July 25, 2023 • 39 mins
Our Here’s the Thing Summer Staff Picks series continues, featuring our favorite episodes from the archives. This week, we revisit Alec’s 2021 interview with U.S. Representative Katie Porter. In 2018, Porter was the first Democrat ever to be elected in her traditionally conservative Orange County, California district. Prompted to run by Trump’s 2016 win, Porter quickly made a name for herself with her tough questioning of CEOs and administration officials, often using a whiteboard to lay out the facts. Katie Porter’s no-nonsense approach comes in part from her upbringing in Iowa. During the farm crisis of the 1980s, she saw first-hand how her father, a third generation farmer turned community loan officer, helped to support their neighbors. She went on to study bankruptcy law under Elizabeth Warren at Harvard Law School and become a consumer protection attorney and a law professor. A single mom to three school-age children, Katie Porter tells Alec people often have often underestimated her - at their own peril.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. It's officially summer, and that means
it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where
our staff shares their favorite episodes in our Summer staff series.
Next up is our producer Maureen Hoben.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thanks Alec. There are many things I admire about California
Representative Katie Porter. She's a single mother who fearlessly speaks
truth to power, from pharmaceutical executives to Wall Street CEOs.
Which if you've ever seen her at a congressional hearing
using her infamous whiteboard, you know she fights to crack
(00:42):
down on price gouging to protect public land, and she
refuses money from any special interests or corporate packs. I
knocked on doors for her twenty eighteen campaign when she
flipped a seat that had always been held by Republicans,
and now after three terms, she's running for Senate. I'm
pleased to share Alex twenty twenty one conversation with Congressperson
(01:04):
Katie Porter.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
My guest today is United States Congresswoman Katie Porter, a
Democrat in her second term. Porter represents California's forty fifth
district in Orange County, which is traditionally conservative. She's a
consumer protection attorney and a law professor. She quickly developed
a name for herself in her first term with tough
(01:28):
questioning of people testifying before Congress, often using her famous
whiteboard to hold CEOs and political appointees accountable. Katie Porter
grew up on a farm in Iowa. During the farm
crisis of the nineteen eighties, she broke with family tradition
of attending state school to go to Yale and went
(01:49):
on to Harvard Law School. She decided to run for
office after Trump's win in twenty sixteen and became the
first Democrat elected in her district. Katie Porter is comfortable
being a fish out of water.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I like to be challenged.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I like to learn, and I think that was a
huge part of, you know, why I chose to go,
you know, off to college far away from Iowa to
kind of stretch myself. I loved being a professor. I
was a professor here at the University of California, Irvine,
teaching business law courses, and then really stretched myself when
I ran for Congress. And one of the great things
(02:26):
about being in Congress that I never hear anyone talking about,
which makes me kind of skeptical.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Act frankly, is that.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
The great thing about this job is every minute you
should be learning something. Whether that's listening to your constituents,
whether that's a briefing from about national security, you know,
whether that's you know, having a meeting with your staff.
There's just so much to learn to be able to
do this job effectively.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And I like that.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
So in some ways it's very much like being a professor.
My job is to learn stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And then to help teach.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And so in this case, instead of teaching a classroom,
I think about teaching the American people.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You graduated Harvard Law School.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
What year, two thousand and one?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So when you left there? Where did you go from there?
Where did you first go out of school?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So I went to clerk for a federal judge in
Little Rock, Arkansas. He was a wonderful judge. And this
mon't surprise people. There weren't a lot of other law
clerks who wanted to work on the bankruptcy cases, and
so literally, I think I got to work on every
single bankruptcy opinion in the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which stretches from North Dakota down to Arkansas.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Worked on that year, and then I went off and
I practiced.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I took the bar exam, and I practiced law in Portland,
Oregon for a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
What led you to Portland from Little Rock?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
My now ex husband is from there, right, family? Yeah, family,
and you know it was a good place to practice there.
And then decided that I wanted to become a law professor.
And I hadn't really gone to law school thinking maybe
I want to be a professor. I had thought about
getting a PhD. And at the time, the idea of
writing a book seemed really long to me, which is
(04:01):
funny because I've now written two law textbooks that are
like a thousand pages each. But when I got to
law school, I really liked it. I wasn't sure what
I wanted to teach, what did I love? What did
I want to spend my whole career studying? And then
I took Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy class and that was it.
That was what I wanted to spend my life working on.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
This is why you were in law school.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
This is when I went to law school. My third
year of law school.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Tell the story if you would have you approached Warren
after she was less than cuddly toward you in class.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Yeah, So Elizabeth was a really great professor. She called
on students and you had to have your homework done.
You had to be prepared if you showed up. And
so I was a rule follower. I did my homework.
I sat in the front row, which I thought would
help her overlook me, but it didn't really work out
that way. And so, you know, one of the solutions
(04:52):
to not being called on is to raise your hand.
And so she was asking a question and I raised
my hand and I gave what I thought it was
a pretty good answer, and I remember her turning to me,
I'll never forget I mean, the hand gesture. I can
do it today. She said, thank miss Porter. Think and
I remember just wilting inside because I was thinking. I
(05:14):
was thinking so hard and I was coming up short.
And I went to see her after that, and I said,
don't give up on me. I've never taken a course
like this before. I didn't take some of the there's
a couple kind of courses you often take that are
introductory to bankruptcy. And I just jumped into the deep end.
I was like, don't give up on me. I really
care about this stuff. And the reason I cared so
(05:35):
much about bankruptcy was growing up in Iowa in the
nineteen eighties during farm Aid and the tractor motorcades and
watching the farming community where I grew up really struggle economically.
When I got to bankruptcy, I realized there are tools
in law and policy to help.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Right now. When you made that request of Warren, did
she grant it? Was she more give and take with
you in the classroom, did she really?
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I mean no, it actually was the opposite. She came
back to me even more because she knew I really cared.
Like she knew that it mattered to me. My message
to her wasn't taken easy on me. It was don't
give up on me. And a lot of professors, I mean,
I see this in witness rooms actually in hearings, and
people will ask a witness a question and the witness
will stonewall give a nonsense answer, another question, answer another question.
(06:22):
And what my colleagues will do is they'll just give up,
they'll move on, they'll start giving a speech. But just
like in the classroom, when I gave a wrong answer,
Warren didn't say, oh well, let me go find someone
more cooperative.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
She told me. Think she's stuck with me as I
was learning.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
So whenever I hear someone, you know, they give a
nonsense answer, I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You said something interesting. When people don't give a good answer,
you know, I myself become exhausted by the unwillingness of
people to answer the questions of the duly elected members
of Congress. You are here, and Congresswoman Porter or anybody,
You're not doing this for your health. You're doing this
on behalf of your constituency, the American people. You're representing
the American people, and many of them are so smug
(07:06):
and so arrogant and won't answer your question. And I
was wondering, do you find that the authority of the
Congress has weakened in recent years because people feel like,
what does it matter? There's no teeth behind this.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
So I think that some of the things that we've
been able to do with our hearings is actually restore
a sense of accountability to this, which is if you
if I ask you a question and you give me
a nonsense answer, I'm not going to pretend that what
you said makes sense. I'm not going to accept a
wrong answer. If you're dodging, if you're stonewalling, I'm going
(07:39):
to try to get you to answer, so.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You would think. I mean, it's sort of an interesting
to me.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
I remember, like maybe the second or third hearing I
was at, I said, well, surely you know now everyone
will come really prepared, like I won't stump anybody anymore
because they'll know that you have to show up and
take me seriously. But you know, I've been underestimated my
whole life.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
I kind of explain like that, and witnesses still show
up and they're contemptuous or they're unprepared. I mean the
other day Steve Menuchin said, well, are you a lawyer? Like, yes,
I am, like since you mentioned it, but I think
that you know, the goal is that these shouldn't be
performance art moments.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
They shouldn't be substantive.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
And so you know, the one thing I'll say about
the whiteboard is it's not about trying to go viral, right, It's.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Not about it's not an antic, it's.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Not an ANTIQ.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
It is a tool, and so sometimes I use it.
