Frederica Freyberg:

On the Democratic side, with the election of Glenn Grothman, Mark Pocan will no longer be the freshman congressman from Wisconsin. Pocan recently won his second term in the US house, representing the 2nd congressional district around Madison. Last night Pocan voted no on a last-minute spending measure to keep the government running. Democrat Gwen Moore and Republican Jim Sensenbrenner voted also voted no. Democrat Ron Kind voted with Republican Sean Duffy, Tom Petri, Reid Ribble and Paul Ryan in favor of the measure, which passed. Congressman Mark Pocan just arrived from Washington and joins us with his reaction to the vote. And thanks very much for being here.

Mark Pocan:

Thank you, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

We wanted to ask you why you voted no on the trillion dollar spending bill?

Mark Pocan:

Well, you know, I think the last four years in Washington we’ve just seen so much of it broken, the legislative process. And this is one more thing that I think is the public no-confidence in Washington. We have a 1,600-page document that gets released Tuesday evening. We’re going to vote on it 48 hours later. And it’s just riddled with all sorts of special interest things. Two of them that stood out the most, I think, to many of us were a provision to go back to the bad old days of banking where banks invest in risky derivatives, and somehow we’re going to, as taxpayers, protect those investments rather than discouraging those risky investments. And then on top of it we give big, wealthy campaign donors the ability to give even more money to pollute the process. And it’s almost as if they were connected. You know, banks are going to make more money, and by the way, here’s a place you can put it. That’s just a part of what was really wrong with this. And if you really want the public to have trust in Washington we have to have– go back to doing a budget process the way it’s supposed to work, pass appropriations bills separately, not a giant omnibus bill. And let’s debate those and really see what's in each bill.

Frederica Freyberg:

Yet you’re getting heavy pressure, even from the White House, to vote yes on this.

Mark Pocan:

Absolutely. I think the White House looked at it as they wanted to have some continuity for the economy. But we really looked at it as, you know, the public already has enough disdain for Washington. If they find out in the middle of the night in a couple days notice we're passing this sort of stuff, they should be upset with us.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet, didn’t it take you close to a potential government shutdown?

Mark Pocan:

Well, it wouldn't have shut down, because they had a backup plan and continuing resolution. But again, you’re right, that’s how the leadership in Washington works. They wait until we’re at the final 48 hours and then they put something together, I think largely, so they can slip a lot of this bad stuff in. But that’s what’s wrong with Washington, and I think it’s time that some of us start saying that more aggressively.

Frederica Freyberg:

One of the things I understood though was that the spending plan was negotiated and agreed to before the Democratic caucus kind of decided they didn’t like it?

Mark Pocan:

Well, it was agreed to by a few people in leadership in the senate and a few people in leadership house, and those few people decided on the 1600-page document. And that’s the problem. So if you do the normal process, we have committees that have review, subcommittees that have review, and you actually know what’s in a budget. Right now anyone who told you they know everything that’s in that budget would likely be lying.

Frederica Freyberg:

On immigration now, the incoming Republican majority wants to arm wrestle the president's executive order into a bill of their making. What do you think that kind of bill on immigration might look like?

Mark Pocan:

Well, you know, the senate did the right thing. Because of the closure rule they have to operate in a bipartisan way, and they did that. Because of that they got a large bipartisan vote on the immigration package. The house, unfortunately, didn’t do that. So as much as we complain about needing to deal with the issue, we didn’t even vote on a single measure to take us anywhere close to what the senate had. We didn’t vote on anything. So when the president acted because congress didn’t act, something has to happen. And in a vacuum the president did what he could within executive order powers. So I’m glad the president’s doing something, but that also means we need to come back and do a lot of other things. And the next session, Republicans are in control of the house and the senate. They no longer can blame Harry Reid somehow for everything. And this is their chance to really craft what their vision will be, and I look forward to having that debate.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, this time last year did you think you’d be rolling up your sleeves alongside Glenn Grothman again as you did at joint finance here in the state?

Mark Pocan:

It will be interesting having Glenn in Washington.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because Glenn apparently is on two of your committees, both education and workforce, and also the budget committee. So that’s your answer? It will be interesting to have Glenn in Washington?

Mark Pocan:

I'll tell ya, first of all, Tom Petri, I think, is very big shoes to fill. Tom Petri may have been a Republican, but I had enormous respect for him. He was an expert on infrastructure and education. And I hope that Glenn learns a lot from how Tom Petri worked, because he had a lot of respect from Democrats and Republicans. And I'm hoping that Glenn will get to Washington, and maybe he’ll have a chance to see our delegation does work together really well. And I hope he will bring in that same spirit that Tom Petri did.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet, one of his priorities remains welfare reform and he’s not backing away from his statement that public benefits are a bribe to unmarried mothers to keep them that way. What’s your reaction to his persistence on this?

Mark Pocan:

He’s entitled to his opinion, but not to his own set of facts. And the facts that he’s putting out saying how you can make $35,000, and there’s a bribe to not work. It’s simply a fallacy. He cooked the numbers. I used to be on the finance committee, I know the memo he’s got. Even with one little screening he’s making it sound like you can go, and every piece of welfare that’s out there, he asked them to put on a paper and how much would it be. The problem is you can’t get all those. Some you have to work for, some you can't be working. Some just don’t have overlap. Just to give you one idea, if you’re on TANF, getting that money, and financial aid, they were told that that’s no more than at most 260 people in the entire state of Wisconsin out of 5.5 million. If you had housing assistance or anything else, you’re going to get to probably an imaginary family that doesn’t exist. So you can say that, but the facts belie his argument. So I hope that he’ll come to Washington maybe relying a little more on facts like the rest of us, and then we can have a good debate. He’s entitled to every opinion he may have, but we do have to have one set of facts that we all work off of.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Congressman Mark Pocan, thanks very much.

Mark Pocan:

Sure, thank you.