While gas prices soar around the nation, on Monday at a press conference at which he spoke with Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg lauded the nationwide electric vehicle charging network the Biden administration is pushing, saying that Americans from “rural to urban to suburban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) fired back, “Tell me you’re a liberal elite without telling me you’re a liberal elite.”
Tell me you’re a liberal elite without telling me you’re a liberal elite. https://t.co/XLkFw7LUbG
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 8, 2022
Buttigieg started by intoning, “In our economy transportation is the single biggest contributor to climate change and is responsible for over 55% of nitrogen oxides, dangerous gases that can contribute to asthma and other respiratory diseases. So it also means transportation has to be a big part of the solution to the climate crisis and to air pollution.”
Ignoring the extra time it often takes for workers to take public transit instead of private vehicles, Buttigieg continued, “One of our best tools for doing that is public transit. Transit gets riders where they need to be, efficiently and affordably with far less pollution than driving and it’s even good for drivers of cars because it means less congestion on our roads. And transit is even better when it’s clean transit; modern electric buses that don’t pollute at all.”
Buttigieg made sure to plug unions: “We often talk about the costs of failure on climate, and for good reason but we should also celebrate what Americans stand to gain through our transformation to a cleaner transportation system. For example, we’re talking about a lot of good jobs with a choice to join a union. Building, maintaining and operating the electric transit buses of the future. And for the first time in this program we have dedicated funding for training to make sure that the skilled operators and the mechanics working on diesel buses today are ready to be the electric transit workers of tomorrow.”
“And these electric buses must be built in America. Something that will create a lot of good-paying manufacturing jobs across the country,” he insisted.
Essentially arguing that Americans should purchase electric vehicles, he said, “Clean transportation can bring significant cost savings for the American people as well. Last month we announced a $5 billion investment to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network so that people from rural to urban to suburban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”
Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) also took aim at Harris and Buttigieg’s push for electric buses, tweeting, “Vice President Kamala Harris and DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg spent the afternoon promoting electric vehicles and Green New Deal policies. Are you kidding me? The Biden Administration could not be more tone deaf.
Vice President Kamala Harris and DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg spent the afternoon promoting electric vehicles and Green New Deal policies. Are you kidding me?
The Biden Administration could not be more tone deaf.
— Markwayne Mullin (@RepMullin) March 7, 2022
“The national average price of gasoline in the U.S. today broke the existing record, rewriting the all-time high to today’s $4.104 per gallon,” GasBuddy reported on Monday. “The previous all-time high was set back in 2008 at $4.103 per gallon, just ahead of the U.S. Great Recession and housing crisis.”