Here & Now

Green Bay Area Congressional Candidates On Wisconsin Issues

Frederica Freyberg:

That was Zac Schultz reporting and this is a closely watched purple congressional district flipping back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. In this election, the 8th congressional district in northeast Wisconsin is an open seat, with the Republican incumbent not running for reelection. In four days voters will elect either Republican Mike Gallagher, a former intelligence officer for the US Marines, a Georgetown PhD, staffer for the senate foreign relations committee and global market strategist for a fuel management company in Green Bay. Or they will select Democrat Tom Nelson, the Outagamie County Executive in Appleton with a master’s degree from Princeton, who served six years in the Wisconsin State Assembly and ran for lieutenant governor alongside Tom Barrett. So there you have their resumes. What are their positions? Let’s ask them.

Thank you to both of you for being here. On the presidential candidates in your respective parties’, latest polls put Donald Trump up 50% to 38% in the Green Bay/Appleton market.

So first to you Mike Gallagher, you’ve said that you can’t defend some of Trump’s remarks and yet you say you will vote for him. Reid Ribble who has endorsed you says he cannot vote for Donald Trump. Will your vote be difficult for you?

Mike Gallagher:

I already made my vote. And it was difficult. I think it’s difficult for a lot of Americans. I was talking with my mom and my sister about this the other day, and I think they said what a lot of people feel, which is out of 330 million people in this country, is this the best we can do, on both sides, by the way. Americans have profound misgivings about both of these candidates. But we have to make a choice. For me, I simply can’t vote for Hillary Clinton, for a variety of reasons. I mean putting aside the fact that she supports policies that I believe would be incredibly damaging to this country, policy of completely open borders, more foreign policy weakness. But my own experience as a counter intelligence human intelligence officer for seven years in the Marine Corps, and I sent a single classified email on a private server let alone maintain that private server and deliberately wiped it, I would not be sitting here today. I’d be in jail. My personal experience with Benghazi, working at the national counter terrorism center. I totally understand the difficult decision. It makes it more important to have people in congress who will protect their constitutional responsibilities to stand up to the president.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let me turn to Tom Nelson, and ask given the apparent popularity of Donald Trump in this Green Bay, Appleton market, how much of a drag has Hillary Clinton been on your race in the 8th?

Tom Nelson:

The question of who to support for president has never been a political issue, partisan issue for me. This has been a do the right thing. Donald Trump is completely unfit to be president of the United States or commander-in-chief. Anything that he has said and done, especially over the last month and half, where he has mocked a disabled reporter, how he has bragged about not paying taxes for 18 years, how he said these vile, awful comments about committing sexual assault. I mean, that in and of itself disqualifies him from running for president of the United States. I have opposed Donald Trump from the very beginning. My opponent, Mike Gallagher, has stood with him, shoulder to shoulder through thick and thin. This is a question about doing the right thing. The right thing to do is definitely not to support Donald Trump.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to move along to jobs and the economy, unless you particularly want to respond to that.

Mike Gallagher:

Well, you know, I think it’s not only desperate, but a dangerous misreading of what this job actually entails to try and make it all about the presidential race. The fact is, as I’ve said from the start, I’m not hesitant to call out Donald Trump when he says something I disagree with, whereas my opponent has been completely silent in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. He’s been silent when it comes to the $2 billion ransom payment paid by Iran. The fact is I’m not running to serve the president and congress or party leadership. I’m running to represent people of the 8th district and to honor the oath I took to support and defend the constitution. The same one I took 10 years ago when I joined the Marine Corps.

Tom Nelson:

That’s what’s frustrating about this, is this is a pretty simple question. It’s a long-winded answer. The answer is we have to oppose Donald Trump. We have never had a candidate for president, much less probably any other office that has done and said the things, that this is a question of– This is a moral question to do the right thing and we have to oppose Donald Trump, regardless of what you might say his standing in the polls are.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let’s move along to an issue, jobs and the economy. First to you, Mike Gallagher. You say reducing regulations and taxes including closing loopholes. Describe how those moves spur jobs.

Mike Gallagher:

Go around, talk to anyone in the District, particularly manufacturers. I grew up working in my family’s business, which is just across the river, Gallagher’s Pizza. Small businesses, family-owned businesses, that’s the lifeblood of our economy here in northeast Wisconsin, but they’re getting crushed. Talk to anybody. They’ll tell you the same thing. It’s I started this business 20 years ago. I put absolutely everything I had into it. I fought for a decade to make it work, but I could not make this business work today because the regulatory burden is too punishing, because health care costs are going up because Obamacare is a complete failure. I simply don’t have the resources to reinvest in my workers or to offer more jobs. We need to fight to get government off our back, out of our wallets, and allow companies to grow, to reinvest in their workers. That’s how we get manufacturing moving in northeast Wisconsin again.

Frederica Freyberg:

Tom Nelson, how would you strengthen the economy in northeast Wisconsin?

Tom Nelson:

I think the focus has to be on the worker, has to be on the working families. People are, despite all the statistics out there saying that we’re in a great economy, people are still struggling to get by. I think the policies must be focused on working families; first, second, third. Number one, we have to raise the minimum wage. It hasn’t been raised in seven years. This is both an economic question, but also moral issue. People shouldn’t have to, you know, only get paid $7.25 for a full hour’s work. That’s just not right. My opponent disagrees with that. This is a pretty easy question. We need to raise the minimum wage. Trade has been a big issue here in northeast Wisconsin. NAFTA, 20 years ago, has been absolutely devastating for manufacturing jobs. That’s the lifeblood of our economy here. I’m proud to have the endorsement of the United Steelworkers who represent the paper workers. We have to have a voice in the Congress that will oppose these trade deals. I’m sorry. Mike has been a through and through free-trader. He even disagrees the fundamental premise that bad trade deals have cost jobs here in northeast Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

I thought I read you didn’t approve of the TPP.

