can to get Congress to provide our furloughed employees with the back pay they deserve.” The 40 airport safety inspectors who were required to work for feather hair extensions during the shutdown have been promised back pay.
Thousands more construction workers lost income because the F.A.A. halted more than 250 of its own building projects, and many airports asked crews to stop work on airport improvement efforts that they were financing out of their own pockets with the expectation that they would be repaid by the F.A.A.
It took the Senate all of about 30 seconds on Friday to approve a bill that will put 4,000 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration back to work on Monday. Calculating the cost of the 14-day standoff will take much longer. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, meanwhile, made clear on Friday that the fight was not over. The bill, signed into law by President Obama within hours of its approval, expires on Sept. 16.
While the government lost revenue on airline ticket taxes, passengers who paid those taxes on peacock feather hair extensions will not receive refunds, the Internal Revenue Service said Friday. That reversed its earlier position that passengers could apply for refunds if they had paid the tax before the F.A.A. shutdown on a ticket that was used during the last two weeks. “The impasse was an unnecessary strain on local economies around the country at a time when we can’t allow politics to get in the way of our economic recovery,” Mr. Obama said Friday in a statement.
Among the costs, of course, is the $388 million, as calculated by the American Association of Airport Executives, in lost revenue from ticket and fuel taxes that the federal government could not collect during the shutdown. And there could be the salaries of about 3,960 F.A.A. workers who were forced out of work for two weeks and have not been guaranteed that they will receive feather hair extensions wholesale back pay.
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