Sometimes I don't sometimes I use other things.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Whose idea was that, I don't you know.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
I think it was maybe one of my staffers when
we start. The first time we ever used it was
with Jamie Diamond. We were trying to go through the
budget of a worker where a typical family would spend
and compare it.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
To the salary and show that.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Even though he's paying more than minimum wage, people can't
make against meat On that she had twenty four hundred,
twenty five dollars a month. She rents a one bedroom apartment.
She and her daughter sleep together in the same room
in Irvine, California. That average one better apartment is going
to be sixteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
She spends one.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Hundred dollars on utilities, take away the seventeen hundred, and
she has nets seven hundred and twenty five dollars, four
hundred dollars for car expenses and gas net three twenty five.
A low food budget is four hundred dollars. That leaves
her seventy seven dollars in the red. She has a
Cricket cell phone, the cheapest cell phone she can get
for forty dollars. She's in the red one hundred and
seventeen dollars a month she has after school childcare because
(09:33):
the bank is opened during normal business hours. That's for
fifty a month. That takes her down to negative five
hundred and sixty seven dollars per month. My question for you,
mister Diamond, is how should she manage this budget shortfall
while she's working full time at your bank. And so
the idea of the whiteboard was just instead of having
all these numbers what she spends on rent and food
(09:54):
and rattling it all off a million miles an hour
and then he says, I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
I mean, that is what every the first refuge of
every unprepared student in every classroom in America is to
ask the teacher, I'm sorry, could you repeat the question.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's a courtroom tactic, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Exactly, So, especially in Congress, we only have five minutes.
So if someone says could you repeat that, and you've
spent a minute setting up the question, your loss. So
the idea of the whiteboard was to prevent him from
being able to, you know, sort of dodge install. And
you know the interesting thing that he said is I'd
have to think about it. And I asked him, you
(10:31):
know again, and he said, I have to think about it.
And I asked him, well, what about this? And he
said he'd have to think about it. And really, I
hope he is. I hope that moment did prompt him
to think.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
When I was doing Saturday Night Live for this long
run during Trump's thing, and we would be there and
I would pitch ideas, and I wanted your character to
have the whiteboard everywhere, like you were with your kids
at the breakfast table. All right, let me show you
and think you have the whiteboard out of here, drawing
everything for your children and your boyfriend and your at
the gas station and whatever. Everywhere you go, someone is
(11:03):
handing you a whiteboard. But I wonder, is there a
distinction between when you're questioning people, not only the questions
you ask, the way you ask them again, you only
have five minutes, but the way you anticipate they're going
to respond when they are government administrators who are there
to protect an administration. Do you see there's a difference
between the two. When someone who is a political appointee
(11:23):
is before you, are they even worse in terms of
their caginess?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
No, not always. I mean I think that you know
it just depends on the witness. We try to anticipate
what the witness will say. In other words, what's the
obvious thing they're going to try to dodge with Where
are they going to try to misdirect us? If we
research the witnesses, sometimes we'll watch video clips of them
to try to understand kind of what they're like, whether
(11:47):
they get easily frustrated, whether they launch into long, boring explanations.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
So I'm prepared to cut that off.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
But I think one of the great myths is that,
you know, the Oversight Committee, where I'm so excited to
be serving again in this Congress, somehow is less important
or less exciting in a democratic administration, given that I'm
a Democrat than it was when you know, we were
Trump administration on so opposite. I would just tell you
(12:13):
that these are both oversight stay is important. I mean,
once we're enacting programs that I have supported and I
have voted for as a Democrat, I'm even more concerned
that these programs are working as intended. So the responsibility
to do good oversight, it's not a partisan thing. It's
part of effective government.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Now, do you go back to your office sometimes and
watch yourself watch clips of yourself and review what you've
done to see how effective or ineffective you think it
might have been.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Not usually, I mean it's interesting after I question, and
when I'm questioning, I typically have no idea what anybody
else around me is doing or saying or reacting. It's
just me and that witness, right and just looking at them,
you know. I question postmaster to Joy.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I wasn't sure that I made the point that I
wanted to make. Now it turns out I think I did.
But when I got off, I was just like, I
don't think I did it.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I think I messed it up.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
So it's often, you know, it's it's not about how
I'm feeling, it's about whether it's resonating with the American people.
So it often, you know, that's about how people react
to it. So you can make something that you think
is great, you know, but if other people don't.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Find it moves them, then it doesn't really work.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
What's going to happen with the Joy? Is it a
civil service thing? In his job is safe, he can't
be fired.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Well, so he was appointed by the Postal Board, which
oversees the post office. So they can remove him, and
I hope they do. There's also the possibility that he
does what so many people have done it, you know
who came from the Trump administration, which is that they quit,
which I certainly hope is what happens.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
If he doesn't quit, then I helped.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
The Postal Board holds him accountable because they really a
lot of the problems that he created, you know, he
has not been able to fix. And the most revealing
part of that was when I asked him, I said, well,
you keep saying you didn't do.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
All these things. Not my fault.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
Someone else did this, So I am the very last
person to question. I think I am the forty eighth
person to ask questions or something crazy like that.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So I asked him, well, you said you didn't do this,
who did?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm with you, which seems like.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
A pretty obvious question, right, But nobody had.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Asked something he should know, Like all day long.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
People had just said why did you do this? And
the answer had been well I didn't. And I asked him, well,
who did it? And he said he couldn't tell me,
which tells you there's an even bigger problem.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Well, I'm sorry that you don't have the opportunity to
remove him yourself, because I mean he basically turned the
post office into an office max for the Republican Party.
But I want to get back to something else, and
that is so when you're down in southern California and
you go to Orange County, it was primarily to take
the teaching giket you see Irvine. If you see Irvine
as a ca us inside the red, red red part
(15:03):
of California, there in Orange County, what was it like
for you down there working there? Was it a very
conservative staff and administration and faculty.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
No.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I mean, look, Irvine has changed a lot, and a
big part of the reason that Irvine and Orange County
has changed is in part the presence of the university.
It's a large employer here. It attracts bright and interesting
and thoughtful people from all around the country and even
the world. And so you know, my kids go to
school in public school here and they have some very
(15:34):
conservative classmates. I mean, one of my former Cub Scouts,
I was his Cub Scout dead leader for five years.
That kid actually made phone calls for my publican opponent
in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
So I don't know what that says. About my cub
Scout skills.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
But you know, actually there are a real diversity of
opinion here. But there are very progressive people here too.
There are people in the middle, there are Republicans. I
like that diversity. I represent roughly equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats,
and no party preference or independent voters. And what that
means is, on any given topic, I need to know
(16:12):
how to talk to people who will come at it
from a lot of different perspectives. And that is an
incredible skill to have, and I wish all of my
colleagues had it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Frankly, so when you won in twenty eighteen, it it
was close. It was tightrase correct, very close.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I lost.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I like to say I lost before I won. So
on election night, you typically have three speeches in California,
you have I won, I lost, and we don't know
because it often takes a while to count all the
mail ballots. And so I gave that I don't know
speech that we don't know. But everybody was crying and
(16:48):
telling me, good try. I got all these sympathy calls
and sympathy emails.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
You know, we love you anyway. Nice try.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
You know you made a difference even though you're you're
not going to make a difference kind of things. And
then slowly but surely, over the next couple days, took
about seven days.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
I won.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And so why would get these messages back? Never mind
delete my message?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
You're my hero.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I knew you could do it.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I always I lost faith in you.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Now in the second race, this last election, you won
more handily. Correct.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I won by a couple six percent I think, and
the first time it was four, So I made I
made up a little bit of ground.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, who was your opponent in the twenty twenty race.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
My twenty twenty opponent was a man named Greg Raths
who's been on the city Council of Mission Viejo here.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And what did he come after you with? What was
his pitch?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
It was just, you know, she is a Democrat. She's
a Democrat and this is Orange County. Yeah, I mean
just sort of like, like, you.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Know, I think there is an attitude that you know,
sort of people are entitled to have Republican representation here.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
What they're entitled to is.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Good representation, right, people who listen to them, people who
fight for the people, who are not corrupt, And that
can come in your Democratic or Republican forms. And so
the fact that I don't take corporate pack money, that
I'm grassroots funded, I think that really helped me reach
a lot of those independent voters and even Republican voters
who are really skeptical, including younger Democratic voters who are
(18:19):
really skeptical about whether in people in Washington really work
for them.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Congressperson Katie Porter, I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to
here's the thing from iHeartRadio. If you like conversations about politics,
go to our archives from my live show with Nixon,
Whitehouse and Watergate figure John Deane.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
It's after listening to that conversation, I let my fingers
do the walking in the criminal code to figure out
what in the world are we doing. And I discovered
the obstruction statute, and I discovered the conspiracy statute, and
I realized we're in a whole lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Now. You might have thought that.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
First reaction would be to run for the hills. I
mean I had exactly the opposite reaction. That's when I
double down, That's when I try to make the cover
up work.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Here more of my conversation with John Dean in our
archives at Here's Thething dot org. After the break, I
talked to Katie Porter about what surprised her when she
got to Washington in early twenty nineteen. I'm Alec Baldwin,
(19:33):
and you were listening to Here's the Thing. I wanted
to know how Katie Porter won her seat.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
People people send me money.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
How much you spend in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I spent six million dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
To raise six million from individual contribution.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I spent six million, and I spent six million in
twenty eighteen. TV is incredibly expensive here. I have to
advertise to all of Los Angeles and all of Orange County,
even though I just represent a little part of a
part of Orange County. But you know, people will send
five dollars, ten dollars, they'll send notes with it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
When you got there in twenty eighteen, what did you
think the job was going to be like? And what
did you find out it was really like?
