The Department of Transportation (DOT) is a cabinet-level agency of the federal government responsible for helping maintain and develop the nation’s transportation systems and infrastructure. From roads to airlines to railways, DOT carries out planning that supports the movement of Americans by cars, truck, trains, ships and planes. When it comes to ground transportation, state and local governments are largely the key government players in building new roads or running public transit systems. But DOT plays a key role by providing funding to lower levels of government to improve the means of transport that Americans use. With air travel, the Transportation Department has a more hands-on role, as it regulates commercial airlines and airports in a dual effort to both promote the industry and ensure the safety of passengers. Of all its agencies, DOT has taken the most flack for its running of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—an operation that continues to be the subject of criticism for not staying on top of potential problems.
Research and Innovative Technology Administration:
RITA manages the Department of Transportation’s research and development programs, with the ultimate goal of creating technologies that can be used to improve the country’s transportation networks. The agency also compiles statistics, publishes reports and provides education in transportation-related fields. All told, the agency helps coordinates research efforts worth approximately $1 billion annually.
Crowley Maritime Corporation
|
$888,514,329
|
The Boeing Company
|
$698,862,403
|
Lockheed Martin
|
$681,571,338
|
Veritas Capital Fund II, LP
|
$541,020,631
|
Saltchuk Resources, Inc.
|
$499,214,563
|
Computer Sciences Corporation
|
$458,209,802
|
General Dynamics Corporation
|
$425,232,352
|
Phoenix Marine Co. Inc.
|
$419,986,000
|
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
|
$367,999,057
|
Chas Kurz & Co Inc.
|
$357,539,369
|
The
Center for Transportation and the Environment
was awarded a $1.2 million grant for the continued development and demonstration of an improved hybrid fuel cell bus.
What’s Off the Record at N.H.T.S.A.? Almost Everything
(by Christopher Jensen, New York Times)
Hoffa Blasts Bush Administration’s Indifference to NAFTA Harm
(International Brotherhood of Teamsters)
Fact Sheet: CAFE Reform for Passenger Cars
(White House press release)
Biographical Sketches of the Secretaries of Transportation
In Elaine Chao, nominated November 29, 2016, to be Secretary of Transportation, President-elect Donald Trump has at least one Cabinet hopeful who has relevant experience for the position. The majority of the U.S. Senate clearly recognized that, overwhelmingly confirming her appointment with a 93-6 vote on January 31, 2017.
Chao, who was born March 26, 1953, in Taipei, Taiwan, is the oldest of six daughters of refugees from mainland China. Not speaking any English, she came with her family to the United States in 1961, following her father who had preceded them. The family settled in New York and, in 1964, Chao’s father, James S.C. Chao, founded Foremost Shipping (now Foremost Group), a maritime shipping company.
Elaine Chao attended Mount Holyoke College, where she played field hockey, and earned a B.A. in economics in 1975. While there, she became a U.S. citizen. Chao then went to Harvard, working for Gulf Oil, while earning an MBA in 1979.
Chao started her career in the banking industry. She first joined Citibank as a senior lending officer in their European banking division. She took a year off to serve as a White House fellow in the first term of Ronald Reagan’s administration, working on transportation issues in the Office of Policy Development. When her fellowship ended in 1984, Chao went to Bank of America as a vice president for syndications in the bank’s capital markets group.
Chao returned to government in 1986 as deputy administrator of the Maritime Administration, part of the Department of Transportation. Two years later, she was appointed chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission. As might be expected of a daughter of a shipping company owner, Chao got good marks from members of the industry.
After George H.W. Bush took over the White House, Chao was named as deputy secretary of transportation. She urged less regulation in such issues as airline mergers.
By 1991, Chao wanted to be in control of her own agency again and was looking to improve her foreign policy credentials in the event she decided to run for a Senate seat from California, where she was based with Bank of America. She got her wish when she was made director of the Peace Corps. Under Chao, the agency began sending large numbers of volunteers to the former Soviet satellite states.
