Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from My Heart Radio. This fall will be
Speaker 1: airing a rebroadcast of some of my favorite episodes from
Speaker 1: our archives. This week, we're featuring two powerhouses of the
Speaker 1: political field, Congresswoman Katie Porter and former California State Assemblywoman
Speaker 1: Lorraina Gonzalez. Gonzalez resigned from her position in the Assembly
Speaker 1: in January, but continues to fight for union causes as
Speaker 1: the executive secretary Treasurer of the California Labor Federation. Here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with the progressive leader from my guest today
Speaker 1: falls into one of my favorite categories politicians to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on because they're doing amazing things. Lorrena Gonzalez
Speaker 1: represents California's eightieth Assembly district in southern San Diego. She
Speaker 1: was first elected in two thousand thirteen and got into
Speaker 1: politics after years of working as a labor leader. She's
Speaker 1: a progressive Democrat who supports working in middle class Californians
Speaker 1: with an impressive list of wins, including paid sick leave,
Speaker 1: overtime for farm workers, protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault,
Speaker 1: automatic voter registration at the d M v diaper tax relief.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on. Growing up, Assemblywoman Gonzalez
Speaker 1: saw first hand what government can do or not do
Speaker 1: to help working class families. She was raised by a
Speaker 1: single mom who put in long hours as a nurse
Speaker 1: to support Gonzalez and her two older brothers. Today, Lorraina
Speaker 1: Gonzalez has five kids in a blended family with her husband,
Speaker 1: Nathan Fletcher. He's also in San Diego politics as a
Speaker 1: county supervisor. Gonzalez and Fletcher of both Democrats, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't always the case. He was a Republican. He was
Speaker 1: actually a Republican assembly member and at the time I
Speaker 1: was the head of the a f l c I
Speaker 1: O in San Diego, and he was always a much
Speaker 1: more moderate Republican. But through the process when he ran
Speaker 1: unsuccessfully for mayor, we had a ton of discussions. This
Speaker 1: is before we started dating or anything, and he saw
Speaker 1: the light. He became a Democrat. Then we started dating,
Speaker 1: then we got married. That makes sense to me. The
Speaker 1: first thing I think about when I look at your
Speaker 1: biography and so forth, beyond your family, the thing that
Speaker 1: strikes me most is my goodness. You have the trifecta
Speaker 1: of academic credentials here Stanford undergrad, Georgetown Masters, u c
Speaker 1: l A Law school. You have the credentials to have
Speaker 1: done a lot of things for yourself. You know, you're
Speaker 1: certainly the whole Goldman Sachs material academically and everything. And
Speaker 1: yet labor organizer, State Assembly. What is it? What was
Speaker 1: the calling for you that you wanted to forego taking
Speaker 1: care of yourself in order to take care of other people?
Speaker 1: I put a lot of that on my mom. So
Speaker 1: my mom, for most of my life, was a single mom.
Speaker 1: She just worked her ass off. I don't know else
Speaker 1: to put it. I don't ever remember her having a
Speaker 1: forty hour work week. She worked fifty sixty seventy hours
Speaker 1: a week, multiple jobs at times, all to make life better,
Speaker 1: not just for me and my brothers, to give us
Speaker 1: an opportunity to go to college and do things, but
Speaker 1: also to make life better for her patience for people
Speaker 1: she was serving. She taught me that in life, what
Speaker 1: actually matters isn't how much money you have in your
Speaker 1: bank account or how many trips you get to go on,
Speaker 1: but how much you do to save the world. And
Speaker 1: we laugh now, my husband and I, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a question, do you want to savor the world or
Speaker 1: save the world. We're still on the save the world trajectory.
Speaker 1: At some point, you know, it's everybody's right to take
Speaker 1: a step back and savor the world a little bit.
Speaker 1: There's just so much work to do, and I think
Speaker 1: that I saw that, and I saw hard working people
Speaker 1: and saw what they go through, and just wanted to
Speaker 1: ensure that I could try to make other folks lives
Speaker 1: a little easier. Now, there's a variety of bills and
Speaker 1: so forth that you've authored or co authored, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to just hop through a couple of those, because
Speaker 1: I find all this stuff very fascinating. Assembly build five
Speaker 1: requiring workers classified as employees rather than independent contractors for
Speaker 1: more labor protection. Take me through that. What's the difference. Well,
Speaker 1: over the last maybe decade, a lot of employers have
Speaker 1: taken advantage of loopholes in the law and classified what
Speaker 1: would be traditional employees as independent contractors. And yes, it's
Speaker 1: cheaper for the employer, but the cost that it puts
Speaker 1: on both the employee and society is a large has
Speaker 1: to be taken accounts. So when you're an independent contractor,
Speaker 1: the employer does not pay their person of your Social
Speaker 1: Security or Medicare. That's seven point five percent. You're responsible
Speaker 1: for the full fiftent of those two things. They're not
Speaker 1: required to provide hell care. They're not required to give
Speaker 1: you paid sick leave, paid family leave that we have
Speaker 1: in California. They don't have to provide you with workers compensation.
Speaker 1: You don't have the right to a lot of civil
Speaker 1: rights and sexual harassment laws. As an independent contractor, you're
Speaker 1: viewed as an individual small business, not a worker of
Speaker 1: the company. So obviously there's a number of benefits and
Speaker 1: most important during COVID, which we found is nobody's paying
Speaker 1: into unemployment insurance for you. So if you lose your job,
Speaker 1: you're on your own. So it is this idea and
Speaker 1: I can imagine and for some people it's an important
Speaker 1: piece to be an independent contractor, to be a true
Speaker 1: small sole proprietor small business, and we have those. You know,
Speaker 1: you may be a plumber, you might be a doctor
Speaker 1: that has your own business and you're on your own.
Speaker 1: So for example, a doctor as an independent contractor, he
Speaker 1: would then become whose employee to qualify for the benefits
Speaker 1: you're enumerating here. Well, in doing a B five We
Speaker 1: took what was called in California a decision by the
Speaker 1: California State Supreme Court dynamics, and we applied that it
Speaker 1: was going to be presidential basically, and so we applied
Speaker 1: it to our entire labor code, and we said, but
Speaker 1: there will be exceptions. And we took the reasoning and
Speaker 1: the decision that said, if you have the ability to
Speaker 1: bargain for yourself, if you truly require a certain certificate education,
Speaker 1: you have the ability to provide these things for yourself.
Speaker 1: Were less concerned, right, because what happens is a doctor
Speaker 1: doesn't need these benefits necessarily, they self ensure they self
Speaker 1: provide them, and then if something goes wrong, society is
Speaker 1: not on the hook, right, It's not like some taxpayer
Speaker 1: funded program. They can actually take care of themselves. If
Speaker 1: a janitor is classified as an independent contractor and doesn't
Speaker 1: have those benefits and they lose their job, they're going
Speaker 1: to end up on state sponsored support. We we don't
Speaker 1: want people to to be homeless or go hungary, so
Speaker 1: we do provide a safety net, but they don't have
Speaker 1: somebody paying into the system. There's no social contract that
Speaker 1: was established. And those companies who are misclassifying workers are
Speaker 1: at a competitive advantage over companies who are biding by
Speaker 1: the law. So this is just strengthening the existing law.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this came about because of the
Speaker 1: upswing of all these tech companies that think if you're
Speaker 1: hired through an app, you're an independent contract or your
Speaker 1: own business, right. And that's what I'm curious about, is
Speaker 1: that is that let's say I have a building, an
Speaker 1: office building. Are you're telling me that they will hire
Speaker 1: janitorial staff and call them independent contractors and not call
Speaker 1: them employees. So usually what would happen if you hired
Speaker 1: a buildings You hire janitorial company and you don't know
Speaker 1: you have the building. You hire a company. That's all fine,
Speaker 1: but the people working for the company, they would be
Speaker 1: independent contractors when they're actually just employees who have been misclassified.
