Next gen affirmative 1ac advantage-Econ

A2: PPP CP

Privatization has empirically failed

Robert Poole Jr., Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow and Director of Transportation Policy at the Reason Foundation, April 2012 (“Annual Privatization Report 2011: Air Transportation,” http://reason.org/files/aviation_annual_privatization_report_2011.pdf)

There have been two major developments in U.S. airport screening in 2011, the year of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. One concerns the future of the program under which airports are allowed to outsource passenger and baggage screening to firms certified by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The other concerns an apparent shift by the TSA towards a more risk-based approach to aviation security, with the launch of a Trusted Traveler program. A. Passenger and Baggage Screening When Congress enacted the Aviation & Transportation Security Act (ATSA) in November 2001, it had to reconcile two very different approaches. The Senate bill called for complete “federalization” of airport screening, in which a new federal agency (the TSA) would take over all passenger and baggage screening at all air-carrier airports, using a new federal workforce of well-trained people. The House bill called for replacing the former system (in which the FAA required airlines to hire screening firms for each airport concourse) with a new system in which the airports would be responsible for screening, which they would do under federal supervision, either with a workforce of their own (meeting federal training and performance standards) or from security contractors that met federal training and performance standards. Because the White House had announced it would not veto a bill based on the Senate’s highly centralized approach, the final bill was mostly the Senate’s approach. In a concession to the House, it permitted five airports to opt out initially, as a pilot program. After 2004, all other airports in theory would be allowed to opt out. In the years since then, no airport that already had a large TSA screener workforce in place chose to “kick out” the TSA screeners—though all five original opt-out airports (including San Francisco and Kansas City) have chosen to remain with contract service. The only airports that have taken advantage of the post-2004 opt-out provision have been small airports—either ones just beginning to offer scheduled air service at the level that requires airport screening or a few where TSA had difficulty matching its screener workforce levels to large seasonal variations in passenger traffic.
Perm is key—empirically outsourcing from the perspective of the government avoids congress

Robert Poole Jr., Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow and Director of Transportation Policy at the Reason Foundation, April 2012 (“Annual Privatization Report 2011: Air Transportation,” http://reason.org/files/aviation_annual_privatization_report_2011.pdf)

A more recent example of outsourcing is the Flight Service Station program. This set of facilities that provide flight plan filing and weather briefing services to private pilots was technologically outdated and very costly to operate. In 2005 Lockheed Martin won a competitive contract to modernize and consolidate FSS facilities. Thanks to a significant investment in automation and displays, this labor-intensive and facility-intensive program has been reduced from 58 sites to just six (three hubs and three satellite facilities) and from around 2,000 people to just over 600. FAA’s monitoring reports find that the program is meeting or exceeding all 20 customer service performance metrics. The most recent example of service outsourcing concerns one of the key building blocks of the NextGen ATC modernization program. Called ADS-B, it’s a way of keeping track of aircraft locations using GPS position information, which is far more accurate than radar for this purpose. Rather than simply purchasing, installing and operating the hardware for the nationwide network of ADS-B ground stations, the ATO put out to bid the service of procuring, installing, operating and maintaining the entire network. The winning bidder was ITT, and the installation of the ground stations nationwide is proceeding on schedule. Finally, ATC governance reform seems to be going into reverse as of 2011. In fall 2010 the FAA commissioned Monitor Group to do an organizational review of the entire FAA. Perhaps because the ATO’s creation has never been fully accepted within some quarters of the FAA, the report picked up on differences within the organization and ended up recommending creation of “One FAA Culture.” It also identified areas of “duplication” between the ATO and the rest of FAA, and its number-one recommendation was to “optimize shared services”—which would strip the ATO of its own information technology, finance and acquisitions functions. That, in effect, would dismantle the ATO as the platform from which a self-supporting ANSP could be created, as envisioned by numerous commission and consulting reports, including two from the Clinton administration plus the Mineta Commission. Since the consolidation of functions that created the ATO was authorized by Congress, undoing it will also require congressional approval—which may or may not be forthcoming.