Chao left the Bush administration in 1992 to become CEO and president of United Way of America. She took over the charity in the wake of the fraud allegations against a previous president, William Aramony.
While at United Way, Chao also saw a change in her marital status; in 1993 she married Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who had recently been divorced from his first wife. It wasn’t the first link between McConnell and Chao, however. Chao’s father had donated to McConnell’s Senate campaigns since the 1980s.
When Chao left United Way in 1996, she said it was because she had succeeded in cleaning up the organization and that the departure was her idea. Unusually for a charity, however, Chao was given 18 months’ salary as severance, the same amount she would have been due contractually had she been dismissed by the United Way board. After leaving United Way, Chao went to work for the conservative Heritage Foundation.
When George W. Bush was elected, he appointed Chao to be Secretary of Labor, the first Asian-American female Cabinet member. Chao wasn’t seen has a friend of the workers during her tenure.
Toward the end of the Bush administration, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported to Congress that Chao’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) had consistently failed to follow up on reports of wage theft, sometimes advising workers to file claims on their own. “In one example, a delivery driver who was working 55 hours per week informed WHD that he was not receiving overtime pay as required,” the GAO testified. “WHD waited more than 17 months before assigning an investigator to the complaint. The investigator subsequently dropped the case without performing any investigative actions.” Subsequent investigations by the GAO showed that WHD staffers often failed even to pick up the phone when called by those seeking help.
Chao was the only Bush cabinet member to serve out the entire eight years. Her anti-worker stances were not appreciated by all the department’s employees, however. Upon her departure, some members of the American Federation of Government Employees held a good-riddance party at a Washington restaurant, and enjoyed a cake that said “Ciao to Chao.”
Chao returned to the Heritage Foundation and helped McConnell in his re-election campaigns. She worked to counter charges by McConnell’s 2014 Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, that the senator was anti-woman.
Chao also serves on several corporate boards, including Wells Fargo Bank and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Chao made $1.2 million as a director at Wells Fargo, which holds more than $400 million in Trump mortgages.
As transportation secretary, Chao will be in position to regulate her father’s business. The elder Chao has given millions of dollars to his daughter and to McConnell. Forbes magazine put her net worth at $24 million.
The McConnell-Chao Archives are housed at the University of Louisville.
If Chao is confirmed, she’ll be the second wife of a Senate Republican Leader to serve as transportation secretary. The first was Elizabeth Dole, wife of former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas.
-Steve Straehley
To Learn More:
Family’s Shipping Company Could Pose Problems for Trump’s Transportation Pick (by Josie Albertson-Grove and Masako Melissa Hirsch, ProPublica)
Elaine Chao, Ruined Department of Labor, Picked to Ensure Safety of Nation’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (by Spencer Woodman, The Nation)
Girding for a Fight, McConnell Enlists His Wife (by Jason Horowitz, New York Times)
Elaine Chao Leaves United Way (by Holly Hall, Chronicle of Philanthropy)
Staffers’ Good-Riddance Party for Chao a Labor of Love (by Joe Davidson, Washington Post
President Barack Obama is going with a Democrat this time at the Department of Transportation, whose Secretary, Republican Ray LaHood, announced in January that he would leave the job upon the confirmation of his successor. Obama nominated Anthony Foxx, who has been mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, since 2009..
Born April 30, 1971, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Foxx was raised by his mother, Laura Foxx, and his grandparents, James and Mary Foxx, who were public school teachers, and graduated from West Charlotte High School in 1989. Grandfather James Foxx was also a prominent Democratic Party activist whose endorsement was considered essential in local elections.
Anthony Foxx earned a B.A. in History at Davidson College in 1993, where he was the first African-American student body president, and a law degree at New York University School of Law in 1996.
