"Oversight of the Department of Transportation's Policies and Programs and Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request"
2025-07-16
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Source: Congress.gov
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You have had an extremely busy six months, and I appreciate you coming in to answer members of Congress's questions. Following the tragic aviation accidents in the recent months and years of underinvestment in FAA's capital budget, This committee responded by providing the FAA with a $12.5 billion down payment to modernize air traffic control systems as part of the reconciliation bill. This funding will allow the administration to immediately get to work to replace critical telecommunications infrastructure and radar systems, invest in runway safety and airport surveillance projects, and replace antiquated air traffic control facilities.
Additionally, the committee is already working on the next surface transportation bill, which we plan to consider before the end of the year. The current authorization, which is set to expire next September, has plagued infrastructure planning with delays, cost increases, and administrative confusion.
Cut red tape and accelerate project delivery, ensure that states have the flexibility that they need to address their priorities and shore up the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund. We must maintain the user pays principle and offer solutions for putting the Highway Trust Fund on a more sustainable fiscal path. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of
Thank you, thanks for holding this hearing, Chair Graves. Secretary Duffy, thanks for taking your time out of your busy schedule. As the head of two federal agencies now, I appreciate your appearance before the committee. This committee is a workhorse committee, we're not a show horse committee. It has a history, which I appreciate Chair Graves continuing, of enacting legislation to fund critical transportation and infrastructure projects to create jobs, working across administrations to get these investments to our constituents. And I certainly want to continue that partnership. There's a lot of critical work ahead of us to modernize the air traffic control infrastructure and boost controller staffing, to improve rail safety, to upgrade roads, bridges, airports, and ports, and transform how we move people and goods safely through communities and across the country. We have a great opportunity to work together on job-creating infrastructure investments this Congress, including a surface transportation authorization bill. But to do any of that work, we do have to rise above the chaos. Delaying grants authorized in statute or conditioning transportation funding on things that don't have to do with transportation won't get us to yes. DOT is currently reviewing 1,300 approved grants, and your 26th budget request seeks to cancel $5.7 billion in EV charging grants. So, I urge you to get on with the review of the remainder of these grants because we are leaving construction jobs on the table without these grants going out the door. Holding up these grants stalls badly needed job-creating infrastructure investments, and we need to get them going on that. Firing federal workers who oversee infrastructure or carry out critical safety missions won't get us to yes. More than 4,100 DOT employees have left the department, and several agencies in the department, including FHWA, FTA, and NHTSA, have seen reductions of more than 25%. So I urge you to consider how you're going to expedite product delivery and advance safety with the decimated workforce. Privatizing air traffic control won't get a CS.
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