As the nation prepares for Thanksgiving, which is traditionally one of the busiest holidays of the year, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has some advice for Republicans who are fond of complaining about the travel situation at this time of year: Don’t start whining because you haven’t done a damn thing to help alleviate the problem.
Speaking with reporters Monday, Buttigieg remarked:
“Bottom line is that, you know, in just two or three years, we’ve gone from people wondering whether the U.S. aviation sector as we knew it would survive to a mountain right now of record demand and record work going on to meet that demand.”
The secretary added:
“I need to stress that the progress I’ve discussed and the progress underway with regard to our aviation workforce, technology and infrastructure is not guaranteed. Every time extremist Republicans in Congress bring us to the brink of a government shutdown, it threatens to stop the momentum that we built around training and around protecting customer rights.”
“Every time they threaten to slash funding for DOT and short the FAA — and there’s a Republican proposal to do that on the cusp of reaching the House floor right now — it threatens to reverse all of this progress.”
Referencing a report from aviation experts that suggests the Federal Aviation Administration needs to hire more people and update its equipment, Buttigieg noted:
“So we’re doing everything we can with everything that we have. But if some voices in Congress got their way, we would have to freeze hiring new staff. We would be set back in modernizing computer systems, including the badly outdated system that forced the FAA to ground planes when there was an outage back in January. It would disrupt the progress that we’ve made. I’m certain that it would lead to more disruptions in air travel.”
In other words, until the Republicans get serious and fund the updates that need to be made, they should shut their mouths and endure whatever delays happen because they’re a big part of the problem.
