The Breakfast Club - Secretary Pete Buttigieg Talks Infrastructure Bill Updates, Flight Delays, Inflation + More

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Secretary Pete Buttigieg Talks Infrastructure Bill Updates, Flight Delays, Inflation + MoreSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed. He's a friend to the room. He's been up here several times. Listen, I say it all the time. He's the only person from the Democratic Party who comes during the offseason. When it's not an election year, even though it is an election year. But when it's not an election year, Secretary Pete comes. That's right. Well, Secretary Pete, thank you for joining us this morning.

Thanks for having me on. How are you, man? Pretty good. It's good to be in New York. Absolutely. I mean, this is a really exciting time for the work we're doing. Well, how do you like your position, you know, since you started? How has it been for you? Stressful? Non-stressful?

Have you grown more gray hair? Tell us about it. Definitely more gray. I mean, what I say is it's the best time, but also one of the toughest times for transportation. It's the best time because we're making investments that we haven't been able to do in my lifetime. The funding that's in the infrastructure package. So there's, in my view, there's never been a better time to be in charge of transportation policy.

And there's not a better job to have in the federal government. The other side of the coin is we've actually been through more disruptions to the transportation system in the last couple of years than at any time with the partial exception of 9-11 than any time since World War II. We've had container shipping issues. We've had cancellations and delays in our airports. We've had a number of disruptions, everything from trucking and supply chains to passenger travel. But we've been working through those and the causes of those are mostly temporary. Most of it has something to do with the pandemic. So as we're tackling those issues, the investments that we're making, the repairs that we're making, the improvements that we're making to the transportation system, that's permanent.

So the reasons that the job has been demanding are, I think, less enduring than the reasons to be really excited about the work. I love the job. It's definitely a complicated time for transportation it must be a sucky job sorry so it must be a sucky job at this point the reason I say that is right when you go in office that's when everything started to happen and things that you can't control right like you mentioned cargo you can't control that you can't control what's going on in the world right now and it has to be so difficult to try to fix it yeah but that's that's part of what we sign up for when we go into public policy right you want a job like this so that you can tackle you come in with a list of things you wanted to do and then

there's all the things that get thrown at you and that could be a labor issue in our rail system it could be a pandemic it could be an extreme weather event it could be a terrorist attack by definition you don't know. But part of the job is to be ready for that and to help work through that. You wind up dealing with a lot of things you don't control. And it turns out you can take some of the things you do control and use those tools to help. So you look at something like the supply chain issue. Yeah, a lot of that global supply chain imbalance is caused by factories shutting down in China and then more ships making their way across

the Pacific than our ports are ready for. But it turns out there are things we could do working with the ports, working with the companies, working with the tools we have to not exactly fix everything overnight, but make it better. Right now, there's less than 10 ships, I think, bearing down on the West Coast. This time a year ago, there were about 100. And some of the work we did helped with that. It's been almost a year since the infrastructure law passed. That's right, yeah. I signed it in November. So what have the updates been?

So one year in, we've been standing up all of the different programs that it created and starting to move the money out, something like $100 billion already moving in order to fix roads, fix bridges, airports. We were just in Orlando. We're improving the, airports. We were just in Orlando. We're improving the airport there. We're just in Detroit, and we announced a project there.

We're putting $100 million in to help Detroit take I-375, which cuts right through it. They destroyed a couple of neighborhoods when they built it, and it's just like a gash. It just kind of slices those mostly black neighborhoods apart from downtown. We're going to lift it up and turn it into a boulevard and use it to reconnect the community. We're doing a project in the Inland Empire, Fontana, California, part of the region that doesn't get as much attention as L.A.

You've got kids who have to walk basically on a highway. There's this road that has no gutter, no curb, no sidewalk. And in order to get to high school, they're competing with cars and trucks. And we're funding an improvement that's going to fix that. We're doing the elimination of railroad crossings, literally hundreds and hundreds of projects. So getting those underway has been the work of the last year. It's a five-year bill. So the bill the president signed has five years of funding. We're just through year one, and it's really, I mean, it's still the very beginning

of a lot of what we're working on, but we're starting to see the results. Now, Secretary Pete, another issue always is this, right, making sure that black-owned businesses also have access to getting some of those contracts to get this work done. So where are we with that? Because I know that's something

that's been needing improvement. Yeah, so a lot of work to do here. A lot of progress that we've made. The first part is the contracts that we directly control out of the Department of Transportation. So we set a goal for SDB, small disadvantaged businesses of 20 percent. This is a more ambitious goal than we've been able to set before. And so far we're beating that goal. But I have to say, for every dollar that we contract out of the department directly, there's about $10 that go out indirectly. In other words, we fund a transit agency like the MTA, or a state department of transportation, or a city that's rebuilding a bridge or an airport, and then they do the actual contracts.

So we're working with them to make sure that they are inviting more businesses to the table that haven't had a seat before. Black-owned businesses have enormous potential right now to do all kinds of work, not just if they're directly involved in construction and engineering, but if you're involved in, let's say, accounting, serving one of the companies that is doing the construction,

right, there's opportunity there too. So we're actually in the middle right now of a process of redoing the policy for DBE, Disadvantaged Business Enterprises, where there's a history of discrimination, and we have legal authority to pay particular attention to creating opportunity there. You can go online. I know the website regulations.gov probably does not sound like what a lot of people are excited to check out on Monday morning, but there is a chance right now through the end of this month to weigh in if you were involved with a black owned business or any kind of MB or DBE and

You've had an experience a trouble getting certified a problem getting a seat at the table Or you have a success story to share about how? Public work may be being part of a construction project, help you build your business. Now is a great time to enter public comments about your experience through regulations.gov on our DBE rule because that will be part of what we use to make decisions about how to update the rule. Bottom line, nobody has a better track record of creating jobs and opportunity for people who have been left out in the past, including women in construction,

including black building trades workers, than businesses who are owned by people who have been left out in the past. And I'm really excited about what we can do, but it's not going to happen on its own. That's why we're putting a lot of effort and emphasis on it. And I think we're going to have a lot of results.

I just sat down with the National Association of Black Women in Construction. They have incredible success stories about how they've created opportunity, but also about what it's like trying to get a seat at the table. Last week I was in Philadelphia. We had a meeting. We have a whole set of regional meetings that we're doing around the country, basically to make clear, make transparent what the opportunities are actually going to look like. Because there's been a pattern in the past where you kind of had to already be in the business,

already be connected, already be doing business with, uh, units of government to feel like you were in the know about what the next opportunity was going to be. So we're trying to make that more transparent. So, um, I don't have any illusions about the work ahead, but I think we're going to be really proud of the opportunities we create if we stay very focused on it. Now, I saw you in Philly.

How do you do that, though? Because, you know, the conversation was about how do you diversify federal contracts with black and brown people. So how do you go about doing that? So the first thing that we did just when we were there was talk about some of the challenges they face. So, for example, access to capital. If you're trying to get started or you haven't had these kind of big business opportunities, just being able to get capital funding or cashflow, right? If you're a giant multinational corporation and one of your vendors takes two, three, four months to pay, or now you're one of your customers, then you can absorb that. If you're a small business and a lot

of these businesses starting out or businesses that are just trying to break their way in, they need prompt payment, right? Stuff like that. So we're talking about those direct issues that can be an obstacle. But also we've got to have conversations with the prime contractors that are bringing on a lot of these black-owned businesses as subs about how to be more inclusive and how to get some of these subs to be in a position where someday they can be the primes. We're talking to a lot of state leaders. I was at a convening Friday in Florida with all of the state departments of transportation and their heads saying that we're counting on you to create more of these opportunities. So there's a lot of different pieces of it, but there's a lot of things that we're doing

in parallel, including this DBE role that I was just mentioning, that we hope there's a lot of public input on because then we can actually update the formal processes around contracting, the way the directories are built, just even the expectation of the requirement that you check to see if there are any new minority owned businesses that could be doing the work that you're about to open a contract for before you sign the contract. I was going to ask, too, with the airlines. I airlines i mean it's been horrendous it's been horrible people have been missing you know birthdays and weddings and funerals and families and what are we going to do to fix that it has gotten better though yeah i noticed it's gotten better over the past couple of months it's still bad like you know and the prices are really high yes that's right like she said prices are high so what are we doing to fix that

