FAA Partially Shut Down as Congress Takes Recess Some 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration employees and more than 70,000 contractors will likely be off the job until September after Congress quit for a month-long recess without funding the agency’s operations. FAA officials say the government will lose $1 billion in ticket taxes that cannot be collected and will incur increased costs to restart construction and other projects that are idle. FAA’s funding lapsed July 23 when the House and Senate could not agree on issues including union rights and subsidies for small airports. Associated General Contractors estimates 70,000 construction and related workers on more than 200 airport improvement projects had received stop-work orders. “With so few other construction segments doing well, halting an entire category of federally-funded construction—airport projects—is exceptionally devastating economically for this industry,” said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the trade group. Work on the Next Generation air traffic control system is halted. Forty airport safety inspectors are paying for travel out of their own pockets. “We can neither pay them nor can we compensate them for expenses,” FAA administrator Randy Babbitt said. “We are depending and living on their professionalism at this point.” Air traffic controllers and inspectors responsible for commercial aircraft remain on the job. They are paid out of separate accounts.