US: Chao distances herself from Trump's harsh air-traffic claims

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao distanced herself from President Donald Trump’s searing assessment of the US air-traffic system in her testimony before a House committee on a plan to strip it out of government. "They are protecting our safety," Chao said Thursday in response to a lawmaker’s question about Trump’s criticism of the performance of the Federal Aviation Administration’s air-traffic controllers. "Those are not my words." Chao stood with Trump on Monday at a White House ceremony in which he endorsed splitting off the FAA’s air-traffic system and placing it under a non-profit corporation. The president repeatedly attacked the existing system. He called it “horrible," saying it had wasted billions of dollars and used outdated technology. He contended its leaders didn’t know what they were doing. "You stood right there next to him and yet what we’re hearing from you today is a little different,” Representative Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat, said to Chao at a hearing before the House transportation committee. "So I’d like to go back over some of the things and see who we should believe." "I believe that the FAA is doing a good job," Chao said. She was testifying at a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing and stopped short of directly criticising her new boss in the White House. Chao is a long-time Republican loyalist. She has vigorously defended the Trump plan at two Congressional hearings in two days, sometimes under aggressive opposition from lawmakers of both parties. “It’s a big step,” she told the House committee Thursday. “But after 30 years of debate, we believe the country is ready.”<br/>