Slashdot Mirror
Trump's New Infrastructure Plan Calls For Selling Off Two Airports (politico.com)
The Trump administration has released an infrastructure plan on Monday that proposes that the federal government considers selling off Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. According to Trump's blueprint, the administration wants to allow federal agencies to divest assets if they "can demonstrate an increase in value from the sale would optimize the taxpayer value for federal assets." It also includes the George Washington and Baltimore Washington parkways, the Washington Aqueduct and the transmission assets of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bonneville Power Administration on the list for "potential divesture." Politico reports: State and local agencies or the private sector may be better at managing assets currently owned by the federal government, the administration argues, and federal agencies should be able to "identify appropriate conditions under which sales would be made." They should also "delineate how proceeds would be spent." Under the administration's proposal, federal agencies would have to complete an analysis demonstrating an "increase in value from divestiture." Though technically owned by the federal government, both airports are operated by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority under a long-term lease agreement. The 53-page infrastructure plan lays out a vision to turn $200 billion in federal money into $1.5 trillion for fixing America's infrastructure by leveraging local and state dollars and private investment. "The White House says its plan will create $1.5 trillion for repairing and upgrading America's infrastructure," reports CNNMoney. "Only $200 billion of that, however, would come from direct federal spending. The rest is supposed to come from state and local governments, which are expected to match any federal allocation by at least a four-to-one ratio. States have gradually assumed more of the responsibility for funding infrastructure in recent years, and the White House says it wants to accelerate that trend."
As for how the money would be split up, the plan says that half of the new federal money, $100 billion, "would be parceled out as incentives to local government entities," reports CNNMoney. "An additional $20 billion would go toward 'projects of national significance' that can 'lift the American spirit,'" while another $50 billion will be designated "for rural block grants, most of which will be given to states according to a formula based on the miles of rural roads and the rural population they have," reports CNNMoney. "The rest of the money would support other infrastructure-related undertakings..."
As for how the money would be split up, the plan says that half of the new federal money, $100 billion, "would be parceled out as incentives to local government entities," reports CNNMoney. "An additional $20 billion would go toward 'projects of national significance' that can 'lift the American spirit,'" while another $50 billion will be designated "for rural block grants, most of which will be given to states according to a formula based on the miles of rural roads and the rural population they have," reports CNNMoney. "The rest of the money would support other infrastructure-related undertakings..."
I can't wait for the "de-platforming" trolls to find out that "they own it, so you have to do what they say" becomes incredibly problematic in real world contexts.
The official home of Pepsi ... and the leader of the free world
https://www.newyorker.com/maga...
This is how you turn the first world into the third world
The private sector KNOWS how to run things. We just need a few user fees.
-Parking garage entrance fee
-Parking garage exit fee
-Airport entrance fee
-Airport exit fee
-Airport Security Fee
-Fee payment Fee
-Fee payment fee recovery fee
-Fee payment fee recovery fee surcharge
-Fee payment fee recovery fee surcharge levy
-Fee payment fee recovery fee surcharge levy premium
They should charge for WiFi bandwidth by the byte, say the same as a text message fee, but with a premium.
-Stuff at the airport is too cheap, as proof, even the poors can afford to fly. Poors should have to take the bus everywhere, or at least need a loan to fly.
-Passport fees should also increase.
I presume he already has a couple of friends lined up to buy them ?
In other words, government agencies are now expected to put a dollar value on their historic icons, landmark infrastructure, and carefully-controlled limited-development areas, and sell them to the highest bidders, then turn around and give that money to the federal government to cover tax cuts for the companies who just bought our society.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
While the document doesn't specifically mention projects that "lift the American spirit," we all know that there's a certain parade that a certain country also did that a certain someone thinks will lift everyone's spirits in just the right way. You know that's what he wants, and this is the perfect way to pay for it. I mean, you've got to fix the road first before you can have a parade, right?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Amazing how we can add trillions to the deficit, and then act like gifting federal assets to cronies in Washington as a "sale" will somehow save money.
his "Infrastructure Plan" is to give away vast amounts of infrastructure so the folks that helped elect him can profit from it (after the public paid to build it). Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. The frustrating thing is that it's going to take decades to undo the damage this crap causes. Hopefully enough opposition gets into Congress to stop him from selling off the interstate roads. I'm not looking forward to $20 in tolls just to get to work every morning, but I can guarantee you somebody is.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Instead, of selling critical infrastructure to businesses, make sure the bidding process to build & maintain those things is based on solid business foundations. There's too much crony-ism in the bidding process, too much bias toward existing contractors regardless of performance.
