Pod Insights Civics 101 Secretary of Transportation with Pete Buttigieg About this episode Transportation and infrastructure are massive (literally) undertakings here in the United States. So what does it mean to oversee it all? What is the Secretary of Transportation actually in charge of and what's going on with our roads, bridges, airports, etc.?
We spoke with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to find out.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Hannah McCarthy? Nick, have you ever noticed that when we talk about the importance of government, the reason why you should care, the way it affects your daily life, we almost always talk about things like intersections and stop signs?
0:13 Nick Capodice? That is kind of true. It's like our own personal Civics 101 cliche. And by the way, this is Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
0:21 Hannah McCarthy? I'm Hannah McCarthy. And back to this stop sign thing, I think the reason that we use this as an example for how government affects you is that it is such an everyday thing, right? So quotidian. And at the same time, it can mean the difference between a safe, straightforward, not at all annoying drive or walk or bus ride and a dodgy, sloggy, extremely annoying drive or walk or bus ride.
0:53 Nick Capodice? Like that specific rage that comes with hitting the same pothole you always hit and screaming to the skies, asking why your town hasn't fixed it yet?
1:04 Hannah McCarthy? Infrastructure rage is extraordinary. I, for example, live in the Boston area where the subway system has ruined everyone's commutes and so basically lives for like 20 years, up until very recently.
1:19 Nick Capodice? I remember once getting lost on some backwoods country road in Vermont and the relief, Hannah, the utter relief of finding myself on paved, smooth roads after hours of the exact opposite of that.
1:33 Hannah McCarthy? Bridge closures, detours, train delays, flight delays.
1:39 Nick Capodice? Flight delays!
1:40 Hannah McCarthy? Fun fact, I partially wrote this episode while experiencing a flight delay, which was funny because the person we're talking about today has actually thought quite a bit about people and planes.
1:52 Speaker 02 Well, I think a lot of airline passengers find themselves in a situation where they feel like they don't have a lot of power. You get stuck in an airport, you can't get somebody on the phone, and the airline says, "Well, too bad," or "We'd love to take care of you, but we don't have another flight for three days," or something else happens, and you feel powerless.
2:10 Hannah McCarthy? This is the person who is thinking about infrastructure, so ideally, you don't have to.
2:16 Speaker 02 Sure, I'm Pete Buttigieg. I'm the U.S. Secretary of Transportation.
2:22 Nick Capodice? Wait, so Pete Buttigieg is allowed to do something about airlines?
2:26 Hannah McCarthy? Among many, many other things. So the Department of Transportation, or DOT, is an executive branch agency. These agencies are there to administer and enforce laws. They also make and enforce rules and regulations. These are not the same things as laws, but you do have to follow them. At least until the next secretary changes them.
2:51 Speaker 02 We're using our rulemaking power. And by the way, we don't just, I don't just pull a rule out of the air and say, everybody has to follow this now. We have a whole process where everybody from an airline CEO to an ordinary passenger can submit their comments and weigh in before we finalize any rule. But the kind of rules we're having are ones that say, for example, that if you pay for something and you don't get it, the airline has to give you your money back without you having to ask.
3:17 Speaker 02 Or if you're booking a ticket and there's a bunch of extra fees and charges, they have to show you the fees and charges before you buy. Common sense stuff, I think, but we had to go through a whole process to make that take effect.
3:28 Hannah McCarthy? That process, by the way, is the rulemaking process, and it is involved, that's for another episode on another day. In terms of the enforcement part of being an executive branch agency, the DOT relies in part on people like us to tell them when something is afoot.
3:46 Speaker 02 We set up a website called flightrights.gov about all of the things that you can expect and require your airline to do for you if they do get you stuck, because information is a source of power. We have a complaints portal where you can complain to us if they're not following the rules, and we follow up, because that's enforcement power.
4:03 Nick Capodice? All right, so if the airlines aren't behaving the way the DOT told them to behave, they get penalized?
