CA-10: An Interview With Lt. Gov. John Garamendi

John Garamendi has been seeking votes in California for well over 30 years. He first took a run for the Governor's mansion in 1982, and was set to do so again in 2010 until the seat in CA-10 opened up, and he was inspired to return to Washington, where he served in the Clinton Administration in the Department of the Interior. He has the most diverse record of anybody in the race, with stints at the federal level, the state legislature, and in two statewide offices, as the Insurance Commissioner and now Lieutenant Governor. In our interview, we discussed health care, lessons learned from regulating insurance, No Child Left Behind, saving the NUMMI plant in Fremont (more on that from Garamendi here), and foreign policy in Iran. I found Garamendi to come at issues in a very comprehensive and thoughtful way, and you can see this for yourself below. A paraphrased transcript follows.

DD: Thanks for talking with me today.

John Garamendi: My pleasure.

DD: So how's it going out there on the campaign trail?

JG: It's going very well. Every day, I feel we're moving along well. You have everything being done that is normally done in these campaigns. We have a strong volunteer grassroots organization committed to getting out the vote. Phonebanking has started, we've hit about 30-40 thousand homes. We're walking in different communities. We just had a meeting in Rossmore, with 300 people turning out. So I think it's going very well.

DD: Your last several campaigns have been statewide, with district-level campaigning being more retail, how are you finding it?

JG: To me, it's exactly the same, only it's done in a smaller area. I've always believed strongly in retail politics. The only difference is that after the event's over, I don't have to get on a Southwest Airlines plane. We did an African-American church out in Fairfield over the weekend, same as any African-American church in Southern California or anywhere else. It's just easier for travel.

DD: OK, let's hit some issues. First off, health care. August is this time where everyone's making their feelings known about health care in their districts. What are you hearing in yours?

JG: I am hearing a strong element for single payer, or Medicare for All. As you may know, I've led that debate in this state for many, many years. I've always found it the most efficient, most cost-effective way you can possibly do this. Just send your premiums to the Medicare office.

So I hear a lot of individuals trending in that direction. And some of the unions, the California Nurses Association, are also trending in that direction. There is also a concern about the complexity of the legislation moving through Congress. And people want to see at the very least a public option to compete with the insurance companies. Also, with a lot of seniors, the drug issues concern them, both with fixing some of the issues with Medicare Part D and also maintaining what they like about Medicare. So that's the range.

DD: Would you vote for any bill that didn't have at the least a public option that's available from day one, without a trigger?

JG: Well, I've always been a strong voice for Medicare for All. The fallback position is the public option. That's already a compromise. And so the legislation had to have a public option, I can't go any further away from that. The other thing I want to express is that I understand insurance reform, which is a lot of this bill. I was the main regulator for insurance companies in the largest state in the union. So I bring a set of knowledge to this debate that not only doesn't exist among my competitors, but doesn't exist in Congress.

DD: Let's talk about that. Right now, insurance companies are regulated in the states, and so the regulations vary from one place to the next, and can be corrupted by local interests. Do you support a federal role in insurance regulation?

JG: This is something that we have to figure out with insurance reform and with respect to financial regulation. The regulatory mechanisms need some clarity. It simply won't work to write a law saying to the insurance companies, "Take all comers." They will not do it. So you need a police force. Someone to enforce that law. Will that be federal, or based where it is now, at the state level? That's the kind of detail that must be worked out. I mean, we've had auto insurance here in California that's supposed to take all comers, and they find numerous ways to avoid that. And of course, this is why I support Medicare for All. You don't have to worry about any of that. But as long as we're going with health insurance reform, I can add something to that process.

DD: What are the pluses and minuses of putting this in the hands of the Feds?

JG: If it's a federal process, you'd have to set up a massive new federal bureaucracy. In the positive sense. But you have to have a police force, because otherwise, the insurers won't do it. That's a major, expensive undertaking for the federal government. There's an advantage to the existing mechanism in that it already exists, like with Medicare or Medicaid. However, you mentioned some of the problems with how the regulation changes depending on the state. So both options have shortcomings. Either way, if we have a bill based on insurance reform, it has to be dealt with. And I've been dealing with these companies for eight years of my life. I know how to do this.

DD: Medicare for All will apparently get a vote now. Is that helpful?

