Rep. Mark takai far left is senator inouye, then the congresswoman from hawaii, and on the far right, another senator from hawaii. Host a state senator . No, a u. S. Senator. Rep. Mark takai i tell this story about almost every day about what it is like to be here, representing hawaii. I have many stories about senator inouye and about patsy but i talk about being on the shoulders of people like them, and you know it because we all work here. But the halls of congress, especially capitol hill, it is a very different place at night, you know, when all of the tourists, all of the work groups tour groups are gone, and we are walking to and from the capitol. I heard stories of senator inouye talking about these long nights. In fact, he had his office as Senate President pro tem in the capital, and it is just a surreal experience to be walking through the halls and just hearing your footsteps in realizing that these people who came before me also represented the state of hawaii. In fact, senator inouye was the first elected member of congress, and he came right after hawaii became a state. Host are there traditions in the hawaiian delegation that most people would not know about, a piece of memorabilia, or something that is passed down from member to member regardless of their party . Rep. Mark takai nothing has been passed down. We have gone into the cage , the cage upstairs. That has some memorabilia from other members, and i pulled out some of the portraits and the artwork from previous members, but i think in terms of hawaii we are very proud of the fact that people love us for our macadamia nuts and chocolate. So i think when you talk about hawaii and being on the hill there is almost an expectation that you either come with a lei, wearing a lei, or you come with chocolate covered macadamia nuts. You would be surprised. So i bring them out once in a while. Host you talked about what you want to do on the Armed Services committee. More broadly, how long do you want to serve, and what are your broader goals in congress . Rep. Mark takai i got elected at 47, and i was elected in the legislature and served for 20 years, and as i mentioned earlier, the commitment that our family has made, if given the opportunity and privilege, to put in another 20 years, so that would make me 67. That is not too old. So, yes, if given the opportunity to stay here, i think it is critical for hawaii for seniority, and for this place, for the most part it works on seniority. Host you talked about serving on the newspaper and being a Political Science major. What about your kids, what are they interested in, and what would you like to the them do . Rep. Mark takai i would like to see them not run for politics. [laughter] i tell young people to get a life, raise a family, and then maybe a few years down the road come back and possibly run for office, so i hope they do not have aspirations to follow me right out of college, because it was tough. Host but then you do not have a chance to meet george takai. We almost called you mark takai. Tell us that story. Rep. Mark takai we met through tammy duckworth. It was duckworth, honda, and another supporting tokai, and mark takano and jerry and george actually endorsed me in the primary, so the headline read, takai and tokano endorse tokai. It is really funny because people to this day get us confused. Just by name. All three of us get confused. But we have the pleasure now of calling ourselves friends, and in fact, i am going to see george takai in a few months. And he is debuting in a new broadway show, focusing on the japaneseamerican experience and i am looking forward to that show. Host well, we hope we get it right. Congressman mark takai. Thanks for being with us. Our next interview is with freshman congressman mike bost. He is the first republican to represent the district since 1945. This is 20 minutes. Host so we welcome congressman mike bost of the 12th district of illinois, and we can tell by your pin that there is an military part. Why would you want to run for congress . Rep. Mike bost i have been in the legislature, have 10 grandchildren, and was a it was a situation where i was not happy with the things that were happening out here everything from obamacare to overregulation on business. I was not only in the beauty salon business, but i was in the trucking business. My grandfather started a trucking business in 1933. I came home from the marine corps and ran it for 10 years. The frustration in dealing with all of that and talking to the family with a lot of decisionmaking, and i could have just thrown my hands of an up and said i am done with politics but i said, no, im going to try to it is to make eggs better for the kids. Host when did you want to run for the house . Rep. Mike bost 2014. February of 2000 2014. Well no, right after the other elections. Host your race, you defeated the incumbent Democrat Bill enyart, in what was reportedly one of the most expensive races. Rep. Mike bost it is. Was. It is inexpensive market an expensive market. The paducah, kentucky, market is less expensive, but you go to st. Louis, it is like 600. Host so your district reaches all of the way up that far . Rep. Mike bost my district goes up to alton, almost st. Louis, but not as far as grafton. It is 1. 