Transcripts For CSPAN3 Congressional Careers Remembered 20160723

The center for state and local government. In the wake of the 2000 president ial elections, professor king directed the task force on election administrations for the National Commission on election reform chaired by former president s geraldford and jimmy carter. That effort had landmarks and voting legislation signed by president bush in late 2002. He later oversaw the evaluation and structure for the Boston Election Department and he served in the Advisory Board of america elect. Org. In the past, professor king chaired harvards Bipartisan Program for newly elected members of the u. S. Congress and he directed the executive program for Senior Executives in state and local governments. Professor king is the author, coauthor and coeditor of three books and he has published in a range of journals including the american Political Science review and the journal of politics. Please welcome david king. [applause]. Thank you. Is this amazing just to be in a group of people who are like you . Isnt that wonderful . I know there is always a level of citizens and anytime we talk about politics and especially we talk about legislatures in the United States today, but i think everyone of us may have fallen in love, if not with another person, certainly fell in love with some ideas in the j. K. 1,000 sections of your library. I remember being camped out there for a long time. Thank you so much for being here. You have in front of you, not only the subject of your studies, i feel a little bit like theyre insects and we are all enter monthly gists. Were going to try and understand Nancy Johnson and peter tore kellson a little more. We have also agreed that we want to hear your questions and your perspectives and open it up to a broader discussion as we move forward. Nancy johnson asked just before we stepped up here whether or not we want to talk about rhinos and was rhino a thing when peter was in congress . Well, it was just starting to be a thing. Congress is changed dramatically or at least it seems. I remember when speaker Thomas Brackett from the great state of maine was speaker, he had a narrow majority in the house. It was a thin republican majority and you probably know the rules and Young Democrats came and complained to him. He said two things that were just as true then as they are today. He said the rights of the minority are to show up at work, collect your pay and that is it. And then he said democracy stops at the door of the United States congress, which is a challenging but important point because article i of the constitution wasnt placed there just by happenstance. Article i was the most Important Branch of government in the eyes of the founders, the core, at the center of a representative republic, we have the house and the senate which are not run democratcally and we have Political Parties that are not nominating folks in a democratic manner at all and its caused quite interesting results. So when Nancy Johnson, one of the great moderate republicans of our time was challenged and called a rhino, that was a significant challenge at the time and today we dont worry about rhinos if youre republicans. If youre a republican in the worried y, you are about being cantor. So a different kind of dynamic. The institution is remarkably stable some some respects and yet it never stands still which reminds me of another famous quote, this from Oliver Wendell holmes jr. He says the law mcnabb stable, but never stands still. Congress must be stable. The rules, institutions, the basic idea of representative democracies stay stable, but the institution is always changing. So the institution that Nancy Johnson from the great state of connecticut entered in january of 1983 and left after the lection in 2006, when she left in january of 2007, that institution had changed quite dramatically already, but the institution is still quite stable, important work has to get done, appropriation bills have to be passed. Peter torkelson who was born in my home state, great state of wisconsin, served in the minority and the majority as the republican from massachusetts. Now thats almost a definition of a rhino, but the term wasnt really widely used at the time. When we were putting this panel together, robin reed asked us who do we want . Well, we want the very best. It doesnt matter if theyre d or r. We want people who can be introspective, tell us how the institution has changed and what it was like for them and what their relationship with you as administrators and librarians and educators, how that interaction might actually work. We are obviously the institutions of representation are changing at all times. The way we learn about them, the way our children learn about them will have you forever more they center. So i would like to introduce first and hear from Nancy Johnson and second i want you to hear from peter torkelson, two wonderful former members of congress. Thank you. Nancy. [applause] nancy thank you. I think at the beginning here ill talk a little longer ill stand up. Being short, you dont feel up, i would rather see your faces. Its a pleasure to be here with you and a great pleasure to work with the Uconn Library as we put my papers there and talk about accessibility and so on. I hope in a few months to completely retire because im still working in washington, so a lot of my friends are there and so i have a different perspective on what is appening and it does pain me terribly that the president tells you practically nothing at all about the big changes that have taken place in restoring a deliberative body, particularly in the house in the last four years. But just to give you a little sense of the difference, let me tell you when i went down to washington, i was in my early 40s. I was a seasoned state senator. I had been a Ranking Member on all of the Important Committees, appropriations, bonding and education and planning and development in connecticut that was a very, very Important Committee and really looked at what do we do regionally, how do we do a lot of things. So i had a lot of experience. I was in my office, this was my first year and theyre debating a h. U. D. Bill about whether or not seniors could have pets in Public Housing or people could have pets in Public Housing. We had been through that in the state and its something that people feel very strongly about. Public housing isnt just in the big cities. I went on the floor and there was my friend stuart mckinnie, one of the great republicans of all time. He looked at me and he said what are you doing here . I said well, im going to speak on this amendment. He said you are . Well, you know i can only give you two minutes. Yes, i know that. He said now, dont go over. I said i wont. So i did my thing and as i came off, he said nice job, but remember freshman are to be seen but not heard. And truly enough, over the next two months, coming up and down the escalators going to brennan and other places, other members would say nice job, nancy, there were only two women elected that year. Everybody knew exactly who i was and their staff or they had een it on the television and that happens your freshman year. You get up and Say Something that is totally political without substance or text and youre remembered for it. It was very good advice and i was very careful, particularly when i was so visible. Nowadays, fast forward to when the republicans became the majority, six months into that session we got to teach the freshman that the order of the house is different from the campaign trail. Youre