[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
DEPARTMENTS OF TRANSPORTATION, AND
HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND
RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2026
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HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
______________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DEPARTMENTS OF TRANSPORTATION, AND
HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas, Chairman
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina,
JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida Ranking Member
TONY GONZALES, Texas MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona NORMA J. TORRES, California
DAVE P. JOYCE, Ohio PETE AGUILAR, California
STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma, ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
Vice Chair
DALE W. STRONG, Alabama
NOTE: Under committee rules, Mr. Cole, as chairman of the full
committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full
committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.
Doug Disrud, Avery Pierson,
Andrew Giacini, and Nathan Silverstein
Subcommittee Staff
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PART 1
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National Transportation Safety Board..................... 1
Member Day............................................... 65
U.S. Department of Transportation........................ 107
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
61-854 WASHINGTON : 2026
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
----------
TOM COLE, Oklahoma, Chairman
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky,
Chairman Emeritus
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas
KEN CALVERT, California
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN,
Tennessee
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
DAVID G. VALADAO, California
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan
JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida
BEN CLINE, Virginia
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa
TONY GONZALES, Texas
JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia
STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona
CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina
MARK ALFORD, Missouri
NICK LaLOTA, New York
DALE W. STRONG, Alabama
CELESTE MALOY, Utah
RILEY M. MOORE, West Virginia
ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut,
Ranking Member
STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina
SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
GRACE MENG, New York
MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
PETE AGUILAR, California
LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
NORMA J. TORRES, California
ED CASE, Hawaii
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
JOSH HARDER, California
LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
SUSIE LEE, Nevada
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
MIKE LEVIN, California
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana
MARIE GLUESENKAMP PEREZ,
Washington
GLENN IVEY, Maryland
Susan Ross, Chief Clerk and Staff Director
(II)
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND
RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2026
----------
Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD
WITNESS
HON. JENNIFER HOMENDY, CHAIR, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD
Mr. Womack. The subcommittee will come to order. Want to
thank all of you for joining us at this first hearing of the
119th Congress for the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing
and Urban Development. It doesn't go unnoticed that today is
the 1-year anniversary of the collapse of the Key Bridge and we
will talk a little bit more about that subject in the course of
this hearing. Many other things have happened that are under
the jurisdiction of the NTSB that are also noteworthy and of
recent importance.
I want to recognize a couple of new faces on the dais this
year. I want to welcome Ms. Stephanie Bice, Vice Chair of the
subcommittee, from the great state of Oklahoma. And Alabama's
Dale Strong. He is yet to arrive. I would also note that Mr.
Jim Clyburn, my ranking member, and Chair Emeritus and Dean of
the House Mr. Hal Rogers are expected to join us for the
subcommittee today. Albeit when they last served on this
subcommittee together, we were solely tasked with the T part of
THUD.
Today, we welcome Chairwoman of the National Transportation
Safety Board Jennifer Homendy to the subcommittee. Ms. Homendy,
welcome. I want to thank you for appearing before us today and
for your service to the taxpaying public.
I want to start off by expressing on behalf of the entire
subcommittee our heartfelt condolences to the families affected
by the tragic American Airlines army helicopter collision back
on January 29th. This tragedy has been followed by several
other incidents, from crashes in Philadelphia and Nome, Alaska,
to the engine fire in Denver 2 weeks ago. Transportation safety
has been top of mind across the Nation as we look for answers
and aim to mitigate the chances of future such incidents.
Safety is a top priority for the subcommittee. In our work
to fund the Nation's transportation network, it is our duty to
ensure we provide appropriate levels of support to
transportation programs that ensure the safety of our skies,
roads, and railroads. It is also our duty on this subcommittee
to support the operations of the National Transportation Safety
Board, or NSTB. This critical independent safety watchdog helps
ensure our world-class transportation system is as safe as
possible, identifying the how and why of some of our most
tragic accidents and puzzling events in civil transportation.
We are proud on this subcommittee to provide the resources
necessary for Chair Homendy and her team to execute this
mission. Most recently, I was proud to secure an anomaly to the
FY 25 full-year continuing resolution to help provide Chair
Homendy with the necessary resources for her team to accomplish
their statutory mission. Be it the Key Bridge that we talked
about earlier, the East Palestine train derailment or the
aviation incidents that have occurred far too often in recent
years, Chair Homendy's team are some of the first on the scene.
In 2025, we secured a 3.6 percent increase for the NTSB
appropriation to $145 million. We know, Chair Homendy, that you
put these funds to good use. Under your leadership, the NTSB
has dramatically reduced the average age of open
investigations, getting reports out to the public faster.
With that, it would be appropriate to recognize when he
gets here the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman
from South Carolina, Mr. Clyburn. In the absence of that,
however, I am going to recognize the chairman of the full
committee of the House Appropriations Committee, my good friend
from the great state of Oklahoma, Tom Cole.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Chairman Womack, and
thank you when he arrives to Ranking Member Clyburn. It is
always good to be with my good friend, the ranking member of
the full committee. So happy to see you again. And Chair
Homendy, thank you very much for appearing before us today.
Our Nation's transportation systems are relied on by
Americans and passengers from across the globe. We not only
expect but demand that they reflect the gold standard and
safety. Yet recent accidents in our skies, waterways and
railways have raised serious concerns and questions. From the
midair collision at Reagan Washington National Airport which my
friend the chairman referred to, the Francis Scott Key Bridge
collision, these tragedies have brought devastating loss and
underscored the need to ensure these situations are never
repeated. The bottom line is when you get on a plane, drive
over a bridge or board a train, you shouldn't have to wonder if
you will make it to your destination safely.
The mission of Chair Homendy and her team at the National
Transportation Safety Board is essential to achieving that
objective. They investigate why an accident occurred and
identify measures to prevent it from happening again. They
don't speculate. They find the facts necessary to uphold the
highest standards of reliability and safety. It is for these
objectives of improving safety and saving lives that we have
prioritized increased resources for the NTSB in our FY 25 and
FY 24 funding measures.
During my time on this subcommittee, I secured an 8.2
percent increase to your funding, and I must say, you put it to
very good use. So you are an excellent steward of public money,
and I am very pleased that my friend the chairman built that
into 2025. Again, I greatly value our interactions and working
together, Chair Homendy, and I look forward to a continued
engagement.
This subcommittee, as it always has under both Democratic
and Republican stewardship, will continue to ensure safety is
an utmost priority in the funding decisions we make. Your
agency is a fulfillment of that priority. As we begin the FY
'26 appropriations process, I look forward to working with my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to responsibly fund this
critical safety mission and transportation infrastructure needs
of the country.
So thank you Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Cole.
And now it is my great honor and privilege to welcome the
ranking member of the full committee, the gentlelady from
Connecticut, Ms. DeLauro. The floor is yours.
Ms. DeLauro. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. It is great
to be with you here this morning and with the chairman, who is
a dear friend, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here at
this hearing. And I want to say a thank you to Chair Homendy.
Really, welcome to the committee. It is an important and very,
very important hearing today. It is a topic that impacts every
one of our districts safety and the security of our Nation's
transportation systems, and it does come in the wake of several
heartbreaking and deeply concerning tragedies in our Nation's
skies. In addition to that, what happened with the Key Bridge
as well as in our skies as well as involving American Carrier
at Toronto's Pearson--Pearson Airport.
Just let me just say a word. I have always so admired the
NTSB to the point of I view that I spend a lot of time in the
food safety area, and we have 15 agencies at the Federal level
that deal deal with our food safety; two primarily are the FDA
and the USDA. And wanting to have--I have for years and years
and years have wanted to consolidate and have one single food
safety agency. The example I always use is the NTSB because
when something happens, you go in, you get the facts, and then
you tell us what happened and you make your recommendations
instead of a whole bunch of agencies pointing fingers at one
another. So thank you really for the strength of this agency.
You are a small agency but with a tremendously important
mission; investigate, help Congress and the American people
understand how and why aviation and other transportation
disasters happen. The independence of the NTSB is critical to
its mission. We cannot tolerate any outside pressure, political
or otherwise, to influence the investigation of and the
reporting on transportation incidents. However, broadly
speaking, the current administration has shown limited respect
for the independence of the agencies. I would like to know how
we can continue to advocate the agency's independence in
support of the NTSB's fact-finding and reporting abilities to
Congress.
Unfortunately, after 17 years without a fatal accident
involving a U.S. carrier, 67 lives were lost in the Potomac
River earlier this year when a PSA Airlines flight operating
for American Eagle collided with a U.S. Army helicopter just
seconds before attempting to land at Washington's National
Airport. Two nights later, a MEDEVAC flight crashed into a
populated area of Philadelphia, taking the lives of all on
board and one person on the ground. And then in February, a
Cessna Caravan crashed in Alaska, leaving no survivors.
With recent reports of near-miss incidents and runway
incursions, the American people are deeply concerned about the
safety of our aviation system. While we need to assure the
American people that our commercial aviation system is the
safest and the most reliable air system in the world, I am
concerned with how the administration is approaching aviation
safety and the conflicts of interest involved in billionaire
Elon Musk pursuing the FAA to contract his own Starlink service
rather than engaging in a thorough safety-driven analysis.
Cuts and decisions at FAA are out of your jurisdiction and
beyond the purview of this hearing, but I do want to discuss
how this administration has responded to recent incidents.
NTSB'S fact-finding abilities are helped by long standing
policies and an industry culture that encourages flight crew
members and air traffic controllers to report any and all
incidents that take place. Rather than placing blame before we
know the facts, we need airspace operators to feel comfortable
compelled to self-report any incidents and diversions from
procedures that take place.
However, in the immediate aftermath of the Potomac crash,
we saw the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of
Defense blaming ``DEI'' as the reason for the crash before any
facts were known. We cannot afford to put the cart before the
horse when it comes to aviation safety. We cannot lay blame on
pilots or air traffic controllers or any other personnel until
after the NTSB uncovers and reports on the facts and the
preliminary report showed no role for DEI. It is follow the
facts. That is all we are asking. We cannot overstate the
critical importance your agency plays in keeping our families,
our colleagues and our fellow Americans safe. I know you have a
deep awareness of this, and I hope you will do whatever is
necessary to protect and defend NTSB's authorities and
prerogatives when it comes to transportation safety.
Finally, I would like to know how working with agencies
such as the Department of Transportation, who are operating
under a continuing resolution rather than a full-year funding
bill that addresses current and near-future needs, affects your
collaborative work, ongoing investigations, and the need to
close out thousands of transportation safety recommendations in
general.
I wish that we had been able to finish the job on the 2000
on Fiscal Year 2025 funding bills. We were on the brink of a
bipartisan agreement between the four corners of the
appropriations committees when the House majority decided to
upend the process and pursue a partisan bill that does not
fully meet the needs of any department or agency across the
government and that, instead, have handed a blank check, in my
view, to Elon Musk and to President Trump. I implore this
committee to get back on track to work towards bipartisan
consensus for this subcommittee's bill and the rest of the
appropriations bills for 2026.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Womack. I thank the gentlelady.
The ranking member of the subcommittee has arrived and has
informed me that he will waive his opening statement, and we
will go to questions here a little bit later on.
With that, Chair Homendy, we turn to you now for your
opening statement. Your full written statement will also be
included for the record. The Chair now recognizes you for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF HON. JENNIFER HOMENDY
Ms. Homendy. Thank you and good morning, Chairman Womack,
Ranking Member Clyburn, and members of the subcommittee. Thank
you for the opportunity to appear before you today to provide
an overview of the NTSB's activities.
I also want to recognize that it was a year ago today that
I got the call shortly after 1:29 a.m. about the collision of
the Dali with the Key Bridge and the fatally injured six
construction crew members on the bridge as well as two serious
injuries, one on the Dali and one on the bridge. And our
deepest condolences, I want to offer for the families and all
the loved ones for this tragic event, and our thoughts and
prayers continue to go out to you as we pursue this
investigation.
I want to start by thanking you for your incredible support
of the NTSB and our critical safety mission, including the
increase in our FY '25 funding to $145 million in the CR. The
funding you provided is necessary to support the staffing,
training, and technology we need to maintain our reputation
across the globe as the gold standard in accident
investigations. With your support we will be able to increase
our agency size to 450 onboards. It is currently 427, which I
can talk about. That would bring us closer to truly full
staffing of about 500 personnel. The fact is the NTSB has
hovered around 400 personnel over the past 3 decades. We need
to grow to improve performance, meet increasing demands, and
keep pace with emerging challenges.
As you know, the NTSB is an independent agency charged with
investigating and establishing the facts, circumstances, and
probable cause of accidents and serious incidents in the U.S.
in all modes of transportation. We also serve as the United
States accredited representative under international treaty and
lead the U.S.'s response to the investigation of hundreds of
accidents that occur overseas annually. The NTSB also delivers
a Family Assistance Program, which focuses on facilitating the
recovery and identification of fatally injured passengers
involved in the accidents we investigate and communicating with
families throughout the course of our investigations.
Our current investigative workload includes almost 1,250
accident--active investigations in all 50 states, including
Puerto Rico, including in many of your districts. In addition
to supporting more than 160 foreign investigations in over 50
countries. Throughout a typical year, we work on about 2,200
domestic and 450 foreign cases, and we expect the number of
cases annually to remain high and continue to increase in
complexity.
I want to take a few moments to provide updates on two of
our major investigations. Earlier this month we issued a
preliminary report and urgent safety recommendations to the FAA
in response to the midair collision at DCA. I want to commend
Secretary Duffy for his swift acceptance of these
recommendations. The Secretary and the acting administrator of
the FAA have been tremendous partners throughout the course of
this investigation and in many others, and I want to thank them
for their focus on safety.
Just last week, as part of our ongoing investigation of the
Dali collision with the Key Bridge, we issued urgent safety
recommendations to 30 owners of 68 bridges, which I also can
discuss. There is still much work to be done in both of these
investigations and we'll keep this committee updated on our
progress.
Some investigations understandably get more public
attention than others, but all of our investigations are
critical for improving transportation safety. We owe it to the
families of those involved, to the communities where accidents
occurred, and to the traveling public to find out what
happened, why it happened, to prevent it from happening again.
In 2024, we issued 132 new safety recommendations across
all modes of transportation, nearly 60 percent of which have
already been implemented voluntarily by the recommendation
recipients. This success rate demonstrates the value of our
safety recommendations and our work with stakeholders to
improve safety. And I think this is an important point that I
want to emphasize. The NTSB doesn't regulate. We don't want to.
The NTSB doesn't have enforcement authority. We don't want it.
Why? Because our singular focus is on saving lives and almost
all of our safety recommendations we issue are dependent on
voluntary action of the recipients. In other words, it is a
true partnership on safety.
Chairman Womack, you once said that we punch above our
weight. That is true. We run lean with a highly skilled, highly
valued workforce, many of whom are here today or watching
online. To them I say I could not be more proud of you. It is
an absolute honor, a privilege, to serve you and the American
people each and every day.
I want to thank you for having me, and I look forward to
answering your questions. And I will just note that Vice
Chairman Brown is here today as well.
[The information follows:]
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Mr. Womack. Fantastic. Well, we are delighted you are here
and grateful for the leadership that you give this organization
and the American people.
Having said that, recognizing that they have a lot of other
important things that they need to do, the ranking member and
myself are going to delay our questions so that we can go
straight to the overall chairman of the appropriations
committee and then the overall ranking member of the
appropriations committee, get their questions out of the way so
they can go about their business, and being respectful of their
time. And also understanding I know who I work for.
So with that said, I am going to recognize my good friend
again from Oklahoma, Mr. Cole.
The Chairman. You also know how to get our nose out of your
business as fast as you can, too. It is a pleasure to be back
here and couldn't be prouder of this committee on both sides of
the aisle, and particularly this chairman, but also your
agency. We really, really do appreciate you being there in
really difficult times and helping us understand what happened
and making sure it doesn't happen again.
Toward that end, and you touched on some of this in your
testimony, and I know we don't have a final report yet on the
Francis Scott Key Bridge incident, but I think you released
recently that there were a couple of electrical outages on the
Dali as it approached the bridge. And I am curious if you can
tell us at this point, number one, how did you detect that?
Just out of curiosity for myself. But is this common on vessels
like this, or was this a sign perhaps of negligence on the part
of the crew?
Ms. Homendy. That is part of our investigation that we are
still looking into. There were two electrical outages and then
there were electrical outages the day before. We determined
those were unrelated and announced that in our preliminary
report the day before it was due to planned maintenance. And
that is not something that they would undertake underway in
transit. But the electrical outages themselves, we are still
looking into. That is part of our investigation. I do want to
thank some of our partners at Hyundai for coming to help us. We
got down to the component, subcomponent level and were on the
Dali for about a month with our team. So that does continue.
And then we also have the bridge team focused on the bridge
itself and safety.
The Chairman. Is there anything about the bridge you can
tell us at this point?
Ms. Homendy. So for the bridge itself, while it passed
annual inspections, which really focus on the condition of the
bridge, what we did is AASHTO, the state highway transportation
officials, recommended in 1991 and again in 2009 that bridge
owners conduct a vulnerability assessment of their bridges to
determine if there is risk and to evaluate that risk and take
action if warranted. That did not occur for the Francis Scott
Key Bridge.
And so we had asked MDTA if they had done the vulnerability
assessment. They had not done it. And we looked for data for
that vulnerability assessment. They didn't have the data, so we
had to get the data over the course of it usually takes about a
year to do these vulnerability assessments. We did it in 6
months. We got a ton of data and then ran the calculations. And
what we found was that the bridge was almost 30 times greater
than the risk threshold that AASHTO sets for critical bridges.
And the Pier 17, which was struck by the Dali, was almost 15
times greater. So we recommended as a result of that that 30
bridge owners of 68 bridges conduct a vulnerability assessment
to determine risk and, if warranted, take immediate action.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for that. Let me turn
quickly. We have obviously had some incidents in our air travel
that are concerning to all of us. And you have made several
recommendations over the past decade, frankly, regarding the
Aviation Safety Management System, or SMS. While the FAA, I am
told, has implemented requirements for major airlines, we
continue to see delays and extending some of these requirements
to other aviation sectors, including manufacturers, maintenance
facilities, smaller operations. Which of your specific
recommendations do you think would be most important to apply
across the board to ensure the maximum safety for the flying
public?
Ms. Homendy. Well, for SMS in particular, which you stated,
we have recommendations on SMS across all modes of
transportation. But in aviation in particular, the focus has
been on commercial aviation, and the commercial airlines have
had SMS since 2015. But it has been a very piecemeal approach
across the aviation industry. For aviation manufacturers, there
was a final rule issued in May of 2024, and that doesn't go
into effect until 2027.
So Boeing, for example, is in the early stages of
implementing that, but it is in the very early stages. For
other sectors, Part 135, that is the charter and air taxis,
they began the process of SMS at FAA, but that hasn't been
finalized. Maintenance facilities, there is no requirement for
that. Part 91, which are the air tours, also do not have
requirements for safety management systems. It should be one
level of safety for passengers. That is what we believe, and
the piecemeal approach isn't working.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Cole.
Now the ranking member of the full committee, Ms. DeLauro.
Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me just
follow up a bit on the--the findings that the 30 owners of the
68 bridges and the potential risks there. And I will have more
questions for the USDOT about their work to address your key
findings.
I think it is critical to underline the important state-
federal partnerships at work here. That includes collaboration
by the board, USDOT and other Federal agencies and state
departments of transportation. What more can this committee do
to make sure that we are supporting the collaboration and
improving our oversight of these specific bridges? And there
are a number of members here who have, you know, key bridges.
Ms. Homendy. Yeah. For bridges itself--and a lot came out
since our preliminary report, including a report from Johns
Hopkins, and then we had a report on infrastructure showing
bridges got a C rating. It is not a matter of if. It is a
matter of when something happens. Vessel collisions happen all
the time with bridges. And we have to take proactive measures
to ensure safety whether it is the Federal Highways
Administration and partners with the bridge own.
In this case for hardening bridges, it could be anything
from dolphins, it could be Fender systems. After our
investigation of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa, Florida,
in 1980, they made substantial improvements to their bridges.
But that was also a vessel collision with a collapse, and 35
people died. There were a lot of lessons learned there. And as
a result of that investigation, a lot of improvements came. But
now these bridge owners need to ensure that they are safe.
Ms. DeLauro. I just would say I think it would be helpful
if we could understand or make recommendations as it has to do
with state Departments of Transportation. In other words, to
prevent rather than to react when something is as significant
as the loss of lives. You know, here are the 35, you know, and
so I think that that that focus would be--would be helpful.
Ms. Homendy. And a lot of our recommendations for these
bridge owners, a lot of them are either in some cases the
Federal Government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in other
cases, state Departments of Transportation.
Ms. DeLauro. Well, let me get--get to that question. I want
to hear about more about your experience with Federal agencies,
including obviously the U.S. Department of Transportation at
this time.
We have seen a termination of employees in the agencies.
For DOT, 790 employees terminated; 340 were from the FAA, 170
from Federal Highway Administration. More than 20 employees
terminated from DOT's Office of the Inspector General, which we
all know is a watchdog for waste, fraud, and abuse and who has
had a hand in transportation as well. Although the majority of
the investigations are conducted by the NTSB staff, you have to
call on the expertise of other Federal agencies to deal with
fact-finding efforts, making recommendations to agencies such
as DOT as well as the, as you referenced, the Army Corps of
Engineers and U.S. Coast Guard.
What are some of the tradeoffs that you see with these
agencies during times of uncertainty where field and regional
staffing become strained and operations may become overall
unpredictable? Are you concerned about our ability to close out
the thousands of transportation safety recommendations, as
there is, in my view, an indiscriminate approach to cutting the
Federal workforce?
Ms. Homendy. It would be difficult for me, as the chair of
the NTSB, to understand the positions of these individuals for
the Department of Transportation. We have 427 employees and I
will say that we didn't lose one probationary employee. We got
hiring exemptions from the administration. We got an exemption
from deferred resignation program. We got tremendous support,
and we continue to get support from the administration and as a
result of the hard work of our workforce. So we have not
experienced any of that, and I have maintained our workforce.
Ms. DeLauro. I would love to, because you know my time will
run out shortly, but want to understand what this means in
terms of your relationships with the other agencies with which
you need to do business, to get information, et cetera, where
you haven't had that experience of the--of the laying off of
employees other agencies have, which you directly relate to,
which may have an impact.
The other piece of this is whether or not, whether or not
you are prepared, you have an authorized level of funding, but
no one could foresee some of these efforts which have happened.
I would very much like to know what this means in terms of the
resources that NTSB needs in order to be able to address the
significant issues that have come your way. They weren't
planned, but they have come your way, and how you are going to
be able to deal with it. That would be important for us to
know.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, gentlelady from Connecticut.
Chair Homendy, you mentioned in your testimony that it is
your mission to basically advise, take data from serious
incidents, and then make recommendations, though you have no
authority to implement those. You have no authority to enforce
such a recommendation. So let's go back to the midair collision
that happened back on January 29th. It involved a helicopter,
and we had, up to that point, had a lot of helicopter traffic
up and down the Potomac and particularly on what we now know as
Route 4. But there had been recommendations, I am assuming,
made previously about the combination of helicopter traffic and
passenger jet service flying into and out of Reagan National
Airport. Had there been recommendations on helicopter traffic,
specifically with regard to Route 4, which is right across the
Potomac?
Ms. Homendy. We had not issued any recommendations
regarding Route 4, but certainly as part of this investigation,
that is one of our big focus.
Mr. Womack. So when you did your investigation, there were
some pretty alarming conclusions made. Perhaps most alarming to
me was the number of times, and I think this went back to like
2021; I can't remember, but 4 or 5 years, that the number of
times where the separation horizontally and the separation
vertically was very dangerous. As I understand it, in vertical
separation, less than 75 feet. So can you speak to the
conclusions that your team has come up with in researching
serious incidents prior to?
