Dave
grew up in Wausau and graduated from Wausau East High School. He was
elected to Congress in 1969 to represent the 7th Congressional District.
What position do you now occupy in Congress?
I am a member of Congress, the 7th Congressional District of Wisconsin.
Were you elected or appointed?
You can’t be appointed to the House of Representatives.
The only way you can get here is be elected. You
can be appointed to the Senate, you can be appointed VP, like Jerry Ford was,
but you have to be elected to go into the House.
What are your campaigns like?
Well, they vary. I’ve had
a lot of them. The last time was
the first time in all of the campaigns that I
didn’t have a Republican opponent.
I had 2 Third Party opponents, but not a Republican opponent. Basically,
my campaigns, I guess you can talk about them in 3 levels, the main campaign is
just going from county to county, going down Main Street talking to people,
letting them “chew” on you; rallying the troops, speaking if they are
visiting firemen or candidates, like we had Edwards come into the district a
number of times, Kerry, we campaign with them.
And then you also have immediate campaign with radio and television ads
and some newspaper ads. That’s pretty much it.
How many Congressional terms have you had?
Well, I was elected the first time, April Fools Day of 1969.
What is your political platform like?
Well, I am a Wisconsin Progressive Democrat.
Before Bob Lafollette came along, Wisconsin government was owned lock,
stock, and barrel by the mines, by the timber companies, by the railroads, and
by big business. Lafollette made democracy safe for everybody else.
I mean, he essentially pushed through social legislation that created
unemployment compensation, workmen's compensation, regulated the utilities so the
railroads couldn’t just price farmers right out of business by their shipping
costs. I am for whatever helps
average working families get a fair shake in life.
I think we need to make sure that kids who come into this world will get
an equal shot at a decent education which means that I fight to increase the
education budget. I think it’s a mortal sin that every family is not covered
by health insurance, etc. I’m very much for that.
I think that when people work for 40 or 50 years, and they are worn out
and are looking forward to a decent secure retirement, that they have a right to
expect it, which is why I am so fundamentally opposed to what President Bush is
trying to do, because I think he would essentially tear up Social Security as we
know it today and ruin it. I think
we need more protection for workers in the workplace.
I used to work with asbestos, for instance, I didn’t know at the time
that it would cause cancer. Lots
people in the workplace every day are working with materials and compounds that
could be problems for their health and I think someone needs to step in to make
sure that they are as safe as possible. In
foreign policy, I think it would be nice. I
want this country to be strong and I want us to defend our interests around the
world, but I would also like us to stay out of stupid wars like Iraq.
The issues that we were just discussing, how are you
fighting for that, and have you achieved success for these issues?
Well you make progress, and then you get knocked back.
Right now the Republicans control this place and they are not going to
vote for most of the things that I am for.
They are not for the government doing something to provide healthcare.
They will spend any amount to provide tax cuts, especially for people in
high income standards. But they
fight like the devil against major increases for education or healthcare,
environmental protection, things like that.
Right now, I am the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, that
is the committee that decides where the money goes.
So we decide how much goes for environmental protection, and how much for nurses training, how much for
education, you name it.
What are the main issues involving Wisconsin that you
have focused on during your campaigns and how they have changed?
Wisconsin’s problems are very similar to most of the rest of the
country. I think you keep getting
back to the basics – what does it take to give a family a chance to get ahead
in life? And to me, it takes
knowing that if you are going to send your kid through school, it’s going to
be a quality school with a decent building, decent technology, well trained
teachers, class sizes small enough so that you get some personal attention.
If you are going to college, whether you can afford to go to college or
not should be determined by your head and your heart, not what you have in your
wallet. When you are trying to
raise a bunch of kids and you got 2 people in the family working at the same
time, you need a place for those kids to be.
Which means that lots of people need after-school centers, for instance,
which not enough people have. You
need to know that if you get sick, I mean, I remember when my father worked for
3M in Wausau, and he went to the hospital for an appendix operation, he came
back paralyzed. His arms wouldn’t
work, nobody knew what happened. He
couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t shave.
Herb Frankie, the old barber, used to come over and shave him.
We thought our family was ruined but we were very lucky because slowly he
got the use of his arms back and wound up being OK.
Lots of people aren’t so lucky. So,
you are just an illness or accident away from economic destruction.
Families shouldn’t have to go through life playing Russian Roulette.
Those are the issues, then you have your specialized issues, obviously
agriculture is very important to Wisconsin.
In fact, I was in a hearing with the Secretary of Agriculture this
morning and tourism is awfully important. You
want clean water, lakes, air, that’s what attracts people.
The Ice Age National Trail in Wisconsin is a wonderful recreation
opportunity for people. I try to
get funding to expand that every chance I get.
I am working on the same priority issues.
What would say you are most proud of in your career?
I’m most proud of the fact that I led and lost when Ronald Reagan was
president. When he came in here we
never had a deficit larger than $70 billion, and he proposed a budget which we
knew would triple the deficit and he tried to pay for some of it by cutting the
blazes out of education and healthcare programs.
The Democratic party was kind of “weak knee'd” because they just lost
26 seats in the previous election, and so they really weren’t taking it on
with any clarity. So, Mo Udall and I and Henry Rice organized the Progressive
Democrats in fighting that package – warning that it would lead to a big
deficit and warning that it would also cause us to disinvest in things we needed
to invest in, like long-term science and things like that.
We lost it, we knew we would lose it, but we got a majority of Democrats
to vote for it and that was the basis of our campaign two years later when we
won back a lot of those seats, which enabled us to stop the bleeding.
Those budgets put us in the ditch for 10 years and we wound up with huge
deficits. You know, so it’s a
fight I lost, but it was a fight worth making.
And then there are other things, I’ve got lots of funding for things in
the district, the new nursing and health education facility at the Tech in
Wausau. I’ve gotten over $50
million in special highway funds, modernized the transportation system around
Marathon County. I support economic
development and lots of things like that.
Do you have any failures in your office that you
would like to share?
Sure you have failures all the time.
I just talked about the most important one – when Reagan beat our socks
off. I mean in politics, it’s
just like life, you lose most of the time.
And that can be very frustrating. But
you have to remember, even Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times.
So, if you put it in that perspective, it’s just like any other walk of
life, if you get licked, you get up, dust yourself off, and keep going.
What drove you to consider public service?
A nun. When I was in 7th
grade, I was a confused frustrated kid. I
skipped school 2 days a week. And I
hated everything. My folks were
getting a divorce, and one day Sister Techlia said “You’re going to
participate in a debate about Senator Joe McCarthy.” I didn’t know anything about Joe McCarthy.
I found out he was the worst public servant Wisconsin ever had.
But, she gave me some stuff to read and I thought it was interesting. It was the first time in months I was interested in anything
and that started my attention to politics and I got involved with the Young
Republicans because my mother was a big Republican and she was crazy about
Douglas McCarthy. And then when I
saw what the “Kill McCarthy” supporters did to the best teacher I ever had
– they tried to have him fired for being a “red.”
He was about as red as Red Skeleton, the old comedian.
They tried to have Henderson fired and that made me take a look at
McCarthy and realize what a savage he was.
By the time Adli Stevenson ran for the second time as president, I became
a Democrat and have been a strong Democrat ever since.
Did you have any other public service jobs in
Wisconsin before you came here?
Yes, I was in the State Legislature for 6 years.
I was the Deputy Party Leader, and before that, I was in college.
I thought I was going to be teaching Russian Government some where. Instead, I got waylaid into this crazy life.
When you came into office, what was the community
like then?