If Ayn Rand were here today, even she would say you were an idiot.
Democrats have been doing that too.
Go look at Jerry Brown, while he's fixed a few things that previous paid-for politicians fucked up, he's also been busy helping make real estate available for cronies/the highest bidder, including a few eminent domain jobs (This has been going on for years in Sacramento via the Mayor's office and other places as well.)
America is due for a top to bottom purge. And if the ballot boxes and voting consituents aren't working, there are other boxes available. Including the cell box if you can convince the DA, cops, and judges, all likely paid for by them, to lock them up.
There's a red hole in the budget caused by reducing corporate taxes, allowing companies to screw the government.
And it's really sore.
Go well
Trump could do anything. Especially run up bills on the joint's credit. And why not? Nobody's gonna pay for it anyway. And as soon as the deliveries are made in the front door, you move the stuff out the back and sell it at a discount. You take a two hundred dollar case of booze and you sell it for a hundred. It doesn't matter. It's all profit. And then finally, when there's nothing left, when you can't borrow another buck from the bank or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match.
Fuck you, pay me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In other words, Trump isn't doing a goddamned thing, is doing his standard trick of making other people spend their money and take the risk while he puts his name on it, and is going to transfer public assets into private assets. This is pretty much how he built all of his other failed ventures.
This is such a bullshit 'plan' it defies belief ... because Trump is a crook and thief who apparently can't do math.
But in the mean time he'll be sure people are dying in the streets because they have no healthcare, but his rich asshole friends all get tax breaks.
I swear, the economics trotted out by Republicans is a complete fantasy most of the time.
So his way of paying for it is by forcing the states to match him at least 4:1?
This works incredibly well. For example, the federal Department of Education doles out a minuscule fraction compared to state and local spending but every school district fights tooth and nail and adopts basically whatever testing procedures, etc, the feds dictate for those incremental funds.
You already pay most of these fees except for the facetious ones at the end plus others that you have not included like "airport improvement" despite the fact that airports almost never seem to improve no matter how much you pay.
Most of these fees are hidden by being included in your ticket price either directly as a fee you pay or as fees which the airline pays and so passes on indirectly (like landing fees) to you. Have a look at the list of fees on your next air ticket. Typical charges on mine are things like: Air Travellers Security Charge; Passenger Service Charge; Air Passenger Duty; Airport Improvement Fee etc. The exact names vary based on the countries you are flying to/from but they are always there and are becoming a considerable fraction of the cost of flying.
According to David Harsanyi at Reason, our "crumbling infrastructure" is a myth.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
There's a big difference between selling excess unused assets (e.g. closed military bases) and selling active assets (e.g. TVA). The former is just not letting buildings rot. The latter is potentially privatizing essential services.
The thing is, this is one of those ideas that sounds a lot better in theory than in practice. I mean, in theory, selling it to the various states that buy power from TVA might work. The problem is that you'd have no single legislative body that could control it, and getting several state legislatures to agree is even harder than getting Congress to agree. So in practice, that's not likely to work very well. And that's the only possible sale that wouldn't represent a high risk of causing the complete economic collapse of the entire South. After all, TVA's low-cost electricity is a major factor in keeping those states' manufacturing industries competitive with China, Mexico, etc.
The alternative — selling TVA to a private company — would be disastrous. If a conditions of sale was that TVA continued to be operated as a non-profit, nobody who could afford it would want it, because it would mean a lot of extra risk on the book for no financial benefit. And if they didn't make that one of the conditions, then... well, it takes a special kind of stupid to take a well-functioning nonprofit power company and sell it to a for-profit entity so that every single man, woman, and child in the southern United States can pay significantly more for the exact same electricity that they have now.
So proposing the privatization of TVA should raise more than a few eyebrows among anyone living in any of the states that it serves.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Doesn't the thief usually end up with the money after stealing it?
