Meet the Press: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

Interview

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Thanks for having me on.

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Well, President Biden and the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, reached a deal earlier this year. So the focus of the administration is to get the House Republicans to live up to a deal they already made. And by the way, that wasn't the easiest deal to accept. It included cuts to things I was hoping to do in transportation, just to take one example. But it's the deal that we have now. For some House Republicans to be propelling us toward a shutdown means, among other things, that air traffic control training would stop. It means that air traffic controllers, who would continue going to the towers to work, would not be getting paid. Think about how stressful of a job that is on the best of days. And now we'd be asking them to show up to work with the added stress of not getting a paycheck -- not to mention, the service members not getting paid, all of the other unacceptable things that would go along with a shutdown.

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Well, again, the president is focusing on trying to get the House to honor the deal they already made. The Senate is ready to go. The administration is ready to go.

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Well, of course. I -- and -- and the most frustrating thing, of course, is that the -- the president, the administration have a responsibility to make sure no matter what Congress does, that the country keeps on succeeding. And that's what we're doing. But we're doing it, and he's leading us in doing it with a focus on not allowing a shutdown to happen in the first place. And, by the way, the cuts that House Republicans are threatening the shutdown over would also cut into things--

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--like transportation.

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It can't be. We can't let it be. This is no way to run the government in the most powerful nation on earth.

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Look, I think this is President Biden being who he is, which is a deeply pro-worker president, you know, not only compared to the anti-union tendencies of the Trump administration, but compared to any other modern president. President Biden is proud to be the most unapologetically pro-worker, pro-union president we've had. And that's going to be on display, I think, when he's on those picket lines. Now, he and we want the auto companies, the auto sector to succeed as well and are pushing the parties to get to a win-win deal that does right by workers.

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What the president said is that when you have record profits in this industry, there ought to be record pay and record benefits going to the workers who are creating that value. That's only fair. That's only sensible. And by the way, it's in keeping with the great tradition of how the middle class was built in the first place. My home town, South Bend, Indiana, home of UAW Local 5, Local 9, our middle class was built on those good-paying jobs. The unions and the president want to make sure that those jobs are good-paying going into the future.

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Well, again, he supports them getting a record deal. He and the administration are--

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-- we're not at the table, right? We're not part of the negotiations. We're not doing the numbers. That's for the companies and the unions to do. But what the president is making clear is that he is leading an economy where people need to, as he says, where the economy needs to grow from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down. It's a stark contrast from the economic vision you saw in the last administration, or that you see now with congressional Republicans who are more interested in corporate tax cuts and are anti-union.

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Workers are smarter than that. And the UAW has made clear that they are not trying to pretend that we can trap Americans in the technologies of the past. Most people who are clear-headed about this recognize the transition to that new technology, that's already underway. It's happening with or without us. And, under the Trump administration, they allowed China to build an edge in that. We're making sure that that is a made in America EV revolution.

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Well, you're going to see an auto sector grow on American soil, where there will be more American jobs to be had. Yes, EVs are better vehicles, including in the sense that they have fewer moving parts, so they don't break down as often. They also represent a huge growth area for America to reclaim more of the sector. Remember, after a manufacturing recession under the last administration, we're seeing a manufacturing boom under this administration. This really can be a win-win-win. And to be clear, there's no going back. I mean, this technology is coming to the global auto industry with or without us. The question is will the American workers thrive.

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Well, what you saw was the administration, as always, responding as needed to conditions, being proactive where necessary--

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Look, the president did what needed to be done. And often that involves a rapid response, like the rapid response that this administration directed. But also what we see is a political dynamic where some people seem to prefer that the problem continue, rather than to do something to actually solve it. And I have to say, that kind of reminds me of what's going down in the -- going on in the funding fight, where some of the very same people who would line up to take a shot at the administration over something like air travel disruption, are also trying to disrupt us from training more air traffic controllers.

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Winning the election was the beginning, not the end, of President Biden's achievements. And since then, we have seen more jobs created than under any presidential term in American history. We've seen an infrastructure bill that so many other presidents and Congresses promised and failed to deliver. The achievements are being stacked one on top of another, and that work needs to continue in the administration. Obviously I can't talk about the campaign side in this capacity. But look, we've got a lot to be proud of. And I'm proud to serve under President Biden and Vice President Harris.

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