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Republicans ramp up their political response to Ohio train derailment: Blaming Pete Buttigieg [1]

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Date: 2023-02-27  

House Republicans are planning hearings by multiple committees, and like most House committee hearings under Republican control, the plan is to use them to attack the Biden administration’s response to the disaster. Mind you, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, was very slow to request help from the federal government.

That House Republican plan is reflected in a showboating letter from House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer to Buttigieg. Comer is demanding an explanation for why the Transportation Department has such a “slow pace in resolving this matter.” National Transportation Safety Board investigations of such derailments routinely take a year or more, and within weeks Comer is making noise about a slow pace. The NTSB was on the scene on Feb. 5, while the Environmental Protection Agency had been on the scene on Feb. 4, after the train derailed around 8:54 PM on Feb. 3.

Comer also gets the details of the NTSB’s preliminary report wrong:

The report explained that the train passed through several hot bearing detectors signaling that a wheel bearing had critically overheated. 5. The train subsequently came to a stop where a crew then observed fire and smoke from a possible derailment. The wheel’s failure, occurring moments before the derailment, was also observed by NTSB investigators via surveillance footage from a local residence.

The report explained that the detectors showed the wheel bearing’s temperature rising, but it traveled past multiple detectors before the temperature had risen to the level above ambient temperature that triggers an alarm. When the alarm went off, the train didn’t just happen to stop in the passive voice—the crew braked.

Comer’s focus is on portraying the DOT, and Buttigieg in particular, as unresponsive and uncaring and incompetent, and he’s using the NTSB’s meticulous investigation process as a cudgel. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee are also considering investigations, Axios reports.

Then we have Sens. Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance pretending to be concerned about workers and the safety implications of staffing reductions:

Current and former rail workers, industry observers, and reform advocates have pointed to precision-scheduled railroading (PSR), by which rail companies such as Norfolk Southern increase efficiency and drive down costs by moving more freight with fewer workers, as a potential contributor to the accident. We have voiced concerns with PSR, as well as with this administration’s prioritizing of efficiency over resilience in its national infrastructure and transportation systems. By that token, it is not unreasonable to ask whether a crew of two rail workers, plus one trainee, is able to effectively monitor 150 cars.

This is all true, and it’s all for show.

Where House Republicans seem mostly interested in setting up more show trials of Biden administration officials, Rubio and Vance are gesturing toward stronger regulations—on how the speed-ups of precision scheduled railroading have taxed workers and infrastructure, how reduced inspections and longer trains may mean more things like wheel bearings failing, and on how trains carrying hazardous materials should be classified. These are questions Democrats have been asking. Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent include them in "5 good points the right is making about the Ohio train disaster," which I will charitably assume is intended as a little light trolling, a challenge to Republicans to actually follow through on the good points they are making. “It’s unclear whether some of these figures will match their rhetoric with action,” Waldman and Sargent write, and they can be expected to call it out when Republicans fail to match their rhetoric with action. I’m just not interested in giving Republicans even that much credit—until they take action.

If Republicans want to put into place stronger safety and environmental and labor laws, by all means. Show me the goods. And yes, this train derailment is as good a place as any to get started on that. I’ll just be over here waiting, but not holding my breath.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/27/2155239/-Republicans-ramp-up-their-political-response-to-Ohio-train-derailment-Blaming-Pete-Buttigieg

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