Freshman U.S. Rep. Waltz learns ropes
Freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz has had an eventful first few weeks in Congress, starting in the midst of a government shutdown, joining in a crucial compromise to avoid another closure and reluctantly backing an emergency declaration by President Trump.
He’s also learning how to navigate Capitol Hill as a member of the GOP minority in a newly Democratic-controlled House.
“The first thing (you learn) is how much walking there is,” said Waltz in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel. “I’m averaging 12,000 to 15,000 steps a day. That, I was not expecting.”
Waltz, 45, of St. Augustine, was elected in November to succeed Gov. Ron DeSantis in District 6, which includes Volusia County, Flagler County and parts of Lake and St. Johns counties.
His first major decision on the agreement between the Democratic-led House and Republicancontrolled Senate to continue funding the government was “a tough vote,” Waltz said.
He was one of 87 Republicans to vote yes on the $333 billion funding package, joining 213 Democrats.
Another 109 Republicans voted no, with many concerned about the compromise to add $1.4 billion for steel fencing along the border and not the $5.7 billion for a border wall originally demanded by Trump. Nineteen Democrats also
vote no.
“There were things that I liked and certainly things I didn’t like,” Waltz said. “But at the end of the day, I think it moves us forward. As I’ve said before … compromise can’t be a dirty word.”
He added that his guest to his first State of the Union Address was Senior Chief Jeffery S. Graham of Coast Guard Station Ponce De Leon Inlet, one of 800,000 federal employees furloughed during the shutdown
“It’s certainly a call I didn’t want to make to him, to tell him he was going to go without pay again for defending the country,” Waltz said.
He did criticize the bill for not including back pay for govern-
ment contractors who missed paychecks during the shutdown, which he said hurts NASA contractors from his district.
While he praised the increase in border patrol and ICE officers included in the package, he said it still didn’t do enough for border security “to truly fix the problem. And I think that’s why you’re seeing the president take the action that he’s taken.”
The same day he signed the funding package, Trump declared a state of emergency along the southern border with Mexico and said he would use $6.1 billion in military funding pulled from other designated projects to build a wall.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio criticized Trump’s move, saying, “We have a crisis at our southern border, but no crisis justifies violating the Constitution.”
The administration will use $2.5 billion of military narcotics funding and $3.6 billion in military construction funding, according to CNN. Waltz said a large part of the money Trump is diverting toward the border comes out of seized assets from drug cartels.
“I don’t have a real issue with that,” he said.
“I’m not thrilled about it, I don’t like it, but this is what the president was elected to do in large part,” he said. “And my big concern ... is I don’t think we can get some meaningful legal immigration reform until we fully secure the border.’’
Waltz, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served in Afghanistan as a Green Beret and a counterterrorism adviser during the George W. Bush administration, is the only freshman Republican appointed to the Armed Services Committee, where he serves on the subcommittee overseeing Special Forces.
Waltz tried to clarify the Trump administration’s policy on Syria, which has seen Trump declare ISIS defeated in Syria and call for a pullout of U.S. forces even as military leaders said the mission would continue.
Waltz gave the Trump administration credit for destroying the ISIS “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, “but ISIS is not destroyed as a movement. … I want to see us stay on offense.”
“There is a notion in Washington on both sides of the aisle that if we just leave our allies and others to take care of this problem, they will,” Waltz said. “And we have seen the fallacy in that thinking.”
“People tend to think about it in a black-andwhite scenario, either ‘Bring our servicemen and women home’ or we’re invading countries,” he said. “There are ways the U.S. can lead through diplomacy, economically, and with a small special operations footprint fighting alongside our allies.”
He said he had a good working relationship with U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Winter Park, a fellow Defense Department alum, and he’s met with all 26 other Florida representatives.
“And Val Demings is across the hall,” he said of his office. “You really have to work hard at establishing those relationships.”
Demings spokesman Daniel Gleick said Demings and Waltz “recently made a commitment (sealed with a handshake) to find legislation to work on together during this session.”
While the Republicans are in the minority, “there are still things you can get done,” Waltz said.
Sometimes, he said, it can be a simple thing to rectify an ill-conceived policy.
He recently met with the widower of Navy Chief Shannon Kent, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria in January. She should have been assigned to the Navy’s medical school, but because she previously had cancer, an “obscure” regulation led to her deployment overseas instead.
“A few phone calls to the Navy, and we got it changed before her funeral,” Waltz said. “And the family really saw that as her legacy.”