debating substance, not vision for the most part. Theyre just bringing too much political rhetoric into the floor. So we talked about that for a while, reached certain ones and we began generally to teach them. I remember one time each party, they know exactly what is going on. If you talk to your staff and you dont know what amendment youre working on, then you dont what youre working on, they will tell you. I remember one time, he said vote yes, ill tell you why later. He didnt have time to explain to me. He knew me and he knew i voted yes. So what did i vote for . So with all of the absolute flood of subjects and information, you have to pick trustworthy people that you believe you will follow if you havent had time to study it. You only have so much time to train your own staff and they are in there, usually right on top of it, energetic, smart, but completely inexperienced. So their conclusion might be completely wrong at the beginning. Over time, they get to know you and your record. I came in, i didnt want to contradict my record. Anyway, the whole thing of accommodating as a freshman. Anyway, to finish up, a little later on, the guy that came forward came over to me, the california ladies, i understand that they were all night, they cant come on the floor in jeans. I wont talk to you about the ladies about dress. They were talking to some of the men about dress. There was a decorum on the floor of the house that as the politics took precedence over the substance it began to be a problem. We really need to focus ourselves back on the fact that we are legislating policies that will affect throughout america. On the floor, no one calls you your first name or last name, its the gentle lady from connecticut, the fact that they were two, it doesnt matter. In the record they would put whoever, but on the floor of the house, you were just the gentle lady from massachusetts, the gentle lady from connecticut. I dont know how much we want to do now and how much we want to do later, there were a number of terribly controversial subjects while i was there. One advantage of the papers, to me the big advantage of the papers being available to someone in our library and after i gave my papers to the library, we moved to a community, so i couldnt keep all of these papers that i kept. When you go through all of the clippings from beginning to it completely different, right. You see politics that is totally different from my politics from one day. Some of it we have to get back to. Some of it im glad its gone. You see things that you dont see otherwise. And kids can see that. They can see the limit, for instance, i spoke always in a school whenever i was out for a day in the district. Smart and articulate, theyll ask you any questions, whether its the last one they heard their parents discuss or whether it came off the television, then you can see all that and particularly if our era because in my district, i had 41 counties, i had six or eight newspapers published every single day. And they needed to know what they should publish. They needed to know what i thought about things and i needed to bring it back down to that town and what was doing to make a distinction. They each had radio stations. The radio stations follow the school games and the school lunches. You better be able to Say Something quick and easy to help them understand what congress, what is your congressman doing for you today. The challenge was the same, but the ways in which you could penetrate the minds of your con tissue enters or invite their input were far richer, not only news prints and radios but all kinds of organizations. I went to every chamber, every town over the course of the year, every rotary, every Senior Citizen center at least ce and other organizations that were responding to certain things. Land trusts were very active and needed help and so on. So that rich relationship, i would do community updates, i would plan my schedule. They wanted me to every grade. So we would go to schools. We would sit down with the agencies, with business in town. So if there was a factory that was important, a competition issue, and sometimes you would speak to the workers as to what you were looking for, so you had the opportunity to have a very rich relationship with your constituents. You would have to be there when something important would happen. The state senator and the state representative, the mayor, but we were all part of the Community Envisioning its own future for managing its own life, developing its own families, creating its own schools. I had schools where certain days of the week i would go. So it was a wonderful privilege and rve, but it was a deep systemic relationship the issue of representation. Now because there is not so many avenues to reach through any place, but also members are spending more time raising money. Theyre less intensely interested. I came into politics for basically service, a p. T. A. Mom and it was just kind of a larger arena for what i had been doing as a stayathome mom. Ou see that in the papers. Physically i came through and im sorry that i made the decision not to keep all of the copies of the columns. We send out thousands he have single week. Sometimes we didnt think they would get picked up. Sometimes they would all pick them up. It kept the newspaper educated in things that we were dealing with. Trade was printed everywhere, health care. I kept only one copy. So now im kind of sorry, oh, yeah, there is another one. It was a great privilege to serve, a great challenge to serve and they would look in those papers, what was different in politics then . Why was it that way . The other thing they say is the extraordinary amount of work a member has to do, not just work in their district, but we didnt we didnt realize we had no life at home. You got on a plane and one aff was waiting, another was greeting you, all prepared, we have things for you to do. The intellectual challenge, i graduated from radcliffe, i never worked so hard learning as a member of the congress and arms e privileged to have control. The people making the decisions thinking the thoughts when we got into 9 11, the Armed Services committee briefed all of us, the Intelligence Committee briefed all of us. Needless to say, they didnt give us the kind of level of information because it was going to get out. You really had the opportunity and also the responsibility to know both sides of the issue. Not just one side. So we have lost some of that, but the work that you have to do, i can honestly say its as demanding as any job that america has to offer. Its about as great as any job that you can have. [applause] peter david, thank you. Thank you for those comments, nancy. Its interesting that nancy and i both being in new england, we had the curse of the hourly shuttles which is that because, there is always a plane to get back home, people expect you to be home all the time. I remember talking to a colleague of mine from idaho. By the time his nondirect flight got back to idaho, he still had a 4 1 2 drive to get to get to his house. He was not someone who was going to rush home and rush back because it wasnt practical. But nancy and i and the People Living in the northeast were always expected back. As soon as congress adjourned, usually on a thursday, you hop on the next flight, you come back and the staff would be there and without exaggerating, i told people my days were always longer in the district than they were in d. C. In d. C. Oftentimes a session would end. You get home at a decent time, get some sleep, it was not uncommon for