Buttigieg Uses Colonial Pipeline Hack to Push $2T ‘Infrastructure Bill’ — ‘Excellent, Modern Infrastructure’ a Nat’l Security Issue

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion plan for the nation’s infrastructure was needed for “national security.”

Referencing a cyber attack shutting down the Colonial Pipeline, anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “I wonder if you can tell us how the proposed infrastructure bill would have protected this pipeline from a cyber attack and whether that is central to all those things that I know some of your conservatives make fun of, things that aren’t actually tangible roads and bridges.”

Buttigieg said, “Right, I mean, this is one more reminder that infrastructure in the U.S. means a lot more than roads and bridges. Although I would remind everybody that the American Jobs Plan has a huge amount of resources to improve roads and bridges in this country among many other things.”

He continued, “The truth is that having excellent, modern infrastructure has always been a national security issue, and we are less safe and secure any time that we allow our infrastructure to degrade or to be behind the times.”

Buttigieg added, “That’s true when we think about roads and bridges, obviously. It’s a safety issue if they’re not in good shape. But it’s also true as we’re confronting threats of the future ranging from climate security to cybersecurity. It’s one of the reasons why there is such a robust amount of funding for resilience built into the President’s American Jobs Plan, an awareness that we need to be preparing and building for the future.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN