When Ray LaHood visited the White House in November to sign the bipartisan infrastructure law, he met with the current occupant of his old agency.
LaHood had advice for Pete Buttigieg that laid bare the stakes of this political moment for the former 2020 presidential contender.
"Pete, you have to be the one who decides," LaHood told him, referring to the hundreds of billions of dollars in grant money that Buttigieg will soon be delivering around the country for big projects like roads, bridges, ports, and tunnels. If the grant programs are going to be successful, President Biden will get the credit, so you have to make the decision on every one of them. You're going to get criticism if they're not successful.
Hillary Clinton spent a lot of her 2016 presidential campaign answering questions about her time in the Obama administration because she was caught in the bureaucratic muck. That's why LaHood was talking to Buttigieg and suggesting that he assemble a task force within his department of political and career staffers, as well as an infrastructure coordinators, that can be his eyes and ears for any potential obstacles.
Buttigieg knows he'll be held to a high standard, and seems to have taken the advice to heart. He held an internal DOT town hall focused on implementation before the law's passage. He would work with another former mayor,Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, who is serving as Biden's senior adviser and infrastructure coordination, to set up a DOT working group. The White House said that Landrieu would see the most significant and comprehensive investments in American infrastructure in generations. The White House declined to make Landrieu available for an interview, but the former mayor endorsed Buttigieg's unsuccessful bid to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Buttigieg is aware of the political stakes he is in.
A person close to Buttigieg told Insider that he knows he's vulnerable over the next year.
Buttigieg got off to a great start.
Buttigieg had a banner year.
In February, the first openly gay Cabinet secretary was confirmed by the Senate. Buttigieg, who turns 40 on January 19, has become one of the most visible members of the administration, with appearances on cable news, Sunday shows, and even late-night television. Through his travels to red and blue states, he's been buying local media.
His office says he built bipartisan relationships with members of Congress by calling them 300 times. He posed for a picture with former President Barack Obama at the United Nations climate summit. Buttigieg was a fan of the Amazon documentary about his campaign. The supply chain crisis was supposed to delay Christmas gifts.
The Georgia Ports Authority's Garden City Terminal is located in Georgia. The supply chain crisis has not prevented Christmas gifts from arriving on time, though Buttigieg has said this is not a "mission accomplished" moment.
Drew Angerer is a photographer.
Even at the mercy of the most partisan members of the GOP, Buttigieg's Midwestern demeanor and McKinsey-honed competency haven't attracted the kind of heat-seeking GOP missiles elicited by other Cabinet secretaries. Only one Congressional Republican called for his resignation, less than any other Biden Cabinet member.
Buttigieg's rosy 2021. could prove to be a problem for the Rhodes Scholar, as his day job turns from selling infrastructure to steering its implementation.
With $550 billion in new infrastructure spending about to go out the door, Buttigieg faces a series of potential political pitfalls in the coming months, including learning how to say "no" to projects that don't make the cut, according to experts in both congressional oversight and transportation policy Buttigieg's political career is just beginning. The coming years could be more challenging for him than the 2020 campaign was.
Buttigieg has political exposure.
Buttigieg is a possible target of both the right and left following the passage of the infrastructure law.
Some Democrats in the party's progressive wing may be upset with some of Buttigieg's moves, according to a former DOT hand and one of Buttigieg's former presidential campaign advisers.
She told Insider that she was disappointed in the infrastructure legislation that passed because of its impact on climate change and Black citizens of historically divided communities.
"He has a very hard job because he's made promises and he hasn't fulfilled them yet," said the director of Transportation for America, who last spoke with Buttigieg by phone in February. Climate change and racial equity were considered in the DOT's analysis of each project's merit.
He needs to be careful about the promises he makes when he's dependent on people who don't have the same priorities.
It's not likely to happen in red America because of the law's provisions that allow states to decide how to spend it. Take remarks by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is a potential presidential candidate.
The transportation secretary and the Arizona senators were at a Mesa Community College in Mesa, Arizona, to discuss supply chain problems.
Jonathan J. Cooper.
Buttigieg talked about using infrastructure to end systemic racism. The Secretary of Transportation tried to make this about social issues. To me, a road is a road.
It's likely that rejecting Buttigieg's DOT moves will be a litmus test for any GOP presidential candidates who serve as governors.
Is GOP oversight coming soon?
If Republicans win back control of the House or Senate in November, they could wield subpoena power and drive the investigative agenda, which Buttigieg needs to be aware of.
