Fee diversion, unresolved by the AIA, is the cause of application backlog

In a post titled Patent Reform Fails to Halt Fee Diversion , Inventors Digest brings up the problems caused by fee diversion, in particularly asserting that fee diversion has caused the backlog of unexamined patent applications:

A Report of the National Academy of Public Administration estimates the current backlog of unexamined patent applications is in fact the direct result of fee diversion. The report estimates that if the USPTO had not experienced fee diversion, then the average application pendency time would have averaged slightly over 21 months as compared with the 30 months to 40 months that it currently takes to process a patent application.