JG: It's enormously helpful. It got pushed to the side of the debate for too long. Medicare provides about 60% of the care in dollar terms already in this country, and it's very popular. If you bring the rest of the population in, on a per-person basis, the cost would decline dramatically. The money in the private system is good enough to get this done and cover everybody. And the other important thing is that Medicare allows individual choice of provider. Whatever doctor you like, you can keep them. Of course, we know that private insurance restricts your choice of doctor. So this is the big lie in this debate, the idea that Medicare would have government telling you what doctor to pick. That's what happens right now.

DD: Let's move on. I noticed on your website you took a lot of time talking about the need to rebuild manufacturing. We're seeing this cash for clunkers program becoming very successful as an economic stimulus for the auto industry. Is that the kind of incentive-based programs that we can use to bring back manufacturing to America?

JG: Not exactly. The auto industry is not central, but it is important. That's why I'm trying to save the NUMMI plant. 1,200 businesses are direct suppliers to NUMMI. The auto supply industry is one of the largest in America. So cash for clunkers will help NUMMI. But what I'm talking about with respect to manufacturing is an economic theory that I developed in the 1980s. Basically, I figured that you need certain things to maintain the ability to lead as an economic power. You need a world-class education system and a commitment to research and development. Through both of those, you can create new things, with a high profit margin, whatever those things are, but new innovations that people find valuable. Eventually, those new things become a commodity, and once that happens, like all commodities, it seeks the lowest-wage place to be made. So those things get pushed off, and you have to create more new things, to keep feeding that engine. So that's what I'm talking about, high-end manufacturing.

DD: Couldn't the NUMMI plant be retooled to serve as a place to manufacture those new things, be they innovations in solar or wind technology or new batteries?

JG: Well, we tried this a few years back. I endorsed a bill in the legislature to provide a specific exemption for sales tax on manufacturing equipment to retool the NUMMI plant for hybrid vehicles. And that probably would have been enough to keep NUMMI open. But it didn't pass. Right now, what we're doing is putting together a package for NUMMI of incentives that will hopefully keep them in California. But it's more complex than that. This is like a divorce. You have GM and Toyota fighting over who owns what widget on the line. So there are legal issues in play now. I think we can get it done, because that's a very efficient plant, one of the most efficient in the country. But we have to manage this divorce.

DD: Education is another issue you talk about a lot. The Department of Education just put out this Race to the Top program to offer money to the states with good outcomes, but they are restricting the funds to states which incorporate student testing into teacher evaluations, and because California doesn't do that, they don't qualify. What are your thoughts on that, and this larger divide between education reformers and groups resisting their reforms?

JG: My question about it is basically, what is the equation between the test and teacher evaluations? Are we talking about just the test score? In that case, do I get to choose the students? Because the students and their backgrounds are a contributing factor to their performance. So it's a complex equation. There's a socioeconomic element to it. And it's very difficult to do to take everything into account. I don't think that testing should be the sole measure of a teacher evaluation. There are multiple factors. My daughter's a kindergarten teacher, and this year she got to school and there were a lot more kids in her class. So is that a factor? I think we need to evaluate teachers, but we must be fair.

DD: Do you support a reform like paying teachers more to go into poor-performing inner city areas?

JG: I've always supported reforms like that. I put up a bill in the 1980s to pay more to math and science teachers, to make sure we were attracting the best of them. And I support sending good teachers into the inner city. We have to pay our teachers better if we want to get the best outcomes.

DD: We are having such a tough time in California, what can the federal government do to alleviate some of the burden here where we are destroying our social safety net during a deep recession?

JG: Well, just to go back to education, one thing the federal government can do is fix No Child Left Behind. It was a great concept, but not good in detail. The reauthorization is coming up, and the Feds had better fund it. You can't place a burden like that on the states and expect them to deliver. So funding, and some reform of the law, has to get done. I don't think testing should be the only evaluation of students. There's a place for it, but we're building a nation of robots by teaching to the test. I have significant concerns about No Child Left Behind that need to be addressed.

DD: What about beyond that. Would you support a second stimulus focused on the states?

JG: I don't know whether there will be a second stimulus. But the problem is pretty elemental. California is the 7th, 8th-wealthiest place on Earth. We have made a decision, and it was a decision, not to invest in education. We have plenty of money to fund it, but we made the decision not to. The leadership has refused to use that wealth in the greatest resource we have, and that's our education system. It's clear to me that the federal government cannot substitute for the effort that California must make for themselves. We need investment, coupled with serious reform, to break the gridlock. Voting to tax students by raising college rates is just insanity. And the regents and trustees refused to support legislation for an oil severance tax to fund higher education. I brought it to them, and they wouldn't support it. We are the only oil producing state with no tax on the natural resources coming out of our ground. The oil companies have been able to take it for free for over a century. It's madness.

