WASHINGTON — President-elect Trump has chosen former Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy as his nominee for Secretary of Transportation. Duffy, 53, currently serves as a co-host of Fox Business’ The Bottom Line broadcast and is a frequent contributor to the network. He left politics in 2019 to care for his newborn daughter.
Duffy served as a Congressman for Wisconsin’s 7th District — which covers much of the northern part of the state — from 2011 until 2019; before that, he was a district attorney in Ashland County, which is part of that congressional district. During his tenure is Congress, he served as chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and served on the House Committee on Financial Services. He was also a member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-sponsored Enterprises, the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, and the Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity.
“[Duffy] will prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness, and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports,” Trump said in a statement. “He will ensure our ports and dams serve our Economy without compromising our National Security, and he will make our skies safe again by eliminating DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives] for pilots and air traffic controllers.”
Duffy did not serve on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; however, he co-sponsored a number of transportation-related legislation, including rail.
He sponsored H.R. Bill 354 in 2015 to impose a $10,000 civil penalty against railroads for each hour a train occupies a blocked grade crossing, and he was one of six co-sponsors supporting a bill that would allow railroad employees to remain on duty in excess of the current hours-of-service requirements to clear trains of blocked grade crossings. Neither piece of legislation passed the House.
In 2017, the former Congressman also voted to amend H.R. Bill 335, the Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, which would have eliminated funding for Amtrak’s national network. The amendment ultimately failed.
— Trains News Wire will update this story as more information becomes available.
All I can say is we are $35+ trillion in debt and growing. It can’t go on forever. The Fed is to big, bloated and involved in almost everything they have no business being involved in. It’s time to tighten the belt and get back to fiscal sanity.
I can see you have no idea about economics. The country does not work like your household. It’s amazing to me that people think the supposed greatest and richest country ever runs like your home.
I’m sure you also think that China and not the American people will pay the tariffs.
I don’t expect anything good will happen in the next 4 years for Amtrak.
That, Mr. Hall, is an understatement. But we can be sure that Stevie and the boyzz aren’t worried. For one thing they most likely have themselves convinced their 450 mile BOS-WAS “playpen”, and therefore their lucrative jobs, are safe. Maybe its appendages like the Keystone and Empire Corridors will be cut but not their little baby. For another, each has probably invested all that bonus $$$ they disgracefully awarded themselves with no pushback from Congress (the latter equally disgraceful if not more so) in the stock market so they are set financially for the rest of their sorry lives. So they don’t care.
Mark Shapp,
I strongly suspect the days of big Amtrak bonuses for their upper management are over come January.
Well, well, well, another another unqualified Trump toady, yet the R’s on this site are still on fixated on Pete even though his replacement Duffy has an anti Amtrak/RR voting record yet not an ill word or apprehension about him. Hint- Trump didn’t even mention Amtrak, transit or rail, any guesses as to what that means??? You people have an unhealthy fixation about Pete you’ll still be blaming him when Trump & Duffy zero out Amtrak, but you’ll justify their actions with “oh well passenger rail should be privately operated” as you get on your taxpayer funded airline flight or drive off on your deficit swelling road trip you’ll say “well that’s different because I use that!”
Say it again but louder, for the people in the back – no seriously! The R’s are obsessed with Pete and how he “did nothing”, as they put it. This guy will do less than nothing. I.E. this new guy will makes the current situation way worse. And then, the R’s will complain about how it was all Pete’s fault even if he was out of office at that future time. (It’s like how some R’s complain about how Obama did nothing for Hurricane Katrina or wasn’t in the white house on 9/11 – when Obama wasn’t even in office until Jan. 2009!)
“Former Wisconsin Congressman has no specific transportation background”
Another occupant of the clown car driving in circles the next 4 years.
I understood Charles pretty clearly. Mayor Pete, seems not to understand our transportation needs much. There, I said it, without cursing. Cheers.