During his Davidson years, Foxx spent two summers abroad: one in France studying the French language that his grandmother taught in school, and another in South Africa assisting legendary civil rights lawyer James Ferguson II—a family friend who in 1970 successfully argued before the Supreme Court for the desegregation of Charlotte's schools—train black lawyers in the fight against apartheid. Foxx later said his experience of witnessing the obstacles black South Africans faced in getting an education inspired him to work harder at school.
After law school, Foxx spent a month playing trumpet in New Orelans, where he and Wynton Marsalis became friends, practiced law for about a year at the Charlotte law firm of Smith, Helms, Mullis, and Moore, and served as a judicial clerk for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. He spent the remainder of the 1990s serving as a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and as staff counsel on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, where he met his wife, fellow attorney Samara Ryder.
Returning to Charlotte in 2001, Foxx practiced commercial litigation at the large law firm of Hunton & Williams until 2009, when he joined DesignLine Corporation, a hybrid electric bus manufacturer, as its deputy general counsel.
Foxx began his political career in 2004 as campaign manager for Rep. Mel Watt (D-North Carolina), who has represented North Carolina's 12th Congressional District, which includes parts of Charlotte, since 1993, and whom President Obama nominated for a different federal post—head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency—just a few days after naming Foxx. Watt’s wife, Eulada Watt, and Foxx's mother are second cousins, so Foxx had known Watt all his life. The following year, Foxx won election to the Charlotte City Council as an at-large representative, serving a pair of two-year terms and chairing the Transportation Committee.
Winning election for mayor in 2009, Foxx focused on helping small businesses, improving government efficiency and public safety, and implementating a 10-Year-Plan to End Homelessness. During his first term as mayor, Foxx led a successful bid for Charlotte to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and then served as chair of the Charlotte in 2012 Host Committee.
Foxx and his wife, Samara Foxx, have two children, Hillary and Zachary.
To Learn More:
Official Biography (pdf)
Man of the Past (by Jen Pilla Taylor, Charlotte Magazine)
Obama to Name Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx as Transportation Chief (by Franco Ordoñez, Charlotte Observer)
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is a cabinet-level agency of the federal government responsible for helping maintain and develop the nation’s transportation systems and infrastructure. From roads to airlines to railways, DOT carries out planning that supports the movement of Americans by cars, truck, trains, ships and planes. When it comes to ground transportation, state and local governments are largely the key government players in building new roads or running public transit systems. But DOT plays a key role by providing funding to lower levels of government to improve the means of transport that Americans use. With air travel, the Transportation Department has a more hands-on role, as it regulates commercial airlines and airports in a dual effort to both promote the industry and ensure the safety of passengers. Of all its agencies, DOT has taken the most flack for its running of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—an operation that continues to be the subject of criticism for not staying on top of potential problems.
Research and Innovative Technology Administration:
RITA manages the Department of Transportation’s research and development programs, with the ultimate goal of creating technologies that can be used to improve the country’s transportation networks. The agency also compiles statistics, publishes reports and provides education in transportation-related fields. All told, the agency helps coordinates research efforts worth approximately $1 billion annually.
Crowley Maritime Corporation
|
$888,514,329
|
The Boeing Company
|
$698,862,403
|
Lockheed Martin
|
$681,571,338
|
Veritas Capital Fund II, LP
|
$541,020,631
|
Saltchuk Resources, Inc.
|
$499,214,563
|
Computer Sciences Corporation
|
$458,209,802
|
General Dynamics Corporation
|
$425,232,352
|
Phoenix Marine Co. Inc.
|
$419,986,000
|
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
|
$367,999,057
|
Chas Kurz & Co Inc.
|
$357,539,369
|
The
Center for Transportation and the Environment
was awarded a $1.2 million grant for the continued development and demonstration of an improved hybrid fuel cell bus.
