Today, we are welcoming back to the program Congressman Rokaya representing California's
17th district, located in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Congressman, always great to have you on. Great to be on.
So let's just start with the covid relief bill, popular with 76 percent of Americans,
even 60 percent of Republicans. Rarely do you see such agreement among three
hundred and thirty million Americans on anything, one point nine dollars trillion dollars. Many
people wondering, what what are we waiting on right now exactly?
Well, we're going to pass it this week in the House and then it goes to the Senate,
so we're waiting as often on the Senate and most of the bill is going to go through. The
big debate, as you know, is whether the minimum wage will be part of the increase to fifteen
dollars. Is at this point, do you think that understanding
how popular the bill is nationally, that Republicans in the Senate are really going to stand in
the way? Or will some of them take the more pragmatic
approach of realizing that this is popular even with many of their constituents, and
it makes sense to to be on the right side, so to speak?
You would think that, but that's not the indication, I mean, when you have Mitt Romney coming out
saying that this is too big of bill and too much spending, I mean, if he's not going to
be for it doesn't give me much hope that you're going to get many Republicans for it. So I
expect, unfortunately, that this will be a straight party line vote.
How soon would the stimulus deposits and or checks start getting to people if it was passed
sometime next week? It would be a few weeks typically, I mean,
I know in the previous administration, it dragged on for months and we still have some
people who are asking about the six hundred dollar check from last time. So I hope we've
learned from that. Typically, it takes about two to three weeks for people to see the check
after the president signs it. In your mind, would this be the last covid
stimulus? I hope not. I have called Tim Ryan since the
economic crisis began four monthly checks because people's rent comes due every month
or a lot of folks who aren't getting unemployment benefits. I think we have to continue until
the crisis is over, until our economy is fully open again. And I'm going to continue to push
for that. What metrics would you look at to determine
when that is? I guess I would look at the unemployment rate,
but not just the unemployment rate for people who have opted out of the workforce. I would
look at the infection rate and the prevalence and seeing how much we've been able to open
up our economy. Again, the 15 dollar minimum wage, which is
part of the version that is currently in your chamber in the House of Representatives, if
that doesn't ultimately get included in the bill, is that the next thing you'd like to
see Congress take up or is there something else?
I would, because it's the one thing that represents structural change. So the bill is very important.
It gets money to state and local governments. It gives money for vaccines. It gets money
of cash for every individual. But it's not structurally changing the economy. The minimum
wage does not fundamentally increase wages for people. The challenges and Bernie Sanders
made this point yesterday that you can't do the minimum wage without reconciliation. They're
just not 60 votes. So, yeah, you either have to get rid of the filibuster or you have to
do reconciliation, which is why it's so important to get this in the current bill.
When we talk about the immigration situation we covered on the program earlier this week
how Joe Biden did very quickly do this executive order to stop the removal of undocumented
immigrants back to a number of different countries. But a judge very quickly kiboshed that. And
since correct me if I'm wrong, Joe Biden has not attempted with a different legal justification
to do another executive order. And I've read a number of interesting legal assessments
that say if Joe Biden was really determined to do this, there are a number of other ways
that he could word and structure executive orders. The it was it was very narrowly stopped
by this Texas judge. And Joe Biden hasn't done that. I've said that. I think that if
indeed this is the priority, Joe Biden said it would be in that I believe it should be
he should be going right back at this with another executive order and another. What
do you think? I agree with you. I mean, I think that we
shouldn't let one judge stop the process of having a more humane immigration policy. And
the biggest concern to me are the kids. And I'm sure you read also on the other detention
and sending them there. Now, there are alternatives. You can have community detention, community
placement, and it's a question of having the resources in a plant. So I think that this
has to be looked at. I've looked I'm on Pramila Jampolis road map for immigration. She's going
to be putting out a plan of how we keep our borders safe, but are not treating most of
the migrants coming over, particularly kids, as criminals.
So if Joe if Joe Biden doesn't do it, if he just leaves it, as I did an executive order
and a judge stopped it and I guess now we have to wait, would you consider that a failure?
I don't think that's true to what he ran on. I mean, we every Democratic candidate running
said that we were going to look at the inhumane Trump policy and return to a policy of not
criminalizing most people crossing the border, that it is a civil infraction and you can
be sent back. But there has to be a move that we are treating mothers and kids as criminals
and that we're placing them in community placements instead of these detention centers.
