Financial Feminist - 166. Listen to This Before Your Next Flight with Secretary Pete Buttigieg

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Are you tired of hidden airline fees, frustrating delays, and feeling powerless as a passenger?  Then you won’t want to miss today’s conversation! Join Tori as she sits down with US Secretary of ...Transportation Pete Buttigieg for an eye-opening discussion on the future of travel. From groundbreaking airline passenger protections and the unveiling of FlightRights.gov to ambitious high-speed rail projects and a vision for safer roads, this episode is packed with insights that will impact your everyday life. Discover how the Department of Transportation is fighting for your rights, enhancing accessibility, and making transportation more equitable and sustainable. Resources mentioned in this episode: Flightrights.gov Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at: https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/166-listen-to-this-before-your-next-flight-with-sec-pete-buttigieg/ Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz. Special thanks to our sponsors: Thrive Causemetics Get an exclusive 10% off your first order at thrivecausemetics.com/FFPOD Masterclass Get an extra 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/FFPOD Squarespace Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. Hill House Visit hillhousehome.com and use the discount code TORI at check out for 15% off. Bossbabe Subscribe to The Bossbabe Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform to level up your business this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of Financial Feminist is sponsored by Thrive Cosmetics, Squarespace, and Masterclass. Refresh your everyday look with foolproof vegan products made with clean, skin-loving ingredients. Get an exclusive 10% off your first order at thrivecosmetics.com slash ffpod. Build a beautiful website to get your message out into the world with Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash ffpod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Masterclass is the only streaming platform where you can learn and grow with over 200 of the world's best. Get an extra 15% off any annual membership
Starting point is 00:00:30 at masterclass.com slash FF pod. If you're that person who is just trying to survive the summer heat and girls saying because I don't do well in heat, Hill House Home has got you covered. They invented the viral nap dress, which has the most flattering and comfortable fit with their signature smocking, and their dresses are easy and versatile. Hill House Home makes fun fashion that makes
Starting point is 00:00:51 you feel good, and celebrities like Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo have been spotted in Hill House dresses. You can wear the same dress whether you're running errands or whether you're going to a wedding that evening. You can go to hillhousethome.com and use discount code TORI at checkout for 15% off your purchase. ["The Daily Show Theme"] Hello, financial feminists. I'm so excited to see you. Welcome to the show.
Starting point is 00:01:29 If you are new here and you're just here for Pete, just go forward like two minutes and we'll get into the interview. But if you're an oldie, buddy, goodie, welcome back. My name is Tori. I run her first under K, which is a money career platform for women. I believe I was put on this earth to fight for your financial rights. And here on this show and in our work in general, we talk about how money affects women differently. We teach women how to save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses,
Starting point is 00:01:52 feel financially confident, and we fight the patriarchy by getting you rich. Hell yeah. Okay. Today was a very fun experience. We love when we just have people that we recognize and respect and it's just so fun having them on the show. And I will say candidly, I was just telling Kristin this off mic that every time we have some sort of politician or some sort of person that I've followed for a very long time, I don't get nervous per se, but I do the like, I need to be very formal and very official. And then I also do the thing where I'm like, yeah, but they're just regular people and they want to have a good time because they're doing
Starting point is 00:02:25 back to back to back to back interviews. And then I, I end up being too formal, but at the same time, trying to crack jokes. And it's just funny. It's just, that's what happens. But secretary Pete Buttigieg is on the show today and we're very, very, very excited to have him. And we're talking about something that is affecting your everyday life all the time, which is not only transportation, because he is the Secretary of Transportation for the United States government, but also specifically, we're focusing a lot of our time together on airline fees. And if you haven't seen this before, they are doing some really incredible legislation to make sure that if your flight gets
