Over the last few years, we have seen some pretty horrific accidents and near misses in the sky and at airports.
With Trump now in office, of course, Democrats are blaming everything on him and current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Not so fast, says Duffy, pointing the finger back to moves made by Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg when he was in that position.
Duffy was recently on Pod Force One with Miranda Devine, and he had all kinds of tasty morsels to tell the American people.
According to Duffy, when Buttigieg was at his post, he “lowered the standard from 85% to 80% to be best qualified … to get these young people into the academy.”
He further explained, “Well, what happened was, they had a substantial washout rate, 30%-plus because they couldn’t do the work.”
Buttigieg wanted to lower the washout rate, so he lowered the standards, which, of course, he denied, stating, “To be abundantly clear: we did not change the rigorous standard for becoming a certified air traffic controller. Those claiming otherwise are mistaken or lying. We did increase funding & training, and grew the ATC workforce after years of declining numbers, including under Trump.”
Duffy was rumored to have been one of the key Trump administration officials at odds with Elon Musk when he was running the Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk had reportedly called on Duffy to fire more workers, but the secretary refused to dismiss those in “safety-critical positions.”
He added, “Safety-critical positions are not going to be fired within the Department of Transportation. We can do things more efficiently … but we are not going to fire air controllers. And so we had a little back and forth, [but] we got along very well after that. I think the papers made it a bigger deal than it was.”
When all this was going down, I stated that I thought Musk’s approach was far too aggressive and that these decisions needed to lie with directors and secretaries, so I very much support Duffy on this.
A notable revelation that emerged during the change in administrations was just how outdated the air traffic control system had become, a problem that was immediately addressed by the Trump team.
Referencing a January mid-air collision near D.C., Duffy stated, “There were 85 near-misses in this airspace in the three years before this crash. So someone should have seen it in the last administration. They didn’t. Tragedy struck.”
The administration has since put forth a $31.5 billion upgrade package, of which more than 30% has already been approved by Congress.
We are going to get there, but it will take time. The infrastructure of this country has been ignored for so long, it will take more than one presidential term to get it right. If there is one area where we really just need to bite the bullet and write the check, this is it.
