Episode taped on Wednesday, June 28th, 2021

Preet Bharara:

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Pete Buttigieg:

You can start the clock right around the beginning of my lifetime. The last 40 years, were just systematically disinvested and it’s catching up to us. So let’s not just do all this work to remain in 13th place in the world on infrastructure, let’s take it to the next level and be proud of it.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Pete Buttigieg, he’s the United States Secretary of Transportation. A lot has changed since Buttigieg last joined me on Stay Tuned in March of 2019. He was still weeks away from launching his presidential bid and the country was just getting to know Mayor Pete from South Bend, Indiana. Now Buttigieg is Secretary Pete, and he’s a key player in the Biden Administration’s efforts to pass the most significant investment in America’s infrastructure since the 1950s.

But it all hangs in the balance as the White House struggles to hammer out the details and piece together the votes. Buttigieg joins me today to talk about what’s actually in the Bill and what it would mean for our trains, roads, bridges, and the livelihoods of millions of Americans. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

Question & Answer:

Preet Bharara:

Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes in an email from Barbara who writes, “Hi Preet. Did you happen to watch the House Select Committees first hearing on the January 6th insurrection? I found myself getting emotional while watching, anything stand out to you?”

Well Barbara, thanks for your question. I missed it as it was happening and unfolding live, but I managed to catch a large portion of it later. And there are certain clips that I saw over and over and over again, and I don’t blame you for getting emotional. And what stood out to me is probably the same kinds of things that stood out to you and to others, was in some ways the raw emotion of it.

And just to comment on how the proceeding was conducted, I commend the chair, Bennie Thompson, and the other members of the panel. If you listen to the show on a regular basis you know that I’m no stranger to criticizing congressional panels, particularly House panels, where members talk more than they listen, where there’s not a lot of light generated, just a lot of heat.

Here, I think they were very smart and also sensitive to have four in uniform, Capitol Hill police officers give the lie to what a lot of Republicans have been saying, that it was a tourist event, that it was Antifa, that it wasn’t at the behest of the president of the United States. We have four officers describing their actual experiences in gut-wrenching manner. And the playing of video, that multiple people texted me and said that they wanted to throw up and it made them cry.

So for the beginning, for the first hearing, letting the officers tell their stories, officers who have no agenda, other than to protect members of Congress, Democrats, and Republicans. And to describe some things that we haven’t heard before, including Capitol police, Officer Harry Dunn, a black Capitol police officer, who said that he was called the N word again and again, and again, by these so-called tourists.

He said also very pointedly, which sets up a sort of legal issue, eventually and accountability issue for that panel. He said quote-

Officer Harry Dunn:

There was an attack carried out on January 6th, and a hitman sent them. I want you to get to the bottom of that.

Preet Bharara:

And through that officer, I guess there was no better sort of framing of the issue and the responsibility of that committee. I think the participation of the two selected Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger was very strong, they were sober, they were moved by the testimony, they were moved by the issue. And I think they continue to show that they put country over party.

Meanwhile, I think the big loser in all this Kevin McCarthy, who thought he was too clever by half, by first objecting to a bipartisan commission where he would have been able to choose half the members and then chose some people to serve on this commission under the guideline, under the rule of the House in consultation with Nancy Pelosi proposed to people who I think by any reasonable measure were not qualified to serve, because of the positions they’ve taken, including Jim Jordan, and now he finds himself odd man out.

And this committee is going to do its work. They’re not going to be derailed by politics or by talk radio and TV talk shows. And I’ll tell you from the lawyer’s perspective, and investigator perspective, one of the most heartening things that I heard separate and apart from the stories that were so compelling and hard to get out of your head, is that Bennie Thompson has said that they’re going to go right to the subpoena process.

They’re not going to waste a lot of time by asking people to come and testify voluntarily and then fight about the scope and everything else. He looks like he’s going to skip that step and haul people before the Committee to tell them what they know, so they can get to the bottom of that. That’s all well and good.

This question comes in an email from Jennifer who writes “The VA, the Veterans Affairs Administration, just mandated that all of its employees get vaccinated against COVID. What is the legality of vaccine mandates? Do you personally feel they are warranted?” Well, that’s a great question.

And as you’ll see in here in the interview with secretary Pete Buttigieg, I ask him that question about Department of Transportation employees, and there have been actions taken by certain divisions of the government, including the VA like you mentioned, to require vaccines in order to come to work as a condition of employment.

And remember, these are not forced inoculations, they aren’t mandatory in the sense that people will come to your home and give you the jab, whether you want it or not. And although it is coercive arguably in a way, it’s a condition of employment.

Now what’s interesting about this is that there’s so much division and there’s so much hesitancy, I don’t mean vaccine hesitancy, but hesitancy of a different sort. A hesitation to impose these kinds of conditions. It has been imposed in lots of public venues. You’ve heard me mention, probably more times than you would like, that I saw Bruce Springsteen on Broadway.

As a condition of being able to be an attendee at that concert every single person, myself included, my son included, had to show proof of vaccine. And we sit in the line and you either showed them a screenshot, or you showed them the hard copy of your vaccination card. I think it is very clear that both in the private sector and with respect to government, that you can require vaccination as a condition of employment or attendance somewhere.

What I think is very interesting about all this is not withstanding what I perceive to be clarity in the law. DOJ commissioned an internal opinion from that office that we’ve talked about, another context, many times the Office of Legal Counsel, OLC, that’s the office that famously has opined that a sitting president cannot be indicted. We’ve talked about that ad nauseum multiple times in recent years.

