Buttigieg wants to spend $20 million on female crash dummies

WASHINGTON – Who’s the dummy, again?

Despite stubbornly high inflation and a looming debt ceiling crisis, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is asking Congress for $20 million in his department’s proposed fiscal year 2024 budget — to develop female crash test dummies.

Specifically, dummies representing “small-sized adult females,” according to the DOT’s pitch for its “cutting-edge safety and accessibility research initiatives.”

The project already has some support in Congress.

When Buttigieg appeared before a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday to discuss his budget ask, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) commended him for “including the critical funding that would accelerate the development” of the distaff dummies.

“This will start to fight the gender inequity among vehicle safety and crash victims,” said DeLauro, making sure that everyone knew that “this is an area I’ve written to you about.”

The funds would also go toward research on vehicle design considerations “to improve accessibility for people with disabilities, and research on the effect of vehicle size and weight on pedestrian safety,” according to the DOT.

Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a car wreck than men, according to Verity Now, a US-based vehicle equity campaign group that cites “outdated crash test standards” as the driving force behind the statistic.

Engineers in Sweden designed the world’s first female dummy just last year.

The dummy idea represents yet another equity-focused Biden administration initiative funded with taxpayer dollars.

Equity, unlike equality, focuses on “fair” treatment – not equal.

Last year, federal agencies produced more than 300 equity initiatives – many of them costly – under President Biden’s day-one executive order requiring all 92 federal agencies to develop equity action plans.

While $20 million for crash dummies is but a fraction of the DOT’s $145.3 billion budget request, the ask comes as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Wednesday introduced a bill to cut federal domestic spending to 2022 levels and impose caps on government funding for the next decade to address the nation’s $31 trillion debt.

“These spending limits are not draconian, they are responsible. Federal spending exploded in the last two years when Democrats controlled all,” McCarthy said on the House floor. “Limited government spending will reduce inflation and restore fiscal discipline in Washington.”

If the bill passes, Congress would be forced to get pickier on what to allow the Biden administration to spend discretionary funds on – and it’s unclear if crash dummies would make the list.

“If Washington wants to spend money, it will have to come together to save money,” McCarthy said, “just like every household in America.”