Recent history shows he has reason to be concerned. The FBI launched a criminal investigation of the California manufacturer of solar cells that had connections to an Obama donor after the Solyndra scandal.
The company received $528 million in loan guarantees through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but still filed for bankruptcy. The downfall of Solyndra was the result of rapidly-changing global market conditions for renewable energy products, but it exposed the previous Democratic administration to oversight-hungry Republicans who held countless hearings aimed at embarrassing the president and some of his most prominent Cabinet members.
If Republicans take back the House in November, they will likely ramp up oversight of Buttigieg the same way they did with Obama and Solyndra. James Comer, a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, told Insider that Republicans plan to keep a close eye on the implementation of the infrastructure law.
Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, said that GOPers will take a tougher approach on oversight if they win the majority, having already sent the Biden administration preservation requests for documents related to the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
Unless House Republicans control the chamber and have subpoena power, such actions are meaningless. The DOT isn't keeping a record of preservation notices at the moment.
There is plenty of room for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, and it is unclear how these taxpayer dollars will be used, as we have seen in the past with debacles like Solyndra.
Solyndra was written off as a manufactured scandal. The blood was still flowing and it was still putting the Obama White House on the defensive and creating a campaign backdrop for Romney and the Republicans to use in their unsuccessful bid to stop Obama's second term.
The reputation of Steven Chu, the physicist who was one of the celebrity members of the Democratic president's Cabinet as the secretary of energy, was damaged by Solyndra. In the same way the Recovery Act put Chu's Energy Department at the center of its plans to remake the economy, more than half of the bipartisan infrastructure law falls under the auspices of the DOT.
If Republicans take back the House in the upcoming elections, Buttigieg will face a perilous path ahead, as the most analogous cash influx into public projects to the infrastructure law, the Recovery Act, was.
A veteran of the Obama administration's efforts to promote and defend the Recovery Act told Insider that he has until the fall campaign season to go out there and get nice and easy press. The waters are going to get rougher.
Romney held a news conference outside the shuttered Solyndra solar power company's manufacturing facility in California.
The images are by Justin Sullivan.
The DOT is staffing up.
Kurt Bardella, who worked for Rep. Darrell Issa when he chaired the House Oversight Committee, said there's a big incentive for GOP lawmakers to score political points at Buttigieg's expense and try to sully his future political prospects in the long term.
Buttigieg seems to have followed LaHood's advice. The DOT and the administration have been working on it.
Amazon's former vice president and associate general counsel for worldwide transportation will be working with Landrieu. She will return to the DOT as director of the bipartisan infrastructure law implementation in the new year.
She knows transportation. A DOT veteran who worked with her during the Obama administration said that she understands people. The DOT is planning to hire hundreds of additional staffers to implement the law.
Buttigieg is a weekly caller with Landrieu and his Infrastructure Implementation Task Force. Landrieu was invited by Buttigieg to join a DOT staff call to discuss next steps and take questions from political appointees about implementation. An internal working group was established by the secretary.
Buttigieg will be the one who decides on infrastructure projects nationwide. Republicans have the ability to comb through every aspect of the various projects' background for any potential problems that may arise for one of the most well known members of the Biden Cabinet.
Bardella said that the Republican effort would be "merciless and repetitive" because they see him as a threat. dents in his armor are caused by the fact that they see him as a potential future adversary. It will be a partisan and hyper- political effort to hurt the secretary's political future.
It's almost impossible for Buttigieg and his team to prepare for the storm that's coming, according to the Democratic strategist who helped guide the Obama administration through Solyndra.
He recalled that a reporter from a Washington newspaper would email him every single day for a year and a half, with a new trove of documents. The reporter wanted a reaction for a story that was going to run by 4:30 p.m., acknowledging that he still has "nightmares about the daily routine."
"I don't know if he or the people around him are prepared for that level of scrutiny," the Obama veteran said. That's not a knock on him. There's no way you could have been through it.
The Democratic strategist said that Landrieu may not fully insulate Buttigieg from the blowback in an investigation.
He said that you're going to have a big push to spend the money. "Mitch Landrieu's portfolio will either evolve or $$$[ $$$[ $$$[ $$$[, or he'll be less front and center once the money is out the door." The heads of the agencies that are implementing and overseeing these grants are going to be left behind. When there is an inevitable scandal,Mitch will probably be gone. It will most likely be on Pete or the agency that is in the crossfire.