But I find it interesting that not withstanding what I think is fairly clear in the law, that the justice department decided that it wanted to have an opinion. And by the way, make the opinion public, lots of what happens in the OLC remain secret. And that’s a point of contention to Senator Ron Wyden and others in Congress are annoyed that so much of the legal reasoning that lies at the heart of decision-making by the government never gets made public.

But this, they were sure to make public, and it strikes me that it’s an effort to give cover and assurance to people both inside and outside of government that having these mandates or these conditions of employment or participation are lawful. And the one thing that makes it a little bit more confusing than you would have in other circumstances, people are always saying, “Well, it has long been true that you can’t send your kids to school without showing inoculation for various things”.

That’s all correct. The difference between these three vaccines that have been approved is that they have been approved under what’s called emergency use authorization, which a lot of people are taking that to mean, we can’t trust it yet, maybe they won’t get a final authorization.

And so this opinion that goes on for some pages is a bit technical, and it purports to answer the question of quote, whether section 564 of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act prohibits entities from requiring the use of a vaccine subject to an emergency use authorization, end quote. So it kind of gets at that question that has people kind of troubled and scratching their head. Do we have to wait till there’s final authorization, permanent authorization, whereas emergency use enough.

I’ll spare you the details, but not only is it sort of generally understood throughout the legal profession and throughout government and throughout private industry, that such conditions are appropriate and lawful. And in my personal opinion really needed right now, but the Office of legal Counsel, that tends to be fairly conservative about these things, as opined about its legality itself.

Stay tuned, there’s more coming up after this.

The Interview

Preet Bharara:

My guest this week is Pete Buttigieg. He currently serves as the secretary of transportation and he’s in the middle of helping negotiate the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Bill, a massive piece of legislation that could turn out to be the president’s signature achievement.

And just to note that we taped our conversation on the morning of Wednesday, July 28th, before the Senate procedural vote. Secretary Pete Buttigieg, welcome back to the show.

Pete Buttigieg:

Thank you. Good to be with you.

Preet Bharara:

We were discussing right before we started taping. Yeah, you said people still call you mayor, even though you’re now secretary?

Pete Buttigieg:

Yeah. All the time. I think it’s just become my first name now, this is Mayor Pete, which I’m happy to answer to you. Once the mayor always a mayor.

Preet Bharara:

You know what? You were on the podcast two years and change ago. And since then, people know how to say your last name now, what do you make of that?

Pete Buttigieg:

That’s true. Yeah. And that’s no small thing with a last name like mine.

Preet Bharara:

They still can’t say my last name, but they can say… Let me ask you a question that I’m sure you get every time you get interviewed. Now that you are a member of the cabinet, are you very excited to be the designated survivor?

Pete Buttigieg:

Oh Jeez. You know, it hasn’t come up yet. If you get that-

Preet Bharara:

Can you volunteer or is it by lottery?

Pete Buttigieg:

I’m not sure all of the mechanics of it. I would say that if you’re going that far into the depth chart, we’re in big trouble.

Preet Bharara:

Well, it’s part of infrastructure, right? To have the designated survivor?

Pete Buttigieg:

I’ll tell you, they have a plan for everything. That’s one thing I admire about the way things are set up. But I love being part of this team. I mean one thing as a mayor is, by definition you’re the only one at a time. And so, one of the best things that’s changed, one of the most welcome adjustments, is just being part of this peer group of cabinet members. And really feels like a team rockstar, so I’m excited to be part of this.

Preet Bharara:

How often do you get together as a group, ever?

Pete Buttigieg:

We just had our second cabinet meeting in the White House and it was the first time we actually did it in the cabinet room at the cabinet table, which just has kind of… I don’t know, you just feel it when you’re in that room. But in some combination or another, just about every day, some subset of us just together.

Pete Buttigieg:

We had the jobs cabinet that’s focused on the infrastructure work, that’s going on. A subset of the cabinet that works on tribal affairs, that I’m a part of. And in the different combinations, getting to know each other, professionally but also just as teammates and coworkers. And it’s a hell of a group.

Preet Bharara:

Now, when you have these cabinet meetings and you’re all gathered together, is it awkward a little bit to go one by one and publicly sing the praises of the leader, Joseph Biden?

Pete Buttigieg:

You have to eat your preamble, right? Oh, glorious and magnificent leader is out.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have to do that?

Pete Buttigieg:

One of my colleagues actually playfully did it as we were talking about the contrast in the atmosphere where we all witnessed this bizarre spectacle in the last administration. And here, I mean, obviously we love being part of this group. I think all of us admire the president and the vice president, but we also know that he expects us to tell him what’s going on. The good news, the bad news, what we’re up against, what’s hard, where we think things need to go, and that’s the kind of team that I feel that I was recruited to be part of.

Pete Buttigieg:

So you never really know how things are in any other administration, but the one you’re in. But this is one where I think straight talk and honesty are valued. And to me, that’s part of a functioning team.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I think it is. Who’s the cabinet secretary that you deal with the most, given the nature of your job?

Pete Buttigieg:

You know I deal a lot with the Secretary Granholm, fellow Midwesterner. She as secretary of energy is so central to the climate issue. And if you think about something like electric vehicles that we work on a lot, EVs are actually only as clean as the energy that goes into them. And we’ve got to make sure we have a grid that’s ready to support the level of electric vehicle adoption that we want to drive.