So who's getting the money... THAT'S your thief!
Divesture of surplus military bases from the WW2 and cold war eras has been going on for decades, spanning the tenure of presidents of various stripes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_Realignment_and_Closure/
This is a whole other kettle of fish.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Or the landlord will neglect all those facility updates and just squeeze all the money they can out of their investment, making sure to bust unions and reduce pay along the way.
Chicago went through this same privatization binge in the 1990s. It didn't go swimmingly.
Finding God in a Dog
It is the only way you are ever going to see Trump International Airport.
You act like this is new. How else did so many at the upper levels of Government become fabulously wealthy, on Government paychecks, if not for internal payoffs? Bill Clinton went from ~$700,000 to $100,000,000+ in 10 short years. Chellie Pingree went from $12,000 to $40,000,000 in just 5 years, and Nancy Pelosi went from under $1,000,000 to $200,000,000+ in 30 years. It seems that the normal modus operandi to this point has been to privatize the profits for those in "social service" roles, and privatize the losses - as the average private citizen has to pick up the losses via higher taxation.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Sydney's airport was sold to Maquarie bank and now has the dubious distinction of having the most expensive parking of any airport in the world!
They also financially engineered the transaction so they haven't spent on taxes in the history of the project.
Don't do it.
So with regards to the selling of federal assets: It may be that the private market will game the system better with the extra control they have over the most valuable assets... they'll let buildings run down even more and charge even higher fees because it's really expensive and time consuming to build another airport near Washington DC... and if you start, they'll wait until you're underway and then cut their pricing to bankrupt your project and then raise prices even higher afterwards.
Yeah, sell the assets once to get a lump sum now, pay from now to eternity "leasing" it back. We'll see how the state's and city's budgets will look like in 10 years for the ones that sold their legislative offices to private enterprise so they can lease them back...
> Comcast Ronald Regan Washington National Airport.
A couple of recent stadium naming deals have been for $400 million and $800 million. If Comcast wants to give us, the taxpayers, half a billion dollars for the right to add their name to the airport sign, that sounds like an easy win to me.
SO LEAVE BITCH. But you DO NOT have the right to sell national forests to the pencil corporation on your way out BITCH TRAITORS! Capiche? I'll see you at the bottom of the ocean first, Libertarian crackheads! ALL OF YOU.
You want freedom? GET OFF YOUR SASSY ASS AND FREELY GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS COUNTRY.
You want ZERO government? Get the fuck OUT and find a CAVE you stupid troglodyte son of a Kentucky Senator!
There's no fucking government in the VACUUM OF SPACE WHERE YOUR IDEOLOGY BELONGS!
NO MORE BULLSHIT WHINING. YOU HAVE YOUR OPTIONS. DEAL WITH IT SNOWFLAKE.
FUCK JOHN BIRCH. AYN RAND IS A WHORE IN HELL.
America was theorised on individualism, but largely built on government subsidy. The "frontier" would have stayed at the 13 colonies if it hadn't been for the Army, the federal postal system, acquisition of land granted for essentially free to new colonists, and lots of other federal government money.
When you institutionalize theft, thieves are going to seek power over the resulting institutions...
. is already a thing.
When asked, "How many soldiers do we have?" the military does not include contractors who have taken the jobs formerly filled by military personnel.
Think Blackwater, Snowden, Winner and recent "civilians" killed in Afghanistan.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. What proponents of privatization often fail to account for is that large infrastructure projects don't lend themselves well to free market competition.
Read up on all the controversies around the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Ontario... and get ready for owners of private infrastructure to pull that same crap hundreds of times over across hundreds of other bridges, roads, and waterways across America.
Want to build a competitor to DCA within reasonable distance of the Washington DC metro area? Good luck. In many places it's not just a question of land acquisition... there are many locations where local geography limits where airports can be built or where bridges can cross rivers. Look at the terrain around Pittsburgh... want to build another international airport there, maybe closer to the city? I'd like to see someone try.