Starting point is 00:03:01 delayed or if something happens, you are entitled to compensation and not having to, as I jokingly say, but not really a joke, in our conversation with him, you don't have to yell at them on Twitter anymore to give them what you want and what you deserve. We're really excited for this conversation and it's very applicable to your everyday life. So Pete Buttigieg serves as the 19th Secretary of Transportation, having been sworn in on February 3rd, 2021. His focus as Secretary is to deliver the world's leading transportation system for the American people and economy. He has worked to achieve organizational excellence
Starting point is 00:03:34 in the department's operations and to focus the department on five policy goals, safety, jobs, equity, climate, and innovation. The first openly gay person confirmed to serve in a president's cabinet. Also, we recorded this for Pride Month, so hell yeah. Secretary Buttigieg previously served two terms as mayor of his hometown, South Bend, Indiana, where he worked across the aisle to transform the city's future. Household income grew, poverty fell, and unemployment was cut in half. His work on transportation as mayor was nationally recognized, including an award for innovative streetscape design from the US Department of Transportation, where he now serves. He has also
Starting point is 00:04:09 served for seven years as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, taking a leave of absence from the mayor's office for a deployment to Afghanistan in 2014. Secretary Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and completed a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. He lives with his husband, Chastain, their two children, Gus and Penelope, and their dog. So today we are discussing all things transportation, but really focused on airline transit, the delays and the cancellations and what you are entitled to. So this is very practical and very informative. We also talk about high-speed rail, which makes me very excited, as well as other things that the DOT is doing to make all of our lives easier. So without further
Starting point is 00:04:51 ado, let's go ahead and get into it. So I'm sitting in the office in DC, but our family's in Michigan, so that's, that's all. Yeah. I went to DC for the first time last year. It was very lovely. I had never been, I did the whole monument tour and everything. So it was great, that's all. Yeah. I went to DC for the first time last year. It was very lovely. I had never been. I did the whole monument tour and everything. So it was great. That's great. It's a great city. Yeah, it's a complicated scene. But as a city, it's great. Yeah, it was World Cup time at the time too. So everybody, the whole city was just like, everybody was so excited. We're so excited to have you. One of the questions we like asking is what your first money memory is. Our podcast is called Financial Feminist and we love talking about money and women and feminism. So what is the first time you remember thinking about
Starting point is 00:05:30 or encountering money? Oh, wow. I remember I used to get an allowance, it was a buck, and I would use it on baseball cards mostly. I guess that was my first kind of concept of saving and consuming and all of that. Do you remember a particular baseball card that you were like you had to save for? If I was lucky, I'd come along to the grocery store and then I get to pick out a pack and
Starting point is 00:05:54 then I would go home. I was very nerdy. I'd alphabetize them all. I was more interested in baseball cards than I was in baseball to be honest. I became briefly and very obsessed. Nicole Zickman My partner collects them and still has multiple containers worth of them. So yeah, it's the thing that he loves too. So funny. The big thing we wanted to talk to you about today, especially with summer travel and full swing is about the new proposed protections for consumers on flights. And we've all been there where I think we've all been there. I think we've had some sort of terrible experience on a flight and gotten stranded or multiple
Starting point is 00:06:30 hour delays. So can we talk about what is happening with airlines and flyers and why was it so important to build this legislation? So the bottom line is we are out to make sure that airlines take better care of passengers. We got a lot of authorities as the Department of Transportation that we knew if we use them in a tougher, stronger way, we could get better results. Part of that has to do with refunds. So if your flight is canceled,
Starting point is 00:06:57 or if you get such a long delay, more than three hours, that it doesn't even make sense for you to take that flight anymore, we are specifying that the airline not only has to give you your money back, they have to give it back to you without your asking. One thing that we've been paying a lot of attention to is the difference between opt-in and opt-out. See, opt-in is how it used to work, which meant you could ask for your money back. And in theory, they had to give it to you, but you had to push for it. Maybe they'd offer something else
Starting point is 00:07:22 instead. You had to get them on the phone. And so it meant that many people, maybe most people, exactly, or you had to complain to us. And then we would chase it down. We wound up finding airlines, millions of dollars to get people billions of dollars of refunds back. We're changing it to be automatic. So unless you ask for something else,