So the federal government cannot substitute for California. But I'll fight to bring money back to the state. First by funding No Child Left Behind. And also, there's the issue of medical services. The formula for state participation in Medicaid in California is 50-50, an even split between the Feds and the state. In other big states, that ratio is different. In Illinois, New York, it's more like 60-40, 70-30. Getting a better split in that formula represents a huge amount of money for California. And there are numerous formulas like that. So experience counts in understanding all that.

DD: OK, final question. On your website, I noticed very strong language supporting Israel, and also warning Iran not to continue with their alleged nuclear program. And you advocate for stopping shipments of refined oil to Iran if they refuse to cooperate. Now, I'm assuming that was written before the most recent uprising.

JG: It was, yes.

DD: Do you still believe, given the events over there, that it's a good idea to stop refined oil shipments, when it may hurt not the regime, but the very people in the streets who are resisting it?

JG: There's no doubt that the effect of an embargo would hit the economy and the people. That's what it's designed to do. I've thought long and hard about this, after watching the events take place, and I still believe in the concept. What you have over there is the current government's legitimacy being questioned. Does that mean they are more willing to negotiate on the nuclear program, to bring something tangible to the people? We don't know. So I think you have to pull together the interested groups, and that's Europe, and Russia, Pakistan, the Arab states, they might be more interested than us. And you create a larger coalition to change the behavior of the government. The uprising actually helps in that regard. And like in any negotiation, you have to have a big stick. So I would not drop the embargo possibility. And again, all of this is down the road a piece. Now another big stick would be bombing their facilities, and I think there are some unadvisable consequences to that. So I'd rather use the other stick.

DD: Thanks so much for talking to me today.

JG: Thank you.

NCLB Go Bye-Bye?

That's what The NY Times has said. This is for the best, there were elements of Rep. George Miller's reauthorization that were noble, but it was the wrong framework for improving education in America, and sought to turn our schools into test-taking factories instead of institutions to prepare young minds for the future. Sen. Kennedy is talking about "postponing" the bill, but something this big is unlikely to be reauthorized in a Presidential election year.

Get Out The Victory Cigar

Said White House press secretary Dana Perino: "We won this round on SCHIP."

And 10 million kids lost, but they're just "collateral damage."

Yay, we won!

(This is the Administration that's trying to reauthorize something called "No Child Left Behind," right? Just checking.)

"Fully Briefed" and more from Rep. Harman

My post about Jane Harman's remarks at a town hall meeting yesterday about the secret "torture memos" revealed this week by the New York Times is up at Think Progress, submitted through their Blog Fellows Program, which I can't recommend enough. Let me contextualize those remarks a bit more, and add some of the other interesting things Rep. Harman had to say.

I asked the question to Harman about the secret memos. Earlier this week, the White House claimed that all relevant members of Congress had been fully briefed on the classified program sanctioning harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA. At the time of the memos, Harman was a member of the "Gang Of Eight" routinely briefed on intelligence matters. Harman was shaking her head as I asked the question if she was fully briefed, chuckling almost in disbelief. Her answer:

We were not fully briefed. We were told about operational details but not these memos. Jay Rockefeller said the same thing, and I associate myself with his remarks. And we want to see these memos.

Harman is now the third member of the Gang of Eight, joining Jay Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi, to reject the White House's claim that they were fully briefed about these memos. The Administration is lying, again, and it is now incumbent upon Congress to make every effort to obtain those memos and to enshrine into law a full repudiation of the arguments therein described. The follow-up question I wanted to ask Rep. Harman, but could not, was how she would go about pressuring the White House to get those documents. Obviously the vehicle for this is through the confirmation of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey. Considering that these memos came out of the Justice Department, there should simply be no movement on his confirmation without an exchange of the memos.

Let me add some additional information about the town hall. I wrote in my Think Progress post this tidbit:

Harman later revealed that she was speaking with an unidentified Republican in her office, who told her that if President Bush were to attack Iran, then even he would vote for impeachment.

You have to understand the environment of this town hall meeting. The audience included the hardcore progressives that made up the core of the Marcy Winograd primary challenge to Harman in 2006; in fact, Winograd was on a panel right before Harman's arrival. These people were SCREAMING for impeachment; the first two questions were about this issue. And Harman could do nothing but reiterate that Nancy Pelosi, not her, had taken impeachment off the table. She went on to describe her no votes against the Clinton impeachment and how MoveOn.org was born out of the impeachment debate (odd of her to approvingly cite MoveOn, considering she voted to condemn their remarks in the "General Betrayus" ad). But when she brought up Iran, she said "this little anecdote should make you smile," and mentioned the above exchange.

