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