Starting point is 00:07:39 unless you're saying I'd rather have miles or I'd rather you rebook me, otherwise you're gonna get your money back. They have seven days to put it back on the same card you used to book the flight in the first place. And that's an example of how we can make it simpler and easier. Another thing we're doing is just transparency. We're requiring the airlines to put up more information about what the fees are. Sometimes you see this ad for an airfare looks great. You go to book the ticket, somehow it's like double that because there's all these fees and we're requiring that that be more transparent. The airlines are pushing
Starting point is 00:08:08 back. They're actually suing us right now over that requirement. But we think it's on strong legal ground. We also think it's the right thing to do. I even think it's good for the airline industry because if they have more trust from their passengers, I think they'll run a better business. So you're talking about, you know, when we go to book and it turns out you also have to buy an extra bag and you have to choose to pick your seats, like all of that is going to be more transparent upfront. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:08:34 Yeah, we're requiring that that information be communicated upfront, Wi-Fi fee, seat fee, change fee, cancel fee, all that has to be clear so that you really know what you're getting. And if you pay one of those extra fees for something and you don't get it, like you pay extra for a bag and it doesn't come on time. Or you pay for Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi doesn't work, you gotta get your money back. Yeah. How does this legislation allow airline consumers to just change the experience of travel?
Starting point is 00:09:03 Because to your point, and I've been there, I think we've all been there where it was like jumping through hoops. And yeah, I would yell on Twitter to try to get the refund. But it seems a lot more streamlined. So you mentioned just, you know, it happening without people having to ask for it. And then the seven day period, anything else of like, walk me through somebody traveling, like what is changing about, you know, from where they book to where they're getting to their destination? Yeah. So first of all, before you even book, we've set up a new tool. It's called flightrights.gov.
Starting point is 00:09:34 And if you go there, you can see a dashboard of different things that the airlines will do. They go above and beyond the legal minimum, but that we can also go back and enforce now that they promised us, promised the government that they're going to do it. Like if you get stuck and it's their fault, are they gonna get you a meal? Are they gonna get you a hotel? Are they gonna get you a ground transportation? Are they gonna rebook you on another flight, even if it's with a different airline?
Starting point is 00:09:55 So I would definitely encourage everybody, go to that website, flightrights.gov, before you buy, so that you know how each airline will treat you if there's a problem. Then when you're at the airport, you know how each airline will treat you if there's a problem. Then when you're at the airport, you know your rights. And this website has good information about that too. And again, yeah, we're trying to make it so you don't even have to ask for a lot of these things.
Starting point is 00:10:13 And then on the back end, if you have a problem, let us know. I mean, first go to the airline and they should take care of you. But if they don't, then we have an office of consumer protection that has, just in the time we've been here, we've actually issued more and tougher fines just in the three and a half years I've been here than the last 20 years combined because we're trying to make sure that the airlines behave differently. Now, on top of all of that, we're trying to make sure problems are less likely
Starting point is 00:10:41 to happen in the first place. It's why we're investing in better airports. Part of the Biden infrastructure plan, it's not just roads and bridges that we're fixing. We're trying to make sure problems are less likely to happen in the first place. It's why we're investing in better airports. Part of the Biden infrastructure plan, it's not just roads and bridges that we're fixing. We're also improving the airport terminals. Things like baggage systems that you might never see, but fixing it up is going to help make sure that you get your bag when you thought you were going to get your bag. We're also pressing the airlines to have more on-time performance and they're doing better, I have to say. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:04 Compared to two years ago when we had just off the charts cancellations and delays, right now we're actually on track to match last year, which was the lowest rate of cancellations in a decade. So, you know, all that pressure is working. I think it's changing how the airlines behave. We've got a long way to go, but they are responding if only because we're making them. And we've got more rules that we're developing right now to reach into some other areas where we think airlines need to take better care of passengers. Are those same rules and regulations relevant, whether it's a budget airline or something that is more of a standard airline?