What’s Off the Record at N.H.T.S.A.? Almost Everything
(by Christopher Jensen, New York Times)
Hoffa Blasts Bush Administration’s Indifference to NAFTA Harm
(International Brotherhood of Teamsters)
Fact Sheet: CAFE Reform for Passenger Cars
(White House press release)
Biographical Sketches of the Secretaries of Transportation
In Elaine Chao, nominated November 29, 2016, to be Secretary of Transportation, President-elect Donald Trump has at least one Cabinet hopeful who has relevant experience for the position. The majority of the U.S. Senate clearly recognized that, overwhelmingly confirming her appointment with a 93-6 vote on January 31, 2017.
Chao, who was born March 26, 1953, in Taipei, Taiwan, is the oldest of six daughters of refugees from mainland China. Not speaking any English, she came with her family to the United States in 1961, following her father who had preceded them. The family settled in New York and, in 1964, Chao’s father, James S.C. Chao, founded Foremost Shipping (now Foremost Group), a maritime shipping company.
Elaine Chao attended Mount Holyoke College, where she played field hockey, and earned a B.A. in economics in 1975. While there, she became a U.S. citizen. Chao then went to Harvard, working for Gulf Oil, while earning an MBA in 1979.
Chao started her career in the banking industry. She first joined Citibank as a senior lending officer in their European banking division. She took a year off to serve as a White House fellow in the first term of Ronald Reagan’s administration, working on transportation issues in the Office of Policy Development. When her fellowship ended in 1984, Chao went to Bank of America as a vice president for syndications in the bank’s capital markets group.
Chao returned to government in 1986 as deputy administrator of the Maritime Administration, part of the Department of Transportation. Two years later, she was appointed chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission. As might be expected of a daughter of a shipping company owner, Chao got good marks from members of the industry.
After George H.W. Bush took over the White House, Chao was named as deputy secretary of transportation. She urged less regulation in such issues as airline mergers.
By 1991, Chao wanted to be in control of her own agency again and was looking to improve her foreign policy credentials in the event she decided to run for a Senate seat from California, where she was based with Bank of America. She got her wish when she was made director of the Peace Corps. Under Chao, the agency began sending large numbers of volunteers to the former Soviet satellite states.
Chao left the Bush administration in 1992 to become CEO and president of United Way of America. She took over the charity in the wake of the fraud allegations against a previous president, William Aramony.
While at United Way, Chao also saw a change in her marital status; in 1993 she married Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who had recently been divorced from his first wife. It wasn’t the first link between McConnell and Chao, however. Chao’s father had donated to McConnell’s Senate campaigns since the 1980s.
When Chao left United Way in 1996, she said it was because she had succeeded in cleaning up the organization and that the departure was her idea. Unusually for a charity, however, Chao was given 18 months’ salary as severance, the same amount she would have been due contractually had she been dismissed by the United Way board. After leaving United Way, Chao went to work for the conservative Heritage Foundation.
When George W. Bush was elected, he appointed Chao to be Secretary of Labor, the first Asian-American female Cabinet member. Chao wasn’t seen has a friend of the workers during her tenure.
Toward the end of the Bush administration, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported to Congress that Chao’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) had consistently failed to follow up on reports of wage theft, sometimes advising workers to file claims on their own. “In one example, a delivery driver who was working 55 hours per week informed WHD that he was not receiving overtime pay as required,” the GAO testified. “WHD waited more than 17 months before assigning an investigator to the complaint. The investigator subsequently dropped the case without performing any investigative actions.” Subsequent investigations by the GAO showed that WHD staffers often failed even to pick up the phone when called by those seeking help.
Chao was the only Bush cabinet member to serve out the entire eight years. Her anti-worker stances were not appreciated by all the department’s employees, however. Upon her departure, some members of the American Federation of Government Employees held a good-riddance party at a Washington restaurant, and enjoyed a cake that said “Ciao to Chao.”
Chao returned to the Heritage Foundation and helped McConnell in his re-election campaigns. She worked to counter charges by McConnell’s 2014 Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, that the senator was anti-woman.
