NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen praised the leaders of the House General Aviation Caucus on Tuesday for their continued support of “one of America’s greatest industries,” and repeated opposition to proposals that would be harmful to general aviation. “General aviation provides more than 1.2 million jobs–good manufacturing and service jobs–and also supports tens of thousands of American businesses,” he explained to a capacity crowd in a Capitol Hill hearing room. “General aviation serves the nation’s communities by providing vital air transportation, and also helps in times of need, by providing medical evacuations and responding to natural disasters.”
Bolen particularly thanked lawmakers in the GA Caucus for their steadfast opposition to repeated proposals to impose user fees on general aviation, most recently in President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2015 federal spending proposal issued in March.
“From the business aviation perspective, we have always maintained that anything a user fee can do, a fuel tax can do better and more efficiently,” Bolen said. “None of us likes paying taxes, and we don’t want to pay more than is necessary, but we would like the tax mechanism to be as efficient as possible. We think the general aviation fuel taxes are the single best way to generate revenue to support the aviation system.”