The crash of an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people above Ronald Reagan National Airport, near Washington, D.C., and is the worst U.S. aviation disaster since the November 2001 crash of a jet in the Queens borough of New York City.
Among those who perished on Wednesday were figure skaters and their families and coaches returning from a competition, as well as the three military service members aboard the helicopter.
The tragedy is once again raising the question of the role that key federal agencies and officials play in protecting the lives of Americans. The Federal Aviation Administration provides oversight of the airline industry, airports, and related matters.
But the position of FAA administrator was vacant from Jan. 20—the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration—until the day after this week’s accident, when Trump finally appointed an acting chief of the agency. Why was the position vacant? The previous administrator, Michael Whitaker, resigned roughly a year and a half into his five-year term after a pressure campaign by Trump financier and multibillionaire Elon Musk.
Additionally, Wednesday’s crash occurred against the backdrop of actions by Trump and his administration to slash the size of the government and roll back civil rights initiatives meant to diversify the federal workforce and the nation at large.
Trump effectively disbanded an aviation safety committee that had been in operation since 1989. He also issued a directive halting a program to encourage the growth of a diverse workforce within the aviation industry, including for the key position of air traffic controller.
Now it has emerged that staffing levels at the control tower at Reagan National were “not normal” at the time of the accident, according to an internal preliminary report from the FAA.
In his Thursday press conference discussing the crash—instead of addressing the core of these issues, including his role in possibly hobbling the government response—Trump instead blamed a frequent conservative punching bag: diversity.
Conservatives like Trump have for years insisted that the government needs to operate like a business, and that the size of the federal government (including its budget and the size of the workforce) must be curtailed. This message has frequently been touted by Republican politicians, but it has been repeated endlessly in conservative media outlets, like Fox News.
Conservatives have so embraced the notion that government must run like a business that Trump, whose businesses have repeatedly failed, has been the leader of the party since 2016.
The right has railed against government-based solutions as harbingers of communism and socialism, and that effort has led to even some Democrats, like former President Bill Clinton, making an argument against “big government.”
But America is a massive nation. There are more than 341 million Americans behind the largest economy in the world, with the most powerful military in the history of humankind. American policy on both domestic and foreign issues has a ripple effect felt in every other nation in the world. It simply isn’t practical for a nation of that size and scope to operate in the conservative dream of a government in the 1800s.
While it remains unclear what specific role the government played in Wednesday’s plane crash, it is a matter of historical fact that massive crises have been caused or exacerbated through government inaction.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the government failed to alleviate the suffering of millions of Americans under Republican President Herbert Hoover. More recently, under Republican President George W. Bush, big business was allowed to put the global economy at risk while profiting from the mortgage bubble. And under Trump, the purported business skills that were touted during his stint as host of NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” were absent as he failed to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.
What has worked have been the initiatives and legislation the right has decried as “big government.”
Under President Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal became law, leading to massive government expenditure to fight the Great Depression and World War II. Landmark programs like Social Security were created to provide government backing for the retirement of seniors.
Later, President Lyndon Johnson put in place his Great Society agenda, expanding the safety net with programs like Medicaid to meet the needs of low-income earners needing health care. That was not being addressed by the profit-motivated private sector.
In more recent history, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in response to the Great Recession, and saw unemployment significantly decline during his eight years in office. And President Joe Biden passed the American Rescue Plan to stimulate the economy following the massive losses that had occurred on Trump’s watch during the pandemic.
Despite the conservative fixation on small government and operating the government like a business, it simply has not worked. There are too many moving parts, and too many lives are at stake for the government to operate like a business working toward a quarterly earnings report.
When the government is too small or not given enough resources to operate, disaster has been the result—over and over again. Yet, despite the carnage, conservatives are unlikely to change their rhetoric and world view because they would have to admit they were wrong all along.