Chao also serves on several corporate boards, including Wells Fargo Bank and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Chao made $1.2 million as a director at Wells Fargo, which holds more than $400 million in Trump mortgages.
As transportation secretary, Chao will be in position to regulate her father’s business. The elder Chao has given millions of dollars to his daughter and to McConnell. Forbes magazine put her net worth at $24 million.
The McConnell-Chao Archives are housed at the University of Louisville.
If Chao is confirmed, she’ll be the second wife of a Senate Republican Leader to serve as transportation secretary. The first was Elizabeth Dole, wife of former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas.
-Steve Straehley
To Learn More:
Family’s Shipping Company Could Pose Problems for Trump’s Transportation Pick (by Josie Albertson-Grove and Masako Melissa Hirsch, ProPublica)
Elaine Chao, Ruined Department of Labor, Picked to Ensure Safety of Nation’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (by Spencer Woodman, The Nation)
Girding for a Fight, McConnell Enlists His Wife (by Jason Horowitz, New York Times)
Elaine Chao Leaves United Way (by Holly Hall, Chronicle of Philanthropy)
Staffers’ Good-Riddance Party for Chao a Labor of Love (by Joe Davidson, Washington Post
President Barack Obama is going with a Democrat this time at the Department of Transportation, whose Secretary, Republican Ray LaHood, announced in January that he would leave the job upon the confirmation of his successor. Obama nominated Anthony Foxx, who has been mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, since 2009..
Born April 30, 1971, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Foxx was raised by his mother, Laura Foxx, and his grandparents, James and Mary Foxx, who were public school teachers, and graduated from West Charlotte High School in 1989. Grandfather James Foxx was also a prominent Democratic Party activist whose endorsement was considered essential in local elections.
Anthony Foxx earned a B.A. in History at Davidson College in 1993, where he was the first African-American student body president, and a law degree at New York University School of Law in 1996.
During his Davidson years, Foxx spent two summers abroad: one in France studying the French language that his grandmother taught in school, and another in South Africa assisting legendary civil rights lawyer James Ferguson II—a family friend who in 1970 successfully argued before the Supreme Court for the desegregation of Charlotte's schools—train black lawyers in the fight against apartheid. Foxx later said his experience of witnessing the obstacles black South Africans faced in getting an education inspired him to work harder at school.
After law school, Foxx spent a month playing trumpet in New Orelans, where he and Wynton Marsalis became friends, practiced law for about a year at the Charlotte law firm of Smith, Helms, Mullis, and Moore, and served as a judicial clerk for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. He spent the remainder of the 1990s serving as a trial attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and as staff counsel on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, where he met his wife, fellow attorney Samara Ryder.
Returning to Charlotte in 2001, Foxx practiced commercial litigation at the large law firm of Hunton & Williams until 2009, when he joined DesignLine Corporation, a hybrid electric bus manufacturer, as its deputy general counsel.
Foxx began his political career in 2004 as campaign manager for Rep. Mel Watt (D-North Carolina), who has represented North Carolina's 12th Congressional District, which includes parts of Charlotte, since 1993, and whom President Obama nominated for a different federal post—head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency—just a few days after naming Foxx. Watt’s wife, Eulada Watt, and Foxx's mother are second cousins, so Foxx had known Watt all his life. The following year, Foxx won election to the Charlotte City Council as an at-large representative, serving a pair of two-year terms and chairing the Transportation Committee.
Winning election for mayor in 2009, Foxx focused on helping small businesses, improving government efficiency and public safety, and implementating a 10-Year-Plan to End Homelessness. During his first term as mayor, Foxx led a successful bid for Charlotte to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and then served as chair of the Charlotte in 2012 Host Committee.
Foxx and his wife, Samara Foxx, have two children, Hillary and Zachary.
To Learn More:
Official Biography (pdf)
Man of the Past (by Jen Pilla Taylor, Charlotte Magazine)
Obama to Name Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx as Transportation Chief (by Franco Ordoñez, Charlotte Observer)
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