Speaker 1: Give us the most vivid example of who the bill
Speaker 1: was aimed to help. The bill was aimed to help
Speaker 1: delivery drivers for Uber. For example, Right, yep, I carry
Speaker 1: my Uber Eats bag. I'm being told where to go,
Speaker 1: when to go. I can't negotiate with Uber over my
Speaker 1: pay I can't negotiate with Uber over whether or not
Speaker 1: I want to take a certain job, and uh Uber says,
Speaker 1: I'm a small business and I have to pay for
Speaker 1: my own expenses, for my own insurance. Um, I have
Speaker 1: to pay my own taxes. There's no payroll taxes taken out.
Speaker 1: Uber investors and Uber owners get very very very wealthy
Speaker 1: and billionaires and the workers making submimum wage. Another area
Speaker 1: is in two thousand seventeen. This one was very sensitive
Speaker 1: to me because I was involved tangentially, but I was
Speaker 1: part of drafting and circulating petitions in terms of lead
Speaker 1: paint in the schools of New York, And in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen, you would have been requiring all K
Speaker 1: through twelve schools to test their drinking water for lead.
Speaker 1: Did your concern for this issue in was the trigger
Speaker 1: that you're a mother? What was the genesis of that?
Speaker 1: Obviously a lot of what I do is the fact
Speaker 1: that I am a mom, and I'm a mom first, right,
Speaker 1: So I approach a lot of issues that we're facing
Speaker 1: as any mother would. Yes, you send your kids, I
Speaker 1: send my kids public school. I hope and pray um
Speaker 1: that they're safe, that nobody's going to gun them down,
Speaker 1: that nobody is going to um poise in them that
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna sexually abuse them and that they'll get a
Speaker 1: good education at the same time. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of trust we put into our schools. And we had
Speaker 1: a situation in my district where it was a really
Speaker 1: odd situation. A dog. They put water out and the
Speaker 1: dog they reacted to it, and so they end up
Speaker 1: testing the water and um, the water had lead in it.
Speaker 1: And this is like New York City. We've we fought
Speaker 1: for years in my community in particular, which is a
Speaker 1: Latino working class community, to replace lead paint in the houses.
Speaker 1: We took lead out of candy. We know that it
Speaker 1: poisons children and disproportionately poor children. And so when we
Speaker 1: found it in the water fountain at school, it was
Speaker 1: a shell shock for me because the one thing you
Speaker 1: sent your kid to school and you're like, don't drink
Speaker 1: the sugary drinks. Go have some water, Go drink some water,
Speaker 1: drink for the waterfown, drink more, you know, and like
Speaker 1: how many times diet code exactly, And I thought, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, for my own kids, you think of that thought,
Speaker 1: like how many times I say, okay, after pe, make
Speaker 1: sure you drink some water from the water fountain, you
Speaker 1: know hydrate well a little. Did I know we're sending
Speaker 1: kids to poison themselves. So what we did is in
Speaker 1: some of these schools are very, very old, and we
Speaker 1: said it's time to test it for lead, and we
Speaker 1: got a lot of pushback. Everybody's like, well, is it
Speaker 1: makes sense to test? I'm like, how can we not
Speaker 1: test when we know that there's lead in the water?
Speaker 1: Who on earth would be opposed to testing the drinking
Speaker 1: water of your children in the school? Who people who
Speaker 1: know that if it's positive, they're going to have to
Speaker 1: pay to replace the pipe? Right? What was the upshot
Speaker 1: of that in two thousand and seventeen, Did the testing
Speaker 1: lead to any remediation of the problem that they ripped
Speaker 1: the pipes at a certain schools? Or what happened they filter?
Speaker 1: It was filtration the answer filtration um they replaced they
Speaker 1: brought in water stations to some And what happened is
Speaker 1: there there had already been a number of school bonds
Speaker 1: that had passed, both statewide school bonds as well as
Speaker 1: local school bonds. And what happened as soon as they
Speaker 1: started finding this, then, know, when you pass the school bond,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you can spend it on.
Speaker 1: In in San Diego Unified, for example, had well we
Speaker 1: had some football fields and some lighting that needed done,
Speaker 1: and we wanted, you know, some HVAC done in the classrooms.
Speaker 1: All important things. But if you find lead in the water,
Speaker 1: guess what, replacing those water fountains gets to the top
Speaker 1: of the list in money that was already going to
Speaker 1: be spent. It becomes prioritized. So the world didn't end.
Speaker 1: The waters has been tested, and now it's being fixed.
Speaker 1: California Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez. If listening to interviews with up
Speaker 1: and coming politicians gives you a sense of hope, be
Speaker 1: sure to check out my conversation with Texan Christina since Soon,
Speaker 1: who co founded the Workers Defense Project. I think that
Speaker 1: there's an image of Texas that people have that is
Speaker 1: not the true Texas story. When people think about Texas,
Speaker 1: they usually think about us in a singular way of
Speaker 1: people like my white grandfather, which was a cowboy, And
Speaker 1: the truth is that the state is you know, you
Speaker 1: have a city like Houston, it's one of the most
Speaker 1: diversities in the entire country. You have one in three
Speaker 1: Texans that are immigrants, were children of immigrants. The state's
Speaker 1: population is Latino, it's majority people of color at this point.
Speaker 1: Here more of my conversation with Christina sin soon in
Speaker 1: our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break,
Speaker 1: Lorena Gonzalez talks about cheerleaders and her fight to get
Speaker 1: California's biggest sports teams to pay them like the professionals
Speaker 1: they are. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing. In two thousand eighteen, Lorrena Gonzalez co authored
Speaker 1: a bill which put California on a path to generate
Speaker 1: one of its electricity from clean, carbon neutral energy sources
Speaker 1: by two thousand forty five. She says the state is
Speaker 1: on track to meet its goal even sooner. We're already
Speaker 1: almost there. I gotta be honest. We're gonna get to
Speaker 1: renewable quicker than we had imagined or hoped. But that's
Speaker 1: because we required it by way of what. By way
Speaker 1: of large scale solar farms that you're seeing go up,
Speaker 1: wind energy that you're seeing. We're exploring other forms biomass,
Speaker 1: pub stations, things to provide renewable energy sources throughout California. Obviously,
Speaker 1: rooftop solar plays a role in that, but we have
Speaker 1: really adopted in California an approach that is getting us.