are they finding the airlines and right so what are we doing to fix that? Are they fining the airlines? Right. And what are we doing for that? Yeah, so it did get better, but it was tough over the summer. We got big holiday seasons coming up that are going to test whether these improvements are going to hold. There's three sets of things we're doing. First, fines. So airlines are required to do things like offer you a refund, give you a refund if your flight gets canceled. And a lot of the airlines

were slow to do that, or they dragged their feet, or they didn't do it at all. So we're subjecting them to fines because we enforce that rule that you got to get a refund. That's part one. Part two, though, is the rules themselves need to be tougher. So we'll enforce the rules that are on the books, but we need to raise the floor. So that's another thing that we have in the process right now. It takes a while. It's a very ponderous legal process. You got to go through a lot of comment periods, but we've got that open right now on things like raising the floor of how long of a delay counts as a serious enough delay that the airline's got to give you a refund. So we're working on that and then the third part that that has really helped is actually much simpler than the rule making processes it's just transparency so we set up

a website uh that makes clear which airlines will do what when you get stuck with with a delay for example will they give you a voucher for a free meal will they book you on another flight will they book you on another flight even if it's only on another airline, that there's a free flight? Things like that. And I wrote a letter to the CEOs of the airlines, said, look, in a week or two, we're going to put this website up. So now would be a good time to...

Fix your problem. Yeah, now would be a good time to up your game. And they did. We went in two weeks from zero out of the top 10 airlines to nine out of the top 10 airlines that will offer you, at least offer you food or hotel or something like that so in addition to the enforcement side which is very powerful but takes a long time sometimes to line up the pieces legally we found that just transparency and

we're gonna add other things to this you can check it out on our website transportation gov it's a passenger dashboard just to give you the information so you can make a decision when you're thinking about buying a ticket you don't even know what to ask for sometimes well that's the thing you know what i learned when my bags get delayed coming out if it takes more than 20 minutes you get mileage credit there you go yeah so i always will go and i'm like okay my bags took 40 minutes to come out and i'll go right online and i get it immediately right but you have to go in and ask for it right yeah you have to know that that doesn't follow any of this protocol let's not give nothing back so uh i'd invite you to check the dashboard i don't want to pick winners and losers here but it's really interesting you

know we got a little green check marks little red x's on who does what and uh look some airlines have decided uh we're going to offer less customer service and we're going to be really cheap right and as long as everybody knows that going into it, if you're empowered to make a decision, that's fine. But what we can't have happen is, first of all, we have to have a floor where I don't care how cheap the ticket is. There are certain things you can't do to a passenger, like leave them completely stuck and not offer a refund. But also, as you're making those choices, we've got to make sure it's transparent. We've got to make sure it's clear. And we have more work coming up on things like like these fees these little extra fees that

aren't part of the airfare but you wind up paying for them and that's part of the cost of traveling on a certain airline it's it's got they got to be upfront about that well what was causing these flight cancellations and delays over the summer do we know so yeah like a lot of things in our economy part of it had to do with staffing hiring being able to find people what's frustrating about that i think for a lot of us is uh we put billions of dollars into saving the airline industry. And one of the conditions was you can't fire people if you're taking this federal money. Now, they lived up to that, but they let a lot of people go into early retirement, including pilots that are hard to replace. It takes a very long time to qualify a pilot, both in general and then specifically

on any given type of aircraft, right? So when the demand came back, and we're glad it did. I mean, it's a good thing. It's a good sign for our economy that so many people want to fly. But it came back faster than they were prepared for. And our message is you've got to be, we're glad that demand is back,

but you've got to be prepared to service the tickets that you're selling. You're collecting money on this. That's right. Another thing that we've talked about is scheduling, realistic scheduling. So if you know that you aren't going You're collecting money on this. That's right. Another thing that we've talked about is scheduling, realistic scheduling. So if you know that you aren't going to have the staff on this route, don't schedule as many flights. And we've been pushing them a lot on that. And I think that's gotten better. And that's one of the reasons we