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I think one thing that surprised me, and I know
it surprised some of my fellow colleagues is how much
I really loved doing the work in the district with
my constituents here in my home, and how much I
really didn't like being in Washington, right, So I ran
for Congress because I wanted to make policy. I wanted
(20:35):
to make people's lives better, and I think I associated
that with things that happened in Washington. But it turns
out that a lot of the time you spend in
Washington is just scurrying back and forth to votes that
are sometimes important but sometimes are really like, you know, meaningless, frankly,
or almost meaningless. And being here in the community was
(20:56):
so rewarding. So you know, behind kind of the stucco
and the neatly trimmed hedges of Orange County are amazing
and interesting businesses and nonprofits and community organizations. So some
of the favorite things I've done are I toured a
lightweight body armor manufacturer here in Irvine that I had
(21:16):
driven down that road a million times taking my kids
to the target and never known that right there they
are making body armor that keep men and women safe,
and they're working to design actually special armor that better
fits women's bodies. And so, you know, seeing those little
parts and pockets of your community and realizing just how
(21:37):
amazing things are around.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
You, you really learned every nook and cranny of your district.
And what's really going on there.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I'm still learning. I absolutely love it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And when you went to Washington, and you talk about
the importance of the work that you do within the district,
But when you went to Washington, what did you think
that was going to be like with your colleagues and
so forth, and what did it turn out to be.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I thought there'd be more substantive policy discussion among regular members.
House Representatives is four hundred and thirty plus people, so
it's big. And so it turns out that a lot
of things are kind of decided before they get to you,
that they're decided by leadership, that you know, the relevant
committee has kind of figured everything out before it comes
(22:23):
to you, and you're just in a situation of yes
or no on the vote.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
And I think that's where I saw.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Hearings as this great opportunity because if you're not if
you're a newcomer to Congress, you don't have a lot
of power, especially on the Democratic side.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
But we have a strong seniority system.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
But one of the few equal things about Congress is
everybody gets five minutes for their questioning. So I decided
I was going to use my five minutes better than
anybody else or as well as I could the maximum
of kind of my ability, And that's where I found
the greatest reward, really, And the thing that's rewarding for
me is it's not the answers that these witnesses give,
(23:01):
because they're often really bad answers. It's the American people
watch and they see that lady is.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Asking what I've always wondered. Why do the drugs cost
so much?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Why does the drug keep getting more expensive?
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Do you know what the price of revealment was in
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I can look it up, but I don't recall. I
don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Four hundred and twelve per pill. How about twenty seventeen,
I would.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Say approximately seven hundred dollars a pill, but again I
don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Seven hundred and nineteen per pill, and today Revelmed costs
seven hundred.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
And sixty three dollars per pill.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
I'm curious did the drug get substantially more effective in
that time?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Did cancer patients need fewer pills?
Speaker 4 (23:50):
She's asking about me, and that's really for me. In
the most rewarding part.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
You were a single mom, Well you got divorced when
your kids are how old now?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
They're now fifteen, twelve, nine.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
So you were a single mom now for almost a decade.
And do you maintain because I know that we one
of the things you focus on is about all the
women that are losing jobs. We're losing a lot of
women in the workplace because of the COVID.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Correct, absolutely huge issue.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
What are some of the legislation you might or might
not propose to address that.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
So when I was elected in the last Congress, at
that time, I was the only single mother of young
children to serve. Since then, the Republicans have elected one.
But this idea of the single household, the single parent household,
isn't well represented in Washington, to put it mildly, So
when we talk about issues like child poverty, one of
(24:40):
the reasons for that is women, single women, single moms,
single dads, trying to raise a family on one income.
What happens financially to families when they get divorced, you know,
it's very difficult. And so when we see right now,
what we know is about twenty two percent of women
have left the workforce since the pandemic. A lot of
those are lost jobs. Some of them are women who
(25:02):
are leaving because they're put in a position to choose
between taking care of their kids who are out of
school remote learning, or having to go to work and
leave their kids home alone. This has long term implications
not just for women's economic opportunities and child poverty, but
also for our economy as a whole. If we're a
(25:23):
capitalist economy, we need our best and brightest doing the work,
competing for the jobs, and that means men and women,
people of different backgrounds, all having an opportunity to be
in the workplace. And in our country, we're losing a
lot of women out of the workforce, and that's going
to have big implications for our global competitiveness. It's not
just a women's issue. We all benefit from a strong,
(25:46):
healthy economy. One of my favorite phrases, and I use
it all the time with my staff is buy the ticket,
take the ride right. And this actually applies to capitalism too.
If we want to say, and you hear these people
who are uber capitalists, they're anti government, they're worried about this,
they're throwing up this ridiculous specter of socialism. Well, guess
(26:08):
what inherent in capitalism is equal opportunity to compete. And
that's true about antitrust enforcement, but it also has to
be true about social mobility. It has to be that
you're not allowing things like race discrimination to taint who
you promote in the marketplace. You're paying people not because
of the color of their skin, but because of how
(26:30):
good they are at their jobs. All these things are
perversions of capitalism, and we ought to be standing up
for them on that basis, as well as the fact
that they're morally reprehensible.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Now, obviously, we have a graduated income tax in this country.
The more money you make, the more you pay in taxes.
Why isn't the same principle applied to these trillion dollar
COVID relief bills? Meaning why are we giving a single
penny to a family that's making over two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars?
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Okay, great question. So I want to push back on
a couple of things. One is you said we have
a graduated income tax. I want to push back on
that and say, we theoretically have a graduated income tax. Okay,
that's what it says on paper when you look it
up on the little back of the IRS booklet.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
If you still do your taxes.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
On paper, but in actuality, people who earn a lot
often pay a lower effective tax rate because we have loopholes.
We have problems in our tax system, and so we
need to close that gap because a lot of people
who are running around talking about how they're in the
highest tax bracket aren't paying taxes in that higher bracket
because of capital gains, because of all kinds of other things.
(27:33):
The other issue with regard to COVID relief is, look,
we definitely want to focus the help where it is needed,
but we also cannot be so focused on making sure
that nobody gets any help that they don't need that
we slow the whole thing down, and we ultimately allow
people to die and to suffer while we're waiting around,
(27:53):
and there are people in it very expensive areas where
they were spending all of their money to make ends meet.
Now boom childcare, you have kids childcare. For my daughter Betsy,
when she went to the University of California Irvine, childcare
costs more than it would have for her to have
been an undergraduate at UCI. Childcare one year preschool was
(28:16):
more than it would have been for her to be
an undergraduate so all of a sudden, when you'd have
all these kids out of school, people's expenses are going up,
even if their income may be stable. So we have
to think about the entire effect here. And here's the
main thing I have to say to people. COVID relief
is the financially and fiscally responsible thing to do. If
(28:38):
we get this wrong, it will set our economy back
for a decade or more.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It'll be into pressure. Howard Dean was on the show
the other day and said the same thing. I said,
do you think we're running a risk by printing trillions
of dollars? He said, the problem will be if we
don't spend that money.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Absolutely, we have to invest it wisely. We have to
make sure we're putting it into programs that are working.
