The House pushed through an amendment to slash Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s salary to $1 on Tuesday evening.
Introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the amendment would be added to the 2024 Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill if passed. The amendment was introduced under the Holman Rule, which allows the slashing of annual salaries of individual federal workers to $1.
SOCIAL SECURITY UPDATE: FIRST ROUND OF DIRECT PAYMENTS WORTH UP TO $4,555 ARRIVES IN ONE DAY
“I’m proud to announce my amendment to FIRE Pete Buttigieg just PASSED the House. Pothole Pete staged fake bike rides to the White House and used private planes funded by taxpayers to receive awards for the way certain people have sex. American taxpayers should not be on the hook for paying for his lavish trips or his salary,” Greene wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Only the president can fire Cabinet members.
🚨 BREAKING: I’m proud to announce my amendment to FIRE Pete Buttigieg just PASSED the House.
Pothole Pete staged fake bike rides to the White House and used private planes funded by taxpayers to receive awards for the way certain people have sex.
American taxpayers should not… pic.twitter.com/9fq9XrXLV2 — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 7, 2023
Republicans attacked Buttigieg after a video from 2021 appeared to show security staffers unloading his bike from the back of an SUV so that he could ride to a White House Cabinet meeting and back to the Department of Transportation. Conservatives claimed he staged the bike ride, but the DOT and Buttigieg denied the accusations, noting he bikes the 3-mile trip occasionally.
Greene attacked Buttigieg for his slow response to a train derailment in eastern Ohio earlier this year.
“These fraudulent actions of Secretary Buttigieg illustrate that he is not to be trusted in leading our Department of Transportation,” Greene said on the House floor. “While Secretary Buttigieg was taking taxpayer-funded carbon-emitting private jets to receive LGBTQ awards, he failed to serve the Americans in East Palestine who were devastated by the train derailment and chemical earlier this year.”
Residents expressed frustration with the federal government’s response as the Norfolk Southern train was carrying hazardous substances. Buttigieg waited roughly three weeks to visit East Palestine and later apologized for his delayed response.
“I felt strongly about this and could have expressed that sooner,” Buttigieg said in February. “I was taking pains to respect the role that I have and the role that I don’t have, and that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt about what was happening to this community.”
Buttigieg received an award in September 2022 from Quebec’s largest LGBT organizations for “an individual or group who has made exceptional contributions to the advancement of LGBTQ rights.” Buttigieg flew on taxpayer-funded flights using private jets managed by the Federal Aviation Administration to receive the award.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Secretary Buttigieg mostly travels by commercial airline, and has directed that travel and logistical decisions be grounded in efficient and responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” a DOT spokesperson told Fox News Digital last year. “Given that commercial air travel is usually the cheapest way for the Secretary and his staff to travel, 108 of the 126 flights for DOT trips he has taken have been on commercial airlines.”
“However, there are some cases where it is more efficient and/or less expensive for the Secretary and accompanying personnel to fly on a 9-seater FAA plane rather than commercial flights,” the spokesperson continued. “Use of the FAA plane in limited, specific cases has helped to maximize efficiency and save thousands of taxpayer dollars.”