Starting point is 00:11:36 Yes, this is important. Look, those low cost airlines, their whole business model is there no frills, they're not going to offer some of the same flexibility and you know, you pay for that difference if you take a different airline, but everybody has to meet the same floor and we're raising that floor. So I don't care if it's a last minute super cheap fare or if you're on kind of mainline first class, whatever, those refund rules apply, those transparency rules apply, and we have the authority to enforce on any of those airlines. Yeah. So when do refunds come into play here?
Starting point is 00:12:11 Like with this new rule, when as a passenger am I entitled to a refund? What has to happen? So first of all, if your flight is canceled for any reason, you're entitled to a refund. If they rebook you on another flight, great. You know, sometimes you're on your way to a meeting or a wedding or something and the new flight's not going to even get you there, you get your money back. Also, if there's a significant delay and you decide not to take
Starting point is 00:12:34 the flight. So if you're delayed by more than three hours or more than six hours, if it's an international flight and you wind up just booking a different flight or you don't even take the trip, you get your money back. Similarly, if they change the routing or they change, make a significant change, you know, which airport you're going to, that kind of thing, that can also qualify. Bottom line is these kinds of dramatic changes, you need to be empowered to get your money back
Starting point is 00:12:59 if it means you're not even gonna take the trip at all. I've heard a lot from airlines, because I am the person that negotiates and tries to get, you know, whatever I'm doing. They will tell me like, oh, the weather was bad. So it's not our fault. Does this cover weather as well? Yeah, it does. So there is a difference. There's definitely more that you're entitled to if it's the airlines fault than it's weather. But just to be clear, when I'm talking about you getting your money back if your flight's canceled, that's for any reason, whether it's mechanical, crew, weather, you name it. Now, it's also true,
Starting point is 00:13:30 if it is, everybody gets the airlines don't control the weather, right? That's fair enough. But if it's something that they are responsible for, like maintenance or staffing, then they also take care of other things. And this is where that website comes in handy. So you can see how just about all of the top 10 airlines will now guarantee that if you get stuck and it's their fault, they're gonna get you a hotel or they're gonna cover your meals. And by the way, that was zero out of 10 when we got here. So, you know, this transparency has really had an effect
Starting point is 00:14:00 because what we did was when we had the idea to put up that website, I wrote a letter to the airline CEOs and I said, look, we're gonna be putting this information up in a couple of weeks. It's gonna be really easy for consumers to see. You might wanna change your customer service plans before we put this out into the world. And they did, they responded to that.
Starting point is 00:14:19 I think because they knew it would be important for passengers making decisions. But yeah, it's why I can't say enough about that website, flightrights.gov. And again, we're working on more regulations to come. We're not trying to regulate for the sake of regulating, but when we see a need or an issue, we're getting a lot of complaints about something,
Starting point is 00:14:36 we're gonna step in. Yeah, we can link it down below in the show notes too, so people have access to it. Great, good. Can you talk about some of the upcoming rules you're proposing, including getting rid of family seating fees and then expanding rights for passengers with disabilities and those who use wheelchairs? Yeah, so the fee-free family seating, I always thought this was the right thing to do, but I care about it a lot more now that Chast and my husband and I have two
Starting point is 00:15:01 twin toddlers. And we've had that experience often of being in being on a plane and just all the wrangling that goes on with little kids. Right. The last thing you need in that situation is to find out that you were being seated separate from your kids and being told that you have to pay extra or you got a bag or bargain with some other passenger, make your case to the flight attendant just to sit next to your kids. Everybody should be able to sit next to their kids. So we're developing a rule
Starting point is 00:15:30 that would make that a requirement that airlines do that. Now, there is a lot of legal process you have to follow to finalize a rule like that. Our message to the airlines is don't wait until we do the rule. We're still doing the rule, but you could make this your policy now. And several of them have. It's another thing you can see on our website. I think we're up
Starting point is 00:15:49 to four now at the top 10 that have agreed that they're going to do that. My message to the other six is we're going to do this regulation, but don't wait. On the wheelchair side, this is extremely important. Passengers who use wheelchairs often tell me that they've just decided to stop flying altogether because they've had terrible experiences with their wheelchair being mishandled and sometimes damaged or destroyed. And if you think about that,
Starting point is 00:16:19 especially if you have a specialized wheelchair, which a lot of people do, that doesn't just mess up your trip, it messes up your life until the chair is back. They've compared it to arriving at a destination without your legs. We're developing a rule that will require airlines to do better. It specifies the training that has to go on, the condition of it. It even says if they screw up your wheelchair, you, the passenger, get to choose your own
Starting point is 00:16:49 vendor to fix it instead of the airline sending it off to their vendor. That's actually something that can make a major difference in how quickly you get results. That is right now in a process of getting public comments. We're trying to get more information from wheelchair users. And we're accepting information from airlines too, anybody wants to weigh in on that. Before we finalize that rule, we think it's really important because passengers need safe and dignified travel.