We have to out fraud, waste, and abuse, you know.
So I think it's ridiculous, for example, that we passed
a paycheck Protection program, a PPP program for small businesses
that allowed Congress members to get loans.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
That's nuts.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
That's a mistake in the program. But our biggest risk
here is not doing enough and leaving people mired in
long term poverty, in hardship, out of the workplace with
atrophying skills when other countries are not making that same mistake.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So obviously the current senator there Padilla is an appointee
interim because Harris is now the vice president. Do you
think that that's his seat to hold on to or
does the congresswoman have other ideas about her future in
California politics.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I'm really excited about Alex Padilla representing me and my
family in the Senate, and I've contributed to his reelection
campaign already.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
You know, I think he's going to be a.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Wonderful partner and a really important voice for California. He
has an a amazing life story, he went to MIT,
he's incredibly smart. So I think you can safely paint
me as a fan of Alex Padia and somebody who's
really excited about working with him. He just got added
to the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, so I told my staff, like,
(30:15):
call him up, let's start working on bills together.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Do you think that you have what it takes to
serve in the Senate or do you think you're better
off where you are on the Congress.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Oh, look, wherever you put me, I'm going to fight
for the American people, I'm gonna I mean, this is
when I was a professor. I became a professor to
understand what was wrong with our laws and how we
could make it better. When I'm in the house, that's
what I'm thinking about, what's wrong, how can we make
it better. It's going to be the same thing whether
I would be in the administration, whatever I go on
to do after this. You know, these are the fundamental questions.
(30:47):
The fundamental question that has motivated my life is how
do we achieve economic prosperity for all Americans? And I'm
going to keep asking that question whatever job I'm in.
And you know, I kind of look, the house is fun,
it's scrappy, it's a little bit chaotic. You're right, But
you know, wherever I've gone, I've always tried to make
(31:07):
the most of what I've gotten. And so you know,
whatever the future holds, I'm pretty sure I'm going to
still be asking tough questions.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
The Honorable Katie Porter. If you're enjoying this conversation, be
sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
please leave US A review. I really appreciate it. When
we come back, Katie Porter talks about why Trump must
be convicted by the Senate. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this
(31:46):
is here's the thing from iHeartRadio. When protesters storm the
US Capitol building on January sixth, Katie Porter wasn't far
from the insurrection.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
I was on the Capitol grounds in my office, which
is not in the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Which house building are you in?
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Longworth?
Speaker 4 (32:04):
In Longworth and More as AOC has now memorialized it,
the dunkin Donuts building, which was actually a factor and
why I picked that. It's very handy to be able
to go get coffee in the morning. But I was
in my office and Alexandri Kasio Cortez. I passed her
in the hallway as I went into my office, and
you know, she kind of you know, she waved, and
(32:24):
a few seconds later she came back and knocked on
the door and said can I come in? And I said,
of course, and you know, she came inside. She was
obviously very rattled. There had been a bomb threat in
her building. I didn't know that at the time, and
so we sheltered together, along with a couple of staffers
for about four or five hours, six hours in my office,
barricaded the doors, turned the lights off, pulled the windows,
(32:47):
silenced the phones, just in the cold and the dark,
you know, worried that what was going on at the
Capitol where there were cameras watching. What you can't see
is that there are underground tunnels connecting the capital to
our office buildings. If the attackers had come down those tunnels,
we would not have known they were coming. And so
we just stayed barricaded in there for hours and didn't
(33:09):
know what was happening.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
And when you look back on it, now, what do
you think should happen?
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Oh, to protect us? I mean, look, we have to.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
We have a real problem in this country with misinformation,
with violence. You know, our democracy is strong, but it
is not unshakable, and this was a this was a
powerful kind of I think earthquake a powerful shake to
our democratic principles. So I think we have to reaffirm
that it's okay to disagree, so kay to have different ideas.
(33:37):
I represent Range County, I represent a lot of constituents
that I disagree with. That's okay, that's healthy. But violence
in a democracy is never.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Okay, do you voted to impeach Trump? I did twice,
and the Senate's not going to convict him.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
You know, I think they should convict him.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
I think that this is and I think too many
people are thinking about this just from the punitive angle
about up. But we have a rule of law in
this country, and part of that rule of law is precedent.
So what we are doing here is saying this conduct
was not acceptable.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
And if anyone who we are, again, it's not who
we are.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
So if you're wondering future president whether you can act
like President Trump did, the answer is no, you will
be impeached.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
This is illegal. So we need to set that precedent
and establish that boundary.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I would have bet you everything I own at the
onset of Trump's administration that it never would have ended
this way. I mean, it ends. His political legacy ends
on this note, one of destruction and hate and lawlessness
and stuff with which defines them. You know, I've always
said that the government's purposes to do the greatest amount
(34:46):
of good for the greatest number of people. This is
not some concierge service to help wealthy Americans. And I'm
wondering what's the change you'd like to see in the
campaign finance laws that will help clean that up.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah, No, corporate pack money is a huge part of it.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Citizens United saying companies are are people, right.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
So, you know, reversing Citizens United stopping corporate pack contributions
or at least forcing corporations to disclose them to shareholders
and justify how this actually provides any value to the corporation.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I think that's really important.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
I think campaign finance generally, you know, I think small
dollar contributions are great because you know, five dollars a dollar,
you know, volunteering your time. People can feel themselves part
of democracy, part of the process. But you know, until
we clean that up, until we clean up some of
the corruption, it's going to be really hard.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I think it's the source of all of the problems of.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
This country, source of all of the problems.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Which committee you want to You're on one exclusive committee.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
I was on an exclusive committee lost Congress, which is
financial services.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You're not there anymore.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
I'm not there anymore now I'm not.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
I was on financial Services, and then later in the
year I got added to oversight when they were openings.
So now I'm on continuing on the Oversight Committee. I'm
really excited about that. I love that oversight and I
like doing it for all different kinds of areas, everything
from you know, pentagon spending to pharmaceuticals to car seats
to civil liberties. And then I'm now joined the Natural
(36:14):
Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over public lands, over tribal lands,
all the drilling on public lands, oceans and wildlife. So,
you know, I said the other day, polluters, I have questions.
So I'm really excited about that. It's an incredibly important
issue in California. It's important to our global competitiveness in
the future. The company, the economy, the nation that has
(36:37):
manufacturing jobs in the next decade will be the country
that figures out how to manufacture in a green way.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
We need that to be us.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Bobby Kennedy Junior used to say, let's force them to
bring their products to market at their actual cost. YEP,
what are the American people really paying for a gallon
of gas? You throw the PCBs in the Hudson River
and we have to clean it up. That should be
a part of the cost of your thing. The woman
who's studied bankruptcy law at Harvard with Elizabeth Warren. Are
you sorry you're out on the Finance Committee anymore?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Sure, I'm definitely sorry. I mean, I asked to serve
because I wanted to. I want to continue working on
those issues, and I hope there'll be an opportunity for
me to fill a vacancy in the future to get
back to that committee. You know, I'm excited to be
on the Economic and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of Oversight.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
I'm going to keep doing a.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Lot of work on financial services issues from that. So
absolutely wish.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I were on.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (37:28):
You know, they just decid they had so many spots.
They voted people on and off. I was one of
two people who didn't get it. You know, eight or
ten people.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Did get it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Other people were chosen, other people were chosen.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
But you know what, Like remember what I said about
I've been underestimated a lot.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
When I went on now, people are like, oh, well,
she can't go off financial services. Financial services is where
all the hot committee action is.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Trust me.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
When I went on financial services, everyone was like, oh
my god, that's the most boring committee.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
No one's going to pay attention to you.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Let's go deductive donuts, right, So.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
I go I'm going to try to engage the American people.
And I don't think there is a bad committee in Congress.
These are all important.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Well, let me just say I really mean this. People
who really are so disheartened. I mean they're crushed and
demoralized by the inefficiency of the American government. They've lost faith.
And then along you come, and all my friends who
see you, you know what they are. They're proud of you.
They're so proud of you because they get when you're there.
