Here & Now

Pocan Discusses Legislative Agenda for New Dem House

Frederica Freyberg:
In Washington, the House of Representatives flipped majority. In tonight’s closer look, we check in with a member of that new majority, Congressman Mark Pocan representing the 2nd district of Wisconsin. Congressman, thanks very much for being here.

Mark Pocan:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
We wanted to ask you, are you supporting Nancy Pelosi to be speaker?

Mark Pocan:
We’re having our election next week and sitting down with the leader. I think I just found out today between noon and two on Tuesday and we’ll be making final decisions then.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what can you tell us now?

Mark Pocan:
I expect Nancy will be the next speaker of the House of Representatives.

Frederica Freyberg:
We spoke with Congressman Mike Gallagher of Green Bay last week. He bemoans a broken Congress, saying how leadership runs the whole show, leaving very little room for members to actually legislate. What would you like to see from Nancy Pelosi in terms of giving the ranks more power?

Mark Pocan:
That’s kind of an insider view. People inside the beltway care about. Big view of what’s wrong with Congress and there’s plenty. Let’s start with campaign finance reform. Let’s get rid of dark money. Let’s make surely half my colleagues aren’t millionaires. No offense to a millionaire, but that’s hardly representative of the country and that’s the makeup of Congress. There’s a lot of things we need to do. I think I’m heartened by the first bill that we’ll introduce as Democrats, HR-1, cause it gets the first number as bill, will be one that deals with campaign finance, elections and ethics reform. So dealing with some of the problems we’ve seen with this administration and some of the cabinet heads and things that need to happen. Dealing with some of the election law changes that we saw many states where they dropped people off the voter list. And dealing with things like disclosure of dark money, anonymous money into campaigns. We want to lead with that and I think that’s a good way to start a session.

Frederica Freyberg:
Will the House then kind of “go after Donald Trump?”

Mark Pocan:
So we’re going to have two things that you do, right? In Congress, part of it is you’re going to advance policy legislation and pass bills. You’re going to have a Republican Senate, Republican president so you’re going to have to negotiate, so that’s a good thing. But also is oversight, what’s been missing the last two years, is Congress has had no oversight over this White House. So there’s a committee called Oversight and Government Reform. Their job is oversight. Clearly they’ll be doing that. Judiciary will do that and Intelligence. Those are the main three. Every committee will do certain oversight. Sometimes it’s around the administration. Sometimes, for example, I’m on Appropriations, the Labor, Human Services Education subcommittee. I assume we’ll have a lot of pharmaceutical company executives in to talk about why the cost of drugs is so expensive when it doesn’t seem to make sense to most anyone else. So that is a responsibility. We’ll do a lot of that along with putting proactive pieces of legislation forward.

Frederica Freyberg:
And you specifically for your district here in Wisconsin, what will you be looking to kind of get done?

Mark Pocan:
Yeah. So a number of things that we’ve had out there. Higher education is something I think with this district especially, the two subcommittees that I serve on in Appropriations, account for 77% of the money that comes to UW-Madison. Clearly, that’s very important to me. Financial aid. I’ve been the lead sponsor of a Perkins Loan Reauthorization Bill. It’s lapsed for now for over a year. It’s a bipartisan bill. We have 245 sponsors. It’s one of the 20 most sponsored bills in Congress that hasn’t seen a vote. Like to get that done. And we have to do the Reauthorization of Higher Education Act. That’s just one area. Also I have a lot under my subcommittee purview in agriculture, in human services and in labor issues. So we’ll probably lead with issues in those areas.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, you’ve been talking with Speaker Vos, I understand, back here at home over his ideas to limit Tony Evers’ authority. What is your comment on that?

Mark Pocan:
Yeah, you know, so the people of Wisconsin voted for Tony Evers. They voted for, in fact, all the constitutional offices happen to be Democrats this time. 54% of the people or 53% of the people voted for Democrats for the state legislative seats, yet they have 36% of the seats because of gerrymandering. So I think what we have to realize is people wanted a change in the direction of the state. You don’t out of sour grapes or because you lost then change the rules and that’s what they’re trying to do. I expect that from a banana republic. I don’t expect that from a Wisconsin Legislature. Robin’s better than that. He and I may disagree on issues but he’s a very smart person. I think he should be better than trying to take away the powers of an incoming governor because you’re unhappy that he won. I think that just looks bad. It is bad policy. And I’m hoping that he’ll come to a better place.

Frederica Freyberg:
Now, you have said that you believe that what that is about is redistricting. How so?

Mark Pocan:
Yeah, so my concern is just that stat I gave, 53% or 54% of the people voted for Democrats for the legislature, and you only have 36% of the seats. Clearly they’re concerned about redistricting. I think if there is a way, if they really are going to try this North Carolina-coup attempt on the governor’s power, they will try to find a back door way to go after redistricting. So I just want people to be very ready for it. It’s nice to worry about the DNR board composition or the WEDC board composition, but if you’re busy looking at a couple trees and miss the entire forest, that’s the kind of stuff that could happen. I think even they could go after the attorney general’s office. There’s a lot of things they could do that they shouldn’t. And again, I’m trying to go to their better selves. They have some good ideas, we have some good ideas, but you don’t just after an election get so mad you take all the marbles and then huff and puff and go home crying. That’s what they’re doing by trying to take away the powers of the governor.

Frederica Freyberg:
What do you think about the idea of moving the presidential primary to ostensibly protect a conservative justice?

Mark Pocan:
Yeah, that’s another pathetic thing they could do. We used to be very proud that it was Wisconsin, Minnesota and Maine that had the top three turnouts nationally, especially when it came to presidential races. Now we’re going to move elections around because, again, the people might decide they want to elect someone other than the Republican leadership thinks? That would be a really bad move. It’s very expensive. It’s hard to administer but it’s also just the wrong thing. You know, make your case. You have some good ideas. We have some good ideas. Let’s negotiate. We now have split government. But you don’t just change the rules after you lost. That’s not right. That’s not the Wisconsin way. Again, I’m hoping they’ll reconsider that.

Frederica Freyberg:
Congressman Mark Pocan, thanks very much for joining us.

Mark Pocan:
Sure, thank you.