>A big part of the problem, aviation experts said, is that Congress has not given the F.A.A. enough money to do its many jobs properly, and the agency has sometimes been slow to make change even when it had enough resources. The agency’s budget was about $18.5 billion in 2022 — less than it was in 2004 after adjusting for inflation.
>“This is an agency that has been chronically and critically underfunded, not for years, but for decades,” said William J. McGee, a senior fellow for aviation at the American Economic Liberties Project, a research and advocacy group that has criticized consolidation in the airline business.
>The outage will surely figure prominently in hearings and debates in Congress because the F.A.A.’s most recent authorization, passed in 2018, expires this year. That gives lawmakers an opportunity to overhaul the agency, require changes and reset its funding.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/01/11/business/faa-flights-grounded#faa-flight-delays-outage