It was right down the middle of the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King had
just been killed, Bobby Kennedy had just been killed, and everything that we had
worked to build was turning to sand. It
was a very bitter time for people. Physically,
the downtown mall in Wausau didn’t even exist
yet. Wausau Insurance
Companies were still located where the City Hall is today.
And you didn’t have the downtown open square that you’ve got today,
the Arts Block. All of the bridges
in Wausau have all been replaced with modern bridges today, so physically, the
town is very different.
What is the most interesting experience you have had
in Congress?
I would say, the 10 years that I chaired the Foreign Operations
Appropriation Subcommittee. Because,
I was chairman when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and the Iron Curtain
collapsed in Russia and the Soviet Union collapsed.
I was in charge of the congressional response to that in terms of
providing aid to the emerging countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine.
I just met some people from the Ukraine.
I mean that was fascinating in dealing with the collapse of the Soviet
Union and being in conferences with them. When Yelson stood on the tank after
the Communists had the counter revolution, trying to take power back, 10 days
later were meeting in Budapest with Russian Minister Andre Cosognif and Deputy
Defense Minister, Andre Coshin. Those
meetings led to a program that is known as Non-Luber Program today.
It’s a program under which we provide money to buy up loose nuclear
weapons floating around the former Soviet Union because you had lots of Russian
sergeants who weren’t getting paid after the country collapsed and we were
worried that terrorist countries or terrorist organizations would bribe these
guys and grab some tactical nuclear weapons.
We were worried that some of those scientists who were out of work would
go to work for these organizations and we tried to put up money so you could
find other things for them to do short-term until the economy stabilized.
That was a challenging time. Right
now, this whole issue of what is going to happen to Social Security, it's a
fascinating issue because people your age, by in large, don’t recognize it,
but Social Security is not just a retirement program.
I mean if you are a 30-year-old person working and you get injured and
can’t work for the rest of your life, Social Security will, in fact, over your
lifetime pay you about $300,000. It’s
the equivalent of a $300,000 term policy. It
is so crucial that that program not be screwed up.
There is a story in the paper about this conservative alliance that plans to
spend about $200,000,000 on propaganda to try to convince the American public
that it’s a good idea. It is a
wretched idea. It will wreck Social
Security as we know it, it will plunge us $2 trillion deeper in debt and won’t
solve the problem. There are
adjustments that have to be made long term, but we have had to make the
adjustments in the program for 70 years. We
ought to be doing that rather than blowing it up.
What would you consider the most difficult experience
you’ve had?
I would say the most difficult was trying to find a way to keep
everything from being poisoned by the Vietnam War.
This country was so bitterly divided at the time.
I would also say that knowing we were going to lose the fight with Reagan
and knowing what that would mean in terms of long-term screwing up our country,
and I was very involved in trying to shut down our financial support for the
Contra War in Central America. I
think the last 2 years trying to preserve education and health care programs
from Bush’s budget ax. Those were
the most difficult times.
Do you feel you have made an impact on your
community?
I don’t think there is any doubt about it.
You look at any county in that district and you will see dozens of things
that wouldn’t be there if we hadn’t been around to get it done.
Highway 29, we got lots of money to complete that 4-lane, highway 51 the
same thing. Student aid, there are
literally probably 30,000 students that have gotten much more help to go to
college than they would have gotten if I hadn’t helped.
I mean, I am the point man on education funding in this place on the
Democratic side of the house. This
country is spending $16 billion more on education than it would have been
spending if I had not been negotiating those budgets.
We had to run over Newt Gingrich and the Republican majority, and we liked to
run over George Bush the first year he was in the office in order to get that
done. We had less success lately in
the last two years, but that $16 billion investment has made a big difference in
the quality of education.
Have you changed as a person since being in office?
Oh, I think everybody changes You know, I think I have learned to roll with the punches a
little better. I take a longer view
of things. I mean when I came here
I was looking for mentors. People
like Dick Bowling from Missouri,
Bob Kastenmier from Wisconsin and Gaylord Nelson sort of took me under their
wing and helped me learn the ropes and now, I do the same thing for newer
members. But one thing that
hasn’t changed, are my beliefs and my passions.