Pete Buttigieg:

So I’m working with her a lot. With HUD, Secretary Fudge, housing and transportation are not separate things. They’re definitely not separate in terms of family budgets, in terms of affordability issues, right? So much depends on being able to live within a reasonable commuting distance of work. But they are separate on the org chart of the federal government. And so we’re working to kind of cross that with things like supporting transit oriented development, where you think on the front end about how transportation and housing ought to go together.

Pete Buttigieg:

Michael Regan at the EPA who is someone I really admire, and really work to be in touch with. Especially as we pursue things like emission standards, which not to get into the complexity of the regulatory setup, but basically EPA has part of it. And we have part of it in terms of how efficient cars need to be.

Pete Buttigieg:

So any given day, there’s an issue that brings me into contact with one or more of my cabinet colleagues, and that’s a good thing. I mean, there are these silos in the executive branch and we work hard, not just as cabinet members, but really push our teams to work across them.

Preet Bharara:

So we are recording this on Wednesday morning, July 28th. There’s a lot of negotiating going on. I really appreciate you made the time to come on the podcast. Infrastructure week, long time coming. I don’t know if this is the week or next week will be the week when there is finally some results. Are we getting a bill? Are we not getting a bill? Why is this so hard?

Pete Buttigieg:

I think we are. As we speak, conversations are happening that are moving us really close to the finish line. And the reason-

Preet Bharara:

Are they wondering where you are?

Pete Buttigieg:

I’ll get away with-

Preet Bharara:

What do you mean he’s talking to Preet?

Pete Buttigieg:

… a little bit of time away from the desk. No. I mean, look, part of it’s talking to the Members of Congress, and then part of it’s talking with the public and the press and getting this message out, right? We need to make sure that the Americans understand what it is we’re doing. Infrastructure can sound like such a big, broad and vague term that I think it’s very important to spend part of my time just getting the message out there about what it would mean if we fixed the number of roads and bridges that we could fix with this deal we’re putting together.

Pete Buttigieg:

What it would mean, not just in terms of the infrastructure itself, but for our climate. This may not be called a climate bill, and there’s more climate work to be done in the budget resolution, but actually the biggest part of our economy in terms of contributing greenhouse gases is transportation. So every decision we make about transit, about rail, about supporting our ports, all of that is climate policy.

Pete Buttigieg:

Equity, all these things we care about are at stake in the deal that’s being worked out right now. And I’m hopeful that we can get there. It’s something that in different ways and for different reasons is affecting every single part of this country. And definitely every single district, that every single member of Congress Republican or Democrat is going to have to go home to.

Preet Bharara:

So explain this to the public who get news in bits and pieces, maybe people are watching the Olympics and they hear a lot about infrastructure and they hear this term two track. There is a negotiating process going on with respect to a bipartisan infrastructure bill for hundreds of billions of dollars. And then there’s a separate thing in the trillions of dollars, which is the budget resolution.

Preet Bharara:

Can you explain to the ordinary person what the hell it means for something to be one of those versus the other and what the strategy is? And is it just something that makes sense or not?

Pete Buttigieg:

Here’s the way I think of it. The president has an economic vision for this country, and it touches a lot of things from roads and bridges to how we support people’s childcare and education and family leave. All the things that add up to what it’s like to be an American going through life in our economy and what it means to build an economy back better than the one that we had before.

Pete Buttigieg:

So you have this vision, and there’s a part of that vision that we can actually do on a bipartisan basis. And that’s a big deal because there is value in America seeing in today’s incredibly divided Washington, there being something, anything that we can do together. And it turns out that a lot of that, that part that we can do together, revolves around transportation infrastructure.

Pete Buttigieg:

Because again, anyone in the Senate, anyone in the House, what they all have in common is they’re all from somewhere. They’re all from a place where there’s an airport, or a set of roads, or a bridge, or something that needs work in a country that has really failed to keep up with transportation investments for decades.

Pete Buttigieg:

So we’ve got these transportation pieces, broadband internet that we want to have in there, issues around lead pipes and getting clean safe drinking water to our kids that really does look like it could command a bipartisan vote, a bipartisan majority, even in today’s Washington. That’s part one. That’s when you hear about the two tracks, that’s the first track.

Pete Buttigieg:

Then you have the other part, and this was a part that admittedly we may have to do with only democratic votes. Now, having said that, I refuse to give up on the idea that at least some Republicans should vote for this. I mean, I don’t know why Republicans can’t get on board with the idea of, for example, paid family leave. Most people in most countries, not even wealthy countries, just most countries, period, can expect some level of paid family leave not in America.

Pete Buttigieg:

Ideas like making childcare affordable for everybody or community college free, or three and four year olds being able to go to school. I think that the Republicans have a vote for that too, but it might not happen. And so that’s on a different track that you can get through with only democratic votes. Those are the two pieces. Both of them are moving.

Preet Bharara:

Can you take us inside the negotiations, who’s playing ball. Who’s not?

Pete Buttigieg:

Yeah. So what you have is a group, sometimes this is called a gang of 10 or 11, 20 at different moments to-

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know why they always call it a gang that has pejorative —

Pete Buttigieg:

Yeah. Hopefully, this is a better sense of what a gang of people can do, but the point is you have a room of some Democratic and Republican senators who believe in pulling this together and believes they can deliver votes from the broader caucus. Right? So you have a lot of overlapping groups to their committees that work on things like transportation year in, year out. Then you have these groups that form, they’re unofficial, they’re informal, they don’t have a title other than, when we call them a gang of five or 10 or whatever.

