Comedian Stephen Colbert "interviews" U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee for a Comedy Central program. (Michigan Public Radio photo.) KILDEE'S 1ST YEAR: New Congressman "Frustrated" at Gridlock in Washington
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The hyper-partisanship now prevalent in Washington "can't be sustained," new 5th District U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee told the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.
"Ideological extremists are dominating the debate," the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City Democrat, elected in 2012, stated before a crowd of about 150 at the chamber's Legislative Luncheon at Bay Valley Hotel & Resort.
Herb Spence III, president and CEO of Spence Brothers Construction, introduced the Congressman after a welcome by Chamber Chair Pat O'Brien, of EMCOR, Inc.
Spence noted that Kildee was one of the youngest elected officials in the nation when he was elected in 1977 to the Flint Board of Education at age 18.
Kildee, born Aug. 11, 1958 in Flint, is 55. He is considered a prime prospect for higher office, including Michigan governor, for which he contemplated a run before opting to seek the Congressional seat occupied for 36 years by his uncle, Dale Kildee, who retired.
He also served 12 years on the Genesee County Commission, 1984-1996, and as chairman led the formation of the Bishop Airport Authority. He was Genesee County Treasurer from 1996 to 2009 when he became co-founder of the Center for Community Progress, a nationwide land reform effort aimed at retarding urban blight.
Kildee got national exposure during his first year in office when he was a guest on Comedian Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show September 3, 2013.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/428794/september-03-2013/better-know-a-district---michigan-s-5th---dan-kildee
Despite being a freshman on the Hill, Rep. Kildee showed an insightful grasp of the issues not being logically addressed by a Congress that he said is "lurching from crisis to crisis:"
*Tax reform;
*Overspending;
*Adequate funding of K-12 education;
*Immigration reform;
*Farm Bill tied into food supplements for the poor;
*The mortgage system;
*The under-funded Social Security pension plan; and
*Income inequality.
Despite the gridlock, Rep. Kildee found his colleagues "all pretty good people." And he is heartened by the recent bipartisan budget deal that he called "only a framework providing appropriations to use as targets."
He noted that he and Rep. Dave Camp, R-Midland, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, have worked together on funding for the Bay Special Care Hospital and 17 similar facilities. Camp's telling comment: "That's the way we used to do things around here," Kildee said.
He has introduced four pieces of legislation and was successful on three of them to deal with the hardest hit vacant and abandoned properties left over from the 2008 financial downturn, he said. And a new Farm Bill, with a "Double-Up Food Bucks" component, encouraging consumption of locally-grown fruits and vegetables, is included in a bipartisan budget close to agreement.
This Congress has done less than any other in legislative history, said Rep. Kildee, passing only 57 bills. The Truman "Do Nothing" Congress passed twice that number, he quipped.
Without specifically singling out the quarrelsome Tea Party, Rep. Kildee commented that some Members of Congress see gridlock "as a sign of success." He said those representatives "truly believe they were sent to Washington to stop the mechanism of government."
Kildee admitted the Democratic-adopted Affordable Care Act "has lots of problems," but indicated he "supports the general direction in which it is going," while decrying the "unintended consequences."
He said opponents of ACA find two ways to address the universal health care issue: 1-Don't touch it or you'll own it; and, 2-Don't fix it, it might work and people will like it.
Although past Congresses have raided the Social Security Trust Fund, demographic changes are the biggest problem. When the age 65 retirement was put in place under Franklin Roosevelt, the average mortality was age 62. "FDR figured he'd make money on it," Kildee joked. But nobody counted on advanced medicine, longer lifespans and the Baby Boomer Bubble.
Fixes to Social Security could involve means testing, an idea he does not favor, decreasing benefits or increasing the eligibility age producing 72-year-old ironworkers." Revenue revisions in 1983 anticipated that 90 percent of earnings would be captured; instead, wealth earned by fewer recipients has reduced the capture to 83 percent of earnings.
"Instead of paying it forward, we end up billing it forward," he concluded. ###
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