Speaker 1: On any given Saturday, about eight of the energy coming
Speaker 1: through a grid is now coming from renewable sources. How
Speaker 1: did you get involved with the cause of the cheerleaders
Speaker 1: in the NFL go as you lost? I guess you
Speaker 1: lost your box seats of the Charges game. I was
Speaker 1: not a popular person at the Charges. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1: What happened, to be honest, is you gotta figure I
Speaker 1: was actually a Stanford cheer leader. So I was a
Speaker 1: cheerleader and a labor leader. Right, I know how to
Speaker 1: use a bullhorn and a megaphone. Um, it's it's a
Speaker 1: rare combination. So when I had read at the time
Speaker 1: the Raider ats, the cheerleaders for the Raiders had started
Speaker 1: a couple of them start a lawsuit against the Raiders
Speaker 1: for not paying the minimum wage because they were classified
Speaker 1: actually as independent contractors. And so I talked to the attorneys,
Speaker 1: and I'm an attorney, So I talked to their attorneys
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is outrageous. They're basically almost
Speaker 1: paying to do this fantastic job. Yes, it's a job
Speaker 1: women want. It's a job that that is respected to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, but it's still a job everybody else
Speaker 1: on the football field. It doesn't matter if you're the
Speaker 1: physical trainer. It doesn't matter if you're the person picking
Speaker 1: up the trash. It doesn't matter if you're selling the peanuts,
Speaker 1: if you're the coach, if you're the player. You're all
Speaker 1: being paid like an employee. And these cheerleaders were being
Speaker 1: given a stipend, being penalized. They signed an employment contract
Speaker 1: with the NFL. So I said, this is easy. We're
Speaker 1: going to make them by co employees so that they
Speaker 1: have basical labor protections in California. And so I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I introduced it, and of course a
Speaker 1: lot of journalists were more fascinated with fact that I
Speaker 1: was a cheerleader Stanford in one of those pictures, and
Speaker 1: so we're like, all right, here's a picture, now can
Speaker 1: we talk about this really important issue. And and then
Speaker 1: my favorite part of the story is having to go
Speaker 1: to then Governor Jerry Brown. And he's anyone who knows
Speaker 1: he's a little I don't want to say crotchety. You
Speaker 1: just never quite know what you would get with no
Speaker 1: nonsense guy, No nonsense, and I mean, I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: I got to talk to him about cheerleaders, like this
Speaker 1: is gonna And so I said, um, we were at
Speaker 1: a dinner together, and I said, Governor, when you have
Speaker 1: a chancel and talk to you about this bill I'm
Speaker 1: working on. It has to do with professional cheerleaders. And
Speaker 1: he said I was a cheerleader, and I was like,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? He apparently he was a cheerleader
Speaker 1: in college or high school, and so I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to get this one. But we did.
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of that. So what was that path?
Speaker 1: Was it directed an individual team? Was this league? Why
Speaker 1: you wanted the NFL to recognize? Was the situation in
Speaker 1: San Diego duplicated at all the NFL teams? Well, none
Speaker 1: of them were getting paid. None of the NFL cheerleaders
Speaker 1: to this day, only in California do they have rights
Speaker 1: as an employee. There was a bill actually introduced in
Speaker 1: New York as well, but it never made it through.
Speaker 1: So it was any professional sports teams in California, the
Speaker 1: dancers or cheerleaders have to be treated and have the
Speaker 1: basic labor protections of an employee. So that includes of course,
Speaker 1: the Chargers, the Rams, the Lakers. It was basketball and football.
Speaker 1: So I was going to ask about that because I
Speaker 1: go to Knicks games, or I used to, and those
Speaker 1: women were out there not getting paid either now and
Speaker 1: a lot of them, but they are now. Only in California.
Speaker 1: There's a national fight still against the NFL. There have
Speaker 1: been a lot of lawsuits, a lot of the teams
Speaker 1: have lost lawsuits, and there's been a lot more attention
Speaker 1: to it. There's a couple of documentaries and issues pertained
Speaker 1: to we'd like to see it, of course on the
Speaker 1: national level. So how did the lawsuit work in California
Speaker 1: and not in the other states. Well, it was settled,
Speaker 1: and so in other states it's been settled as well.
Speaker 1: But so often when you settle these lawsuits on worker issues,
Speaker 1: the judge accepts a settlement, so it makes whole the
Speaker 1: workers who are suing, but it doesn't force companies to
Speaker 1: fix the problem. So it's kind of like an ongoing
Speaker 1: invitation to sue without fixing the problem. And that's why
Speaker 1: sometimes you need legislation to come in and say all right,
Speaker 1: nobody can do this, this is enough. Now. In two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, you passed legislation that extends the statute of
Speaker 1: limitations for survivors of sexual abuse who are seeking justice
Speaker 1: in court. Now, I think most of our listeners know
Speaker 1: what a statute of limitations is, but I want you
Speaker 1: to explain, as an attorney, the reason for a statute
Speaker 1: of limitations in most cases, and there are some crimes
Speaker 1: I believe, like murder, where there is no statute of limitations.
Speaker 1: But where there is a statute of limitations in place,
Speaker 1: why is there one. There's often a statute for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons. One, you can't preserve evidence. So you know,
Speaker 1: I could say, hey, when twenty years ago you stole
Speaker 1: this TV from me, Well, that TV doesn't exist. Witnesses
Speaker 1: probably don't exist. It's hard to pin that down. People die,
Speaker 1: they move away exactly, or or they forget I mean
Speaker 1: quite frankly, you know, I can't remember twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Probably should have integrity in the trial of the witnesses.
Speaker 1: You need to do it in a certain time frame.
Speaker 1: But childhood sexual assault is unique. So there's some things
Speaker 1: that made it unique and made the statute of limitations
Speaker 1: very damaging. Number one, so often the primary witness the
Speaker 1: child themselves, uh suppresses it basically doesn't think about it,
Speaker 1: doesn't come to terms with it, and until later in
Speaker 1: life when they're dealing with a failed marriage or depression
Speaker 1: that it comes out. And so sometimes you know, that's
Speaker 1: the primary witnesses a person who was assaulted, if you will.
Speaker 1: And what we had with childhood sexual assault is actually
Speaker 1: a lot of people knew what was happening. We actually
Speaker 1: have official documents like the church, the Boy Scouts, they
Speaker 1: actually had complaints that were filed that were put away
Speaker 1: that there still exists and you still need all of
Speaker 1: this proof, if you will, to establish a case, but
Speaker 1: it allows time to have passed and yet still victims
Speaker 1: to get some sort of justice. So I understand you
Speaker 1: want some choice words for Elon Musk when he was
Speaker 1: going to move his company from California. Is that true? Yes,
Speaker 1: But I want to put it in context. Look, my
Speaker 1: mouth gets me in trouble. I'd lie if I said otherwise.
Speaker 1: I say exactly what I think and what I mean.
Speaker 1: But you have to look in context. Elon Musk has
Speaker 1: made a crapload of money off of California taxpayers, and
Speaker 1: if people don't understand why, it's because everything he makes
Speaker 1: is subsidized by taxpayers. So the tesla's that flew off
Speaker 1: the market, those all had taxpayer rebates on a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar cards. I mean, people who didn't need the
Speaker 1: rebates were given them because we want to encourage electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: His solar panels and solar storage had been highly subsidized
Speaker 1: by the state California, so taxpayers have helped make him
Speaker 1: a billionaire in California. We have really supported Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and coming the labor movement. He hasn't really been too
Speaker 1: good on worker issues, so he's been slapped down by
Speaker 1: the n l r B. He's he's anti worker. He's
Speaker 1: had really some big safety problems in his facility. So
Speaker 1: I've always been a little irked, like, here we are
Speaker 1: giving you taxpayer dollars and you can't even abide by
Speaker 1: the law when it comes to union organizing. That upsets me. Well,
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, he decided forget it. I don't like
Speaker 1: these orders. I'm going to open up my factory in Fremont.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what the county public health officer is saying.