Pete Buttigieg:

But they come together and hammer out something and then go back and see if they can get the votes among their colleagues to make it happen. Meanwhile, the white House is playing a convening role. Remember all of this was launched by the president, laying out his vision earlier this year, which we call the American Jobs Plan, which is the framework that holds all of this together.

Pete Buttigieg:

And a lot of analysis has been done on the president’s American Jobs Plan. And the analysis tells us it’s going to create millions of good paying jobs in this country. Most of them, importantly, don’t require college degree. So, as we like to say, a blue collar blueprint for the future of the economy and a great deal of that original vision that was in the American Jobs Plan is in this bipartisan infrastructure framework that we are hoping will, even as you and I sit here soon be finalized and ready to be moved onto the floor.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that would be great. So let’s talk about some of those things that you expect to be in the bipartisan final bill. I presume if there’s hundreds of billions of dollars, that’s going into this among other things, the Acela train from Amtrak that I take from time to time will be two times faster before long. True or false?

Pete Buttigieg:

It doesn’t work quite that way although, no one would like that more than it was.

Preet Bharara:

We looked it up, my team looked it up. The Acela train reaches a maximum speed of 82 miles per hour. The Japanese bullet train 177 miles per hour. So we’re not putting any dollars into making our trains faster.

Pete Buttigieg:

No, we are. It’s just not going to come overnight and it’s not going to be as dramatic as that. But it’s unquestionably going to give us a stronger train network on the Northeast corridor. And importantly, this is not just about the Northeast corridor. So, across the country, there are a lot of communities, including the Midwest where I come from, the south place like Texas, a lot of places that would benefit from more frequent, more reliable transfers and a movement toward true high-speed rail, I mean, it’s important now.

Preet Bharara:

But those rails are just not profitable. They need government subsidy. Is that fair?

Pete Buttigieg:

Yeah. They’re not supposed to be, right? I mean, sometimes people throw on this idea that they’re anti-trains because trains don’t make a profit. Well, the whole reason we have a federal policy around them is that they’re not there to make a profit they’re there to make sure the economy as a whole is stronger. I mean, you could say the same thing about driving, right? Roads typically with a few exceptions in terms of certain privately managed toll roads, but roads generally don’t make a profit, you collect taxes and then you spend them to create these roadways that make an economy possible, is similar with rail.

Pete Buttigieg:

So that’s why we need to make choices about, as a country, about supporting them to unlock the greater economic value and potential that they create for the economy as a whole. That’s why we do anything, right? If something could be efficiently, fairly and profitably delivered by a business, you wouldn’t need government decisions. You wouldn’t need Congress. You wouldn’t need a big bill to make it happen.

Pete Buttigieg:

That’s why in so many other areas of the economy, all we need to do is set some basic safety regulatory boundaries and let the market do its thing with infrastructure, with big critical infrastructure, it’s not that simple. You can’t make a profit and for any one player unless you have a system that a country has decided. Another way to put it as that it is countries, not companies that build national networks and then individual companies operate on them or through them and create jobs. And that’s how the public private handshake is supposed to work.

Preet Bharara:

Right. You mentioned countries and companies, but there’s another unit of geography. There are regions, and you mentioned everyone’s from somewhere. And I wonder if it’s the case that the infrastructure needs in America for rural communities. Does that provide a point of divergence with respect to the infrastructure needs of urban communities, or does it provide an opportunity of overlap because the broadband needs and the bridge needs, and the rail needs they’re different. Does that cause discord or does that cause compromise?

Pete Buttigieg:

Well, if we get the balance right, then it’s a win for everybody. And I do think we need to have a smarter public conversation about this. For example, making sure that there is affordable and fast internet access for everybody. You’ve got one set of problems in cities where the biggest issues usually have to do with affordability,. A different set of problems in a lot of rural areas where the issue has to do with whether there’s any connection at all.

Pete Buttigieg:

So by saying that we’re going to make sure that Americans writ large have fast affordable internet, wherever you are. We’re saying that, rural or urban, we’re going to put the resources into making that happen. And a lot of the things that I think have publicly been thought of as a big city thing might actually be as beneficial or more beneficial in rural areas. And I’ll give you an example, which is electric vehicles.

Pete Buttigieg:

I think early adopters of electric vehicles tended to be people who lived in cities. And so a lot of rural Americans are saying, “This does nothing for me.” But if you look right now at, for example, the kind of electric pickup trucks that Detroit is making with American workers on American soil, no one’s going to benefit from this more than people who live in spread out rural areas. Think about it.

Pete Buttigieg:

I mean, first of all, if you live in rural America, you probably drive more in any given day, which means you burn more gas, which means you’re going to save more money if you have an electric vehicle and you don’t have to fuel up. Also, some of the challenges we face in cities that are going to be very important for electric vehicles, like if you live in a large apartment building, how can we make sure that everybody there has the ability to charge up?

Pete Buttigieg:

Those are actually easier in more spread out areas where people are likely to live in standalone houses and you’re charging infrastructure, so to speak is as simple as a regular plug in the wall of your garage. So, there are some of these things that, that come into our consciousness as more urban or more rural might actually be the reverse over time, or if you zoom out and think about the big picture.