Ms. Homendy. Yes, and what we did is we looked at FAA
surveillance data and then voluntary reporting system data. So
that is reporting from pilots, reporting from air traffic
control. Those are voluntary reporting systems. And then there
is a mandatory reporting system for occurrences in air traffic
control. And what the data showed us is that there were 15,214
close proximity events from 2021 through 2024 at DCA between
helicopters and planes.
Mr. Womack. When Federal agencies respond to your
recommendations, across the spectrum of them, not just
particularly this case, what are the hesitancies involved,
because I am assuming they don't accept all the
recommendations, they don't implement all of the
recommendations. What are the various, and I will use the word
excuses, but what are the various reasons why many of the
things that are recommended by the NTSB never find their way
into certain protocols?
Ms. Homendy. Sometimes they will use costs.
Mr. Womack. Cost.
Ms. Homendy. They will say the cost is not justified by the
benefits. I will say one thing that we are looking at as part
of this investigation is ADS-B Out and ADS-B In. ADS-B Out is
required for commercial aircraft and has been since 2020, but
ADS-B In is not required. We have been on record since 2008
that ADS-B In should be mandated. But the FAA has used cost as
a reason not to mandate that.
What that would have done or could have done, and we will
look at that as part of this investigation, is the CRJ, the
plane, had ADS-B Out. It did not have ADS-B In. Though American
does have some Airbus planes that do have ADS-B In, that could
have provided them some information about the helicopter
positioning and flight path, but that information was not
available to them. We will look at how ADS-B In could have
helped as well as Out, including at air traffic control
throughout our investigation.
Mr. Womack. Of all of the data-driven conclusions that were
made, including the vertical and horizontal separation, what
was most alarming to you?
Ms. Homendy. I think what is most alarming to me, well, two
things, that you had reporting over years. In fact, there was
data going back to 2011 that traffic collision alerts were
going off monthly as a result of close proximity to
helicopters. And that is from 2011 through 2024. And so for me,
all this data is being collected by FAA from operators, from
others, from voluntary reporting systems. Where is that data
going to trend potential accidents and incidents in the future?
The next accident is in the data right now and what are we
doing to figure out what that is?
The other most alarming to me is how nobody figured out,
based on the glide slope going into Runway 33, that if you look
at the helicopter route, that there is only 75 feet of
separation between a plane coming in to Runway 33 max. That is
75 feet max. That route doesn't have lateral boundaries. And,
in fact, in this case, the helicopter was to the right of the
route. So, it is a very small margin for error.
Mr. Womack. Thank you.
Mr. Clyburn.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Chairman
Cole, Ranking Member DeLauro, and members of the committee.
Thank you all so much. And thank you very much. I want you to
know that last evening I submitted my opening statement that I
would hope that will be entered into the record. But there is
one particular----
Mr. Womack. Without objection.
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Mr. Clyburn [continuing]. Thing in the opening statement I
would like to emphasize.
But let me first join you in welcoming the chair here
today. I always stumble over pronouncing her name, Homendy.
Thank you so much. And Board Member Brown, it is good to see
you, my longtime friend and, as we say down south, homeboy.
Thank you so much for being here.
In fact, the part of my opening statement I want to
emphasize here just for a moment is this. My belief that safety
is non-negotiable. It is not a nice thing to have, but rather a
bare minimum as a necessity. And private profits should not be
at the expense of the public safety and security of our
transportation systems and the American people.
Now, I travel back and forth to South Carolina weekly and I
have become very familiar with your board in large part because
often I shared the seat with Chair Sumwalt, who chaired this
board through several administrations. And we talked a lot
about your duties and responsibilities. And particularly I am
concerned about this whole question of efficiency. And as the
chair will tell you, I am a stickler for effectiveness. That is
the ``E'' that I am particularly concerned with.
And so in view of the fact that in order for you to
effectively do your job, there must be interactions with other
agencies. We had a roundtable in here yesterday when all the
talk was about silos. You cannot operate in a silo. You might
take the home county of Mr. Brown, Beaufort, the Marine Air
Station is located on one side of a bridge, Parris Island is on
the other side of the bridge, the Naval Hospital is two or
three bridges. So, in order for you to do your job, you have
got to interact with several other agencies. And so when we
start talking about building efficiency and getting rid of
staff, it seems to me that you are going to be challenged or
could be challenged very significantly in carrying out your
duties and responsibilities.
So, if you could tell me just a little bit about staffing
in your agency. I know that you have not had to reduce anybody,
but have you made any projections as to what is going to be
required going forward, what it is going to cost for you to
interact with these other agencies, to step outside of your
comfort zone a little bit to add safety and security to your
job, results of your job? Have you done any of that in your
preparations for the future?
Ms. Homendy. Yes. So, right now, at the end of the year, we
had 440 employees, and I brought that up from high 300s when I
came in as chair. But since the end of the year, we have lost
some employees to retirement or they went to the private
sector, so we are down to 427. You have given us the ability to
go up to 450 and we are hiring. We have a hiring exemption
right now and 14 jobs currently that are posted on USAJobs to
bring in personnel.
The hiring exemption currently applies to our investigative
staff and maybe a couple of staff outside that, like training
specialists. But in order to bring in people, I still need the
support team at the NTSB. I can't lose them. I need people in
the CFO. I need people, a chief financial officer. I need
people in CIO for information technology. I need people who can
hire. I need people who are focused on the safety and health of
our employees. So, that support team, I don't have that hiring
exemption for them at this time, but it is something that I can
request.
Right now our focus is on the investigative staff because
we have a pretty big workload and we have hiring exemptions
there. But to get to full staffing, we really need to get to
between 485 and 500 personnel. That would get us to full
staffing, which is why we have requested for fiscal year 2026
more funding than we are currently authorized for. So, we are
authorized for 148. We are hoping for 156 or as close as we can
to it because we need to get to that higher level because we
have such a--we run lean. We have a short bench.
I mean, Clint Crookshanks is behind me. He is a structural
engineer. He was at the door plug 1282 investigation. He has
got one backup. We are looking to hire two more, but he has a
caseload of 20 other cases. So, first of all, I will say when
we hire, these are highly skilled professionals. These are
experts in their field. And so getting them is a challenge.
Retaining them is a challenge if they are burning out because
they are on duty 365 days a year and constantly missing family
engagements, holidays, you name it. We had a number of
investigators that spent Thanksgiving overseas.
So, our biggest risk right now, because our personnel makes
us the gold standard for accident investigations, our biggest
risk is not having that redundancy in our personnel. And that
is what we are looking to accomplish in growing.
Mr. Clyburn. My time has expired.
Mr. Womack. Thank you. Before I go to Sheriff Rutherford,
just anecdotally, life comes at your members, your staff, just
like life comes at all of us. And as it is in regard to your
structural gentleman behind you, he lost his mom right in the
middle of this whole aircraft investigation incident over the
Potomac and you don't just hire people like this gentleman off
the street. It does take some time to have their credentials.
Ms. Homendy. It also takes about 3 to 5 years in training
to get the new hires up to be able to take over a major
investigation. That is a significant investment on our part.
Mr. Womack. Sheriff Rutherford.
Mr. Rutherford. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Chairman Cole, and
Ranking Member DeLauro. And thank you, Chair Homendy, for being
here this morning. And I would be remiss if I didn't point out
and say hello to my former mayor, Alvin Brown. Great to see you
again, Mayor.
I want to go back to the report that you released in the
middle of the Francis Scott Key investigation because that to
me, is highly unusual for you all to do that, which means you
are thinking there is a real serious issue here that we need to
be paying attention to. And so when I look at this report, it
becomes even more important to me when I see one of my major
bridges, the Dames Point, the Napoleon Bonaparte Dames Point
Bridge, is on that report. And it is part of the I-295
infrastructure, hundreds of cars sit on that bridge every day,
twice a day. And I see under the classification it is critical
and essential. And so can you tell me, is that a description of
the bridge's function or is that a classification of the
bridge's danger?
Ms. Homendy. That is a classification that AASHTO, the
state highway transportation officials, give to bridges. In
their guide, in their standard, they designate bridges either
as critical essential, meaning it is a key corridor, it is a
key route.
Mr. Rutherford. So, it is more the use than the exposure.
Ms. Homendy. And then there is others that are typical.
That is correct.
Mr. Rutherford. But there is also a tremendous amount of
exposure on this bridge because it sits in between--it cuts
right through our JAXPORT operation, which is shipping coming
in and out all day, every day, and it literally splits the
port. So, I am really going to go back and get with FDOT after
your testimony and find out what we are doing in regards to
that, so I thank you for that.
Are there any critical next steps that you think we in
Congress can do to expedite the number of what, 68, 69 bridges
that haven't been evaluated yet?
Ms. Homendy. Just to encourage bridge owners and to work
with the Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. Coast
Guard and Army Corps of Engineers, who we also recommended to
help provide guidance and assistance to the states in order to
do their vulnerability assessments. We are not saying these are
bridges that are at risk of collapse if there is a vessel
collision. What we are saying is to figure it out, look and see
if it is at risk, do those mathematical calculations, and if
you determine there is, then you have that information where
you can take proactive action before something terrible occurs.
Mr. Rutherford. Let me ask, as a former first responder
myself, I have worked closely with your team on several severe
incidents that occurred in our jurisdiction. And sometimes it
was fits and starts. It depended who showed up, how smoothly
everything went. Is there any type of training that we could
support for NTSB to work with some state and local first
responders on how we can prepare scenes for you before you show
up, those sorts of things that we can be a force multiplier for
you before your investigators do show up?
Ms. Homendy. Well, Erik Grosof, who is our chief of special
operations, is going to be really happy you asked that question
because he, in particular, he runs our Response Operations
Center, and his entire focus is reaching out to law enforcement
and firefighters to educate them on what the NTSB's process is
and how they can be helpful. My dream would be or my goal would
be to give him additional personnel, four or five people, so
that he can split up the country, and they could be very
focused in regions on helping train first responders to be able
to work with them on the initial stages of an accident. We do
that now. I actually speak at a course at the FBI Training
Center in Quantico that is focused on law enforcement officers
in hopes of developing that relationship before something
tragic occurs.
Mr. Rutherford. Very good. Also----
Ms. Homendy. The four or five people would be, we estimate,
with training, about $200,000 per employee because of travel
and everything else. That is not how much they make. So, it is
a small investment with a big payoff. We appreciate that.
Mr. Rutherford. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I assume my time
is up. I yield back. But I will tell you, I think that is
something that we really need to look at. Talk about bang for
your buck. Before the NTSB even gets there, we can be working
for them. And so I would appreciate a look.
Mr. Womack. Good point. Thank you, Sheriff.
Mrs. Watson Coleman.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you
very much for the work that you all do.
You had indicated that there had been 1,500 near collisions
near the airspace around the Reagan Airport. Is that for the
last couple of years? Did I hear that right?
Ms. Homendy. 15,214 close proximity events. That doesn't
mean that they were near collisions, but close proximity events
where the vertical and lateral separation was too small of a
margin.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Yeah.
Mr. Womack. That was dating back to '21?
Ms. Homendy. '21 to 2024.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Right. Did your organization make
observations about how to improve those particular threats of
safety?
Ms. Homendy. We just issued urgent recommendations to the
FAA, which they did swiftly adopt, to prohibit helicopter
traffic while planes are landing or departing on Runway 1-5 and
Runway 3-3, and to determine an alternative route that could be
in use while aircraft are coming in on that runway.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. May I ask, when were those
recommendations made? Was that after this particular collision?
Ms. Homendy. That was on March 11th. We issued urgent
safety recommendations as a result of our investigation.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. So, that is after the collision?
Ms. Homendy. Yes.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Even though this has been a problem,
this sort of proximity issue has been a problem since at least
2021 that we have been tracking. Is that right?
Ms. Homendy. We were not tracking that as part of our
investigation. We got that data from FAA----
Mrs. Watson Coleman. After the fact.
Ms. Homendy [continuing]. As part of our investigation, and
that is what we were able to begin basing our urgent safety
recommendations on.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you. Total out of the box
question. My understanding is that there is a concept called
single pilot operations and that there are European countries
that are considering this. This results in reducing crew
operations during cruise. From a safety perspective, do you
have a position on this?
Ms. Homendy. We have not issued a recommendation on two
pilots. However, in the Austin near miss investigation, we had
a finding that said the pilots in the FedEx plane, which were
two, it was the two pilots and the fact that there were two
pilots that really saved the day that day and prevented a
collision and----
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Yeah.
Ms. Homendy [continuing]. Potential fatalities.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. So, some of us who are like being told
all the time flying is the safest way of traveling, we are
scared right now actually.
One last question that I want to understand. The President
of the United States made a really very poor, unsubstantiated,
lack of evidence comment about this particular collision at
Reagan, and he said that it was related to DEI, diversity,
equity, and inclusion. I know that is crazy, but did you find
anything in the investigation thus far that would support that
notion that this accident happened because of diversity,
equity, and inclusion?
Ms. Homendy. I was in the Oval Office that morning and met
with the President and the Vice President and Secretary Hegseth
and Secretary Duffy and the FAA administrator, and I did go to
the press briefing. The President held a moment of silence. He
talked about the focus on safety for the investigation. He
talked about having a report quickly.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. I am sorry, ma'am, because my time has
expired. I just need you to answer that particular aspect of my
question. Was there a legitimate reason for the President to
associate the tragedy that took place with diversity, equity,
and inclusion, which means that we weren't holding pilots to be
all white, straight males?
Voice. Yes or no?
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Yes or no is the answer. Did you find
anything?
Ms. Homendy. I can't speak for the President, and we
haven't finished our investigation.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Okay. Well, I do hope that when you
finish your investigation that----
Voice. Preliminary report. There was a preliminary.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Well, okay. Did your preliminary
report include anything of that ilk?
Ms. Homendy. We still have to evaluate all training and
qualifications documents.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Ma'am, let me just tell you this is
not the time to allow these misstatements to be made and to be
unaccounted for because it negatively impacts both what the
general public thinks and is concerned about, but it also
impacts the people who are trying to do their jobs. And there
is nothing that we have found that diversity, equity, and
inclusion has created negatively in people doing their job. On
the contrary, loyalty and sycophants seems to be the order of
the day and it is definitely negatively impacting this Federal
Government doing its job.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I do yield back.
Mr. Womack. I try to be very generous in how I preside, but
it is time to move on.
Mrs. Bice.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Chair
Homendy, for being with us this morning.
I first want to start out, you mentioned that you had
issued a urgent safety recommendation to close Route 4 on March
the 11th. There was a previous recommendation to close Route 4
through the end of March as I understand it. How long is this
urgent safety recommendation going to be in place?
Ms. Homendy. So, the Route 4 closure was actually FAA's
decision. That is something that Secretary Duffy did
voluntarily to address safety once this collision occurred.
That was going to be in place until March 31st, and he was
waiting to get our preliminary report to see what we came up.
So, we were in close communications and, as a result of that,
we did identify some serious safety issues and issue that
urgent safety recommendation to close that.
Mrs. Bice. And do you know, is that in effect in perpetuity
or what timeframe will that be in effect?
Ms. Homendy. Secretary Duffy has adopted the
recommendations. And my understanding is right now it is
permanent, but certainly it is up to them if they want to look
for an alternative route.
Mrs. Bice. Great. I had the great pleasure of visiting with
you and your staff, and I was so incredibly impressed with the
job that you and your team are doing, and particularly Clint,
your investigative lead there, who is really phenomenal and
such a wealth of knowledge. And I think that leads me to maybe
a follow-up line of questioning as it relates to employees and
staffing.
The people that work at your organization have such
incredible experience. It takes time. I believe Clint is a
structural engineer by trade, if I remember correctly. And so
taking that knowledge and being able to utilize it to examine
these accidents and figure out how to keep the public safe is
time-consuming. You talked already a little bit about staffing
issues. Tell me, what is your plan to try to hire more of these
folks with this specialized background and keep them in your
organization?
This is a very stressful job. It is time-consuming, as you
mentioned, with families, but they are seeing a lot of really,
I know, terrible things. And so what are you going to do to be
able to not only recruit folks to join your organization, but
to keep them?
Ms. Homendy. Well, we do a lot of outreach. We work with
different parties. So, part of our investigative process and
how we work collaboratively on safety is our party process. And
what that is, is anyone that can provide technical expertise in
an investigation becomes a party to the investigation to help
us develop the facts. Part of that working relationship, a lot
of people find that they want to come to the NTSB. We are a
great workforce. We are a great place to work. We want to keep
them. We also want to prevent burnout as well, which I think is
a real concern.
My ideal would be able to have a situation where Clint or
Sean, who runs our recorders division, or Sarah, who is part of
the family assistance team, can take time off to be with their
families and not be in rotation and have a backup, some
redundancy there, so others can come in, so that we can keep
them at the NTSB.
Mrs. Bice. Is there a request from Congress that will allow
you to be able to do that? Is it just additional funding or are
there other things that we can do to be helpful in that way?
Ms. Homendy. What would be helpful, 70 percent of our
budget is our workforce. And so a lot of agencies need billions
of dollars. What I need for fiscal year 2026 is between $150
and $156 million. $156 million is what I asked for. Million,
not billion. M, not a B, M. And that will help us get towards
that full staffing level that helps keep our workforce that is
highly skilled.
They could go anywhere and make millions of dollars. Don't
do it, but they could. And that is what we lose. I mean,
frankly, during telework, we were losing a bunch of employees
to other agencies that had more flexible telework programs. Now
people want to come to us. So, I think that speaks very highly
of our workforce, but we do need funding.
Mrs. Bice. And one last quick question before my time
expires. You mentioned there is currently over 1,000 open
recommendations that you all have made as a result of your
investigations. Can you tell us how the NTSB coordinates with
DOT and other agencies on these recommendations?
You said you don't have enforcement authority, nor do you
want it, regulatory oversight. But tell us how you make sure
that these recommendations are actually being adopted.
Ms. Homendy. So, we have a safety recommendations team.
Actually, most of our recommendations don't go to Federal
agencies. Most of them are to the entities that may be involved
with our investigations or, say, a local fire department or
state responders. There might be state police. So, we issue
recommendations to many different entities. And throughout the
investigation, our biggest hope is we don't issue a safety
recommendation that they improve safety through the
investigation. But we do have an entire team focused on
implementing our safety recommendations. And they meet
quarterly with, say, the Federal agencies to figure out how
they are meeting them.
One thing people don't realize is just because we issue a
safety recommendation doesn't mean you are stuck with that
safety recommendation. We are open to an alternative. PHMSA,
the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration in
DOT, is an expert at this. They come back and say we can't do
this because we are not going to be able to implement it this
way. How about we do it this way? And then we reconsider the
recommendation and say, great, that is an alternative that will
meet the intent of that recommendation.
So, we actually encourage, when we talk about cost, we
encourage agencies and others to come back to us with some
alternative. It doesn't mean we know everything about their
operations. They may know something we don't know. So, please
tell us, is there a different way to do it?
Mrs. Bice. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the extra time and with
that, I yield.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Joyce.
Mr. Joyce. I want to switch a little bit on you if you
don't mind. Oops. Got it? Thank you very much. Glad somebody is
looking out for me.
Thank you for being here. But my question goes back to,
Chairman, a little over 2 years ago, the Norfolk Southern train
derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, spilling the toxic chemicals,
as you know, that continue to affect the health of the local
communities today. Your investigation in the vent and burn of
all five derailed VCM tanks addressed the communication and
decision-making processes that led to the vent and burn and the
availability of sound criteria for when a vent and burn is
appropriate.
Can you give the committee an update on your
recommendations for ensuring the proper assessment of when to
use vent in burn procedures in the event of an emergency?
Ms. Homendy. That recommendation is still being implemented
by Norfolk Southern and we continue to follow up. It is not
something that they have fully developed yet, but it is
something that we are monitoring and encouraging them to
implement.
Mr. Joyce. Have you seen any of these recommendations
implemented by other rail systems and/or their contractors
since your report was released last June?
Ms. Homendy. No.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you. Recognize these Palestinians in
surrounding areas have obviously growing concerns that there
will be long-term health effects because of the exposure of
these chemicals. Recognizing that your staff has incredibly
demanding schedules, therefore time constraints, how long does
staff work with families impacted by disasters like East
Palestine?
Ms. Homendy. So, we currently are working with 1,187
families with active about 470, I think right now, cases. But
we, from the initial stages of the investigation, when we were
on scene, we are meeting with the families within--when they
arrive. It could be within 24, 48 hours, but we begin that
communication and we carry that through the course of the
investigation. Any time there are updates, they get notice
first. Any time there are recommendations prior to the final
report, we talk with them and meet with them.
And then sometimes families become advocates for safety and
want to work with us to implement our safety recommendations.
And so they will work with us for years to implement those
safety recommendations. And we really cherish those
relationships.
Mr. Joyce. We have certainly seen that in East Palestine.
Ms. Homendy. Yes, in East Palestine; in the Conception dive
boat in California, where the families of the 34 who died are
still working for change.
Mr. Joyce. So, if I am hearing you correctly then, your
agency doesn't stop when the report is issued. It continues to
work through as they receive further information?
Ms. Homendy. Yes. So, well past preliminary report, through
the final report, and then once the final report is issued,
family members, some want to become advocates for safety, some
don't. And then our safety advocacy team will work with them to
coordinate for implementation of our recommendations.
Mr. Joyce. I want to switch up again on you both. Though 34
states have changed their laws regarding legal marijuana, it is
still illegal everywhere to drive while intoxicated. In a 2022
report, your researchers found that current testing practices
and protocols need to be improved to better detect a driver's
drug use and accurately report the prevalence of drug-impaired
driving. The lack of a standardized drug testing and reporting
hinders understanding of the issue and development of policies
that can reduce impaired driving as well as treatment options
for those with substance abuse disorders. We need to be doing
more research, especially in the development of tools that help
identify the problem presence of drugs in drivers, in
themselves, and others by them operating these vehicles
endangered the motoring public. What does the NTSB recommend
other federal agencies and state governments do to address the
rise in drug-impaired driving accidents, especially as more
communities across the U.S. are beginning to legalize
recreational marijuana and can be subjected to this?
Ms. Homendy. Yeah, we have long worked on, against drug-
impaired driving. We work with states. We recently did an
investigation in Oklahoma where some teens died, and it
involved drug-impaired driving. And actually, we had found that
this is really across the United States. I am sure you all
remember that when we all went to school, we had driver
education as part of our school curriculum, and it was pretty
robust. Today, that education doesn't occur. So, for teens that
died in Oklahoma, we had found that that driver education
around drug-impaired driving did not occur. Now, they put that
back in place, but that doesn't occur across our country.
What is very interesting is that organizations have done
some research and have found that for teen drivers, in
particular teen drivers, a third of them think it is legal to
drive after intaking marijuana, 25 percent of adults. Usage has
gone up significantly and we need to do a number of things
including testing protocols, training for law enforcement
officers so they can detect drug-impaired driving, increased
enforcement, and then training itself for the public.
Mr. Joyce. I wholeheartedly agree with you. And what is
even more disturbing is the crap that they sell at local gas
stations to underage kids without any regulation that creates
much worse effects and puts these kids out on the motoring
highway with no concept of what is going wrong.
Ms. Homendy. I have a 17-year-old. I understand and I worry
about it all the time. And usage has gone up significantly. It
was not too long ago, I believe I saw five years ago it was 20
million Americans were using American marijuana. Now it is up
to 64 million. The usage has skyrocketed and meanwhile we have
drivers who think it is legal. I mean, we have all been at
traffic lights in D.C. where somebody pulls up and you can
smell it. It is awful. And terrible tragedies that we have
investigated over and over again involving marijuana, other
drugs, and then alcohol, of course.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you very much for your work.
