 If you're anything like me, you're probably wondering how could this have possibly happened? Well, like most of the other problems here in America, it comes back down to one simple thing. Corruption. This incredible new article from the Lover makes it crystal clear how lobbying led us to this point. Let me break it down. Over the last four years, Boeing and Spirit's packs have worked together to spend more than $65 million on lobbying and federal campaign contributions. And they're getting their money's worth. So why did this ramp up, especially in the last couple of years? If you remember, in 2018 and 2019, two different Boeing 737 MAXs crashed. And understandably, there came to be a lot of questions about the safety of these airplanes. So why didn't we see planes get updated with the kind of infrastructure that they clearly needed to make these planes safe for everyone? Well, simply put, profits mattered more than people to these companies. By December 2019, the FAA still hadn't recertified the Boeing 737 MAXs to go back on the air. And because they were set to launch a whole new fleet of these planes, they were really worried that if they didn't get them out at the time, they would take a huge financial hit. And so Spirit Aerosystems announced in January 2020 that they would lay off 2,800 employees, unless those planes got back in the air. So shortly after the layoffs were proposed, Senator Jerry Moran, the senior Republican on the Senate subcommittee overseeing aviation safety, issued a statement saying that he had spoken with the Boeing CEO and then he was urging the FAA to do everything they could to get those planes back in the air. Again, not allowing for the normal timeline of FAA, not only recertifying the planes and checking them thoroughly, but also making these companies spend a little bit more to make the planes actually function as the way that they should. Like I said before, these companies, they are getting their money's worth with lobbying. Spirit was and still remains a top campaign contributor to Moran and was the number two donor in Moran in recent years. It's not just a Republican issue though. Putting profits over people is bipartisan in Washington. Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, who represents Washington, has received nearly $200,000 in contributions from Boeing and pushed through a legislation to exempt Boeing 737 MAX bottles from a safety deadline, despite the concerns and outcry from the families of the passengers that were killed in 2018 and 2019. Oh, that's not even getting into the issue. When in 2020 they received a huge bailout from the government, so they explicitly would not have to lay off employees due to the ongoing financial hardship because of the coronavirus pandemic when, you know, no planes were really flying. Instead, they still laid off the employees and rewarded executives with huge bonuses. It's clear this horrific situation could have been prevented if companies were not obsessed with squeezing every single penny they can to make a profit wherever possible and if Washington wasn't helping them do that at every single step. The government is supposed to work for us, so luckily we don't just have to sit there and take them. Here it represents we have a plan to end corruption. Go to represent.us today, read our strategy. It's under the How We Win section and join the fight against corruption. And let's make people matter more than profits.