House Speaker Mike Johnson said Saturday that the Republican-controlled Congress will seek to provide funding to update air traffic control systems after flights were grounded nationwide.
“We were working on an aggressive legislative package to finish out the year strong … and this will be added to that,” the Louisiana lawmaker told Fox News. “Some of this equipment dates back to the ’80s, so it’s got to be updated.”
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy told reporters at a Friday night press conference that the Federal Aviation Administration issued a groundstop because outdated communications systems were not functioning properly.
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He demanded congressional funding to address the issue.
“It’s the old hardware that went down,” he said. “I want $50 billion.”
Congress provided $12.5 billion to modernize the FAA in the 2025 party-line budget legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat who could chair the House Budget Committee in the next Congress, also supported FAA funding in a Friday MS NOW interview.
“The fact that we have an FAA system that’s built on using floppy disks and the latest technology of 1989 — come on. We really do need to fix this. I certainly would be willing to vote for a major appropriation to do this overhaul,” he said.
“I’m glad that the crowd that was bragging about DOGE a year ago and making all sorts of deep cuts now actually wants to spend the resources.”
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