FAA ground stop could lead to more Congressional funding

So to talk more about that, let's bring in Donna Crane. She is a political science professor at San Jose State. Donna, thanks for being with us this morning. I'm going to start right off the bat with the update that we got from the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy. On the one hand, he made this claim that Congress needs to allocate more money to update the infrastructure at the FAA. But as we know, it's been a Republican-controlled Congress for the last two years, a Republican president. He was kind of walking a fine line there, making that pitch while trying not to maybe upset his boss, the president. Is that what you, the sense you got? Yeah, that's exactly my take on it as well. Look, infrastructure is never a sexy thing for Congress to fund. Congress likes to spend money on high profile projects and infrastructure just isn't right. If there's not an immediate crisis, it's just it tends to fall to the bottom of the list. Thank So there's that to contend with. But we also have to layer on top of it, of course, that Doge, which was one of Donald Trump's signature projects, you and hand it over to, it has to be said, to his largest donor. very Doge cut 12 percent of the personnel at FAA. There were experts that warned about this a year ago. So it's premature to know exactly what caused much. this communications outage, but I don't think there's anybody who's watching today who would say you can cut, cut, cut, and there will be no consequences. The Secretary made a pitch that this is a bipartisan issue. Now that we're going to have a shift in who's in control of Congress, do you think he will get his wish? He'll actually get some more funding for the FAA. I think it's likely he is going to get more funding for the FAA. I think that, you know, the series of tragedies that we've seen over the past year or so has been has no party identification. So and, you know, Democrats love to spend where the Republicans do. So I think it's likely that he will get more funding. Yes. Politically, do Democrats have to worry about how that looks? Does it look like they're being bipartisan or does it look like they're giving the president a win? You know, that's not my impression about this. I think this is a pretty, this is a pretty popular program. And I mean, it's a popular agency and everybody loves to fly and everybody wants it to be safe. There's some indication that public opinion about the safety of flying is even taking a little bit of a, of a beating. So I think this is, I think, I don't think this is likely to be to be super controversial. Let's switch gears to the NVIDIA fallout that happened with the now former CEO, Jensen Wong. We know he's going to be appearing before Congress. Behind closed doors, I will say, before a couple of congressional committees as early as next week. What do you think will come from that? Or do we really have to wait and see what the congressional hearings are like once Democrats are in charge? I think hearings, your right, hearings will be the first step. I think those are certain to happen and probably in multiple committees. It sounds like he's doing behind the scenes, behind closed doors depositions first, but there's going to be a lot of pressure to put him in front of cameras. So I think hearings will come first. I think it's, I think the chances for legislation have increased somewhat since the last time we talked about this. I think that it's Possible legislation could include some some sort of nibbling around the edges, so perhaps some regulation around data centers, perhaps some changes around taxation policy around data centers. The story about how Mark Zuckerberg has found a way to elude the regular tax that he should have to pay on data centers has gone down like a lead balloon in Washington. I think also possibly some protection for minors and maybe some liability issues. What sort of political fallout will there be, if any, you think, for Commerce Secretary Howard Leibniz? Well, I think he's really on the hot seat right now. Something we haven't discussed yet is the. You know, the concern that's been raised that perhaps there was some that the administration had information about the vulnerability of these NVIDIA chips being sent by a second party or third party to China and that they ignored that warning. So I think there will also be some hearings that are more aggressive in terms of oversight about the administration's role in maybe neglecting to. Safeguard our technology the way they should be and the way their rhetoric says they want to. But at the same time, is there any possibility of enacting some legislative changes or things to prevent this type of thing from happening again or limits to export controls and things of that nature if once the Democrats are in control of Congress, if they don't have a veto proof majority? Yes, I think there is a real possibility of that. But like you've noted, there are a lot of crosswinds here politically, right? There's the veto threat. Democrats themselves are also not totally united on this issue, and different Democrats have different incentives. We are starting to move into a presidential election, and there are some Democrats and Republicans who are in Congress who have an interest in being president. And then, of course, there's the filibuster rule in the Senate. So there are some crosswinds here. It's not smooth sailing, for for sure, but I do think that's That's reclaiming Congress's oversight over the Commerce Department is something that's also likely on the list. Can I ask you, I know you teach political science courses and you teach the course to a lot of first-time college students, so it's a