Here are some of the other notable tidbits in Harman's meeting.

• She recommended Jack Goldsmith's "The Terror Presidency" as the best source for understanding how the Bush Administration attempted to expand executive power through neutering the Office of Legal Counsel. She had the book with her.

• She reiterated that "intelligence was politicized again" on the FISA bill, referring to the fake terror attack hyped by the White House designed to get wavering Democrats to sanction warrantless surveillance. It was a cold-blooded tactic, and it should be heavily publicized. I thanked Rep. Harman for speaking out on this, and I hope that she'll continue as well as encourage other members to corroborate her allegations. Harman said she is working to change the new FISA bill, which will "probably be introduced this week." The goals are that any surveillance must be done through the FISA court, with a warrant, and with minimization protocols if a US national is involved.

• Harman spoke about her legislation to close Guantanamo, restore habeas corpus, and end the use of national security letters outside their initial purpose. She spoke glowingly about the vote this week to put Blackwater contractors under the auspices of US law, and thanked both Rep. Waxman and Rick Jacobs, who produced Iraq for Sale, with their efforts to get the word out about Blackwater's numerous abuses and how they fell into the "legal black hole" regarding their activities.

• She recommended the Seymour Hersh article about developments with respect to Iran, and said that she has invited him to speak to the Congress. Harman was adamant in saying that "targeted sanctions are working" with Iran, and that the government should "stop the saber rattling" that could lead us to another catastrophic war.

• She trumpeted her contribution to the House energy bill, a measure to retire the incandescent light bulb by 2012.

• On trade, she made a disappointing statement. Despite voting against NAFTA and CAFTA and claiming that she was proven right on those votes, she said that some trade deals are admissable with proper labor and environmental standards as well as trade adjustment assistance, and referring to the current Peruvian Free Trade Agreement that will come up for vote in a couple weeks, she said that "It was approved by Charlie Rangel." Uh-oh. We know that this bill, crafted in the dead of night to appease corporate interests, does not go nearly far enough to ensure labor and environmental standards, and would be nothing more than NAFTA-light.

• Someone asked Rep. Harman about the Walt-Mearshimer book "The Israel Lobby" and AIPAC's support for endless war, including war with Iran. Harman, who has been linked in the past to lobbies like AIPAC, said "I'm not a member of AIPAC... I support a two-state solution where Palestine can thrive economically with borders that are defensible to Israel." She pretty much dodged the question.

• On the still-unresolved EPA waiver that would allow California to make their own rules on tailpipe emissions that contribute to global warming, Harman said that she signed on to a letter protesting the slow-rolling from the EPA and the Department of Transportation, and she added that Gov. Schwarzenegger should work harder to get DoT to "back off" (they've been accused of lobbying lawmakers to pressure the EPA to block the California law).

• Finally, Harman asked for education activists to call her office and tell her about the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. While she said that Rep. Miller has claimed to her it has been improved, she said "I am prepared to oppose it" if the changes are not satisfactory.

Biggest Increase In Student Aid Since The GI Bill

Time to give the Democrats credit where credit is due.

WASHINGTON - Congress approved a $20.2 billion boost in financial aid for college students yesterday, a package that backers said would be the single largest increase in federal tuition funding since World War II.

The bill, which President Bush is expected to sign, raises the maximum Pell grant for low-income students from $4,050 to $5,400, and temporarily slashes interest rates on student loans by half.

It also establishes debt-forgiveness programs for graduates who enter certain poorly paid fields such as law enforcement, firefighting, and teaching. According to the Department of Education, the average student now graduates with $19,000 in debt.

The new aid would be funded by a massive cut in subsidies to the scandal-plagued private student loan industry. Lenders said the cutbacks would cause some banks to stop offering student loans.

The president had threatened to veto an earlier version, but the White House indicated Thursday that Bush would sign the legislation.

This is fantastic news. The student loan industry has been gouging kids for decades and forcing them to live the beginning of their professional lives in debt. It discouraged innovation and entrepreneurship among young people. I'm especially pleased to see debt forgiveness for those who enter public service-sector jobs like police, firefighting and teaching. And to get the President to agree to sign it is quite a coup.

This Congress has endured a lot of headache from all sides, a lot of it deserved, but this is a step forward. In fact, it was one of their core priorities in the "6 for '06" election-year agenda. Now education reform moves to the reauthoriztion of No Child Left Behind, where George Miller has some ideas.

