2 seconds ago 2009-12-15T00:25:01-08:00
Readers covered a wide variety of topics in their posts for Virginia Rep. Tom Davis. Thanks once again to everyone for participating.
Rep. Tom Davis
The interview took place in the congressman's Annandale, Va., district office. Questions were presented by Talk to Power producer Ilyse Veron.
Below is a question-by-question breakout of the interview with video links to Rep. Davis' responses. A complete transcript follows.
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On Congress being out of touch
A reader asked, "Rep. Davis, What is your opinion on why Congress has lost touch with those who have elected them? Why do the members continue to ignore the American people and continue to cater to big money, governments that do not like us and the illegals in our country?"
See Rep. Davis' response here or read the transcript below.
On Iraq and Congress's role in declaring war
The war in Iraq is always a focus on the Talk to Power boards. This week, one reader offered a comment and question with a somewhat different spin, asking about Congress's role in declaring war and in managing foreign policy.
"Why does Congress take such a back seat to the Executive Branch on matters of foreign policy? There was nothing sudden (or urgent, in my mind) about Iraq so why didn't Congress insist on a war declaration prior to authorizing force? Why have we still not declared war? More important, what can we do as a country to restore the powers of the legislature on matters of foreign policy to those intended by the founders?"
Rep. Davis spoke at length to this question. We've divided the file into two pieces.
See Rep. Davis' response regarding balance of power.
See Rep. Davis' response regarding Congress' role in Iraq.
On openness in government
One reader, citing recent books arguing that the current administration is overly secretive, asked:
"Should the Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress be much more open about what they are doing in government? Why all the extreme secrecy?"
On the Foley scandal
One thing many Y! readers felt was kept secret for too long by Republican leadership was the behavior of former Rep. Foley toward pages.
One reader asked: "Will you vote to remove Dennis Hastert as Speaker of the House, or are those words just ramblings in the halls of the House of Representatives?
On the budget deficit
Government finance was a prime concern for many readers including deficit spending on health care programs such as Medicare. One wrote:
"Representative Davis: Will you please tell us why is it that the Republican Party has departed from basic conservative principles such as smaller government and balanced budgets."
On gay rights
As with previous guests, the issue of gay rights was raised by a number of readers. One wrote:
"Rep. Davis, I am a conservative and my son is gay. He and his longterm partner are raising a son. I don't appreciate the Republican party, which I support and view as standing for limited government, hurting my family. Gay people make up a small percentage of this world and it doesn't hurt anyone to let them raise their families in dignity. ... I believe government should get out of the business of families and concentrate on defending us."
A transcript of the Rep. Davis' interview is below.
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MS. VERON: On behalf of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and Yahoo! thank you so much for coming, and I'm sorry Judy couldn't be here, but we're really looking forward -
REPRESENTATIVE TOM DAVIS: Good.
MS. VERON: - to getting the lay of the land from you.
Out of touch Congress
MS. VERON: "Representative Davis, what is your opinion on why Congress has lost touch, with those who've elected them. With approval ratings in the low 20's for Congress, why do the members continue to ignore the American people and continue to cater to big money, governments that do not like us and the illegals in our country? This is both parties. At election time everyone talks and says what the voters want to hear, but after the elections are over, its back to business as usual." Your comments on that?
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Look, you have 435 members, and the 435 members all have a different take on it, and the difficulty of homogenizing that into policy becomes very difficult in the House and it's driven by rules, committees, leadership. And even if the House passes something, as has been done so many times, it goes over the black hole called the Senate, where not 55 votes, which is what the Republicans have, but 60 votes are required. There have literally been dozens of filibusters in this Congress that have stopped progressive legislation that the House has passed, like associated health plans that would bring health care opportunities to small businesses that don't have them now. And just in - tort reform - just a number of, I think, common sense reforms that the American people support.