(38:30):
You're not there for the self aggrandizing. You're doing this
because you care, and you take the job seriously, and
you're finding and honing a way to use the job
the office as a tool. You're honing a tool to
do the work you want to do on behalf of
the American people. So thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Oh absolutely, thank you so much for having.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Me us representative Katie Porter. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing that is brought to you by iHeartRadio, produced by
Kathleen Russo, Krie Donahue, and Zach MacNeice. Our engineer is
Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. It's officially summer, and that means
it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where
our staff shares their favorite episodes in our Summer staff series.
Next up is our producer Maureen Hoben.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thanks Alec. There are many things I admire about California
Representative Katie Porter. She's a single mother who fearlessly speaks
truth to power, from pharmaceutical executives to Wall Street CEOs.
Which if you've ever seen her at a congressional hearing
using her infamous whiteboard, you know she fights to crack
(00:42):
down on price gouging to protect public land, and she
refuses money from any special interests or corporate packs. I
knocked on doors for her twenty eighteen campaign when she
flipped a seat that had always been held by Republicans,
and now after three terms, she's running for Senate. I'm
pleased to share Alex twenty twenty one conversation with Congressperson
(01:04):
Katie Porter.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
My guest today is United States Congresswoman Katie Porter, a
Democrat in her second term. Porter represents California's forty fifth
district in Orange County, which is traditionally conservative. She's a
consumer protection attorney and a law professor. She quickly developed
a name for herself in her first term with tough
(01:28):
questioning of people testifying before Congress, often using her famous
whiteboard to hold CEOs and political appointees accountable. Katie Porter
grew up on a farm in Iowa. During the farm
crisis of the nineteen eighties, she broke with family tradition
of attending state school to go to Yale and went
(01:49):
on to Harvard Law School. She decided to run for
office after Trump's win in twenty sixteen and became the
first Democrat elected in her district. Katie Porter is comfortable
being a fish out of water.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
I like to be challenged.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I like to learn, and I think that was a
huge part of, you know, why I chose to go,
you know, off to college far away from Iowa to
kind of stretch myself. I loved being a professor. I
was a professor here at the University of California, Irvine,
teaching business law courses, and then really stretched myself when
I ran for Congress. And one of the great things
(02:26):
about being in Congress that I never hear anyone talking about,
which makes me kind of skeptical.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Act frankly, is that.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
The great thing about this job is every minute you
should be learning something. Whether that's listening to your constituents,
whether that's a briefing from about national security, you know,
whether that's you know, having a meeting with your staff.
There's just so much to learn to be able to
do this job effectively.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And I like that.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
So in some ways it's very much like being a professor.
My job is to learn stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
And then to help teach.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And so in this case, instead of teaching a classroom,
I think about teaching the American people.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
You graduated Harvard Law School.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
What year, two thousand and one?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So when you left there? Where did you go from there?
Where did you first go out of school?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So I went to clerk for a federal judge in
Little Rock, Arkansas. He was a wonderful judge. And this
mon't surprise people. There weren't a lot of other law
clerks who wanted to work on the bankruptcy cases, and
so literally, I think I got to work on every
single bankruptcy opinion in the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which stretches from North Dakota down to Arkansas.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Worked on that year, and then I went off and
I practiced.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
I took the bar exam, and I practiced law in Portland,
Oregon for a couple of years.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
What led you to Portland from Little Rock?
Speaker 4 (03:39):
My now ex husband is from there, right, family? Yeah, family,
and you know it was a good place to practice there.
And then decided that I wanted to become a law professor.
And I hadn't really gone to law school thinking maybe
I want to be a professor. I had thought about
getting a PhD. And at the time, the idea of
writing a book seemed really long to me, which is
(04:01):
funny because I've now written two law textbooks that are
like a thousand pages each. But when I got to
law school, I really liked it. I wasn't sure what
I wanted to teach, what did I love? What did
I want to spend my whole career studying? And then
I took Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy class and that was it.
That was what I wanted to spend my life working on.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
This is why you were in law school.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
This is when I went to law school. My third
year of law school.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Tell the story if you would have you approached Warren
after she was less than cuddly toward you in class.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Yeah, So Elizabeth was a really great professor. She called
on students and you had to have your homework done.
You had to be prepared if you showed up. And
so I was a rule follower. I did my homework.
I sat in the front row, which I thought would
help her overlook me, but it didn't really work out
that way. And so, you know, one of the solutions
(04:52):
to not being called on is to raise your hand.
And so she was asking a question and I raised
my hand and I gave what I thought it was
a pretty good answer, and I remember her turning to me,
I'll never forget I mean, the hand gesture. I can
do it today. She said, thank miss Porter. Think and
I remember just wilting inside because I was thinking. I
(05:14):
was thinking so hard and I was coming up short.
And I went to see her after that, and I said,
don't give up on me. I've never taken a course
like this before. I didn't take some of the there's
a couple kind of courses you often take that are
introductory to bankruptcy. And I just jumped into the deep end.
I was like, don't give up on me. I really
care about this stuff. And the reason I cared so
(05:35):
much about bankruptcy was growing up in Iowa in the
nineteen eighties during farm Aid and the tractor motorcades and
watching the farming community where I grew up really struggle economically.
When I got to bankruptcy, I realized there are tools
in law and policy to help.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Right now. When you made that request of Warren, did
she grant it? Was she more give and take with
you in the classroom, did she really?
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I mean no, it actually was the opposite. She came
back to me even more because she knew I really cared.
Like she knew that it mattered to me. My message
to her wasn't taken easy on me. It was don't
give up on me. And a lot of professors, I mean,
I see this in witness rooms actually in hearings, and
people will ask a witness a question and the witness
will stonewall give a nonsense answer, another question, answer another question.
(06:22):
And what my colleagues will do is they'll just give up,
they'll move on, they'll start giving a speech. But just
like in the classroom, when I gave a wrong answer,
Warren didn't say, oh well, let me go find someone
more cooperative.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
She told me. Think she's stuck with me as I
was learning.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
So whenever I hear someone, you know, they give a
nonsense answer, I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You said something interesting. When people don't give a good answer,
you know, I myself become exhausted by the unwillingness of
people to answer the questions of the duly elected members
of Congress. You are here, and Congresswoman Porter or anybody,
You're not doing this for your health. You're doing this
on behalf of your constituency, the American people. You're representing
the American people, and many of them are so smug
(07:06):
and so arrogant and won't answer your question. And I
was wondering, do you find that the authority of the
Congress has weakened in recent years because people feel like,
what does it matter? There's no teeth behind this.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
So I think that some of the things that we've
been able to do with our hearings is actually restore
a sense of accountability to this, which is if you
if I ask you a question and you give me
a nonsense answer, I'm not going to pretend that what
you said makes sense. I'm not going to accept a
wrong answer. If you're dodging, if you're stonewalling, I'm going
(07:39):
to try to get you to answer, so.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You would think. I mean, it's sort of an interesting
to me.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
I remember, like maybe the second or third hearing I
was at, I said, well, surely you know now everyone
will come really prepared, like I won't stump anybody anymore
because they'll know that you have to show up and
take me seriously. But you know, I've been underestimated my
whole life.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
At this point.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
I kind of explain like that, and witnesses still show
up and they're contemptuous or they're unprepared. I mean the
other day Steve Menuchin said, well, are you a lawyer? Like, yes,
I am, like since you mentioned it, but I think
that you know, the goal is that these shouldn't be
performance art moments.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
They shouldn't be substantive.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
And so you know, the one thing I'll say about
the whiteboard is it's not about trying to go viral, right, It's.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Not about it's not an antic, it's.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Not an ANTIQ.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
It is a tool, and so sometimes I use it.
Sometimes I don't sometimes I use other things.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Whose idea was that, I don't you know.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
I think it was maybe one of my staffers when
we start. The first time we ever used it was
with Jamie Diamond. We were trying to go through the
budget of a worker where a typical family would spend
and compare it.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
To the salary and show that.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Even though he's paying more than minimum wage, people can't
make against meat On that she had twenty four hundred,
twenty five dollars a month. She rents a one bedroom apartment.
She and her daughter sleep together in the same room
in Irvine, California. That average one better apartment is going
to be sixteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
She spends one.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Hundred dollars on utilities, take away the seventeen hundred, and
she has nets seven hundred and twenty five dollars, four
hundred dollars for car expenses and gas net three twenty five.