4:09 Hannah McCarthy? They do, for now, at least. Again, the interesting thing about these agencies is that they can shift drastically from administration to administration. But here is how Pete Buttigieg thinks about his job.
4:24 Speaker 02 Well, the thing about infrastructure is you tend to notice it least when it's at its best. Like, if you've got a perfectly smooth road between your home and your work... You're probably not thinking on your way like, oh, what a great road. I haven't hit a pothole this whole trip. You don't think about that unless it's just been resurfaced. And then you think about it for like a week and then you get used to it. If on the other hand, there's a problem, you can't take the bridge that you're usually taking because it's been closed or there's a limit on how many vehicles can drive on it because it's in poor condition. Or you're getting on airplane and you got a four hour delay. Or anything else goes wrong, that's when you notice it.
5:06 Nick Capodice? And that, that is where the infrastructure rage comes in.
5:10 Speaker 02 So the paradox of our work is I've got to make sure there's enough attention on our work to maintain the support to do it, to have the funding to fix the road or to have the power to require the airlines to take good care of passengers. While recognizing that the better we do our jobs, the less people have to think about it. With one big exception, which is all of the people who work in this sector. There are so many people from a flight attendant to an electrical worker involved in one of the projects we're funding to, let's say, fix an airport terminal, whose livelihoods depend on this.
5:50 Nick Capodice? Can we take a quick step back here, Hannah, and say what Pete Buttigieg actually does? Fix the roads, fix the airports, et cetera. But what does that actually mean? Like, what does the Secretary of Transportation actually do all day?
6:08 Speaker 02 Okay, well, if it's Washington day, then I get up, I make my way to the office. We start with a round of check-ins with the team to find out anything that's happened overnight that I need to know about, our plans for the day, any interviews that I'm doing, what we're planning to do in the media. And then we jump into a lot of meetings and conversations. It might be an interview like this one, followed by a meeting with a senator who's interested in a project that they're hoping to get done in their state. Maybe they got a bridge that needs work and they're hoping to get funding from our department to help get it done. I might address- A larger group of vehicle safety advocates who are concerned with making sure that there
6:50 Speaker 02 are fewer car crashes or a gathering of consumer groups in the aviation industry who want to get more passenger protections. I might find myself at the White House to be part of the team that I'm part of in addition to, of course, the work here at the Department of Transportation.
7:05 Nick Capodice? All right, so Pete Buttigieg talks to the press, and he talks to politicians, and he talks to advocates, and he talks to the president's people, and he talks to other cabinet members. And, look, I know this, like, I know the higher up you are, the more your job becomes talking, but it's gotta be way more than that.
7:24 Speaker 02 If you've ever seen an ad saying, "Call before you dig, 811," which is about pipeline safety, that's us, because we're responsible for pipeline safety. If you've ever heard of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, that's part of our department. We issue the licenses for commercial space launches, because that's part of what the FAA, that's in charge of aviation in the national airspace, does. We're not NASA, but in order to get to space, you have to go through the national airspace, and we're responsible for the national airspace. So it is really an extraordinary scope of different things that we work on. But what they all have in common is that they have to do with moving people or goods
8:05 Speaker 02 safely in this country, and they require some level of federal involvement to make sure it goes well.
8:11 Nick Capodice? Would it be fair, Hannah, to say the Department of Transportation is all over the place?
8:17 Hannah McCarthy? Very good, yes, a little all over the place. But literally, yes, the Department of Transportation includes the Federal Highway, Railroad, Transit, Aviation, and Motor Carrier Safety Administrations. We're also talking about the Maritime, National, Highway Traffic Safety, Pipeline, and Hazardous Materials Safety Administrations.
8:40 Hannah McCarthy? Even the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.
8:44 Nick Capodice? I'm sorry, the what?
8:45 Hannah McCarthy? So you know how for a long time, people were looking for the Northwest Passage to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean?
8:51 Nick Capodice? Oh, I certainly do, Hannah. Stan Rogers even has a whole song about it.
