Ted Cruz blasts Boeing in bipartisan challenge during Senate hearing

Ted Cruz.
(Image credit: Susan Walsh/AP)

Boeing was the subject of a rare moment of bipartisanship during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday.

Republican and Democratic senators teamed up to grill Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg over the company's response to two crashes within the past year in Indonesia and Ethiopia involving malfunctioning flight-control systems on Boeing's 737 MAX plane.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told Muilenberg that Boeing "set those pilots up for failure" after doing nothing to address the issues in 2016, while committee Chair Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said both accidents were "entirely preventable" in his opening statement.

Even Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who is usually a strong supporter of Boeing which has a large presence in her state, was firm with Muilenberg, telling him, "If you want to be the leader" in aviation manufacturing, "you have to be the leader in safety." Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

Explore More
Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.