Lauren Boebert rages at Pete Buttigieg for problem House Republicans aren’t solving

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is angry again at out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, this time because experts predict that the North American aviation industry will be short 30,000 pilots over the next decade.

Buttigieg talked about the current, smaller shortage in a CBS News interview and how it’s affecting flights: “There’s definitely gaps in places. The system is just uneven right now.” 

Related Stories Pete Buttigieg slams Lauren Boebert in just 7 words

She has been attacking him all week. He’d had enough.

He said that the Department of Transportation is actively investigating several airlines that engage in “unrealistic scheduling”; that is, they’re scheduling flights and selling tickets without having the crews necessary to operate the flights, leading to cancellations and delays and other flight disruptions.

Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.

“If an airline is knowingly flying an unrealistic schedule, there are going to be consequences,” he said. “We have active investigations underway right now with regard to that.”

“We take that very seriously because when you sell a ticket to a paying customer and you make a profit off of that, you better be ready to do everything in your power to service that ticket. And we’re also going to hold you responsible for what happens if you can’t.” 

Boebert linked a conservative New York Post article that reported on what Buttigieg said, and she was mad.

“America is the greatest country in the world. This is completely unacceptable,” she tweeted. “Air travel has become a nightmare lately. It’s getting worse than ever before.”

“What is Pete doing and how has he not been replaced yet? We can’t have this go on for a decade!”

She did not explain why she thought Buttigieg was responsible for the next decade’s pilot shortage.

America is the greatest country in the world. This is completely unacceptable.

Air travel has become a nightmare lately. It’s getting worse than ever before.

What is Pete doing and how has he not been replaced yet?

We can’t have this go on for a decade! https://t.co/gbiVhwhJcf

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) July 26, 2023

According to the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the U.S. and Canada are currently short 8,000 pilots, and that shortage is expected to grow to 30,000 by 2032.

“What it means is the potential for higher fares and the potential for lower levels of service,” Geoff Murray, a pilot and a partner at Oliver Wyman, told KARE11. “It is impacting, right now, largely secondary cities.”

Congress has been attempting to address the pilot shortage in its Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill. Some measures include raising the pilot retirement age from 65 to 67 and decreasing the number of training flight hours a pilot must log from the current 1,500 hours, both of which are controversial.

Far-right Republicans in the House, though, are attempting to use that same bill to attack transgender rights. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is trying to insert amendments to the bill to “prohibit funding from being used to promote the LGBTQ initiatives and policies within the FAA.” She said that the FAA must be stopped from posting LGBTQ+ content to their Twitter account.

“Our preamble of the Declaration of Independence recognizes that all men are created equal,” she said in introducing her amendments. “We don’t need to promote people’s sexual identity with our tax dollars. We know that people are equal, and we recognize that.”

It’s one of several major funding bills that House Republicans are trying to use as vehicles for anti-LGBTQ+ rules, jeopardizing their passage in the Democratic Senate.

Boebert has been attacking Buttigieg for years, including when she got mad at him for taking paternity leave to be with his newborn twins in 2021 as they faced medical difficulties.

“The guy was not working! Because why? He was trying to figure out how to chestfeed,” she said at the time. “Maybe someone should tell him, please, so he can get back to work.”

“Listen, I’m a mother of four. I delivered one of my children in the front seat of my truck. Because, as a mom of four, we got things to do. Ain’t nobody got time for two and a half months of maternity leave. We have a world to save here.”