me in my district to have three dinners in one night, none of which i ate at because you would go. You would greet people. You would give remarks and go on to the next event while everyone sat down and ate. It was the way to maximize your contact with con stitch yents and thats what people expect. They want to see, ask you questions, that was part of the retail end of the policy. Before i was a member of congress, i was a state representative and it was really interesting because not only was i in the minority in the massachusetts statehouse but i was in a tiny minority. You had lots of issues that would come by and lobbyists, they would walk right by your office space and keep going and talk to the chairman of the committee and that was that. So a lot of issues would come up and you would not get any contact at all. In washington, d. C. , that was a habit. Every issue is important to somebody, even if it has nothing to do with your district. I think i maybe had a dozen farms in my district, but obviously agriculture is a huge issue naturally. There was always people, there were always people lobbying on agriculturerelated issues even though it wasnt a big part of my district. My district was interesting, north shore of massachusetts, we had some of the poorest communities in the city of inden my district, we also had others, i was able to interact with people across the sphere and everyone wanted you to know and understand what their situation was. That was part of my education in the process learning that you have to represent people, you get one vote, even though the people in your district may have very, very different opinions on what is there. David mentioned the concept of rhino and i was thinking that in new england, we actually saw that process a little bit before eric cantor. We saw joe liebermannerman lose his primary because he was a dino, instead of a rhino. He was a democrat in name only. In his particular case, he was able to run in the general anyways and defeat the democratic nominee and at the end of that term, he retired, but its a process we have been seeing i think sadly were going to see more of it because as the parties go to the two extremes, youre not going to have moderates left on either side. I think thats the worst for america that is happening that for me, for someone to say eric cantor wasnt conservative enough is just mind boggling. Yet thats what his opponent ran on. If you remember, i studied this a little bit, the issue being whipped, was actually being whipped on the house floor at the time. John boehner was having the whip organization assess support for the Immigration Reform bill. People were looking at, well, they didnt want to do entirely what obama wanted, but could they do something to address the issue . It had gotten that farm. That was the number one issue that was used to attack eric cantor on. Even though he had not made any pronouncements on it one way or another, being a member of leonardo dicaprio, he wanted to see what the support was, it was used to attack him. Lo and behold, he was defeated. There was no mention of every whipping or bringing the immigration bill to the floor by the republicans after that. Obama was like, well, why cant you do that . It was like, well, there arent other members who want to sacrifice their career on an issue that we just saw the majority leader of the house defeated in his own primary for it. Its something that worries incumbents of both parties. Nobody wants to stick their neck out so far and depending on the year, somewhere between like 60 and 80 of districts are considered safe for one party or the other. So those people arent even worried about a general election opponent. They are only worried if they are at all the primary opponent and to me, something has to give there. Several weeks ago, david and i were on a panel and we were just talking about, well, will the california system help, will the louisiana system help . Some type of chance for the voters to say, well, no, were not going to choose between the most liberal democrat and the most conservative republican. We want a choice other than that in certain circumstances. Were certainly not there, not yet. Im just looking at the situation were in right now and the race for president , the democrats look like theyre about to nominate the least popular nominee of a major party for a president ever, except the republicans said, no, wait a minute, we want someone even more unpopular than the democrat. Im still scratching my head at that, and yet that looks like what our choices are going to be this november. Art of it i think is very much and entirely the parties are bifurcating so solidly, they are looking at mimicking what is happening in many congressional districts. When Hillary Clinton started running, she was not the most liberal person on all of the issues, but during the campaign, she has begun to echo many of Bernie Sanders positions. If she is not the most liberal candidate, she is certainly very close to that, which a different situation than you normally have. The republican side, i honestly dont know what to make of it because, i mean, donald trump on paper does not appear to be conservative, does not appear to be republican, and yet he had a pluralality of republican votes, 42 and he will be the nominee. So there is an old adage that may you live in interesting times, i think we are all living in interesting times. I dont know where it is headed, but for members of congress, i think their function is even more important now and for those of you who study the congress, your work is important as well. In terms of explaining that to people, nancy mentioned fifth graders, certainly the younger the crowd that you can get to, i think the more impact you can most he people with the open minds explaining to them that there still is a major role for congress, that their participation in democracy is essential, that you shouldnt look at it as choosing our leaders is something that other people do or it doesnt matter if you vote. In my particular case, when i was defeated for reelection, i lost by less than 400 votes. It was one vote per precinct, so im one of those walking cases that tells you, yes, each vote does matter. You really can have a role in that. While i wont even begin to predict exactly where the situation this year is going to lead us, i still have absolutely faith that the people control their government ultimately if they choose to step back, thats their decision and not an informed one in my viewpoint, but they still have ultimate control and to the extent that you can explain and engage people of all ages in that, that is very, very helpful and for your role as keepers of that information, hopefully you will find some students along the way who want to do that extra research, whether its for a paper in school. Whether its for later in life out of just interest, whether its for reporters or people who do bulldogs and the rest blogs and the rest, it really is an essential role. Im glad that you are still there trying to disseminate that information which is essential for a democracy to work. Thank you. [applause] david thank you, i would like to move the conversation briefly to a little bit about polarization which i know you have been thinking about and they call an over determined problem in that there are so many answers to how in the world did this actually happen. Lets just go through a handful of them. After i go through a handful of them, i would like to hear from nancy and peter again with their perspectives on what they have seen changed and