NPR’s Ailsa Chang speaks with Transportation Secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg about the Biden administration’s priorities for the Department of Transportation.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Last year, on this very day, Pete Buttigieg was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in Boone, Iowa. Well, today a Senate committee approved his nomination for secretary of transportation in his one-time rival’s Cabinet. And should the full Senate confirm him, the former mayor of South Bend is on track to be the youngest person to lead the Transportation Department, the first openly gay Cabinet member and, of course, a key player in implementing some of the many executive orders President Biden has issued in the one week he has been president.
Pete Buttigieg, welcome.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: Thank you. Good to be with you.
CHANG: All right. Well, there is a lot to get to, but I first want to start with a general question about your new job-to-be. Transportation – it’s this huge department with oversight over rail, air, roads, cars. Your predecessor, Elaine Chao, had a background at DOT. So I’m curious, how did you approach learning all the nuts and bolts of this as you prepare to take on this totally new job?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, it is a large and complex department, over 50,000 employees and a budget in the tens of billions of dollars. And fortunately, I’ve been supported by an extraordinary transition team helping to make clear all the issues that we face. And I’m arriving with something of a bottom-up perspective on what it’s like to engage federal agencies like the Department of Transportation. You know, there are so many cities across the country, like the city that I led that have a lot at stake in making sure that we meet our goals in terms of climate, job creation, equity and, of course, safety in this department. And I think having that perspective of having interfaced with enormous federal bureaucracies from the local perspective will be something else that I can offer in the department.
CHANG: OK. Let’s turn to the executive orders that I mentioned. Today President Biden signed a series of executive orders on climate change. But the thing is, with climate change, you have this issue where there is some buy-in from industry on things like fuel efficiency standards. But there is pushback, some in Congress. So how do you turn executive orders into lasting policy if you can’t get them passed by Congress?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, we’re going to make every effort to have legislative action to – we need all of the levers working in the same direction. I think the most important thing we have to do is put an end to the false construct that says that this is about climate versus jobs. Look. Climate policy is jobs policy. And the reality is the only way to have a sustainable growing economy is to grow jobs in a way that helps, not hurts, our climate goals.
If you look at the president’s executive order, if you look at the work that’s going to be done, for example, really, I think, supercharging the American electric vehicle industry with government leading the way in its own purchasing but also supporting consumers being able to thrive with electric vehicles – that’s unlocking a huge economic opportunity in places like the industrial Midwest, where I come from, where we have a chance to build these things.
CHANG: What about when it comes to coal? I mean, let’s look at the Senate. We’re talking about a 50-50 split in the Senate. How do you persuade someone like, say, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who comes from a coal-producing state, or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s also from a coal state – how do you convince them to vote against their state’s financial interests?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, I just don’t accept the premise that it is against the state’s financial interests, at least not if we get the policies right. Of course, we need to make sure we are…
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