The leading House Democrat on education issues proposed revisions yesterday to the No Child Left Behind law that would ease the penalties for public schools that barely miss academic testing targets but tighten another rule that has helped the District and Virginia.

U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and a leading sponsor of the law in 2001, called his proposal a work in progress. He and three other committee members were floating the ideas as they move toward introducing a bill likely to contain major changes to the controversial law. Miller has said he wants to move a bill through the House of Representatives next month.

The proposal would allow states to use more than annual tests in reading and math to rate schools; give credit to states for students who are projected to reach proficiency within three years; and require states to test certain students with limited English skills in their native language. For some schools that fall only slightly short of academic targets, the proposal would also lift requirements to provide after-school tutoring and let students transfer to better schools.

In addition, Miller proposed strengthening a rule that requires test scores to be reported separately for groups of students identified by ethnicity, race, family income and other factors. Currently, Maryland reports separate scores for groups in a given school if there are at least five students in the demographic category. D.C. schools report scores from all groups with at least 40 students in a given school, and Virginia sets the threshold at 50 students.

Hopefully, we can work hard to establish some sensible solutions to a flawed education bill. This is a good day for the future of our country.

What Congress Is Doing Right

Some Gallup poll numbers came out showing a plunge in approval ratings for Congress after a significant uptick. The numbers are still above what they were for the dreaded 109th Republican Congress, and other polls suggest Gallup may be an outlier. But I think that Democrats in general aren't doing enough to highlight successes. So allow me to note some.

I've been critical of the Democratic leadership for how they're handling the Iraq debate, and I think that things are moving out of conference committee entirely too slow. We have two major pieces of the first 100 hours agenda passed by both houses of Congress, and they've fallen off the radar screen for weeks. Getting those to the President's desk would do a lot to blunt criticism. Nevertheless, here are some encouraging items:

• A trio of open government bills passed by the House would compel more records to be turned over during Freedom of Information Act requests, require public acknowledgement for donors to presidential libraries, and ensure that the public can scrutinize Presidential records. They sound like inside baseball, but they're crucial for history and the public record to ensure that government secrecy goes out with the Bush Administration. All of these bills had substantial bipartisan support.

• The Accountability in Contracting Act passed the House, which would minimize no-bid contracts (and require public justification for them), eliminate "cost-plus" contracts that make it financially beneficial for contractors to waste taxpayer dollars, mandate disclosure of any cost overruns, and close the "revolving door" whereby former federal government officials become contractors seeking business from government. This should also be called "The Most Sane Legislation in the World Act." The vote was 347-73.

• Byron Dorgan is leading the charge in questioning Halliburton's move to Dubai, which appears to be an attempt to slither out of having to pay taxes after fleecing taxpayers for years.

• The House is finally giving taxpayers in Washington, DC representation, moving toward passing a bill awarding two additional seats to Congress, one to DC and another to Utah, which would get one in the next Census anyway. The Bush Administration is threatening to veto this bill because everyone knows that people who live in Washington, DC shouldn't have a say in their government (?).

• A proposed bill by California Rep. Mike Honda would amend the No Child Left Behind Act to require parental opt-ins before military recruiters take their children's personal information. Right now every school must give the personal data of all their students to the military without notifying the parents. That's wrong, and this amendment would reverse it.

• I'm most pleased to announce that Sen. Dick Durbin, as he pledged in a blogger meeting I attended last month, introduced the Fair Elections Act, which allows for public financing of Congressional elections. He even got bipartisan support, as Arlen Specter (R-PA) cosponsored.

The Fair Elections Now Act would restore public confidence in the election process by allowing qualified candidates to receive campaign funds from the Senate Fair Elections Fund instead of asking for money from private interests. In return, participating candidates would voluntarily agree to limit their campaign spending to the amount allocated to them. This voluntary alternative to traditional privately financed campaigns would free candidates from the incessant, time-consuming money chase that has tainted public perceptions of elected officials and fostered abuses that undermine our democracy. Candidates could instead devote their time and energy to talking with their constituents about the issues that are important to them.

We're never going to totally get rid of the corrosive power of money in politics. But this bill would go a long way to restoring some basic fairness and allow legislators to legislate again.

• Finally, Nancy Pelosi has promised to bring a measure requiring Congressional authorization for any attack on Iran to a vote, and I plan to hold her to it.

This is all outside of the search for justice in the US Attorney Purge scandal. But it shows that the Congress is trying to do the people's business in many respects, and they ought to be recognized for that.