Preet Bharara:

You just got to get people to think about that. My conversation with Pete Buttigieg continues after this. I think there’s another issue with respect to infrastructure that causes some people’s eyes to glaze over. And I think there’s a reason for that, I think about my own home. And I was saying to some of my team in preparing for this interview that, there was once a time where we had to spend some money to get something that we wanted.

Preet Bharara:

And it’s of course, when you live in the suburbs, a barbecue grill. It was very exciting, and I didn’t mind paying that money because that’s part of the infrastructure in a domestic setting, from barbecue grill and grill-

Pete Buttigieg:

I like this, I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but I like this idea of barbecue grill-

Preet Bharara:

It will be for a moment, for a moment. And then sometime later we had an old boiler in the basement that reached the end of its life and we had to replace it. And it was thousands of dollars. And I understood that was an important expense and protected my family and protected our home. But I really didn’t like spending that money. There was no euphoria in getting the new boiler, which is of course, more traditional infrastructure in the domestic setting.

Preet Bharara:

And occurred to me if the boiler companies had a sale and said… And let me know, if you think this is stupid or not. This summer, you get a new boiler with throwing a barbecue grill. I would have been running to get the new boiler and as a metaphor for the infrastructure bill as a whole, it’s not exciting when you have invisible spending. In other words, shoring up a bridge, shoring up a building.

Preet Bharara:

That’s very, very important and responsible people understand that, but they want some new, exciting thing. You mentioned a couple, what are other things like that, that are in this bill that people will see that are not invisible, that they can get excited about?

Pete Buttigieg:

Yeah, you’re right. This is the paradox of good infrastructure investment, which is, when infrastructure works really well. A lot of times you’re not noticing it, right? You don’t say, “Oh, you know, great day to day, the bridge didn’t fall down.” It’s just not supposed to, and to make sure it doesn’t do that-

Preet Bharara:

I do that, I do that.

Pete Buttigieg:

The whole idea, I used to talk about this a lot as a mayor in terms of the importance of things like water and wastewater infrastructure is that if you even have to think about it, that means you’re a little bit less free to think about the other things that you should be able to concentrate on in life. Right?

Pete Buttigieg:

So families, for example, that can’t absolutely take for granted that they’re going to get a glass of clean, safe drinking water out of the tap are less free to worry about things like whatever brings meaning in their life, school, or work or family or faith, because they’re worried about something as basic as whether you have access to clean, safe drinking water. So a lot of infrastructure spending it’s about just taking that off the table, making sure that the road just works, the pipes just work. The bridge is there.

Pete Buttigieg:

Now, having said that, there are some things that are newer and that are exciting, and that are part of this. I think electric vehicles is a great example of that. I think the kinds of infrastructure we can build in terms of taking our airports to the next level, there are some listings of the top 25 airports in the world. And not one of them is in the United States.

Preet Bharara:

Wait a minute, wait a minute. LaGuardia is not in the top 25?

Pete Buttigieg:

I know that shockingly has not shown up much. And by the way, this is not just of concern for the comparatively well off people who use airports a lot as travelers, but also the many people whose jobs are supported by an airport in their community. And so, the other thing I think that that we’re very excited about in this administration is the jobs that are going to be created. Good paying, again, largely blue collar but really across the spectrum.

Pete Buttigieg:

I mean from PhD engineers to a union electricians to painters and insulators, plumbers, and pipe fitters. You name it. I mean, there are so many opportunities in this round of work that we’ve frankly needed to do all along. I mean, if we could start the clock, really right around the beginning of my lifetime, the last 40 years, which is systematically disinvested and it’s catching up to us.

Pete Buttigieg:

So, let’s not just do all this work to remain in 13th place in the world on infrastructure. Let’s take it to the next level and out of it.

Preet Bharara:

I’m so confused about this. Everything you say makes a lot of sense. There’s Republican support, we’re talking bi-partisan in an age of utter polarization. I want to get to some of that before I let you go also, how come this wasn’t possible under the prior administration?

Pete Buttigieg:

Politics. Takes all away.

Preet Bharara:

But I don’t get it. Isn’t it good politics to do something like this?

Pete Buttigieg:

Well, it should be, and in a moment like this, I think it is. But we have to remember that we’ve come through a very long season in this country of this idea that you could just cut and get away with it. And for a while, there was even a belief since disproven that if you cut revenue enough, if you cut taxes enough, it would somehow come back to the treasury in terms of the growth that we create, of course, that didn’t happen, but people really thought it would.

Pete Buttigieg:

Then it turns out that when you slash taxes on corporations and the wealthy, for example, there’s no such thing as a tax cut that is not also either an impact on the deficit and/or your service card. And so that mentality, I think really followed us to the extreme where it became very difficult for the federal government to do things that even local communities step up and do. I mean, in a local environment, if you’ve got to pull together the revenue to fix your streets or enhanced transit, or do some of these things, voters have generally been willing to do that, as long as it’s not unreasonably expensive, or it’s not an unfair tax burden.

Pete Buttigieg:

That’s been tougher federally. You add to that, the crass political considerations does one team want to give the other team will win by working with them and all of these things, I think conspired over the last 10, even 20 years to make it very hard to get something done. But here’s a moment where I believe good policy and good politics really are aligning where most Americans are impatient to get something done, where anyone who’s part of this will, I’d like to think be rewarded by the public for having delivered.

