    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 19, 2025)]
    [Senate]
    [Pages S1025-S1026]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                              Trump Administration

      Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to call
    attention to the Trump administration's unconscionable disregard for
    air safety.
      Last month, here in Washington, we saw the deadliest commercial
    aviation event on U.S. soil in over 23 years, and while this loss of
    life was horrifying, it was, unfortunately, not unimaginable. In recent
    years, near misses at airports across the country have increased, and
    the incident at DCA illustrated just how quickly these dangerous
    situations can take a turn for the worse. Several times last year,
    runway incidents were narrowly avoided due, in no small part, to the
    heroic actions of the certified, professional air traffic controllers
    who staff our towers. These controllers are hard-working Americans.
    They often log 6-day weeks and 10-hour days, and that is on a good
    week.

      So even before this week's misguided and frankly stupid--I mean, I
    have to stay, I think it is a stupid decision to lay off hundreds of
    FAA workers and air traffic controllers who have been overworked and
    understaffed.
      This is not a new problem; we have known about it for years. For
    years in Congress, we have been sounding the alarm about the need to
    invest in our air traffic control workforce. In last year's FAA
    reauthorization bill, we worked in a bipartisan fashion to address this
    issue--to support our air traffic control workforce so they can do
    their vital, often lifesaving jobs effectively.
      By partnering with the national air traffic control union and the
    FAA, we successfully adopted a new staffing model in the
    reauthorization bill. They have been making good progress, but, of
    course, we have more work to do.
      It is important to acknowledge that any response to the tragedy at
    Reagan National Airport must include a commitment to reinforce all
    parts of our aviation safety workforce. Controllers would be the first
    ones to tell you that they don't work in a vacuum. The equipment they
    use is maintained by hundreds of dedicated support personnel who go
    through years of highly specialized training.
      Many towers and facilities operate in buildings and on equipment that
    is 5, 10, even 15 years old. When something goes wrong, they need to
    know that there is someone on call to fix things because lives
    literally depend on it.
      Americans need to know that the skies are secure and that their
    safety is a top priority. Sadly, I can't say that the actions we are
    seeing from this administration does any of that.
      Secretary Duffy said he wants to surge air traffic controller hiring,
    and I agree with him on that. We can and we should hire more air
    traffic controllers but not at the expense of the rest of the FAA's
    workforce. We could hire any number of air traffic controllers
    tomorrow, but without the dedicated support staff that make their work
    possible, it wouldn't matter.
      So how is the administration responding to the American people's
    distress over increasingly frequent close calls and indeed crashes--
    sadly, like the one we saw in Toronto this week? Well, over the
    weekend, this administration fired nearly 400 FAA employees, some of
    them in my State of New Hampshire.
      We heard an outpouring of concern over the weekend from controllers,
    pilots, airlines, and passengers who want to know that they are going
    to be safe when they fly. I am sure the administration must be hearing
    this, too. But when asked about the impact of the irresponsible and
    reckless effort, this is what Secretary Duffy had to say:

           Zero critical safety personnel were let go.

      So I am not sure I understand this. We are telling the American
    people that if a communications system goes down while the plane is
    approaching the runway, the person who knows how to get it back up and
    running isn't critical? That if the power goes out at an en route
    facility while 747s are flying overhead, the 18 fired maintenance
    personnel who know how to turn the lights back on won't be necessary?
    That the staffers who develop innovative safety and flight procedures
    every time there is an incident to make sure your plane takes off on
    time and arrives safely are fair game to be fired? Because we just lost
    13 of them.
      To anyone who is worried about our national security--good news.
    According to this administration, the FAA employees working on a
    classified radar system to detect cruise missiles aren't all that
    important either. They also were fired.
      So I am going to say that again because this administration thinks
    that the civil servants at the FAA's National Airspace System Defense
    Program are apparently not critical to our safety. None of this makes
    me or my constituents sleep better at night, but I will bet you it
    makes our enemies happy.
      The administration has tried to defend this by saying that everyone
    who was fired was probationary. They would like you to believe these
    are all brandnew employees--sort of the philosophy that the last one in
    is the first one out. That is not how the system works, and it sure as
    heck isn't how you keep Americans safe. In fact, employees who were
    promoted based on stellar performance within the last year--many of
    them who have been with the FAA for 10 or 15 years--are also labeled as
    ``probationary employees'' when they start their new positions. So, in
    fact, the administration just fired some of the people with the most
    experience, not the least.
      This speaks to what is a bigger problem. Time and again, we are
    seeing this happen with so-called government efficiency experts.
    Listen, like most of us in this Chamber, I think we should do
    everything we can to make government run efficiently and effectively,
    but indiscriminately freezing hiring across the board and pushing out
    thousands of civil servants make that problem worse, not better.