then we will go to you for questions and answers. So we are now based on measurements that are done with mething called d. W. , princeton is best known for this. We are in the third break movement in polarization of American History. Its difficult sometimes to measure ideology and they think they have a pretty good approach. Were in the third grade moment now. The first grade moment of American History polarization and with the civil war. The second great moment of polarization and at the end of he progressive era and the realignment of parties with the Democratic Party in the election of 1932 and then we are now at the third grade moment. So there have been, there have been these massive changes that can be quite problematic. One, the civil war, second, a major realignment of the parties, and now. Well, the parties have been realigning for quite some time anyway and that is issue number one, why do we have polarization, because the fundamental basis of the Political Parties have changed. When i was young, the Republican Party in massachusetts was considered the liberal party in massachusetts and the democrats were the conservative party in massachusetts. This begins to change in the early 1960s and in full sweep by the late 1960s as the base of the Republican Party first kind of signaled by the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and ultimately the unsuccessfully first challenge by ronald regan in 1976 and the successful challenge in 1980, the base of the Republican Party moved from the south end to the west. This is a realignment that happens largely around race and the correlation between a person individuals selfproclaimed identification of their own party and their individual selfproclaimed identification around ideology, that correlation has turned quite dramatically. It began in the 1960s and accelerated the physical realignment around race. The second argument is that the , this is an argument i want to hout out to a young star whos name is james dangelo. It is that the Movement Towards sunshine legislation in the 1970s has actually made things considerably more difficult for the work of legislators. In 1970 in the house, we have the 1970 legislative reorganization act, right, a favorite of everybody in the room, i hope, unless you liked the 1946 act instead. The 1970 act was quite a moment because in this act, the sunshine legislation, all votes of the committee of the whole were then made roll call reported votes. Previously votes in the committee of the whole only made final passage vote was the recorded vote. So the crafting of the legislation through the amendments and the amendment tree was hidden from public view. You knew the total vote, but you didnt know how actually people voted. That seems undemocratic. Remember, democracy stops at the door of the United States congress and seems undemocratic. The push to make that major reform was actually done not by citizens groups, but by lobbying organizations who wanted to more successfully and accurately monitor the members and see how they were doing. A rather dramatic change in the orientation of many members. Instead of looking at each other and thinking about crafting legislation at the amendment stage and then going public on final passage, every little moment had to be crafted in public view because their final votes, their amendment votes would actually be amplified. The data on this is really quite crystal clear. There is a knife edge moment beginning in the early 1970s, these reforms are then later adopted across the senate, every state legs layer fewer for which we have data. There is a dramatic increase in party line voting that begins in the 1970s that continues right up until now. Are members becoming polarized themselves . O, they are actually presenting themselves to a polarized constituency. That is issue number two. There are times when transparency leads to particularly difficult unwelcomed outcomes. The reorganization around race and the Political Parties was issue number one. Issue number three is something we also dont talk very much about unless you are inside the baseball and i want to call you it for you. The unrain rules and procedures have changed so dramatically. When you two were on the hill, you could go on congressional delegation, these travels. Ted, i think you may have actually gotten to go along on a few of these at a time. Members were not sleeping in their offices which frankly is disgusting, but now happens widely. They would move to washington, d. C. If you slept in your office in the 1970s, you would have been laughed out of the institution and yet now its recommended because you dont want to go native. Beginning in 1994, republicans and then later democrats decided they were going to no longer move their families to washington, d. C. , but they would keep running back home. It reinforces this idea that the institution is really only running on tuesday,s wednesdays and thursdays and you have to get back home. But it also means that youre not getting to know your colleagues in a deep and careful and thoughtful and loving way which it used to be. There are many unwritten rules that have been violated and beyond sleeping in your office and not living with other colleagues, another very important one was thrown out in 1994. That was the strong and vibrant rule, you could not if you were a sitting member of congress, go into another member of congresss district and campaign for their opponent because if you do that, how are we going to sit down facetoface two days later or two weeks later or two months later and try and cut a deal. If i know that something i tell you in private as were trying to craft legislation and do the common good, if i know that that is going to be used against me and youre going to use it to attack me in my own district, thats insane. When that jeannie was let out of the bottle in 1994, first by the republicans and in 1996 by the democrats, that was a disaster. The rules and procedures are simply what is written down, there are norms and behaviors. The fourth big one and this will be the final one is participation in primaries. There is a very strong emper kl regular relationship between when primaries happen and how extreme the candidates coming out of those primaries are likely to be. Its called the primary gap. The primary gap is the amount of time between the primary, lets say it was in june and the general election in november. If you have a primary in june and a general in november, thats a pretty big primary gap. What if you have a primary ats actually binding in may or in april . The primary gap in the United States, forget about the president ial primaries. I care about binding primaries for members of congress. The primary gap has been dramatically increased. When we look at how people represent their constituencies based on that primary gap, its crystal clear. The smaller the gap, the more moderate and wideranging the candidate will be. Because if you have a primary, lets say in late september, now your media buys are also appealing to a general election constituency, you have to broadcast in not narrow gaps. If you have your prior in may or in june, its all about narrow gaps. Its all about bringing up the narrowest most possible vote. Primary turnout has been on a huge decline. If we look at offier Congressional Elections, so forget about the president at the top of the ticket. Offier Congressional Elections beginning in 1966 and going through to present day, it is a monotonic decline in the percentage of eligible voters that turn out to vote. So in 1966, it was