Sec. Duffy asks Congress for $50 billion

It is Sunday, November 15th. We welcome you into Fox 5's On The Hill. I'm Tom Fitzgerald here with you. We're going to begin on the headlines. Airlines hoping to be fully functional at some point today. Authorities are still trying to determine the source behind Friday's massive nationwide ground stop. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says Friday's ground stop likely stemmed from upgrade work to an older system. But He still has not ruled out contractor error or equipment malfunction as a cause for the meltdown. One thing is clear right now, though. Officials say they are certain that there is no evidence of a cyber attack in all of this. What we're working to determine was whether we had incompetence, meaning was it user error or installator error from L3 Harris, or did they install a faulty router? Well, Duffy says air travel is expected to be fully recovered by Sunday night. He is asking for $50 billion from Congress to upgrade outdated systems. And for more on this, we want to welcome back Mario Parker. He's the managing editor for the economy and government for Bloomberg. Mario, thank you for being with us on kind of a busy week around here. Let's start with this situation here. We'll A lot of these briefings were done from the White House. We haven't heard from the president about this. What are the grades they're getting on handling this? be Well, you're seeing some dissent, at least online, right from both Republicans and Democrats speaking about this, particularly Democrats who are saying, Hakeem Jeffries in particular, who is likely to be the next speaker of the House, in particular is saying that the Secretary Duffy's request back. for $50 billion doesn't quite pass muster. In the back against the backdrop of what we just saw on Friday. So you mentioned Hakeem Jeffries likely to be the next speaker of House. There's been a lot of what people would probably remember as the second round of elections going on on Capitol Hill right now because there's just jogging going on. Jeffries appears to have a lock on the speakership. You can't quite say that yet for Democrats over in the Senate. Chuck Schumer has come out and said that he has the votes to become majority leader. Thank you, Peter. But he's got somebody on his heels right now. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen says that he is going to run for that seat. A lot of Democrats across the country, especially progressives, are calling for change in leadership. They want Schumer out as leader. Peter, so... How much of a chance does Van Hollen have of upending Schumer? Well, right now, Chuck Schumer says he has the votes. He has the record, at least based off of what we saw with the historic election over the last week and a half, two weeks or so as well. That being said, Chris Van Hollen has the support of Bernie Sanders. He has the support of incoming Michigan U.S. Senator Abdul El-Sayed as well. There continues, as you know, Tom, this this election, this midterm election, the backdrop, at least for Democrats, has been just this intraparty fight between the progressive and centrist wings. This at least shows that that fight isn't going away anytime soon. Dams don't break in one fell swoop. They start with cracks. Alyssa Slotkin, you've got Bernie Sanders, Chris Van Hollen openly challenging. Now, could these cracks become a problem that topple? Chuck Schumer's designs on this job. Unsure, right? Unsure right now whether or not this will topple him for the designs on the job. I mean, they've got 55 seats right now. Perhaps 10 people are undecided. That leaves another 45 that we don't know exactly which way the winds are blowing. And to your point, you did invoke some of the more centrist as well who are withholding some votes. So we'll they're saying that they need to see a little bit more. There needs to be a quorum. So we'll see what emerges out of that. All right. So Congress was back up on the hill this past week. I spoke with Congressman Jamie Raskin, who is due to become. The new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also Robert Garcia, who's in line to become the new chairman of the Oversight Committee, have both made it very clear there are going to be hearings and there are going to be investigations into the Trump administration. How do they, for lack of a better term, walk and chew gum at the same time when voters clearly said they wanted the economy to be jobless? Well, they're going to have to do both. They're going to have to have a lane or the people that I speak with, they're going to have to have a lane where they're putting forth legislation, whether that's raising the minimum wage, whether that's some more sweeteners for overtime as well, to show voters that they're trying to take that seriously. And then they say that they're able to connect the dots with accountability as well. Three C's is what I've heard from Democrats, corruption, chaos, and then also just the cost of living. A couple of I's that have been fluttered around as well, too. Investigation. And maybe impeachment. Now, investigation, they're very quick to talk about. Is impeachment hanging out there or is that a third rail that Democrats have been burned on a couple of times that they don't want to touch again? You can see it right with the investigation. They'll talk about investigations. They'll talk about oversight. They'll talk about accountability. When it becomes when it comes to impeachment, Democrats are getting a little bit more quiet there. It's just not the sense. That voters, to your point, Tom, have the appetite to have another theatrical show in terms of impeachments after they saw two during the first Trump administration. Mario Parker joining us. He is Bloomberg's managing editor for the economy and government. Two big areas to be in charge of. Mario, we thank you.