So, you have, basically, institutionally, a dysfunctional Congress. It is difficult for them to react in any quick way to changes in public opinion and the mood of the people, because you have the House, which sometimes acts precipitously, but at least acts on a majority-rule basis, and then you have the Senate, in which you need a super-majority to pass anything. And then, given the tenor of the times, which is the backdrop of war and the changes in the economy with globalization, I think it gives people the impression that somehow members are not connected to their constituencies.
I can tell you I'm out almost every night in my district, speaking to different and diverse groups, whether they're civic associations, PTAs, Rotary Clubs, minority organizations. I do seven town meetings a year that are widely publicized. We average over 150 people per meeting, where I go into a room for an hour and a half, and people can ask me anything they want.
I do everything I can stay out of touch [sic] and knowing that I have to go through that every year, when I vote on the floor, whether it's a special interest on one side or the other, I know I'm going to have to explain this to a town meeting where somebody's going to ask me that question, and they usually do.
So, I've tried to stay in touch. I can't speak for other members, but a lot of them try to stay connected to their constituencies. You have others, though, that are from safe, one-party districts that are still hanging around in Washington during the election, that they can be beholden to interest groups because the only thing they have to worry about is the party primary. These, and it's over 300 seats in the House, are just basically non-competitive in a partisan situation, and November is a foregone conclusion because of the way the districts are drawn.
The Senate is a little bit different. The Senate does not have redistricting; you're running statewide, and you have more diverse constituencies in Senate districts. But I think, institutionally, the way that things are structured today gives that appearance that we lose touch, even though a lot of members are very deeply frustrated by the situation.
MS. VERON: Thanks.
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: That's my short answer. I could have expounded on it, but...
Balances of Power
MS. VERON: You mentioned the war in Iraq, which is always a focus on the boards on Talk to Power. This week, one reader offered a comment and question that dealt with Congress's role in declaring war and managing foreign policy. This person asked, "Why does Congress take such a back seat to the Executive Branch on matters of foreign policy?" The person continues, "There was nothing sudden or urgent, in my mind, about Iraq, so why didn't Congress insist on a war declaration prior to authorizing force? Why have we still not declared war? More important, what can we do as a country to restore the powers of the legislature on matters of foreign policy to those intended by the Founders?"
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: We go through these disputes in every generation. I don't how many of your viewers remember the Cooper-Church amendments and some of the issues that came out of the Vietnam War, where we had the same kind of issues.
The reality is the structure of the Constitution gives the Executive Branch very strong powers to wage foreign policy and limits Congress basically to funds. Cutting off funds for a war is very difficult because you're sending troops over there, you're cutting them funds. It's the old adage where Jefferson sent troops abroad and Congress threatened to cut him off. He said, well, I'm going to send them back there, I mean, I'm going to send them over there. If you want to cut the money to bring them back, that's up to you, but that just leaves them there.
So, Congress is limited by its nature, and we haven't had to declare war, you know, for a long time. The way it does now is you empower your executive and they make the decisions. We empowered President Clinton with Kosovo. By the way, very few Republicans supported the president on that. I did, feeling that the executive needs some authority to negotiate, so you give them broader powers. In Iraq, we gave President Clinton similar authorities that we gave President Bush. He just utilized them differently. In fact, we put more restrictions on the authority that we gave to President Bush. We required him to go to the United Nations and do some things we did not require President Clinton to do. I think a lot of us are supporting that thought, this is going to strengthen the president's hand when he sits down with Saddam and other world leaders to try to get the weapons inspectors back in. You have to go - it's difficult sometimes to go back 4 years and remember what the situation was like, but Saddam had kicked the weapons inspectors out at that point, and we were just trying to get them back in and we wanted to pursue this peacefully, but when he shut the door on that, we gave the president authority to do what he, whatever he felt he needed to do, but required him to go to the U.N. We did not want this to be done precipitously, but we wanted to have the appropriate debate and role.
The rest of it has been up to the Executive Branch. And although I've offered some criticisms and critiques from time to time - I've been to Iraq three times - in many ways, the administration's been kind of tone deaf to Congressional intervention or even Congressional critiques.