Atleast Duffy knows how to spell Train. Don’t know if Moron Pete ever. He was a gift to the Liberals and did about what most of us expected: ZIP!
I assume the earlier mention of the embarrassing pick for Transportation Secretary was in reference to the spectacularly unqualified and unproductive current occupant of the position. My own preference would be a pick with actual experience in the industries with which he would be involved. If I can’t have that, I will settle for an intelligent person who keeps his ears open and is eager to learn about all sides of an issue and who won’t waste a second in virtue signaling for any particular social agendas.
My personal opinion is the current Secretary is the “bottom of the barrel” when it comes to transportation. So this choice is probably better than him. How much better we’ll have to wait and see. At least this one appears to have experience with finance & business judging by his listed committee assignments when in congress.
I know all the proponents of spending more & more on Amtrak and high speed passenger rail won’t be happy with him. But, as I stated in a previous posting on another article regarding high-speed rail, the Feds have too many other financial problems for it to be involved in financing it at this point in time.
I absolutely agree with Messers Landey, Mangan, Saunders, and Foster on Pete Buttigieg. No argument. But I am appalled and disgusted that none of you apparent Trumpers (and all that comes in its train (pun intended) give a pass to Mr. Duffy’s “supporting a bill that would allow railroad employees [conductors and engineers] to remain on duty in excess of the current hours-of-service requirements to clear trains of blocked crossings”.
I’d like to see how any of you would react when told you must stay on duty for an open-ended period after working 12 hours in a safety-sensitive job like running a train under all the operating rules, special instructions, and daily operating bulletins. You guys haven’t a clue.
And as a matter of full disclosure, in my years as a tower op and later train dispatcher I was wasn’t subject to that. We in those crafts could, except in emergencies, only work beyond our 8 hour shifts, one extra hour without FRA penalty and another 3 with. But I got lots of cab rides over the years, some on assigned “road days” per FRA regs., some on my own on my days off. So I experienced “how the other half lives” and I can assure you guys you wouldn’t want to be subject to that kind of mandate.
Charles wtf are you talking about and what does that have to do with this embarrassing pick for Transportation Sec? Your bluster is reflective of how dismal this new administration is going to be. Go ahead and keep talking yourself in circles
Okay all you Democrats, please calm down, You lost, get over it, the rest of us have…
It’s not Democrats who lost Vincent, it’s the American public that lost.
When Buttigieg said America would become the world leader in high-speed rail under his leadership, I knew he was full of crap.
I don’t know what Duffy means for freight rail and Amtrak, but I think the Trump administration is well aware that efficient transportation is vital to their economic success.
I guess we will have to wait and see.
This doesn’t appear to bode well for Amtrak. Sad.
Yeah, and Mayor Pete did such a great job with Amtrak? Pete, not Sean, is SecDOT during the current meltdown of Amtrak LDs.
As far as I can see, Mayor Pete spent four years on one task and one task only:- endlessly repeating the lie that Detroit interstate highways were built in black neighborhoods. Some were, notably the southerly end of the Walter P. Chrysler. The bigger half of Detroit’s freeways were built in white neighborhoods, fully reflecting the city’s population distribution at the time the freeways were built. For example, the western end of the Edsel B. Ford cut through a Polish neighborhood. The John C. Lodge was built through a white Appalachian neighborhood close to downtown, and Jewish neighborhoods further out.
Oh, and to futher my own post (above), Mayor Pete doesn’t even get the Chrysler Freeway thingie right. Five percent of the “Black Bottom” neighborhood was removed for the freeway. Ninety-five percent of “Black Bottom” fell to wholesale demolition for the Lafayette Park and Elmwood Park urban renewal projects. Look at a map. It’s the square mile immediately east of downtown Detroit (zip 48226) and east to the Mt. Elliott cemetery.
Besides, Mayor Pete hasn’t explained how demolishing the Chrysler Freeway would bring “Black Bottom” back.