33 counties. Host how did you do it, from the standpoint of raising the money . Who helped fund you . And what was the argument in beating him . Rep. Mike bost we had Jerry Costello there for many years. Jerry was a conservative democrat. He represented the area well. He was constantly in touch with people. The concern that had come up was that this congress or bill enyart was not keeping in touch with the people. They had become used to Jerry Costellos style, which was constantly in contact. They knew him. All over the district, and in a short period of time, i realized that was not occurring. I actually talked to a democrat state legislator who said, i do not know him, and he was in the district, and that is not what these jobs are about. They are about servants positions, and i was able to look at that and then springboard on some of the other issues out there. Of course, we also have a videotape that was from my experience on the floor as a floor leader that we did not know whether they would use it or not, but we had to try to figure out how to build our name recognition. Host this is the one that got you the nickname of rep. Mike bost meltdown mike. Yes. What happened it actually is rated as the second greatest second greatest rant according to cnn, so, basically, what had happened is right after year here in congress, they had passed obamacare, and the statement had been made, we have got to pass it, so we find out host 2010. Rep. Mike bost yes, i am on the floor, and what we have been working on is the illinois pension problems, and we had been working on it for a year and a half, and i am one of the leaders. And i come in on the morning that we are supposed to pass it, and i say, i need some information on the bill, because there are some things i need to talk about, and he said, they changed it, and i said, they changed what part of it, and he said, all of it, and i said, who changed it, and he said the democratic speaker, so things went on. They actually moved the bill in a partisan manner out of committee, and they were bringing it to the floor. My job as a floor leader is too two fold. One is to protect the members, and two is to argue our point. But this was more than that. It was a case of were 30 years where 30 years plus of having the same speaker bypassing rules, and basically what happened is i had had enough and i threw the bill in the air, and if you listen to it, there were specific arguments. It was loud, but there were specific arguments that i was talking about. Host and this went viral, and in the end, you think it helped your campaign. How does it feel to be the spotlight when the media and other members may be criticizing you . Rep. Mike bost right. It was you know you wish that it was not a case where you had to do that, but sometimes, what we have discovered the majority of people that contacted me when it happened and right after the campaign as a matter of fact, they say you do not what to send some of someone else like this to washington. And we said it will make the federal problems worse, and the answer we got on the street was, no, we want some it is like this in washington who will stand up for us and who will say, no, things arent right. Host what have you found so far . Is it different . Rep. Mike bost it is quite a bit different, and one is the control of the rules as far as your debates, everything like that, after being a floor leader in illinois, where we did not chair was kind of the moderator, so it is different in that respect. Just the level of work and the amount of subjects you need to be a breast of, and the sheer size of the job. Host we talked earlier about Jerry Costello keeping in touch with the district. How do you do that . Rep. Mike bost we do that by social media, and when i am back in the district, when people say, well, you are home. Well no, my population base is quite away from my home. Quite a bit away from my home. For example, during easter, we were there one week before and one week after, and all of those 16 days we were home, i slept in my bed four, so the day you do the way you do that is to make sure youre out and in constant contact, everything from town hall meetings, but also we have listening sessions, where we go out and meet with Different Community leaders and with the general public, and they know we are out there, and we are getting comments on that all of the time, that we are out there everywhere. Host you do not have duties anymore about being a volunteer firefighter, but you brought a helmet. We will show it to our viewers. Tell us a little bit about that. Rep. Mike bost that was a gift from one of the fire departments, because i often carried the language, but i was a firefighter with murphysboro and it was that job as, i mean, as a kid you get to do all of , the things that your mother does not want you to do, running into buildings that other people are running out of, getting dirty, getting wet, and people like you because of it. So, it is it really was one of the most exciting job i ever had in my life. Even with the marine corps, this was right up there. Host you were a volunteer. Rep. Mike bost i was actually a fulltime firefighter. For two years. But i was what they call