8:55 Hannah McCarthy? Well, this is not that, but people thought it was. It's a series of waterways that the United States and Canada turned into a water highway from the Atlantic up to Montreal. And the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation helps take care of the US part of it.
9:12 Nick Capodice? And the Secretary of Transportation is in charge of the people taking care of it.
9:16 Hannah McCarthy? Right.
9:17 Nick Capodice? All right, so it really is all about moving people and goods. And given the fact that we have hundreds of millions of people and billions of tons of goods.
9:27 Hannah McCarthy? I mean, it takes the GDP of a mid-sized country.
9:30 Nick Capodice? Yeah, about that. So what is all that money actually doing?
9:36 Hannah McCarthy? Planning, fixing, building, maintaining. Roads, bridges, seaways, aviation infrastructure, the things that we use to move people and things. A big part of the Secretary of Transportation's job is to get the money to the people doing the transportation projects, of which there are currently a lot, for reasons we will get to shortly.
10:03 Speaker 02 Go to something like invest.gov and you can see, it's called invest.gov because investing in America is our, our framework for everything we're doing. You can see dots all over the map. You'll find a project close to where you live, wherever you live, because we're doing 66,000 of them. So I have, I've been to every single state in the US, and I have only seen a tiny fraction on this job of the projects we're doing. Another thing I want people to know is that a lot of the decisions are actually being made closer to where you live. So much of our funding is set up through a process. It's a competition. Different states and cities come in, they say, we got this project, they've got that project. And our team works through them, and then I sign off on the winners who get the, the limited funding that we have.
10:47 Speaker 02 But actually, most of our funding doesn't work that way. Most of the billions of dollars that come out of this building where I'm sitting go into the hands of a state. And the state, in turn, often distributes them to more local units like what's called a metropolitan planning organization, an MPO.
11:04 Nick Capodice? Hang on, I want to make sure I get this right. So your state or your city can basically make a pitch to the DOT and hope you have the best pitch, and it's Pete Buttigieg who decides what the best pitch is?
11:18 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, basically, there are grants which are competitive. And then there are appropriations which are based on a formula approved by Congress and distributed to state DOTs, tribal governments, various transit agencies. These entities get to decide, to a degree, what to do with that money. And Pete Buttigieg wants you to know that you actually get to weigh in if you want.
11:42 Speaker 02 This is getting pretty wonky, but the reason I want people to know about this is often the meetings of those bodies that decide what to do with this money, like an MPO, are open to the public. So unlike here in Washington, where you only get to speak in a committee meeting in Congress if you've been invited, a lot of these processes closer to home, you can just show up. And back when I was a mayor, I saw decisions made differently sometimes because young people, high school students even, not old enough to vote, showed up, stood in line, and said their piece. And I hope people remember that. Because if you know, for example, that on your walk to school or on your drive to soccer practice, there's a intersection that's unsafe, there might be a chance to do something
12:27 Speaker 02 about that by getting that intersection on the radar of people in your state legislature or State Department of Transportation, or just your city council or county, who are figuring out what to do with some of these funds. Or putting together a process for community input, which we require on many of the projects that we're funding. So find ways to get involved, even if the dollars are federal, you don't have to come to Washington in order to be involved in how they get used. In fact, the whole point is that everything we fund... Is a local project somewhere that's designed locally. And then all we do is prepare the funding and make sure that it follows the rules of what to do with federal taxpayer dollars.
13:11 Nick Capodice? All right, I was gonna ask about this. You can't just go willy nilly all over the place with your federal money, right? Like, the DOT is watching.
13:19 Hannah McCarthy? DOT is watching. We talked about airline consumer regulations earlier, but a lot of these rules and regs are about safety. Is something being planned, built, or repaired the right way? Will it be safe for people and the environment in the future?
13:35 Nick Capodice? So while we're on the subject about doing something about transportation.
13:40 Hannah McCarthy? That is, in fact, the singular subject of this episode.