aren't seeing the cancellation rate. So before, you know, we were seeing three, four percent. That doesn't sound a lot, but the difference between one or two percent where we are now and four percent is the system starting to break down because it just can't ever Exactly like you said that but the prices are so expensive now prices are through the roof. So look prices for the inflation So how do we combat inflation now because people are not making right much so much for flies now. I'm like this is ridiculous well, this gets to the bigger story right of all the different things where prices are high and Part of it is that the costs are higher. I get that. I mean, obviously, one of the biggest expenses for an airline is fuel, right? But that's not enough to explain all of it. So part of what's happening, same with gas itself, right? You look at the price of oil and the price we're actually

paying at the pump and the spread between those two things is higher than it used to be. And so we also have to have a conversation about a lot of corporate profits that are getting fatter on the margin there. And that's a big part of what's happening across the economy that we need to talk about when it comes to inflation, because we've got some friends in Congress, for example, on the other side of the aisle who love talking about inflation, but refuse to offer any solution. Can you still call those people friends? I'm being polite. It's a lot of fascism in there right now. Can you call those people friends when they're a threat to democracy? Look, I think we need to call something what it is. And when somebody is threatening democracy, we need to call that out. I also think I know that

there are a lot of people definitely in Congress, in the Republican Party, who are horrified by what's happened to their own party. Why they don't speak out? Because they're afraid. Because they don't vote like they're afraid. Right. No. And so, you know, my job as a policymaker is to sit down and work with them on anything where they're willing to do the right thing, which they did on infrastructure, for example. We had, you know, a lot of Republican senators and a handful of Republican House members come over and vote with Democrats and work with the president on that.

What are the solutions to regulating these corporations' pockets getting fatter while everybody's paying more and not combating inflation? Yeah. Well, on something like energy, we, the president put forward an idea called use it or lose it, which is basically if you're sitting on these permits or these leases, but you're not doing anything to produce energy, then at a certain point, you don't get to keep sitting on it. That didn't go very far, largely because it was blocked by the allies that the big oil companies have in the House and the Senate.

We've got to have more, again, more transparency about the practices of some of these companies. And we've got to keep working toward a tax code that's fairer when it comes to these things. But again, the people who will talk about inflation all day don't necessarily back any of those things that would make a difference. We think that the best thing we can do for inflation is create breathing room for

people right that's why we cared so much about cutting the cost of prescription drugs $35 insulin we could have had that and student loan debt absolutely right that creates some breathing room when you're facing these higher prices on groceries gas you name it even Even for gas itself, right? It's one of the reasons why we're pushing to make electric vehicles cheaper. I'm not saying everybody can go get an EV tomorrow, but part of how we can give people alternatives

is to make sure everybody can afford an EV. Some of the people who were beating us up over EVs being too expensive voted no on a bill that would have made them cheaper, that did make them cheaper. So we've got to look at who actually has ideas and proposals to create that breathing room, because prices are going up here. Prices are going up around the world, by the way.

It's not like this is a U.S. thing. You know, you go to England, Germany, they're pushing 10% on their inflation. Now, there are a lot of signs, you know, that many of the analysts, the banks, predict that it's going to go down. But we're not comfortable with that until it happens. That's why we're pushing to create a little more space, a little more room and lower the everyday cost people are basing on everything from healthcare to housing to transportation. I see Dr. Fauci was saying that COVID might get really bad coming up this winter. Are you guys

preparing for that too? Look, it's got this seasonal quality to it, right? I mean, this is still where this is, I guess, our third time now dealing with it. And so we don't know everything. We know that we're dramatically better protected than we were before. So the level of loss of life that used to come with the COVID surge is different now with so many people being vaccinated and hopefully boosted. It's definitely time for people to get that booster if they're eligible. But yes, we've got to prepare for that because another thing that can happen, even if you aren't going back to the days

when there were a lot of mandates and shutdowns and that kind of thing. You've still got to call out sick. Yeah, exactly. You're still allowed sick, can't come to work. And if you're, back to the airline example, if you have just barely enough flight attendants and barely enough pilots to fly the schedules

if there's no disruption or no complications and you have you know even five percent uh of your availability go down because people just have to take the five days ten days whatever while while they're sick with covid that's going to affect the system so we are working to try to get ahead of that it was good to see you uh with val demings in orlando yeah she's terrific yeah and you know a lot of people running for Senate don't feel they're getting support from Democrats. I don't know if that's why you was down there. So I was there on the official side

talking about the airport improvements. So we were with two members of Congress, her and then Darren Soto, who represent that area. And I thought it was very important to be with them. First of all, there were things they thought it was important for me to see. And she wanted to make sure that I met with the workers and I met with the leaders of the airport, the economic development folks, the tourism.

