by Ifeanyi Emmanuel

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said proposed budget cuts would result in the federal agency cutting jobs and freezing hiring for new air traffic controllers, moves that could result in chaos at airports during the busy summer travel season.

According to The Associated Press, FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen said in a report to Congress that the agency is on its way toward meeting the goal of adding 1,500 air traffic controllers by September, but the cuts would impact those plans.

In addition, Nolen revealed that proposed budget cuts would also slow down the FAA’s goals of modernizing technology, including upgrades to an alert system that failed in January and briefly grounded planes around the United States.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation to raise the debt ceiling and keep the government functioning, but added cuts to domestic spending and other caveats introduced by Republican lawmakers are likely to keep the bill from becoming law.

“Despite these efforts, the spending cuts recently passed by the House of Representatives would wreak havoc on summer air travel,” Nolen said.

Republicans are hoping the budget cuts force President Joe Biden to the table to negotiate and “accept deeper domestic cuts than he would prefer.”

Last week, a new report from a government watchdog suggests several top FAA officials overruled pleas from engineers to ground the Boeing 737 MAX planes after two deadly crashes.