Pete Buttigieg:

And by the way, that’s even true on the revenue side. I don’t know exactly where we’re going to come out in terms of the ways that this is being paid for. But what I will say is when the president laid out his vision, which this is fully paid for without raising a penny in taxes on anybody making less than 400,000 bucks. When we explain to the American people, how we were proposing to do it, closing loopholes, that kind of thing, support for the bill actually went up even higher.

Pete Buttigieg:

So I think America is there, but one thing we learned, we saw this in the rescue plan is, just because something is popular even wildly popular across the country with the Americans in both parties, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically got support on Capitol Hill. You actually have to work through all of the complexities of the politics and the policy. And that’s exactly what this bipartisan group is doing. And I hope are very close to being able to have something to show for it.

Preet Bharara:

Where’s the business community on this? I saw that there are letters that are being signed by lots of corporate executives. Are there some folks in some industries who are giving you a problem, or is there overall consensus, and is things that happen?

Pete Buttigieg:

One of my favorite things about this moment is that it’s creating a lot of strange bedfellows. And so you’re seeing businesses that are not generally on board with democratic presidents initiatives. You’re seeing business and labor groups that are not generally on board with each other, literally at the table together with the president and saying, “We want to do this. We’re we’re for this. How can we keep getting the word out?”

Pete Buttigieg:

So, I’ve been thrilled by businesses that have done the math and seen the need for more infrastructure, labor groups that are looking at the good paying union jobs that are going to be created. And a lot of other people who are just frankly, rarely on the same side of anything brought together around this opportunity.

Preet Bharara:

I’m getting the sense, given the billions with what you’re talking about all this that you, you enjoy your portfolio, you like it.

Pete Buttigieg:

I love it. I mean, I get to be the Secretary of trains, planes, and automobiles. A whole lot of other things.

Preet Bharara:

I was going to make a joke about that movie, but I forgot you got to it. But a wonderful movie.

Pete Buttigieg:

But a lot of other stuff too, maritime, commercial space, travel, pipeline safety, we’re in the middle of it. But what really makes this a compelling place to be is that so many other things are at stake in the seemingly unglamorous work around transportation, right? As I mentioned earlier, if you believe that climate is one of the existential challenges facing humanity in our time as I do, one of the biggest areas to work on climate is in transportation.

If you believe that the generations that are now in power and in positions of responsibility need to tackle the issue of racial and economic justice in this country, it turns out one of the biggest areas to work on equity, both in terms of who gets services, and in terms of who gets jobs, is transportation. The safety issues, the economic issues, the technology issues. It is an incredibly dynamic, compelling, exciting area to work in. And I’m thrilled that the president has put a big priority on making transportation infrastructure happen.

Preet Bharara:

So, I’m glad you liked your portfolio. My next question is, do you think that vice president Kamala Harris would like to trade portfolios with you?

Pete Buttigieg:

She’s taken on some really, really demanding responsibilities and I think doing it admirably. And again, when I look across the cabinet table and I see her and I see so many colleagues who are not only so capable and talented and ineffective, but also whose presence at that cabinet table is a historic fact in itself, it’s one of the things that really just puts winds in my sails to do this work.

Pete Buttigieg:

It turns out it’s basically impossible to go more than a paragraph without using some kind of transportation metaphor. Once you start noticing it-

Preet Bharara:

You know what, you can use it with that attribute, use the barbecue grill thing. Everybody wants a Weber.You know, something just popped into my head when you were talking. For years, and I don’t know if this is within the portfolio or the DOT takes positions on this, but for years we’ve been hearing about the imminent prospect of driverless cars and their various prototypes, and then you hear about accidents, and I’ve always wondered from my legal background, what the liability issues would be. Is that anywhere on your radar? Is that going to be a real thing, or is that going to be too difficult for people to swallow?

Pete Buttigieg:

No, I think that’s going to be a big part of the story of transportation in the 2020s. I mean, look, a lot of these technologies are here. They’re being piloted on streets. I was in Arizona recently, and it wasn’t even a site visit. I just saw on the road, some of these cars. And if you think about the implications in terms of everything from safety to congestion, to labor, to liability, there’s a lot going on here.

Let me make a couple of points. First of all, safety, we’ve got to make sure that these things are safe. The potential safety benefit of these, assuming that we have that confidence is enormous. Look, human drivers do not have a very good track record. As a matter of fact, in terms of roadway and pedestrian it has been moving in the wrong direction over the course of the last year.

Preet Bharara:

But human drivers believe they have control, which psychologically makes a big difference. And isn’t the tolerance for human driving error higher than the tolerance for computer error.

Pete Buttigieg:

Well, that’s one of the things we’ve got to work through, and you have to have the computer would be so extremely unlikely that people would see a benefit. But the other issue is that frankly, our policies have not kept up with our technologies. Here’s one way to think about it. If you think about the division of labor between what we do in the federal government, where we have the five-star safety ratings and the crash tests and recalls and all of those things.

And then you think about what States do, right? The bureau of motor vehicles scan your driver’s license. Basically the division of labor to simplify just a bit is federally, we regulate the cars and at the state level, the state regulates the drivers. Now, what are you supposed to do when the car is the driver? Who’s in charge of that? We’re not really set up for that. I mean, right now, my department can tell you exactly where you need to put a side view mirror on a car that doesn’t have a human driver.

