Barbara Boxer’s view:
GOP upheaval is blocking work in Congress, senator says.
The continuing upheaval within the Republican House leadership is making it virtually impossible to get anything done in Congress, California Sen. Barbara Boxer said Friday.
“I served in the House for 10 years and know it really well. I’ve never seen such a mess,” the Democratic senator said at a news conference covering a wide variety of topics at San Francisco’s Ferry Building. “This is unacceptable.”
Deadlines are rapidly approaching on a number of bills desperately needed to keep the government running, and there’s still no agreement on what will be done, she said.
“The debt ceiling has to be raised because we have to pay our bills,” Boxer
said. Even the threat of a default could be a disaster for the still-struggling economy, she added.
Congress also needs to pass a budget by early December, but Democrats won’t go along with the Republican proposal because it calls for cuts for such things as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Community Health Care Centers, affordable housing, job training and government Pell Grants for college students.
“We can’t agree to this because it would plunge us back into recession,” Boxer said.
But the ongoing GOP dispute over who should replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is pitting very conservative Republican House members against very, very conservative members, and it has spilled over into just about every part of the legislative process, stalling action on a variety of measures.
“If John Boehner would reach out to (House Minority Leader) Nancy Pelosi, all this could be resolved in short order,” the senator added. “I know (Boehner) doesn’t want to leave a mess behind” when he resigns his congressional seat later this year.
Things were different when she was in the House, representing Marin County, Boxer said, and not just because Democrats were in control.
“When you’re in a legislative body, each of us has to set aside our dreams and work with each other,” she said. For then-Speaker Tip O’Neill, “the magic number was 218 (votes), and it didn’t matter where he got them.”
The whole idea of compromise has gone away, she said.
Boxer did get some good news Friday when the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released its longterm transportation bill, probably clearing the way for a joint conference committee to resolve any differences between the House bill and the Senate bill passed in June.
Unless a bill is passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in the next two weeks, federal money for roads, bridges, transit and other transportation needs will run out, which would be a disaster for California. The state receives about $4 billion a year in federal transportation money, Boxer said.
Although Boxer, who was first elected to the Senate in 1992, has said she will not run for reelection in 2016, there is still plenty of work to do, she said. On Friday, for example, she joined with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Agriculture and the Army Corps of Engineers, asking what preparations they are making for an El Niño event that could drop record amounts of rain on the state in the coming months.
On Thursday, heavy rains in Southern California caused slides that closed parts of Interstate 5 and other highways and left hundreds of cars stranded in deep, clinging mud. After a four-year drought and wildfires that have ravaged the state, strong storms could cause widespread flooding and dangerous landslides across the state, Boxer said.
“What mitigation projects have your agencies completed in California to reduce the risk of severe flooding and to address the impact of drought and wildfire?” Boxer and Feinstein asked in their letter. “Can any projects be accelerated prior to potential storms due to an El Niño?”
Boxer said she has plenty of plans for life after the Senate. She has written her memoirs, which are due out in June, and she will be involved in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential effort.
She also is looking at converting her existing Senate political action committee into a more prominent super PAC that would raise enough money to go toe-to-toe with those run by conservatives like the Koch brothers.
That’s despite her concerns about the growing power of money in politics, a trend she called “an abomination.”
But politics has to be played with the rules that exist, not with the rules you would prefer, she said, which means raising the money that now is legal.
“You can’t just go and hide under the covers,” the senator said.
Boxer said she intends to stay involved in the progressive battles she has fought during her decades in public office.
“I’m going to be very involved in the upcoming election,” she said. “I just won’t be running.”