just over a third of all eligible voters turned out to vote in this congressional primary. In the last congressional offier off year primary in 2014, 11 of eligible voters turned out to vote. Its astonishing. Its not the moderates who are no longer turning out, it is the months rats are turning out. Its the strong eiferts who are still turning out. These are things that we can change. We can change how primaries operate. We can change the timing of the primaries. We can maybe change how gerrymandering works. The law must be stable, but never stand still. The institution is stable, but its always changing. Right now were at a pretty difficult time in American History with respect to congress. It doesnt have to be that way. Were always one generation away from losing our democracy, but we are also just one generation away from having the most vibrant and lively and dynamic democracy that we can possibly imagine and thats going to take every one of us in this room to try and make that. So i would like to i was just preaching, im sorry to my parents and ministers. Nancy and peter. Nancy how many of you saw not page coverage its n . How many of you saw about a month ago front page coverage of richard neil who is a massachusetts member of congress, probably the longest serving right now in the massachusetts delegation and sam johnson, a long serving member from texas having a press conference to laud their bill, their bipartisan bill to fix the Social Security Disability Program that is scheduled to go bankrupt this year . How many of you saw those articles . Outrageous i mean look at all of the pensions that are going broke everywhere. Look at Social Security which we dont talk about anymore. This one is actually going bankrupt. This is by start san solution. Richie said himself i want the press to note this is bipartisan. In my mind, the primary number one cause of the problems in governing america fall at the feet of the press. Because they dont report so much. Before Speaker Boehner became speaker, he was asked at the press club in washington, big deal, these speeches at the press club, about six months out before the election, should you become speaker, what will you do to restore civility, thats our language in washington to talk about all of this. And he said, ill make it my business to restore regular order. And im reading this in the Washington Post and i thought to myself, nobody will get that. I wonder if he has told his team he is going to do that because the republicans started writing legislation in the Speakers Office because they had a desperate need to feed their base. Nancy pelosi wrote the entire Affordable Care act in the Speakers Office. The committees were explicitly told no structural amendments, you can amend around the edges, but thats why it didnt work so well because it didnt have the airing. You cant make this stuff up. Law is law. I can tell you from chairing the Human Resources committee of the ways and Means Committee where we did foster care, we did welfare reform, it is the part of congress that does the childrens stuff, even though its ways and means, but under our tax law is where you find Social Security. We take all of your money, but we give it back. So ways and means is the giver backer as well as the taker. We do unemployment comp, we do disability, we do welfare. We do foster care because the foster care child is just a person with no means of income. We had a lot of hearings on these things and both richard neil and sam johnson are on the ways and Means Committee and this is a victory. Its not like the way we pay doctors, it took us 15 years to figure out how to fix it and every year were punting and punting and punting and they never know are they going to get paid or not get paid. It got no press. When boehner said, im going to return it to regular order, that got no press. That one sentence in the Washington Post and they know better. My first thought was, did you tell your guys that. So boehner started that process. I dont write in my office, go see the chairman. They would tell you go see the subcommittee chairman. A good friend of mine, chairman of energy and commerce, i served with him many years. He is from michigan. I spent a lot of time in michigan. He said, well, who is your democrat . Now, fred announced when he became chairman that any amendment that had bipartisan sponsorship would be taken first and most all of the amendments put themselves at a disadvantage if they dont, so they all scurry around and get bipartisan support. If you get bipartisan support, ill tell you my best story about bipartisan support. You remember ted kennedy, i hope. He was really concerned about churn and health care. He wrote this bill that became known as chip. He could not find a sponsor in the house. He needed a sponsor in the house part because the republicans were in the majority in the house. So his staff approached my staff and my staff and i talked about it and i said you know its an entitlement. Anyway, i read it and we thought about it and i said, well, i have to talk to him. I cant cosponsor this. This is just to medicaid. Medicaid is a joke. You cant find a doctor to take medicaid. Its a false promise. I am not going to do that. So ted and i met in his Little Office in the capitol and he told me the history of it. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time. He agreed that they would not have to do it through medicaid. They could do it through whatever program they wanted and connecticut became known as husky so thats a good thing. So children joined husky who didnt have other insurance. We needed that flexibility at the state level and from chairing reforms for foster children, i knew how different the state Health Care Systems were. So that was my contribution. We couldnt get the senate onboard and orrin hatch was the key person. He said i cant do an entitlement. You may remember what happened to his colleague senator bennett had. He said i cant be out there having led a new entitlement. This is important so we agreed toy acapped entitle. In some states, it meant it couldnt serve all of the children, but on the other hand, you have the ability to manage the program the way you want, you can pair it with things youre doing, you can put it down entirely through Community Health centers because the feds pay much better for Community Health centers than other medicaid, so we all agreed on that. Now we have a bill that has the support of hatch, the support of kennedy, and the support of myself but its way deep into the legislative session. We had the support of Newt Gingrich and of bill clinton. And i dont know how they got it done, but they did. It didnt go through committees. It did go just out in the final bill, i dont remember whether it was a reconciliation, but it got woven in because some things are too controversial to get through the Committee Process unless you have several years. A good bill takes five years from idea that everyone agrees with to legislative form. I mean, we should have kids study, what is the initial one, what does it come out as . It cant go in and serve connecticut and still serve wyoming, you cant have a bill that is exactly the same for icago and good for connecticut. So you have to legislating is a profound experience. It goes right to the heart of how you build human communities, how you relate to one another when institutions you have already built. This is why the Affordable Care act, im a big advocate, was an early advocate of universal coverage, but because it was ne the way it was, its laid over. It doesnt fit. So it cant