Starting point is 00:17:14 And just a reminder, sometimes people think about these disability issues as kind of a specialized issue. And if I'm not part of the disability community, maybe it's not for me. In addition to thinking about how this is just the right thing to do, you should also remember that many people, most people sooner or later age into disability of some kind. So this is for people who are impacted by it now and people who will eventually be impacted
Starting point is 00:17:39 by it. Yeah. I think about my Nana, she had an incident on a plane where, yeah, didn't have everything she needed to be able to get off the plane safely and get her luggage. And yeah, to your point, if you're not disabled currently, you know, that may be something that you end up aging into. So I really appreciate you all focusing on that and highlighting it. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. You know that we love Squarespace. They are one of the first resources, actually the first resource we ever used at her first 100K. It
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Starting point is 00:19:06 So as you might know, I am going to a wedding in Italy this summer. It is in the Omafi coast. It is going to be hot. It is going to be like 90 degrees. I have to wear pastels. I don't own pastels and I'm curvy girl. So a little hard to fit. So when Hill House reached out to us about sponsoring the podcast, I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, because Hill House Home invented the viral nap dress. And you're thinking nap dress, but the nap dress for the wedding? Oh, it's like flattering and it's comfortable. And they've got like their signature little smocking fit. It's so great. So whether you have weddings or a vacation or you just need something comfortable to survive the heat in Hill House Home makes
Starting point is 00:19:45 fun fashion that makes you feel good. The other cool thing is that they have this like one signature dress with some other styles too, but in every single color or pattern you could possibly want. So whether I'm vibing with my normal like black vibes or I'm going pastel for the wedding, they've got me covered. You can use discount code TORI for 15% off your first purchase at hillhousethome.com. When we're talking about all of the changes that are being made to airlines around fees,
Starting point is 00:20:19 when can we expect as an average consumer for those changes to start impacting us on a day-to-day basis? So a lot of these changes are taking effect quite quickly. The coming months, that refund rule will go fully into effect. It's already become law through the FAA reauthorization. We're just nailing down the mechanics of how to enforce it. There's a six-month period, which started about a month ago. So we've got about roughly five months to go this fall on the fee transparency rule. And again, our message to the airlines is don't wait till the last minute like you can start doing this now. But that's when it kicks in as a legal matter. And then some of these others, they're still in development. So it's a good time to weigh
Starting point is 00:20:56 in and let us know your view before those rules get finalized. Yeah. Something we chatted about with a housing economist recently was the importance of mass transit. And so we're kind of switching gears here, but considering the urgency of climate crisis, especially, how can the DOT accelerate the development of something like high speed rail in addition to when we're talking about plane travel, airline travel? Yeah, it's a great question. We really think about housing and transportation as closely connected. Whether you're thinking about it from a climate perspective, the less you have to travel around your city or town or area in order to get what you need, the less you have pollution and
Starting point is 00:21:36 that largely comes to how we plan communities. But also just affordability, right? So many people live in a place they can't really afford because they need to be close to work. And other people live impossibly far away from work and have this ridiculous commute just to be able to live somewhere they can afford. Part of how we can solve that is transportation and making sure transportation is better connected with housing and work. It's what we call transit oriented development. So we're actually funding financing for transit oriented development in more and more places. And we're just making sure we take it into account
Starting point is 00:22:11 the same way a family has to think about, it's not like you get to think about housing one year and transportation the next, like that's part of your costs every month. And we know that we can better financially empower people by giving them more and better options. That's part of what's at stake when we're funding transit and modernizing transit.
