Gloucester Matthews Gazette Journal - Two Days in D.C.: Congressmen Speak on Issues with Local Impact

News Article

With all the commotion going on in our Nation's Capitol, the Gazette-Journal thought it might be a good year to mosey up to Washington and chat with our district representative and senators.

The offices of Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner and of Representative Rob Wittman welcomed an opportunity to reach constituents in this area of the state, and staff members for all three men set up appointments for last Thursday and Friday.

In spite of their hectic schedules, our Congressmen were very punctual and made the local reporters a priority on The Hill. Their staffs were also extremely accommodating, going above and beyond to ensure the reporters could get the absolute most out of their D.C. experience.

Overall, one of the strongest messages the men gave was for constituents to stay in contact. The Congressmen said that the decisions they make and the work they accomplish cannot be completed without the valuable input of Virginia residents.

Mark Warner

Quite unexpected for a former governor, it took some searching to locate Senator Mark Warner's basement office. Warner came in, welcoming the two reporters with a smile and calling them by their first names. He had just finished taking his turn presiding over the Senate Friday morning.

Warner's office was rather small in comparison to where he hung his hat in Virginia's Governor's Mansion. But, according to aides, that's the tradition for freshman senators. Press assistant Riki Parikh said that senators with highest seniority are first in line to pick the office of their liking.

It didn't take long for Warner to begin talking about the economy. Asked what the average American can do to help the situation, he said, "First and foremost, don't lose faith that we will recover. We still live in the greatest country. Even now our economy is better off than most any other.

"Secondly, turn off your T.V. on the financial markets a while and don't let yourself go through the emotional ups and downs," he advised.

"Third, keep pressure on elected officers of both parties to work together." He said confidence will be restored a lot easier that way. "Though there is no perfect solution, you really need to tell us to leave our party hats at the door."

"These are hard-hard issues," Warner continued. But he said it boils down to people learning to live within their means. "Don't go get a second mortgage to finance your vacation," he said. "And don't max out your credit cards."

Warner said it's something of a Catch-22. "We do want people to become fiscally responsible, but not so much to not stimulate the economy."

He said three things will contribute to a better economy. The first is the President's stimulus plan which, Warner added, is not perfect. The second: A housing stabilization plan that allows people to refinance their mortgages. Finally, getting the finance program stabilized.

"It's a wild time to be here," Warner added.

Meanwhile, other specific issues Warner addressed follow here.

Omnibus bill

Most of the omnibus bill passed by Congress Tuesday consists of bills that were passed last year with bipartisan support, said Warner, but because lawmakers figured President Bush would veto much of it, the bills were "cobbled together and brought forward."

Last Thursday night, the Senate voted on four proposed Republican amendments to the bill while Gazette-Journal reporters were present, but the amendments all failed. Warner said he believed that $10 million earmarked for Chesapeake Bay watermen would be safe, and he hopes the bill will be passed without second-guessing what was done last year.

Bipartisanship

Bipartisanship is important to Warner, and he said he's spent his first 60 days in office developing friendships on both sides of the aisle, trying to dispel the notion that "there's got to be an R or a D attached to everything."

"More than three Republicans wanted to support the stimulus package," he said emphatically. "I don't want to default to ‘everything's got to be split up along party lines.' You've got to spend time developing those relationships with the Republican folks."

Regulation of finance

Warner, who sits on the Senate's banking committee, said the fiscal crisis is so complicated that even someone such as he, who has a background in business and finance, finds it difficult to grasp. It's even more difficult for Congressmen without such a background, he said.

"If you've only been a lawyer or a politician all your life, you don't have the knowledge to figure all this out," he said.

"There are hundreds of great community banks that haven't done anything wrong and are still profitable," he said. "It's not the small banks that have done anything wrong—it's Wall Street."

The trick is to figure out which of the big banks are "really under water," said Warner.

"When a small bank fails, that's bad, but there's a mechanism to deal with it," he said, explaining that the FDIC takes over and gets rid of the bad assets. "But when you talk about Citibank, that's worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of employees," he said. "We've put over $100 billion in AIG and we still don't know where the bottom is, but we don't want others to fail because of AIG. We are in uncharted territory; there's not an example to go back to."

Warner said Congress is determined to fix the problems, "but we still have to clean up the mess." He emphasized that "all those products that were unregulated will have to be regulated going forward."

Chesapeake Bay

Asked if he intended to fight for every dollar possible for the Chesapeake Bay, Warner said, "Absolutely." While Virginia didn't pay its share for bay cleanup for a long time, he said, "now we are, and the federal government has to step up, too."

Asked about earmarks being labeled "pork," Warner echoed Sen. Jim Webb's statements by saying, "I think you should be able to advocate for a project in your state."

