Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said Sunday that his predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, was largely responsible for the slow buildout of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, thanks to onerous criteria he had placed on the spending.
“It was hard to check all the boxes that he had set up,” Duffy said, saying Buttigieg had required “a lot of green and a lot of social justice” in contracts to build the EV stations. He said even Democrats were frustrated by the slow pace.
Duffy also said that 58 EV charging stations had been built with funds spent by the previous administration, which was far too few. He said that while $2 billion had already been allocated to projects under way, there was still $3 billion left to spend, and that the administration was changing the rules about how the money would be spent.
He said that Congress would ultimately determine whether that money would be spent on EV charging, though he said the question remained why the private sector wasn’t investing in those stations instead of the government.
Duffy spoke to Breitbart News Sunday, which airs Sunday evenings from 7-10 p.m. on SiriusXM Patriot 125.
Duffy was in Los Angeles last week to announce an audit of California’s long-delayed high-speed rail project, which will run $100 billion over budget, if it is ever completed. Voters approved the project in 2008, but “in essence, nothing’s been built,” Duffy said, despite billions of dollars being spent, including $2.6 billion in federal funding, plus $4 billion committed to the project by the Biden administration.
“Who got rich on this project?” Duffy demanded.
He said a project linking L.A. to Las Vegas would probably continue, given that there was genuine private interest.
But liberals, he said, “can’t lay tracks, they can’t meet the promises that are made,” even as they try to force commuters to take public transportation. “They’re pushing money, and people, into projects that are garbage.”
Duffy addressed the recent spate of air crashes, saying that the cause of each appeared to be unique, but that the Trump administration would be upgrading outdated air traffic control technology — some of which still relied on floppy disks and headphones from the 1980s — and emphasizing merit in hiring personnel.
He also said that the administration was considering allowing those under 21 who are “responsible, mature, and qualified” to become truck drivers, in order to address a shortage of truck drivers that was hurting the shipping industry and supply chains.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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