A low food budget is four hundred dollars. That leaves
her seventy seven dollars in the red. She has a
Cricket cell phone, the cheapest cell phone she can get
for forty dollars. She's in the red one hundred and
seventeen dollars a month she has after school childcare because
(09:33):
the bank is opened during normal business hours. That's for
fifty a month. That takes her down to negative five
hundred and sixty seven dollars per month. My question for you,
mister Diamond, is how should she manage this budget shortfall
while she's working full time at your bank. And so
the idea of the whiteboard was just instead of having
all these numbers what she spends on rent and food
(09:54):
and rattling it all off a million miles an hour
and then he says, I'm sorry, could you repeat that?
I mean, that is what every the first refuge of
every unprepared student in every classroom in America is to
ask the teacher, I'm sorry, could you repeat the question.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's a courtroom tactic, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Exactly, So, especially in Congress, we only have five minutes.
So if someone says could you repeat that, and you've
spent a minute setting up the question, your loss. So
the idea of the whiteboard was to prevent him from
being able to, you know, sort of dodge install. And
you know the interesting thing that he said is I'd
have to think about it. And I asked him, you
(10:31):
know again, and he said, I have to think about it.
And I asked him, well, what about this? And he
said he'd have to think about it. And really, I
hope he is. I hope that moment did prompt him
to think.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
When I was doing Saturday Night Live for this long
run during Trump's thing, and we would be there and
I would pitch ideas, and I wanted your character to
have the whiteboard everywhere, like you were with your kids
at the breakfast table. All right, let me show you
and think you have the whiteboard out of here, drawing
everything for your children and your boyfriend and your at
the gas station and whatever. Everywhere you go, someone is
(11:03):
handing you a whiteboard. But I wonder, is there a
distinction between when you're questioning people, not only the questions
you ask, the way you ask them again, you only
have five minutes, but the way you anticipate they're going
to respond when they are government administrators who are there
to protect an administration. Do you see there's a difference
between the two. When someone who is a political appointee
(11:23):
is before you, are they even worse in terms of
their caginess?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
No, not always. I mean I think that you know
it just depends on the witness. We try to anticipate
what the witness will say. In other words, what's the
obvious thing they're going to try to dodge with Where
are they going to try to misdirect us? If we
research the witnesses, sometimes we'll watch video clips of them
to try to understand kind of what they're like, whether
(11:47):
they get easily frustrated, whether they launch into long, boring explanations.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
So I'm prepared to cut that off.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
But I think one of the great myths is that,
you know, the Oversight Committee, where I'm so excited to
be serving again in this Congress, somehow is less important
or less exciting in a democratic administration, given that I'm
a Democrat than it was when you know, we were
Trump administration on so opposite. I would just tell you
(12:13):
that these are both oversight stay is important. I mean,
once we're enacting programs that I have supported and I
have voted for as a Democrat, I'm even more concerned
that these programs are working as intended. So the responsibility
to do good oversight, it's not a partisan thing. It's
part of effective government.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Now, do you go back to your office sometimes and
watch yourself watch clips of yourself and review what you've
done to see how effective or ineffective you think it
might have been.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
Not usually, I mean it's interesting after I question, and
when I'm questioning, I typically have no idea what anybody
else around me is doing or saying or reacting. It's
just me and that witness, right and just looking at them,
you know. I question postmaster to Joy.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I wasn't sure that I made the point that I
wanted to make. Now it turns out I think I did.
But when I got off, I was just like, I
don't think I did it.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I think I messed it up.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
So it's often, you know, it's it's not about how
I'm feeling, it's about whether it's resonating with the American people.
So it often, you know, that's about how people react
to it. So you can make something that you think
is great, you know, but if other people don't.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Find it moves them, then it doesn't really work.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
What's going to happen with the Joy? Is it a
civil service thing? In his job is safe, he can't
be fired.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
Well, so he was appointed by the Postal Board, which
oversees the post office. So they can remove him, and
I hope they do. There's also the possibility that he
does what so many people have done it, you know
who came from the Trump administration, which is that they quit,
which I certainly hope is what happens.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
If he doesn't quit, then I helped.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
The Postal Board holds him accountable because they really a
lot of the problems that he created, you know, he
has not been able to fix. And the most revealing
part of that was when I asked him, I said, well,
you keep saying you didn't do.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
All these things. Not my fault.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
Someone else did this, So I am the very last
person to question. I think I am the forty eighth
person to ask questions or something crazy like that.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So I asked him, well, you said you didn't do this,
who did?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I'm with you, which seems like.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
A pretty obvious question, right, But nobody had.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Asked something he should know, Like all day long.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
People had just said why did you do this? And
the answer had been well I didn't. And I asked him, well,
who did it? And he said he couldn't tell me,
which tells you there's an even bigger problem.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Well, I'm sorry that you don't have the opportunity to
remove him yourself, because I mean he basically turned the
post office into an office max for the Republican Party.
But I want to get back to something else, and
that is so when you're down in southern California and
you go to Orange County, it was primarily to take
the teaching giket you see Irvine. If you see Irvine
as a ca us inside the red, red red part
(15:03):
of California, there in Orange County, what was it like
for you down there working there? Was it a very
conservative staff and administration and faculty.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
No.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
I mean, look, Irvine has changed a lot, and a
big part of the reason that Irvine and Orange County
has changed is in part the presence of the university.
It's a large employer here. It attracts bright and interesting
and thoughtful people from all around the country and even
the world. And so you know, my kids go to
school in public school here and they have some very
(15:34):
conservative classmates. I mean, one of my former Cub Scouts,
I was his Cub Scout dead leader for five years.
That kid actually made phone calls for my publican opponent
in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
So I don't know what that says. About my cub
Scout skills.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
But you know, actually there are a real diversity of
opinion here. But there are very progressive people here too.
There are people in the middle, there are Republicans. I
like that diversity. I represent roughly equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats,
and no party preference or independent voters. And what that
means is, on any given topic, I need to know
(16:12):
how to talk to people who will come at it
from a lot of different perspectives. And that is an
incredible skill to have, and I wish all of my
colleagues had it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Frankly, so when you won in twenty eighteen, it it
was close. It was tightrase correct, very close.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I lost.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I like to say I lost before I won. So
on election night, you typically have three speeches in California,
you have I won, I lost, and we don't know
because it often takes a while to count all the
mail ballots. And so I gave that I don't know
speech that we don't know. But everybody was crying and
(16:48):
telling me, good try. I got all these sympathy calls
and sympathy emails.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
You know, we love you anyway. Nice try.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
You know you made a difference even though you're you're
not going to make a difference kind of things. And
then slowly but surely, over the next couple days, took
about seven days.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
I won.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And so why would get these messages back? Never mind
delete my message?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
You're my hero.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I knew you could do it.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I always I lost faith in you.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Now in the second race, this last election, you won
more handily. Correct.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I won by a couple six percent I think, and
the first time it was four, So I made I
made up a little bit of ground.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, who was your opponent in the twenty twenty race.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
My twenty twenty opponent was a man named Greg Raths
who's been on the city Council of Mission Viejo here.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And what did he come after you with? What was
his pitch?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
It was just, you know, she is a Democrat. She's
a Democrat and this is Orange County. Yeah, I mean
just sort of like, like, you.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Know, I think there is an attitude that you know,
sort of people are entitled to have Republican representation here.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
What they're entitled to is.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Good representation, right, people who listen to them, people who
fight for the people, who are not corrupt, And that
can come in your Democratic or Republican forms. And so
the fact that I don't take corporate pack money, that
I'm grassroots funded, I think that really helped me reach
a lot of those independent voters and even Republican voters
who are really skeptical, including younger Democratic voters who are
(18:19):
really skeptical about whether in people in Washington really work
for them.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Congressperson Katie Porter, I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to
here's the thing from iHeartRadio. If you like conversations about politics,
go to our archives from my live show with Nixon,
Whitehouse and Watergate figure John Deane.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
It's after listening to that conversation, I let my fingers
do the walking in the criminal code to figure out
what in the world are we doing. And I discovered
the obstruction statute, and I discovered the conspiracy statute, and
I realized we're in a whole lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Now. You might have thought that.