Starting point is 00:22:31 It's not just the most dense places. It's one thing in Manhattan, but a place like where I grew up, South Bend, Indiana. It has a bus system, but we can do so much more with some of the newer technologies instead of assuming that the kind of fixed route, fixed schedule hub and spoke 40 foot bus system that we all grew up with is the only way to do this.
Starting point is 00:22:52 And we're leaning into new technologies, things like micro transit, micro mobility, scooters, bikes, try to fit that all together into a bigger picture of how we make it easier, safer, and more affordable to get wherever you need to go from where you live to where you work to where you shop to everywhere else. Yeah. And I live in Seattle and we just got our second light rail line, which is very exciting because the other one was just north to south and it wasn't spread out beyond that. It was just north Seattle to the airport basically. And so now we have from Seattle to Bellevue, which is the neighboring city, and it's over
Starting point is 00:23:30 water on a bridge and everybody's so excited. Everybody's so excited about that second transit line. It changes everything and it's going to make a big difference at Seattle. And these transit links, they change the shape of our neighborhoods and our cities. Yeah. But most of all, they change what our lives are like. Because it turns out, if you think about it, we don't really experience distance in miles. We experience it in minutes. Yes. When it comes to our commute. If you live 30 miles away from some place, but you can get there in 30 minutes, that's very different than if you live five miles away, but it takes you an hour and a half to get there. And I've seen examples of both. Yeah. I'm recording this from Los Angeles, which is the perfect example of,
Starting point is 00:24:12 okay, it's five miles away, but I'm going to be in the car for 50 minutes. Yeah. And I will plus one high speed rail. I want it so badly. Please, if we can make it happen somehow, trains are fun, exciting. I would take a train over a flight any day. So if there's any possibility of that, that would be just divine, be lovely. So look, we are on it. We just funded a project called Brightline West. They're gonna run a high-speed train
Starting point is 00:24:36 from Las Vegas to Southern California. They hope to be in service by 2028. So they're moving very quickly. There's the California High-Speed Rail North-South.'s going to take longer, but could connect huge parts of the population on the west coast. We're funding some planning actually in the Pacific Northwest, a vision called Cascades, which would benefit Seattle. There's a project or a proposal, I should say, in Texas taking shape to link Dallas and Houston. And that's a good example of where you got two cities that are a short flight of where you got two cities that
Starting point is 00:25:05 are a short flight or a long drive apart from each other. There are a lot of people in them. It makes a ton of sense to have them connected by high-speed rail. And of course, we're improving the Northeast Corridor. The closest thing we have to high-speed rail in the US right now is the Boston, New York, Washington Corridor.
Starting point is 00:25:20 Really there, what we're doing is we're making up for lost time. There is infrastructure there that's more than 100 years old. We're actually working on a tunnel in Baltimore that's 150 years old. So we just got to bring that up to speed, no pun intended, just to make it reliable. And then over time make it faster too. What are you excited about next with the DOT? Like obviously it sounds like high-speed rail you're working on, anything else that you're really excited about that you want to tell folks about?
Starting point is 00:25:48 Yeah, I mean, some of this stuff is dazzling. I mean, you know, autonomous vehicles, we're not that far away from from flying cars. I mean, it's not gonna happen while I'm secretary, but but we're already doing work on the safety approvals for what are called EV tallies basically starts as a helicopter and winds up as a plane. That could be a really important part of air mobility in the 2030s. Commercial space launches are going on. But actually some of the stuff that most excites me is a little, maybe a little more low tech and a little closer to home. It's safety. It's the work we can do to make it safer to just be a pedestrian or a driver or a person in the U.S.