Speaker 1: And you're talking about an area where we had tons
Speaker 1: of Latinos dying from COVID. We had the spread. It
Speaker 1: was at roaring at the time. So he brings back
Speaker 1: his workers and he says, if anyone stops him, he's
Speaker 1: going to take his jobs to Texas. I mean, at
Speaker 1: some point, look, every elected official in Calfoya should be
Speaker 1: saying I won't say it here, but go go away,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. There is a point where where as elected
Speaker 1: officials and this kills me. It doesn't matter who it
Speaker 1: is who is getting things from us, right, leadership is
Speaker 1: also being able to make those tough decisions and say, hey,
Speaker 1: all right, we like your product, we like what you're
Speaker 1: doing for the environment. But by the way, we've got
Speaker 1: rules and we're going it doesn't matter who you are,
Speaker 1: you're going to stick by the rules too. And it
Speaker 1: it irks me that so many of our rules in California,
Speaker 1: in this nation, we apply them disproportionately to communities like
Speaker 1: mine and not to billionaires like Elon Musk, and I
Speaker 1: think we have to be stronger about that. He has
Speaker 1: a lot of fans on Twitter, and I got a
Speaker 1: lot of lush comes with the territory. It does. Well,
Speaker 1: let me just say this, you were such an amazing
Speaker 1: woman and all your credentials and your accomplishments and your passion.
Speaker 1: You're somebody who it's still your task to save the world,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid, and not savor the world. You have to
Speaker 1: have to postpone the savoring of the world a little
Speaker 1: bit longer. You and your husband. You have to keep going.
Speaker 1: There's no turning back. You've got to keep running and
Speaker 1: keep doing this great work you're doing. You've been doing
Speaker 1: amazing work, and you were such a role model, and
Speaker 1: we wanted you on because people spoke so highly of view.
Speaker 1: Andrew Day, the actress, was talking about the work you
Speaker 1: did with that school down there. Robert E. Lee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in San Diego. You can imagine, yes, because we care
Speaker 1: about our history. You had the name of the school changed.
Speaker 1: You and other people were working on that cast I did.
Speaker 1: And this was before we kind of started attacking the
Speaker 1: Confederate name issue, so I got to see what people
Speaker 1: said before they realized it was politically incorrect. But you
Speaker 1: don't have a school in San Diego named after Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee in the nineteen fifties, the same year that we
Speaker 1: ended segregation in the schools, and it not be tied
Speaker 1: to racism. So that school today is over kids of
Speaker 1: color and they finally don't have to go to school
Speaker 1: that is named after not just the biggest traitor in
Speaker 1: our in our history, but somebody who was fighting to
Speaker 1: keep people segregated, in keep people enslaved. Well, what an
Speaker 1: honor it is to get to meet you. I know
Speaker 1: your time is valuable. Thank you so much, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Lorraina Gonzalez. My next guest is United States Congresswoman Katie Porter,
Speaker 1: a Democrat in her second term and wielder of the
Speaker 1: famous prop the white Board of Justice. Here's my conversation
Speaker 1: with the congresswoman from Katie Porter represents California's district in
Speaker 1: Orange County, which is traditionally conservative. She's a consumer protection
Speaker 1: attorney and a law professor. She quickly developed a name
Speaker 1: for herself in her first term with tough questioning of
Speaker 1: people testifying before Congress, often using her famous white board
Speaker 1: to hold CEOs and political appointees accountable. Katie Porter grew
Speaker 1: up on a farm in Iowa. During the farmer crisis
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties. She broke with family tradition of
Speaker 1: attending state school to go to Yale and went on
Speaker 1: to Harvard Law School. She decided to run for office
Speaker 1: after Trump's win in two thousand sixteen and became the
Speaker 1: first Democrat elect it in her district. Katie Porter is
Speaker 1: comfortable being a fish out of water. I like to
Speaker 1: be challenged. Um. I like to learn, and I think
Speaker 1: that was a huge part of, you know, why I
Speaker 1: chose to to go, you know, off to college far
Speaker 1: away from Iowa, to kind of stretch myself. UM. I
Speaker 1: loved being a professor. I was a professor here at
Speaker 1: the University of California, Irvine, teaching business law horses, and
Speaker 1: then really stretched myself when I ran for Congress. And
Speaker 1: one of the great things about being in Congress that
Speaker 1: I never hear anyone talking about, which makes me kind
Speaker 1: of skeptical, frankly, is that the great thing about this
Speaker 1: job is every minute you should be learning something. Whether
Speaker 1: that's listening to your constituents, whether that's a briefing from
Speaker 1: about national security, you know, whether that's you know, having
Speaker 1: a meeting with your staff. There's just so much to
Speaker 1: learn to be able to do this job effectively. And
Speaker 1: I like that. So in some ways it's very much
Speaker 1: like being a professor. My job is to learn stuff
Speaker 1: and then to help teach, and so in this case.
Speaker 1: Instead of teaching a classroom, I think about teaching the
Speaker 1: American people. You graduated Harvard Law School one year two one,
Speaker 1: So when you left there, where did you go from there?
Speaker 1: Where did you first go out of school? So? I
Speaker 1: went to clerk for a federal judge in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: He was a wonderful judge. And this won't surprise people.
Speaker 1: There weren't a lot of other law clerks who wanted
Speaker 1: to work on the bankruptcy cases. Um and so literally
Speaker 1: I think I got to work on every single bankruptcy
Speaker 1: opinion the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which stretches
Speaker 1: from North Dakota down to Arkansas, worked on that year. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I went off and I practiced. I took
Speaker 1: the bar um exam, and I practiced law in Portland,
Speaker 1: Oregon for a couple of years. What led you to
Speaker 1: Portland from Little Rock? My now ex husband is from
Speaker 1: their family. Yeah, family, and you know it was a
Speaker 1: good place to practice there. And then decided that I
Speaker 1: wanted to become a law professor. And I hadn't really
Speaker 1: gone to law school thinking maybe I want to be
Speaker 1: a professor. I had thought about getting a PhD. Um
Speaker 1: and at the time, the idea of writing a book
Speaker 1: seemed really long to me, which is funny because I've
Speaker 1: now written two law textbooks that are like a thousand
Speaker 1: pages each. Um. But when I got to law school,
Speaker 1: I was I really liked it. I wasn't sure what
Speaker 1: I wanted to teach, what did I love? Where did
Speaker 1: I wanted to spend my whole career studying? And then
Speaker 1: I took Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy class and that was it.
Speaker 1: That was what I wanted to spend my life working on.
Speaker 1: This is why you were in law school. This is
Speaker 1: when I went to law school. My third year in
Speaker 1: law school. Tell the story if you would have you
Speaker 1: approached Warren after she was less than cuddly towards you
Speaker 1: in class. Yeah. Yeah, So Elizabeth was a really great professor.
Speaker 1: She called on students um and you had to have
Speaker 1: your homework done, you had to be prepared if you
Speaker 1: showed up. And so I was a rule follower. I
Speaker 1: did my homework. I sat in the front row, which
Speaker 1: I thought would help her overlook me, but it didn't
Speaker 1: really work out that way. And so, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the solutions to not being called on is to
Speaker 1: raise your hand, um. And so she was asking a
Speaker 1: question and I raised my hand and I gave what
Speaker 1: I thought was a pretty good answer, and I remember
Speaker 1: her turning to me, I'll never forget I mean the
Speaker 1: hand yester, I can do it today. She said, thank,
Speaker 1: miss Porter, thank, And I remember just wilting inside because
Speaker 1: I was thinking. I was thinking so hard and I
Speaker 1: was coming up short. Um. And I went to see
Speaker 1: her after that, and I said, don't give up on me.