A2: PPP CP-Monopolization Turn

Air privatization is unstable and leads to monopolization

Elliot Sclar 2010, Professor, an economist and urban planner, is the Director of graduate programs in Urban Planning at Columbia, won the Louis Brownlow Award for the Best Book of 2002 from the National Academy of Public Administration and the 2001 Charles Levine Prize from the International Political Science Association, February 2003 (“Pitfalls of Air Traffic Control Privatization,” http://www.controladoresaereos.org/wp-content/uploads/pitfalls-of-atc-privatization.pdf)

Privatization advocates point to cases of air traffic control privatization in other countries to highlight the potential value of privatization for the United States (U.S.). However, an independent review of three prominent international privatizations, Australia, Canada, and Great Britain demonstrate the dangers of privatization and the inability of private air traffic controller (ATC) monopolies to effectively deliver positive results in any of the three criteria that prompt privatization consideration: reducing cost, increasing the speed of modernization, or stabilizing funding. Further, the case reviews demonstrate that privatized air traffic control systems tend to impose greater costs on users, are prone to technological failure as well as disruptive labor disputes, and privatizers ultimately rely on government backing, to costly effect. In Canada, the privatized system has led to massive increases in user fees for passengers, and dangerous understaffing in towers. In Australia, excessive demands on controllers have led to a series of strikes, while failures with new technologies led to actual radar blackouts and major traffic disruptions. In the United Kingdom, the newly privatized National Air Traffic System (NATS) has been forced to go to the government for financial bailouts valued to date at two thirds of the original sale price, while technological failures have led to multiple system shutdowns and operational irregularities. Evaluation of the nature of air traffic control provision suggests that privatization cannot address the efficiency concerns advanced by its advocates. ATC cannot be competitively bid. The profit making market based incentives for efficiency and economy that are supposed to motivate a private provider do not easily align with the government’s abiding interests in safety and security. Moreover, cross subsidy, which maintains geographic diversity in service provision, is not sustainable under the proposed user fee system. The labor intensive, and inherently monopolistic nature of air traffic control provision undermines effective private provision. Monopolistic, revenue-driven organizations, regardless of profit or not-for-profit status, have little incentive to keep fees at a minimum. “Efficiency” in a labor-intensive service necessarily consists of staff minimization strategies, which tend to be contrary to the safety principle that lies at the heart of ATC work. More importantly, as more and more private enterprises have access to the vital air traffic control information as a result of the increased use of contractors and subcontractors, the U.S. is more exposed to the potential threat of terrorist activities.
That causes massive inefficiencies that turn the case

Elliot Sclar 2010 Professor, an economist and urban planner, is the Director of graduate programs in Urban Planning at Columbia, won the Louis Brownlow Award for the Best Book of 2002 from the National Academy of Public Administration and the 2001 Charles Levine Prize from the International Political Science Association, February 2003 (“Pitfalls of Air Traffic Control Privatization,” http://www.controladoresaereos.org/wp-content/uploads/pitfalls-of-atc-privatization.pdf)

