If an audience that heard speakers spend the day criticizing the Obama Administration were expecting Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to indicate that the administration does anything but dis the industry, they were disappointed. I perceived an audible thud from the lead balloon he left in his wake as the capstone speaker at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's 8th Aviation Summit yesterday.

Even so, I wondered if I were alone in not expecting much from the man who is tasked with elevating NextGen to the national priority that had repeatedly been called for at yesterday’s summit. Indeed, as he rose to speak, I swore I was going to be a good little girl and listen with an open mind. I was underwhelmed by him at his confirmation hearing and again at the FAA Forecast conference. Well, I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I just have to scream: IF WE ARE DEPENDING ON HIM FOR NEXTGEN, WE HAVEN’T GOT A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN HELL!

Did his speech writers even know he was speaking to an aviation audience? They must have, otherwise the words aviation, airport and NextGen would not have been strategically sprinkled throughout out the text he had a hard time reading. While trying to make us think DOT cared, they ended up making it clear they had dusted off an old speech; a template to be delivered to all audiences once the appropriate blanks are filled in with the right buzz words. Otherwise aviation would have been completely forgotten just as it has been the forgotten step child in the stimulus package, the president’s agenda and the budget. Related Story

Just as Congress passed the administration’s $3.4 trillion FY2010 budget yesterday, LaHood talked of Obama’s ambitious agenda and how the investment in transportation from the stimulus budget creates jobs in the process and how it concentrates on ready-to-go projects. Yeah, like high-speed rail..

“It is focused on all sorts of transportation projects to create jobs,” he said. “Of the $48 billion allocated $38 billion is now available and funding 2800 surface and aviation projects.” He noted that the money has been spread out to fund projects outside the mainstream such as $3 million to fix runways and provide fire/rescue equipment, both of which went to small airports in the south. He also pointed to the allocation of $175 million in the President’s budget for essential air service, noting it constituted record levels of spending for the program. “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is shining a spotlight on transportation as never before and everyone has gotten the message we need to invest more resources in transportation. This is not about letting some modes win and others lose.”

That last statement is particularly ironic since speaker after speaker yesterday noted the big fat goose egg aviation has been given an Obama Administration that has spent much of its first 100 days actually harming the aviation industry. Had LaHood attended, he would have heard American Airlines Senior Vice President Government Affairs Will Ris describe the administration’s “gift” to the industry.

“The anti-travel bias is very disturbing,” he said, adding that a lot of what the industry does in making its case is counterproductive. “A lot of our wounds are self inflicted. We scrap about funding things. We have heard that travel is evil and rewarding people with travel is evil. But what they don’t understand is that when a conference is cancelled it hurts the employees of airlines, hotels, restaurants and all sorts of workers that depend on it for their living. We have to push back on this rhetoric. Travel is not evil. Business aviation is not evil. Essentially this is about mobility. [The National Business Aircraft Association’s] members are some of biggest corporate customers and we all want them to be competitive in the global economy so they can buy another seat. We need to fight that.”

Former FAA Acting Administrator Bobby Sturgell recounted just one of the hundreds of examples the industry could cite. In talking about the benefits of high speed rail,” he said, “President Obama said ‘imagine whisking through towns at speeds of over 100 miles an hour and getting to your destination without taking off your shoes or long waits for luggage or on the tarmac. He talked about bypassing airports rather than focusing on the connectivity between modes. We need every mode and it is good to imagine high-speed rail but it is years, if not decades away. While this administration is very young, it has given a lot of signals on where things are headed.” Related Story

If he had attended yesterday's conference, LaHodd would have heard US Airways Chair Doug Parker say that one of the four greatest problems for the industry is harmful government policies. “Even though it has been deregulated for 30 years,” he said, “We have not completed the deregulation process. Our taxes are rivaled only by tobacco and the industry is treated as a vice by the government and it’s not getting any better. There are a number of initiatives that are extremely harmful – our energy policy and the cap-and-trade legislation that would not change our behavior because we have every incentive to reduce fuel burn and our carbon output. It will only raise our costs.”

While La Hood mentioned with pride the $1.8 billion in stimulus spending for airports, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Director of Aviation Bill DeCota, described what the industry thought of that. “All of that came from the trust fund so we weren’t given anything,” he said, alluding to the bailouts for the banking and auto industries. “For us that means we get $20 million in stimulus money. Investment in aviation has tremendous benefits. We are not asking for handouts from the government. In general we have been a pretty self sustaining business. Ultimately, it is the 859 million passengers who pay.” LaHood would also have learned from Deutsche Lufthansa AG Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Mayrhuber that, worldwide, airline passengers who get airborne every year is equal to 40 percent of the world’s population.

