The chairman of the House’s Aviation Safety Caucus is accusing the former Biden administration of helping fuel the current air traffic control (ATC) crisis, by its choice to fund progressive diversity initiatives instead of modernizing the aging system.
Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital that the former administration’s marquee bill, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was among several “missed opportunities” to fund a revamp of the ATC system.
“That was before I came to Congress, but, you know, you had just mistaken priorities in that, all this DEI policy, DEI staffing, that all got baked into the cake,” Langworthy said. “They could have taken that money and spent it on real modernization of what is critical infrastructure in this country.”
“We had the longest period of incident-free aviation in this country’s history, where we didn’t have a commercial air crash from the time the crash happened in Buffalo, in my district, back in 2009, to just this year, and what happened at [Ronald Reagan Airport]. And it was avoidable.”
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It comes after a blackout at Newark Liberty International Airport reportedly caused a roughly 90-second outage to its air traffic control screens.
And earlier this year, a military helicopter collided with a passenger plane coming from Wichita, Kansas, in a deadly incident just off the shores of the nation’s capital.
Langworthy clarified that he does not believe DEI policies “necessarily” directly hit ATC.
“It’s what they spent the money [on]. I mean, you know, there’s infrastructure projects, ones in my backyard, where they want to bury and tunnel over our main artery in the town because it’s going to reunite a community somehow,” he said.
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“Aviation is infrastructure. It’s transportation. It should have been spent then. Instead, they did all this social engineering with money and didn’t focus on what has been a glaring problem for the federal government for many years, modernizing our aviation infrastructure.”
Part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill allocated $25 billion over five years to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), specifically for modernization.
But lawmakers now believe that was not enough. Republicans’ plans for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” via the budget reconciliation process include $12 billion for air traffic control modernization, specifically.
During visits with air traffic controllers in his own upstate New York district, Langworthy said the message was simple but critical: “We need more bodies.”
“We should be promoting this to young people that want to look at career service in the government. And it comes with a very competitive salary,” Langworthy said. “But it’s a tough job with a lot of hours. And you know, there’s always gonna be stress involved, but we have to prioritize it and not just take it for granted.”
Langworthy said he would help push for as much funding as needed to meet the issue.
“I will absolutely lead the fight for [Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy] and the president on their plan to modernize our aircraft,” he vowed.
“When Secretary Duffy and the president roll this out as a spending priority, we have to frontload this process. We have to get them the resources that they need to get this done, because the flying public – everyone’s lives hang in the balance on this.”
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