Duffy Asks Congress for $50 Billion to Rebuild Air Traffic Control

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called on Congress Friday night to provide $50 billion to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system after a nationwide outage grounded flights, according to the Washington Examiner.

“This is an emergency,” Duffy said at a White House briefing, according to Roll Call. “I want $50 billion. President Trump is a builder. He’s going to build this network and deliver for the American people. But the president can’t deliver for America unless the Congress delivers the money to make it happen.”

Duffy implores Congress to stump up $50 billion after FAA outage: ‘Give us the money to fix it’ https://t.co/8IO1Shq9ba

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 14, 2026

A bigger ask than a day earlier

The new figure is $19.1 billion more than the $30.1 billion that Duffy and White House budget director Russ Vought formally asked congressional appropriators to approve in a letter on Thursday, Roll Call reported. Roll Call said the administration officials did not fully lay out how the larger amount would be spent.

Mullin said the $50 billion figure was an administration estimate for a “complete overhaul of the system,” according to Roll Call. “We need someone to come in and build the whole system,” Mullin said, Roll Call reported. “Nickel and diming it together does not work.”

Duffy said the administration had already secured $12.5 billion toward modernization, according to Fox Business. Roll Call reported that the $12.5 billion came through the July 2025 reconciliation law, which Duffy and Vought have called a “down-payment.”

What failed on Friday

Duffy said the FAA began seeing instability in its radar and communications systems around 3:36 p.m. ET and issued the nationwide ground stop out of an abundance of caution, according to Fox Business. He blamed outdated switches and routers that became overloaded with data and sent inconsistent information to controllers, Fox Business reported.

“We have old, old switches, old routers. We use 1980s little copper lines,” Duffy said, according to Fox Business. “What went down was old, right? It was the old legacy equipment. It failed. And listen, it’s going to continue to fail.”

Mullin said “we’re not ruling out anything” about the cause but that “the public was never at danger through this process,” according to Roll Call.

U.S. airspace reopened at 8:15 p.m. Eastern, Duffy said, according to Reuters, which reported that nearly 10,000 flights had been canceled by late Friday, citing Flightradar24.

How Congress is responding

Senate Commerce Committee Republicans pointed in a social media post to $1.9 billion in the reconciliation law for upgrading air route traffic control centers, which the FAA cited as the source of the problem, Roll Call reported. The committee’s majority said the last time a new center was built, President Lyndon B. Johnson was in office, according to Roll Call.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the committee’s ranking member, said the panel will review “technology issues related to how planes communicate through primary frequencies, backup frequencies, and other issues,” according to Roll Call. Cantwell is poised to take the committee’s gavel in January when Democrats assume the Senate majority, Roll Call reported.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., and ranking member Rick Larsen, D-Wash., called the communication failures “concerning” in a joint statement and said their committee would “thoroughly review the issues that led to this nationwide ground stop,” according to Roll Call.

Duffy argued the funding should not be a partisan fight. “This is bipartisan. This is American,” he said, according to Fox Business.

Sources

• Washington Examiner on X
• Washington Examiner: Duffy implores Congress to stump up $50 billion after FAA outage
• Roll Call: Trump administration ups ante on aviation funds after ground stop
• Fox Business: Duffy sounds alarm over aging FAA system after nationwide air travel shutdown
• Reuters: US to resume flights after air traffic network failure sparks chaos

Reporting by Daily Beltway.