Air Transport Association President Jim May pointed out that at a time when the government is prioritizing on high-speed rail, some decades away, 150,000 new jobs could have been created for the immediate implementation of technology that is ready to go had the $4 billion requested by the industry made it into the stimulus package. “NowGen is a suite of technologies,” he said, “some in their formative stages but there are four to five ready to be put at the airport and in the airplane. If we start moving ahead we could reduce $41 billion worth of costs incurred with current ATC inefficiencies.”

Had he attended the summit, LaHood would have also heard that the delays in New York, one of our most intractable problems, cost $2.6 billion, $1.8 billion of which is borne by the passenger and $800 million by the airlines, according to DeCota, who noted that relatively small expenditures can yield a lot. “Aviation contributes $1.2 trillion to the economy [with a crippled system],” he said, putting the issue in perspective. “Some 5.4 percent of nation’s economy is due to aviation. That’s a huge impact for the expenditure of $22 billion from the government for NextGen.”

Sturgell agreed, adding that 28,000 airline  and 22,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost to the recession and the industry was in a worse position than after 9/11 because so much of what the industry needs depends on policies pursued by the federal government. “While $1 billion made it into the stimulus package, the FAA had twice that amount that it wasn’t allowed to spend because the lack of reauthorization and multiple continuing resolutions didn’t give it the authority to do so, even for those things associated with immediate needs like runway safety.”

But it was clear La Hood has little appreciation for such problems as he talked about the budget. “One of our top priorities will be NextGen,” he said. “The budget has $800 million for NextGen” as if that actually meant something to a $40 billion program. AOPA President Craig Fuller pointed out that the budget give FAA $17 billion per year for its entire agenda, not just NextGen.

And when it came to the Q&A, I got the distinct impression he hadn’t had time to read his briefing book on aviation issues because every response related to highways. He was there to trumpet Obama’s first 100 days so he’s had plenty of time. His only discussion of transportation trust funds was about the highway trust fund, saying it was inadequate for what needs to be done; which is also true of the aviation trust fund.

In response to a question about encouraging public/private partnerships to fund aviation, again he referenced the discussions he’s had for such things for highway projects. And when it came to the length of the reauthorization – two or four years – he stumbled around for a minute before saying he didn’t have a position on it but, um, “the longer we can budget for things the better it is for the industry and for opportunities to plan. It worked in the highway bill.” But it sounded as if he had decided on his “instant” position on the basis of longer must be better, not from any appreciation of the topic or what short budget cycles do to NextGen development.

So, it didn’t take long for my metaphorical, good-girl, frilly-pink dress to start itching and soon it had melted off to be replaced by my normal, look-at-all-pols-with-a-jaundiced-eye, tee-shirt-and-jeans persona. After all, I wasn’t the only one to wonder when he was appointed, about whether DOT has become a political backwater, somewhere to stick someone from the opposite party to show a bipartisan cabinet but who won’t cause any trouble, just as Bush did with Norm Mineta. But at least Mineta had written the briefing book which gave us confidence in him even if we lacked confidence in the Bush Administration. We had eight years of do-as-little-as-possible-for-transportation and judging from the major transportation initiatives rolled out so far, we are about to have another four of do as little as possible for aviation.

We spent the day hearing from one brilliant speaker after another about the challenges the industry faces, and, more importantly, the solutions. Then there was Ray LaHood, who when asked how to ensure that any carbon taxes the industry pays gets reinvested in infrastructure. “Well,” he said happily. “I’d have Congress put it in the bill. I’d meet with the energy and commerce staffs and see if I could get an audience with Carol Browner at the White House.” All good suggestions, I’m sure, but it sounded as if he was advising a constituent from the home district not the sophisticated audience gathered by the Chamber. It also sounded as if he didn’t have a clue as to how important the issue actually is.

On a question concerning the hassles surrounding security screening at airports, he bluntly said he has never discussed it and while he didn’t use these words, he was clearly telling the audience that it was because it was not his job.

La Hood was asked whether there were any plans to include aviation in the proposed infrastructure bank to pay for large infrastructure projects. After all, the questioner stated, all we’d heard from the administration was about was transit, rails, highways and bridges, including in the speech LaHood gave yesterday. Ris had mentioned the proposed back aarlier in the day as something on which the industry should jump, noting that Congress had left out aviation. “There is a little proposal in the president’s budget for a $5 billion infrastructure bank,” he said, adding he preferred getting funding from the general fund. “If we can’t get that, we should do what we do in business, finance it and pay it off over time because we are not going to be able to get NextGen through the regular process.”

