Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want to talk about a dust up I created
(00:01):
on x dot com that I didn't think would be
much of a dust up. Okay, let me just lay
the groundwork here. Representative Britney Peterson, who is a young woman.
She just had her second child. The child is five
weeks old. She is a Democrat, and politically, there's probably
not a single dang thing that I agree with Representative
(00:22):
Brittany Petterson with.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Okay, I don't, but she's got a.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Point when she says, if I want to be able
to vote for my representatives, for the people that she's
been elected to represent, she had to fly and she
took her baby with her, and yes it was a
photo op to stand there with her baby in front
of the Capitol. But the underlying point is solid. There
should be in the modern era a way to allow
women of child bearing age to have time at home
(00:48):
with their newborns while still be able to represent the
people that they were elected to represent.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
And joining me now from the Steamboat Institute, Hadley Manning.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Heat Wait, Hadley, you've dropped the heath now that you've
just gone with Matt Manning, what is your what do
you go by?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Now?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
You could call me really any of the if of
Hadley just call me Hadley. God.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
So you reached out to me because you also are
a young woman, you have had children while you're pursuing
very difficult and high level jobs. I was disappointed by
the response that I got on my x feed from
my followers, who I think more than probably seventy five
percent lean right. They were dismissive, they were ugly. They
(01:30):
were she shouldn't have run for Congress, she should have
resigned her role. They were anything but sympathetic to the
needs of a new mom. And you were like, uh ah,
this should be an area that the GOP should really
lead on.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Dig down on that for me.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
We yeah, I mean, I think both parties should try
to support working moms and working families, and we shouldn't,
you know, I don't want conservatives to seed this to
the left. Yes, it was a photo op, but it
was a photo op that was created because her request
to vote remotely was dismissed, was turned down.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
So I think you got to think in forty.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Chess terms when you're in today's political environment.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Of course, it.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Created a pr set of optics that were bad for
congressional leadership. But they should have known that, you know,
they should have known that was what was going to
happen in this case.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
And you know, Mandy, we have in Colorado and kind
of want to put this in the bigger picture.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Of family policy. Right, we have in Colorado this New Family.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Act, which I opposed. I worked very hard.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Actually, I was on the commission that Governor polis Like
appointed me to this commission to do a study about
whether or not we should have an entitlement program to
provide paid family leave to everybody in Colorado from the government.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And of course that's that's bad. I don't like that.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I think that's government meddling where it doesn't belong. But
there are specific questions, like what happened with Representative Peterson
that you have to remember. In this case, the government
is her employer. We the tax players or her employer,
and so we're making a very specific decision. She's only
the thirteenth person to give birth while in office, so
(03:07):
it's a very small number of people who've had this experience.
It's almost as if this is more symbolic than consequential.
But the symbolism really matters, and I think that this
is again conservatives should not see this to the left
and give them more ammunition to say, oh, look, how hypocritical.
They say they're the family values party. They say they're
in favor of women and supporting women. And by the way,
(03:30):
were we just had a great, you know month the
last month with the executive order on women's sports.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
You know, I do think the Conservatives.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Have really had a morally and politically superior position on
women's sports. This is a great wedge issue. It's an
opportunity for us to say, actually, we've been we've always
been in favor of doing what's best for women. That
just didn't come out in this series of events around
Representative Peterson.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
A lot of people responded with some variation of where
does it stop, Like, essentially, if you allowed a nurse
mother to vote remotely, then some guy who just didn't.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Want to come to the office would want to vote remotely.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And I think that those are things that can be
addressed in a very specific fashion. But I would say,
if someone is battling cancer, if they are in their
district getting treatment at one of their local hospitals for
a disease that has an endpoint, right, not like a
terminal disease where you're just going home to die.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
But if you're home, I mean.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Why can't with technology, why can't we say, look, you
can get a special dispensation from the parliamentarian or whatever
or whoever you need to go to. I think it's
unreasonable in the modern era to say that you have
to get on horseback and ride to d C in
order to create a quorum. I just think that that
is very outdated thinking. And it was done during a
(04:44):
time when no person that was going to have a
baby was in Congress.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's time to modernize.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
You allowed to congress, right, I mean, yeah, no, I
understand the argument, slippery slope argument.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I think that's fair.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I think that's we should always ask those questions about
anything related to public.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Policy, because we should always guard against it.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
You know. But I've in the past, you know, a
couple of weeks while they've been debating the budget, I
have heard very reasonable arguments from conservative lawmakers about the
medicaid program. For example, we want medicaid to be available
to single mothers and children. We want to provide for
the health insurance needs of people in the population who otherwise,
(05:25):
you know, would be falling through the cracks, but we
don't we draw a line at we don't want to
provide medicaid for an able bodied, twenty nine year old
guy who could be out there working.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
So this is public policy.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
This is where we make reasoned decisions about the cost
benefit analysis. You know, I don't believe in no government.