Mr. Womack. Thank you. Mr. Strong.
Mr. Strong. Thank you, Chairman Womack and Ranking Member
Clyburn for holding this important hearing today, as well as
Chairman Homendy for your continued commitment to public
service and safety. Chairman Homendy, Alabama is currently
assigned to the NTSB's Eastern Regional Office whose
headquarters and personnel are based in Washington, D.C. My
colleague Mr. Rutherford mentioned working with first
responders. How does the NTSB ensure that its investigators
working in regions like Alabama are fully familiar with the
local governance geography and other factors that impact
investigations?
Ms. Homendy. Well, first I am pleased to tell you that my
daughter's number one is a college in Alabama, right now. So I
was just in Alabama visiting a few of them. I might not say
which one because I am not sure which side you are on there.
But for our investigators, we have investigators in the
headquarters, but we also have a number of our investigators
that are stationed around the United States. And I will
specifically look on Alabama to see who might be in that area.
But where we can, our regional investigators that do the
regional investigations. We do have others across the country.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. In north Alabama, the most recent
NTSB investigation required close coordination with several
local agencies, including the Scottsboro City Fire and Police
Department, Hollywood, Alabama Fire Department, and Jackson
County Emergency Management. How frequently does NTSB conduct
joint training exercises or professional development
initiatives with state and local agencies to ensure both
investigators and first responders are well prepared to handle
emerging incidents and are fully integrated into the
investigative process?
Ms. Homendy. I would have to get you exact figures and I
can do that, for the record. However, we do a lot of training
with law enforcement and fire personnel and we would like to do
a lot more.
Mr. Strong. Thank you.
Ms. Homendy. We think it is critical. Right now, we will
have first responders who call us and report accidents and say
what should we do here? Others who have developed relationships
with us. So we do think it is critical. I will get you figures.
Mr. Strong. Chair Homendy, in your written testimony you
highlighted the importance of enhancing the NTSB's use of data
to drive greater effectiveness and innovation. Huntsville,
Alabama is the largest city in the state of Alabama. Forty
years as a firefighter, assistant chief, emergency medical
technician. Over the years we have worked well with NTSB to
investigate airplane crashes, helicopter crashes, and even a
school bus crash that critically injured 31 teenagers on one of
our interstates. When an accident occurs, is there a
centralized system or shared database where all relevant
agencies, including the NTSB can access and review the same
data? How does the NTSB ensure that there is no overlap of work
and prevent duplicative efforts in data review?
Ms. Homendy. So, the NTSB for aviation accidents, we are
the holders. All aviation accidents are reported to the NTSB,
and we take that information, and we include them in a
database. We also have a database for all the other modes of
transportation that the public can access. And we are always
looking to make improvements and get input on where we can make
improvements. It is not duplicative. It is very focused on our
investigations. The ones that we conduct for aviation, it is
all of them. For the other modes, it is only the ones that we
are conducting.
Mr. Strong. When conflicting data arises between agency,
who has the final say on which information is considered the
most accurate and reliable?
Ms. Homendy. I would have to say it depends on which data
you are referencing.
Mr. Strong. That is right. As you mentioned, the National
Transportation Safety Board relies on highly skilled staff to
conduct accident investigations. As the NTSB investigators near
retirement age, what strategies does NTSB have to incentivize,
recruit, train, and retain the next generation of investigators
to carry out the mission effectively?
Ms. Homendy. We do have strategic plans. One thing that we
would like to do is human capital planning. In order to do
that, and a skills assessment, it would take about $1.5 to $2
million, which is pretty significant for us. But it is
something that we do want to undertake. We have looked across
the modes and all the offices to figure out where the biggest
gaps are and gotten input from all the directors for that. But
we can do a better job. We can do a better job. And we want to
do a better job at recruiting, training, and retaining our
workforce. When I say that we need more resources, it comes
with we have to make improvements as well. We have to be
accountable for making those improvements, and that includes
being able to have the best workforce out there.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. In closing, I want to thank you for
your leadership, the NTSB board members and the entire team for
their faithful service to our country. I remember well a quote
made by former board member Deborah Hersman at a critical scene
that I was at, at a tragic investigation that we worked
together. She told the media, we will investigate what went
right that will lead to what went wrong. I thank each of you
for the job that you do. And my daughter graduated from Auburn
in May and my son's a junior at Auburn, but we like them
Crimson Tide people too.
Ms. Homendy. I did get some good lemonade there. I did get
some good lemonade there.
Mr. Strong. Toomer's Corner.
Ms. Homendy. Yep.
Mr. Strong. Love it.
Mr. Womack. Honestly, I expected him to put in a plug for
Athens State University. He is a proud bear. But, and this I
can tell you he is going to be rooting against BYU on Thursday
and he is going to be rooting against Michigan on Friday. I can
only hope that late Thursday night he will be rooting for my
Razorbacks.
Mr. Strong. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member.
Very informative hearing and thank each of you for what you do
for our country.
Mr. Womack. Thank you. Thank you, Dale. Welcome, by the
way, to the subcommittee. Ms. DeLauro. We are going to do a
lightning round.
Ms. DeLauro. Yes.
Mr. Womack. Let us go two or three minutes and any
remaining questions.
Ms. DeLauro. Sure. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
just a couple of points and then a question. I just wanted to
make reference to the comment by the President, Vice President,
Secretary of Defense on DEI as responsible for the crash and
which is, let us take a look at who the air traffic controllers
are, 16 percent of them are women, 36 percent of them are
veterans. If you want to maintain morale and you want to
maintain the commitment, the dedication, and the knowledge, et
cetera, then you just don't make offhanded comments that talk
about DEI as being responsible for a crash which killed 67
people. It is just unbelievable that that would be the
statement.
Secondly, I want to just get back at the issue of staffing.
I understand that there are 554 open recommendations for DOT
and the various modes. And aviation, there is 180; and on the
highways piece it is about 187. So those are the two biggest
pieces.
And what I asked earlier on 790 employees terminated, 340
from FAA 170, from Federal Highways Administration. If you are
working with these agencies, we have to understand and know
what those terminations of that staffing. You talked about,
your staff and those who are protected, not protected, but we
have to know from you because it is saving lives. This is not a
matter of buying a helicopter and so forth, but this is saving
lives. But if there is an impact on your agency with the loss
of personnel in these other places that help you do your job,
which you do very well, it is a gold standard, but it was a
gold standard with a full complement of people working there.
That is information that we really need to have.
And I am asking you, I would like to get--we can speak
offline or we can talk about this, but I think it is critically
important for us to know what is happening with the
terminations in this area that affects your ability to save
people's lives? Now, the piece of that you can answer, are we
then now transferring this effort which you do to states to
close out the recommendations? Are we saying, we can't, the
State Departments of Transportation have to do that so that we
are not then saying the federal government isn't going to be
there, but we are going to rely on the states? A lot of that is
happening in this area. So, a lot of that pushing stuff to the
states is what is on the agenda. So, with regard to that and
what you do and those recommendations, how are they going to
get carried out?
Ms. Homendy. It depends on the recommendation. But for our
recommendations, right now we are working with personnel at the
Department of Transportation, other federal agencies, and state
agencies. We have not seen an impact on our investigations at
this time or our recommendations. However, if there is one, I
will commit to notifying the committee if we see any sort of
negative effect like that.
Ms. DeLauro. What kind of role are the states taking on?
Are you pushing things to the state to deal with, with regard
to the recommendations?
Ms. Homendy. We----
Ms. DeLauro. You said--go ahead.
Ms. Homendy. We are not pushing anything to the states, but
we might have recommendations to states to improve state laws
in a certain area. I had mentioned Oklahoma with the drug-
impaired driving. We encouraged the State of Oklahoma to make
improvements to teen driver education. And they made that
through their efforts through the State Department, their
Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Those are the types of
state initiatives. Drunk driving, we have a long-standing
recommendations for states to go to 0.05 instead of 0.08. That
is something for a recommendation that goes to all the states.
Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Womack. Thank the gentlelady. My final question. I am
reminded of the famous movie the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy was
talking about lions, tigers, and bears, oh my. The threats that
she perceived that she was facing. I can only imagine what your
break room is like when new technology, emerging technology,
and I am talking about things like drones, vertical takeoff and
landing, driverless cars and trucks, things that could pose a
threat to the transportation safety of this country and the
world. Can you look into your crystal ball and tell us where
the next real threats are going to come from that could cause
your agency to have to be spun up and conduct another major
investigation?
Ms. Homendy. I mean, it could really happen in any mode of
transportation. Certainly, there are emerging technologies in
each mode of transportation, many of which you mentioned. But
our agency is ready. We have technology ourselves, but we are
constantly evolving as new technology comes out. We have needs
there as well.
We are making sure that our employees are ready from a
standpoint of training. We do want to increase our investment
in training for our employees. But it is tough to say in my
crystal ball, because I look across all modes of transportation
and see that there could be significant disasters in any of
those modes. What I will say, and I know there is been a lot of
focus on aviation, our biggest contributor to fatalities right
now in transportation is on our roads. Over 40,000 people are
dying on our nation's roads every year, millions injured. You
know, we talk about transportation accidents as single
accidents, but every day an average of 112 people are dying on
our roads; 112 people, and we don't blink an eye. There is so
much we have to do to improve road safety across the U.S. and
we have so many recommendations on that. If we can get that
number down, that would be significant. That is 95 percent of
all transportation fatalities.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Clyburn talked about silos, how agencies
perform in silos. And I think it is wise for an organization
like yours that is going to be on the receiving end of the next
tragedy that is going to happen, for you guys to be invited
into some of those silos to help forestall, maybe, or prevent
some of the future tragic accidents from happening.
Mr. Clyburn.
Mr. Clyburn. Well, let me extend on that silo business for
a moment. I am going to be harping on this for a long time, Mr.
Chairman. I made the mistake of spending some time with air
traffic controllers. I am never going up in one of those things
again. I met with them two days ago, turned down all
invitations, because I really, really feel that not enough
focus is placed on air traffic controllers. I think they are
tremendously understaffed. I know where the training takes
place, and I am all right with that. We need to expand. Either
they need to build one in South Carolina or expand their
facility in Oklahoma, wherever it is. I don't know that you are
reporting on your status. Well, let me just put it this way. I
am haunted by the fact that talked about tragedy in Washington,
here. There was only one controller in the tower when it
happened. That is the reporting. I have no idea whether or not
that is true. And I understand that from the reporting, that
that was not unusual. You talked about two pilots. I don't
know. Is it true there is only one at the time?
Ms. Homendy. No, there were five at the time in the tower.
There were nine on duty. What you might be referring to is the
combining of positions. There were six at one point during the
day before 3:40 p.m., where actually it could have been seven
because they combined the position for clearance delivery and
flight data, which is not uncommon. But they did combine
positions for the helicopter position and the local traffic
position into one. The person didn't leave. So, it went down to
five controllers at the time of the accident. That combined
position was at 3:40 p.m. It stayed that way. The person went
on break. Came back into rotation at 4:27 p.m. But in total,
there were nine people on duty that day.
Mr. Clyburn. There were nine people in the tower?
Ms. Homendy. Five.
Mr. Clyburn. I am not talking about----
Ms. Homendy. Five. Five in the cab.
Mr. Clyburn. At the time of the accident?
Ms. Homendy. Correct.
Mr. Clyburn. Okay. Well, I don't know why that reporting is
out there, but it is been out there pretty extensively. And I
have been haunted by that. In talking with them, air traffic
controllers, they tell me that they are tremendously
understaffed, tremendously understaffed. I don't understand how
this country will tolerate air traffic controllers being
tremendously understaffed. There is a problem with that, that I
would hope that in your reporting of your studies that you will
take a look outside of your silo and see what has happened with
air traffic controllers and make some recommendations as to
what we ought to be doing.
Ms. Homendy. So, we----
Mr. Clyburn. That, to me, is a very serious problem.
Ms. Homendy. We have a number of investigators that focus
on air traffic control at the NTSB. As part of this
investigation, we have an entire investigative group focused on
air traffic control. They are going to be looking at everything
from staffing to changes in staffing over time at DCA, to
whether there should be more staffing. They will look at
operations at DCA in total and over time. So they are former
air traffic controllers that are working on this, and it will
be part of our investigation.
Mr. Womack. Ms. Bice, do you have a comment?
Mrs. Bice. I just want to say, first of all, thank you to
Secretary Duffy for coming to the FAA facility, Mike Monroney
Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma, looking at the facility,
recognizing that part of the challenge is technology, that we
need to be investing in technology. And he has made a
commitment to FAA that that is going to happen. And secondly,
you know, one of the challenges we have is recruiting and
retaining these FAA air traffic controllers because it is a
very long process. It can take five months to two years just to
clear medical training. Then you have the training itself. Then
you are assigned to an airport, and you have to work your way
up. We have not done the best job, in my opinion, of filling
that pipeline adequately. And I do think that Secretary Duffy
is very on target with his plan to try to address this issue
quickly. And I welcome the expansion of the FAA Center in
Oklahoma City. With that I yield.
Mr. Womack. And with that shameless plug, we are going to
go back to the Sheriff.
Mr. Rutherford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly, I
will say because this has been brought up, the President's
remarks about DEI hiring having created some of the shortfall
of the air traffic controllers. There is a class action lawsuit
about this issue, and in fact under the Obama administration,
they changed their assessments from a skill-based assessment to
a biographical assessment. They have now gone back, as a result
of actions by this Congress. Well, not this Congress, but the
one before. And so, that 3800 shortage that the FAA is looking
at in ATS controllers is a result of qualified people being
denied employment for DEI reasons. And that is why I think the
President made that reference. I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Joyce.
Mr. Joyce. Get our mic going. We are going to switch topics
on you yet again. According to your recommendation related to
the Baltimore bridge collapse, Ohio has five bridges that
require an assessment of their vulnerability to vessel strike
related collapse. What were the most common issues or
inconsistencies with the current vulnerability assessment
requirements that led the NTSB to identify the 68 bridges in
need of evaluation?
Ms. Homendy. So, we worked with the Federal Highway
Administration to determine our list of bridges. We started
with a much bigger list and focused on ocean-going vessels in
navigable waterways and then began limiting that list, and came
down to 68 that had not done vulnerability assessments of their
bridges prior to recommendations by AASHTO in 1991 and 2009,
which those recommendations were to look at your existing
bridges and to do a vulnerability assessment. The vulnerability
assessment was created in 1991 and updated in 2009. And at the
time, they said for existing bridges that they should go back
and do those vulnerability assessments.
So, we are recommending out of these 68 bridges that they
go back and do that assessment. And there is pretty substantial
data that they are going to have to put into that assessment.
Some of the states may have done it and we don't know--or I am
sorry, the bridge owners may have done it and we don't know yet
but we know that they need to--we felt so strongly about this
that we issued an urgency safety recommendations so that they
would determine risk and report that back to the NTSB and then
take proactive measures to ensure safety.
Mr. Joyce. Do you foresee the NTSB then issuing further
guidance on how bridge owners can reduce their risk or should
bridge owners wait for guidance and risk education system from
the Federal Highway Administration, the Coast Guard, or the
Army Corps?
Ms. Homendy. So, there is a guidance already out there by
AASHTO, the State Highway Transportation Officials, that is
there including how to do the method two calculations. The
assistance would be helping them in getting the data, which is
where the Federal Highway Administration, the Coast Guard, and
the Army Corps of Engineers can be most helpful.
Mr. Joyce. Great. Thank you very much.
Ms. Homendy. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. Ms. Bice.
Mrs. Bice. Mr. Strong.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Strong, bring us home.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. And I am going to bring it home
quick. Number one, I wouldn't jeopardize an investor under any
circumstance, but the facts are 67 people lost their life at
Reagan National. Greater than 850 takeoffs and landings happen
every day at Reagan National Airport. My understanding, an air
traffic controller is or was designated to solely do air
traffic control for helicopters until 9:30 p.m., nightly. Was
this helicopter air traffic control in their position the night
of the crash or had they left their post? The final report will
answer most of these questions and we await the completion of
your investigation. And I think that will answer all the
questions that members of Congress and the families that lost
loved ones have. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Yeah. Thank you. In a good way to bring this
hearing to a close. And the report that will come out, we can
all have great confidence that it is going to be a highly
professional, thorough, very detailed, conclusive report. And
to that, Ms. Homendy, we are eternally grateful for what you
and your team do. I want to ask you one final question. What
did we not ask you today that we should have?
Ms. Homendy. Would you like to be an NTSB investigator?
Because that is always the last question that we ask in all of
our interviews. Would you like to hear what we need again for
fiscal year 2026?
Mr. Womack. You know, you are talking to the people who
will ultimately, I mean, we will get a budget, we will be
presented a budget, and we know what happens to most of those
presidential budgets. But eventually the appropriations
committee, if in fact we can get back to regular order, we will
have to make some of the tough calls. So, I think it is
certainly within----
Mr. Rutherford. Mr. Chairman, the answer was $156 million.
Ms. Homendy. $156 million. We do need to get to full
staffing. We need to provide the ability for our workforce--I
would like to increase training funds for our workforce,
increase outreach to law enforcement and to firefighters, but
that takes resources. We are very good stewards of our
resources. I have gone through every single contract that we
have to determine is there anything here that we need to
change. But you know, our--and I will say I did look at the
cost for government requirements is going up. The cost alone
for government mandates is $6.4 million to the NTSB from 2024.
We looked across the agency. $6.4 million is pretty significant
for a budget of $145.
But here is what I will say. We also, when we ask for
increased funding, we know that we also have to improve
performance. We always strive to do better. When I came in as
chair, I met with all stakeholders in all modes of
transportation, not to figure out what we were doing right, to
figure out what we were doing wrong and how we could be better.
And we have looked at our risks proactively and we know what we
need to address. We are not perfect, but we strive to do better
every day for our workforce. For the taxpayer, I think it is
critical.
There are a lot of agencies right now that are, maybe, need
to look at rightsizing agencies. But for the NTSB, we do run
lean, and we are good stewards of our resources. But that comes
with a requirement that we need to be held accountable as well
for delivering our accident reports, our recommendations. When
I came in as chair, as you started, we had over 400, close to
480 accident investigations that were over 2, 3, 4 years old.
We are now down to--well, we are down to--it fluctuates. Some
days it will be five over, but it is usually for something that
is not in our control. But we are down to zero.
We eliminated that backlog because we invested in our
workforce, and we said we had to be held accountable for
delivering on safety and we take that very seriously, our role.
I will say in closing that this committee has been very
supportive of the NTSB. Your state staff has been incredible to
work with. Each of you as members has been really supportive of
our agency, and we really appreciate all your work. We know you
have a difficult job to do. You have to balance a number of
priorities. We just ask that you consider us among those
priorities, because an investment in us will save lives.
Mr. Womack. Well, it is easy to invest in an organization
that is highly capable, highly competent, and well led. Mr.
Clyburn, final remarks?
Mr. Clyburn. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let
me just say this. I am not much of a moviegoer. Every
Christmas, I do show a sort of a historical movie to a group
that I spend the holidays with. And one of those, this past
Christmas, The Six Triple Eight. I would recommend that my
colleague take a look at that movie and see what DEI is all
about.
I didn't see the Red Tails, which was the movie made about
the Tuskegee Airmen. I think we have to, DEI is something we
ought to be very, very careful about. Those Tuskegee Airmen
gave service to this country. And most people you talk to
coming out of World War II said that a lot of those fighter
pilots would not fly unless those Tuskegee Airmen were flying
with them. John Glenn would not go up on his flight into space
unless those four African American women signed off on it. So,
DEI is something we ought to be very careful about.
Mr. Womack. And on that note, we thank you again for your
time today, for your staff, for the work that you do on behalf
of a grateful country. Thank you so much. This hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
MEMBER DAY
Mr. Womack. The subcommittee will come to order. Good
morning. Welcome to this year's Member Day Hearing. Today, we
welcome our colleagues to testify on their priorities for the
Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department
of Transportation for fiscal year 2026.
Member engagement is key to the appropriations process and
especially important for our bill because every district has
housing, transportation assets, and as a result of that, they
have needs. As a former mayor, I value the local perspective
from districts Nationwide. That is why I am looking forward to
hearing from our colleagues this morning.
So before we get into the testimony, I would like to
recognize the ranking member, the gentleman from South
Carolina, Mr. Clyburn, if he has any comments he would like to
offer before we get into member testimony.
Mr. Clyburn. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Womack. Just hit that button over there. There you go.
That one.
Mr. Clyburn. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
As you have stated, this subcommittee provides funding for
vital programs that impact every district across this country.
Programs throughout this bill create opportunities for everyday
Americans that include stable housing for seniors and growing
families, pathways for homeownership and wealth building, job
growth and self-sufficiency, transportation, and air safety. We
welcome feedback on how we can work on a bipartisan basis to
support the work of members of this body, Department of
Transportation, Housing and Development, and the other
independent agencies. I look forward to hearing from our
colleagues today, and I thank you for your leadership.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Clyburn.
Today we kick off with the gentlelady from Illinois, Delia
Ramirez. Welcome to this subcommittee. Every member will have
the standard 5 minutes to testify. Your full written remarks
will be included in the record. And we want you to remember to
turn the microphone on when you speak and when you leave, turn
it off, and things will go just great here this morning. So,
Congresswoman Ramirez, I am going to recognize you for 5
minutes.
----------
Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
WITNESS
HON. DELIA C. RAMIREZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE
STATE OF ILLINOIS
Mrs. Ramirez. Thank you, Chairman Womack and Ranking Member
Clyburn, and our vice chair, who is also here with us today,
for creating a space for members to provide input into the
appropriation process and to also be able to provide the
written testimony on the agencies and the programs under the
jurisdiction of the Transportation, Housing and Urban
Development, and Related Program Subcommittee.
I would like to start by stating that I am deeply concerned
about the state of housing in our country, particularly in
light of the recent ongoing actions of the administration that
feel like they are weakening the housing workforce and
abandoning some of our most vulnerable residents. Since January
20th, we have witnessed the dismantling of the Department of
Housing and Development. The administration has doled out some
executive orders and others that we have seen already have
reduced staff at HUD, we have seen freezes and delays in
Federal funding to housing programs and the release guidance
that severely undermines housing protections for some of the
most underserved communities in our country. And that includes
veterans and individuals with disabilities.
As members of Congress, it is our responsibility to ensure
that the funds we appropriate are honored by the Executive
Branch and that, in this moment, it feels like we are not
ceding Congressional power to the whims and interests of
billionaires at the expense of working families. I want to tell
you why I think this.
In the state of Illinois, almost 400,000 people rely on
subsidized housing. 400,000. There has been at least $60
million in funding that have been thrown into limbo due to the
directives of the Trump Administration. Funding uncertainties
and contract cancellations delay install necessary housing
developments that our communities have desperately needed for
so many years. And it feels unconscionable that at a time where
we need housing so much, we would be stalling these projects.
The attacks on HUD and its programs are not just attacks on
our working families, but they are attacks on the
infrastructure of our country. The attacks on HUD are
intentional attacks on civil rights and legal protections,
particularly for historically marginalized communities.
Constituents and stakeholders have shared their fear and their
uncertainty regarding the future of housing opportunities,
especially for persons with AIDS, through the HOPWA program and
their Fair Housing Initiative Program. The HOPWA program has
established--was established to provide housing assistance and
related supportive services to low-income persons living with
HIV/AIDS and their families. And as a proud supporter of AIDS
Chicago and AIDS United, it is imperative that our neighbors
living with HIV/AIDS continue to receive the lifesaving
support, including housing. Any attack on HOPWA is an attack on
the Black and Brown communities that are disproportionately
impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Furthermore, I learned that in February this administration
canceled 78 Fair Housing Initiative Program grants. The
programs contribute to the creation of equitable and fair
access to housing. The services provided by Fair Housing
Centers are indispensable to a large and diverse set of
Americans, including but not limited to African Americans,
Latinos, Asian Americans, and other racial and ethnic
minorities who have historically faced systemic discrimination
in Chicago and in housing as a whole. Persons with disabilities
seeking accessibility and reasonable accommodation and housing
under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA). And families who
have been denied access to housing because they have children.