"My job is to fight for the bay, to fight to protect our military establishments," he said. "But you have to be public about it."

Finally, Warner reminisced about Gloucester and Mathews, which he visited during his gubernatorial campaign in 2001, returning last year during his Senatorial campaign. He asked how efforts to preserve New Point Lighthouse were going, and remembered greeting people at Williams Wharf.

"That's such a pretty part of the state," he said. "It's this little piece of heaven…"

With all the commotion going on in our Nation's Capitol, the Gazette-Journal thought it might be a good year to mosey up to Washington and chat with our district representative and senators.

The offices of Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner and of Representative Rob Wittman welcomed an opportunity to reach constituents in this area of the state, and staff members for all three men set up appointments for last Thursday and Friday.

In spite of their hectic schedules, our Congressmen were very punctual and made the local reporters a priority on The Hill. Their staffs were also extremely accommodating, going above and beyond to ensure the reporters could get the absolute most out of their D.C. experience.

Overall, one of the strongest messages the men gave was for constituents to stay in contact. The Congressmen said that the decisions they make and the work they accomplish cannot be completed without the valuable input of Virginia residents.

Jim Webb

The most striking aspect of a face-to-face with Senator Jim Webb, from the perspective of someone who has seen him only on television during his rather grim-faced news interviews, is that he smiles and laughs—a lot.

The 63-year-old senior senator from Virginia gives off a friendly energy in person that somehow doesn't come across on camera, engaging his visitors in conversation with amicably intense concentration.

When the Gazette-Journal set up an interview in advance through the senator's very accommodating staff, Webb asked for biographical information, and he pointedly used that information to set a warm tone with the reporters, asking questions about their activities and areas of interest.

One of the reporters, when asked a question about books, brought up the senator's own well-established authorship by getting the title of one of his books wrong. Webb burst into laughter as he made the correction, and good-naturedly dismissed the faux pas.

While press secretary Kimberly Hunter had only been able to promise 10 minutes or so with the senator, Webb extended the time to twice that or more as he waited to go to the Capitol for four votes on amendments to the Omnibus Bill that's still under consideration this week. He arranged for the reporters to attend the Senate session, and made it clear that it was important to him to connect with voters in areas such as Gloucester and Mathews that he hasn't yet visited.

The topics Webb discussed in response to questions follow.

Citizens helping out

It was suggested to Webb that perhaps the government ought to give citizens some ideas for doing their share to help the economy recover, possibly along the lines of a "buy Treasury bonds" campaign. But he said that, while "we all need to understand that as a country we are all at risk and invested in what's happening," current financial problems are part of a global crisis that has stalled the economy not only locally, but throughout the international marketplace, as well.

"We've attempted to get money into the system on a large scale to jump-start our economy and hopefully assist the global economy," he said, adding that he hopes Congress's efforts will instill enough confidence in the system that people will start spending again.

Regulatory impacts

Asked how any new efforts to regulate the financial industry will affect smaller banks and companies that didn't participate in the risky lending practices that contributed to the economic downturn, Webb said he didn't expect that new regulations will place burdensome requirements on such businesses. He explained that much of the problem occurred because regulatory efforts didn't keep up "as the economies of the world internationalized."

Loopholes in the regulations governing commodities markets for oil and gas were part of the problem, said Webb. Commodities should be regulated by the people using the products, he said, but when such markets were deregulated, "wild speculation began," and suddenly prices were at the mercy of wealthy investors looking for a profit. During one period when oil was selling for over $100 a barrel, said Webb, market demand would have had it selling for only about $60 a barrel.

"The smartest thing is to work internationally" to address those problems, he said, adding that "it doesn't mean we have to regulate the whole economy."

Exploring for oil in Virginia

Although according to the Federal Register the amount of oil and gas estimated to be available off the coast of Virginia only amounts to about six days' consumption of oil and 55 days' consumption of gas nationwide, Webb said those areas are still worth exploring.

With a degree in engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, Webb said he understands the issue from a technological perspective. When the initial estimates about oil and gas reserves were made in the 1960s, he said, the technologies available to explore for and extract the resources weren't as advanced as they are now. But over the past 40 years, extraction methods have become so much more sophisticated that even Santa Barbara, California, where several devastating oil spills once occurred, has passed a resolution calling for drilling.

If revenue sharing were included in the oil lease, said Webb, Virginia could get as much as 46 percent of the profits from drilling offshore—money that could help pay for Virginia's infrastructure needs.

"We need to put everything on the table," he said. "Nuclear, alternative, offshore…I just think it's a smart thing to do."

Earmarks

Asked about earmarks and the accusation that a lot of ‘pork' is included in the Omnibus Bill currently under consideration by Congress, Webb said he believes that legislators have a right to get projects included in the budget. He explained that earmarks are spending requests that weren't asked for by government departments and so weren't included in the president's budget, but that a senator or representative might want to see funded.

