From Thomas Oliphant's editorial in yesterday's Boston Globe, "Muscling government out of air safety":

[President Bush] could not prevail if the privatization issue were put to a specific vote in Congress. In fact it was put to a vote in the Senate two months ago as part of the process of reauthorizing the functions of the aviation-supervising Federal Aviation Administration. With 11 Republicans joining in, the Senate in a 56-41 vote specifically forbade any privatization. In the House, a ban of only marginally less sweeping nature was made part of the legislation it approved.

But when representatives of the two bodies met to iron out differences, the White House went to work to undo what each had already done. Promising a veto for reauthorization legislation that restricted his agenda, Bush insisted that the final version allow for-profit air traffic control to proceed in stages. Rubber-stamp Republicans on the conference committee then folded like cheap suits and the result was legislation that permitted what each house had forbidden.

Lest anyone think that serious legislating on an important public policy issue was occurring, consider the actions of the top Republican member of the House-Senate committee, Representative Don Young of Alaska, who also chairs the House Transportation Committee. Young went along with the White House ploy, but the resulting legislation magically exempted two traffic control facilities from privatization. Not surprisingly those two facilities are in Alaska, Young presumably being willing to inflict for-profit public safety on the rest of us but not so willing to inflict it on his own constituents.

The Republicans did what they could to disguise what had happened. Young's committee statement buried the privatization scheme in a blizzard of information about the overall bill. It was made to seem small, that no major steps could be taken until late 2007, that only traffic control towers already operated privately were exempt -- along with new ones and "certain other" functions. The administration chipped in with the observation that only "rural airports" were involved.

In fact, 2,000 of the system's 15,000 controllers would be affected, along with assorted certification and maintenance employees. The number of towers involved would increase to 71, including Van Nuys, Calif. (the eighth-busiest airport in the country), and 11 of the 50 busiest. The accurate way to summarize the overall traffic control situation is to note that after 2007 the entire system could be privatized.