In terms of the makeup of the House of Representatives right now, when we look at national polling
among Republican voters, for the most part, the support of the former President Trump
is is still significant. Something like 80 percent of Republicans want him to remain
involved, 64 percent said if he split off and started his own party that they would
follow him. Now, I expect that in practice those numbers would be lower. I think the
idea of splitting off is more appealing than actually doing it. But needless to say, for
the time being, there's continued support among the Republican Party for the former
president. What is your assessment right now of the impact within your legislative body,
of the presence of folks like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert and Madison Cawthorn,
who arguably are only even there by riding on the coattails of Trump ism in the last
six months of 2020? Well, they've been marginalized from the body,
but the challenge is that there were almost one hundred and forty Republicans who voted
for the the opposing the certification of the election. And that's a lot of that's not
just some of these extreme cases. And so the decision by the Republican Party has to make
and it's a very difficult decision, is how do they move beyond Trump without abdicating
their base? And I don't think any Republican actually has figured that out. I mean, you
have Nikki Haley taking a different side of the equation every day because they're trying
that balancing act. But and they've seen the consequences of a Liz Cheney or someone who
tries a clean break. And until they are able to get a coherent vision of a post Trump future,
they're going to struggle. Is it naive to think that this fracturing,
particularly if this divide becomes more noticeable, if Donald Trump does start his own party or
if he announces at CPAC on Sunday that he's running as a Republican in 2020 for any of
these things that might fracture these two sides, is it naive for me to think that it's
an opportunity for the left to get things done while they are fighting among themselves?
Well, I I think for the sake of the country, it would be better to have a coherent party
that rejects racism and that moves beyond Trump. But what I would say is we have all
the tools we need, but we don't even have the focus right now on the Republicans. When
we have to do is focus on how controlling the House, controlling the Senate or the presidency.
We get our things through and we ought to be doing aggressively through reconciliation,
the fifty dollar wage that covid relief infrastructure and expanding health care. So I think we have
an opportunity to deliver on our agenda on health care.
What do you see as as the next step? Not in a in a perfect world where we might be talking
about Medicare for all or something else, but based on what Joe Biden ran on, is it
is it a simple let's establish a public option? What is it that you see as the immediate next
step on health care? Well, we should expand Medicare, and he ran
on expanding it to 60. That seems to me an easy left. We should look at how we at least
get a public option that is affordable as a step towards a single payer. I mean, I believe
fundamentally Medicare for all is the right solution. But what I would say is, let's look
at any step in the lens of getting us closer to that ultimate goal and we should support
those parts that are helping us move in that direction.
In your mind, does this have to be done before twenty, twenty two because we simply don't
know who will control what after that point? I do. I mean, I think it has to be done not
for the sake of politics or the bill itself. You don't do this, you'll lose the House.
I just think it's so rare in American politics that you have the presidency, the Senate and
the House. And if we don't do this, who knows when all those stars align? Again, we're working
very, very hard to make sure we keep the House and Senate chambers working hard to keep the
Senate. And I think we have a very good chance. But politics is unpredictable.
And while we have this opportunity, let's deliver on some structural change to improve
people's lives in terms of the day to day in the House, you know, we've had these stories
about metal detectors and we've learned about Congressman Cawthorn saying that with his
wheelchair, he's able to actually have multiple firearms with him. And it's not obvious to
others that that that's what's going on. Are you feeling worried day to day about firearms
at the Capitol? I personally am not. But I feel I worry for
our colleagues. I worry for some of the women of color who have been subject to many death
threats. I worry for people who have been outspoken and targets on on right wing media.
And then I'm sad for our country that every time I go to the Capitol, it's basically a
fortress. Barbed wire. You have the National Guard. I mean, it's a sad thing that we've
created that distance between government and people because of the threats that are there
on the building. So you're not necessarily changing your protocol,
but much has changed at the Capitol. Yeah, I mean, everyone is more vigilant. That's
just common sense, and me and our team are more vigilant. We probably lock the doors
more. We're more careful. We're making sure that we're not taking unnecessary risks. But
personally, I don't feel threatened in the way that some of my colleagues, unfortunately,
have been threatened. Yeah, you mentioned infrastructure. And this
is such a big topic now, particularly in light of what happened in Texas last week. And,
of course, we've gone into detail about the way the Texas grid works. The reality of it's
very plausible to Winterreise wind turbines, wind turbines are not the cause of this issue.