Speaker 5 (18:58):
First reaction would be to run for the hills. I
mean I had exactly the opposite reaction. That's when I
double down, That's when I try to make the cover
up work.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Here more of my conversation with John Dean in our
archives at Here's Thething dot org. After the break, I
talked to Katie Porter about what surprised her when she
got to Washington in early twenty nineteen. I'm Alec Baldwin,
(19:33):
and you were listening to Here's the Thing. I wanted
to know how Katie Porter won her seat.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
People people send me money.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
How much you spend in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I spent six million dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
To raise six million from individual contribution.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I spent six million, and I spent six million in
twenty eighteen. TV is incredibly expensive here. I have to
advertise to all of Los Angeles and all of Orange County,
even though I just represent a little part of a
part of Orange County. But you know, people will send
five dollars, ten dollars, they'll send notes with it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
When you got there in twenty eighteen, what did you
think the job was going to be like? And what
did you find out it was really like?
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I think one thing that surprised me, and I know
it surprised some of my fellow colleagues is how much
I really loved doing the work in the district with
my constituents here in my home, and how much I
really didn't like being in Washington, right, So I ran
for Congress because I wanted to make policy. I wanted
(20:35):
to make people's lives better, and I think I associated
that with things that happened in Washington. But it turns
out that a lot of the time you spend in
Washington is just scurrying back and forth to votes that
are sometimes important but sometimes are really like, you know, meaningless, frankly,
or almost meaningless. And being here in the community was
(20:56):
so rewarding. So you know, behind kind of the stucco
and the neatly trimmed hedges of Orange County are amazing
and interesting businesses and nonprofits and community organizations. So some
of the favorite things I've done are I toured a
lightweight body armor manufacturer here in Irvine that I had
(21:16):
driven down that road a million times taking my kids
to the target and never known that right there they
are making body armor that keep men and women safe,
and they're working to design actually special armor that better
fits women's bodies. And so, you know, seeing those little
parts and pockets of your community and realizing just how
(21:37):
amazing things are around.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
You, you really learned every nook and cranny of your district.
And what's really going on there.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I'm still learning. I absolutely love it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And when you went to Washington, and you talk about
the importance of the work that you do within the district,
But when you went to Washington, what did you think
that was going to be like with your colleagues and
so forth, and what did it turn out to be.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I thought there'd be more substantive policy discussion among regular members.
House Representatives is four hundred and thirty plus people, so
it's big. And so it turns out that a lot
of things are kind of decided before they get to you,
that they're decided by leadership, that you know, the relevant
committee has kind of figured everything out before it comes
(22:23):
to you, and you're just in a situation of yes
or no on the vote.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
And I think that's where I saw.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Hearings as this great opportunity because if you're not if
you're a newcomer to Congress, you don't have a lot
of power, especially on the Democratic side.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
But we have a strong seniority system.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
But one of the few equal things about Congress is
everybody gets five minutes for their questioning. So I decided
I was going to use my five minutes better than
anybody else or as well as I could the maximum
of kind of my ability, And that's where I found
the greatest reward, really, And the thing that's rewarding for
me is it's not the answers that these witnesses give,
(23:01):
because they're often really bad answers. It's the American people
watch and they see that lady is.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Asking what I've always wondered. Why do the drugs cost
so much?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Why does the drug keep getting more expensive?
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Do you know what the price of revealment was in
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I can look it up, but I don't recall. I
don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Four hundred and twelve per pill. How about twenty seventeen,
I would.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Say approximately seven hundred dollars a pill, but again I
don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Seven hundred and nineteen per pill, and today Revelmed costs
seven hundred.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
And sixty three dollars per pill.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
I'm curious did the drug get substantially more effective in
that time?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Did cancer patients need fewer pills?
Speaker 4 (23:50):
She's asking about me, and that's really for me. In
the most rewarding part.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
You were a single mom, Well you got divorced when
your kids are how old now?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
They're now fifteen, twelve, nine.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
So you were a single mom now for almost a decade.
And do you maintain because I know that we one
of the things you focus on is about all the
women that are losing jobs. We're losing a lot of
women in the workplace because of the COVID.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Correct, absolutely huge issue.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
What are some of the legislation you might or might
not propose to address that.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
So when I was elected in the last Congress, at
that time, I was the only single mother of young
children to serve. Since then, the Republicans have elected one.
But this idea of the single household, the single parent household,
isn't well represented in Washington, to put it mildly, So
when we talk about issues like child poverty, one of
(24:40):
the reasons for that is women, single women, single moms,
single dads, trying to raise a family on one income.
What happens financially to families when they get divorced, you know,
it's very difficult. And so when we see right now,
what we know is about twenty two percent of women
have left the workforce since the pandemic. A lot of
those are lost jobs. Some of them are women who
(25:02):
are leaving because they're put in a position to choose
between taking care of their kids who are out of
school remote learning, or having to go to work and
leave their kids home alone. This has long term implications
not just for women's economic opportunities and child poverty, but
also for our economy as a whole. If we're a
(25:23):
capitalist economy, we need our best and brightest doing the work,
competing for the jobs, and that means men and women,
people of different backgrounds, all having an opportunity to be
in the workplace. And in our country, we're losing a
lot of women out of the workforce, and that's going
to have big implications for our global competitiveness. It's not
just a women's issue. We all benefit from a strong,
(25:46):
healthy economy. One of my favorite phrases, and I use
it all the time with my staff is buy the ticket,
take the ride right. And this actually applies to capitalism too.
If we want to say, and you hear these people
who are uber capitalists, they're anti government, they're worried about this,
they're throwing up this ridiculous specter of socialism. Well, guess
(26:08):
what inherent in capitalism is equal opportunity to compete. And
that's true about antitrust enforcement, but it also has to
be true about social mobility. It has to be that
you're not allowing things like race discrimination to taint who
you promote in the marketplace. You're paying people not because
of the color of their skin, but because of how
(26:30):
good they are at their jobs. All these things are
perversions of capitalism, and we ought to be standing up
for them on that basis, as well as the fact
that they're morally reprehensible.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Now, obviously, we have a graduated income tax in this country.
The more money you make, the more you pay in taxes.
Why isn't the same principle applied to these trillion dollar
COVID relief bills? Meaning why are we giving a single
penny to a family that's making over two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars?
Speaker 4 (26:54):
Okay, great question. So I want to push back on
a couple of things. One is you said we have
a graduated income tax. I want to push back on
that and say, we theoretically have a graduated income tax. Okay,
that's what it says on paper when you look it
up on the little back of the IRS booklet.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
If you still do your taxes.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
On paper, but in actuality, people who earn a lot
often pay a lower effective tax rate because we have loopholes.
We have problems in our tax system, and so we
need to close that gap because a lot of people
who are running around talking about how they're in the
highest tax bracket aren't paying taxes in that higher bracket
because of capital gains, because of all kinds of other things.
(27:33):
The other issue with regard to COVID relief is, look,
we definitely want to focus the help where it is needed,
but we also cannot be so focused on making sure
that nobody gets any help that they don't need that
we slow the whole thing down, and we ultimately allow
people to die and to suffer while we're waiting around,
(27:53):
and there are people in it very expensive areas where
they were spending all of their money to make ends meet.
Now boom childcare, you have kids childcare. For my daughter Betsy,
when she went to the University of California Irvine, childcare
costs more than it would have for her to have
been an undergraduate at UCI. Childcare one year preschool was
(28:16):
more than it would have been for her to be
an undergraduate so all of a sudden, when you'd have
all these kids out of school, people's expenses are going up,
even if their income may be stable. So we have
to think about the entire effect here. And here's the
main thing I have to say to people. COVID relief
is the financially and fiscally responsible thing to do. If
(28:38):
we get this wrong, it will set our economy back
for a decade or more.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It'll be into pressure. Howard Dean was on the show
the other day and said the same thing. I said,
do you think we're running a risk by printing trillions
of dollars? He said, the problem will be if we
don't spend that money.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Absolutely, we have to invest it wisely. We have to
make sure we're putting it into programs that are working.
We have to out fraud, waste, and abuse, you know.
