Pete Buttigieg’s tough month

.

Between Southwest Airlines’s employee scheduling system meltdown and the Federal Aviation Administration’s safety information software program glitch, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has had a challenging month.

The former mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate was poised for positive media exposure as President Joe Biden‘s administration implements the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill that would have positioned him well for future political aspirations. But the recent troubles lend credence to the contention that the most successful transportation secretaries are the ones who rarely make the news.

BIDEN GIRDS FOR CONGRESSIONAL GRIDLOCK AS GOP TAKES OVER HOUSE

Buttigieg has attracted bipartisan criticism for Wednesday’s FAA Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, system outage, which resulted in airplanes being grounded across the country for 90 minutes.

Scrutinizing Buttigieg’s response to last summer’s airline cancellations, the Southwest Airlines meltdown, and now the FAA malfunction, former Ohio Democratic state Sen. Nina Turner, for example, implored “neoliberals” to acknowledge the Transportation Department “is not performing well.”

“Being good at talking on Fox News isn’t a qualification to run the Department of Transportation,” the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporter tweeted.

Several Democratic strategists defended Buttigieg, adamant it has not been “a bad month” for the secretary. Buttigieg was also dinged this week after it was revealed he took a taxpayer-funded private jet to New York City in April so he could appear on a radio show and meet with the president of the American Civil Liberties Union. The secretary has taken roughly 18 private jet flights since the Senate confirmed him in February 2021.

One Democrat disagreed that “people on airplanes associated the FAA with the secretary of transportation directly.” Another insisted “partisan or self-interested political attempts to blame him for an FAA software glitch that was fixed after a few hours will resonate with voters or the general public.”

“Doesn’t pass the smell test as a political attack, and there’s a risk that people seem like they are playing partisan politics instead of looking for solutions to prevent it from happening again,” the strategist said.

“Similar with Southwest making bad business decisions that [led] to massive delays [and] cancellations,” the source added. “No one blames the secretary of transportation for that since they understand that’s not something he caused — but there is opportunity for him to show he is acting responsibly and forcing solutions to prevent it from happening again.”

But that has not stopped Republicans, including Republican National Committee staffers, from piling on, citing Buttigieg’s reaction to supply chain kinks and last month’s potential railroad worker strike as well.

“Biden shouldn’t have selected someone whose main ‘qualification’ was liking the board game Ticket to Ride,” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott said. “Buttigieg is a lesson for us all: Crisis follows incompetence, and Buttigieg and Biden are incompetent.”

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO), the top Republican on what is traditionally a bipartisan panel, was more measured in his critique of “the largest ground stop of our National Airspace System since 9/11.”

“While it appears at this time that the Notice to Air Missions — or NOTAM — system malfunction was not the result of a cybersecurity breach, it highlights a huge vulnerability in our air transportation system,” he wrote. “Just as Southwest’s widespread disruption just a few weeks ago was inexcusable, so too is the DOT’s and FAA’s failure to properly maintain and operate the air traffic control system.”

Graves additionally urged Biden to reconsider his renomination of Phil Washington for FAA administrator, with the Republican describing the CEO of Denver International Airport’s resume as “troubling.”

Buttigieg disclosed in his multiple media appearances that the FAA had experienced problems sending NOTAM messages overnight and that he had ordered an after-action report to identify the source of the errors and why the usual redundancies did not work.

“We’re going into a period where Congress will be looking at a periodic reauthorization of FAA legislation that typically sets what the next five years are going to be like for the agency,” he told MSNBC. “It is the right time for us to be stepping back and saying, ‘In terms of resources, funding, staff, authorities, systems, is everything set up for what we know is going to be a period of continued change?'”

The last FAA reauthorization bill, signed by former President Donald Trump, was for $90 billion. Ironically, the FAA was set to invest $5 billion in air traffic facilities through the bipartisan infrastructure law.

But Buttigieg downplayed the possibility of the federal government compensating travelers for the inconvenience because “we’re not for-profit companies selling tickets the way an airline is.”

“Our responsibility is to make sure that everybody is safe,” he said. “When there’s an issue on the government side of the house, where there’s an issue, we’re gonna own it, we’re gonna understand it, and we’re gonna make it very clear what’s needed, and we’re going to fix it.”

Buttigieg, who moved from Indiana to Michigan last summer with his husband, Chasten, has denied his relocation is connected with his desire to achieve higher office. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) announced last week she is retiring after more than two decades in the Senate.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“I’ve been honored to work with her and look forward to continuing to work with her during this Congress,” Buttigieg said at the time. “I am fully focused on serving the president in my role as secretary of transportation and not seeking any other job.”

Related Content

Related Content