But can you talk a little bit about what would a green infrastructure deal look like? What
would be the most important things to include in terms of the types of subsidies maybe that
would be put in place, the types of jobs that we should be looking to create, how we should
be managing the reality that for the most part, we still do get most of our energy from
fossil fuels at this point in time. Well, David, I chair the subcommittee on the
Environment, and we're going to be holding a hearing on what happened in Texas and you're
absolutely right with one of the questions we're going to ask, whether this is actually
cheaper to weatherize wind turbines than it is to weatherize natural gas pipeline. So
shouldn't this incident have us move towards renewable energy? That's either easier to
weatherize, that's easier to build infrastructure. And we need to be making that kind of investment
in renewable energy generation, in battery storage and electric vehicle. And all of these
things are going to create jobs. And we ought to have the federal government help finance
it or take equity in it, because these are large capital projects in building the modern
infrastructure for the new energy economy. That is something that's jobs, good jobs,
and it's also something that's going to help us tackle climate change.
What will it ultimately take, though, to really signal a sea change in terms of I mean, your
state of California has taken a pretty definitive position on a new new vehicle. Sales will
have to be electric after. Correct me if I'm wrong, is it 20, 35? Yes. Some European countries,
Germany, for example, has taken a similar approach, but at the national level rather
than at the state level, do you think ultimately the federal government is going to have to
make some of those decisions in order to really move forward?
I do. I think we ought to set ourselves. I think those standards will be good for American
business. It's good for us to lead in electric vehicles rather than allowing China to lead.
And we could create the incentives to build those plants in places that have lost manufacturing.
For example, Lordstown, Lordstown, Ohio, lost an auto plant because we have a demand for
SUVs over over sedans. Well, why don't we incentivize that? Lordstown Lordstown, Ohio,
could become an electric vehicle plant manufacturer or a battery manufacturer. One of the things
that's interesting is a lot of the component parts of electric vehicles could be made in
the United States. So we have to have a real view of how we reindustrialize America. And
if we do that, it can be towards climate change, tackling it, but also towards job creation.
Yeah, there's a bit of a myopic view on electric cars. I mean, certainly right now Tesla is
the lion's share of the market and those are American vehicles. It's unbelievable what's
going on. But when you look at Revy and you look at Polestar, you look at what clearly
is a growing presence of Chinese electric vehicles. There's a particular window of opportunity
right now that it sounds like you're saying should should be seized before this goes elsewhere.
Exactly, and China currently leads and the electric vehicle market, I mean, they don't
lead in the US market, but they lead in the China market and the worldwide market. And
a lot of the electric vehicle manufacturers does by Tesla are there. So we don't want
China to eventually be exporting to Europe and to be exporting to the rest of the world.
We want our countries companies to do that. And that's why it has to be collaborative
with the government and the private sector to innovate.
Last thing I want to ask about two structural issues that we talk about so much in terms
of how future elections will will work. Those are campaign finance, how our elections are
financed and paid for, and also how how we count votes. Right. The idea of first past
the post within an electoral college system. Do you see the possibility of any reform or
changes on either of those two issues in the next two years? Is there even an appetite
for it right now within the Biden administration and the Democratic Party?
Well, H.R. one is all about the and a big ideas to give individuals matching funds to
be able to contribute to eliminate big, big money to help have redistricting reform. I
think it'll pass the House again. The question becomes what happens in the Senate? And then
the question becomes what parts of the Roberts court hold constitutional? My view is that
the simplest thing is to make every voter a donor, give every person a fifty dollar
credit to be able to use on campaigns to democratize finance and lessen the value of big money.
Yeah, well, I mean, one interesting piece I read said that that's a great half measure,
but ideally you would eliminate all of that and simply have straight public financing
of elections. Do you see that democratization of funds as an intermediate step or is the
end goal? I think it is an intermediate step. I mean,
I would love public financing of elections, but that just would be struck down as unconstitutional
under the way this court has held this delay. How an understanding of money is speech about
your proposal that Larry Lessig and some others have come up with is to say that it's constitutional,
even under a Roberts court. And if we can't get rid of the billionaires spending money,
at least we can dwarf them with citizen resources. And so that's the idea. But obviously, it
is a half measure. Absolutely. Last thing we just learned about
Joe Biden's plan to essentially pack the Postal Service Board of governors, adding three individuals
so that then Lewis Dejoy could be removed. Does that sound to you like it will happen
as smoothly and as quickly as some are hoping? It should. I hope so. I applaud the president
for doing that. I mean, look, Joy was just a disaster, not just because of his trying
to play games with the election, but his view that you would basically privatize the postal
service and that that was never the intention. When private companies can explain to me how
they're going to guarantee mail going across country for 50 cents and the speed it does
that we could talk. But the reality is they can't. And there's a reason that we have a
postal service that is a public entity and we shouldn't be privatizing the few public
entities that are working in this country. Absolutely. Let's let's hope it does happen
that quickly and smoothly. Congressman Roxanna, of course, from California, 17th District,
always great catching up with you. Thank you, David. Thank you for having me,
as always. The David Pakman Show at David Pakman Dotcom.