Any serious commitment to improve the performance of the ATC system must start with a clear analysis of the problem and then link proposals for change directly to the problem. Cost and modernization issues at the FAA are not problems of bureaucratic incompetence. Rather they are multidimensional problems with far more powerful proximate causes. Among other factors, the pure scale of the enterprise, unmanaged growth in air travel, lack of adequate institutional support, and restructuring of the airline industry impact air traffic control efficiency. The ability of the FAA to respond is certainly a consideration, but it is not the determining consideration. Even if, for the sake of argument, one were to conclude that public management was the critical issue, any solution must reflect full cognizance of the nature of air traffic control work as a delivered service and the way in which an organizational change such as privatization would impact that work over time. That has not been done in any of the studies the Project Team reviewed. Instead the studies simply imply that a restructuring of economic incentives such as landing fees paid to a new agency, bonuses, and other rewards for employees will serve to alter bureaucratic behavior and cause the agency to handle more air traffic, more efficiently, and at a lower cost. While that is one possible outcome, it is equally, if not more, plausible that the incentives will distort behavior so that safety and security are jeopardized in the name of efficiency, that user costs will skyrocket, that the government will be forced into a massive financial bailout due to the inability to fully transfer associative risk with an air traffic control privatization, that the cost of the FAA’s remaining security and safety responsibilities will swell as independent entities become responsible for implementation of safety standards, and that technological fixes will be implemented without adequate testing, bringing chaos to the air traffic control system.3 In general, privatization is a blunt instrument of organizational change. In many ways it is at variance with much of the general consensus in the management literature that effective organizational change is a process of continual improvement focused upon the actual work of service delivery. To make a case for privatization it is necessary to demonstrate that the problem is so extreme that incremental improvement is unworkable. Privatization proponents assert that to be the case, but they never identify the specific basis within the FAA for this conclusion. Typically, privatizations are aimed at improving efficiency by introducing competitive behavior to a marketplace. It is clear to all parties, however, that there is no potential for competition in the air traffic control market. Air traffic control is too infrastructure dependent, and far too vital to our national interest to set up multiple competitive systems. Services cannot be rebid at any level of frequency if we hope to maintain continuity in a knowledge-dependent industry. Privatization advocates would agree with this assessment of the inherent impossibility of inserting competition into the air traffic control market. However, they turn to general notions found in privatization theory that assert that, because private organizations can provide economic rewards to employees who further the profit or surplus generating potential of the organization, it will become more efficient in fulfilling its mission. The privatization literature also suggests that public agencies are entrenched and intractable to change. However there is also management literature that demonstrates that public agencies are as amenable to improvement as private ones as long as the problem is properly specified.

A2: PPP CP-Links to Net Benefit

National security hawks hate the CP

GSN, Government Security News, February 8, 2012 (“Senate homeland security leader lambastes security privatization measure in FAA bill,” http://www.gsnmagazine.com/node/25603)

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said in the hours before the bill’s passage, that while he supports the overall bill, the SPP measure is particularly troubling, because TSA has proven that privatized operations aren’t as cost-effective as TSA’s screening, weakens security and won’t eliminate the pat-downs, scanners and material restrictions that have angered the public and some in Congress. “At stake is TSA's management of the Screening Partnership Program (SPP), which allows a limited number of airports around the country to replace Transportation Security Officers (TSO) with private contractors to screen passengers and their baggage,” said Lieberman. “TSA has implemented this program at airports where, due to low traffic volume, full time, year-round federal staff is unnecessary. A handful of larger airports take part in the program so TSA can measure and assess its performance and cost effectiveness against the private contractors. It is telling that TSA's assessment after comparing the two systems is that it can secure airports more economically than private screeners can.” Lieberman called the measure’s backing by other House and Senate members “regrettable” and it “undermine (s) the TSA -- and therefore airport security itself - by advocating for the pre-9/11 system of screening by private contractors. My response to that is: how quickly we forget,” he said. “I know it is fashionable in some quarters to criticize TSA,” said Lieberman. “Understandably, people are unhappy with pat-downs, body scans, and invasions of privacy. But TSA establishes its policies for a reason. They are a direct response to real terrorist threats,” he said. The agency has evolved to suppress the evolution of terror threats, from shoe bombs, to liquid explosives, he said, castigating House and Senate members for wishful thinking. “They are real incidents and the reason that TSA makes so many demands on the flying public. And we should not delude ourselves or the American people into thinking that adopting a contract workforce will eliminate the need for body scanners, pat-downs or any other security procedure TSA determines is necessary to secure air travel; regardless of whether an U.S. airport uses federal screeners or private ones, the security procedures implemented are the same.” Lieberman said the provision lowers the bar for airports looking to implement private screeners. “Right now, airports must demonstrate that a private screening workforce would be more effective, secure, and efficient, than the TSA,” he said. “The standard tucked into this bill, however, ‘would only require airports to demonstrate that using private screeners would not compromise security or detrimentally affect the cost-efficiency or the effectiveness of screening.’”

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