Buttigieg, who is gay, also responded to comments from Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who told CNN earlier this week that voting on a bill to codify same-sex marriage was a “stupid waste of time.”
“If [Rubio’s] has time to fight Disney, I don’t know why he didn’t have time to help protect marriages like mine — look, this is really, really important to a lot of people. It’s certainly important to me,” Buttigieg told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
A visibly emotional Buttigieg described spending Sunday morning breakfast with her twin children so that her husband, Chasten, would have time to rest, telling Tapper, “It’s no small thing, as any parent of young children knows.”
“That half hour of my morning made me think about how much I depend and rely on my husband every day and our marriage deserves to be treated equally,” he mused, criticizing House Republicans for voting against legislation codifying same-sex marriage only “hours after being in a room with many of them talking about transportation policy, I was having what I thought were perfectly normal conversations with many of them about that topic.”
“If they don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, they can vote yes and move on, and that would be really comforting for a lot of families in America, including mine,” Buttigieg told Tapper.
Buttigieg also discussed the administration’s efforts to pass a reconciliation bill targeting welfare programs, declining to pin the blame on West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
“We’re dealing with a Senate where not one Republican in the Senate is willing to go along with any of these priorities, but also where we’ve been able to get a lot done,” Buttigieg told Tapper, touting the administration’s legislative achievements as America’s bailout plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. “The president continues to push for other priorities – we must not overlook what has been achieved and we must never relent in insisting on what still needs to be done.” I’m really looking forward to seeing where we are able to get prescription drugs, something that will give families a lot of breathing room. There is still a lot of work to be done.”
And he pledged that his agency was “acting with its enforcement powers to hold airlines accountable” after a spate of canceled airline flights left passengers struggling in the past few months due to weather and staffing issues.
“We will continue to push [airlines] and, of course, to prepare to work together whenever there is a chance to do things to smooth operations in our national airspace,” Buttigieg said. “It’s good that the Americans have the income and the desire to get back into the skies, that demand is so strong after several years of people postponing travel. Now that demand is back, airlines need to be ready to service those tickets that they’re collecting revenue from.”
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