LaHood’s response? “First I’ve heard about it.” He probably didn’t get the questioner’s pointed reference to the $13 billion high-speed rail initiative and how it is 100 percent funded from the general fund, but the rest of us did.

That question was especially delicious since it came right after one about how passengers are so heavily burdened by taxes and, if he was listening, he at least learned that it is taxed more heavily than cigarettes at 20-30%. His response to whether or not the administration might consider some relief to the poor beleaguered passenger, was to dodge the question with a perfect non-statement statement by reminding us reauthorization was going through Congress and “we should try and do what we can to make sure aviation is affordable and the industry is not burdened with the inability to allow airlines to make money and to deliver people around the country and the world with as much safety and efficiency as possible.”

That was the only time he used the word “we.” Nice little sound bite on a subject about which he is planning to do nothing. He must think that is not his job either, I thought. Indeed, he seemed to want to be rid of the subject noting that Proposed FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt was soon to be confirmed. Why did I get the distinct impression that what he was really saying was as soon as this guy on board, I can wash my hand of the whole thing.

Window dressing, I thought. That is what he is. Just window dressing; someone to haul out and make speeches. That would be okay if he weren’t overseeing one the most important projects in aviation history.

He would have benefited greatly by actually attending the full day’s summit which provided some of the best arguments yet for not only supporting the industry but doing so through the general fund which is now under threat of being reduced to about 10 percent.

He would have learned that all the budgetary stalling has put American competitiveness in air traffic management in jeopardy along with our ability to set the agenda as the world’s systems are harmonized. May declared many countries were already well ahead of us. “We have developing countries like Tibet with more advanced control systems than we do,” he said. “This is going to have a huge impact on our carriers within the framework of international competitiveness and that is the reason we need to be more aggressive."

LaHood’s clear ignorance is as much an indictment of the industry as it is of the Obama Administration and puts its inability to communicate its agenda into sharp relief. Indeed, as Ris indicated, most of the industry’s wounds are self inflicted, as he pointed to the warfare on funding. He likened the industry’s current efforts to the task of convincing Warren G. Harding to create a system of bonfires to guide air mail pilots back in the 1920s. Like Obama, Harding didn’t get the impact of aviation on the economy. “Compare aviation to rail and highway that has been given so much priority and you find we have a far more antiquated and older system,” he said. “We have to tell that story.”

But it is what he said next that was really important. “We have done a great disservice to ourselves by spending years bad mouthing the FAA,” he said. “Instead we should be telling Congress that they can get this done if Congress gives them the resources. We need to tell them that we can expedite NextGen and cut years off the current schedule and reduce the ultimate costs down to $11 to $12 billion.”

Congressional doubts about the FAA’s ability was expressed by frustrated members of the House Aviation Subcommittee at a recent hearing when they said the industry and the FAA have collectively failed to communicate. Related Story

But they seemed be getting their act together yesterday, especially about the benefits of accelerating NextGen. “We need to continue to do what we started doing earlier this year,” said May. "We need to be collectively singing from the same hymn book. We need to say GA is an important part of the economy. We need to promote ourselves and promote the fact that NowGen is ready for immediate investment and we are not going to let up on the administration, the house or the senate on giving us what we need.”

His assessment was the industry has failed to make the argument for the value of investing in NextGen now. “We need [Wall Street], mayors and senators to make an impression that this is worth it; that we need to adopt a strategy like Eisenhower did with the highway system and make it a national priority. That was based on a military need which had a wonderful civilian benefit but the technology is proven and we can benefit from it today if we can find the money for it.”

NBAA President Ed Bolen returned to the theme of gaining more from the general fund, a theme repeated during recent hearings. He noted that whenever the country has a national priority it is paid for from the general fund. “There is an erosion of the philosophy that we all benefit from aviation to the point where the policy is limiting general fund expenditures to the portion of costs associated with public us and military aircraft,” he said. “We have walked away from the general fund as something we can never get. We are beginning to articulate a crisper message that is resonating on Capitol Hill."

But it was Fuller who put that argument in perspective when he said that whenever we had a national priority, it was paid for by the general fund, just as NextGen should be.

So, had LaHood stuck around all day, he would have learned a lot. However, we learned that he loves his job and gets up every morning energized. We also learned he can give a bang up commercial for the Obama Administration. We learned that the secretary of transportation clearly does not think aviation is a part of his portfolio or is one of the nation’s pathways to returning to prosperity. Finally, we learned that aviation is not only absent from the administration’s agenda, it is not even near the radar.