Biden administration warns of risks to air and rail safety if government shuts down
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned that a shutdown could hurt efforts to address air and rail safety at a press conference Wednesday, September 27, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also said that a shutdown and proposed GOP cuts could affect efforts to fight the fentanyl epidemic, as well as disaster relief operations.
Republican demands to cut the federal budget could undermine progress that the Biden administration is making on beefing up rail inspections, improving passenger air service and catching drugs at the border, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned Wednesday.
Much of the federal government could shut down Sunday if Congress cannot reach a spending deal by then. That could potentially disrupt the training of new air traffic controllers, which could lead to further disruption to an airline industry that has struggled to handle a crush of passengers in the wake of the pandemic, Buttigieg said.
But the transportation secretary stressed that he is also worried about the demands that conservative members of the U.S. House of Representatives are making in order to avoid the shutdown.
Buttigieg lambasted proposed cuts that would come at a time when cities are grappling with a fentanyl crisis—overdoses from the drug are now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49—and when railroad safety has become a key concern for state and local governments ever since a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio.
“To absorb the 8% cut that they have proposed, we would have to totally freeze FAA hiring in operations and facilities. We’d be set back in modernizing systems like [a pilot notification] system that led to nationwide havoc with just a 90-minute national outage earlier this year,” Buttigieg said. “What’s especially galling is that we see some of the same elected officials who have responded even to weather delays by blaming the administration, now turning around and demanding that we cut resources for air traffic control.”
The proposed cuts would also impact railroad safety, an issue that lawmakers in both parties have zeroed in on since the February derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine. Congress has not yet passed legislation to impose stricter safety standards on freight carriers, but the Biden administration is working on rules that could accomplish many of the same objectives, Buttigieg noted.
“A Republican shutdown would stop our work on new safety rules,” he said, “all because some of the same people who rushed to get in front of the camera during the East Palestine derailment aftermath are now demanding extreme cuts to railroad safety inspections.”
“Their proposal would cut 4,000 safety inspections next year alone, meaning 11,000 miles of railroad track would not get inspected compared to the current levels,” Buttigieg added. “I don’t understand how anybody could claim to be serious about railroad safety and then turn around and defund our inspectors.”
The transportation secretary, who once served in the U.S. Navy Reserve, noted that 1.3 million active duty troops would have to work without pay while a shutdown lasted. So would air traffic controllers. The hold-up would hamper law enforcement, food safety and disaster relief operations, he said.
“Three hundred more pounds of fentanyl, 6,000 more pounds of methamphetamines and 50,000 more pounds of cocaine could be let into this country,” Buttigieg claimed.
The longer-term effects of the cuts the Republican holdouts want would translate into cuts to Meals on Wheels, veterans losing housing vouchers and cuts to education.
“There is no good time for a government shutdown, but this is a particularly bad time for a government shutdown,” he said. “The consequences would be disruptive and dangerous, and so would the long-term consequences of paying the ransom to avoid it in the form of savage cuts to safety, infrastructure and other priorities.”
Daniel C. Vock is a senior reporter for Route Fifty based in Washington, D.C.
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