Another bid to close Murtha airport

Timothy McNulty | September 17, 2009

The WashPost's chief Jack Murtha watchdog Carol Leonnig has a story on another (probably failing) effort by Congressional Republicans to cut funding to the little-used Murtha airport:

A Republican Senator called on Congress Wednesday to stop the decades-long flow of federal funds to a little-used rural airport named after Congressman John P. Murtha as a textbook example of government waste. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said the John P. Murtha Airport in the congressman's hometown of Johnstown, Pa., rivaled the famous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska for the amount of federal dollars it had wasted, and offered an amendment to stop an annual $1.4 million subsidy for airport traffic there. The airport has received $200 million in federal funds in the last 15 years. Most of those funds were steered there by Murtha, including more than $25 million for stronger runways to handle heavy military planes, which don't fly there; $8 million for a radar system, which isn't used; and $800,000 in new stimulus funds to repave an alternate runway.

"We're not taking away the $200 million they've already gotten.... We're just saying enough is enough," DeMint said. "If we cannot cut the funding for this little airport in Pennsylvania, named after the congressman that helped get it $200 million ... if we cannot look at the facts in this particular case, and decide as a Congress to stop this, then there is nothing we can cut here, then there is no such thing as waste."

His amendment, scheduled for a vote on Thursday, has little chance of success, and a similar move was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 263-154 earlier this year. Sens. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey, both Pennsylvania Democrats, defended the airport, noting that 152 other airports in the country receive a similar passenger subsidy to protect air travel to remote areas.

Specter said the runway improvements in Johnstown were necessary to keep area military and National Guard in "a state of constant readiness" in case they had to move quickly during a wartime or domestic terrorist attack.

(h/t to GrassrootsPa)