So I think it's ridiculous, for example, that we passed
a paycheck Protection program, a PPP program for small businesses
that allowed Congress members to get loans.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
That's nuts.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
That's a mistake in the program. But our biggest risk
here is not doing enough and leaving people mired in
long term poverty, in hardship, out of the workplace with
atrophying skills when other countries are not making that same mistake.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So obviously the current senator there Padilla is an appointee
interim because Harris is now the vice president. Do you
think that that's his seat to hold on to or
does the congresswoman have other ideas about her future in
California politics.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I'm really excited about Alex Padilla representing me and my
family in the Senate, and I've contributed to his reelection
campaign already.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
You know, I think he's going to be a.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
Wonderful partner and a really important voice for California. He
has an a amazing life story, he went to MIT,
he's incredibly smart. So I think you can safely paint
me as a fan of Alex Padia and somebody who's
really excited about working with him. He just got added
to the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, so I told my staff, like,
(30:15):
call him up, let's start working on bills together.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Do you think that you have what it takes to
serve in the Senate or do you think you're better
off where you are on the Congress.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Oh, look, wherever you put me, I'm going to fight
for the American people, I'm gonna I mean, this is
when I was a professor. I became a professor to
understand what was wrong with our laws and how we
could make it better. When I'm in the house, that's
what I'm thinking about, what's wrong, how can we make
it better. It's going to be the same thing whether
I would be in the administration, whatever I go on
to do after this. You know, these are the fundamental questions.
(30:47):
The fundamental question that has motivated my life is how
do we achieve economic prosperity for all Americans? And I'm
going to keep asking that question whatever job I'm in.
And you know, I kind of look, the house is fun,
it's scrappy, it's a little bit chaotic. You're right, But
you know, wherever I've gone, I've always tried to make
(31:07):
the most of what I've gotten. And so you know,
whatever the future holds, I'm pretty sure I'm going to
still be asking tough questions.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
The Honorable Katie Porter. If you're enjoying this conversation, be
sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there,
please leave US A review. I really appreciate it. When
we come back, Katie Porter talks about why Trump must
be convicted by the Senate. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this
(31:46):
is here's the thing from iHeartRadio. When protesters storm the
US Capitol building on January sixth, Katie Porter wasn't far
from the insurrection.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
I was on the Capitol grounds in my office, which
is not in the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Which house building are you in?
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Longworth?
Speaker 4 (32:04):
In Longworth and More as AOC has now memorialized it,
the dunkin Donuts building, which was actually a factor and
why I picked that. It's very handy to be able
to go get coffee in the morning. But I was
in my office and Alexandri Kasio Cortez. I passed her
in the hallway as I went into my office, and
you know, she kind of you know, she waved, and
(32:24):
a few seconds later she came back and knocked on
the door and said can I come in? And I said,
of course, and you know, she came inside. She was
obviously very rattled. There had been a bomb threat in
her building. I didn't know that at the time, and
so we sheltered together, along with a couple of staffers
for about four or five hours, six hours in my office,
barricaded the doors, turned the lights off, pulled the windows,
(32:47):
silenced the phones, just in the cold and the dark,
you know, worried that what was going on at the
Capitol where there were cameras watching. What you can't see
is that there are underground tunnels connecting the capital to
our office buildings. If the attackers had come down those tunnels,
we would not have known they were coming. And so
we just stayed barricaded in there for hours and didn't
(33:09):
know what was happening.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
And when you look back on it, now, what do
you think should happen?
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Oh, to protect us? I mean, look, we have to.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
We have a real problem in this country with misinformation,
with violence. You know, our democracy is strong, but it
is not unshakable, and this was a this was a
powerful kind of I think earthquake a powerful shake to
our democratic principles. So I think we have to reaffirm
that it's okay to disagree, so kay to have different ideas.
(33:37):
I represent Range County, I represent a lot of constituents
that I disagree with. That's okay, that's healthy. But violence
in a democracy is never.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Okay, do you voted to impeach Trump? I did twice,
and the Senate's not going to convict him.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
You know, I think they should convict him.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
I think that this is and I think too many
people are thinking about this just from the punitive angle
about up. But we have a rule of law in
this country, and part of that rule of law is precedent.
So what we are doing here is saying this conduct
was not acceptable.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
And if anyone who we are, again, it's not who
we are.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
So if you're wondering future president whether you can act
like President Trump did, the answer is no, you will
be impeached.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
This is illegal. So we need to set that precedent
and establish that boundary.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
I would have bet you everything I own at the
onset of Trump's administration that it never would have ended
this way. I mean, it ends. His political legacy ends
on this note, one of destruction and hate and lawlessness
and stuff with which defines them. You know, I've always
said that the government's purposes to do the greatest amount
(34:46):
of good for the greatest number of people. This is
not some concierge service to help wealthy Americans. And I'm
wondering what's the change you'd like to see in the
campaign finance laws that will help clean that up.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah, No, corporate pack money is a huge part of it.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Citizens United saying companies are are people, right.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
So, you know, reversing Citizens United stopping corporate pack contributions
or at least forcing corporations to disclose them to shareholders
and justify how this actually provides any value to the corporation.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I think that's really important.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
I think campaign finance generally, you know, I think small
dollar contributions are great because you know, five dollars a dollar,
you know, volunteering your time. People can feel themselves part
of democracy, part of the process. But you know, until
we clean that up, until we clean up some of
the corruption, it's going to be really hard.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I think it's the source of all of the problems of.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
This country, source of all of the problems.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Which committee you want to You're on one exclusive committee.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
I was on an exclusive committee lost Congress, which is
financial services.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You're not there anymore.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
I'm not there anymore now I'm not.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
I was on financial Services, and then later in the
year I got added to oversight when they were openings.
So now I'm on continuing on the Oversight Committee. I'm
really excited about that. I love that oversight and I
like doing it for all different kinds of areas, everything
from you know, pentagon spending to pharmaceuticals to car seats
to civil liberties. And then I'm now joined the Natural
(36:14):
Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over public lands, over tribal lands,
all the drilling on public lands, oceans and wildlife. So,
you know, I said the other day, polluters, I have questions.
So I'm really excited about that. It's an incredibly important
issue in California. It's important to our global competitiveness in
the future. The company, the economy, the nation that has
(36:37):
manufacturing jobs in the next decade will be the country
that figures out how to manufacture in a green way.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
We need that to be us.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Bobby Kennedy Junior used to say, let's force them to
bring their products to market at their actual cost. YEP,
what are the American people really paying for a gallon
of gas? You throw the PCBs in the Hudson River
and we have to clean it up. That should be
a part of the cost of your thing. The woman
who's studied bankruptcy law at Harvard with Elizabeth Warren. Are
you sorry you're out on the Finance Committee anymore?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Sure, I'm definitely sorry. I mean, I asked to serve
because I wanted to. I want to continue working on
those issues, and I hope there'll be an opportunity for
me to fill a vacancy in the future to get
back to that committee. You know, I'm excited to be
on the Economic and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of Oversight.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
I'm going to keep doing a.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Lot of work on financial services issues from that. So
absolutely wish.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
I were on.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
What happened?
Speaker 4 (37:28):
You know, they just decid they had so many spots.
They voted people on and off. I was one of
two people who didn't get it. You know, eight or
ten people.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Did get it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Other people were chosen, other people were chosen.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
But you know what, Like remember what I said about
I've been underestimated a lot.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
When I went on now, people are like, oh, well,
she can't go off financial services. Financial services is where
all the hot committee action is.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Trust me.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
When I went on financial services, everyone was like, oh
my god, that's the most boring committee.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
No one's going to pay attention to you.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Let's go deductive donuts, right, So.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
I go I'm going to try to engage the American people.
And I don't think there is a bad committee in Congress.
These are all important.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Well, let me just say I really mean this. People
who really are so disheartened. I mean they're crushed and
demoralized by the inefficiency of the American government. They've lost faith.
And then along you come, and all my friends who
see you, you know what they are. They're proud of you.
They're so proud of you because they get when you're there.
(38:30):
You're not there for the self aggrandizing. You're doing this
because you care, and you take the job seriously, and
you're finding and honing a way to use the job
the office as a tool. You're honing a tool to
do the work you want to do on behalf of
the American people. So thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Oh absolutely, thank you so much for having.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Me us representative Katie Porter. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
thing that is brought to you by iHeartRadio, produced by
Kathleen Russo, Krie Donahue, and Zach MacNeice. Our engineer is
Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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