Our investments in fair housing and housing opportunities
for underserved populations are not wasteful. They provide
essential foundational stability that enables our neighbors
across the Nation to fully engage in their lives and in their
communities. What is wasteful is tax breaks for billionaires,
billions spent criminalizing immigrants, and millions spent on
ad campaigns to televise authoritarian agendas. We cannot put
Americans first while also cutting housing programs that are
critical to our Americans.
Instead, we are here talking about cuts that would actually
critically impact so many people, not just in Chicago, but
across the country. It is why I wanted to testify here today
and tell you, as someone that ran a homeless shelter, as
someone that worked really hard in providing permanent, stable
housing, we have a moral responsibility to save these programs,
to provide permanent, stable housing.
And I want to urge this subcommittee to fight for adequate
and sustained funding for these housing programs while also
defining congressional intent for the funds to ensure that they
are protected from further misguided action by this
administration.
Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking Member. And with
that, I yield back.
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Mr. Womack. We thank you for your testimony this morning.
Many times when members are offering testimony, there aren't
any questions. But I am always going to yield to my colleagues
that are here today. If they have any questions, you can feel
free to ask away. So, you good? You good?
Mr. Clyburn. I don't have any questions. I would like to
say to the gentlelady that I applaud her stance on
disabilities. I ran such an agency in my former life for 18
years in South Carolina, and I am the creator of the South
Carolina bill for handicapped citizens. And I understand, Mr.
Chairman, that less than 5 percent of all the housing in this
country is accessible to the disabled. And I applaud your
concern for this. And I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, that I
am a big proponent of us not cutting back on funds that will
allow disabled people in wheelchairs. And I can remember when
we would not even lower buttons on the elevator for dwarfs.
These kinds of things, I think, will work to get beyond that.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you.
Mrs. Ramirez. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Ms. Ramirez. Our next witness this
morning is the member representing the 4th District of New
York, the Honorable Laura A. Gillen. Rep. Gillen, your
comments, your prepared testimony will be included in the
record. You will have 5 minutes. Just turn the mic on when you
start and off when you leave, and the floor is yours.
----------
Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
WITNESS
HON. LAURA GILLEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE
OF NEW YORK
Ms. Gillen. Well, thank you, Chairman Womack, Ranking
Member Clyburn, and other members of the subcommittee. I am
grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today to
highlight several important issues affecting my constituents in
New York's 4th Congressional District, which is on the south
shore of Nassau County on Long Island.
Mr. Chairman, we face a major crisis on our roads on Long
Island with an alarming and unacceptable rise in fatal crashes
in recent years. In fact, every 7 minutes on Long Island there
is another car accident involving death, injury, or serious
property damage. According to our local paper Newsday, more
than 2,100 people have been killed and 16,000 have been
severely injured in traffic accidents on Long Island's
dangerous roads over the past 10 years.
We can and we must do more to prevent these terrible
tragedies and save lives. That is why I strongly urge members
of this subcommittee to increase funding for road safety,
including the Bridge Investment Program, Safe Streets and Roads
for All Program, and the Highway Safety Improvement Program.
Earlier this year, the New York State Department of
Transportation released data finding that 10 bridges on Long
Island are in poor condition, including a bridge in the Village
of Hewlett Harbor, which is in my district. We need to increase
Bridge Investment Program funding over--under the
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in fiscal year 2026, and
I will be leading a letter with my colleagues urging this
committee to do just that.
In addition, programs like Safe Streets and Highway Safety
Improvement Program have helped improve and modernize our
transportation network, and I am committed to working in a
bipartisan manner to continue successful initiatives to prevent
fatal accidents and keep Americans safe on our roadways.
I also request your support for vital community project
funding in fiscal year 2026, which provides direct Federal
assistance to towns and villages across my district to invest
in critical infrastructure upgrades that increase the safety
and the reliability of our transportation system.
I would also like to highlight the critical importance of
HUD Economic Development Initiative grants which fall under
this subcommittee's jurisdiction. EDI grants fund a wide range
of projects that benefit our communities and help grow our
economy.
Last year, the House Appropriations Committee passed an
fiscal year 2025 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development
Appropriations bill, which included more than $21 million for
eight projects in the 4th Congressional District.
Unfortunately, this funding and $30 million in direct funding
slated to go to my district was ultimately stripped from the
full-year fiscal year 2025 continuing resolution that was
passed by Congress last month.
For fiscal year 2026, I urge the committee and all my
colleagues in Congress to support vital projects in my district
and across our country. I know there is strong support for this
effort on both sides of the aisle. I will work with anyone in
any party who is serious about bringing their necessary
resources back to my district, on Long Island, and throughout
the United States to fund these important projects.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, I thank you so much for
your time today, for your work on this committee to help serve
the American people. I look forward to working with all of you
to make the communities that we represent more vibrant and
safer places to live. Thank you. I yield back.
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Mr. Womack. We are grateful for your testimony. Questions?
Comments? Mr. Clyburn.
Mr. Clyburn. Oh, I haven't got questions. I want to thank
the gentlelady for being here today. And looking at your
testimony, I see why your son is now living in the 6th
Congressional District of South Carolina. And we----
Mr. Womack. Oh, that was shameless.
Ms. Gillen. Very privileged to have that honor.
Mr. Clyburn. He is a great intern. Thank you so much. And
in my office in Columbia.
Mr. Womack. Anything, Stephanie?
Ms. Bice. Thank you for the testimony. And as someone who
has driven on the roads of Long Island, my father used to live
in--in the area, I agree with you. And I would also say the
safety is incredibly important across the country. I have a
great relationship with my folks back home in the
transportation industry, and it is, I think, somewhat
surprising to folks when they hear the number of deaths of
construction workers who are actually working on road and
bridge projects across the country. So not only should we be
focusing on making sure that transportation safety is
important, but also that we are protecting our construction
workers as they are working to improve roads and bridges across
the country. With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Womack. Thank you. Grateful for your testimony. Before
you leave, let me just say I would be remiss if I didn't
acknowledge--totally unrelated to the hearing today--the
tremendous sportsmanship, the credible sportsmanship, given the
Washington Capitals and Ovechkin for the breaking of the
record, which he did in New York and delayed the completion of
that game. I am not a huge hockey fan, but I was glued to the
television watching that. And throughout the entire process, I
thought what a great display of sportsmanship that was given by
the people at that hockey arena on Sunday. And that was a
credit, and I am sure a lot of your constituents--I don't know
who represents that area.
Ms. Gillen. I represent that district. The arena is in my
district. I was at the game. It was very exciting when he--when
Ovechkin scored that goal, everybody in the arena was a
Capitals fan and just really impressed. And it was--it was a
wonderful thing to behold.
Mr. Womack. America needs more of that.
Ms. Gillen. I agree.
Mr. Womack. Thank you very much.
Ms. Gillen. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Womack. Our next witness is the Honorable Maxine
Waters. And as she takes her position at the table, your
prepared comments will be inserted into the record. You will
have 5 minutes, so turn that mic on when you start and off when
you are finished. And, Rep. Waters, you are recognized.
----------
Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
WITNESS
HON. MAXINE WATERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE
OF CALIFORNIA
Ms. Waters. There it is. Thank you. Good morning, Chair
Womack, Ranking Member Clyburn, and members of the
subcommittee. I want to thank you for the opportunity to
testify today on one of the most important issues facing our
country.
As ranking member and former chairwoman of the House
Financial Services Committee, I have come to know all too well
the struggles families are facing in today's housing market.
Americans are spending more of their paychecks on their rent
and mortgage than ever before. Homelessness is rising and our
Nation's housing is increasingly being purchased not by
families, but private equity funds with all-cash offers.
For decades, the U.S. under-produced housing for hard
working families while making it easier for corporations and
flippers to scoop up more single-family homes than ever. We
haven't built enough housing since President Roosevelt's New
Deal and we certainly haven't built enough since the 2008 Great
Recession. It is no wonder since the federal housing budget has
represented less than 2 percent of all federal outlays since
fiscal year 1986 and the fiscal year 2024 housing budget isn't
even 1 percent. This lack of investment has directly resulted
in our Nation's public housing failing to disrepair, people
waiting years to get housing assistance they are owed under the
law, and first-time and often first-generation home buyers
having insurmountable obstacles to achieving the American
dream.
And so, while I know that every member of this subcommittee
is concerned about this and is looking for solutions, I am
concerned that the situation will only get much worse as this
President's reckless tariff plan goes into effect. The
President's tariffs on the world, but in particular Mexico and
Canada, are going to significantly increase the cost of
building and repairing homes. Trump's gutting of consumer
protection and civil rights enforcement and housing will allow
landlords and banks to lock more people out of housing and
increase rents without Federal oversight.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk's DOGE has infiltrated our Nation's
housing agencies, stealing funding Congress provided to
communities, illegally terminating staff, including in your
districts, and accessing confidential data about people living
in assisted housing, including sexual assault survivors. I am
concerned that all of this makes it possible for Elon Musk and
the other billionaires in Trump's cabinet to achieve their goal
to help their Billionaire Boys Club get rich quick off of
America's housing.
The recently passed appropriations bill has the potential
to make this a reality. The funding year 2025 continuing
resolution slashed 500 million from the Federal housing budget
and is expected to put at least 32,000 families at risk of
eviction and homelessness. And the housing that they vacate
will be ripe for the picking by private equity, hedge funds,
and others who don't believe that everyone in America should
have a right to affordable housing.
So I am here today to request that the committee increase
all housing accounts well beyond funding year 2024 funding
levels so that we can meet the growing needs of this country.
For a start, the committee could consider my Housing Crisis
Response Act, which provides more than $150 billion in
investments for fair and affordable housing. My bill outlines a
plan for which Congress should fund housing so we can build
more affordable homes, bring down the cost of rent, and revive
the dream of home ownership for all.
So, in addition to funding above funding year 2024 levels,
I specifically request the following.
First, $10 billion for the HOME Program and $500 million
for each of the Section 202 and Section 811 Program accounts to
help increase the supply of homes that are accessible and
affordable to families, including seniors and people with
disabilities.
$24 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher Program to help
Americans afford their rent and and avoid eviction.
$65 billion to address capital backlog needs in public
housing that put the health and safety of residents at risk on
a daily basis.
And $8 billion for emergency housing vouchers to help house
people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
Together, we can secure fair and affordable housing in
every community across this great country. With that, I want to
thank you for holding today's hearing, and I yield back my
time.
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Mr. Womack. Thank you very much, Representative Waters.
Anybody? Comments? Questions?
Mr. Clyburn. Well, I want to thank you so much for being
here.
Ms. Waters. Yes.
Mr. Clyburn. Congresswoman Waters, you and I have talked
about this for years, and I want you to know that I share your
concern for affordable, accessible housing for all.
I am particularly interested in what is happening now as it
relates to housing in Columbia. I live in a community where it
was the first ``subdivision'' that Blacks were allowed access
to housing. And I have been in there ever since I have been in
Columbia. And what has happened there now, Mr. Chairman, is
that a lot of those public school teachers, postal workers who
have retired and are now living basically on small retirements
and Social Security, every time I go home, there are at least
two letters in my mailbox from hedge funds wanting to purchase
my house. And all the people in the neighborhood are getting
those letters. They aren't buying these houses to live in. They
are buying these houses, in my not so humble opinion, to
deprive these senior citizens living in retirement dependent
upon Social Security when they find themselves in need of
resources, they are going to sell. And I think that that is
very, very unfair, and there is something sinister about that.
And so, I want to work with you and with this committee
because you have had hearings on evictions and this kind of
thing. And this is something I think we need to focus on
because that is a shame. But it is taking place throughout. I
am sure it is more than my community. And I thank you for your
testimony.
Ms. Waters. You are so welcome.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Clyburn. Ms. Bice.
Ms. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your
testimony this morning. I think we would be remiss if we didn't
also talk about the other factors in purchasing a home. I have
been considering whether or not to move from the home that my
husband and I have had for 18 years and raised our two
daughters in. And the two factors that have changed in the last
few years that have made it, in my opinion, much more
unaffordable to purchase a new home are interest rates, of
course, at 7 percent and insurance. You know, my homeowner's
insurance has increased extraordinarily over the last couple of
years. Yes, I live in Tornado Alley. But unfortunately, that
also has a factor in whether or not individuals can afford to
purchase a home. So I hope if we are going to have a
conversation, that those two factors are also part of that
discussion. So, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you. Ms. Waters, thank you so much for
your testimony this morning.
Ms. Waters. You are welcome. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. Our next witness is the at-large member from
the great state of Wyoming, Representative Harriet Hageman. And
Rep. Hageman, you are recognized for 5 minutes, knowing that
your prepared remarks will be included in the record, and the
floor is yours. Thank you.
----------
Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
WITNESS
HON. HARRIET M. HAGEMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE
STATE OF WYOMING
Ms. Hageman. Thank you, and thank you for this opportunity.
Chairman Womack, Ranking Member Clyburn, and members of the
subcommittee, I am grateful for the opportunity to testify
before you today for the subcommittee's Member Day hearing
regarding issues of great importance pertaining to the success
of Wyoming's air service.
Despite Wyoming being one of the most rural states in the
United States, our air service actually dates back nearly 100
years to when the City of Cheyenne became a principal stop on
the new U.S. Air Mail Service route. Since then, air service in
Wyoming has flourished and remains a major contributor to the
statewide and local economies.
According to the Wyoming Department of Transportation, or
YDOT, total Wyoming passengers numbered over 1.6 million in
2024. Commercial air services' annual economic impacts exceed
$1.5 billion and support over 17,000 jobs statewide. To
accommodate this increasing level of demand, Wyoming boasts
nine commercial service airports, including one international
airport and the only airport in the entire country that is
located within a National park. Advocating for meaningful
investment in Federal programs that seek to build upon this
momentum and not only preserve but expand rural air service
should always remain a priority as we craft our appropriations
bills.
Last year, in a bipartisan fashion, Congress passed the FAA
Reauthorization Act of 2024, which, among other valuable
provisions, increased the authorization of the Airport
Improvement Program, or AIP, from $3.35 to $4 billion. The
importance of the AIP funding in Wyoming cannot be overstated
as it has repeatedly supported essential airport infrastructure
projects, including expanding terminal buildings,
rehabilitating aprons, taxiways, and runway lighting, and
acquiring snow removal and firefighting equipment, all of which
are essential to increasing air traffic capacity and mitigating
hazards caused by unpredictable weather, which is simply a fact
of life throughout Wyoming and the Greater Intermountain West.
Failure to adequately fund this program will make it far more
difficult for rural airports to maintain their existing
infrastructure and accommodate future growth, which will
inevitably trickle down to all communities and local businesses
that rely upon air service for revenue generated through
tourism, freight, and other means.
Just as important as our airport infrastructure is the
ability to grow and retain a pipeline of aviation professionals
to carry out the critical functions necessary for the
continuation of air service. It is no secret that we continue
to struggle with Nationwide aviation workforce shortages,
particularly when it comes to pilots and aviation maintenance
technicians. Unfortunately, these deficiencies are uniquely
amplified in a state as rural as Wyoming, where the lack of a
stable workforce can detrimentally impact the timeliness and
quality of our air service, if not resulting in its loss
altogether. As of 2020, there were a total of 2,254 aviation
employees in Wyoming. Initiatives such as the FAA's Aviation
Workforce Development Programs can go a long way to helping
fill employment gaps while recruiting and educating the next
generation of aviation professionals. Wyoming is a prime
example of these objectives as there continues to be a growing
interest in my state for expanding aviation career technical
education opportunities, including through new K-12 internship
programs and post-secondary pathways to obtain applied sciences
degrees in aviation and aeronautics and commercial pilot
certificates.
Finally, I would like to briefly touch on the issue of
assisting smaller communities who are actively seeking to
attract increased commercial air service and minimize higher
airfares through the Small Community Air Service Development
Program. Multiple communities across my state are actively
competing with other locations Nationwide to obtain commercial
air service routes, which are almost always in short supply and
can be financially burdensome to maintain over a longer period.
Initiatives such as the Small Community Air Service Development
Program are integral in allowing smaller communities to compete
in the rural air service market through revenue guarantees,
marketing agreements and the completion of necessary studies.
As previously stated, these are just a few of the many
programs and resources that contribute to the success of
Wyoming's air service. Ensuring that we are not only fully
funding but also reverting program management back to the core
principles laid out under the laws as opposed to unrelated
political objectives is crucial to achieving this intended
success.
Once again, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to
testify and I look forward to working with each of you as we
begin the ever important process of drafting our appropriation
bills for fiscal year 26. Thank you.
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Mr. Womack. We appreciate your comments this morning and
recognizing the rural nature of your state. I am curious, do
you recall right off the bat how many of your commercial
service airports get Essential Air Service funding?
Ms. Hageman. I don't know the answer to that, but I could
get back to you on it.
Mr. Womack. Because that was one of the anomalies that we
had in fiscal year 2025 or the fiscal year 2024 continuing
resolution to make sure that we had funds flowing to the
airports that are serving a very rural population. I have a
couple in our state; I think three or four in our state. But I
figure some of the ones that you are referring to also are
Essential Air Service beneficiaries.
Ms. Hageman. I think so, and pretty much all of my airports
are pretty rural.
Mr. Womack. Yeah. Questions? Comments? Mr. Clyburn, any?
Mr. Clyburn. No, sir. Thank you, gentlelady, for your
testimony.
Ms. Hageman. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. All good? All right. Thank you, Harriet.
Ms. Hageman. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. We appreciate it.
Our last witness, if I am not mistaken, is Jeff Van Drew,
who represents the 2nd District in the State of New Jersey.
Jeff, your official comments will be included into the record.
Just hit the microphone, and for 5 minutes, the floor is yours.
----------
Wednesday, April 9, 2025.
WITNESS
HON. JEFFERSON VAN DREW, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE
STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Mr. Van Drew. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, ranking
member. Thank you, members of the committee, for having this
hearing today.
You know, the FAA Reauthorization of 2024 codified New
Jersey's William J. Hughes FAA Technical Center for Advanced
Aerospace in Title 49, Section 106 of the U.S. Code. Last year,
the committee drafted an fiscal year 2025 bill that included
$62 million for the technical center's laboratories and
infrastructure sustainment. This year, I am requesting that the
committee continue this momentum by investing the same amount
from the facilities and equipment account.
This includes $6 million for disaster resiliency of
critical National aerospace systems to upgrade ``Priority One''
infrastructure to enhance critical power distribution,
providing cooling for essential equipment, and ensure resilient
data transmission.
$29 million for William J. Hughes Technical Center civil
service systems sustainment. These funds will design and
construct a water supply system and underground utility for all
tenants at the technical center, including the Atlantic City
Airport.
$27 million for William J. Hughes Technical Center
electrical system sustainment. These funds will design and
construct a replacement electrical system to supply power to
the airport operations area, covering all airfield lighting and
navigational aids, which obviously are necessary.
These investments, very importantly, will also benefit the
many technical center tenants, which includes--but not only--
but includes the Coast Guard, the Air National Guard, the
Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Air Marshals and
the Atlantic City airport itself.
I also request that the committee provide $10 million for
the research, engineering, and development account for an
emerging technologies accelerator. This provides a pathway for
development, demonstration, and transfer of technology that can
lead to a tangible operational improvement to the aviation
infrastructure.
And my final request on this is related to the technical
center for increased technical personnel levels. And I will
provide staff with additional information on that as well.
On community projects--and by the way, all this sounds very
dry, but basically, it is important for our homeland security,
for navigational airspace and obviously for the future that we
want to be better and safer. Community project funding. The
first request is $3 million to construct a dental hygiene
school--I don't want to hear any jokes. Yes, I am a dentist,
but this is really important. At the Atlantic Cape Community
College. From the EDI account, there is a serious need for
dental hygienists in my area. We are critically short, number
one. Secondly, the part of the state that I represent, some of
it is some of the least fiscally sound area, has the most
financial economic challenges of any part of the State of New
Jersey. And this is a wonderful career for people where they
can frankly make a good income. It is very much needed. It
allows people, if they are going to be doing it full-time or
whether they do it part-time, to also have a family and make a
decent income. It is a good thing.
And as you know, I spent a good part of my career being a
dentist. The more sane part of my career, I might add, was
being a dentist. And so, we have a non-Federal match on this of
over $2 million from the Atlanta County government who is very
willing to contribute additional construction costs and
equipment for this. It is my top request and is an fiscal year
2025 resubmission. Unfortunately, it has to be a resubmission.
The second request is $3.5 million for EDI funds to the
Buena Vista Township Municipal Utility Authority to fund
emergency shelter water infrastructure. This project will
design and build an expanded water and sewer connection into a
local school auditorium. It indeed is also important. This
project needs economic development funds because this is the
type of water service that does not align with either the
Interior or USDA accounts.
The third request is for $2.5 million to the design and
preparation of a site for an aviation maintenance training
academy. Again, speaking of what I did do before, we need some
good jobs in our area very much. This is a good job. It is a
very much--it is a job that is needed in high demand, and we
are short of people that can do this work. This would be from
the EDI account as well. This project will train generations of
much needed aviation maintenance workers. The project is
supported importantly by the United States Air Force and also
has matching non-Federal funds, private sector partners that we
have already lined up on this as well. They are interested in
recruiting from this facility. And again, I am going to say,
unfortunately, it is a resubmission from 2025.
And I really thank you all for the work you do and the time
you take. Thank you.
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Mr. Womack. Thank you. You know, Congressman, you recognize
that the appropriations process, at least for the last several
years, has been kind of a broken system. So I am asking you, as
a dentist, does this process need a cap, a filling, a root
canal, or an extraction?
Mr. Van Drew. Or a combination of all the above. On a
bipartisan way, I think, sometimes Congress, and this is--I am
only--this is my 7th year. I have been involved in public
service for a lot of years. I was 16 years in the New Jersey
legislature. And as you know, clearly, and I will be very
frank, you asked me a candid question, I am going to give you a
candid answer. I have served as a Democrat and a Republican. I
have always been a conservative, but I was in both parties. Our
system is broken to a great degree. And I would say we share in
the responsibility for that on both sides of the aisle. I do
look forward to a time where we are more functional and more
focused. We run around in circles like crazy sometimes, but all
the running around doesn't necessarily always count. It is what
you accomplish and what you get done for the people of this
great country. So I think we need root canals, extractions, and
caps. And in dentistry, that is called a full rehab, where you
do the whole deal. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. I think he just told us to floss more. Mr.
Clyburn?
Mr. Clyburn. I thank the gentlemen for his testimony. I
would like to say, Mr. Chairman, that I agree that there needs
to be overhauls of the system. And this is going to come real
strange, you are going to think strangely. But if we just stick
to that document that we call the Constitution of the United
States and its dictates as to how all this is to be done, we
will be fine. We will be fine. But we have yield too much of
Article 1's power to the executive. If we just ran in what the
Constitution tells us, we will postpone that root canal.
Believe me, you ought to postpone as long as you can.
Mr. Van Drew. Respectfully ranking member, I think there
are people on both sides of the aisle that would agree with
you.
Mr. Womack. Yeah, I am not going to disagree. Ms. Bice.
Ms. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Rep. Van Drew, can you
share with me, if you know, what does it cost to go to dental
hygienist school?
Mr. Van Drew. It depends whether you go to a university
college or a community college. Things have been so expensive
lately in our colleges and universities, which is another--
again, I really don't want to digress. But it amazes me,
compared to when I went to dental school, the folks coming out.
