Reprieve for Essential Air Service program

The US House of Representatives has voted to keep the Essential Air Service program, which subsidizes flights to isolated towns, intact and has granted a new budget of $214 million. Rep. Tom McClintock, said “This is about the easiest choice the House could possibly make, to put an end to the so-called Essential Air Service that lavishly subsidizes some of the least-essential air services in the country…Rural life has both great advantages and disadvantages, and it is not the job of hardworking taxpayers who choose to live elsewhere to level out the differences.” The subsidized routes must average at least