OPINION:
If you ever find yourself thinking about infrastructure, it means something has gone wrong. The crash that collapsed Baltimore’s Key Bridge last year and the deadly collision over the Potomac River in January were shocking because such accidents are rare and preventable.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is reasserting common sense when deciding how to pay for the systems that are supposed to keep the public safe. On Monday, he tore up a pair of Biden administration directives that diverted transportation dollars into social justice programs.
Mr. Duffy’s predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, was determined to stamp out what he called “racism physically built into some of our highways.” The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, used his Cabinet post to distribute funds to anything that advanced the left-wing agenda, which helped build his name recognition to the point that he is thinking of taking another run at the White House or a Senate seat.
He also left a mess that Mr. Duffy must now clean up. “Prioritizing projects that meet Green New Scam and DEI standards is why our infrastructure is crumbling,” Mr. Duffy wrote Tuesday on X.
This is an inherent flaw in our constitutional republic. Politicians love spending on flashy proposals, especially if they can share the credit. They aren’t fond of devoting resources to the humble and invisible work needed to shore up a crumbling bridge or replace obsolete network infrastructure, even though doing so would have a massive impact on public safety.
Last week, the Government Accountability Office slammed the Federal Aviation Administration for maintaining more than a third of its air traffic control systems in “unsustainable” conditions. Over the decades, the agency has amassed a hodgepodge of antique computer and radio systems that rely on vacuum tubes and floppy disks to keep America’s 45,000 daily flights from bumping into one another.
Pilots are notified of critical safety developments along their routes through a system developed in the 1920s and optimized for the telegraph. It hasn’t been updated since, with one exception. President Biden’s transportation chief renamed the outdated and unreliable “Notice to Airmen” system “Notice to Air Missions,” demonstrating the administration’s fondness for appearance over substance.
The liberal political obsession diverted attention and resources away from things that matter. Mr. Duffy realized this on his first day on the job as he tackled the disaster at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He quickly realized the safety net for planes was part of the problem.
“It’s antiquated, it’s old. … Looking forward, we don’t want to lose lives because we have a break in the system. So, it has to be upgraded, and it’s going to take money,” Mr. Duffy said at a press conference Tuesday.
The FAA has been working on a modernization initiative called NextGen since 2007. Like a California high-speed rail project, $14 billion has been spent but little progress has been made. Mr. Duffy realizes he can’t allow updates to continue at a governmental pace, or the initiative will never be completed.
By asking Congress for the money to finish the entire project up front, Mr. Duffy can require contractors to finish on a more businesslike timeline. With the president clawing back billions of dollars in wasteful spending, the budget has plenty of room for this and other priorities that matter.
The big challenge for the former congressman from Wisconsin will be persuading his former Capitol Hill colleagues to support upgrades that will never be seen.
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