I mean, think about Orlando, right? That's part of the country. That airport's been a mess. I'm so glad you guys fixed that because let me tell you something. People have been missing flights. What happened? Orlando. Yeah.

So Florida actually has more demand than they did before the pandemic. Yeah. And we have some air. And there's some airspace challenges. So I don't want to get too, I don't want to geek out here, but if you look at the national airspace, in Florida you have more storms than usual, right, including the hurricane.

Part of why we were there was to look at the hurricane damage. And you have just a lot of traffic. And you have military operations, because there's so many military bases there, that can mean that you have to change air traffic and Space launches this is actually they're actually we're getting to where there are enough space Launches commercial space launches that that can start to have an effect on on the system. So we're working through that Anyway, yeah, so so Val Demings is one of the members of Congress who?

Supported this infrastructure law and now we're getting the funding out to places like Orlando where they're building a new terminal. And she's running for Senate. She is. Yeah. I can't talk about that while I'm wearing this suit. You can't though? You can't officially endorse it? No, the thing with the Hatch Act is I can do one at a time. So if I'm at a campaign event, I can campaign. If I'm here as a secretary, then I can't. But, you know, it's definitely fair game to talk about where we agree with the votes that people have taken as members of Congress or as members of the Senate and the good policy that's going on, including the... Because what we're

seeing right now is a lot of folks who voted no on the infrastructure deal, the Republicans who did not join the Republicans who voted yes with the Democrats on getting this stuff done, are still there to take credit when we actually announced that we're building the bridge or we're fixing the airport or we're doing the thing. It's really striking to see that. And so I do think it's important just to keep reminding people that, you know, the things that happen on the floor of the House and the Senate, the president's side, those have consequences. And, you know, we're here for a very specific reason. We're able to say yes to these projects for this very specific reason that the bipartisan infrastructure law was passed and signed. And, you know, this is something that people need to bear in mind when they're asking, okay, is my government doing anything at all that I expect of my government to deliver for me? So if Republicans take over the House and Senate, how hard is it to make your job? So, look, my job is to work with whoever's in the House and Senate trying to get stuff done.

I'll say that the legislation that Republicans in the House and Senate have proposed so far is not in line with what we're trying to do. For example, one of the things they've put forward, or they seem to be aligning on as a strategy, is that they might be willing to have another crisis over the debt limit, where there's a threat of shutting down or even defaulting, unless there are a number of cuts that could even affect things like Social Security or Medicare. So at a policy level, again, I'm not talking about campaigns, but at a policy level, that's a pretty big disagreement. Is the pressure mounting for you in regards to 2024?

Because I know you said you didn't want to do anything else in government other than this. But the Democrats have a very weak bench. And I see how you move. Like, you know, you'll come to places like the Breakfast Club, you'll go to Fox News. Like, you're talking to a big swath of the American public. So is it growing louder for Secretary Pete

to run in 2024 as president? I mean, look, I already have a job and we already have a president. So the best thing I can do is support this president that I really believe in, in the agenda and the vision that the administration has. And as long as he trusts me to do this work on transportation, try to deliver on that. I mean, look, every job I've had, and I'm not trying to be cute about the politics. I know there's a lot of political chatter that goes on.

But every job I've had, especially in public life, the best thing you can do is just try to be good at that job. And then whatever you want to do next, you're going to be better off if you deliver. And delivering, you know, to our earlier conversation is hard as hell, but also incredibly rewarding when you're working on stuff like that. Are you concerned with more celebrities coming up as being president that doesn't necessarily know politics, that really doesn't know what they're doing? We have another situation like a Donald Trump. Yeah, we're seeing a lot of this, right? Look, I think there's something to be said for outsider energy.