I am just as fiercely committed
to economic justice today as I ever was. To
put it into prospective, what I’m talking about, in 1975 the wealthiest 20% of
people in this society had a family income every year that was about 8 times
greater than somebody in the lower 20%. Now
that’s already obscene. But if
you take a look today, that same family in the upper 20%, the average family
income for them is 15 times as large as a lower income family.
When you have the wealthiest 1% of people in this society that control
33% of the nation’s wealth, and when the gap between rich and poor has doubled
over the last generation, I think that’s obscene and that’s why there are so
many families who can’t afford health insurance, can’t afford to send their
kids to school, and can’t afford decent housing. This is a capitalist system, but I don’t believe that
everyone is equal. You want people
to demonstrate initiative and you want them to be rewarded for it, but you
certainly want some norms of decency between those who have the most and those
who have the least in this society. We’ve
gotten way, way from that.
Do you like being in DC and what you do?
Well, my old friend from Ireland, John Hume, was the leader of the Peace
Forces in Northern Ireland won the Nobel Prize a number of years ago for peace.
John was in my office one day and he was taking note of how much people
were disparaging politics in this country, and he said, “David, don’t your
constituents understand that politics is a nonviolent substitute for war?
If you doubt that for one minute, look at what is happening in my own
country.” I am thrilled every day
to be able to walk around this building to see that dome and think of what it is
supposed to mean and realize that I have got a say, even if it is just a small
one in the decisions that we make here. Having
said that, it is very distressing to me to see the huge role that big money
plays in politics. When you see the
hundreds of millions of dollars that big business will spend.
Right now, the Washington Post pointed out that there are over 450
lobbyists hired in order to try to persuade the Congress to blow up Social
Security. Now those lobbyists are
not hired by little people, they are hired by the big corporate giants of this
world who think that they have no obligation to anybody else on the planet and
enjoy every day of getting up and thinking of ways to block people like that!
I’ve always had these signs up. I
took them down last week because when the President gave the State of the Union
message, the first lady usually uses this office as a holding room before she
goes in. But, whenever somebody’s
in asking for money, that’s what I ask them, make them read it out loud –
“What do you want me to do for somebody besides yourself.” You would be surprised how many people resent
that. But that’s the question,
the're always going to be somebody who needs something more than you do and if
you don’t put that first “besides yourself” in, and then in practical
terms, if they are looking for money, you got a $500 billion deficit coming at
us, you can’t afford it if you are going to provide another trillion dollars
in tax cuts. If
I cut taxes for my generation without having a way to pay for it, that
means your generation is going to pick up the tab.
That’s not exactly good business.
If someone is considering public service, what advice
would you give them?
Well, it depends on what kind of public service they want.
I mean, my niece is a foreign service officer.
She has been in the foreign service for a long time. If that’s the kind
of public service you look for, you have to specialize.
You have to learn languages, you have to learn international clearance,
you have to learn the country’s history.
Other public service, you’re in public service if you’re feeding
somebody in the soup kitchen and you’re in public service if you are in the
White House. If people are looking
to get into elective office, there are a dozen different ways.
All I can tell you is the way I did it.
I just got involved because I was a kid who got turned on about politics
so I used to stand up on Third Street in Wausau every Friday night, passing out
literature for candidates I was supporting. While I was still in High School I
took my sister’s wagon, tied it to my bicycle, filled it full of literature,
and distributed to all of the City of Wausau during the campaign.
Then when I went to college, I was involved in Young Democrats and I
would be down to party headquarters and stuff envelopes and lick stamps.
That’s how I met John Kennedy, Bob Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Adli
Stevenson, just doing stuff like that. I
never expected to be in college. I
got persuaded to run for the Assembly and it totally changed my life.
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