I HATE planning roadtrips across Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma... not because of all the stereotypes about flyover country (I actually love the scenery), but because of all the damn toll roads. For each road, I have to figure out: do they take cash, are they toll by plate (with a hefty surcharge for being unregistered), or do they use any of a number of incompatible tolling systems? If I register my rental car's tags in one city will my registration be valid in another? And avoiding the tolls in places like Kansas just to cross the state means you have to go MILES out of your way on two lane roads. Is it reasonable to expect that someone will be able to raise enough money to build a competing toll road, parallel to an existing one? In contrast, I can drive anywhere in a dozen northeastern states and know that any toll road will take EZpass.
There's a big lake near my house that TVA sold off to a private company some years ago. Sure, the buyers spent money fixing up boat ramps and picnic areas... but then they decided to drain the lake for a year to do some maintenance on the dam. Now, if this were still government land it would be common sense to expect that you explore the lake bed at your own risk (people do that anyway when the lake is drawn down for the winter), but since the lake was now private property, the company used trespassing laws to enforce a complete closure of the entire lake and all adjacent land. And who did they use to enforce the closure? The local sheriff's department.
As an Australian that moved to the US a few years ago and does a lot of flying for work, I'm on the fence when it comes to airport privatisation proposals. One of the interesting differences between the US and Australia is that, despite the fact that the US is generally more in favour of private sector delivery of services (think healthcare etc.), it has overwhelmingly kept its airports publically owned. Most major airports in the US are publically owned, whereas I think every major Australian airport was privatised many years ago.
On the one hand Australian airports are wayyyy nicer than US airports. More modern and up to date, cleaner, more spacious, better and more facilities etc. Nicer places to be in by a long shot. US airports, especially some of the major ones (Newark and O'Hare spring to mind) are very overcrowded at peak times, straining at the seams and generally just more unpleasant places to be in (e.g. what's with those disgusting old seats and claustrophobically low ceilings in Concourses E/F at ORD?)
But why are they so much nicer? Because they charge a lot more and thus have a lot more money to pump into improvements. US airport parking fees, even in a major city, are a small fraction of what they are in Australia for instance. I could park at Chicago for a week for what it could cost for a few hours at SYD or MEL. Australian airports no doubt also charge the airlines more than their US counterparts too (landing fees etc.), which indirectly affects ticket prices etc.
So in terms of user experience, private airports seem nicer, but in terms of equity of accessibility to travel itself, publicly owned is the way to go. Prices go through the roof when airports are privatised, if Australia is anything to go by. Travel should not be only for the wealthy.
You tax the hell out of it and regulate it until they either sell it back or settle in for long term low profits. The question is what's gonna happen when the boomers die off and leave the millennials with nothing. Will the millennials have the political will to do stuff like that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
companies will run infrastructure way, way beyond it's intended life and to devil with the consequences.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The TVA doesn't fit in a "small government" model, and likely should have been privatized a long time ago. They actually run at a profit, which is a pretty good sign that they shouldn't be a government entity. Looking at their mix of power sources, it seems like they are also going to have some significant capital costs in the future that the government doesn't need to be on the hook for.
Hopefully, they can divest themselves of it in a logical way so that the benefits of what is in place are not completely lost. I favor separating generation, transmission, and distribution personally.
FUCK JOHN BIRCH.
We only hail the hero
from whom we got our name.
We're not sure what he did,
but he's our hero just the same.
For those who don't get the reference.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Putin made an undisclosed amount for him and his friends by selling off government assets -- he was many many times more wealthy than Trump before he even became president and it was all by stealing from the public.
Government corruption costs a % of everything but it has public input that at least has to get lip service. Private corruption is called profit and it's at least 20% to even bother with stuff on that scale. Public input also gets some lip service and often the difference in lack of change is the same; monopoly services however are pretty much always worse than public monopolies.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Having worked for MBAs you can't fool me...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
and they can toll the Dulles access road and get rid of odd rules for it.
You can help purchase the Groom Lake test facility from the US Air Force and own a historic piece of the "Will Smith slept here" hanger, not to mention Elvis's personal UFO. Our goal is to raise $11,000., $1000 of which will be the payment for the base and all assets. The rest will be used to commission a giant sign reading "President Trump is the bestest and mostest smartest ever in the history of ever" AND sponsor a tribute parade to the POTUS in downtown Pahrump. Can't lose.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The federal government would no longer own it, and therefore would only be in a position to regulate it, not manage it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
A "small government" model is just as fundamentally defective by design as a "big government" model. Certain things simply work much better when owned by government, and infrastructure like power lines, broadband connections, etc. are very clearly examples of that. Why? Because competition in wire providers simply does not work, has never worked, and can never work.