I came into national politics as an outsider, a different kind of outsider. I was involved in policy as a mayor, but I was not part of Washington. And I don't think you have to be, you know, a Washington lifer to be effective. But I do think you have to care about public policy. I mean, you should see some people now who just don't seem like they care. And I think...

Kanye's running in 2024. I don't know if you know, but... God. Okay. Great. Why not? Look, in the end, I think what people most want to know is what do you care about? And who do you care about? And when I'm coming to work every day, the focus that we have is the person who's stuck at the airport because the airline didn't take care of them. The person who lives ridiculously far away from where they work and relies on transportation because that's what it takes in order to live somewhere you can afford. Or the person who is paying way too much rent in order to live where they can get to work

because they don't have a good transportation option to do otherwise. And we're thinking about them and how we can make life a little easier for them. I'm thinking about somebody who is talented and skilled, maybe doesn't have a college degree, but has a lot of skill that needs to be put to work and can make six figures if they get a shot at the building trades. But because nobody in their family ever has, maybe it's a working mother and it's not obvious to her how to get the child care so that she can work a construction shift That starts at 6 in the morning

But pays really well and could help her raise her kids like people like that and I think the the look I work in a building full of people who are deeper on Every aspect of transportation policy than I am because they've been doing it their whole lives I think of myself as a policy guy but than I am because they've been doing it their whole lives. I think of myself as a policy guy, but my job is to connect up the priorities of the people who sent us here to do this work with all of that machinery of government that's designed to deliver better answers,

whether it's a better designed subway line or a more affordable way to drive to work or, you know, a light rail, you know, whatever it is. So I think that's the biggest question we have to ask about anybody who is in public service is what do you care about? And then, yeah, do you understand how to use this machinery of government,

which it turns out, I mean, I spend a lot of time just navigating my own agency. It's really complicated. But can you use it in order to get things done? What about as a transportation secretary, let's just say when the Hurricane Ian was about to hit Tampa, and everybody knew it was coming, but some people couldn't get out.

Let's just say you couldn't have access to transportation or didn't have the financial ability to be able to take yourself and your family out of the area. Would that have anything to do with what you do? A little bit, yeah. So we try to help on situations like this. Just Friday or Thursday, I went up with the Coast Guard and we looked at the impacts on the bridges, for example, over there. And we were able to release about $50 million of funding to help Florida get to work on getting those bridges ready. But what we're really focused on doing is, you know, before it comes to that, before you're, you know, 24 hours out from the hurricane making landfall, have we invested in things like evacuation routes to make it easier? Have we invested in things like evacuation routes

to make it easier? So we have a part of the president's infrastructure package called Protect, and it's about $7 billion for resilience so that we can either build a bridge that's going to be more sturdy if there's a storm or design things in a different way. Because one thing that's happening

is you've got climate change, you've got more and more impacts, and you'll have a road that gets washed out or destroyed, and then they'll fix it just the way it was, and then it'll get destroyed again, and then they'll fix it just the way it was. We need to do something better or smarter. In the West, it means wildfires.

I saw part of I-70 in Colorado. It was like a climate change double whammy. First you had a drought, then you had a wildfire, and then there was nothing holding the mud on the hillside in place. Then you had a flood. I guess a triple whammy. And then that meant that there was this mudslide that took I-70 out of service. And that's a road that's critically important for supply chains because you're going through those mountains. There's no other way to go. You don't have an alternative. So we're investing in things that will help communities be ready for when disaster strikes, as well as trying to be there afterwards. Question, when you do interviews, right, and you're not allowed to talk about things like the midterms, how does that help Democrats in the midterms?

Well, look, I think the good policy is good politics. Like, if we're doing things that make sense and we can explain it, then people will appreciate that. And in that way, there's no difference, or there's not a lot of difference, between coming out on a campaign trail and saying, I think you should vote for this person, which is not what I'm doing today, and what I am doing today, which is saying, here's what we're working on as an administration.

Here are the policies we think are good. Some folks voted for it. Some folks voted against it. And this is what we believe in. It's odd, but it's there for a very good reason, right? I mean, the reason we have these rules is so that you don't go out using the powers of the federal government and push a political outcome on people. So I respect it. But shouldn't you though?

