Biden admin prioritized 'social engineering' over air traffic safety, House aviation chair says

The president of the House's Aviation Safety Caucus is accusing the erstwhile Biden medication of helping substance the existent air postulation control (ATC) crisis, by its prime to money progressive diverseness initiatives alternatively of modernizing the aging system.

Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital that the erstwhile administration's marquee bill, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was among respective "missed opportunities" to money a revamp of the ATC system.

"That was earlier I came to Congress, but, you know, you had conscionable mistaken priorities successful that, each this DEI policy, DEI staffing, that each got baked into the cake," Langworthy said. "They could person taken that wealth and spent it connected existent modernization of what is captious infrastructure successful this country."

"We had the longest play of incident-free aviation successful this country's history, wherever we didn't person a commercialized aerial clang from the clip the clang happened successful Buffalo, successful my district, backmost successful 2009, to conscionable this year, and what happened astatine [Ronald Reagan Airport]. And it was avoidable."

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Aviation Safety Caucus Chair Nick Langworthy, left, said Biden medication backing policies helped substance the existent aerial postulation controller shortage. (Getty Images)

It comes aft a blackout at Newark Liberty International Airport reportedly caused a astir 90-second outage to its aerial postulation power screens.

And earlier this year, a subject chopper collided with a rider level coming from Wichita, Kansas, successful a deadly incidental conscionable disconnected the shores of the nation's capital.

Langworthy clarified that helium does not judge DEI policies "necessarily" straight deed ATC.

"It's what they spent the wealth [on]. I mean, you know, there's infrastructure projects, ones successful my backyard, wherever they privation to hide and passageway implicit our main artery successful the municipality due to the fact that it's going to reunite a assemblage somehow," helium said.

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Newark Airport, wherever travelers faced 8 consecutive days of monolithic delays, connected May 6, 2025. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)

"Aviation is infrastructure. It's transportation. It should person been spent then. Instead, they did each this societal engineering with wealth and didn't absorption connected what has been a glaring occupation for the national authorities for galore years, modernizing our aviation infrastructure."

Part of the bipartisan infrastructure measure allocated $25 cardinal implicit 5 years to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), specifically for modernization.

But lawmakers present judge that was not enough. Republicans' plans for President Donald Trump's "big, beauteous bill" via the fund reconciliation process see $12 cardinal for aerial postulation power modernization, specifically.

During visits with air postulation controllers successful his ain upstate New York district, Langworthy said the connection was elemental but critical: "We request much bodies."

"We should beryllium promoting this to young radical that privation to look astatine vocation work successful the government. And it comes with a precise competitory salary," Langworthy said. "But it's a pugnacious occupation with a batch of hours. And you know, there's ever gonna beryllium accent involved, but we person to prioritize it and not conscionable instrumentality it for granted."

Langworthy vowed to enactment with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, pictured here, connected getting backing for ATC modernization. (Getty Images)

Langworthy said helium would assistance propulsion for arsenic overmuch backing arsenic needed to conscionable the issue.

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"I volition perfectly pb the combat for [Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy] and the president connected their program to modernize our aircraft," helium vowed.

"When Secretary Duffy and the president rotation this retired arsenic a spending priority, we person to frontload this process. We person to get them the resources that they request to get this done, due to the fact that the flying nationalist – everyone's lives bent successful the equilibrium connected this."