Webb served on the defense resources board at the Pentagon for four years, and he said they used to "scrub the budgets," but that there were always special projects that someone with influence—say, a retired admiral—could get funding for. Such projects could arguably be called ‘pork,' he said, but the key to handling such items is "total visibility."

"It used to be a private process," he said, mentioning broadband internet service in Tidewater as one project funded as an earmark. "John Warner and I got that through," he said. But since rural areas "don't get that much attention from the executive branch," he said they might need more help than urban areas.

"It doesn't mean I think that it all is lean," said Webb, "but the process is fair. It just ought to be transparent."

Webb had to rush to get to the Senate floor and vote, so Hunter and legislative aide Jacob Terrell escorted the visitors to the Senate gallery. On the way, Hunter expanded on Webb's comments about earmarks. She explained that the $10 million which Congress allocated to put Chesapeake Bay crabbers to work after the fishery was declared a disaster was an example of an earmark.

"Somebody in California might think that's pork," she said, "but they don't know what the industry has gone through. If we're not out there advocating for it, who is? You certainly want to walk a fine line…but it's more beneficial for Gloucester and Mathews to have input from our staff than to depend on the bureaucrats in Washington."

In the gallery

Lawmaking isn't conducted as one might expect on the Senate floor at the Capitol. Senators don't enter together and sit down quietly, respectfully waiting for roll call or debate or a vote to be taken.

Instead, these elected officials wander in and out of the surprisingly small room as business is being conducted, stroll around freely, greet colleagues on both sides of the aisle, chat in voices that don't appear to strive for hushed tones and certainly don't achieve them, and refuse to grow quiet no matter how many times the presiding officer—a senator taking his or her turn—bangs on the desk and calls for order.

When a senator's name is called for a vote, he or she either casually approaches the dais or hand signals the clerk keeping the tally. Visitors just have to wonder how a particular senator voted until the tally is read aloud.

Legislative aide Jacob Terrell confirmed that this is standard behavior in the Senate chamber. In addition, he said, the vice president, who is charged in the Constitution with presiding over the Senate, doesn't. Terrell said he had been told there was one vice president who actually attended every session of the Senate, but that wasn't the norm.

Of course, given standard operating procedures on the Senate floor, perhaps it would be an embarrassment for a vice president to preside, only to be routinely ignored while constantly calling for order.

Rob Wittman

With just a short time available before heading to the House Chamber to cast several votes, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-1st) took about a half-hour on Friday to talk about the economy, the environment and the value of input from his constituents. Wittman is serving his first full term in the U.S. House of Representatives, after finishing out the term of his predecessor, the late Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis.

Wittman said one of the major forces driving the economic downturn is an issue of consumer confidence. "The major question people are asking," he said, "Is, ‘Am I confident enough to go out and make a purchase…to live my life normally.'"

He was reassuring, however, and reminded that this is the 12th cycle we've been through where there has been a recession. "People need to make sure to continue with confidence, that things will come back around and live life normally." Wittman said to purchase normally and that by paying down debt, it can help open up liquidity that is there. "Now's a great opportunity to do that," he added.

Wittman said that the green energy initiatives will be "great, great opportunities" for jobs and allow people to have a great opportunity to become innovative with those things. He said it all boils down to people. "It always amazes me the innovative ideas people in this country can come up with."

Wittman also recognized the extreme difficulties small businesses across the 1st District and the country are enduring. He said he is hearing from many small business owners, "Just let me survive…If I can get my bills paid, I will forego my own salary."

He explained that there are some opportunities for these businesses such as low interest loan programs through the Small Business Administration (SBA), an independent agency of the federal government, to assist and protect the interests of small businesses across the country. Small businesses can apply for various grants and loans from this department, as well as take part in training initiatives. The SBA website is www.sba.gov.

Other initiatives Wittman said he is taking to help small business include accelerating depreciation on capital purchases (which would allow an offset of depreciation in one year vs. five). He also proposes suspending a capital gains tax and rolling back that money into small business as well as reducing the effective tax base for small business.

Shifting focus from the economy, Wittman commented on an issue that is growing in the Middle Peninsula: conventional septic systems and their nitrogen impacts on the Chesapeake Bay, versus alternative systems. Wittman worked in the public health sector for 20 years prior to his political career, first as an environmental health specialist and then as field director for the Division of Shellfish Sanitation.

He said that in this area, groundwater is shallow, and much of it runs directly into the bay. He said that a positive approach would be to phase in alternative septic systems with nitrogen removal. "However, we don't want to create an overbearing burden on folks," he added. Therefore, initiatives need to be taken to provide funding for those who cannot afford the switch to alternative systems. "I want to make sure there are opportunities out there to help."

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