Congresswoman Janice Hahn on Monday cast her vote against the deal to raise the debt ceiling.
Hahn, a Democrat sworn in only two weeks ago after winning the July 12 special election to replace Jane Harman as District 36 representative, argued that that the debt ceiling bill passed by Congress represented not a compromise but a hostage-taking by the Tea Party.
“The other side never compromised at all,” Hahn said in an interview Tuesday. “In fact, they bragged about the fact that they got 98 percent of everything they wanted. They never compromised at all, because they didn’t have to….We lost the debate when we began negotiating with the Tea Party. I mean, we have raised the debt limit in this country numerous times – it was 17 times under President Reagan, I think. So it happens all the time – this was the first time in our history that they decided to use this act to hold us hostage, to hold our economy hostage. And they were very willing to take this country over the cliff and blow up our economy if they didn’t get their way.”
The debt ceiling legislation passed the House in a 269-161 vote, with 66 Republicans and 95 Democrats voting no. The broad outlines of the deal include an immediate $900 billion limit to the debt ceiling and an additional $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion within the next year. An estimated $2.1 trillion in budget cuts are attached to the legislation, the specifics of which will be decided in a newly formed congressional “super-committee.” The committee has until Dec. 23 to reach an agreement or across-the-board cuts will be enacted.
Hahn said the bill represented an unbalanced approach that hurt working families.
“That was why I voted no,” Hahn said. “I thought the people who lost were the middle class and the poor in this country…these are going to be cuts that hurt families in our country while still not asking the wealthiest of Americans to help out.”
Hahn acknowledged that it was a difficult decision to buck party leadership’s wishes in her first major vote. But she said feedback from her constituents was overwhelmingly against the deal.
“It was hard for me,” she said. “But one of the things that made it easier for me was my constituents – you know, it was like 20 to 1 in phone calls and emails from my constituents urging me to vote no on it. So I figured my first act as a member of the House of Representatives, representing my district, it made it a little bit easier to know I was voting on behalf of my district. But there was nothing about it I liked. I feel like I was sent to Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare, and it wasn’t clear to me, long-term, whether this bill did that.”
Hahn last week supported a “clean” debt ceiling amendment that would have separated the issue from budget cuts and more routinely increased the debt ceiling, as was the previous practice across several administrations prior to the Tea Party’s arrival in Washington.
“I think we should have done that,” Hahn said. “It would have allowed this country to pay our bills, to meet our obligations, and then let’s have this fight about spending and the deficit later. But to join those two things together was a big problem.”
Hahn suggested that any approach to addressing the deficit should include ending tax cuts and loopholes that favor the wealthiest Americans and large corporations. As she frequently noted during her campaign, corporations such as General Electric and Bank of America paid no federal income taxes last year.
“Look, we all know we need to cut spending, we’ve got to tackle this deficit, but the American people want us to do it in a balanced approach where everybody helps out,” Hahn said. “So to put the burden on the middle class and the poor without asking the wealthiest of Americans or big corporations or big oil to help us out of this problem is against everything I believe in.”
President Barack Obama’s statement in the Rose Garden Tuesday evening mirrored those concerns. He suggested tax reform that ended subsidies for oil and gas companies and eliminated loopholes that allow corporations and billionaires to “pay a lower tax rate than teachers and nurses.
“I’ve said it before; I will say it again: we can’t balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession,” Obama said. “We can’t make it tougher for young people to go to college, or ask seniors to pay more for health care, or ask scientists to give up on promising medical research because we couldn’t close a tax shelter for the most fortunate among us.”
The fight, in other words, has only begun. Hahn said that the debate ahead will be about the very nature of government itself.
“The Tea Party folks don’t believe government has a role in our lives,” she said. “Of course, I ‘m sure they call the fire department when there is a fire or the paramedics when somebody is having a heart attack…but they fundamentally want to completely shrink government and not let it play a role in creating jobs or protecting the environment, or making sure our food is safe, or making sure products are tested before they are allowed to be consumed. So there is a philosophical debate we are going to have going forward in the Congress about where these cuts should happen and how they should happen.”
Hahn noted that the lion’s share of the current deficit was accrued fighting two wars while at the same time enacting tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. She the Obama stimulus package derided by Tea Party conservatives actually saved the jobs of thousands of teachers and improved infrastructure throughout the country, including the South Bay.
“We don’t want to hand our grandchildren this kind of debt or deficit,” Hahn said. “But I don’t want to hand my grandchildren bridges that are collapsing, highways that are crumbling, schools that are not safe, and air that is not clean. This is going to be a fundamental fight – I think we ought to invest in our grandchildren’s future. I want to invest in education and infrastructure….I think this is the worst time in the world to completely slash spending when we could actually improve the economy and create jobs and add more revenue into our tax base.”
Hahn said it was “quite sobering” to suddenly be thrust in the middle of such a crucial political battle. She was only sworn into office July 19; the week prior, her mother, Ramona, passed away the day before Hahn defeated Republican and Tea Party favorite Craig Huey.
In part, Hahn was appalled by what she witnessed in Washington.
“I am not sure I would believe some of these things if I had not seen it first hand,” she said. “I had heard some of these stories but to see it up close and personal was pretty amazing. You almost have to see it to believe it – some of the tactics that were going on.”
But the congresswoman was also inspired by the scene that unfolded Monday night when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) made a surprise appearance to cast her vote for the debt ceiling agreement. Giffords earlier this year was shot in the head by a gunman outside a supermarket in Tucson.
“I will tell you, the moment I will never forget as long as I live was the moment last night when Gabby Giffords unexpectedly walked onto the House floor,” Hahn said. “We gave her a standing ovation and it was a great, great moment. American needed a miracle, and she was it.”
“What a first two weeks. Unbelievable.” ER
