Since the stroke of midnight on Friday night, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been shut down because Republicans in the House are demanding that airline employee's union rights be curtailed.
One side effect of the shut down is a loss of roughly $200 million dollars per week in revenue for the federal government because ticket taxes aren't being collected. Yet despite this temporary elimination of taxes, costs to consumers have remained the same. Imagine that.
By Saturday night, nearly all the major U.S. airlines had raised fares to offset taxes that expired the night before.
That means instead of passing along the savings, the airlines are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.
American, United, Continental, Delta, US Airways, Southwest, AirTran and JetBlue all raised fares, although details sometimes differed. Most of the increases were around 7.5 percent.
Just to reiterate: A federal ticket tax is currently not being charged to the airlines because the FAA is shut down, but the airlines have raised the cost of tickets to match the previous price which included federal taxes. So a "job-killing" big-government tax has been temporary eliminated, yet the cost to you, the consumer, remains the same.
Big Business does not always have your best interests in mind, America. Taxes or not. Regulations or not.