lot of students who are just learning the beginning of political science at the college level. You survey your students occasionally from time to time. We know that after the midterm election, young voters did shift. Farther away from the Republicans and Republican candidates overall. Is that a shift that you saw in talking to your students even before it happened? Definitely. There's their opinions were almost uniformly negative of the current government. And they they place that responsibility at the White House's doorstep. I think their feelings range from disgust to dismissal to. Uh, deep cynicism, um, even, even some, some of the young men who I would describe as being fans of the manosphere, um, even they felt like what they were promised didn't pan out. And, uh, they really felt like they had been, um, misled. Do you think that's a shift that's long-term or does it all depend what the Democrats can deliver on in the next couple of years? You know, it's just too soon to know. I'm afraid it's just too soon to know. I don't I will say that I don't think they those those who I noticed shifted. I don't think they did so because they bought they're really excited about the Democrats agenda. They're moving away from the current Republican agenda. They're moving away from Trumpism. So I would say that the Democrats have not a mandate with young people, but they do have an opportunity. Yeah, it's the phenomenon of, in the question of... Did Democrats win or did Trump lose? Where are you on that? Yeah, I mean, for my students, it's Trump lost for sure. But there are a lot of my students who talk about, without even much prompting, they talk about affordability. And when they talk about affordability, they're talking about regular things like the cost of gas, which for them is really a bitter pill to swallow. A lot of them are driving. You know to and from campus, but they also talk about the prospects of owning a home. They understand that that is that is um, It's fading further and further out of reach for them. And they talk about things like health care, like they have a they have a sense that health care is getting harder to buy. And they have a sense, you know, we have to remember more than a third of Californians are on Medicare, excuse me, Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California. And they have an understanding that there are cuts coming there. So they're responding in real time in their lives to this Trump administration's priorities, and they don't like them. Yeah, those cuts to Medi-Cal and Medicaid strategically don't go into effect or weren't supposed to go into effect until after the midterms. At the same time, those issues, the cost of gas, cost of health care, cost of housing, those are very difficult things for one party to try and tackle on their own in two years when they don't have a veto-proof majority. No question, right? White Houses get won and lost on the economy, but there just isn't a whole lot that a president can do or that Congress can do about the economy. A difference in this cycle, I would say, is that there are two or three very specific actions the government's taken over the last two years that have led to increases in prices for everyone, right? So the war in Iran, even immigration policies leading to higher prices, right? If you have fewer workers, employers have to pay more. before. So we have actions like that that can be directly traced back to the government and therefore can be reversed. Tariffs is something that also should go on that list. And that's why I think Congress, the Democrats coming in as the new majority in Congress, they are talking about reversing the cuts to Medicaid, reversing the cuts to the ACA, the Affordable Care Act subsidies, right? Making healthcare more affordable in those two ways. Reclaiming some of their authority over tariffs and reversing those tariffs and trying to slow down or halt or stop the president's war in Iran. And the reason those are top of the list is because those are all things that could have a pretty quick impact on cost of living for regular folks. Which of those things do you think they tackle first and will they be able to get them done? I mean, Congress, here's the boring part. Congress runs on a committee system, right? So they can actually start work on all of them at once. And then Hakeem Jeffries and we assume Chuck Schumer, managing the House and the Senate, will have to play traffic cop and read the politics and count the votes and decide which of those bills gets to the floor first. And I think they're also hoping Hoping that in the process of legislating, the public. OPINION WILL SHOW STRONG SUPPORT FOR THOSE AGENDA ITEMS AND THEY'RE HOPING THAT MIGHT SOFTEN PRESIDENT TRUMP'S OPPOSITION. YOU MENTIONED SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER. DO YOU THINK HE WILL BE ELECTED AS MAJORITY LEADER OR IS THAT AN OPEN QUESTION? Um, you know, the, the friends that I have who work on the inside there, they tell me it's pretty likely that Schumer is going to get reelected, that Chris Van Hollen will run a honorable and spirited challenge to him. Um, Chris Van Hollen has longer term ambitions and also probably wants to nudge Schumer along into a little bit firmer oppositional stance. You know, Schumer has been I'm tagged with being too soft in his response to Trump, but as of today, it doesn't look like Van Hollen has close to the votes that he would need to win that challenge. Okay. Always look forward to speaking with you, Professor Donna Crane of San Jose State University. Thank you so much for your insight in breaking all this down and for a great conversation. Have a great Saturday. Oh, it's a pleasure. You too. All right. Take care.