Congress' Role in Iraq
REP: DAVIS: Let me tell you what I've done. I wrote a memo and did sit down with Secretary Rumsfeld after my first visit to Iraq, when I said, "Look, I think we made a mistake in disbanding the Army. These people are now unemployed. We have no organizational government there at all. We have no one to restore order except Americans. We think that's a bad thing, and a lot of the Army members, not the Royal Guard, but the others who were not particularly loyal to Saddam, they were loyal to the country, and they needed the jobs.
Secondly, I said, "You should seal the borders because people are coming across from Syria. They're coming across from Jordan. They're coming across from Iran. And a lot of these are jihadists and terrorists that are now coming into the country. They're going to create a problem for us downstream." And, of course, that's exactly what has happened.
The answer I got at the time was that the Kurds, in the north, who were the major beneficiaries of our intervention there, had relied on smuggling for generations, and closing the borders would create a very strong economic hardship on them there. But I think if you look at this and the way it's progressed, it would have been more prudent to have closed the borders.
There have been a number of other mistakes since that time in the conduct of war. Congress has from time to time weighed in, but, legislatively, the Executive Branch holds the keys to power.
Even now, if the Congress were to flip and Congress were to pass strong resolutions, you have presidential vetoes and the like that make it very, very difficult to change the dynamic. But you're finding more and more members of the president's own party outspoken and questioning the role the administration has played in what we need to do in the future.
I was one of a handful of members that have set up an independent commission. It's called Fresh Eyes on the Target - this is what some people call the Baker Commission - where we've empowered people like Lee Hamilton, the leading Democrat, Jim Baker, a former Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, to have access to secret information, to get high level briefings, and to come in and make recommendations on what we should do here and how we can best advance American interests, but get out as quickly as possible too, while either, if not accomplishing the mission, at least making sure we don't a larger mess behind that could come back and haunt the region and our country for generations. We have funded this group.
I think that sometimes the people who've made the decisions in the administration get so close to it and they're reacting day to day - it's kind of in their face - that they haven't been able to step back and take a look at this from 20,000 feet. We need that kind of a perspective from well-respected members, Republican and Democrat.
The other problem we have is that it becomes very partisan very quickly, and you find members very, very critical, trying to score political points and not really looking at the policy ramifications, but catering to what is a growing frustration among the American electorate about the conduct of the war. Ultimately, that's not what the country needs. The country needs good heads coming together figuring out a Plan B, and I've tried to put that into operation with our Fresh Eyes on the Target.
Secrecy in governing
MS. VERON: Ok. This is a question about openness in government. One reader, citing recent books arguing that the current administration is overly secretive, asked: "Should the Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress be much more open about what they are doing in government? Why all the extreme secrecy?"
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Every administration's secret, and every administration does it. I mean, right now, it's on Bush, but we had the same problem with the Clinton Administration. I've had to do several investigations of this administration. I did the Katrina investigation, we wrote a very highly critical but widely acclaimed report. The same with Abramoff, which lead to actually the resignations of some White House employees that had taken tickets from him.
I was the House author of legislation introduced by Tom Coburn and Barack Obama in the Senate that brings transparency now to government contracts and government grants where citizens can come in and look online. We passed a strong whistleblower protection act out of our committee to encourage or at least protect people in the bureaucracy who saw things that were wrong, they could speak up.
So I think it needs to change, but it's not just Bush. It's not just Republicans, we find this with every administration. You get a group of people around a president, and it's just a tight knit group, and they keep even people of their own party out of trying to make decisions. And they don't like anybody questioning, they don't like to share information. And it is an institutional problem and Congress, regardless of who's the President should assert our constitutional role as a separate branch of government to make sure that we bring more of this to government.
We also passed out of our committee - that I sponsored along with Henry Waxman, my ranking Democrat - legislation that when lobbyists are meeting with people in the bureaucracy, that these have to be logged in and a record is kept. That way, after decisions are made, we don't talk about what happened at those meetings, people should be free to share their opinions. But at least there's a log in of who had contacts with whom when decisions are made - when regulatory decisions are made. Couldn't get it to the House floor, but I've tried to advance openness that way, and I don't think this is just slanted towards the President. I've seen, I've been here for a couple of administrations and this is just called "Presidentitis", where people come in and think that there's not a legislative branch and that we're just in the way.