13:43 Nick Capodice? Right, but I would like to, if I may, draw your attention to the elephant on the bridge here.
13:48 Hannah McCarthy? Go for it, Mr. Barnum.
13:50 Nick Capodice? So Hannah, if there is one word that I have heard more than any other to describe infrastructure in America over the last two decades, it is crumbling.
13:59 Hannah McCarthy? Ah, yes, the crumbling infrastructure. And you know what? We're going to get to that after a quick break.
14:08 Hannah McCarthy? But before that break, a reminder that Nick and I wrote a book. It's called A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works. And it's the book that you can reach for whenever you find yourself wondering, is that legal? Why is that happening? What does that even mean? Re-America. You can get it wherever books are sold.
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17:13 Hannah McCarthy? We're back. We're talking about the Secretary of Transportation with Pete Buttigieg, the current Secretary of Transportation. But we're also talking about what the Department of Transportation, the DOT, actually does. And a big part of what the DOT does has to do with how much the DOT has to work with in terms of money and laws. And Nick, before the break, you mentioned this pretty common buzzword that we have heard a lot when it comes to talking about infrastructure in America. That word is crumbling.
17:49 Speaker 03 Our roads and bridges are crumbling, our airports are out of date, and the vast majority of our seaports are in danger of becoming obsolete.
17:57 Speaker 04 The best interstate system in the world, which is now falling apart.
18:00 Speaker 05 It was a stark reminder of this nation's crumbling infrastructure.
18:05 Speaker 06 According to levy expert Jeff Mount, our nationwide system of levies is old, poorly designed, and in desperate need of repair.
18:12 Speaker 04 It's safe, Steve, but it's not reliable, and it's getting less reliable. It's old. Its systems are breaking down.
18:23 Hannah McCarthy? So there's this annual infrastructure report by the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the US has not fared well for decades. We're talking a D, maybe a D-plus for a grade.
18:36 Nick Capodice? Which is a scary grade for the stuff that moves people and things.
18:41 Hannah McCarthy? It's not great. So since the 1970s and until very recently, infrastructure investment has gone down and down. A lot of the stuff that we use to move people and things is at least 50 years old or much older. It was built in and for a different world. The older it gets, the more expensive it becomes to fix or replace it. And then there's the question of, well, do you fix it or do you replace it? And can you get enough votes to get enough money to do either of those things? Is it politically popular? How do you get people to agree on what to do with the money even when you have the money?
19:26 Hannah McCarthy? And who is actually in charge when we're talking about thousands of state and local departments and agencies?
19:32 Nick Capodice? So federalism and politics are kind of the answer as to how things got so bad.
19:39 Hannah McCarthy? You know, that's the answer to most questions here on Civics 101. Also, infrastructure is often so big and takes so much time. An infrastructure decision is not the same thing as a tax decision, but its effects tend to last a lot longer.
19:56 Speaker 02 You know, a lot of decisions that are made in here in Washington are kind of year-to-year decisions. Sometimes a piece of tax policy or some regulation, and it happens, and then that's the rule for next year. But if we build a bridge, we'd better put it in the right place and design it in the right way, because 50 years from now, people are still going to be counting on it. And one way this hits close to home is that we're living with decisions that were made 50 years ago or 100 years ago. And some of those decisions were good, and some of them were not. Many of us live in neighborhoods that are cut off or cut in two because somebody put in a highway right in the middle of it, when it could have been designed in a way that wouldn't impact the neighborhood.
20:40 Speaker 02 And right now, we're deciding what to do about that.
20:42 Nick Capodice? All right, so let's get to the right now part. You said that investment has been declining until very recently?
20:48 Speaker 02 So right now, we're in the middle of an infrastructure package. In other words, we're doing a round of repairs and construction that's bigger than anything we've done since the 1950s, when we set up the highway system in the first place. And it would be easy to think that that was just happening, but actually, for most of our first year in this job, most of 2021, we didn't know if we were going to be able to do that. President Biden said that it was going to be a priority, but we had to negotiate it with Congress, and we were working very hard to get Democratic and Republican votes to make it happen.
