State of the Union: Interview With U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

Interview

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No, there isn't.

And I think it's very revealing that there's no evidence that this Web designer was ever even approached by anyone asking for a Web site for a same-sex wedding. Matter of fact, it appears this Web designer only went into the wedding business for the purpose of provoking a case like this.

And, in that sense, I think there's something in common between this Supreme Court ruling and what we're seeing happening in state legislatures across the country, which is kind of a solution looking for problem, in other words, sending these kinds of things to the courts and sending these kinds of things to state legislatures for the clear purpose of chipping away at the equality and the rights that have so recently been won in the LGBTQ+ community.

And when they're doing that, it's at the expense of so many other issues that Americans are asking for relief and support on, the kinds of economic issues that President Biden was emphasizing in his Bidenomics address about how we keep unemployment so low, how we continue lowering costs for American families.

The fact that this was relief from a situation that may have never happened in the first place tells you everything you need to know about this agenda to use every instrument of government, courts and legislatures, to claw back at these rights for people who are just trying to go about their lives and just trying to be treated equally by businesses and by the government.

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I'm going to choose my words carefully, partly because I'm appearing as secretary, so I can't talk about campaigns.

And I'm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders, and just get to a bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off?

And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve? We're focused as an administration how to get things done to make people better off. I spent my week traveling around the country to places that are benefiting from infrastructure funding.

We were in Appalachia in an Eastern Kentucky community that's been wiped out by floods repeatedly. And we're bringing them highway funding that's going to help them not only improve the road, but also improve the dam and protect them from floods in the future.

A few weeks ago, we were in North Dakota, where there's a railroad crossing that was a community headache for decades. And thanks to President Biden's bipartisan infrastructure funds, we finally have the resources to do something about it. And we're going to make that better and have it not be a problem holding back first responders.

These are the kinds of problems that most of us got into government, politics and public service in order to work on. And I just don't understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that he's going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America.

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Well, look, we're seeing extraordinarily low unemployment, some of the most job creation under any president ever.

We're seeing, by the way, with that, also unusually high rates of job satisfaction. We have seen inflation falling. We have seen manufacturing returning to the U.S.

And, obviously, a lot of effort and a lot of money goes into negativity to try to get people focusing on other things, like some of the things that we're talking about in the culture wars that certain figures are bringing to the fore again and again, I think because they don't want to talk about the economic work that they're doing.

And they certainly don't want to talk -- if you're -- we're talking about House and Senate Republicans, why they voted no on the infrastructure package, the majority of them, although we appreciate the Republicans who crossed over to work with us.

Most House and Senate Republicans and state legislative Republicans, they don't want to be dwelling on why they said no to $35-a-month caps on insulin or any of the other issues that are really affecting people.

The other thing I have noticed in the way these things get digested in the public and in the media is, when something is unambiguously good, it gets dramatically less attention.

That's part of why we have been hitting the road to highlight the really good work that's going on, work that's going on in terms of long-term infrastructure improvements, short-term successes too, like the work that Governor Shapiro led in Pennsylvania, with partnership from our department, to get I-95 back up and running in record time after it was taken out in a fiery and tragic crash.

These are the kinds of problem-solving that, frankly, there's some folks in Washington, for sure, who don't want to talk about that. They'd rather talk about other stuff. Our job is to make sure that Americans see the full picture. And that's exactly why you will continue to see us not only hard at work in our offices, but out on the road highlighting the actual problem solving and results that we're bringing to the American people.

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I'm less focused on how the CEO of United Airlines gets around and more focused on how millions of passengers can get around.

The good news is, on Friday, according to TSA numbers from the screening checkpoints, we saw the most air passengers not only since COVID, but, we think, ever, and we saw cancellation rates and delay rates below 3 percent, below 2 percent coming into today.

Things look like they have quickly returned to normal for the system, and United also appears to have recovered. Now, we're watching more severe -- potential for severe weather. That's what touched off all of these problems about a week ago. But you look at where we were a year ago, where, even on blue sky days, with no severe weather, there were really unacceptable levels of cancellations and delays.

We have come a long way. And if you are traveling this weekend, like I am, I certainly encourage you to go to flightrights.gov. We have put out a lot of information, including information about the enforceable customer service commitments that we have secured over the last year, so that you are better taken care of if an airline leaves you in the lurch.

And, of course, at the operational level, even as we're holding the airlines accountable on customer service, we're also partnering with them at the operational level to solve those tactical problems that can come up hour by hour when you have a thunderstorm, a staffing issue or anything else.

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Thank you. Good to be with you.

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