If you are going to go into dentistry before you even get to
your residency, there are $300,000, $400,000 in debt. If you
even factor in inflation, which you need to do, that is still
way beyond that inflationary number compared to when I went.
And it is the same with hygiene school, but the good
opportunity there is you can't go to community college to
become a dentist or a physician, but you can be a nurse or a
hygienist. So it can be very affordable, and that is the
affordable way to do it. If you choose to go to university or
college, you are making that choice. But it is going to be what
a university or college costs today.
Ms. Bice. Well, I would concur with your assessment of the
cost of college being expensive. I had individuals from the OU
College of Dentistry in my office not that long ago who asked
me to support an initiative that would allow for them to not
have to pay interest on the loans while they are doing a
residency----
Mr. Van Drew. We are working on that.
Ms. Bice [continuing]. A specialty. Yeah. And it was
shocking to me how expensive it actually is to attend the
medical school. But thank you for your testimony and for your
advocacy of your constituents in your district.
Mr. Van Drew. Thank you.
Ms. Bice. And I yield.
Mr. Womack. Jeff, thank you so much.
Mr. Van Drew. Thank you so much, Steve.
Mr. Womack. I want to thank all the witnesses who testified
this morning, all five. As I said earlier, their comments,
their prepared comments, will be inserted into the record. And
with that, unless there are any further questions or comments,
this hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:49 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
WITNESS
HON. SEAN DUFFY, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Mr. Womack. Good morning. The subcommittee will come to
order.
Today we welcome testimony from the Honorable Sean Duffy,
Secretary of the Department of Transportation, on the fiscal
year 2026 budget. Thank you, Secretary Duffy, for appearing
before us today. It is always good to see you. For those who
don't know, Sean and I were classmates together back in 2010,
and I would like to think that we would surprise ourselves in
knowing we would be in these seats some 15 years later, but
here we are.
The Department of Transportation is requesting $26.7
billion in discretionary budget authority for fiscal year 2026.
This request includes a $1.2 billion increase for air traffic
modernization and operations, $596 million to ramp up our port
and shipyard infrastructure, a $400 million boost for freight
rail safety, and $770 million for multimodal freight expansion.
While the skinny budget request demonstrates your commitment to
making some critical investments to modernize our
transportation systems, there is still much about this request
that remains unknown as we await the full fiscal year 2026
budget. We do not know your total of $1.4 billion in cuts at
DOT to afford these programmatic increases at the $26.7 billion
top line level. We are also lacking detail in what the proposed
$4.1 billion reduction to the IIJA fiscal year 2026 advance
appropriations. We would like to get more from you on that
today.
I would be remiss not to mention that the skinny budget
reveals a top line for the Department of Housing and Urban
Development that will be challenging for this subcommittee, to
say the least. Given the jurisdiction of the subcommittee, we
cannot look at the DOT budget request in a vacuum. We will have
to make some tough choices when reviewing the proposed
investments of the Department of Transportation while
maintaining necessary support for housing our Nation's most
vulnerable.
I would also like to make sure we address a bit of an
elephant in the room. The administration has undertaken efforts
to seriously overhaul the Federal bureaucracy while also taking
a hard look at where our taxpayer dollars are being spent. It
is a valued effort that our House majority supports. I want to
make something clear. Efforts to restructure the Department of
Transportation without congressional approval, to not execute
programs appropriated by this committee, or to not give proper
congressional notification when awarding or amending grants
concerns me. Article I of the Constitution is clear. It gives
Congress, through this committee, the power of the purse. I
know that you, as a former Member of this body, understand
this.
We want to have a partnership with you to ensure we are
providing DOT with necessary resources. It is a reciprocal
relationship. We provide what you need, you get us what we
need. Maintaining open lines of communication between this
committee and your staff is essential for us to execute our
shared mission of maintaining our world-class transportation
system.
Safety will remain a top priority for this subcommittee as
we prepare the '26 bill. I know you share this goal as your
second night on the job was the horrific DCA collision. You
have taken swift action to ensure the safety of our airspace.
And I know the NTSB appreciates your partnership as they
continue their investigation into that accident and many
others.
Additionally, our Nation's air traffic control system is
showing signs of age. The telecommunications issues that have
been plaguing Newark and routinely interrupting operations over
the past month are unacceptable. And the fact that they were
allowed to get to this point over the past several years is
beyond frustrating. Mr. Secretary, I look forward to working
with you to prioritize our Nation's vital infrastructure and
transportation needs in Arkansas's Third District and across
the country, while safeguarding hard-earned taxpayer dollars. I
know our work on this subcommittee affects the safety, economic
opportunity, and quality of life of every American, a duty I
take seriously.
The jurisdiction of this committee is one of the most
unique of the Appropriations Committee as its impacts are seen
in every single congressional district around the country. As
such, we have a spirit of bipartisanship here that I look
forward to continuing as we begin the fiscal year 2026 process.
And it is in that spirit of bipartisanship that I would now
like to recognize my dear friend and the ranking member from
South Carolina, Mr. Clyburn, for any opening remarks he would
like to make.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am
pleased to be here today as we begin to assess the budget
request for fiscal year 2026. I, too, want to welcome Secretary
Duffy to his first official hearing before the subcommittee.
Welcome.
Today we will examine the Department of Transportation's
budget, which I expect will cover current year operations and
the proposed use of funds included in the so-called skinny
budget for 2026. DOT's primary mission is to invest in
solutions that improve transportation safety. This includes
safer transportation in our skies, on our rails, in our ports,
and over and under our bridges, among other modes of
transportation. It is hard to ignore the disturbing incursions
and devastating crashes that have disrupted the lives and
livelihoods of too many at our airports just this year,
following the tragic Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in
Baltimore last year.
The bipartisan infrastructure law makes a significant 5-
year investment in our Nation's transportation systems. Whether
it is helping to build new runways, repair deficient bridges,
or improve our ports, these historic investments are intended
to enhance safety, employ American businesses, put more people
to work, and create new public-private partnerships. This law,
combined with targeted investments through the annual THUD
bill, was supposed to serve as a catalyst for our economy and
quality of life. However, I am deeply concerned that this
administration's deliberate withholding of more than $40
billion provided by laws approved by this subcommittee and
reductions to DOT's workforce halt any meaningful progress in
transportation safety. Instead, we see thousands of qualified
Federal workers and contractors, including air traffic
controllers, made up of women, people of color, and veterans
pushed out of highly skilled jobs.
While I strongly support the need for robust investments in
aviation safety, we have yet to see the full potential of
existing resources being used to address our most immediate
threats brought forward by aging technology and staffing
shortfalls at the FAA. Last week's Air Traffic Control
Modernization Plan released by the administration is a great
start, but it ignores the realities of cuts to FAA staff, fair
competition, and overall cost, and, most importantly, how we
pay for it. Americans are afraid of flying, controllers are
walking off their jobs, and aviation businesses are hurting.
This plan seems to ignore the realities of the FAA losing
more than 2,000 employees this year and assumes project
timelines not yet defined by costs, access to materials, or
feasibility. But we need to know that it is backed by action
and by an administration that will deploy congressionally
directed funding for America's transportation in an expeditious
manner consistent with congressional intent.
Now, Mr. Secretary, I would be derelict in my duties to my
constituents and children were I not to address the significant
issue you raised in your submitted statement. During World War
II, the DEI program that created the Tuskegee Airmen, who
because of existing laws were all Black, was not a waste of
money. They made the skies safer for those all-White fighter
pilots they escorted, and we won that war. The DEI program that
created the women of the 6888, who because of existing laws
were all Black, was not a waste of money and they made the war
experiences more palatable for those all-White fighting units
that they efficiently and effectively supported during World
War II. Both these groups were awarded the Congressional Gold
Medal by this body for their service to this country.
Mr. Chairman, in 2 weeks, I will be hosting several of our
colleagues during Memorial Day weekend down in Charleston,
South Carolina, where that sacred holiday was first celebrated
back in 1865 by the all-Black 54th and 55th Massachusetts
Regiments, who were commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and
Colonel Charles Fox, both of whom were White because of
existing law.
Mr. Secretary, I believe this subcommittee can work in a
bipartisan fashion to deliver safer transportation networks for
the American people. And I look forward to hearing from you
about how we can best serve America's resources and talents to
build a safer and more secure country.
And I yield give back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Clyburn.
Before I recognize the chairman of the full committee, let
me acknowledge the presence here in this hearing room of the
parents of First Officer of Flight 5342, Sam Lilley. Tim and
Sheri, we share our deepest condolences for your loss. I want
to thank you for being here. Sam's legacy lives on in your
efforts here in advocating for safer skies. Please know this
work is not in vain. We hear you and we will make sure to do
right by you and your son in our work to invest in our aviation
system. We welcome you to the proceedings here this morning.
And now the full committee chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee, my good friend from the great State
of Oklahoma, Mr. Cole.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Before I
begin my formal remarks, I want to associate myself with your
remarks about our guests here. And we want to thank you very
much. We share your grief and your loss. Terrible situation. We
appreciate you turning it to such a positive message and
advocacy to try and make the skies safer. I know Tim would have
been enormously proud of what you are doing right now. So thank
you again for being here. It is an honor to have you in this
committee room with all the rest of us.
And again, before my formal remarks, I got to tell you, Mr.
Secretary, and I say that with great pleasure, it is wonderful
to have you there. It is wonderful to see the energy you are
approaching your job with, the commitment. I am very proud of
you as a former colleague and look forward to working with you
in the months and years ahead.
Thank you, Chairman Womack. And thank you, Ranking Member
Clyburn. Again, I want to welcome the Secretary. It is very
good to have him back, even if it is on the other side of the
chamber's dais, and thank you for appearing before us today.
We are focused here today on ensuring that the FAA and our
other safety agencies have the resources necessary to prevent
future tragedies. It is one of the most significant duties we
have, and we do not take it lightly on either side of the
aisle. As we advance the fiscal year 2026 process, effective
investments in our Nation's transportation systems are a
priority.
Secretary Duffy's team at DOT has already made great
efforts to ensure we are directing taxpayer dollars to
infrastructure and safety improvements that are worthwhile,
taking a fine-toothed comb to thousands of funding decisions
made by the previous administration. This subcommittee will
further these efforts as we look at the fiscal year 2026 bill,
making sure we support programs that improve infrastructure
while taking a hard look at those programs that are wasteful
and duplicative. But make no mistake, the fiscal discipline
will not come at the price of safety, and we will continue to
ensure safety is an utmost priority in the fiscal year 2026
THUD bill.
In my opinion, there is no greater example of carrying out
that mission than at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center. In
our final fiscal year 2025 appropriations, we provided funding
to train an additional 2,000 air traffic controllers. I want to
work with you, Mr. Secretary, to ensure that we sustain this
training surge in Oklahoma City. We have the land, the
facilities, and the world-class staff at the Monroney Center to
ensure that controllers receive in-person, focused, state-of-
the-art training. I also believe the center provides terrific
value to the taxpayer. We will continue to support the FAA's
modernization efforts and oppose any attempt to decentralize or
weaken controller training.
I will also reiterate my steadfast commitment to ensure
that the 2026 THUD bill prioritizes investments in Tribal and
rural areas. Nearly 70 percent of America's road miles are in
rural areas and about 145,000 miles of roads pass through
Tribal lands. These communities face notable challenges and
have different needs from urban areas. As we begin the
appropriations process, I am resolute in my commitment to
working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to fund
the critical safety missions and transportation infrastructure
needs of the country.
Thank you, Chairman Womack. And with that, I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Cole.
The ranking member of the full committee will probably
participate at some point in time today. We do have other
hearings going on. I don't think that she is wishing to give an
opening statement, but we will inject her into the Q&A when she
arrives.
And with that, Mr. Secretary, welcome once again to the
subcommittee. We are going to accept your written testimony for
the record and we will yield the floor to you. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF HON. SEAN DUFFY, SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSPORTATION
Secretary Duffy. Chairman Womack, Ranking Member Clyburn,
Chairman Cole, thank you all for inviting me to this
subcommittee, as well as all the subcommittee members. I think
it has been about 6 years since I have been back to the House.
It is a pleasure to see you all. I am not sure if there was
some plan to bring the greatest voices of the House together in
Womack and Clyburn, but you guys, great voices made for media,
I think.
My aim over the course of this hearing is to provide you
with a sense of how building big, beautiful infrastructure is a
top priority of President Trump's priorities and how we can all
work together in a bipartisan effort to make that a reality.
The infrastructure that connects our people, our states, moves
our products is a priority of the President. Our Department,
over the course of the last hundred days, has saved taxpayers
roughly $9.5 billion. Those savings include monies pulled from
projects tied to social justice, to climate requirements, also
boondoggle projects, as well as bringing efficiencies to the
Department.
Now, many of you have asked me about grants and grant
agreements and grant announcements. So just to be clear on this
point, we have inherited an unprecedented backlog of 3,200
awards for grants that were announced by the last
administration. However, those 3,200 were left to me to do the
grant agreements on. So the announcement is fun, but the work
is really the grant agreement. So there are 3,200 that have
been passed off to me. Those are the ones that all of you love
to call me on. And by the way, we are working through that
backlog. Many of these projects of the 3,200 date back to 2022.
The last administration, they were unorganized, they were
unfocused, as projects around the country were stalled by
inaction and inefficiencies. No one is more frustrated with the
inefficiencies of this process than I am. Currently, there are
10 to 14 different systems to track the status of grants across
the Department of Transportation. There is not one system.
There are 10 to 14 systems that are used to track grants. I am
committed to consolidating all of this information into one
dashboard so grantees can see how money is being spent--all of
you can see the progress of grants. I want to bring you that
transparency, but that is also consolidating the system in
which the DOT uses to provide that information to all of you
and to the American people. I promise to ensure that
transparency as we move through this process.
The Department of Transportation is one of the few
nondefense Federal agencies to receive an increase in funding
under President Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget. The reason is
simple. The President, he is a builder. He loves to build and
he wants to build at DOT. Our budget carefully focuses taxpayer
resources on items critical to our most fundamental mission of
safety and investing in transportation infrastructure.
We have pushed forward with the approval of 405 grants
totaling $4.9 billion in the President's hundred-plus days in
office. The President's budget of $26.7 billion in new
discretionary funding for 2026 is a $1.5 billion increase over
2025, or it is 5.8 percent as an increase, which I am proud to
see that we have. We do not want to take additional funds from
hardworking taxpayers for granted in this era of government
where it has become too big, too inefficient, and too wasteful.
We have carefully planned for these dollars to fund urgent
projects that, once built, will serve future generations for
decades and I think build and make this country stronger.
And so I am sure you are going to ask me questions. As Mr.
Clyburn indicated, what is going on with staffing cuts? We are
going to try to make the Department of Transportation more
efficient, do more with less. I am happy to talk about that.
Also I want to discuss Newark. We are working through the
telecom infrastructure upgrade to take care of the delays. As
we speak right now, the FAA has brought in together all of the
airlines who serve Newark to have a conversation about how
there can be a delayed reduction. So if you book your flight,
that flight is going to fly, you don't have people at the
airport for, you know, 2, 4, 6 hours, then a flight canceled.
So we are working through that now. Hopefully, in the next week
or two, we will have additional, really good news about the
telecom progress that we have made. And happy to talk about the
air traffic control system that we announced last week.
And finally, I know my time is over, but I do want to say
thank you to Tim and Sheri for coming. I have appreciated their
support. I have gotten to know them since January 29th and the
loss of their son Sam. And they have been a force for good. And
I am grateful for their partnership. I am grateful they have
been--their coming here today. And I think this is a moment
where we are trying to pay, what happened in late January, we
are trying to pay it forward to make sure we don't have another
set of families of 67 people that have to fight to make sure
they have a system that is going to work. So thank you for
being here.
And to the committee, thank you for having me. And I am
happy to take the committee's questions.
[The information follows:]
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Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. We are going to begin
the Q&A portion. Members will have 5 minutes. And it won't
surprise anybody in this room to know that I am kind of lenient
on that, as long as you don't use 4\1/2\ of your minutes to
lecture or editorialize and only leave 30 seconds for an answer
to a question. But we are going to be very tolerant of the
people here because, at the end of the day, we all share the
same goal, and that is to ensure that we are doing the very
best we can by the people who utilize the transportation modes
in this great country.
You will be recognized in the order of seniority based on
who was seated at the beginning of the hearing, as is typical,
going back and forth between parties.
One other note. At around 10:30, because there is another
subcommittee hearing going on today, our colleague, David
Joyce, is chairing the Financial Services and General
Government Subcommittee. He will come in and I will seek a
unanimous consent request to allow him to get to his 5 minutes
of questions so that he can return back to his subcommittee.
So at this time, I am going to recognize myself.
Secretary Duffy, one of the President's first actions was
to undo burdensome regulations relating to climate and equity
brought by the prior administration. You followed suit. You
have discussed this in your opening statement today, revoking
Biden era policies and requirements pertaining to social and
environmental justice. You also talked or tasked the modal
administrations to review grant applications and awards to
ensure funds are implemented in accordance with statute and not
extraneous Biden era policies unrelated to transportation.
You mentioned 3,200 grant awards. So far, according to our
records, you have cleared just over 480 of those, about 15
percent. Can you give us a status update and help us understand
the steps you are taking to review and how the grantee is
notified as we move through this process?
Secretary Duffy. Yeah, I appreciate the question, Mr.
Chairman. We are all hands on deck right now working through
these grant agreements. And again, I think you are going to see
progress ramp up. But if we look over the past 4 years, there
is a few months where the last administration was able to get
more grant agreements out the door than we have. But by and
large, we are moving at a near record pace and we are going to
continue to move at that pace. I know how important these
projects are to all of your states and your districts, and
especially as we come into the spring building season or we are
in the spring building season, how important it is to get those
agreements signed.
Mr. Womack. What are your limitations?
Secretary Duffy. Well, just it takes time, right? It takes
time to go through and think through these grant agreements. I
will say there is a level of bureaucracy, not just at DOT, but
I think throughout government. We need to streamline that
bureaucracy. Again, we have to do it right, but we are looking
for efficiencies. How can we do it faster? We are looking at
using AI tools as well as other technological tools that we
could deploy that could help us move faster on these grant
agreements. We are in that exploration phase right now.
Mr. Womack. I want to talk a bit about staffing for a
moment. Longstanding language in our bill requires notification
prior to any program elimination or major reorganization. Over
the past few months, we have seen a series of efforts by the
administration to reduce the size of the Federal workforce. And
I think a lot of us up here would agree that the Federal
bureaucracy has become bloated, but I think we need to be a
little bit more precise in downsizing a department with a
mission as critical as DOT's.
The dismissal of probationary employees has brought a
reduction to the workforce of 3,000. When you add two rounds of
buyouts, DOT will see a 12 percent reduction in staffing since
January 20th. I also understand that OMB requested a reduction
in force plan to be submitted by mid-March.
So the question is pretty simple. How many departures can
you handle without eroding the ability to carry out a safe and
effective mission?
Secretary Duffy. So, first off, you mentioned the
reprogramming. And I know there are requirements to report to
Congress if there is going to be reprogramming. We are working
through some ideas right now on how we can streamline the
Department. When we have completed those ideas, we will no
doubt share them with you for your consideration.
Listen, we can do more with less, Mr. Chairman. And if we
do more with less, that means that we will have additional
money, I think, through this committee to put back into the
infrastructure that so many of us dearly want in our
communities. And so the DRP is maybe not the--it is not a
scalpel. People are willing to take an opportunity to retire,
to resign. We should take them up on that.
And if we have shortfalls, I am mission-driven. The
President loves this Department, loves the work that we do. You
all care about the work that we do. If I have to hire people
back in, I will do that to make sure we can do the work. But if
I have people who don't want to be there, that want to take the
offer, well, let's get some people in who are hungry to do the
work. That is what I am looking for. And so we are going to
make it work. It is not a scalpel, but it is an opportunity for
us to reduce the force, get the work done, and save the
American people money.
Mr. Womack. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Clyburn.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I notice,
Mr. Secretary, I made reference in my opening statement to your
submitted statement where the term ``DEI'' was used. In your
oral statement, you used the term ``social justice,'' which is
fine with me. I would call your attention to the fact, however,
that that also raises an issue with me.
We know what social justice has meant in this country. I am
a native of South Carolina, my parents, grandparents, all South
Carolinians, where the Civil War began, where enslavement in
this country really became the number one economy, that made
South Carolina the biggest economy in the country, all because
of enslavement. Now, we have done some things in this country
to overcome all of that. And one of the things we have done is
to make special investments.
My late wife, to whom I was married for 58 years, had to
walk two and a half miles to school every morning, right past
the White school where the White kids had buses. That was
social injustice. And this country has made a big investment to
get beyond that. And now all of a sudden, we see this as
wasteful government spending. I don't think so. I think this is
wise investment in a country that has challenges that we need
all people involved in.
And in the Department of Transportation, where I spent a
lot of my time here in the Congress, we have had some rules and
regulations about how to build highways, where to build
highways, where to put those bridges. And we have done some
things to stop that injustice. That is not wasteful spending.
And so I would like to know exactly when you make these
decisions, what kind of decision-making goes into the fact that
if I raise the issue that this bridge or this highway is
busting up a neighborhood, putting the children on one side of
the highway and the schools on the other side of the highway, I
am not telling you what I think, I am telling you what happened
in my neighborhood. These are social injustices that I think we
as a government has got a responsibility to make sure that does
not happen going forward.
So I love builders. I am a bridge builder myself. I am not
trying to get from one side of the lake to the other, but a
bridge builder to the future for my children and grandchildren.
And I think social justice is an area that we need to pay
attention to. And I would like to know, how do you make
decisions about that?
Secretary Duffy. So, Mr. Clyburn, Congressman, I am well
aware of your history and I think America should be proud of
your history and all that you have done. I am talking about
something very specific in regard to DOT. Okay? I am not
talking about the broader political conversation.
So there are requirements in the last administration, like
a racial equity impact analysis has been completed for the
project, or the recipient or a project partner has adopted an
equity and inclusion program plan or has otherwise instituted
equity-focused policies related to project procurement,
material sourcing, construction, inspection, hiring or other
activities. And so what I see with the climate and the social
justice requirements in the projects that you so dearly want
built, that it is adding costs on, it is costing more money.
And if we take out, you know, 5 to 10 percent on climate or
social justice, that is money we don't have for additional
projects. And that is my concern.
And then the final point is the Supreme Court in the
Harvard decision said, we are not going to divide people and
make decisions based on race or sex. We are going to make it
based on the people, and Harvard, the quality of their
applications to the school. And so here, these were specific
instances where the costs were going up. And I don't know that
this was adding to the safety or the quality of the project.
Mr. Clyburn. Well, I would ask you to have your staff look
at the Adarand decision that deals with this issue. And the
Adarand decision has not been overturned by the courts. And I
maintain that a lot of what we are doing at the Department of
the Administration today is in violation of the Adarand
decision.
I yield back.
Mr. Womack. The chair seeks unanimous consent to recognize
Mr. Joyce out of order since he has some other duties he needs
to fulfill.
Hearing no objection, Mr. Joyce, you are recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and welcome,
Secretary Duffy.
Secretary Duffy. Mr. Joyce.
Mr. Joyce. Mr. Secretary, in fiscal year 2019, the
Department of Transportation launched a Port Infrastructure
Development Program to increase port capacity and resiliency
while modernizing an aging port infrastructure. Since then, the
Department has distributed more than $2 billion to port
authorities, Tribal, state, and local governments, and private
companies. While 70 percent of these funds went to the West
Coast and East Coast ports last year, only 2 percent of these
funds were awarded to the Great Lakes ports. I am concerned
that under the previous administration, these funds were not
being distributed fairly across all regions.