Speaker 1: I've never taken a course like this before. I didn't
Speaker 1: take some of the there's a couple kind of courses
Speaker 1: you often take, their introductory to bankruptcy, and I just
Speaker 1: jumped into the deep end. I was like, don't give
Speaker 1: up on me. I really care about this stuff. And
Speaker 1: the reason I cared so much about bankruptcy was growing
Speaker 1: up in Iowa in the nineteen eighties during farm made
Speaker 1: and the tractor motorcades, and watching the farming community where
Speaker 1: I grew up really struggle economically. When I got to bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: I realized there are tools in law and policy to help. Now,
Speaker 1: when you made that request of war, did she granted
Speaker 1: what she were given? Take with you in the classroom,
Speaker 1: did she be going, I mean know, it actually was
Speaker 1: the opposite. She came back to me even more because
Speaker 1: she knew I really cared, like she knew that it
Speaker 1: mattered to me. My message to her wasn't taken easy
Speaker 1: on me. It was don't give up on me. And
Speaker 1: a lot of professors. I mean, I see this in
Speaker 1: witness rooms, actually in hearings, and people will ask a
Speaker 1: witness a question and the witness will stonewall give a
Speaker 1: nonsense and answer another question, answer another question. And what
Speaker 1: my colleagues will do is they'll just give up. They'll
Speaker 1: move on, they'll start giving a speech. But just like
Speaker 1: in the classroom, when I gave a wrong answer, Warren
Speaker 1: didn't say, oh well, let me go find someone more cooperative.
Speaker 1: She told me. Think she stuck with me as I
Speaker 1: was learning. So whenever I hear someone, you know, they
Speaker 1: give a nonsense answer, I'm not going anywhere. You said
Speaker 1: something interesting. When people don't give a good answer, you know,
Speaker 1: I myself become exhausted by the unwillingness of people to
Speaker 1: answer the questions of the duly elected members of Congress.
Speaker 1: You are here, congresswoman, Porter or anybody, You're not doing
Speaker 1: this for your health you're doing this on behalf of
Speaker 1: your constituency of the American people. You're representing the American people,
Speaker 1: and many of them are so smug and so arrogant
Speaker 1: and won't answer your question. And I was wondering, do
Speaker 1: you find that the authority of the Congress is weakened
Speaker 1: in recent years because people feel like, what does it matter?
Speaker 1: There's no teeth behind this. So I think that some
Speaker 1: of the things that we've been able to do with
Speaker 1: our hearings is actually restore a sense of accountability to this,
Speaker 1: which is if you if I ask you a question
Speaker 1: and you give me a nonsense answer, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to pretend that what you said makes sense. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to accept a wrong answer. If you're dodging, if
Speaker 1: you're stonewalling, I'm going to try to get you to answer,
Speaker 1: so you would think. I mean, it's sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting to me. I remember, like maybe the second or
Speaker 1: third hearing I was at, I said, well, surely you
Speaker 1: know now everyone will come really prepared, like I won't
Speaker 1: stomp anybody anymore because they'll know that you have to
Speaker 1: show up and take me seriously. But you know, I've
Speaker 1: been underesked made in my whole life. At this point,
Speaker 1: I kind of exploit that and when does this still
Speaker 1: show up and they're contemptuous or they're unprepared. I mean,
Speaker 1: the other day Steve Minuchin had said, well, are you
Speaker 1: a lawyer? Like, yes, I am, like since you mentioned it,
Speaker 1: but I think that you know, the goal is that
Speaker 1: these shouldn't be performance art moments. They should be substantive.
Speaker 1: And so you know, the one thing I will say
Speaker 1: about the white board is it's not about trying to
Speaker 1: go viral um. It's not about an antic. It's not
Speaker 1: an antic. It is a tool. And so sometimes I
Speaker 1: use it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes I use other things.
Speaker 1: I don't you know. I think it was maybe one
Speaker 1: of my staffers m when we started the first time
Speaker 1: we ever used it was with Jamie Diamond. We were
Speaker 1: trying to go through the budget of a worker, what
Speaker 1: a typical family would spend, and compare it to the
Speaker 1: salary and show that even though he's paying more than
Speaker 1: minimum wage, people can't be against meat on that she
Speaker 1: had two thousand, four hundred twenty five dollars a month.
Speaker 1: She rents a one bedroom apartment. She and her daughters
Speaker 1: sleep together in the same room. In Irvine, California. That
Speaker 1: average one better apartment is going to be sixteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: She spends one hundred dollars on utilities, take away the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred, and she has net seven d twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars four hundred dollars per car expenses and gas net
Speaker 1: three A low food budget is four hundred dollars. That
Speaker 1: leaves her seventy seven dollars in the red. She has
Speaker 1: a cricket cell phone, the cheapest cell phone she can
Speaker 1: get for forty dollars. She's in the red. A hundred
Speaker 1: seventeen dollars a month. She has after school childcare because
Speaker 1: the bank is open during normal business hours. That's for
Speaker 1: fifty a month. That takes her down to negative five
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty seven dollars per month. My question for you,
Speaker 1: Mr Diamond is how should she manage this budget shortfall
Speaker 1: while she's working full time at your bank? And so
Speaker 1: the idea of the white board was just instead of
Speaker 1: having all these numbers what she spends on rent and
Speaker 1: food and rattling it all off a million miles an hour.
Speaker 1: And he says, I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I mean,
Speaker 1: that is what every The first refuge of every unprepared
Speaker 1: student in every classroom in America is to ask the teacher,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, could you repeat the question. That's a courtroom
Speaker 1: tactic exactly, So, especially in Congress, we only have five minutes.
Speaker 1: So if someone says could you repeat that, and you've
Speaker 1: spent a minute setting up the question, your loss. So
Speaker 1: the idea of the white board was to prevent him
Speaker 1: from being able to, you know, sort of dodge and stall.
Speaker 1: And you know, the interesting thing that he said is
Speaker 1: I'd have to think about it. And I asked him,
Speaker 1: you know again, and he said, I have to think
Speaker 1: about it. And I asked him, well, what about this?
Speaker 1: And he said, you have to think about it. And really,
Speaker 1: I hope he is. I hope that moment did prompt
Speaker 1: him to think. When I was doing Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: for this long run during Trump's thing, and we would
Speaker 1: be there and I would pitch ideas, and I wanted
Speaker 1: your character to have the white board everywhere, like you
Speaker 1: were with your kids at the breakfast table. All right,
Speaker 1: let me show you, and like you have the white
Speaker 1: board out of your swing everything for your children and
Speaker 1: your boyfriend, and you're at the gas station and whatever.
Speaker 1: Everywhere you go someone is handing your whiteboard. But I
Speaker 1: wonder is there a distinction between when you're questioning people,
Speaker 1: not only the questions you ask, the way you ask
Speaker 1: them again, you only have five minutes, but the way
Speaker 1: you anticipate they're gonna respond when their government administrators who
Speaker 1: are there to protect an administration. Do you see there's
Speaker 1: a difference between the two. When someone who is a
Speaker 1: political appointee is before you, are they even worse in
Speaker 1: terms of their caginus? No, not always. I mean I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, it just depends on the witness.