Mike Gallagher:

I don’t. I never have. So my opponent– simply untrue. Listen, I work in the real world in the private sector. My opponent spent his whole life in politics. Whether it’s a dairy farm in northeast Wisconsin, it’s we can’t afford to run and hide from global competition. We have to improvise, we have to adapt, we have to overcome, if for no other reason that 96% of the world’s population, that is, 96% of the world’s customers live outside the United States. We need to let our dairy farmers sell to them, our manufacturers sell to them. We have ensure that they compete on a level playing field. But instead, because of policies that my opponent supports, we force our workers to compete with one armed tied behind their back. I think that’s wrong. I also agree it’s a moral issue. No one should be forced to live on $7.25, but I don’t want someone from New York or Washington D.C. who has never even been to Wisconsin or can’t even pronounce it to make decisions about our economy when they don’t understand our economy here. I think we should make that decision if we want to, right here in Wisconsin.

Tom Nelson:

So, I think, translation clearly from his statement he is leaving the door wide open to support bad free trade deals. And number two, you either are for raising the minimum wage or you’re not. Another answer that he’s just not, you know, coming straight with people. I mean, the simple answer is, number one, we have to raise the minimum wage because people should not be paid $7.25 an hour. We need to raise it. That’s one of the first things congress should do. Second of all, regardless of whether a trade deal was written by a Democrat or Republican, and he opposed the TPP because it was written by president Obama. It’s bad for workers in northeastern Wisconsin, whether it’s TPP, NAFTA or any other variant of that. We know that these trade deals have been absolutely devastating for jobs here in northeast Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to move on to health care. Mike Gallagher, I know you want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. For people in this district currently enrolled in a plan as part of that, what would you replace it with?

Mike Gallagher:

My Sure. Absolutely. Well first of all, my grandfather’s a physician, my dad’s a physician all my uncles are physicians, my sister’s a physician. They delivered about 20,000 babies in northeast Wisconsin. I grew up around hospitals and doctors in this community. Every day someone comes up to me and says, “Your dad delivered me. Your grandpa delivered me. It’s the relationship between the doctor and patient that is at the essence of our health care system. Obamacare is failing because we’ve inserted a bunch of D.C. special interests and government bureaucrats into the middle of that relationship. We need to reverse that. We need to put patients and their doctors back in charge of health care. We shouldn’t force anyone to buy health care against their will, particularly when that coverage doesn’t protect them. We need to allow people to shop across state lines to increase choice, drive down costs. We need to allow farmers, church groups, small businesses to band together in order to create more creative coverage options. Eventually, and this is the hardest thing, but ultimately, it’s the most important, in our fee-for-service system. My sister talks to me about this a lot. Just to order a battery of tests, in order to cover themselves and do whatever the patients asked, but we need to get to population-centered health care. Going from what I call defense to offense.

Frederica Freyberg:

Tom Nelson, on repealing the Affordable Care Act. I mean, it is true that premiums for many people are going up. What do you say to people who are in that position who might have a plan and seeing their premiums go up?

Tom Nelson:

Well, I think, first of all, there are about 20 million people who did not have health insurance in the country that do have health insurance. So simply repealing it and putting forth some ideas, maybe platitudes or buzz words is not going to make sure that those 20 million Americans have access to health insurance. Take a look at Outagamie County. This is one example, one county in our state where we saw from 2013 to 2015, we saw the uninsured rate drop by 50%. We saw it, at Outagamie proper, with our mental health patients. They saw the uninsured rate go down by 70%. So those are some positive things. In addition to that, we now have a law that says that we cannot discriminate against someone with a preexisting condition and then young adults can be on their parents’ health insurance until 26. Specifically what we can do to drive down costs, one thing we can do is adopt the Wisconsin Senior Care model, where the federal government should be allowed to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, with drug companies on the lowest possible price. It’s incredible that the federal law says you can’t negotiate on behalf of those 20 million consumers. I think that would take a big bite out of those costs since rising drug costs are a big part of health care cost inflation.

Frederica Freyberg:

We only have about a minute left and I want to touch on a really important and big issue so I’m sorry for that. Social Security. You say you don’t want to privatize it. So how do you, quote, save it?

Tom Nelson:

First thing we need to do is for those that make over $118,000 a year, they should contribute more. I think that’s something that is fair. That’s 2.5 times the household income of folks in northeast Wisconsin. My opponent has talked time and again about reducing benefits to the poverty line and there was a fact check that just came out yesterday that he does in fact support such a plan.

Frederica Freyberg:

15 seconds.

Mike Gallagher:

There was a fact check that came out after he ran his first ad lying about it that said it was just that, a lie. He’s now on his ninth version of that. Listen, because career politicians like my opponent, politicize this every two years. Talk to Reid about it. it just gets worse and worse. We need grownups, we need people that are going to protect my grandma, who depends on social security to survive. That’s what I’m committed to doing. Let’s have an honest conversation, not a political distortion.

Frederica Freyberg:

I need to leave it there. I thank you both very much for joining us tonight.