In your testimony you mentioned your budget request
provides the Maritime Administration with $596 million more and
fiscal year 2025 enacted less. How will your request help
ensure ports in all regions of the country have access to
needed funding so that they are able to operate at full
capacity?
Secretary Duffy. So I thought you might ask me that
question. So I asked MARAD, is there a disparity in the money
that goes to the Great Lakes? And they are telling me no, but I
am going to investigate that a little bit further. As you know,
I am from northern Wisconsin and we care about Lake Michigan
and Lake Superior and equal access to resources is important.
It is a driving force in the economy in our region. So I
understand that. I will continue to have this discussion with
MARAD and I would look forward to getting back to you and
getting you the information that I find.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you. I have been open about going for all
the Great Lakes. I haven't just pushed Lake Erie. But can you
describe any plans your Department has to ensure and improve
that regional distribution of Federal assistance under the port
infrastructure grant, or is that something that you need to
take a look?
Secretary Duffy. Well, we are working through our plans
right now and would be happy to partner with you as we review
that and look at it.
Mr. Joyce. Many aviation stakeholders are still concerned
about the challenges the FAA faces in reviewing medical
certificate applications as well as the steps it is proposing
to streamline that process. According to stakeholders, two of
the main issues causing delays in the FAA medical certification
process are, first, the outdated paper-based system used to
submit and process medical records; and second, the limited
availability of specialist review panels, which only meet every
couple of months and can only review a small number of cases at
a time. These challenges create long wait times before a
physician can even begin reviewing a case, leaving both the
pilots and the aviation medical examiner stuck in a stressful
and often frustrating holding pattern.
Would you, Secretary, would you describe any actions your
Department has taken or plans to take to streamline this
process, reduce cost to taxpayers, and ensure pilots can safely
return to the air in a timely manner.
Secretary Duffy. So this is an issue that I, too, have
heard a lot about. A lot of pilots have reached out. It is too
slow, it is too laborious, complicated. And so I have had
conversations with the FAA on how we can improve this process
and I would be happy to, again, circle back with you and talk
about how we are going to navigate making this process more
responsive and quicker.
Mr. Joyce. And I understand and fully appreciate the fact
that you have inherited a lot of problems in a small period of
time and I know, seeing you work, that you will be able to work
through this process.
I will throw out one last thing is I had an opportunity
under former Chairman Shuster and Secretary Chao to go to
Canada to see the system that they have in place up there for
the aviation control. And I know that there are some issues
with it, but there are better systems that exist than what we
have in place, and have been in the towers to watch the people
have to transfer paper. I can't believe that in this day and
age this is an American system. But I know under your
leadership we will get that problem fixed.
Thank you, sir. I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Joyce.
I am going to recognize now the full committee chairman,
Mr. Cole, and Ms. Torres will be on deck. Mr. Cole.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First to my friend from Arkansas and certainly the
Secretary, I had the privilege many years ago or a number of
years ago of actually chairing this subcommittee and I had a
pretty simple philosophy on anything that was safety related
that an administration proposed, and it was that we would match
or exceed anything that related directly to safety. I didn't
want that issue to ever become a partisan if you had funded or
not funded that kind of discussion.
And again, we will wait and see what we have to work with,
but we certainly hope we can work with you on that. I don't
think there is any partisan division about making sure the
railroads are safe, the airways are safe, the roads are safe.
And you are probably in a better position to tell us what you
need to do that than we are to tell you what needs to happen.
So we will try to make that same commitment to you.
Our air traffic control system, as you know, is facing a
lot of strain, particularly at our busiest towers. And I want
to thank you for your visit to the Mike Monroney Aeronautical
Center in February, and your decision to announce the hiring
surge immediately afterward was a clear signal of your
leadership and commitment to addressing the shortage of
controllers that we have seen grow over many years. The fiscal
year 2026 skinny budget reflects the Department's commitment to
accelerate air traffic controller hiring, requesting increases
in FAA operations for a hiring surge at the Air Traffic Control
Academy. So we appreciate that and we are going to try and work
and meet your request there.
As you know, the FAA Academy itself is actually a world-
class facility. It has trained generations of controllers to
the highest standards. And in my view, the complexity and
precision required for this, a safety critical workforce,
demands a centralized, hands-on training environment and not a
patchwork of remote or decentralized approaches. So again, we
appreciate your efforts.
I was very pleased last week, just to update you, to have
the opportunity to deal with the acting administrator, and I
hope I don't butcher his name, but Rocheleau, about bringing
additional teaching resources to the Academy.
Can you update us on the progress FAA has made toward
addressing the air traffic controller shortfall? And how many
candidates did we actually hire last year?
Secretary Duffy. I appreciate the question and I appreciate
the engagement from the Oklahoma delegation. You guys have been
wonderful to work with and have given the support to the
Academy that is necessary.
So what you think would be a very simple set of solutions
to get more butts in seats at the Academy is far more
complicated than that. And we have been working through
streamlining, testing, getting the best test scores through the
process and in the Academy. What we have done is we have air
traffic controllers who are teaching the classes in the
Academy, but not all of the classes are specifically air
traffic control specific. So we are going to bring in
professors to teach the nonspecific air traffic control
classes. That will free up air traffic controllers to teach
additional classes, which means we get more instructors in the
Academy, which means we can get more kids, young people,
through the Academy.
So there was a target of 2,000 for this fiscal year of
controllers to get out of the Academy--or to get into the
Academy. That was not going to be met. But after this
supercharged announcement that we made, I think we are going to
hit the 2,000.
One of the problems that we have, as you know, Congressman,
is there is a 35 percent washout rate at the Academy. When I
was there, some of the young people said, if you could just
give us some help, if there are some tutors that could assist
us with just a little extra help we may need, a lot of these
washout students in the Academy are actually going to make it.
They are going to be good controllers, but just give us some
extra support. So we have now stood that up as well. If we
could get the washout rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, we
are starting to talk, you know, real numbers, another couple
hundred a year. So my hope is we are going to get above 1,200
this year with next year, hopefully, getting 2,200, 2,300 into
the Academy.
And then we have offered a bonus to controllers who are
actually experienced. They can retire after 25 years. And so to
get them to stay on with that experience, we have offered to
pay them a 20 percent upfront bonus to their salaries if they
will stay. And for every year they will stay, we are going to
give them 20 percent of their bonus up front. Again, you got to
pay people to stick around. And we are in an emergency
situation and I think we are going to see a lot of controllers
take us up on that.
I would say I know a lot of them are looking at their
retirements that the Congress is talking about right now. That
could force some of them out rather than stay because they are
looking at long-term funding. I know that that has come up with
the controllers, but that is the work of the Congress. But just
full transparency on what they are considering, Congressman.
The Chairman. Well, we are going to have time for a second
round. There are some other issues. But I want to commend you
on the efforts you have already taken. I think it is exactly
the right approach. We have done this in the military before to
make sure we didn't lose recruits. We helped them get to where
they wanted to go and I think you are absolutely on the right
track on that.
And I appreciate you raising retirement issues. Some of us
are having very direct talks with our own leadership about
that. And we could lose some very valuable people. You are
talking about the ones here. I can give you a whole list of
valuable technicians at Tinker Air Force Base and places like
that that you can't change the rules in the middle of the game.
You have made some commitments. You need to follow through on
those commitments, and we will see where we end up at the end
of this process. But again, thank you for your service.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Mrs. Torres.
Secretary Duffy. I wouldn't object if there is not a second
round. I will be okay with that if you guys don't want it.
Mr. Womack. Mrs. Torres.
Mrs. Torres. Thank you, Chairman. And Secretary Duffy,
welcome to the committee and I look forward to welcoming you in
the Inland Empire sometime in the fall.
Secretary Duffy. Thank you.
Mrs. Torres. I want to give you a little background on the
district that I represent, California's 35th Congressional
District. We refer to it as the Inland Empire. Infrastructure
is our lifeline. Our region is a logistics hub where trucks,
trains, and airplanes deliver goods to massive warehouses. The
bipartisan infrastructure law and this committee's
appropriations gave my constituents hope, investing in public
transit, safety, and a more reliable transportation network.
But I am very concerned that the ability of my cities to
build these projects is being undermined by the layoffs, the
workforce layoffs. The cuts have made it almost impossible to
get funds out the door and only 12 percent of Federal grants
are disputed being distributed. Delays combined with lumber and
steel tariffs have threatened vital programs and it has
resulted in one major rail public transportation program to be
completely canceled, no longer affordable.
I also represent the Ontario airport and I am concerned
about the recent actions taken that undermine our air travel
safety. Bipartisan efforts in Congress, as you have recognized,
increased funding for air traffic controllers. But the
administration undermined that by offering deferred
resignations to controllers. And at least 400 of them
responsible for maintaining air traffic control systems were
fired, resulting in delays to much needed upgrades. I agree and
I am so happy to hear what you have just told the chairman of
the full committee and I want to make sure that you are
successful in hiring those 2,000 people, in addressing the
attrition rates, and addressing the training needs of this
workforce.
I would like to ask for unanimous consent to enter into the
record an email that I received from United Airlines this week
about air traffic safety. This is an email that was sent to me
as a passenger on a future flight that will be flying through
Newark Airport.
Mr. Womack. Without objection, so ordered.
Mrs. Torres. Secretary Duffy, planes are falling from the
sky, some crashing into each other. Air traffic controller
systems are unexpectedly shutting down and resetting
themselves. Traffic controllers are too nervous to continue in
many cases. Praying for a safe landing isn't enough. I am glad
that you recognize that. The flying public, though, needs to
hear more reassurances that you and the Department and all of
us working together are doing everything in our power to ensure
that no more lives will be put at risk and that we can continue
to fly safely and be delivered to our destination in a safe
manner.
I also want to address the planned closure of the Pipeline
and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration regional office
in Ontario. It is a big mouth name for an office that does such
critical work. This office plays a critical role in overseeing
the safe movement of hazardous materials, like dangerous gases
and corrosive materials, directly impacting the safety of my
constituents and the entire region. The Alameda corridor splits
my district in two. Hazardous materials travel through the
heart of my cities every single day. And this office is
supposed to stop problems before they happen.
I sent a letter to raise concerns about this closure and,
frankly, the May 8 response I received reads like it was
written by someone who doesn't give a s--t about the
consequences of closing this office. It provided zero assurance
that this office would be restored and blamed the least
termination on another agency within this administration. We
can't be blaming each other. We have to take accountability for
what has happened and we have to reverse course.
It is clear that the safety of my constituents and the
region at large is being completely ignored by bureaucrats
looking to justify savings on a website. Just last year,
inspectors from our region identified 15 probable violations.
And it only takes one safety violation to result in a
catastrophic incident, like the one in East Palestine, Ohio.
Secretary Duffy, how can DOT justify this closure? And I
know that my time is almost running out, but how can we justify
this closure and can I count on you to review the process of
this other agency of closing this office?
Mr. Womack. I will give him a few seconds to respond.
Mrs. Torres. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. Thank you.
Secretary Duffy. Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of
falsehoods that were just lodged. If you would give me a moment
to respond to the 5 minutes of misinformation, I would be happy
to do that.
So we have not fired, haven't let any one air traffic
controller go.
Mrs. Torres. I didn't say they fired them.
Secretary Duffy. You said that we let 400 go. No one in air
traffic control has been allowed to take a deferred resignation
offer. We have preserved all of our safety critical mission
positions, including air traffic controllers. Not one has been
allowed to retire by any of the programs that we have offered.
Not one, not 400. Zero.
We are in this situation because the last administration
didn't see to take initiative on the 3,000 controllers short
that we were. Under COVID they didn't stand up the school fast
enough to get more kids through Oklahoma, so we would have more
controllers in the airspace today. The infrastructure didn't
rot in the last 100 days. We didn't have 3,000-controller
shortages in the last hundred days. There was 4 years that came
before where nothing was done. And watchdog groups have warned
the DOT that the infrastructure was failing and nothing was
done. So we are going to do something about it. We are going to
try to fix it.
By the way, if I could just talk about grants, if I could.
Mr. Chairman, can I have just one grace moment to be 30
seconds. So between Obama and----
Mrs. Torres. Two thousand positions were funded in the last
administration, sir----
Mr. Womack. Let the gentleman respond.
Secretary Duffy. Between----
Mrs. Torres [continuing]. So don't say nothing was done.
Secretary Duffy. Between Obama and Trump, Election Day and
Inauguration Day, in that timeframe, Obama announced 50 grants
in that timeframe. Between Trump and Biden, the Trump
administration announced between Election Day and Inauguration
Day 100 grants. This time between Biden and Trump, Pete
Buttigieg announced 1,000 grants, a massive increase. And you
all say, where are my grant agreements?
So they announce all these grants and I have to do the
work. And I am going to do the work. But offer some grace to
the DOT. There are 3,200 backlogs here. We are going to work
through it. I want to get you your money, but to blame it on
us, I think, is rich.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
And once again to my colleagues, as I said in announcing
the Q&A, if you are going to spend most of your time
editorializing, giving your opinion, that is okay, it is your
time. But don't ask the committee to be terribly lenient if you
are going to do that, and then expect a response from the
Secretary.
Mr. Rogers.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, welcome
home.
Secretary Duffy. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. You have got a distinguished record of service
in this body, and so one of us has done good and it is you.
Thank you for serving in this capacity. We predict that your
record will be enhanced even more in this job than in your
previous one.
Let me ask you about rural highways, roadways. Twenty
percent of Americans live in rural areas, but they account for
43 percent of all deaths from '17 to '21, over 83,000
fatalities. Investments in rural highways are critical to
improve safety, accessibility, and economic growth.
What are your plans, especially for the rural road system
in the country?
Secretary Duffy. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the question.
We have 40,000-plus deaths a year on our roads. It is way too
many. And I think in rural America, where I am from, sometimes
those roads get really long and people cannot pay attention.
That could be a problem. There is some who may become tired on
those trips. But I do think some of the technology that comes
on board right now that can warn people when they are tired, I
do think autonomous technology is going to enhance the safety
of everyone on our roads. And we haven't really seen
substantial movements in the numbers of death over the course
of the last decade. And I think this technology truly will save
lives and prohibit families from going through the pain of
losing a loved one.
But again, this is a problem that the Department has
grappled with and I do think the answer is going to come
through technology.
Mr. Rogers. And the same language applies to airports,
rural airports. What do you see for their future given the fact
that that the proposal is to zero out the EAS system for rural
America?
Secretary Duffy. So, first off, I had EAS airports in my
district, understand the importance of Essential Air Service
for rural America. I don't know how many on the committee have
a EAS airport, but I know a lot of people in this body and in
the body across the Capitol do as well. So we are going to work
through a plan to try to make this efficient and provide the
service to communities that depend on it. And I will partner
with this committee, bipartisan, as we work through that and
navigate service, but doing it more cost effectively. I hope I
am able to make that happen, and I will partner with you in
that process.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Yield back.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Quigley.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you. Mr. Secretary, I appreciate what
the chairman is saying, and I think he will tell you that we,
he and I, have a very solid history of bipartisan, pragmatic
ways of trying to get things done. So I want you to know this
is pragmatic.
If it rolls, floats, or flies, it comes through Chicago.
This is too important. O'Hare, you know, Lake Michigan, one in
four freight trains goes through Chicago. So the criteria we
talk about with these grants, population, existing
infrastructure aging, quality, economic activity, traffic
volume, that is all I want to talk about.
Secretary Duffy. Great.
Mr. Quigley. So you can appreciate a little concern I would
have just from a pragmatic point of view, putting aside
personal feelings, quote, ``give preference to communities with
marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.'' I
am just not sure what the heck that has to do with the
pragmatic issues we are trying to solve very quickly.
Numerous studies, Urban Institute analysis, census tracts
with higher marriage and birth rates have more households with
access to a car. They also feature a much higher share of
residents whose commutes occur while driving alone, who--also a
lower share of people who walk, bike, or take transit. We are
actually, if you follow that, going to add to congestion issues
and traffic volume and, therefore, pollution. It is sort of
contra to the pragmatic aspects that we are trying to get done
here.
Secretary Duffy. So a lot of transportation activity in
Chicago, I think you now have a Pope from Chicago, too, that
you guys don't stop.
Mr. Quigley. But he is a Sox fan, so I digress.
Secretary Duffy. I hope he is not a Bears fan. That is all
I can say. I mean, but I do think this is one factor to look
at. And the reason I am looking at----
Mr. Quigley. I mean, Mr. Scalise is 50th, Louisiana, I
suspect he might be concerned about this, too. So it is
bipartisan.
Secretary Duffy. By the way, I think infrastructure is
bipartisan. This is probably one of the most bipartisan jobs
you could get in in the government because----
Mr. Quigley. Tell me why marriage matters.
Secretary Duffy. Because I think if you look at marriage
and birth rates, that is going to lead to future needs. Where
you have families developing and where you have kids being born
is where you are going to have population. And then when you
have population, that is going to mean you are going to need
infrastructure needs. But it is not the end all, be all. I am
not making decisions at the DOT based only on marriage and
birth rates. I said that is a factor that we should consider
for future growth.
Mr. Quigley. Back to the studies that show it does just the
opposite, that those census tracts tend to be wealthier,
frankly, more white and in less need of public transportation.
So you are actually working against the need. They are more
likely to drive in a car by themselves.
Secretary Duffy. Who is? I'm sorry, will you explain that
to me?
Mr. Quigley. I will give you the studies and the footnotes,
but we will start with the Urban Institute analysis.
Secretary Duffy. But the more kids you have in an area, the
less transportation needs you will have? Is that the study?
Mr. Quigley. No. The census tracts that have the numbers
that you are talking about are wealthier. They are more likely
to drive where they are going with a single person in the car.
A whole bunch of factors that add to greater congestion. They
are wealthier. So there are communities that need public
transportation less. These are all statistical. I am just
saying, putting aside the personalities, it is a factor that
moves us in the opposite direction.
Secretary Duffy. I will look at the study and I would love
to talk to you about it, but from just what I have seen with
the data, it is not White families that are having more kids.
It is other families that look like mine that are having a lot
of kids.
Mr. Quigley. Population and population trends is a criteria
that makes sense. It is what we already use. But you are
talking about something that works in the opposite direction
and it doesn't help the situation.
Secretary Duffy. Well, again, where we have children, we
have families, we have population growth, and we will need
infrastructure. I think that is pretty simple. If you can----
Mr. Quigley. The notion is that you want to help families
with kids. I mean, generally, you want to help families. You
want to help families with kids.
Secretary Duffy. Well, I think families are great, and I
think kids are great, but I also think that----
Mr. Quigley. You want to support families with children.
Secretary Duffy. Well, no, I want to support infrastructure
needs of the future. And where we have families and kids is
where we are going to need infrastructure, where I think we are
going to see growth. I think that is fair to say.
Mr. Quigley. But what you are going to have with more kids
and you are going to have poorer census tracts, they are going
to need more public transportation. This is going to skew us
toward highway projects, road projects, and fewer projects for
mass transit. That is just statistically true.
Secretary Duffy. If we need more freight to bring in more
goods, more diapers into these communities, we can talk about
that. If you think we need public----
Mr. Quigley. At the second round I am sure we will.
Secretary Duffy [continuing]. Transportation in these areas
where we are having more kids, we should talk about that as
well. This was not one-off highways. We will look at the whole
Department and all the modes and how we can serve the future of
population growth.
Mr. Quigley. I just wish you would appreciate this is the
pragmatic, personal feelings aside, we will do that in the
second round.
Secretary Duffy. I appreciate that.
Mr. Quigley. Thank you.
Secretary Duffy. Thank you.
Mr. Womack. We will take up the diaper dandies in round
two. Okay, Mr. Quigley?
Mrs. Bice.
Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr.
Secretary, for being with us. And I want to take a moment to
reiterate Chairman Womack and Chairman Cole's condolences to
the Lilley family. Thank you for being here and working with us
to ensure that we continue to have the safest skies in the
world.
I, as Chairman Cole, also represent portions of the
Oklahoma City area and I am proud to represent thousands of FAA
employees in my district who work at the Mike Monroney
Aeronautical Center. I want to thank you for your recent visit
in February and I am glad you are able to see the critical
facility and the great work that is being done there.
I want to share with you a quick story because I think it
is an example of how broken things have been. After I was
elected, I tried to get into see FAA Mike Monroney Aeronautical
Center for quite some time and the former Secretary of
Transportation made it very difficult for the staff to allow me
in. I finally got in, in October of '22, and keep in mind the
White House was open in August of '22 for visits again, but it
was when I arrived to the facility I was required to answer
COVID protocol questions. Secretary Buttigieg still had these
protocols for certain facilities in place and it was pretty
shocking to have to answer those questions. So it is refreshing
to have someone come in and focus on the mission and actually
what needs to be done to improve the safety of our skies.
The FAA workforce in Oklahoma is crucial and the Academy is
a national asset that prepares our air traffic controllers for
the rigors of a very difficult job. Mr. Secretary, as you know,
the Academy relies on timely medical and security screenings as
well as capacity in field training facilities to move
candidates through that pipeline in a timely fashion. I have a
particular concern with the lengthy delays of the medical
screening process and the field training, but I was excited on
your recent actions to address the factors as part of the
supercharge initiative and I would like you to talk a little
bit more about that and how we can move these folks through the
pipeline faster.
Secretary Duffy. I appreciate the question. Yeah. So, by
the way, if you all haven't been to the Academy, it is amazing.
You should all go. It is really remarkable how we train up air
traffic controllers, but yet we were having this issue where it
was taking up to a year and a half once you apply to become a
controller, to actually get a spot in the Academy. And the
issue with that is if you are 25 years old and you are waiting
a year and a half, you are going to go find a different job.
You can't wait for a potential seat at the Academy.
And so one of the holdups was the medicals, medical exams.
And so we have worked with our doctors, which it seems like it
would be easier than it actually was. We have incentivized them
with additional pay to take our applicants earlier, so we get
our appointments scheduled faster. And then it was taking, you
know, months to get the reports back. And so we are going to
give them a bonus to get those reports back to us in 2 weeks.
And sometimes this comes down to money.
By the way, we have that in the current--we are moving
dollars around at the FAA that you have given us the grace to
do, but we are moving dollars around to pay for it with the
existing money that the FAA has. But again, that is allowing us
to get these students who take the test, get the medical, do
the background check, and we are taking those top scorers and
putting them into the academy first. So it is moving faster,
which is----
Mrs. Bice. Merit-based, which is incredibly important
because that hasn't been the case in the past, correct?
Secretary Duffy. Yes. Right. So if you get a 90, 98 on your
test, we are going to put you in before someone who got an 82.
Like I just think that makes sense. And the opportunity to not
have that student wash out is way better. So I think--because
the washout rate becomes a real issue and the best qualified
students will give us a lower washout rate. But so thank you
for recognizing the hard work it took to try to figure this
out.
Mrs. Bice. Well, I appreciate the focus on that. And I do
want to touch on technology, but I also want to make one quick
note. You mentioned in your testimony grants and the number of
grant programs that--and processes that you are having to deal
with. And that is a focus for me because it is obvious to me if
it is happening at your agency, it is happening across
government. And so many grants are being duplicated in many
ways to the same entities, so I want to work with you to
streamline that in any way that we can.
Last, I just want to quickly ask you to touch on the
technology upgrades. You had a great visual when you did your
press conference showing floppy disks. I am of the age that I
know what a floppy disk is, but my 24-year-old does not. What
are we going to do to invest in technology to get our air
traffic infrastructure up to really snuff, up to the 21st
century quickly?
Secretary Duffy. Yeah, I appreciate the question. We have a
whole problem and if you look at the infrastructure around air
traffic control, I don't think there is anything there to save.
If there is some scraps you could offer a junkyard, that is
possible. But really this is, you know, '80s, our radar is from
the '70s. We have a couple new ones from early '80s. I mean,
that is how old the stuff is.