So we need to work through this at a policy level, there’s going to need to be legislation. It’s not just a technology problem. It’s really a societal issue of how we’re going to wrap our arms around this, when for the last 100 years, we’ve been used to a very different model of how vehicles get around.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to talk about COVID for a second. We haven’t kicked this pandemic. And in part, because of vaccine hesitancy. As the secretary of transportation, is it within your power to require employees of that department to get vaccinated before they can show up for work?

Pete Buttigieg:

So that’s a broader call that happens in the context of the federal administration as a whole. But these are the kinds of questions that are being talked about right now. We need to make sure that our workforce is safe. We’re also thinking a lot about what the future of work looks like. We have 55,000 employees in this department, and some of them are, for example, air traffic controllers, who never had the option to work from home others.

I’ll tell you, I’m in a big building. As we speak right now, I’m sitting in our big headquarters in Navy yard. It’s a beautiful building, meant to hold thousands of employees. And occasionally, I’ve walked among the cubicles on this floor, a couple of floors down and it’s eerie. I mean, you’ll see a bag of chips on the desk or a sweater draped over it. A chair that was probably left there a year and a half ago.

And the person, the employee, they’re still doing great work for the department but they haven’t been to their desk in a year and a half. I don’t think any of us think we’re going back to the 2019 way of working, exactly.

Preet Bharara:

But do you come out on the side on the issue? I know it’s being discussed and maybe there’ll be some announcement soon. Do you think the time has come for the federal government in more than one agency, I think the VA is doing it to require vaccinations?

Pete Buttigieg:

I mean, again-

Preet Bharara:

Or is that a budget to be agreed.

Pete Buttigieg:

Very literally, I’m not going to get ahead of the white house on this, but we do need to talk about how we keep our employees and our public safe. I mean, vaccination is very clearly the ticket to normalcy, whether you’re talking about being able to freely access a workplace or whether we’re talking about what I think a lot of us are impatient to do, which is get on an airplane without a mask or safely reopen international travel or any of the things that represent really putting this pandemic behind us. It’s very clear that the way to get there is to have a level of vaccination that we just haven’t yet achieved.

Preet Bharara:

Let me ask the question, a slightly different way. You have gained some notoriety or fame or at least recognition in so far as you go on Fox News and talk to people, not just the hosts, but the viewers, who may not be aligned with some of your thoughts about things and so, there’s a lot of discussion about how the information, the diet of information that people who watch that network, and some other networks are being persuaded that the vaccine is not safe.

I don’t know if you’ve done this, maybe you have, but I doubt given how busy you are on transportation issues. If you were to go to an audience that was vaccine hesitant, what are the arguments you make to them as to why they should change their mind?

Pete Buttigieg:

Yeah, I think about this and work on this a lot when I’m not out there talking about infrastructure, I’m often out there trying to promote vaccination and again the success we’ve had, the progress we’ve had so far in the last few months as a country is because of the level of vaccination that’s happened. By the way, somebody who speaks, I think very eloquently and very wisely about this as our surgeon general Vivek Murthy, who has a way of recognizing where people are, and appreciating that depending on what information you’re exposed to and what environment you’re in.

You’ll, agree that, even though people get very upset on Twitter that berating people for not taking the vaccine is not effective, the question that I ask is, what effect are you hoping to have on somebody, right? Are you hoping to just feel better yourself that you let somebody have it, that you think doesn’t see the light, or are you actually hoping to guide them toward making a different decision? So, one way to get at that is to say, “Okay, it sounds like you have questions, you have doubts, let’s help you get good information and if vaccines.gov, which is full of good information isn’t a place that you trust, then maybe talk to someone you do trust who I would also trust to give you good information like your doctor.”

Another way of looking at it is just to use a little more conservative language, to talk about personal responsibility. I know people I care about, people in our extended family have hesitated, some of them have a view that God is going to take care of them and I think an important way to talk about this for them is this vaccine could be viewed as the answer to a lot of prayers and remember not to make God do the work for you. If there’s a step you can take and a step you can take responsibility for, that helps keep yourself and people you love safe.

Preet Bharara:

There’s an anniversary that’s sneaking up on us, and I haven’t given a lot of thought but I realized that six weeks from now is the 20th anniversary of 911. You’re a public servant. You’re a veteran. How do you think about that anniversary and how do you think America should commemorate it?

Pete Buttigieg:

Well, you’re right. It’s coming up on us and it’s a very important moment and I know maybe 20 doesn’t seem like as much of a landmark year as certain other years that we keep track of but the reason I think the 20th anniversary is important is that it marks the threshold where people are now becoming adults who were not alive when this happened. So for my generation, of course like anyone, I think of myself as the new generation. But I’m not.

And it’s very different from my generation that was shaped by this, I was in college. I remember my roommate waking me up, into registration day sophomore year saying, “You got to look at what’s going on TV,” and shape the trajectory of my life, and my generation’s life in so many ways, even those who didn’t wind up in serving in the military as I did. It’s just hard to even say how different our lives would be, if this hadn’t happened or how different our politics would be if this hadn’t happened.

And of course now I think about it in another way, which is from a transportation perspective. I mean, this was a terrorist attack that used another one of those modes of transportation that we’re supposed to be able to count on being safe and turned our aircraft, our commercial passenger aircraft into weapons to attack our own cities. It shook this nation and shaped this nation in ways that I think we still haven’t fully come to terms with.