As for running a profit, that's good, because it will cover those significant capital costs you're worried about. What will happen if it gets privatized? I can pretty much guarantee that they'll give those profits to shareholders. And then, when they need huge amounts of money to improve power generation, they'll come crying to the government for a bailout. And, forgetting that the purpose of small government was to keep the public from being on the hook for those costs, the government will dole out whatever they need.
It's all about privatizing profits while socializing risks and costs, which is almost the exact opposite of what is best for the general public. California tried to privatize its electrical power. What did they get? Rolling blackouts, plus some of the most expensive power anywhere in the United States. And they want to do that do the South now? Screw that.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Are you talking about BUILDING a stadium? This is about *existing* facilities, and money for naming rights.
For example my local stadium in Dallas (actually Arlington) opened in 2009, with a sign saying "Cowboys Stadium". For years later, AT&T paid $400 million to change the sign to instead say "AT&T Stadium". That's $400 million in free money to use fixing potholes or whatever the city wants to do with it. What AT&T bought was the *sign* out front.
I don't watch the Cowboys, though. I only watch the Broncos, who play at Mile High Stadium. Officially it was renamed "Sports Authority Field at Mile High" or something, but *nobody* calls it that. That's just the name on the sign, a name not used anywhere but the sign. The sign is coming down in a weeks and a new one will go up after some other fool pays the city a few hundred million to put up a sign with their name on it. There was a bill in the state legislature saying it had to always be called "Mile High", though the sign, and official name, could be "That Mile High Stadium" or whatever. No need - we're always going to just call it Mile High Stadium, regardless of the sign.
That was supposed to say "Redhat Mile High Stadium". Not "That Mile High Stadium". Whatever.
For $10,000 I'll name my house âAMD Residence", and put their name on the front door.
The sale will be sold to a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump International...
You can push the lump under the rug all you want, but this money will have to come from somewhere. If the Feds cut taxes and expect the states to cover the shortfall, then state taxes will go up. You can't get something for nothing.
Why does your vile and false slander render her opinion irrelevant? She developed ideas into a philosophy and into literature, while you struggle to fabricate lies out of envy of people better than yourself.
They're going to sell off everything owned by the Federal government to pay for their excessive tax cuts and military spending?
What happens when they run out buildings to sell, do they start selling off the paintings and plates in the White House? Are we going to end up with a big "For Rent" sign on the Washington and Lincoln monuments?
Just thinking that $400 million is a tax write off, so more of redirected money. One city I know off, they bought both the naming rights and broadcast rights. The broadcast rights are a money maker rather then just advertising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Actually, no. You seem to have missed the words "Includes legal tender notes, gold and silver certificates, etc.". The debt on that page can increase when the government prints more money.
No, you have it backwards. Money via debt is how the US government PAYS the obligations and promises it is has to pay. Can't meet those liabilities (like pensions, medical care, etc) with tax revenues? Well, then spin up the printing press and print more of those dollars that are owed. Let all the suckers and savers eat cake because now those dollars you are saving/hoarding are worth a lot less. BTW, this is exactly how Zimbabwe and others get into trouble. They have debts so they print their way out of it and in the process, they destroy the "buying power" of their currency. This is well known and well understood economics. The US does this too but not on the scale of Zimbabwe
We have been witnessing this - in real time - for going on 30 years now. The difference is that the US dollar is a world reserve currency so it can handle some large increases in the money supply without causing too much negative effect (so far...). But that is not unlimited and if we continue to add debt to our country in order to pay our bills and promises, eventually those choices will come home to roost.
making sure to bust unions and reduce pay along the way.
Oddly enough, I'm looking at reworking the Federal labor laws, notably to rewrite 29 USC 164(b) so as to authorize union security clauses regardless of State and Local law. No closed shops, but they can require you to join the union after 30 days (this is already in the law). Currently, 29 USC 164(b) allows states to prohibit Union Security Clauses requiring full Union membership or the payment of core financial dues ("Agency Fee"), which weakens the power to collectively bargain by weakening the Union's capacity to finance itself in the pursuit of representing the worker (freeriders).
