Pete Buttigieg wins Senate committee vote as Biden Transportation secretary

Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor who challenged Joe Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, won US Senate Commerce Committee approval on Wednesday, 21-3, to head the US Transportation Department. The full Senate will cast a final vote as early as this week on Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who will oversee aviation, highways, vehicles, pipelines and transit as Biden’s secretary of transportation. Biden, who entered the White House a week ago, has proposed $20b in additional government assistance to help US transit systems struggling with a massive falloff in ridership amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Congress has allocated $39b in emergency funding for transit systems, including $14b approved last month, and $65b in government loans and bailouts to US passenger airlines. Lawmakers awarded $12b to airports and $2b to the Amtrak passenger train service.<br/>