December 20, 2011 - Last Friday, Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill that funds the government into 2012. Earlier in the week, Capt. Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l, sent a letter to Congress, urging legislators not to include in the bill any increase in the lending authority for the Export-Import Bank of the United States until a further debate could be held on the merits of aircraft financing to foreign carriers. ALPA was successful in keeping the bank’s lending increase authority out of the year-end omnibus as Moak requested.