Speaker 1: We try to anticipate what the witness will say. In
Speaker 1: other words, what's the obvious thing they're going to try
Speaker 1: to dodge with Where are they going to try to
Speaker 1: misdirect us? If we we research the witnesses, sometimes we'll
Speaker 1: watch video clips of them to try to understand kind
Speaker 1: of what they're like, um, whether they get easily frustrated,
Speaker 1: whether they launch into long, boring explanations. So I'm prepared
Speaker 1: to cut that off. But I think one of the
Speaker 1: great myths is that you know, the oversight can me
Speaker 1: where I'm so excited to be serving again in this
Speaker 1: Congress somehow is less important or less exciting in a
Speaker 1: democratic administration, given that I'm a Democrat than it was
Speaker 1: when you know, we were a Trump administration, and you know,
Speaker 1: so opposite. I would just tell you that these are
Speaker 1: both oversight stays important. I mean, once we're enacting programs
Speaker 1: that I have supported and I have voted for as
Speaker 1: a Democrat, I'm even more concerned that these programs are
Speaker 1: working as intended. So the responsibility to do good oversight,
Speaker 1: it's not a partisan thing. It's part of effective government. Now,
Speaker 1: do you go back to your office sometimes and watch yourself,
Speaker 1: watch clips of yourself, and review what you've done to
Speaker 1: see how effective or ineffective you think it might have been.
Speaker 1: Not usually. I mean it's interesting after I question, and
Speaker 1: when I'm questioning, I typically have no idea what anybody
Speaker 1: else around me is doing or saying or reacting. It's
Speaker 1: it's just me and that witness, right and just looking
Speaker 1: at them, you know. I like, after I questioned Postmaster
Speaker 1: to Joy, oh my god, oh my god, I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure that I made the point that I wanted to make.
Speaker 1: Now it turns out I think I did. But when
Speaker 1: I got off, I was just like I don't think
Speaker 1: I did it. I think I messed it up. So
Speaker 1: it's often, you know, it's it's not about how I'm feeling,
Speaker 1: it's about whether it's resonating with the American people. So
Speaker 1: it often, you know, that's about how people react to it.
Speaker 1: So you can make something that you think is great,
Speaker 1: you know, but if other people don't find it moves them,
Speaker 1: then it doesn't really work. So when you're down in
Speaker 1: southern California and you go to Orange County, it was
Speaker 1: primarily to take the teaching gicket you see Irvine. If
Speaker 1: you see Irvine as a campus inside the red red
Speaker 1: red part of California there in Orange County, what was
Speaker 1: it like for you down there working there? Was Was
Speaker 1: it a very conservative staff and an administration and faculty? No?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, Irvine has changed a lot, and a
Speaker 1: big part of the reason that Irvine and Orange County
Speaker 1: has changed is in part at the presence of the University. UM.
Speaker 1: It's a large employer here. It attracts bright and interesting
Speaker 1: and thoughtful people from all around the country and even
Speaker 1: the world. UM. And so you know, my kids go
Speaker 1: to school, UM in public school here and there are
Speaker 1: they have some very conservative classmates. I mean one of
Speaker 1: my former cub Scouts. I was his cub Scout dead
Speaker 1: leader for five years. That kid actually made phone calls
Speaker 1: from my pum Republican opponent in eighteen So I don't
Speaker 1: know what that says about my cub Scout skills. But
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, actually there are a real
Speaker 1: diversity of opinion here. But there are very progressive people
Speaker 1: here too. There are people in the middle, there are Republicans.
Speaker 1: I like that diversity. I represent roughly equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats,
Speaker 1: and no party preference or independent voters. And what that
Speaker 1: means is, on any given topic, I need to know
Speaker 1: how to talk to people who will come at it
Speaker 1: from a lot of different perspectives. And that is an
Speaker 1: incredible skill to have, and I wish all of my
Speaker 1: colleagues had it. Frankly, when you went to Washington, and
Speaker 1: you talk about the importance of the work that you
Speaker 1: do within the district, but when you went to Washington,
Speaker 1: what did you think that was going to be like
Speaker 1: with your colleagues and stuff, where than what did it
Speaker 1: turn out to be. I thought there'd be more substantive
Speaker 1: policy discussion among regular members House Representatives is four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty plus people, so it's big. And so it
Speaker 1: turns out that a lot of things are kind of
Speaker 1: decided before they get to you, that they're decided by leadership.
Speaker 1: Um that you know, the relevant committee has kind of
Speaker 1: figured everything out before it comes to you, and you're
Speaker 1: just in a situation of yes or no on the vote.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where I saw hearings as this
Speaker 1: great opportunity because if you're not if you're a newcomer
Speaker 1: to Congress, you don't have a lot of power, especially
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side, but we have a strong seniority system.
Speaker 1: But one of the few equal things about Congress is
Speaker 1: everybody gets five minute for their questioning. So I decided
Speaker 1: I was going to use my five minutes better than
Speaker 1: anybody else, or as well as I could to the
Speaker 1: maximum of kind of my ability. Um. And that's where
Speaker 1: I found the greatest reward, really, And and the thing
Speaker 1: that's rewarding for me is it's not the answers that
Speaker 1: these witnesses give, because they're often really bad answers. It's
Speaker 1: the American people watch and they see that that lady
Speaker 1: is asking what I've always wondered, why do the drugs
Speaker 1: cost so much? Right? Why does the drug keep getting
Speaker 1: more expensive? Do you know what the price of Revelement was?
Speaker 1: I can look it up, but I don't recall. I
Speaker 1: don't have it in front of me. Four hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve per pile. I would say approximately seven pill, but
Speaker 1: I again, I don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 1: Seven nineteen propel and today Revelement cost seven hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty three dollars per pill. I'm curious did the drug
Speaker 1: get some stantially more effective in that time? Did cancer
Speaker 1: patients need fewer pills? She's asking about me, and that's
Speaker 1: really for me than the most rewarding part. You were
Speaker 1: a single mom where you got divorced when your your
Speaker 1: kids are how old now? They're now fifteen, twelve and 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 correct, absolutely
Speaker 1: huge issue. What are some of the legislation you might
Speaker 1: or might not propose to address that? So when I
Speaker 1: was elected in the last Congress. At that time, I
Speaker 1: was the only single mother of young children to serve.
Speaker 1: Since then, the Republicans have elected one. But you know,
Speaker 1: this idea of the single household, the single parent household,
Speaker 1: isn't well represented in Washington, to put it mildly, So
Speaker 1: when we talk about issues like child poverty, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons for that is women, single women, single mom,
Speaker 1: single dad's try ring to raise a family on one income. Um.
Speaker 1: What happens financially to families when they get divorced, um,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's very difficult. And so when we
Speaker 1: see right now, what we know is about of women
Speaker 1: have left the workforce since the pandemic. A lot of
Speaker 1: those are lost jobs. Some of them are women who
Speaker 1: are leaving because they're putting a position to choose between
Speaker 1: taking care of their kids who are out of school,
Speaker 1: remote learning um, or you know, having to go to
Speaker 1: work and leave their kids home alone. This has long
Speaker 1: term implications not just for women's economic opportunities and child poverty,
Speaker 1: but also for our economy as a whole. If we're
Speaker 1: a capitalist economy, we need our best and brightest doing
Speaker 1: the work, competing for the jobs, and that means men
Speaker 1: and women people of different backgrounds, all having an opportunity
Speaker 1: to be in the workplace. And in our country, we're
Speaker 1: losing a lot of women out of the workforce and
Speaker 1: that's going to have big implications for our global competitiveness.