Fallout from Foley
MS. VERON: Ok, another thing, actually, that some readers felt was kept secret for too long by folks in Congress was the behavior of Congressman Foley. One reader asked: "Will you vote to remove Dennis Hastert as Speaker of the House, or" - this person said - "are those words, [that I guess you said publicly before,] just ramblings in the halls of the House of Representatives?"
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Well, I think we're going to have a whole investigation. I don't know who knew what on Dennis Hastert. Or on Foley. I don't know what at that point. I was shocked the day he resigned because I had seen some emails a couple days before in press reports and even talked to Mark about it. Ah, you know, Mark, what's up with this thing? The emails by themselves, by the way might have been a warning that there was nothing of a criminal nature, it was just later emails when they came forward and you say, "Whoa, this is a problem".
I was a page in Congress for my four years of high school. Like most members. Very, very, offended that anybody would do this. But, look, let's give the Republicans some credit in this. They got Foley to resign right away. When this similar action happened in a Democratic Congress twenty years ago - twenty three years ago - they reprimanded, in fact censured Gerry Studds, but he didn't just do emails, he actually got a page drunk, and had sexual relations with a male page. And then they end up awarding him the out years with a committee chairmanship.
So, the times have changed. It doesn't excuse what the Republicans did this time, who knew or whatever, and I'm going to wait until I see what the bipartisan ethics committee recommends before I jump to anything. I'm an attorney. But look. Somebody somewhere made some mistakes, and somebody's going to get fired and have to step down, and I think that's very, very clear.
I think what you want is a thorough investigation. Let the chips fall where they may, and we're not pledging allegiance to anybody at this point. I think we just have to wait and see what happened. This is a very unfortunate situation. There were obviously more warning signs that somebody knew along the line than they had let on, and the investigation will show that.
The budget deficit
MS. VERON: Government finance was a prime concern for many Yahoo! readers including deficit spending on health care programs such as Medicare. One person wrote: "Representative Davis: Will you please tell us why is it that the Republican Party has departed from basic conservative principles such as smaller government and balanced budgets."
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Well, Medicare and Medicaid are entitlement programs. They're the fastest growing parts of the US budget. And for all the rhetoric on balancing budgets and spiraling deficit, and you can talk about the war in Iraq, but ultimately it's your entitlement spending that's racking up the deficit. And if we don't tackle this fairly quickly it's going to mount and mount, and then you have a lot of economic ramifications that the next generation's going to be paying - not just huge debt, but at what point do the Chinese and the Koreans and the Japanese quit buying American paper because they no longer have confidence in the dollar because of the spiraling deficits? At that point interest rates go up, at that point investment in business and construction go, and then you have a full blown economic disaster.
So, it is important. But you cannot just eliminate - just say I'm going to end the war in Iraq, and that's going to - you know, we have to encourage economic activity and grow part of our way out. We've got to obviously put limits on discretionary spending, but you have to attack the entitlement programs. The entitlements plus interest on the debt are 61 percent of spending. If you hold those harmless and don't talk - so -
Your reader is right. You have got to hit these programs. Now we, in a budget resolution the Republicans put forward cut the annual rate of increase in Medicaid from 7.7 percent to 7.5 percent. And they're running ads on us, they're coming after us. The other side's shown no responsibility in this at all. This is something where both parties are going to have to sit across the table from each other instead of trying to game this for political advantage and say - we have a problem. In ten years, instead of generating a sixty billion dollar surplus, we're going to be paying out more for Social Security than we take in. For Medicare and Medicaid, with the growth that we're seeing in these programs, and with the Baby Boomers retiring, there won't be any money for education. There won't be money for stem cell research. There won't be any money for defense, unless we can sit down and have an adult conversation.