Starting point is 00:26:23 We lose as many people to car crashes as we do to gun violence in this country, about 40,000 a year. And everybody's kind of used to it, which is something I'm trying to break. We're trying to set America on a course for what we call Vision Zero, the idea that the only acceptable number of roadway deaths is zero. Some people think that's really pie on the sky, but I would point out that the number of people who lost their lives in commercial airliner crashes last year was zero. And that's not just something that happened randomly, that that's a lot of work and regulation and inspection and technology went into that. And if we can do that for a form of transportation
Starting point is 00:26:58 that involves flying through the air, we should be able to do that on the ground. And we're funding everything from new technologies like automatic emergency braking, we should be able to do that on the ground. And we're funding everything from new technologies like automatic emergency braking, we're going to require that on cars in the future, to stuff like better lighting and crosswalks and road designs that we're doing in hundreds of cities around the country that are going to make a difference. We finally seen the numbers start to come down a little, but we've got a long way to go. Well, and I would imagine, I don't know the data on this, we probably do, that if we get more people off the roadways and onto public transport, there's less likely of fatal crashes, yes? Yes, there's a safety benefit for sure. Transit is
Starting point is 00:27:33 much safer than driving. There's also a congestion benefit, right? Even if you don't use transit, you benefit from the people who do because there's less competition for those scarce roadways. It's part of why we're really big on transit. Anything else we didn't talk about that you want to talk about? There's so much I could geek out on, but look, big picture is, you know, we're determined to make this a period of the biggest expansion in airline passenger rights in history. We're working to make our transportation cleaner, greener, safer. And a lot of what we're doing is part of a bigger agenda that President Biden's laid
Starting point is 00:28:04 out. I've got one piece of it here on the transportation side, but it's really about just lowering costs because we know what people are up against, especially with what happened after COVID to the economy. The economy came back, but prices really went up. So it's why we're doing things like getting insulin down to 35 bucks a month for senior. By the way, the president wants it to do for everybody. Congress won't let him do that, but that could change in the future. In the meantime, got it at 35 bucks a month for seniors. Prescription drugs cap to 2000 bucks a year. Health insurance costs are down. Cutting junk fees, whether it's the stuff I get to work on or credit card fees and overdraft fees, which are a big deal. I know you've been empowering your audience with information about this,
Starting point is 00:28:42 because those dollars really add up and we're going to keep pushing on that. To me, the whole point of politics and government is to make everyday life a little bit easier. And we're hard at work on that. That was super informative. Thank you. I'm even I'm like, thank goodness I don't have to yell at people on Twitter anymore. Because that was half the battle sometimes. This is just like, oh, you won't answer my call. I'm going to go to Twitter. Get your attention. like, how do I get your attention? Truly. Yeah, and then people copy me on Twitter or some people even guess my email on them. They copy me on their customer service emails. The more we just not have that problem in the first place, the better.
Starting point is 00:29:12 Just BCC Secretary Buttigieg and expect him to step in. I appreciate your time, Secretary. Thank you so much. Same here. Thank you. Thank you so much to Secretary Buttigieg for joining us today. Such a pleasure having him on the show. Pete, you're welcome back anytime. And thank you so much for listening as always. We appreciate it. And feel free to share this episode with somebody in your life who might
Starting point is 00:29:34 not know, might not know about all of the incredible work that they're doing, especially I think the focus on accessibility around disability. And I'm literally going to send this episode to my Nana so that she can listen and know that her wheelchair is going to be better protected, which I really appreciate. So thank you as always for being here, Financial Feminist. We appreciate it and we will talk to you soon. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, associate producer Tamisha Grant, researched by Ariel Johnson, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel, Amanda LeFeu, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhnakeva, Taylor Cho, Kaylin Sprinkle,
Starting point is 00:30:32 Sasha Bonar, Claire Karonin, Darrell Ann Ingman, and Janelle Reisner, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100k team and community for supporting this show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100k, our guests and episode show nuts, visit by the Yap Media Podcast Network. I'm Hala Taha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire, Yap Media, and host of Yap Young and Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit.
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