But if I am really honest with you, I don't think it is
been done because it is really hard. We are going to update the
telecom moving from copper to fiber. By the way, that is really
fast. We actually have to slow down the fast speed of fiber to
then make the equipment that we use in the facilities, make it
think it is as slow as copper. Otherwise--because it can't take
the high speed, it is so old. And so as we think about how we
are going to do that with fiber, slowing it down, and then, at
the same time, building the infrastructure inside the TRACONs
or the towers or the centers, and also keep planes in the air
and doing it safely, it is not going to be an easy task.
We are going to--Newark has to be addressed and has to be
addressed first. My preference would be that we start at lower
volume airports and we go through that process and learn as we
go how we choreograph the build. But, again, if we can put a
man on the moon, we can actually build this and build it well
and truly have the state-of-the-art, best in the world system.
Mrs. Bice. My airport manager back home may not like this,
but I am happy to let you experiment on the Oklahoma City Will
Rogers International Airport on that project because I think it
is crucial to ensuring safety across the Nation moving forward.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield.
Mr. Womack. Nice attempt to get to the front of the line.
We hear you.
Ms. Watson Coleman, welcome.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize,
I was at the other hearing.
Mr. Duffy, good morning to you. I come from New Jersey, so,
you know I am going to ask you about the Newark airport----
Secretary Duffy. Yeah.
Mrs. Watson Coleman [continuing]. Because it is very
frightening what we have been experiencing. And I even know
that you diverted your wife from Newark Airport to LaGuardia
out of a sense of security.
Secretary Duffy. That is not true.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. So in general and in specific--that is
not true?
Secretary Duffy. No.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Maybe, you know, we are so used to
false information coming out and about this administration.
Secretary Duffy. It is partially true. Partially true. But
I will explain that one.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Okie-dokie. I want to know,
specifically, what are you proposing to do to eliminate those
problems that have impacted safety, security, and landing in
Newark? What are you proposing as it relates to ensuring that
the appropriate staffing exists in addition to the issues with
infrastructure? And how do you see the timeframe taking place?
Secretary Duffy. Thank you for the question. So I didn't--
you know, I did--with all the delays at Newark, my wife had to
do an event and she was in the city of New York. And so I did,
I moved her from Newark to LaGuardia, not for safety, but
because I needed her flight to fly. She had to get there. Now,
someone had clipped some audio of that and made it seem like I
was talking about safety. I fly out of Newark all the time, my
family does, so.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. I accept that.
Secretary Duffy. Thank you. Appreciate that.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you.
Secretary Duffy. I was making the rounds, so--and it was
not accurate. I know where that came from. But so here's what I
am doing.
So first, the Newark, Teterboro, and Morristown used to be
controlled by N90, which was in New York. Right? That had
LaGuardia and JFK controlling all that airspace. It was the N90
TRACON. Last summer, the last administration moved the Newark
airspace from N90 down to the Philadelphia TRACON. And I think
two issues happened. They didn't test and make sure the lines
were hardened, the communication was hardened when they did
that. And the second is they didn't move the STARS system,
which helps interpret the radar, from N90 down to Philadelphia
as well. So those are the two problems. There were outages in
October and November as well in Newark.
So here is what we have done. We had fiber laid at the
airports. That is being--you can't just deploy it. We want to
test it right now. So at the airports that is being tested
today. We are working with Verizon, who have been great
partners with us, to get us all fiber going from the airports
down to the Philly TRACON, from Newark to Philly. I don't want
to overpromise and underdeliver for you. That was going to be
done actually next year, I believe, then it was going to be
done in the fall, then the summer. I hope to have even better
news for you, but we are working at lightning speed and pace to
get this resolved in Newark again.
Today we are having, the FAA is having a conversation about
how all the airlines can come together to reduce the flights at
Newark, so if you book your flight, you know it is going to
fly. And I do think it is important that we slow the flights
because we don't want to have more flights than can be
controlled in the airspace and then make this less safe. So I
want this to be safe and do it at a speed that we can control.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you. So that speaks to
infrastructure issues.
Secretary Duffy. Yes.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Technology issues. What about staffing
issues? What about tower control staffers and the people that
need to have eyes and ears and, you know, responsibilities----
Secretary Duffy. Yes.
Mrs. Watson Coleman [continuing]. For the safety and
security at the airport?
Secretary Duffy. So I think the last administration moved
it because they were having staffing issues at N90 and they
thought they could better staff it at Philadelphia. That was
one of the rationales.
Just to be clear. So if you have a 20-year controller, well
experienced, working the Denver airspace or the Chicago
airspace, and I go, hey, let's move them over to Philly TRACON
and let them control Newark, you can't do that.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. So I am asking you what are you going
to do about it?
Secretary Duffy. Well, so I am trying to--so just, you
know, let me make this point. You can't--it takes a year even
for an experienced controller to get trained up in the New
York--in the Newark airspace. You just can't move them around
because they have experience as controllers. So what I have
done is, I have offered, I mentioned this earlier, but I have
offered to pay a bonus to air traffic controllers to not retire
after 25 years, but to stay on the job. We are going to pay
them 20 percent upfront cash and every year they stay, we are
going to pay them. And we are supercharging, you know, young
people coming into the academy. But you can't fix this
overnight. I can't fix this in a couple months. This is going
to take us, you know, a year, 2 years, 3 years.
Mrs. Watson Coleman. Thank you, sir. So, on one hand, I see
that there are cuts there proposed to the FAA budget. On the
other hand, I see the IIJA budget is being cut or the access to
that money is being cut. Is one trying to offset the other?
When we look at what seems to be a need for an increase,
something that Secretary Buttigieg responded to, we are now
trying to figure out are we robbing Peter to pay Paul or are we
going to add to Peter and Paul?
Secretary Duffy. Oh, I think the budget is we are adding to
Peter and Paul. The only IIJA money that was reduced was the
NEVI money. That was the $7 billion for chargers, then you
didn't get chargers for the money that was spent. So that was
in the budget to be taken away. But no, we are adding to the
IIJA by $1.5 billion. I forgot your question was something
specific, but we have added money to it.
And, yes, again, we haven't let any controllers go. We have
protected safety critical missions in the Department as--which
are air traffic controllers. So we are trying to hire more air
traffic--we actually have hired more air traffic controllers.
We are not letting them go. We are trying to bring more online.
Mr. Clyburn. That is such an important airport for us, for
our economy, for our traveling public. Safety and security is
first and foremost.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the additional
time and for acknowledging when I came in.
Mr. Womack. You are most welcome.
Secretary Duffy. It is even more important because I fly
out of there, too, all the time, so I want to make sure it
works.
Mr. Womack. Sheriff, Mr. Rutherford.
Mr. Rutherford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Chairman Cole
and Ranking Member, thank you all. Mr. Secretary, it is great
to see you here this morning or this afternoon, I guess. But I
want to talk a little bit about I saw where you had a trip to
the United States Maritime Academy.
Secretary Duffy. Yeah.
Mr. Rutherford. And that is a particular interest to me.
And so I believe we share that interest with President Trump
actually in revitalizing the U.S. Maritime situation because it
is not only critical to our economy, it is also critical to our
national defense. And so I want to talk about the Merchant
Marine Academy and how it contributes to both of those
missions. And with your recent trip, I saw some comments, I
think, that you had about that. I would love to hear your take
on that.
And also, you know, I see a real commitment here to MARAD
through the 596 plus up million. So could you talk to us a
little bit about your vision and your visit to----
Secretary Duffy. Yeah.
Mr. Rutherford [continuing]. The Merchant Marine Academy
and where you think we ought to be going with that?
Secretary Duffy. So if you guys all go to Oklahoma City to
tour the Academy, but also, if you all went to Kings Point,
these kids here are some of the most amazing young men and
women that I--and I have a lot of kids and met a lot of kids,
these are some of the most amazing kids I have met. And they
are--this Academy is unworthy to have the name America
associated with it. It is dilapidated. The kids went 4 months
without hot water. They had cold showers for 4 months at an
American Maritime Academy. They are eating off of paper plates,
if they even get a plate, because the dishwasher is broken. I
mean, that we would allow that to happen for young people in
this country who want to serve their country. And they are
smart and they are strong and they are dedicated. And so I have
committed to them. I want to fight for them. And I think all of
you, if you saw the kind of young people that are there and the
kind of heart that they have, you, too, would want to fight for
them.
And it is important because, one, if we are going to build
ships in America, which I hope we do, we need young mariners to
sail those ships. And these kids are amazing that come out. But
also, if we have time of conflict, they are the mariners that
support the military, moving goods and actually people as well,
to support the military. So we need them. And by the way, a lot
of them also will then finish the Academy and enlist in the
armed services, too.
So if you go, there is mold. There is just--it is just--it
has been forgotten. And my commitment is, and I don't--maybe I
shouldn't say this publicly, but I will, I want to keep the
Merchant Marine Academy at DOT. I think we can serve them very
well. I think this committee can serve them well. If we can't
serve them, I think we should give them up. We should give them
to the Marines. I don't want to do that, but they deserve
better than what they are getting, and it is an American
priority.
Mr. Rutherford. Yes, they do. Thank you. I am really glad
to hear that. And I also want to acknowledge the $105 million
additional for upgrading some of our shipyards, because we
absolutely have to improve on that.
I would like to switch gears here and ask you about another
issue. In Jacksonville, Florida, which I represent, the
transportation authority there has become a leader in
autonomous vehicle circulators, the U2C program there, the
ultimate--it is called the ultimate urban circulator. And
autonomous vehicles play a big role in that.
And I know as we look to our highway systems even,
autonomous vehicles are going to start to play a part, I think,
even in our dray situations. So can you talk just a little bit
about DOT's--how do you see DOT playing into the nationwide
plan for autonomous vehicles?
Secretary Duffy. So some people think of us at DOT as hard
hats and the orange vests. I think we are one of the most
innovative places in all of government right now with
autonomous vehicles, eVTOLs, or the Ubers in the air, and drone
technology. So, if we don't have the right rules in place
allowing this technology to advance at the right speed, you
can't let them go too fast, you can't have them go too slow,
but if we don't do it here, China's going to do it. And as this
technology develops, we are going to use Chinese products in
the U.S. for autonomous vehicles, which, by the way, I think
poses a grave national security risk to the country.
And so we are working to get the right information with
those who are making autonomous vehicles and want to allow them
to deploy those vehicles and test those vehicles as the
technology advances. And I do think we need one national
standard. You can't have, you know, 50 states with 50 different
standards. We need to let them develop to one standard. And
that is what we are doing at DOT.
And by the way, they have been--the innovators have been
very cooperative with us, giving us the information that we
asked for, so we can make the right rules around the vehicles.
Mr. Rutherford. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And my time is
up. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Aguilar.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the
opportunity. Welcome, Mr. Secretary. Thank you for being here,
Mr. and Mrs. Lilley, as well.
Mr. Secretary, as the chairmen mentioned, chairman of the
full committee and the chairman of the subcommittee, safety is
of primary concern to all of us. You see that in the questions
that are being asked by both sides. I can't help but, you know,
ask you to reflect. You know, it is been reported that you have
pushed back against some DOGE efforts, you know, with respect
to staffing. I want to ensure you have said that safety is
first.
As the chairman mentioned, notification of Congress is also
an important authority and responsibility that you have
implementing these grants. I agree, it is a time-honored
tradition to point the fingers at your predecessor. It is
something we do quite often, you know, here up on this dais and
in this dome. But the importance of doing all of those jobs,
safety notification, grant awards, is the responsibility of
your Department. And with fewer people, I hope you can continue
to execute those important missions.
In January, California experienced horrific wildfires. And
the devastation was so huge, it is tough to comprehend.
Pictures don't do it justice. In February, the governor of
California requested $101 million under the Department of
Transportation's emergency relief program to help rebuild
Federal highways, bridges, and roads. Congress is waiting for
the President to request of Congress to pass a disaster
supplemental that includes funding for Southern California. It
is been months since the wildfires occurred. We haven't seen
anything, a pro forma request of Congress.
Do you have any updates on a status of a request, Mr.
Secretary? And have you seen some of the damage? Is it a tour
that you are open to seeing with your own eyes in Southern
California?
Secretary Duffy. Yeah, I am absolutely open to a tour. My
son lives in the area and actually had to evacuate with a new
baby. I was well aware of it on a personal level how
devastating the fires were. I could get some additional
information and start circle back with you. I don't have it for
you right now, though.
Mr. Aguilar. Specific to that line item, though, you are
confident in the DOT's ability to implement that funding if
Congress adds the additional dollars for the emergency relief
program?
Secretary Duffy. So I would--I am confident that I am at
the staffing levels to accomplish the mission of the
Department. And again, that is responsive to all of you. That
is responsive to a President who wants me to be able to support
the builds in America. So, yes.
Mr. Aguilar. Do you know how committed the administration
is to executing disaster assistance without preconditions? We
wouldn't put preconditions on tornadoes and floods, hurricanes.
Why would we do it in this case?
Secretary Duffy. I haven't had that conversation with the
administration.
Mr. Aguilar. Okay. Thank you. Over the next couple years,
Southern California will also be host to the World Cup in 2026,
Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympics and Paralympic Games in
2028. You yourself have called these America's Games. L.A.
Metro estimates that the region will need over $3 billion in
Federal funding over the next 3 years to ensure public
transportation network can support the athletes, the staff, the
ticketholders, and residents just for the Olympics alone. Last
year, the Senate included $200 million in transportation
funding for the Olympics. President Trump signed a CR; that
funding was not included in the final funding package.
Earlier this month, the California delegation and a couple
of us here on the dais joined in sending a letter to the
President asking for a budget request that included $500
million in dedicated infrastructure funding for the Olympics.
Can you comment on the steps status of how you view the
Olympics from a dollars-and-cents perspective? And will you
commit to work with the California delegation as we work
through fiscal year 2026 and prepare for the '28 Olympics and
these other events?
Secretary Duffy. They are going to be great. And so our
Department is working with the White House. They have a task
force for the World Cup as well as for the Olympics, and
transportation is a key part of moving people where we have
these massive events. And so, we are no doubt going to partner
with California and your needs and with the administration. And
again, you guys have the ``power of the purse.'' I would look
forward to all of us thinking through what those needs are
because, again, this is our presentation to the world. The
world is going to come for both the World Cup and the Olympics.
And I know the President wants to have a great showing, a
seamless showing. And, you know, I think we want to invite the
world for, even for this summer, for the club games. And to
have them come in and, by the way, spend a lot of their money
would be wonderful, but they have to have a wonderful
experience with it. So we are going to support the communities
across the country with their transportation.
Mr. Aguilar. You would support a funding level of around
that 500----
Secretary Duffy. Oh, I don't know.
Mr. Aguilar [continuing]. For fiscal year 2026?
Secretary Duffy. I don't know. I haven't looked at the
funding levels and what is appropriate from the Department's
perspective. But I want to make sure we have enough resources
to make sure it is seamless. And I would love to work with you
if you have some ideas.
Mr. Aguilar. I mean, I appreciate the comment that it is
going to be great, but, you know, this body works with--with
funding formulas and tables and real dollars out on the street
to implement all the--all the happy talk. So I just----
Secretary Duffy. Of course.
Mr. Aguilar [continuing]. Want to make sure.
Secretary Duffy. We have a skinny budget we were talking
about today. So I, you know, I am happy to talk to you about
it, but that was not on the calendar for today. And so, if you
want me to look at the numbers, I will look at them and we can
partner up together.
Mr. Aguilar. Happy to work with you.
Secretary Duffy. You as well.
Mr. Aguilar. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Womack. You bet, Pete. Mr. Gonzalez.
Mr. Gonzales. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Mr.
Secretary. Welcome back to the House. Your testimony has been a
breath of fresh air. I think one of the things that the last
administration failed to do, the secret sauce, was
transparency. That is all the American people want. Good, bad,
ugly, just give us the truth. I want to start--I am an
optimistic person. I want to start with the future. And in my
eyes, the future is commercial space travel. And I view the
world sometimes the answer is not more money. Sometimes the
answer is the government getting out of the way and allowing
industries to just take hold. And so in particular, you know,
SpaceX has launched successfully nearly 500 rockets. You know,
this isn't a what-if. We are already there. And so, my question
is, what can DOT do in particular to ensure that the United
States of America is the leader and the winner in this
commercial space battle, if you will?
Secretary Duffy. Yeah, that is a great question. I know the
FAA had thought through, you know, and this was in the last
administration, but to think through how they could streamline
the process for permits with space travel. And I have just met
with a very prominent company, not SpaceX, but a different one.
And they are like, this is a worse--it got worse; it didn't get
better. And so we have to make sure--we need to have a
permitting process. We need to have rules and regulations in
place. But it has become so complicated and so redundant, and
different agencies making these companies do the same thing
over again, taking years as opposed to a couple of months, is a
huge problem.
So this meeting that took place yesterday, I have tasked
the FAA to go back and look at how we are going through the
permitting process and the approval process because, again,
this is crucial. By the way, we are leading right now. You look
at SpaceX and Blue Origin and others, we are leading, but we
want to make sure we stay in the lead. And you can't have
government getting in the way of--needlessly in the way of this
advancement.
Mr. Gonzales. I would welcome hosting you in Texas. Blue
Origin is in my district. They, you know, we are literally
launching rockets from West Texas and South Texas as well. Once
again, I think this is an area that is worth talking about. I
am a retired, you know, professional cryptologist. When you
have big problems, oftentimes the answer is look towards
technology. It is a--it is an equalizer.
I want to, now I want to bring it back kind of home base a
little bit, and I want to, you know, piggyback off of what
Rogers said earlier about rural, rural infrastructure. One of
my counties, Reeves County, produces more natural gas than
anywhere else in the country. Okay? And in that area, the
infrastructure is just completely worn down. There is a highway
from Reeves to Loving County that we call ``death highway.''
And if you have ever been on that highway, you know why it is
death highway. I mean, when I am there, I am telling my team,
put your phones down, 10 and 2. You know, it is--it is a very
scary situation. My question is what does infrastructure near
critical resources like oil and gas industries, we have talked
about, you know, energy independence, where does this fall on
your priority list?
Secretary Duffy. Well, first of all, for the President as
well, he cares about oil and gas and making sure we are leading
the world. And if we have extra to be able to export,
especially LNG. But one of the problems I think we have is up
to 40 percent of the money that is spent from all of you on
these projects goes to consultants and permitting, 40 percent.
I mean, if we could get that to 15 percent, that means you guys
all get to build more projects. We get more grant money out the
door. And I think we do have to spend smarter and spend better.
And again, that doesn't mean we don't do things right. We don't
do--you don't say, hey, we should look out for the environment?
Should we look out for the right permits? Of course, but we can
do that with less money. And the consulting class that is built
up almost seems to be bigger than the construction class around
these projects. So that is--we are looking at permitting reform
right now and how can we delegate more authority to states to
do some of the work because we think they can move faster and
more efficiently than the Federal Government.
Mr. Gonzales. Excellent. I mean, and I look forward to
working together. I bring that up because oftentimes rural
America gets forgotten in this equation. One when they produce
a lot of these very critical resources. You know, I met with a
woman there in Pecos County who she--her number one ask was
son--she said, Tony, my son is terrified to start driving. He
is 15 years old. It is a reasonable ask to have, you know, our
children not be terrified to drive on our highways.
So the last thing, and we could take this back. Once again,
I would like to build--build upon this. I am almost out of
time. But the Del Rio Airport is very important to me. We have
not had an airline in there since 2022. The reason why I
mentioned Del Rio, Texas, is because it is along the border. It
is critical infrastructure. When you talk about border
security, Laughlin Air Force Base has a lot of nodes in there.
As we look towards that, I look forward to working together on
how we can, you know, restart this rural kind of airlines in
there.
Secretary Duffy. I appreciate that. Look forward to that.
Mr. Gonzales. Thank you, Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Espaillat.
Mr. Espaillat. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,
Secretary Duffy, for being here. I also want to thank the
family, the Lilley family, for being here. Our prayers and our
hearts go out to you and the memory of your son. That tragic
accident at Reagan Airport. I myself was on a plane with four
of my other colleagues that witnessed the wing being clipped by
another flight as we stood on the runway at the airport. So air
traffic safety is critical.
My district, which has Harlem, East Harlem, Washington
Heights, and the Northwest Bronx, stands sort of like in the
center of LaGuardia, Newark, Teterboro, Westchester, and even
JFK. So all of that air traffic flies right above my district.
And Secretary, recently staffing delays and system malfunctions
at New York Airport have caused obviously significant delays
and safety concerns. To adequately address this issue and
general air traffic control modernization initiatives, industry
experts believe that at minimum, at minimum, we need to invest
$30 billion. Now, we have seen the President's discretionary
skinny budget call for $18 billion. Now, you yourself had
explained the archaic condition of equipment. Newark is going
through a runway reconstruction. The system, the operation, was
moved to Philadelphia. That is going to require additional
dollars. And of course, we need to train air traffic
controllers, and that is not going to be able to be done in a--
in a--overnight. So if the experts are saying that we need $30
billion, how do you expect to do all of this with the proposed
skinny budget of $18 billion?
Secretary Duffy. Thank you for that question. And so, as we
go through the budget process, we are going to have to have a
conversation because I think this is very special, what we need
to do here. And I would hope that we could have that
conversation before October 1st.
Mr. Espaillat. So you recognize that the skinny budget
falls short of where we need to be?
Secretary Duffy. So the skinny budget isn't the ask that I
am going to have of all of you to rebuild this whole system. By
the way, we had 55 different groups, unions, industries, and
airlines. All--they don't sit on the same side of the table.
They all came together and said, this is--this is an American
moment. And so, yeah, it is not--it is not in the skinny
budget. I am going to need you all to take this up as a--as a
special priority.
Mr. Espaillat. This is not a cheap endeavor if you are
saying that there is radars that are from the 70s and 80s, that
you have copper lines, and that you have----
Secretary Duffy. Yeah.
Mr. Espaillat [continuing]. Of course, the training, the
major task of training air traffic controllers at the level
that we need to ensure that there is safety. We are going to
have to have deep pockets for this, but we are not hearing that
from the White House. They are not--their fiscal commitment has
not been shown to be there. Their skinny budget is at $18
billion. And that compromises, if we were to stay at that
level, it would compromise the safety of Americans. And so I
would hope and look forward to working with you and making sure
that we come up with a real ask that will lead to that kind of
improvement.
On another end----
Secretary Duffy. Congressman, I can say you--you guys all
spent $1.2 trillion, and this was a known--known problem, and
virtually none of it went to go towards this infrastructure.
And so the President has talked about this. I talked to him
this morning from--he called me from Saudi Arabia. He cares
about this. But, but yeah, you are right, it is not here. We
are going to have to have another conversation about how we do
it.
Mr. Espaillat. I am glad you acknowledged that the skinny
budget falls short and I am glad you brought up----
Secretary Duffy. It doesn't fall short. It just doesn't
include it.
Mr. Espaillat [continuing]. The infrastructure bill,
because my next question is localities across the Nation are
expecting Federal transit grants to complete capital projects.
Can you confirm for the record that you will honor the
department's existing full funding grant agreements? I mean,
people across the country are waiting for these agreements to
be honored.
Secretary Duffy. Yeah. So, yeah, there has been a couple of
grant agreements that I am not going to honor. Right. There is
some with some studies that we are going to do in certain
universities that I don't think that they provide good use for
the Federal taxpayer. But I can't--I haven't come across a slew
of--of issues that I wouldn't fund. Again, I might not fully
agree with them, but the last administration announced them,
and you expect them, and by and large, these are all going to
get grant agreements. But just so you know, there is this
massive backlog. I wish it would have been done before I got
there, but I am going to work with the whole Congress.
