Do they? Congress holds the purse strings, and that seems to be a BIG part of the issue.

There aren’t enough controllers (possibly budget). The ones who are are horribly overworked and it’s an ultra-high stress job.

Between that and pay they can’t recruit more to ease the burden. But the existing ones are burning out, making things worse.

Maybe better equipment could lessen the load, but that’s big money too.

Is there a simple rule change that can fix this other than limiting the number of flights? I doubt it.

Congress holds the purse strings but FAA makes the rules. And their rules are strict, limiting both populations. There is an ATC shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough ATC. There is a pilot shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough pilots. We need to either reduce our demand of pilots and airline travel, thus reducing the load on ATC, or train more controllers and pilots.

ATC has ridiculous age limits for onboarding and retiring staff, and there are a lot of things (aeromedical and otherwise) that can disqualify your from becoming a pilot. I think they can lighten up and still maintain aviation’s good safety record.

This is just another instance of the long set of Shittification and Shrinkflation happening everywhere, brought about by us holding our collective heads in the sand over the real rate of inflation. I'd bet it's a lot more than the official numbers.

I mean, it’s not?

There was inflation. And instead of increasing the budget the FAA’s budget was reduced. At a time when the U.S. Is seeing record air travel.

You don’t need conspuracies around real and fake inflation numbers to see how that doesn’t add up.

FAAs 3B shortfall in funding is not appearing in the extra cost of running a government. They're "shrinking" or rather "shittifying" the service that the government provides by not hiring enough personnel required.

>> Increasing taxes is basically the only way to ensure the system is funded sufficiently

Making no judgement either way, its worth pointing out that there are other ways.

Firstly one could prioritise this over some other budget item. Perhaps, for example, the military budget (currently 766b) or the TSA budget (currently 11.2b, up 1.6b over last year.)

Secondly, one could restore taxes that have recently been cut. While this is indeed a "short term increase" it can also be framed as "a restoration of tax income recently removed."

Removed incidentally by a govt that was already running a deficit.

Again i make no judgement. All budgeting (at a personal or govt level) is about setting spending priorities. It just appears that safe air travel in the US is not a priority right now.

Why are taxes paying for ATCs at all? The airports/airlines should be footing the entire bill

Because ATC has nothing to do with airports. The only people directly involved from the airports are GND/TWR. APP is not directly related and Centers cover large swaths of territory and just make sure planes fly safe.