21:25 Hannah McCarthy? The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed in 2021 and provided over $1 trillion for transportation infrastructure, environmental mitigation, and things like broadband, quote unquote, "clean energy," and the electric grid.
21:41 Nick Capodice? This is the one that's also called the bipartisan infrastructure law, right? Was it actually bipartisan?
21:48 Hannah McCarthy? It was, but also some of the politicians who voted for it received threats for voting for it, so don't go thinking it was easy. But after years of what we called "Infrastructure Week," being a big joke, not just in Washington, but nationwide, this was a significant thing. And transit-wise, has been funding the very, very big, like, bridge projects and airport renovations, and also the smaller but more immediate, like, new school buses.
22:19 Speaker 07 The $1.2 trillion bill includes $550 billion in new spending, including $110 billion for roads and bridges, $25 billion for airports, and the largest federal investment in broadband ever, $65 billion.
22:35 Hannah McCarthy? All this is extremely, extremely important and needed all over the country. Biggest investment. And by the way, our latest grade from that report that I mentioned earlier, we're up to a C-, which is better than we've done in a while.
22:48 Nick Capodice? Hannah, is this why so many people actually know who the Secretary of Transportation is these days? Because there's a ton of money to do transportation stuff?
22:58 Hannah McCarthy? I mean, I think that, and also, a lot of people already knew him.
23:03 Speaker 02 Well, you know, two years before I became Secretary of Transportation, I was a mayor of a mid-sized Indiana city, and nobody outside of that city would have much reason to know who I was. But about one year before I became Secretary of Transportation, I was running for president, and so a lot of people got to know me. And I tried to use that visibility that followed me into this job when President Biden asked me to take this role. I tried to use that tool to help get things done, especially when we were negotiating this big infrastructure package. So because people knew who I was, I spent a lot of time arguing on television and calling up senators and members of Congress, making the case, and was in rooms negotiating, sometimes
23:47 Speaker 02 with the president, sometimes on my own, working on how to get this done.
23:53 Nick Capodice? You know, this really hammers home the point to me, Hannah, that cabinet members, in essence, have political jobs. I mean, they have very specific responsibilities, right? And for Pete Buttigieg, to keep it really simple, that is moving people and things safely. But, but, to actually get things done, it helps if you know how to politic.
24:17 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, you know how we often ask the question, is this thing that we're talking about political? On its face, for example, is a bridge political? Is flying through the sky at 42,000 feet political? Is that stop sign political? I mean, maybe not in isolation, but none of it happens without politics. It's about money, and jobs, and consumers, and citizens, and safety, and fairness, and talking to people. Which is maybe why, when I asked Secretary Pete Buttigieg if he has time for a life
24:58 Hannah McCarthy? in all of this, he did take the chance to remind me why he's actually here to begin with.
25:04 Speaker 02 The pace can be pretty extreme, but, you know, my husband definitely expects me to be available to either take care of the kids while he's running to Target, or go to Target so he doesn't have to. So at least on weekends, we try to have somewhat of a normal life. The days can be packed. I couldn't help but notice today, I was glancing at the schedule, and I'm not certain where lunch is going to happen. But, you know, that's because there's so much good work today.
25:40 Hannah McCarthy? That does it for this episode. It was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Rebecca Lavoy is our executive producer. Music in this episode by El Flaco Collective, Commodity, Spring Gang, Dama Beats, Ryan James Carr, Casey Wilcox, and Beigel. If you have any questions for Civics 101, we want to hear from you. Go to our website, civics101podcast.org, and submit your questions about America. You are our main source of ideas for these episodes, and we, of course, are here to serve. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
26:47 Speaker 07 Did you know that if your spouse goes missing and you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand-new season of Bear Brook, the critically acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In this season, Bear Brook investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? Don't miss it. Follow Bear Brook wherever you get your podcasts.
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