Speaker 1: It's not just a women's issue. We all benefit from
Speaker 1: a strong, healthy economy. One of my favorite phrases, and
Speaker 1: I use it all the time with my staff, is
Speaker 1: by the ticket, take the ride right. And this actually
Speaker 1: applies to capitalism too. If we want to say, and
Speaker 1: you know, you hear these people who are uber capitalists,
Speaker 1: they're they're anti government, they're worried about this, they're they're
Speaker 1: throwing up this, you know, ridiculous specter of socialism. Well,
Speaker 1: guess what inherent in capitalism is equal opportunity to compete.
Speaker 1: And that's true about antitrust enforcement, but it also has
Speaker 1: to be true about social mobility. It has to be
Speaker 1: that that you're not allowing things like race discrimination to
Speaker 1: taint who you promote in the marketplace. You're paying people
Speaker 1: not because of the color of their skin, but because
Speaker 1: of how good they are at their jobs. All these
Speaker 1: things are perversions of capitalism, and we ought to be
Speaker 1: standing up for them on that basis, as well as
Speaker 1: the fact that they're morally apprehensible. Now, obviously we have
Speaker 1: a graduated income tax in this country. The more money
Speaker 1: you make, the more you pay in taxes. Why isn't
Speaker 1: the same prince applied to these trillion dollar COVID relief bills?
Speaker 1: Meaning why are we giving a single penny to a
Speaker 1: family that's making over two d Okay, great question. So
Speaker 1: I want to push back on a couple of things.
Speaker 1: One is you said we have a graduated income tax.
Speaker 1: I want to push back on that and say, we
Speaker 1: theoretically have a graduated income tax. Okay, that's what it
Speaker 1: says on paper when you look it up in the
Speaker 1: little back of the I r S booklet. If you
Speaker 1: still do your taxes on paper, but in actuality, people
Speaker 1: who earn a lot often pay a lower effective tax
Speaker 1: rate because we have loopholes. We have problems in our
Speaker 1: tax system, and so we need to close that gap
Speaker 1: because a lot of people who are running around talking
Speaker 1: about how they're in the highest tax bracket aren't paying
Speaker 1: taxes in that higher bracket because of capital gains, because
Speaker 1: of all kinds of other things. The other issue with
Speaker 1: regard to COVID relief is Look, we definitely want to
Speaker 1: focus the help where it is needed, but we also
Speaker 1: cannot be so focused on making sure that nobody gets
Speaker 1: any help that they don't need, that we slowed the
Speaker 1: whole thing down, and we ultimately allow people to die
Speaker 1: and to suffer while we're waiting around. And there are
Speaker 1: people in a very expensive areas where they were spending
Speaker 1: all of their money to make ends meet. Now boom childcare.
Speaker 1: You have kids childcare. For my daughter Betsy, when she
Speaker 1: went to the University of California Irvine, childcare cost more
Speaker 1: than it would have for her to have been an
Speaker 1: undergraduate at u c I childcare one year preschool was
Speaker 1: more than it would have been for her to be
Speaker 1: an undergraduate. So all of a sudden, when you'd have
Speaker 1: all these kids out of school, people's expenses are going up,
Speaker 1: even if their income may be stable. So we have
Speaker 1: to think about the entire the entire effect here, And
Speaker 1: here's the main thing I have to say to people.
Speaker 1: COVID relief is the financially and fiscally responsible thing to do.
Speaker 1: If we get this wrong, it will set our economy
Speaker 1: back for a decade or more. It will be a
Speaker 1: depressure Howard Dean was on the show the other day
Speaker 1: and said the same thing. I said, do you think
Speaker 1: we're running a risk by printing trillions of dollars? He said,
Speaker 1: the problem will be if we don't spend that money. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we have to invest it wisely. We have to make
Speaker 1: sure we're putting it into programs that are working. We
Speaker 1: have to root out fraud, waste, and abuse. Um. You know, so,
Speaker 1: I think it's ridiculous, for example, that we passed a
Speaker 1: paycheck protection program, a p p P program for small
Speaker 1: businesses that allowed Congress members to get loans. That's nuts.
Speaker 1: That's a mistake in the program. But our biggest risk
Speaker 1: here is not doing enough and leaving people mired a
Speaker 1: long term poverty and hardship, out of the workplace with
Speaker 1: 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 onto or does
Speaker 1: the congresswoman have other ideas about her future in California politics.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited it about Alex Padilla representing me and
Speaker 1: my family. Um, in the Senate, and I've contributed to
Speaker 1: his re election campaign already. UM. You know, I think
Speaker 1: he's gonna be a wonderful partner and a really important
Speaker 1: voice for California. UM. He has an amazing life story.
Speaker 1: He went to m I T he's incredibly smart. So
Speaker 1: I think you can safely paint me as a fan
Speaker 1: of alex Pidia and somebody who's really excited about working
Speaker 1: with him. He just got added to the Senate Banking Committee, UM, yesterday,
Speaker 1: So I told my staff, like, call him up, let's
Speaker 1: start working on bills together. Do you think that you
Speaker 1: have what it takes to serve in the Senate? What
Speaker 1: do you think you're better off where you are in
Speaker 1: the Congress? Oh? Look, wherever you put me, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fight for the American people. I'm gonna I mean, this
Speaker 1: is when I was a professor. I became a professor
Speaker 1: to understand what was wrong with our laws and how
Speaker 1: we could make it better. When I'm in the House,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm thinking about, what's wrong, how can we
Speaker 1: make it better. It's gonna be the same thing whether
Speaker 1: I would be in the administration. UM. Whatever I go
Speaker 1: on to do after this, UM, you know, these are
Speaker 1: the fundamental questions. The fundamental question that has motivated my
Speaker 1: life is how do we achieve economic prosperity for all Americans?
Speaker 1: And I'm going to keep asking that question whatever job
Speaker 1: I'm in, UM. And you know, I kind of look.
Speaker 1: The house is fun, it's scrappy. UM, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit chaotic. You're right, UM. But you know, whenever I've gone,
Speaker 1: I've always tried to make the most of what I've gotten. UM.
Speaker 1: And so you know, whatever the future holds, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure I'm going to still be asking tough questions. The
Speaker 1: honorable Katie Porter. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: While you're there, please leave us a review. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. When we come back, Katie Porter talks about
Speaker 1: why Trump must be convicted by the Senate. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: When protesters stormed the US Capitol building on January six,
Speaker 1: Katie Porter wasn't far from the insurrection. I was on
Speaker 1: the Capitol grounds, UM in my office, which is not
Speaker 1: in the capital. Which house building are you in long Worth?
Speaker 1: In long Worth and more as AOC has now memorialized
Speaker 1: it the Duncan Donuts Building, which was actually a factor
Speaker 1: and why I picked that, Um, it's very handy to
Speaker 1: be able to go get coffee in the morning. But UM,
Speaker 1: I was in my office and Alexander Kazier Cortes. I
Speaker 1: passed her in the hallway as I went into my office,
Speaker 1: and you know, she kind of you know, she waved,
Speaker 1: and a few seconds later she came back and knocked
Speaker 1: on the door and said can I come in? And
Speaker 1: I said, of course, and you know, she came inside.