And I have said, from my perspective, everything has to be on the table. Revenues have to be on the table, but we're going to have to take a look at the way we deliver these services.
Health care's a huge problem. It is the fastest growing part of state budgets, federal budgets, county budgets and the corporate budgets and individual budgets. And a lot of it is - I mean, we could talk at length about what causes that. But one thing that's causing it - and it's a good thing - and that is, we have medical technology to keep people alive longer. People living better lives, but it's expensive. Somebody has to pay, and how do we distribute those costs throughout the system?
There's no medical marketplace. You have a third party payer system today. So the person that receives the benefit isn't the one paying for it. So you don't get your usual market correction mechanism. And to prove the point, take a look at laser eye surgery, which is not covered by insurance. Those costs have come way down. The technology's improved - why? Because you have a marketplace there. And educated consumers are bringing those costs down as it becomes competitive. But you don't have that in the rest. And I think medical malpractice reform is something that is a piece of this. It's not a cure all. But it's also something no other system in the world has that kind of malpractice that we do, where you get these large punitive damages that bring up insurance costs and the like.
So, it's a complicated situation. It's got to be solved with both parties sitting across the table. Particularly the 60 votes needed in the Senate to do anything. And so far, the leaders of both parties have kind of shied away from it, or when one kind of steps their toe in the water, the other throws in a toaster and tries to electrocute him.
MS. VERON: That's a very interesting analogy. And I appreciate you trying to give your quick answer to that question.
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Yeah, I'm sorry, it's a complicated question though.
MS. VERON: It's a very complicated question. But we'd like to at least give it some credence.
Rights for homosexuals
MS. VERON: This is my final question. Over the weeks, the issue of gay rights has been raised by a number of readers. One wrote: "Representative Davis, I'm a conservative and my son is gay. He and his long-time partner are raising a son. I don't appreciate the Republican Party, which I support and view as standing for limited government, hurting my family. Gay people make up a small percentage of this world, and it doesn't hurt anyone to let them raise their families in dignity.... I believe government should get out of the business of families and concentrate on defending us." Response?
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Well, I think the public opinion on this continues to change. If you go back 30 years, public opinion on homosexual relationships was much different than it is today. Then, it would - there were thought to be heterosexuals who acted abnormally. Today, I think there's an understanding that there are some underlying causes, genetic and the like, for people being who they are, and that changes the whole concept of how we treat them, how we recognize them, how we respect them.
I've been a strong supporter of laws prohibiting discrimination against gays in federal hiring and the like. Adoption, I think you always look for what's best for the kid, not who's adopting it and so on. I mean many - there are many heterosexual couples who are completely incapable of taking care of kids, and if they can find love and a kind of support somewhere else, I think the judges ought to be able to take that into consideration.
The marriage issue is a more complicated issue that different states are dealing with in different ways, and I think it should ultimately be handled by the states. And there will be, you know, as opinion changes or doesn't change, I think they'll be able to cope with it in that way.
But it hasn't just been Republicans. I mean, if you take a look at the votes in Congress, this is more by areas. More urban areas look at it one way. More rural areas, Republicans and Democrats, take a look at this. This one of the cultural battles in this country that continues to divide us, not necessarily Red and Blue. Democrats, to be competitive in some of the rural areas, are very, very Red on their cultural side.
And I would just say to the person, stay active. Get active in the Republican Party. We need to hear your voice. I was the first Republican leader to sit down with the Log Cabin Republicans. I got criticized for sitting down with them. I said they're Republicans. We're a big tent, you know. We want to be a national party, not just a rural party or a southern party or a western party.
And I think you'll see the same thing on the Democratic side, where these issues should not be party issues; they should be issues that we have conversations about and that voters stay involved with. But I would urge your, the questioner in this case to stay active and get active. We need your voice.
MS. VERON: Well, thank you. That's just the kind of thing that we're here for. We're trying to engage people in the political process.
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Yeah.
MS. VERON: So, again, on behalf of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Yahoo!, thanks so much for being with us.
REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: My pleasure. Thank you.