    [[Page S1026]]

      Last week, hundreds of employees at the National Nuclear Security
    Administration were fired without warning. This week, the
    administration is scrambling to try to hire most of them back because
    they didn't realize they oversee our nuclear stockpile.
      The Department of Energy fired more than 1,000 employees, including
    three-quarters of the State and Community Energy Programs Office. Now,
    I don't know if the people who are making these decisions in the
    administration even know what that office does, but I can tell you that
    in New Hampshire, we depend on them because they help keep
    weatherization programs up and running, and they support emergency
    operations in the wake of disasters.
      With folks in New Hampshire dealing with some of the highest home
    heating costs and worried about how they are going to keep themselves
    warm this winter and States around the country still recovering from
    floods and fires and winter storms, I can't imagine why anybody would
    think that it is a good idea to get rid of the people who are helping
    make sure those programs operate.
      Then on Monday, we found out that dozens of USDA employees--the
    Department of Agriculture--who have been working to prevent bird flu
    were fired, and then the White House realized what they had done. They
    panicked, and they tried to bring them back. Now, that is on top of all
    of the people around the globe who have been monitoring the bird flu
    potential epidemic who have already been fired with the closure of the
    U.S. Agency for International Development.
      Just this afternoon, we heard that nearly 500 employees at the
    National Institute of Standards and Technology would be fired,
    including almost 60 percent of the CHIPS Office. So the effort that we
    stood up--that this Congress stood up--to try to make sure we could
    compete with China, with Taiwan in the production of semiconductors,
    which are included in almost everything we use, from our cell phones to
    our refrigerators, to our cars--60 percent of those people are now
    gone. So who is going to provide that effort we need in order to
    compete with China? These are the staff that make sure our high-tech
    semiconductor manufacturing industry stays competitive.
      Example after example shows that the firings that Elon Musk has taken
    credit for have not been thought through. Either he is doing it
    deliberately in an effort to undermine the United States or he is doing
    it because he is so ignorant, he has no idea what any of these people
    do or what the operations do. Either way, it is inexcusable.
      I heard from a constituent this week who worked for the New Hampshire
    Fish and Game Department for 24 years, and she just took a job as a
    wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year.
    Her job focused on implementing the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife
    Restoration Act. As my colleagues on both sides of the aisle know, this
    involves conserving bird and wildlife habitat, hunter education, and
    shooting ranges. Its funds come not from taxpayer dollars but from
    excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment. Yet her
    job was terminated under the guise of government efficiency.
      She has a mortgage. She has kids in college who need healthcare
    coverage. But her main ask to me was to help put a stop to these
    firings and to simply help her get her job back because, like most of
    our public servants, she cares about the mission of her work.
      Over and over, we are seeing this administration take out
    irresponsible, reckless initiatives, with devastating consequences for
    critical positions, without taking a second to think through or learn
    about what those positions do. When things inevitably break as a
    result, they don't own up to their mistakes. Instead, they try to
    convince you that keeping the lights on at control towers or inspecting
    airplane engines, making plans to manage some of the busiest airspace
    in the country really isn't critical to your safety. Well, I don't
    believe that, and I don't think you should either.
      For the sake of the American people, we can and we must do better.
      I don't think people elected Donald Trump to dismantle this country's
    air traffic control system. I think they elected him because they
    wanted to see inflation go down, they wanted to see their grocery
    prices reduced, they wanted to see help with rental costs, with
    mortgage rates, with energy costs. What have we seen in the weeks since
    Donald Trump got inaugurated? No effort to address any of those things.
    All we have seen is an effort at retribution against his perceived
    enemies, at firing and undermining services and programs within the
    government that serve the American people.
      For the sake of our citizens, we must do better. I am calling on this
    administration to right this wrong as quickly as possible before it is
    too late.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.