And part of what I’m reflecting on is how we as a department and given our involvement with the aviation sector can mark what it meant, how we responded what came out of it and what we might learn from that is we’re facing right now, of course, certain threats never go away but other radically different ones from the climate threat to the COVID threat, how we put that in the context.

Preet Bharara:

I know you have to go, you have negotiations to engage in, final question. Do you still want to be president of the United States?

Pete Buttigieg:

I want to be the best Secretary of transportation that I can be, and that’s going to keep me busy.

Preet Bharara:

I knew that was going to be your answer. How about when your public service is done? How about host of jeopardy?

Pete Buttigieg:

Oh, I don’t think I’ll-

Preet Bharara:

You’d be pretty good. I think.

Pete Buttigieg:

You think?

Preet Bharara:

I don’t mean to flatter you, but I think so, they need a permanent host.

Pete Buttigieg:

I’ll tell you that’s a position of great national and civic responsibility. I don’t know if I’d take that on or not.

Preet Bharara:

Jeopardy is infrastructure.

Pete Buttigieg:

Yeah. Why not?

Preet Bharara:

Secretary Buttigieg, it’s great to hear from you. Thank you again for everything you’re doing and I wish you luck in the negotiations.

Pete Buttigieg:

Likewise. Thanks a lot. It’s great being with you.

Preet Bharara:

If you’re interested in the history of American infrastructure, please check out this weeks’ episode of our new history podcast now, and then wherever you listen. So I want to end the show this week, talking about the Corona virus. There’ve been a lot of improvements. A lot of advancements, lots of people have gotten vaccinated. As I’m recording this on Wednesday morning, there is new swirling about return to mask mandates.

Preet Bharara:

The CDC has put out new guidance yet again, there’s a discussion at the highest levels of government of imposing mandatory vaccines that people want to work and they’re in the federal workforce and there’s a boiling over frustration at the people who are refusing to get vaccinations. And in the midst of all this debate and all this turmoil, there was a story I saw last week and you may have seen it to, that basically stopped me in my tracks.

It’s by Dennis Pillion and it was on alabama.com and it’s just an honest and heart-wrenching account from someone who was a doctor on the front lines of the battle against COVID, but it’s also the account of a kind human being, someone who is extraordinarily empathetic and if you haven’t heard the story, and you haven’t heard her words, I thought I would share them with you.

The doctor is Brittany Cobia, who was on staff at the Grand View Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama. A Place where there’s a lot of increase in the Corona virus and she had this to say in an emotional Facebook post and also in an interview with the media outlet, she says, “I’m admitting young, healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections.” And then she says this, “one of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I’d hold their hand and I tell them, I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

Dr. Cobia compares this experience to the earlier days. She says quote, back in 2020 and early 2021, when the vaccine wasn’t available, it was just tragedy after tragedy, after tragedy, so many people that did all the right things and yet still came in and were critically ill and died, end quote. Of course, now there’s a way to save yourself. There is a vaccine, that’s safe and effective.

And so now Dr. Cobia has a ritual. She said this on Facebook quote, a few days later, when I call time of death, I hugged their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same. And Dr. Cobia describes the anguish of the families, the confusion and the hurt and sometimes the epiphany’s about the family. She says quote, they cry and they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color, they wouldn’t get as sick.

They thought it was just the flu, but they were wrong and they wished they could go back, but they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine and I go back to my office, write their death note and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives, end quote. There are lots of people who are angry, who feel no sympathy, no empathy for those who refuse the vaccine, but that’s not how Dr. Cobia sees it.

Quote, you’re kind of going to a thinking, okay, I’m not going to feel bad for this person because they make their own choice but then you actually see them, you see them face to face and it really changes your whole perspective because they’re still just a person that thinks they made the best decision that they could with the information that they have and all the misinformation that’s out there. And now all you really see is their fear and their regret.

And even though I may walk into the room thinking, “Okay, this is your fault, you did this to yourself.” When I leave the room, I just see a person that’s really suffering and that is so regretful for the choice that they made.” Dr. Cobia explains the pragmatism of her approach, her goal is not to accuse or alienate. She’s a doctor. Her goal is to get more shots and more arms and she says this, quote, I try to be very non-judgemental when I’m getting a new COVID patient that’s unvaccinated, but I really just started asking them, why haven’t you gotten the vaccine?

And I’ll just ask it, point blank in the least judgmental way possible and most of them, they’re very honest. They give me answers. “I talked to this person, I saw this thing on Facebook. I got this email. I saw this on the news. These are all the reasons that I didn’t get vaccinated.” And then Dr. Cobia goes on and says, “And the one question that I always ask them is, did you make an appointment with your primary care doctor and ask them for their opinion on whether or not you should receive the vaccine?”

“And so far, nobody has answered yes to that question. I know it’s difficult for a lot of folks who’ve gotten vaccinated and those who were not vaccinated are making it difficult for everyone else. You’ll remember earlier in the show, I talk with people to judge about the ways to persuade people, to get the vaccine and I think some of the heartbreaking lessons taught by Dr. Cobia would be good for us to remember. Be well and be safe.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Secretary Pete Buttigieg. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to meet @PreetBharara with the #askPreet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669 247 7338 that’s 66924Preet, or you can send an email to staytuned@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe Studios and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Your host is Preet Bharara. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The Technical director is David Tatasciore. The Cafe team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Chris Boylan and Sean Walsh. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m Preet Bharara, stay tuned.