(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) While Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has tried to sound tough on Southwest Airlines during the ongoing wave of flight cancellations, he has habitually refused to regulate airlines.
Buttigieg has produced some harsh words for Southwest Airlines after the ongoing rash of flight cancellations, providing taxpayers with pleasant lip service.
“We are past the point where they could say that this is a weather-driven issue,” Buttigieg screeched, according to Fox News. “What this indicates is a system failure. They need to make sure that these stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they’re provided adequate compensation.”
But for all his tough talk, the secretary has habitually cuddled up to big airline executives.
Buttigieg doted on the airlines to the tune of $14 billion of subsidies, according to the Washington Examiner.
Little Pete also showed his affection for the industry by refusing to regulate it in the months leading up to the airport crisis, as reported by Breitbart News.
On July 25, two senators, Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., wrote a letter to Buttigieg urging him to protect customers against the rapacious airlines.
On Aug. 2, New York’s Democrat Attorney General Letitia James sent the secretary a letter warning of “the deeply troubling and escalating pattern of airlines delaying and canceling flights,” and asked him to take action.
A few weeks later, 38 state attorney generals sent a letter asserting that Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation has created an environment that “allows airlines to mistreat consumers and leaves consumers without effective redress.”
That was followed earlier this month, when 34 bipartisan state attorney generals wrote Buttigieg a letter begging him to strengthen protections for airline travel.
As recently as Dec. 19, Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, was asking Secretary Buttigieg to strengthen protections for consumers against the grasping airlines.
Despite these pleadings, Buttigieg did not act. Instead, he appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden to say that air travel “is going to get better by the holidays.”
