Thom Hartmann interviews Congressman Peter DeFazio, 1 July 2009

[Thom]: Congressman Peter DeFazio, a lot of people don't realize this, not only is he one of the most progressive members of the House of Representatives and just all around a generally brilliant guy and one of my favorite members of the House of Representatives, he's also refused to take his pay raises, the Congressional pay raises, over the years, and instead rolled that money into a series of scholarships for Oregon's five southwestern community colleges. He's the congressman from the fourth district here in Oregon. And by the end of 2009 he will have contributed over $300,000 in after tax salary to fund 187 scholarships. This is something he doesn't brag about but I've got to say, I'm, this is a man who walks the walk. Congressman Peter DeFazio, defazio.house.gov the web site, congressman, welcome to the show.

[DeFazio]: Thanks, Thom. You know, actually I have met a number of my scholarship recipients over the years, and boy, they've got some great stories. Just a little bit of money at the right time. They're targeted towards people who lost their jobs, need retraining, and now I have some that give a preference to returning veterans who need help.

[Thom]: Yeah, could you imagine if we just had free college education and trade school for everybody in America?

[DeFazio]: What a radical thought.

[Thom]: Yeah.

[DeFazio]: Imagine what it would do for the future of the country and productivity. I mean, look at, as you know, the phenomenal gift to America it was to educate our veterans returning from World War II. It created a great middle class.

[Thom]: Yep, yep, and my dad was one of those people. And then, even back in the day when you and I were young whippersnappers, well, the example I use is my wife, Louise, who worked her way through university, worked her way through college by, as a waitress at a Howard Johnson's. You could do it back in the day. You know, I as a DJ, I picked apples, I was a migrant farm worker during the summer I was a DJ the rest of the year, you know, at minimum wage, I worked my way through college. Anyhow, that's not what I wanted to talk with you about.

[DeFazio]: Well, I washed dishes and parked cars.

[Thom]: There you go, here we are. And none of that is possible any longer. Now you go into debt for 100,000 bucks and it's nuts. But we'll save that for another time when we talk.

Congressman Peter DeFazio is with us. And you, along with Dennis Kucinich and a few others were among the few Democrats who actually voted against the cap and trade legislation in the House of Representatives. It’s not yet come up in the Senate. Congressman, why?

[DeFazio]: DEFAZIO: There were three progressives at least – me, Dennis, and Pete Stark of California, who understands financial markets, because we feel it’s not going to effectively deal with greenhouse gases, it’s loophole-ridden, it’s subject to massive manipulation. Now, we already have some great quotes from people on Wall Street saying this is going to be the biggest market the world has ever had, much bigger than financial services. They’re already creating, in Europe, carbon-offset futures derivatives.

[Thom]: This is the new bubble.

[DeFazio]: Yeah – they’re going to create carbon offset derivative futures. They’re already talking about – the guy who’s head of Friends of the Earth got his economist somehow into a meeting of people on Wall Street – and they’re talking about trancheing them into junk carbon and good carbon and gourmet carbon, so they’re going to tranche them, and then the bill says, well, if you are doing these exotic instruments on offsets, you have to buy insurance. Well, that brings in the credit default swaps. So what it might do is get us our money back. Maybe AIG can go into the business of doing these as collateralized debt obligations and selling credit default swap insurance, and if we get the taxpayer money back real fast, before they collapse the next bubble, and we don’t bail them out, maybe we won’t come out so bad. But this is really a bad way to deal with the issue.

[Thom]: So you’re of the opinion that a bad bill is worse than no bill. I’ve been taking the position, and you’re causing me to rethink it, that a bad bill was better than no bill because at least a) the government’s acknowledging that we’ve got a carbon problem, and b) it’s making the right wing hysterical. I listened to part of Sean Hannity’s show yesterday, and he spent half an hour – he calls it “cap and tax” – hysterical about this.

[DeFazio]: Right.

[Thom]: And c) once we’ve got that door open, maybe we can fix it. You think it’s just going to get worse, though?

[DeFazio]: Well, I like to drive the right wing nuts, and that’s always part of the reason to do something or say something. But here’s the thing, and most people miss this detail. The Supreme Court ruled two years ago that the EPA can regulate carbon emissions, greenhouse gases.

[Thom]: So we don’t need this bill.

[DeFazio]: Right. The Bush Administration refused to [inaudible]. Obama earlier this year – the Obama EPA said we are going to begin the process to regulate greenhouse gases. This bill prohibits them from continuing that process.

[Thom]: Oh no.

[DeFazio]: Yes. That is a specific provision in the bill that the polluters wanted. They said we don’t want the EPA going ahead with these rules and these regulations like they did with clean water and clean air.

[Thom]: So this is not only a big sloppy wet kiss to AIG and Goldman Sachs, but also to the coal industry.

[DeFazio]: Oh, it’s very coal-friendly. In fact, in the end it took away allowances from utilities that have a lot of renewable generation and, if they don’t have fossil fuels to spend them on, they’re taking their allowances and transferring them to the coal industry. That was a last minute Colin Peterson deal in the Ag section of the bill. So no, I think it’s one of the most coal-friendly pieces of legislation we've seen, well, since I’ve been in Congress.

[Thom]: Yeah, amazing. Well, Congressman Peter DeFazio, thank you for enlightening us. I look forward, next week, or in coming weeks, to having a longer conversation with these things. And thanks so much for the great work you do in the House of Representatives.

[DeFazio]: Thank you, Thom.

[Thom]: defazio.house.gov if you want to check out Congressman DeFazio's work. He's one of the most progressive and one of the most brilliant members of the House of Representatives. Great guy.