Isn't that the whole point? Look, we can take a different, I can go put on a different hat later when my flight wasn't paid for by the taxpayer and talk about politics. But it's, I think it's okay to have those things be separate. I think the important thing, though, is that I don't ever want to say something in one context that I would be embarrassed to have repeated in another context. So it's also just really important that we're consistent and we're clear about what we care about and what we believe in. That's what Jerry Pete has to go to. Oh, last question.

Do you feel like Democrats are rising to the urgency at the moment? Because we know there's a real threat to democracy, and midterms are right around the corner, but it doesn't seem like there's a sense of urgency coming from the Democratic Party about it. I think we have a sense of urgency. I think the concern is how do we make sure to, let me put it this way. Sometimes when something is, sometimes something can be so big that it's hard to make it out and you actually have to break it down into something smaller, if that makes sense. So what I mean by that is that the stakes for our country right now, in terms of our own democracy, in terms of our future, in terms of our standing

in the world, they're so enormous that if you try to talk about it that way all day, climate too, it's so exhausting that I think it can actually shut people down a little bit. Not on the right. Right-wing media does it all day. And they say that democracy is about to be over, but they blame Democrats.

That's true. Um, and one of the things that I think is really important is that facts still have to matter. We have to make sure that there's actually such thing as true and false. And you look at what happened last January, you look at what's happening right now with people denying the legitimacy of elections that actually happened, where part of how democracy works is when you lose you admit it yeah i've lost losing sucks you don't enjoy it but part of your job is to acknowledge that reality because the whole idea of democracy is rules and policy choices that we all have to live by and that means we all live by things we don't always agree. That's the whole concept, right? But I don't think there's any confusion about what's at stake. I do think there's a need to connect all these big picture questions to very concrete things. And I think actually right-wing media sometimes is a little better about that. I have a TV in my office where

I've got, it's kind of splits into four quadrants, and I can see the three big cable networks, and I'm usually watching one broadcast. And every time I glance up at it, or almost always, what you see on Fox is more of a story from a specific place that is meant to make you angry about this big picture fear, real or imagined. And it just puts you in a different state of mind.

Whereas we, I think on my side of the aisle, tend to prefer to talk in terms of the concepts, the ideas. And I do think there's some work to do there. But that's part of what I love about my job. Because there's nothing abstract about saying, Joe Biden signed this bill, and you're getting a better airport, right? Or if you like this new subway stop

that's coming to your neighborhood, it's there because Democrats with a few Republicans helping out in Congress, in the House and in the Senate voted on this bill, sent it to the president's desk and he signed it and my department implemented it, right? Like this is happening in your life. This isn't like some conceptual debate

about conservatism or free market. This is like we're fixing this problem. And I see the number one issue is the economy. Yeah. When it comes to the elections coming up. And so we can see who's voting for and against people to have more money in their pocket. Well, that's the thing. I mean, let's look at the choice. And again, I'm saying this not election-wise, but legislation-wise, look at the choices that are being made, right? So the last administration, their number one economic policy was tax cuts for rich people, and they did it. It's one of the promises they kept. They didn't

keep a lot of promises, right? They didn't drain the swamp. They didn't even build the wall. But they kept two promises, and those two promises represent two things they really care about. They kept their promise to cut taxes for the rich. And they kept their promise to take away the right to choose. Those are two things they said they would do. They took power. And then they did it. And what we're doing is working to keep promises.

And I know there's some unfinished business in terms of promises that we've made. But we promised to get an infrastructure bill done and we've done it we've promised to act in ways that would reduce child poverty we've done it we promised the president promised to get people back to work after we lost millions of jobs more people are working in the private sector now than at any point in American history. So I guess you could say both administrations back to back have come in with a set of promises. People should think about which promises are kept. Like you said, Democrats are terrible at messaging. I mean, you didn't say that verbatim, but you essentially said Democrats are terrible at messaging. I think we think in ways that we got to work a little harder to... They suck at messaging. It's okay, Secretary Pete.

That's what you're working on. It's okay to say that. Look, I hear you. I hear you. All right, well, he does have to go, but thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. And thank you for always stopping through. It's a pleasure.

Good to be with you. Thanks. Secretary Pete, it's The Breakfast Club. Good morning. Hey, guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As a kid, I really do remember having these dreams and visions,

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