I've considered allowing States to pass laws about employers not being forced to fire or not admit someone unless they fail to pay core financial dues: you have to join the union if allowed, but you're exempt from that provision of the security clause if they refuse so long as you pay the required core financial dues. That means, yes, if they allow you to join, you have to pay full membership dues (this already excludes non-union-activity dues such as political activism funding: you can always opt out of those).
I call that a "Right to Work" law: you can be required to join the union and pay dues as a condition of employment, but the union can't enforce that provision so long as you pay dues and they deny membership. The moment they are ready to grant membership, you have to join the union or cease working for that employer. At no time can the Union deny employment to a dues-paying worker willing to become a member of the Union.
I'm also looking at allowing States to limit required union dues so long as the limit does not restrict regular required union dues to a proportion less than 2.5% of paychecks. That limit reflects 2 hours of a 40-hour work week, and less for part-time workers. This ensures dues are always affordable for the worker.
Neither of these provisions goes into Federal law. The provision authorizing State "Right to Work" legislation, replacing 29 USC 164(b), will obliterate union-weakening laws in 28 States and Guam, as well as a few weaker provisions such as seen in the state of Maryland. Instead, the States will be able to prohibit Unions from unilaterally excluding dues-paying employees willing to join the union from employment, so long as they continue paying dues. The States can also ensure those dues are not excessive, should they choose to.
This should reduce union-busting tactics and strengthen collective bargaining.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That's $400 million in free money to use fixing potholes or whatever the city wants to do with it.
The city only gets 5% of the naming rights (approximately 900K/year), despite fully owning the stadium. And while that that money is nothing to sneeze at, it is earmarked to pay down the debt taken on to build the stadium in the first place, and so is not "free money" and will not be used to fix potholes or anything else of direct benefit to the people of the Metroplex.
You're saying because it's a business expense, it reduces the federal tax the company pays on its profits by about $80 million?
If the company wouldn't otherwise spend that marketing / advertising money with TV ads or Facebook or whatever other marketing, that would be true. It would be $400 million for the owner of the stadium (typically the city), and $80 million less for the feds. So net $320 for the taxpayer.
If the company would otherwise do OTHER marketing, there is no tax impact. It's just $400 million to the city instead of $400 million to Facebook or Google.
Selling off infrastructure to balance the budget has so been done before, this is hardly news. Typically it is by Conservatives with the whole "Private is better" approach. One of the more recent examples was the 407 highway in Ontario. The Conservatives didn't sell it however, instead they did a 99 year lease... Totally different.
She lived out the last years of her life on SOCIALISTIC social security and Medicare.
She was a user, marrying then dumping to move to the US, arguing that greed is good, I've got mine, screw the rest of you.
If you fell that way, go buy a damn island and declare yourself a country of one.
Let me take this in reverse order.
What advantage is there to the public to sell off these public assets?
None, unless you believe that air travel into DC owned by private entities will increase its efficiency and definitely never be used for political means.
What if an airline bought them? Can they prevent other airlines from utilizing the airports? Can they deny other airlines' lobbyists access to Washington? Whoever your wealthy bogeyman is (Soros? Koch?), imagine that they have a monopoly on air travel to the seat of US Government. Now do you want the airports to be sold?
Why does the administration want to sell in the first place?
Assuming the most innocuous situation, if Trump can sell them to anyone, even somewhat underpriced, he can claim a "win" in up-front government cash flow to his constituency. That constituency may use the airports twice in their entire lives, if ever, thus mostly avoiding any direct effects brought about by for-profit management.
In addition, if I were a cynical man, I'd suggest that the buyer could be a crony or a soon-to-be crony. See, for instance, the Boris Yeltsin example.
and therefore would only be in a position to regulate it, not manage it.
The claim was that there would be nobody to control it. Regulate is control. The US Congress will not go away if TVA is sold to local companies. The US Congress does not manage TVA today, so talking about a lack of management tomorrow is silly.
Congress approves the people who manage it (as appointed by the President). That's a lot closer to direct control than merely being able to pass laws (which, almost by definition, cannot legally be created in such a way that they affect only one business and not all businesses of a particular type).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.