Speaker 1: She was obviously very rattled. There had been a bomb
Speaker 1: threat at her building. I didn't know that at the time, UM,
Speaker 1: And so we sheltered together, along with a couple of
Speaker 1: staffers for about four or five hours, six hours in
Speaker 1: my office, barricaded the doors, turned the lights off, pulled
Speaker 1: the windows, silence the phones, just in the cold, um
Speaker 1: and the dark, you know, worried that what was going
Speaker 1: on at the Capitol, where there were cameras watching. What
Speaker 1: you can't see is that there are underground tunnels connecting
Speaker 1: the Capital to our office buildings. If the attackers had
Speaker 1: come down those tunnels, we would not have known they
Speaker 1: were coming. Um. And so we just stayed barricaded in
Speaker 1: there for hours and didn't know what was happening. And
Speaker 1: when you look back on it, now, what do you
Speaker 1: think should happen? Oh, to protect us? I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we have to. We have a real problem in this
Speaker 1: country with misinformation, with with violence. UM. You know, our
Speaker 1: democracy is strong, but it is not unshakable um. And
Speaker 1: this was this was a powerful kind of I think
Speaker 1: earthquake a powerful shake um to our democratic principles. So
Speaker 1: I think we have to reaffirm that it's okay to disagree,
Speaker 1: so kay, to have different ideas. I represent Range County.
Speaker 1: I represent a lot of constituents that I disagree with. Um,
Speaker 1: that's okay, that's healthy. But violence in a democracy is
Speaker 1: never okay. You voted to impeach Trump. I did twice,
Speaker 1: and the Senate is not going to convict you know,
Speaker 1: I think they should convict him. I think that this
Speaker 1: is and I think too many people are thinking about
Speaker 1: this just from the punitive angle about Trump. But we
Speaker 1: have a rule of law in this country, and part
Speaker 1: of that rule of law is precedent. So what we
Speaker 1: are doing here is saying this conduct was not acceptable
Speaker 1: and if anyone again, it's not who we are. So
Speaker 1: if you're wondering future president whether you can act like
Speaker 1: President Trump did, the answer is no, you will be impeached.
Speaker 1: This is illegal. So we need to set that precedent
Speaker 1: and establish that boundary. I would have bet you everything
Speaker 1: I own at the onset of Trump's administration that it
Speaker 1: never would have ended this way. Meant it ends. His
Speaker 1: political legacy ends on this note, one of destruction and
Speaker 1: hate and lawlessness and stuff with which which defines him.
Speaker 1: You know, I've always said that the government's purposes to
Speaker 1: do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number
Speaker 1: of people. This is not some concierge service to help
Speaker 1: wealthy Americans. And I'm wondering, what's the change you'd like
Speaker 1: to see in the campaing finance laws that will help
Speaker 1: clean that up. Yeah. No, corporate pack money is a
Speaker 1: huge part of it. Citizens United saying companies are people, right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, reversing Citizens United stopping corporate pack contributions or
Speaker 1: at least forcing corporations to disclose them to shareholders and
Speaker 1: justify how this actually provides any value to the corporation. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that's really important. I think campaing finance generally,
Speaker 1: you know, I think small dollar contributions are great because
Speaker 1: you know, five dollars a dollar, you know, volunteering your time.
Speaker 1: People can feel themselves part of democracy, part of the process. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, until we clean that up, until we
Speaker 1: clean up some of the corruption, it's going to be
Speaker 1: really hard. I think it's the source of all of
Speaker 1: the problems to this country, source of all of the problems.
Speaker 1: Which committee do you want to You're on one exclusive committee.
Speaker 1: I was at an exclusive committee lust Congress, which is
Speaker 1: financial Services. You're not there anymore. I'm not there anymore.
Speaker 1: And now I'm on. I was on Financial Services, and
Speaker 1: then later in the year I got added to oversight
Speaker 1: when there were openings. So now I'm on I continuing
Speaker 1: on the Oversight committee. I'm really excited about that. I
Speaker 1: love that oversight UM and I like doing it for
Speaker 1: all different kinds of areas, everything from you know, pentagon
Speaker 1: spending to pharmaceuticals to car seats UM, to civil liberties UM.
Speaker 1: And then I'm now joined the Natural Resources Committee, which
Speaker 1: has jurisdiction over public lands, over tribal lands, all the
Speaker 1: drilling on public lands, UM oceans and wildlife. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I said the other day, polluters, I have questions. UM.
Speaker 1: So I'm really excited about that, and it's incredibly important
Speaker 1: issue in California. It's important to our global competitiveness in
Speaker 1: the future. The company, the economy, the nation that has
Speaker 1: manufacturing jobs in the next decade will be the country
Speaker 1: that figures out how to manufacturer a green way. We
Speaker 1: need that to be us. Bobby Kennedy Jr. Used to say,
Speaker 1: let's force them to bring their products to market at
Speaker 1: their actual cost. What are the American people really paying
Speaker 1: for a gallon of gas? You throw the PCBs in
Speaker 1: the Hudson River and we have to clean it up.
Speaker 1: That should be a part of the cost of your thing.
Speaker 1: The woman who studied bankruptcy law at Harvard with Elizabeth warrener,
Speaker 1: you saw you dot on the finance comman anymore? Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely sorry. I mean I asked to serve because
Speaker 1: I wanted to. Um. I want to continue working on
Speaker 1: those issues, and I hope there'll be an opportunity for
Speaker 1: me to fill up vacancy in the future. Um to
Speaker 1: get back to that committee. Um, you know, I'm excited
Speaker 1: to be on the Economic and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of Oversight. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep doing a lot of work on financial
Speaker 1: services issues from that. So absolutely wish I were on.
Speaker 1: What happened? You know, they just they they had so
Speaker 1: many spots. They voted people on and off. I was
Speaker 1: one of two people who didn't get it. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: eight or ten people did get it. Other people were chosen,
Speaker 1: other people were chosen. But you know what, Like, remember
Speaker 1: what I said about I've been underestimated a lot. When
Speaker 1: I went on now, people are like, oh, well, she
Speaker 1: can't go all financial services, financial services, where all the
Speaker 1: hot committee action is. Trust me. When I went on
Speaker 1: financial services, everyone was like, oh my god, that's the
Speaker 1: most boring committee. No one's gonna pay attention to. Right.
Speaker 1: So wherever I go, I'm going to try to engage
Speaker 1: the American people. And I don't think there is a
Speaker 1: bad committee in Congress. These are all important. Well let
Speaker 1: me just say I really mean this. People who really
Speaker 1: are so disheartened. I mean they're crushed and demoralized by
Speaker 1: the inefficiency of the American government. They've lost faith, and
Speaker 1: then along you come, and all my friends who see you,
Speaker 1: you know what they are. They're proud of you. They're
Speaker 1: 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 and you're finding and honing away to use the
Speaker 1: job the office as a tool. You're honing a tool
Speaker 1: to do the work you want to do on behalf
Speaker 1: of the American people. So thank you so much, thank you,
Speaker 1: oh absolutely, thank you so much for having me. My
Speaker 1: thanks to Lorreina Gonzalez and Katie Porter. This episode was
Speaker 1: recorded at c d M Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing. Is brought
Speaker 1: to you by My Heart Radio.