tie itself down because in some states there is a much better pattern. I was very interested in one that recently got the right to expand coverage, but not through medicaid. They can do it through the waiver section, not through the medicaid expanse section. The waiver section has been there all that time, but burwell wasnt flexible enough until toward the end, it was too late, do it through the waiver system, do it your own way. So legislating is fascinating and interesting. We have to help kids see if you look back to see how it was done, then you can see what was good about that and wasnt. Currently because boehner made that commitment and started that process, ryan is even better about it. Ryan will have a program that the House Republican members are going to run on so that he can get them out from under whatever the dialogue is at the time. And the structure of that, under newt, the republicans did it with a contract for america. That was a pretty loose group that did that. It was signed off by everybody, but ryan has said to the committees, listen, im not going to tell you because you saw how boehner got completely done in by his own folks. So boehners only choice was to go to the floor and let the body work its will, so to speak. I have seen speakers do it on the other side. Its happened. It used to be part of our process. Anyway, he did it a couple of times just to show his freshmen that you dont rule the world, honey. There is still a majority of the body that makes law in america. Thats part of the reason that he became so unpopular, he went to the floor and let them work it out. Ryan is really providing the leadership to let the committees think through this issue in their own committees where they know more than the other people that arent on that committee and yet it comes back through the conference process. Whether that will result in compelling enough initiatives to be a platform to run on that is Strong Enough to, in a sense, power through trump, i dont know. But i have different, a totally ifferent view of the trump sanders race as i call it. I have said too much already and ill come back to it. David peter, turn the mic on. Peter it was just getting interesting. Its fascinating for me to listen to nancy because i understand a lot of the inside baseball as she is talking about and if you dont, at some point there are going to be questions that you are going to ask us about this. What i see is that when the republicans took power in 1996 or 1995 rather, it was the first time in 40 years they had been in the majority in the house and the other times they had been in power for just one term unless you went back to the 1920s, so it had been a long time since republicans had been in the majority. Normally when the party switches power, you go to the most Senior Member who was in the majority the last time your party was in the majority, but we had no one in that situation. We actually had to ask bill emerson who was a page in the house of representatives in the 1950s to preside because he was the closest thing we had to a member who had been there before. So we were learning our way in terms of the process and sometimes you look at things and say, well, this needs to be changed and you dont pay as while ention to it and that first term of the republican majority, most bills were written at the subcommittee and the committee level, but overtime, they began to appear, well, this is easier if the speaker does it, we can do that and unfortunately it became common place both when the republicans were in the majority in the early 2000s as well as when the democrats took over for four years, so you dont see the negative as it is happening. In the case with john boehner, when you have a twoparty system, thats one thing. John boehner was essentially speaker of the house with three parties in the house. Two of them were on the republican side, but most people didnt know until he ended up resigning that there was a block of 30 republicans who looked at themselves as a separate party from the other republicans and its very difficult to preside in a body like that. Speaker ryan to his credit said im not campaigning for the job if you want me to do it, you come to me and well work out something. The commitment to regular order from john boehner and the bumps that went with it and now speaker ryan who is very much determined not to write legislation in the Speakers Office i think is a good thing for the country, even though its definitely going to have some bumps along the way as well. So its a situation where the process is headed in the right direction and i hope that it continues in that direction, but again, there is a lot of unknowns that well have to see what happens. I think its an improvement that you do allow members to participate. You dont allow you dont set yourself in a structure where a group of 30, no matter who they are, can have a veto power over the process. You want that to continue and in some places, if youre going to be a majority party, sometimes you have to accept a feat, but you have to make sure that its a narrow defeat if you can, but move on to the next issue. If you try to block everything, thats normally when your party gets thrown out of power and thats one thing that ive been researching and want to do more tudy on, but in 1994 elections, republicans had not won a majority in 40 years. Bill clinton had been the first president of either party to control the house and the senate going back to jimmy carter. Two years later, he lost the house and the senate. Nancy he couldnt control his party. Peter he couldnt control his party, nancy says. Its very interesting. Republicans, a couple years, lost a few seats and then he ended up leaving as speaker. You have george bush elected as president in 2000 losing the popular vote, but winning the Electoral College fight by the bare minimum and nominally he had the majority of the house and senate. A senator from vermont switched parties and became a democrat. They had control of the senate, we had 9 11, the republicans controlled the senate and the house. By 2006, the American Public again soured on what was happening and it wasnt just they were, in my view, not just disapproving of what george bush was doing, they were disapproving of what the republicans in congress were doing, too, they threw the republicans out of the house and senate. Its getting worse over time because i thought its going to be a dozen years before the republicans take the house back again after losing it, its just the way its going to be and then barack obama wins huge victory in 2008. 