Mr. Espaillat. In many ways, this is like, you know, you
are a--you are a--I am a baseball fan. So you can sit on the
stands in the legend seats and say that hit--that hitter, that
batter should have hit the ball to left field and move the
runner to second base. But when you stand there at the plate,
Secretary, you see that the ball is coming at you 100 miles an
hour, and in terms of the size of an aspirin, you got to hit
it. You are at the plate.
Secretary Duffy. Oh, I know I am at the plate.
Mr. Espaillat. Okay.
Secretary Duffy. But I just--but I just don't want to see
is you try to say that in 100 days these issues came my way.
Let's not say that. We are getting through them. I was left
3,200. So recognize that and then go, good for you for you
already got almost $10 billion out the door and you have--you
have done almost over--over 400 of them. Good speed, go faster.
Mr. Espaillat. I look forward----
Secretary Duffy. But to try to blame it like I am trying to
hold things up, freeze things, is not accurate. So let's not do
that.
Mr. Espaillat. I look forward to working together.
Secretary Duffy. Thank you. You, too.
Mr. Womack. Now batting, Ryan Zinke.
Mr. Zinke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Secretary Duffy is
a pleasure to see you again.
Secretary Duffy. You as well.
Mr. Zinke. I want to thank you for stepping up to service
once again. We have served together in the House. I look
forward to serving together here. I guess, you know, you are
from Wisconsin, you are from northern Wisconsin, and I am sure
you are attuned to the problems of rural America.
Secretary Duffy. Yes.
Mr. Zinke. And in the news, we--we see that, you know, a
lot of times urban America gets all the news because we are
close to Washington, D.C. But, you know, rural America, I can
tell you our bridges and roads are falling apart. In Montana,
for instance, we have a little bridge called Noxon Bridge, the
only bridge to a wonderful little city that was built in 1922
over the Clark Fork River. And over about 100 years, that
bridge is going to fall in. The bridge itself has not--it can't
sustain a full load of kids in a bus. And then, of course, in
Montana, we have the saying that whiskey is for drinking, water
is for fighting. And a lot of our infrastructure is on water,
which is the headwaters of the Missouri River, which feeds into
the Mississippi. It is a nice thing to have a lot of water
flowing. So I would just, after your commitment, I am all about
slashing bureaucracy, but I want your commitment that we are
going to slash bureaucracy and not urban projects that are
important.
Secretary Duffy. So I am not about slashing projects. I am
about we want to build. So, and I do care, like you, about
rural America. 100 percent. But I mean, I do think at some
point we have to ask the question. Remember, I don't know when
you ran for Congress. In 2009--was it 2010?--they passed the
stimulus bill under the Obama era. And then you had $1.2
trillion in the last Congress. And so that is $2 trillion over
10 years. And sometimes you look around the country and go,
where did $2 trillion go? Where is all the infrastructure? Why
don't we have more? And I think it does--a lot of this money
gets eaten up in--in, again, the permitting and the
consultants. And I want to see more of the money go, you know,
to turn dirt. That is what we have to focus on. And if we do
that, I think there should be money for all of our projects.
But if it gets eaten up just by the consultant class, all of us
lose. All of our communities lose because they don't have the
resources to build your bridge that can't take a busload of
kids.
Mr. Zinke. I appreciate that. I appreciate your commitment
to rural America. Sometimes we are fly over and our voice isn't
heard.
And UAVs, you know, I was a Navy SEAL. I have been dealing
with UAVs for 2004. And by and large, the FAA has not moved on
airspace in 2 decades. Well, the rest of the world is. And as
you know, UAVs are incredibly important for efficiency on
pipeline surveys, on wildlife surveys, on agriculture, and
precision. And yet we are still line of sight. I understand the
complicated--I understand that there is complications in
safety, but if you don't fly, there is no risk. And that is
more or less where the FAA has been for years and years and
years. Are you committed to looking at technology and
integrating UAVs into the NAS?
Secretary Duffy. I am excited about this. I would just say
stay tuned. Very short order, you are going to see our--the
work that we have been doing. So that is going to happen. But
absolutely, this is new technology. We actually have to have
rules that allow it to be deployed and deployed safely. By the
way, this gets to be, I mean, again, we see what is going on in
Russia and Ukraine. These are tools for commerce, these are
tools for industry, but they also can be tools of war. And so
thinking through how we do it with the military, what is the
military side and what is the commerce side, and navigating
that effectively is really important. But again, if we don't--
if we don't allow this technology here, it will be developed in
the rest of the world and then used here. And you don't want
drone technology from somewhere else flying in American
airspace. So I am with you on that.
And beyond visual line of sight, I mean people are getting
coffees now by drone or their Amazon packages delivered by
drone. We want to have again one national standard on how these
companies can deploy across the country. And just on the air
traffic control upgrade that we are going to do, it is going to
bring more efficiency to the airspace. So you can integrate
these eVTOLs, and you can integrate drone technology as well.
So the airspace is going to get more complicated. You can't
navigate it with what we have today. But what we are going to
build, we can accommodate what you are talking about.
Mr. Zinke. And I just, as a comment, if you are going to
move the merchant marine, which I think is a magnificent
experience. It is the highest paid. The highest-paid
undergraduate degree in this country is merchant marine. And by
the way, when you graduate academy, you can cross-deck to any
other commission source. It is a great academy. But if you are
going to move it, I would suggest the United States Navy, not
the United States Marine Corps. With that, I yield back.
Secretary Duffy. Duly noted. But just a note if you have a
young person that wants to consider going. The kids that are
graduating are making $150 to $180,000 working 6 months a year
or maybe a month on, month off. But it is really good money
because they are highly skilled. Good point. I don't want to
give them up, by the way. I want to keep them.
Mr. Zinke. But, and if, Mr. Chairman, if you could just
allow me another second. And also in the Merchant Marine
Academy because they do rotate 4 on, 4 off; 4 weeks on, 4 weeks
off. They are in Montana, the kids that do it. Best hunting
season, best fishing season, best summer. It is the greatest
job ever. I would like to be a merchant marine.
Secretary Duffy. That is right. Right after Wisconsin.
Mr. Womack. Preceding paid for by the visitors bureau of
the great state of Montana. Mr. Ciscomani.
Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Secretary Duffy, for--for being here. I also want to welcome
Mr. Tim and Sheri Lilley for being here and sorry for your
loss. Something we want to address and make sure that none of
that happens ever again.
Mr. Secretary, I remember the first conversation we had.
This is back when I was considering this job, and you called,
and you said, from a father of six, when I took this job, to
another father of six, you can do it. And you even said that
you had more kids when you were on the job. I didn't follow
that example. I stayed at six. But it was great knowing you
then and meeting you and understanding your passion for
families and for our country. And what drives you, I think,
drives many of us in this committee as well. So I want to thank
you for that.
And I want to start by addressing an issue that is a top
priority for everyone here in the subcommittee, obviously,
which is aviation safety, and we have been talking about that
quite a bit. I really appreciate the prioritization you give
this issue in your budget request. I want to highlight a tragic
incident that happened in one of--in my district, you may be
aware of it. On February 19th of this year, two small aircraft
crashed midair, resulting in the death of two individuals in
Marana, Arizona. It is critical that the Federal Government
works to ensure that something like this never occurs again. I
know that is your focus and passion. So can you talk a little
bit about and provide an update on how your budget proposal
will ensure incidents like this do not occur again, especially
in smaller rural airports that are regional and with less
resources?
Secretary Duffy. That was tragic. This was in an
uncontrolled airspace, so controllers don't control every
aspect of the airspace. A lot of the small airports, like in
Hayward, Wisconsin, where I am from, oftentimes it is--it is
done by pilots and visually and staying away from each other.
And by the way, I don't think general aviation would like air
traffic controllers to control every aspect of the airspace.
They do like the freedom of movement, but it then creates risks
like we saw in your community, where two planes collided
midair. But that is a conversation of what should that role be
and should it be expanded. I am happy to have that. And I don't
know what the----
Mr. Ciscomani. The resources part of it.
Secretary Duffy. Oh.
Mr. Ciscomani. Of how, and the budget, how it addresses
some of this.
Secretary Duffy. Well, the resources are--this is--this is
all inclusive. And again, it is the infrastructure, and it is
the manpower of air traffic controllers.
Mr. Ciscomani. Yeah.
Secretary Duffy. And this is what we have been talking
about. And we want to work with all of you to pressure test the
numbers that we are thinking about. It is important. It is also
what we are seeing, I mean, as Mr. Quigley noted in Chicago, we
had a near miss with the Southwest airplane, and it was, I
would think it would be the next--the Flexjet wasn't paying
attention to the air traffic controller. But I do think we need
our pilots to pay attention. This can be very dangerous and a
lot of the pilots who fly commercially take people's lives in
their hands. And it is a serious business, and we want to make
sure that all of them are taking it that way.
Another thing that we need in part of rural America, we got
to think through how we are building out the infrastructure of
towers and TRACONs. I think, on average, we build one a year.
It is going to take us 400 years to replace all of the towers
and TRACONs in this country. We want to up that. We would like
to do four or five a year. I mean, up the speed to update the
old infrastructure. And a lot of you have those facilities
around your districts that--that need work. And so, if we could
start the process every year of getting four or five of them, I
think would be well on the way.
Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you. On the same line of resources,
another incident that happened in Arizona, the New Mexico
border as well, is the train carrying cars of hazardous
materials fell off the tracks. This was back in April of last
year. Caught fire in several Arizona and New Mexico residents,
as well as Navajo Nation tribal members had to be evacuated
from their homes. Not only was this impactful and negatively to
the economy, but also to just posing major health concerns and
issues here. So also on the--on the budget and resources side
in terms of freight and rail, can you speak a little bit on
that aspect as well?
Secretary Duffy. So again, I am not familiar exactly with
the one incident that you are referencing, but I think all of
us heard of East Palestine. And again, I do think as we think
through FRA and PHMSA, in looking at how products that can be
dangerous are moving across the rail, how we--how we navigate
the rail, and what safety policies and procedures we have in
place. You are seeing some very exciting advancements in
technology around rail, that again, what we might miss by the
human eye, this technology is picking up, and we are actually
able to deploy resources and deploy fixes before a derailment
could happen, and I think that is critical. Using the manpower
along with the technology is going to, I think, bring us more
safety.
Mr. Ciscomani. Thank you so much. I do want to just also
thank you for the I-10 completion and process that we want to
be sure that we complete here on the widening and the grants.
That is a very important highway for not only Arizona but the
entire Nation. And look forward to hosting you in Arizona soon.
Maybe it is not as cool in the summer as Montana, but any other
time of the year will be great to visit.
Secretary Duffy. It is pretty awesome in January.
Mr. Ciscomani. Yes, it is. We will see you then. Thanks.
Mr. Womack. Mr. Strong.
Mr. Strong. Thank you, Chairman Womack, and Ranking Member
Clyburn, for holding this important hearing today. It is an
honor to serve with each of you. I also want to thank our
subcommittee staff for all of their hard work. Secretary Duffy,
thank you for being here today and for your work and dedication
to our Nation and for making yourself available to members of
Congress.
As you know, my district, Huntsville, Alabama, is home to
Redstone Arsenal, which is the premier aerospace, ballistic
missile, law enforcement, and military asset located in North
Alabama. More than 50,000 military members, contractors, and
public servants commute to Redstone Arsenal and the second-
largest research park in the country every day. Secretary
Duffy, can you tell us how your agency plans to invest in the
projects surrounding key national security installations such
as Redstone Arsenal?
Secretary Duffy. Are we talking ports?
Mr. Strong. Roads, airports, ports, all.
Secretary Duffy. I can't tell you specifically around that
facility, but I would be happy to discuss what the needs are
with you to again calculate those needs and resources to
further the conversation.
Mr. Strong. Alabama's 5th Congressional District is also
home to Huntsville International Airport, which I am proud to
say was just named the number one best small airport for the
second year in a row. It serves 1.47 million passengers
annually and has the second-longest runway in the Southeast
United States and is the only FAA-licensed commercial space
reentry site in the United States. Small hub airports such as
Huntsville International Airport are a vital link in the
National Air Transportation System and their success is crucial
for connectivity and regional economic development. Secretary
Duffy, can you share with us how your agency is working with
small hub airports to better understand their specific
regulatory and operational challenges?
Secretary Duffy. Yeah, listen, I think we look across the
country at what facilities we have in place and what needs each
of those facilities have based on the number of people, the
number of flights they serve. And so, specifically in
Huntsville, we would be happy to discuss that further with you.
But again, we have to go through a priority list of what are
the oldest infrastructure that we have in regard to airports,
and how do we effectively use the money that you give us to do
the appropriate upgrades and think long-term what project comes
at what time. So if you have special needs in your community, I
would be happy to discuss those with you.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. Do you have the resources needed to
help ensure that small hub airports can effectively access and
utilize Federal funding?
Secretary Duffy. Well, I think we can always use more
money. I don't know that you guys all want to give. But you
know what? We are going to do more with less. And again, I have
to just, if I am honest with you, I am sure the FAA has done
this. I have been with, in the 106 days or 105 days that I have
been here, we have been focused on a couple of big issues with
regard to what is wrong with the national airspace, how do we
control it, what is happening with controllers. We dealt with
multiple incidents, from what happened at DCA to what happened
in Alaska and Toronto. The midair collision that Mr. Ciscomani
mentioned, I think it was the Motley Crue plane, also crashed
in Arizona. So there is been a lot of aviation. I will go back
and talk to the FAA about specific needs across the country.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. As you know, timing and
predictability are critical to efficient airport capital
planning. Could you talk a little bit about the department,
what the department is doing to provide consistency and
transparency in the timing of funding--funding awards,
especially for small to mid-size airports?
Secretary Duffy. Yeah, I know that we just got a big
tranche of grants out from the FAA again across the country for
airport improvements. But again, as I mentioned throughout the
hearing, the backlog is substantial that was passed off to me.
A lot of announcements, a lot of celebration with the
announcements, but that is the easy part. The work is actually
getting the grant agreements done, and we are going through
that now, and we are going to--we are going to get there. We
are working at it. And we are going to get more announcements
as each month goes by, but it is taking time just because of
the volume that was left for me.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. In addition to commercial aviation,
my district is also home to the Port of Huntsville. This is a
multimodal hub that integrates air, cargo, rail, and industrial
development around the JetPlex Industrial Park. The JetPlex
Industrial Park supports hundreds of aerospace, automotive, and
advanced manufacturing industries. Over 400 companies rely on
this port to provide timely and efficient service to their
operations and supply chain. How is your department
prioritizing and investing in projects that will strengthen and
safeguard key domestic supply chain and logistic hubs?
Secretary Duffy. This body, I believe, gave us the FLOW
initiative, so we are able to get companies to coordinate
shippers with the industry to coordinate what kind of needs are
going to be in the system, and it is multimodal. And again,
those tools actually have been working very well that the
Congress gave us, and we are trying to expand that, but
industry loves it. And again, planning for the needs that we
have throughout the country and the capacity excess and
shortfalls is, I think, critical. And the tool that, again,
this body has given the department, I think, has been working
very, very well. And again, we want to grow it.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. Chairman Womack, I yield.
Mr. Womack. Thank you, Dale. That completes our first round
of questions, and I did say earlier in the hearing that we
would have a second round if somebody wanted to. I am going to
waive any opportunity that I might take to ask another
question, but if there is anybody on the dais that does have a
desire to ask another question or get a quick response, I would
be willing to recognize them. Ideally, first to Mr. Clyburn,
the ranking member.
Mr. Clyburn. I will follow your lead, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Womack. Okay. All right. The full committee chairman,
Mr. Cole.
The Chairman. One quick point we didn't have a chance to
cover, but I would just ask you, as you put things together,
you take a strong look at. We made a lot of progress here in
fiscal year 2024 on tribal roads, and we actually went back,
and there have been no hearings on tribal roads or tribal
housing for 20 years. And we had seen how tribal roads and
tribal housing had fallen behind in that period. I have spent a
lot of time on Native American reservations. I know in
Wisconsin, you know a lot about Native Americans, but with the
Federal obligation here, and it is a relatively small part of
your budget, it is around 1 percent, so we are not talking
about something massive, but some money here makes a
difference. And this committee, and, frankly, administrations,
on a bipartisan basis, have overlooked this area for a
generation. And believe me, it is really bad in some of these
places. You are thinking you are not in a third-world country,
you are in the wilderness. So I would just ask you, I know you
have got to make some tough funding decisions, and we are going
to try and be supportive of those, and we are going to try and
help you in other ways. But please take a special look at that.
Don't let it get lost over there because that is what tends to
happen. Sort of out of sight, out of mind. And I have watched
generations of politicians on both sides of the aisle do that.
This committee made a big step forward in 2024 and would have
again in 2025 had the bill happened, and so I don't want to
lose that momentum. So if you just consider that as you go
about all the many decisions you have to make, I would be very
grateful.
Secretary Duffy. I appreciate you bringing that up. I
understood the housing needs and the infrastructure needs
across the Tribal Lands in the country. Senator Ben Ray Lujan
mentioned it as well. I think we should work together on
thinking how we can spend money well and where the most needs
are. Because you are right, it is not third world. Oftentimes
it is wilderness. And I think again, a lot of--some places you
may not need the investments, but there are other places that--
that truly need the investment, and they haven't received it.
So I will work with you on that.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
Mr. Womack. Ms. Torres.
Mrs. Torres. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Oops. Seems
like all the equipment is faulty around here. Once again, I
would like to go back to our conversation over the closure of
the PHMSA, or it has not been closed, the lease is supposed to
expire in August. But I would like to have more information
about the assessment that was done to come up with a decision
that it would be a good decision to close this facility, given
the fact that the nearest facility is 1,000 miles away. I also,
for the record, Mr. Chairman, I would like to include this AP
article dated February 19th of 2025.
Mr. Womack. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
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Mrs. Torres. That talks about the 400 personnel. I am going
to give it to you. I am going to hand this over to you. Mr.
Secretary, just so you know, I am not here to fight with you. I
am here to ask the tough questions. No one wants to see planes
crashing. No one wants to be that person who receives that
call. No one wants to be in this position when 200 or 60 or,
you know, whatever number of people either perish or planes
continue to crash. So all I am asking is for us to take a step
back and look at the massive work that you have ahead of you.
And I want to recognize that you have a massive job ahead of
you. But given the fact that DOGE has come in and made
decisions, probably without even communicating those decisions
with you, I want to believe that we are in all of this--all of
us are in this together. And it is going to take all of us to
push back to ensure that positions, whether they are air
traffic controllers or the people fixing the equipment behind
the scenes, just because we don't see them or hear from them
doesn't mean that they are not critical positions. So with
that, I am going to yield back, and I look forward to
continuing this conversation with you.
Secretary Duffy. On your facility, I will--I will get
briefed on that----
Mrs. Torres. Okay.
Secretary Duffy [continuing]. And coordinate with you and
get back to you. So I don't have a good answer for you right
now.
Mrs. Torres. No, I understand.
Secretary Duffy. And in regard to the--to the 400, again, I
think it--maybe I misunderstood. I thought you were saying
there are air traffic controllers.
Mrs. Torres. Yeah.
Secretary Duffy. And they are not----
Mrs. Torres. No.
Secretary Duffy. I don't know what the reference was. And
if I could just make one, there are 46,000 employees at the
FAA. There is--it is a huge agency. A lot of them do good work.
But if I can do things more efficiently in some spaces, I want
to do that. But there are critical safety missions that we
have, and I am going to make sure those folks not only stay,
but we build upon that. And I just, to your point, this is--
this is not partisan, air traffic control. What we have to do,
it's an American problem. Everyone I have talked to on both
sides of the aisle are, like, how do we work together? And I
think that is the mentality we are going to have to have to
embrace each other and serve everyone who flies. Our families,
our neighbors, our communities. And I look forward to working
with all of you on how we do that together, because it is, this
is not a partisan, it is an American moment.
Mrs. Torres. We want you to succeed.
Secretary Duffy. Thank you.
Mrs. Torres. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Womack. Great hearing this morning. Thank you, Mr.
Secretary, for being here. We look forward to your continued
leadership and a partnership as we continue to achieve the
shared goals that we all have. And that is for it to be the
gold standard of a transportation network throughout, and your
leadership will be vital to that end.
The lady to my left who keeps the clock and takes all the
required notes and keeps me pointed in the right direction is
Avery Pierson. She is typical of the professional staff members
that you saw behind us here today, scattered throughout this
room, and I am eternally grateful for them. They, as you know,
Mr. Duffy, they are the unsung heroes of the Congress because
they do such remarkable work and with no expectation of
anything in return except, you know, a regular paycheck. So
thank you, Avery, and to all of those who are behind me that do
this great work.
Tim, Sherry, we are grateful you are here. You have honored
us with your presence. Your loss is unimaginable, and we and
the American public grieve with you. And again, we recommit
ourselves to making sure that what happened never happens
again. And your participation in this hearing this morning says
a lot about you and your family and about your son. So thank
you from the bottom of our hearts for being here today.
Mr. Clyburn, any closing remarks?
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too,
wish to thank the Lilley family for being here today. On that
particular day, I think it was six or seven people in both
aircrafts lost their lives. One of whom--and I have heard from
several of those families. One of whom was a young lady who was
landing in Washington to accept a job, a new job as a law
professor at Howard University. Her story I think about a lot.
Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for being here. As you
know, I represent the entire peninsula of Charleston. When I
came to Congress, the primary economy in South Carolina was
driven by two T's, textiles and tobacco. Today, it is still
driven by two T's, but now it is tourism and transportation.
And I would hope that as we work together toward the future,
that we would take into stock.
The Department of Transportation is very important to this
country, very important to us in South Carolina, but it does
not operate in a silo. It operates, hopefully, in conjunction
with our trade representatives, with our Department of
Commerce, because we are suffering in South Carolina. Just
recently, Volvo just announced a layoff at that facility. It is
the only Volvo facility in this country, but they are laying
off because they can't get their parts they need from other
countries because of tariffs. BMW, Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes-Benz
makes all of their popular HBCUs, whatever they call them, in
North Charleston, South Carolina, in my district. So this is
very, very important for us to make sure the Department of
Transportation is functioning in a way that would benefit the
future of our great country and do so in such a way that we
utilize all of our resources and our talent to make this
country greater. Thank you, and I yield back.
Secretary Duffy. Mr. Ranking Member, I would welcome your
invitation to come to Charleston. We can even invite former
chairman Trey Gowdy to join us as well. I look forward to it.
Mr. Clyburn. Well, Trey is a good buddy. We don't agree on
much politically. In fact, I guess I am as close to the
governor of South Carolina as one could possibly be. And we
don't agree on anything politically, but we are good friends
because we believe in the future of South Carolina and all
South Carolinians. I yield back.
Mr. Womack. And on that note, staff members are reminded
that questions for the record should be submitted to
subcommittee staff within 7 days. Thanks again to everybody for
your participation in this hearing. This subcommittee stands
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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W I T N E S S E S
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Page
Homendy, Hon. Jennifer, Chair, National Transportation Safety
Board.......................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Answers to submitted questions............................... 41
Ramirez, Hon. Delia C., A Representative in Congress From the
State of Illinois.............................................. 66
Prepared statement........................................... 68
Gilen, Hon. Laura, A Representative in Congress From the State of
New York....................................................... 71
Prepared statement........................................... 73
Waters, Hon. Maxine, A Representative in Congress From the State
of California.................................................. 76
Prepared statement........................................... 78
Hageman, Hon. Harriet M., A Representative in Congress From the
State of Wyoming............................................... 81
Prepared statement........................................... 83
Van Drew, Hon. Jefferson, A Representative in Congress From the
State of New Jersey............................................ 86
Prepared statement........................................... 89
Duffy, Hon. Sean, Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation... 111
Prepared statement........................................... 114
Answers to submitted questions............................... 152
[all]