During Wednesday’s House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA) questioned Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy about cuts to the DOT.
00:00Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Oops. Seems like all the equipment is faulty around here.
00:12Once again, I would like to go back to our conversation over the closure of the FISMA,
00:18or it has not been closed. The lease is supposed to expire in August.
00:24But I would like to have more information about the assessment that was done to come up with a decision
00:34that it would be a good decision to close this facility, given the fact that the nearest facility is 1,000 miles away.
00:43I also, for the record, Chairman, I'd like to include this AP article dated February 19th of 2025.
00:56Without objection.
00:57That talks about the 400 personnel. I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to hand this over to you, Mr. Secretary, just so you know.
01:07I'm not here to fight with you. I'm here to ask the tough questions.
01:12No one wants to see planes crashing. No one wants to be that person who receives that call.
01:19No 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.
01:32So all I am asking is for us to take a step back and look at the massive work that you have ahead of you.
01:42And I want to recognize that you have massive job ahead of you.
01:47But given the fact that DOGE has come in and made decisions probably without even communicating those decisions with you,
01:56I want to believe that we are in all of this, all of us are in this together.
02:02And it's going to take all of us to push back to ensure that positions, whether they're air traffic controllers or the people fixing the equipment behind the scenes,
02:14just because we don't see them or hear from them doesn't mean that they're not critical positions.
02:20So with that, I'm going to yield back. And I look forward to continuing this conversation with you.
02:25On your facility, I will get briefed on that and coordinate with you and get back to you.
02:30So I don't have a good answer for you right now.
02:32No, I understand.
02:33And in regard to the 400, again, I think maybe I misunderstood.
02:37I thought you were saying they were air traffic controllers and they're not.
02:40I don't know what the reference was.
02:41And if I could just make one.
02:43There are 46,000 employees at the FAA.
02:47It's a huge agency.
02:49A lot of them do good work.
02:51But if I can do things more efficiently in some spaces, I want to do that.
02:56But there are critical safety missions that we have.
03:00And I'm going to make sure those folks not only stay, but we build upon that.
03:04And I just to your point, this is this is not partisan.
03:07Air traffic control, what we have to do.
03:09It's an American problem.
03:11Everyone I've talked to on both sides of the aisle are like, how do we work together?
03:16And I think that's the that's the mentality we're going to have to have to to embrace each other and serve everyone who flies,