I believe in limited government. And again, in the case
of Representative Pederson, the government is her employer. This is
more similar to I think the rules change that took
place in twenty eighteen when Senator Tammy Duckworth became the
first US Senator to give birth while she was in office,
(05:59):
the Senate and the Bipartisan Way change the rules so
that she could bring her breastfeeding davy with her onto
the Senate floor. I mean, prior to that, senators weren't
allowed to bring babies with them. I've even heard things
about Senator Chris Murphy leaving his kids kind of like
unattended outside of the Senate chambers so we could go
in and vote stuff like that's kind of silly. I
think we can make room for people who have families
to participate in government as elected representatives, and that does
(06:22):
not commit us should not commit us to going to
the full extreme. I mean, COVID showed us, Yes, there
are benefits to remote work, but there's also an unreasonable
extreme that allows people to shirk their responsibilities and not
do their jobs.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
That's not good. I don't want that. I think when
it comes.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
To this particular issue, I think lawmakers who are women,
who are mothers, who have you have to give birth,
who are recovering from childbirth, I think that's a very
unique circumstance. I think, you know, the next step would be,
what about all the dads in Congress? There's actually a
lot more dads in Congress than there are minds. But
I think in this case, just like we've said when
(07:01):
it comes to the women's sports issue, there are biological
differences between men and women.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
There are differences. I think in this.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Case, asking a mother to board a flight to DC
to cast a vote and then fly back that's a
lot harder than asking a post part of dad.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Like, what even is a postpartum dad?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
You know, this is what I'm talking about, is a
dad who was a newborn baby.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Right Well, because let's just forget about let's take the
breastfeeding part out of it, because dads don't breastfeed. The
physical act of getting a baby out of you, whether
you do a natural birth, or you do an induced labor,
or you do a C section, it beats the crap
out of your body, and you deserve, as a new
mom to not have to worry about hopping on a
(07:40):
plane to go do this. Hadly, I appreciate your perspective.
I was shocked, honestly, and I think that if there
had been an R behind her name, everyone would have
had an outflowing of compassion.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And I think that's awful, because.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Like I said, I don't agree with the single thing
I don't think with Britney Patterson except this, and this
should cut across all partisan lines and we should be
able to make it okay for women of child larying
age to be in Congress.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I like that she supports direct primary care for Medicaid patients.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
That's good.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I mean, we can probably find some common ground with
just about anybody.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Well maybe not just about it, even.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think there is certainly a case being made here
that this is one of these issues where we have
a tendency to put partisan goggles on, you know, because
in this case, yeah, I could see the temptation for
congressional leadership to say, hey, this would you know, this
will be one less vote for the Democrats if we
say no to her request to vote remotely by by proxy.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Okay, fine, well, look at the big picture.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
In the big picture, we want family friendly lawmakers. We
want lawmakers who are more likely to share you know,
pro family values. Yes, limited government values too. Well, a
lot of times those people end up in the middle
of the Finn diagram together. You know, there's a lot
of limited government conservatives who also love families. And I'll
just end by saying this, every new life is a gift,
(08:56):
is a blessing, is something special, and that should be celebrated.
That should be something that we say, oh, this is
getting in the way. It's getting in the way, you.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Know, like, and that's how we treat it.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Unfortunately, whether it's a member of Congress or sometimes other workplaces,
like the idea that a woman has a baby's like, oh,
just getting in the way of productivity whatever. Without these babies,
without our children, we have no future. So I'm really
excited and hopeful that maybe we'll chip away at some
mutitudes like this and we'll change things for the better.
For members of Congress in the future, and that will
(09:25):
attract more women of child bearing age, potentially, women who
you know, have lots of kids and want to do
what's best for their kid's future.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And I do think that people with children do have
a different view of the future than people without, because
we have a vested interest in leaving something behind for
our children that is worth it. Hadley Manning, I'll talk
to you soon, young lady.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Thank you, Mandy