What would you expect if you spent more than $5,000 for an airline ticket? You might think you'd be on a first-class trip to Hong Kong or New Zealand or some other distant, exotic location, with flight attendants feeding you lavish meals and catering to your every wish.
But under a federal program that subsidizes air service to about 150 small airports around the country, $5,223 is the cost to taxpayers to subsidize just one airline passenger flying from little Ely, Nev. - on top of the ticket cost paid directly by the passenger!
In fact, $200 million in taxpayers' money goes to the so-called Essential Air Service program to underwrite the cost of flights to remote airports, and even to some airports that aren't particularly far from larger, more efficient airports.
To put tiny Ely's $5,223-per-passenger subsidy in perspective, consider the fact that in 2008, a total of only 414 people took flights from Ely. Some of the planes were empty except for their crews. Does that sound like "essential" air service?
Some Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives have proposed killing this absurdly wasteful program. But lawmakers who support the subsidy are struggling mightily to keep it intact, and it has survived previous attempts to cut off its funding.
Whether expensive and unconstitutional programs such as this one survive will be one test of whether Congress is serious about beginning to cut our crippling national debt.