Hearings to examine proposed budget estimates and justification for fiscal year 2025, and fiscal year 2026 advance appropriations requests, for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Senate Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies
2024-05-02
Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
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Unknown (SPEAKER_02)
Good morning. This hearing will come to order. I am pleased to welcome Secretary Pete Buttigieg before the subcommittee and we look forward to hearing your testimony on fiscal year's 2025 budget request for the Department of Transportation. In February, I had the chance to welcome you, Secretary, to Hawaii where we visited Lahaina on Maui to get an update on the recovery after the fires. What was clear then as it is now is that those survivors need help. A whole town was flattened. Thousands of people are left without homes overnight. And nine months later, their lives are still in limbo. And I know you know this, Mr. Secretary, and I want to appreciate your attendance, your presence on Maui, on Oahu, but also your ability to listen to the needs of the survivors. And I'll just make it very simple. The survivors need transitional housing. The survivors need transitional housing. Other communities across the state are dealing with disasters of their own. Not far from here, Baltimore is recovering from the tragic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. And as I reiterated to Governor Moore and the Maryland congressional delegation this week, we're going to get Baltimore whatever it needs to rebuild. Elsewhere, just this past weekend, a freight train derailment on the Arizona-New Mexico border forced resident evacuations and a highway closure. We are still waiting to find out more about what caused the accident, but we're thankful that nobody was hurt. And it's a reminder of just how important the investments we make in transportation safety are. In response to last year's East Palestine derailment, this committee, along with Senator Sherrod Brown, worked on a bipartisan basis to improve rail safety by investing in research and technologies to prevent such accidents. More needs to be done to hold the industry accountable, and the administration is requesting an additional $26 million to do just that. In aviation, this committee is focused on addressing the shortage of air traffic controllers in order to maintain safety and reliability for flyers nationwide.
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Unknown (SPEAKER_02)
The FAA's request for 2,000 new air traffic controllers is urgent and necessary. This committee has also provided significant increases in staffing and resources for aircraft certification, which has helped the Office of Aviation Safety to add more than 600 new staff to improve the scrutiny of aircraft manufacturers, including and maybe especially Boeing. An additional $30 million is being requested in this budget for 26 positions, enhanced workforce training, data management, and improvement to safety reporting systems. On road safety, I'm glad to see that NHTSA has finally issued a rule mandating automatic emergency breaks, which will save many, many lives. but more needs to be done. 40,000 lives are lost every year because of roadway accidents, and a growing share of these are pedestrian and bike deaths. No one, whether you drive or bike or walk, should feel in danger trying to get around in their community. We need real accountability here to better understand why the department's investments and regulations are not yet producing safer outcomes. And finally, we have to look at equity in our transportation networks, particularly for rural and tribal communities, This budget proposal to eliminate the cost share for rural and tribal transit programs is a step in the right direction, but we need to continue to expand access for these communities to DOT's competitive programs. Equity also means looking at who pays for and benefits from our transportation networks, and so I'd like to hear about the administration's proposal to increase taxes on certain business jets, and the extent to which these jets are currently being subsidized by other aviation users. The budget requests before us reflect urgent and important national transportation priorities, and these investments will benefit millions of Americans across the country for generations to come. And with that, I'll turn it over to my friend and the Vice Chair, Senator Hyde-Smith, for her opening statement.
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Unknown (SPEAKER_07)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I certainly appreciate that introduction and the working relationship we have. Welcome. Thank you for being here. I just want to talk a little bit about where we are. And while we're all frustrated of how long it took to get the FY24 appropriations packages through Congress signed into law, I will note that here in the Senate, we passed the Teahut Appropriations Bill last November with strong bipartisan support with the help of Senator Collins, for sure, and Senator Murray. And by Senator Kennedy, no doubt.
But without the leadership and the vision of Vice Chairman Collins and Chairwoman Murray, we may well have been here saddled with continuing CRs through the end of the fiscal year, which benefits no one and eliminates Congress's ability to carry out its most fundamental duties. But thank you for being here to testify again on the budget request for the Department of Transportation, which has such a direct impact on so many people in every state. But when you appeared before the subcommittee last year, the department was contending with serious safety challenges, such as the failure of the FAA notice to air mission system and the devastating derailment, as the chairman mentioned, in Ohio. Today, the department is grappling with two new emergencies involving Boeing and then the collapse of the Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge. I look forward to hearing how the department is confronting each of these obstacles and prioritizing the safety of the traveling public. And as Congress contemplates how to address emergency funding needs resulting from the Baltimore Bridge collapse and other disasters, we as appropriators must not lose sight of our responsibility to provide adequate annual funding for critical programs across the department.
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