2010 comes around and republicans take the house back and make huge gains in the senate. And so barack obama had a twoyear window of one Party Control and the American People said, we dont like the direction this is going in. Ill stick my head out and say if by chance one Party Controls the white house, the house and the senate after this election, i predict two years from now, the American People will take at least one branch of the congress away because the partisanship that is driving the primaries and the members election there is not what people want to see in a National Agenda there. The only way to veto that, the next off javier election well have a shift of membership to get that done. David thank you, peter, questions, comments, observations. Yes, sir. Can you speak about your relationship with your repository, have they done anything that has delighted you and is there a downside to having your papers collected . Peter i donated my papers to the massachusetts historical society. In paper im in Great Company because my papers are with thomas jefferson, john adams and john quincy adams. They have done something to delight me and that is they have not touched them. Its a case where i thought i had a lot of papers and then nancy told me how many boxes she donated and its like no, i dont have that many anymore. Theyre in a situation where they have not tackled them yet. I am not in any hurry on that one. I do stay in active contact with them. Obviously they have quite a few projects going on of National Importance and im sure at some point they will get to them and that is absolutely fine by me. I know they will safe for when the seal is cracked. I want to make sure when we ask a question, p the question so everyone can hear it. Do you want to take this question on the archives . Having gone to d. C. And visited our delegation from oklahoma, there are media concerns, oppositional researcher down the road, a lot of these people will continue. What is the advice you give to somebody, even if its good to say i havent touched those papers yet, what is the advice you give to say donation is an ok thing, a good thing, or would you simply say it isnt . I struggle in those conversations to communicate with people in the environment because i understand the pressures they are under and i understand there is life after congress and they have to keep that in mind. What advice do you give your colleagues when theyre facing the question of who to donate to and how to donate through repositories . And donate mind to yukon they have a sophisticated system organized impressively. I dont think we really learned how to use this material to our advantage. And that is not surprising, its a different kind of material. Weve done it at an era where everybody uses their own thing. The idea of looking through isnt at the top of their list. That doesnt mean that in the it will, historically, be terribly important but i think we need to refine how we use it. The first election in which there have in cycles and the election. On the way was known as the hampton that he brought a greater determination to raise money. The unions always contributed standard money to the democrats and standard labor force. Election i lost was the first one and rob emanuel was the thet, the first in which goal was to go after peoples character. Before that, it had always been go after their stand on issues but it was very interesting to that affected us. Went through to make sure there wasnt anything that would be misinterpreted easily. When i retire, i do want to spend some time with them because i went through my notebooks more carefully. Thing is not in the slimming down, the interesting thing is in the volume of eight and seeing what the communication was so my set is not better than theirs. To put some real thought into how we answer members concerned about this because its very real. Written is already Public Information about their positions. If you could get to their archives, you could see what they really did and what they really thought versus what the press said they thought. Ive gotten to be very down on the press about the last few years i was in office. They didnt know anything about government, policy. Before that when i started, we had a very knowledgeable guy named conrad. Stuff if itwrite was just personal attack. We should be in our high schools having kids write a paper on why we should elect trump and the other one why we should elect Bernie Sanders. Its much more instructive because you think the Republican Party is in trouble. Im one of those republicans like brooks and every other peter and iow only served four years together but we met weekly. We were very active. Because trump is responding to when i said he will go away, normally he would have gone away. The fact he didnt go away, who would have thought sanders would have lasted so long attacking Hillary Clinton. Never have we had a candidate of that caliber attack like this. Isember trumps philosophy the government has let us down, it feeds on its own, its out of touch. There is some truth in what he is saying. You have to be able to do both. The issues are complicated. At the same time, we killed off our newspapers, killed off the communications equipment, even town meetings. They would be picketed by some special interest and the article would be all about the picketing but this is depressed. Theead of listening, article would be out on the steps with the picketing. If that first debate. The question to every person was how did you feel when trump called you this . Never have we had a National Debate with that focus. Trump, not one of us understood the level of disconnect between people and itsr government and destroying us. Democracy cannot survive without Mutual Respect for other peoples opinion and its not there anymore. Trump is a problem for all of us democrate is the old it thinks the government can do things better in the private sector. Thats a huge threat to the way we have built our economy. If you can do it better, how would you do it . Love it. A lot of people are not only afraid to donate their documents, they are afraid to keep their documents and to me, its a problem. If you have people who are retiring and your organization has the ability to reach out to them, still do it. If they are thinking about running for office and you are able to keep it under seal or you say give it to us later, there was a democrat who had retired a few years before me and he went out of his way to tell the society he had burned all of his papers. I believe in transparency and all the rest. But the idea of having president ial records unsealed relatively quickly now is you have people running for office in an advisory position for president whose comments are coming back now and im thinking maybe it needs to be a little longer time. Dont want people not saying things. As it is now, there is plenty that doesnt get reported. There is no written record of that. To will not have that part look at anyways. You really want to try to preserve that as much as you can and you dont want people afraid of committing things too hard writing or electronic writing because you have no record to work with at all. Am sure youre all thinking about electronic resources. I want to shout out to the sunlight foundation. Some of their projects will last a couple years but they have done job dropping the wonderful work. Take a look at their website. I also want to shout out to the hewlett foundation. I also want to shout out to a book you havent seen yet but if you want to have a degree of how important the work of the archives are, i have seen this in manuscript form, garrisonnew going to give you chills. Eight is a phenomenal piece of work, a great piece of history. As someone who doesnt spend as , ih time as garrison did want to thank everybody for continuing to arrange things chronologically because i really never know what it is im looking for. In order for me to understand what is happening in context, it is the bins and, as you are maintaining that are helpful. Dont get too organized. Clerics i have a question which i think either of the members of congress may answer. My perspective is that of someone who has done some research over the years and what the repositories qualityatly in terms of in futility. , ining about John Mccormick 1990 seven, i went to Boston University and was stunned by the fact the actress brought out literally brown paper shopping letters. H all kinds of compare that to a much better experience in the university of connecticut. Wondering do you know what ,riteria or anything you follow where you want to put your paper in terms of how you catalog, organize. Clerics in my particular case, it did not have a huge amount of thought. It was very pragmatic. There was a gentleman who was a state senator in massachusetts. I supportedidates his father was a House Speaker and u. S. Senator. Me to the folks there. I did not put any restrictions or recommendations on the donation. They did send out an archivist that would be of interest. But i did not put a lot of thought into organization. Given where we are now, if i knew then what i know now, while not quietly as badly organized as the brown paper bags, they some help. Itely use i cant say i had the foresight to do it then booked its a good question. I had a friend who Left Congress the four i did. He announced he would not run again. A real leader particularly on workforce issues. He said why would i leave all of this for someone else to write what they think my record is . Im sure they throughout half butstuff we gave them particularly if you are interested in harry in history, there needs to be more feedback between the people running the libraries as to who uses what. There is something important to the process you cant see. Same with on tax policy and other things. There was a sense you needed to be exposed to the great minds. You wouldnt really see that in the paper. At the simplest level of how this democracy functions, you can see a lot. In the new group, its all electronic. Constituent mail electronically. You have to decide do you print off one copy of all their constituent mail . I dont know how they do it. I remember when i was first , when we went into see toby, he said we answered every phone call with a hard copy. Is just do what because that how you hear from your people. There is a lot to be learned about how to cultivate this and its important because so many other repositories of that conversation have collapsed. Theres a lot to be learned from the communication amongst members about bills, with constituents. Some of the letters you would get were very valuable. I think the libraries are remarkable resource we have but like lots of resources, as times change, you have to figure out how to get people interested and i think we are missing with our High School Kids how much fun it would be if we could figure out how to let them do original research in the library about some of these people and have it organized in such a way that we could do that. Over the last 20 years, we have seen an increase in Civic Education in terms of common core. We learned with our head and our gut. Over the last 20 years, we have seen a disturbing trend downwards. In high school and middle School Student government, they are going away. Children may be learning in terms of book learning about Civics Education but are they allowed to have their own student government, there class president and actual election . The answer is yes, many will still have it but they are on a rapid decline. We learn by doing. I think its wonderful you are associated with University Libraries and bigcity libraries. If there is a way for you to imagine reaching out to those middle school kids, their teachers, the communities that no longer have student government, there has to be a way to bring it back. We are one generation away from our demise. If someone wants to ask the final question. We have four more minutes. I will throw in an anecdote. David mentioned how the Republican Party used to be the liberal party and the democrats were the conservatives but in 1948 was the first deer democrats ever took control of the massachusetts house of representatives. And the democratic minority leader that year was this guy named tip oneill. He found this great question to organize elections on. The question was to legalize Birth Control. The republicans were in favor and the democrats were opposed so tip oneill owed his becoming speaker of the house to being opposed to Birth Control and thats how different massachusetts was in 1948. [applause] when we took the majority in the house, we took control of a lot of property. New created a team that was to go out and they closed for five where houses and stuff. I just tell you that story because of trump comes in and looks at the government, that could be not all bad. The way we have done things is layer the new on top of the old. Partly our Personnel Management law as well as our collective bargaining agreements may convince a real look at what we are doing and how we are doing it. We are literally desperate. No business is operating like it was 10 years ago. No employee is doing the same thing because they have different tools. Look what has been happening at the irs, making it partisan partly because of this issue of who is nonprofit is too complicated and who should be free. , ive comeax reform to the point where we cant do this because when you are a means thatervice, it the State Government stops doing it and pays you less to do the same thing they were doing for more money and there is no way you can keep doing a good job but everybody pays you that. There is a real coming to terms with what we are doing as opposed to what we are saying and i think without a real , we ought to be thinking about what is the structure of our government. Thank you for inviting us here today. ,ongresswoman nancy john sent thank you so much. I understand we are right at the moment when you get food for yourself so we will see you later. Thank you. Coming up this weekend on tonight, astory tv, look at the confederate civil war prison, State University of new york and the 13,000 Union Soldiers who died and the postwar trial of its commander and rework. By the early fall of 1864, 5000 men died between august and october. Total, nearly 13,000 Union Soldiers died in andersonville in its entire existence. About 45 death rate of percent. At 9 00, brent glass talks about his book. At 11 00, Stephen Breyer on the influence of foreign relations. This power is primarily the president s. Congress, not the court but what about the Civil Liberties . Sometimes, there is a clash. Why is there so little . Cicero was not one of the founders but they did know. 10 00, the 1960 democratic and Republican National conventions with the Democratic Party nominating john f. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon accepting the republican nomination. In 1952 and 1956, millions of democrats will join us not because they are deserting their party but because their party deserted them at los angeles two weeks ago. All over the world, particularly in the new were nation, young men are coming to power not bound by the traditions of the past, men not blinded by the old fears and hate and rivalry, young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions. The republican nominee of course is a young man, but his approach is as old as the ken lay. For a complete schedule, go to cspan. Org. The first time in our nations history that a woman will be a major party nominee. At the Democratic National convention in philadelphia, Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman nominee of a Major Political party for president of the United States. Monday onage begins cspan and cspan. Org. Up next, military historian there at tillman discusses three of his books, including forgotten 15th. He talks about military aviation during world war ii. This was recorded in scottsdale, arizona in 2014. Its just under an hour and 20 minutes. Good afternoon. Its sunday and i am delighted ,o welcome back Barrett Tillman who has written over 40 books. Most of