[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.