paid for call. You are in town, to respond. I was in that from 1988 until actually even up until the time i was in the state legislature until 2008. Host you talk about the busy schedule on capitol hill. What committees are you on . Rep. Mike bost Small Business veterans affair, and ag, which is appropriate for the district. Host does that sound like a lot . In terms of your workload. Rep. Mike bost it does. Is. They told me you probably do not want three committees, but they put me on, and we are able to cover it, but it is a busy time. Host how do you keep it all straight . Rep. Mike bost we have staff, very good staff, and spend a lot of time reading and studying the issues, and one of the important thing to do is these things that are obviously from other congresses before, and you have to play catchup in your mind, and we are getting to the point now where we are pretty smooth. Host you have several witnesses, and you only get a few minutes. Rep. Mike bost that is probably a very rough part of this job. By the time you get down to the freshmen members, most of the questions have been asked. It has drawn out over a long period of time, but with the some of the committees, with the subcommittees, i have been able to get into what i need to know during the actual committee, and quite often, we have to come back with questions so we can get our answers. Host what is on your to do list . In terms of what your district would like to get done in congress. Rep. Mike bost a couple of things. We have got Scott Air Force base, and i will be working to make sure actually, there is a geospatial system that is needed to be relocated. We are we can get it there, and one of the most important things really is, and it has to deal with oil, with those resources over burdensome regulation from the epa, and other agencies that have just caused why do we strangle our businesses in this nation . And when we are trying to compete with a Worldwide Market with so many agencies that have duplicative rules, and that doesnt mean we do not want to make sure everything is safe. I will fight for that, but in Small Business and if you have been an Small Business, which i have, you find out sometimes the government does everything to make it difficult. Host give us an example. What was a regulation you kept coming up against . Rep. Mike bost in the trucking business, if you know there is a Driver Shortage, a Driver Shortage is not occurring because there are not people who want to do the jobs. It is just that people doing the jobs cannot sell enough hours because of a mishandling because of the rules and the logbook rules. You dont want to go back to where it was in the 1970s, but you have to be able to for instance, if you are coming up on your amount of hours that you are scheduled to have in a week and you are an hour or a halfhour from your destination, you have to stop the truck and weight wait 36 hours, or they have to send a driver . And not only that, that driver then, if his week falls with a weird break in the middle, he or she can not solve 40 hours. Cell sell 40 hours. That is when you have got people here in d. C. Writing rules who have never even sat in a truck. They do not understand. Not necessarily from the standpoint of the federal government, but in the beauty salon business, we have this tanning beds and we became so overregulated. Host in terms of federal and state . Rep. Mike bost both. Host how prohibitive are the regulations in a state like illinois . Rep. Mike bost the level of taxation on the Trucking Industry was very prohibitive. And the cost of doing business. Host you are talking about the highway bill, transportation bill, at least through july. What are some of the biggest infrastructure issues, and how to we go about resolving this . Rep. Mike bost as we move forward, and i do not know if you can put the boats together for a gas tax, and the reality is the people in the coffee shop and beauty shops, they are a little bothered by that, and so we want to watch and see if we can find a stream for longterm purposes, and i will be working with colleagues to try to figure out exactly what that is, but truly our job there are many things that we dabble in. But the one thing is interstate commerce, that is a job. Our job. And the highways, that is our job. And we have to make sure that the bridges are kept open, and kept up, and we have not been doing a real good job. Host what would you say are the conditions of roads and bridges are in your state . Rep. Mike bost they are rough. I think they patchwork things, because of funding problems. They do not go to the depth that they need to restore them to the point that they were. Host you are one of the several new members of congress with military experience. How long did you serve in the marines . Rep. Mike bost i served three years in the marines. I was an electronic specialist radar repairman. I went to san diego for boot camp. Then to yuma, arizona, where i did my duty. Host are there any similarities between the military and the house of representatives . Rep. Mike bost no, not really and let me explain why. In the in the in the marine corps, our job was to we had immediate obedience to order, and quite often, that would save your life, by the