BOSTON (State House News Service) – If Congressman Jim McGovern were in the majority next session, the U.S. House agenda would likely address climate change, pay disparities between men and women, and the high cost of higher education, the Worcester Democrat told local business leaders.
If his party is able to turn back the wave that has swept Republicans into elective office in recent years, Democrats would also delve into topics Congress has worked on this session, according to McGovern, but their approach would obviously differ.
McGovern said Democrats would seek to fix the Affordable Care Act that Republicans have tried to dismantle, and try to change the country’s tax system so that it “not only encourages economic growth but encourages that people have decent wages,” McGovern said Tuesday.
“Whether we get to single-payer or not – I don’t think that the votes are there for something like that – but I think we would have a more progressive health care system,” McGovern ventured.
During his talk at the Hampshire House, the congressman who was first elected two decades ago spoke about his party’s priorities in response to a question by a Red Sox official who asked what the agenda would be if Democrats sweep back into power.
“He had a pretty long list of agenda items,” said former Beacon Hill aide David Friedman, the senior vice president of legal and government affairs for the Boston Red Sox, who asked McGovern the question. “If half of that happened, it would be pretty impressive.”
Even having a say over what is on the agenda next session would be an impressive feat by Democrats.
Divided between its centrist and liberal wings, the Democratic Party has not picked off any seats in the special congressional elections held in Kansas, Montana, Georgia or South Carolina to replace members tapped for Trump administration posts.
As Democrats tune up for the 2018 election, they will have to contend with the biggest newsmaker in modern history who is also the leader of the Republican party.
“One of the problems with Donald Trump – he sucks all of the oxygen out of the room,” McGovern said. He said, “It’s not that we don’t stand for anything. It’s that we’re having trouble penetrating and getting that message out there, and I think we’re going to have to better utilize social media, we’re going to have to try to find ways to cut through the noise.”
While they held the White House for eight years under President Barack Obama, Democrats have taken a thumping in down-ballot contests, losing the House, then the Senate and suffering historic defeats in state legislatures.
Democrats last held the House in 2010 – the year the Affordable Care Act passed into law. Opposition parties are generally favored to pick up seats in the election two years after the presidential contest.
In July, the Cook Political Report wrote that Democrats will need “good fortune” to get in position to win back the 24 seats needed to re-take the majority.
Asked whether Democrats should welcome only candidates who support abortion access, McGovern said he disagreed with that approach.
“I guess we are a big tent, and so litmus tests are things I’m not very excited about imposing,” said McGovern, who is pro-choice. He said, “I could never get elected in West Virginia.”
Springfield Congressman Richard Neal spoke out against “pure party” rigidity in June, and last year told the News Service that since 2010, Republicans have gained 69 U.S. House seats, 15 U.S. Senate seats, 15 governor’s offices, and more than 830 seats in state Legislatures. “This is stunning,” he said.
Salem Congressman Seth Moulton has written that the Republicans’ win in a Georgia special election “better be a wake up call for Democrats – business as usual isn’t working. Time to stop rehashing 2016 and talk about the future.”
“We need a genuinely new message, a serious jobs plan that reaches all Americans, and a bigger tent not a smaller one. Focus on the future,” the congressman, who has challenged the Democratic House leadership, wrote on Twitter.
McGOVERN’S “CONSPIRACY THEORY”
A longtime critic of the icy diplomatic stance towards Cuba that Obama thawed with the re-opening of an embassy in Havana, McGovern has met Fidel Castro, the late communist dictator, and Fidel’s successor and brother, Raul Castro.
In June, President Trump made changes to the U.S. Cuba policy, announcing more stringent restrictions on Americans traveling to the country and new efforts to steer economic activity away from Cuba’s “military monopoly” while allowing Americans to engage with the small business sector.
“The new policy makes clear that the primary obstacle to the Cuban people’s prosperity and economic freedom is the Cuban military’s practice of controlling virtually every profitable sector of the economy,” the White House announced. “President Trump’s policy changes will encourage American commerce with free Cuban businesses and pressure the Cuban government to allow the Cuban people to expand the private sector.”
McGovern criticized the shift and said he thinks Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has influenced Trump’s approach to Cuba in exchange for Rubio supporting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during his U.S. Senate confirmation.
“Marco Rubio and a couple of others didn’t like the policy,” McGovern said. “I think he got a pledge from Trump to reverse our policy in exchange for him voting for Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, but now we’re going backwards. And it makes absolutely no sense to me.”
Rubio’s office referred to McGovern’s claim as a “conspiracy theory” and noted Trump had criticized Obama’s stance towards Cuba well before taking office.
Endorsing “continued engagement” with Cuba, McGovern conceded the island nation is “not perfect,” but he said “even some of our allies are not perfect.”
In an interview, McGovern identified Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as examples of imperfect allies and said, “I could go on forever.”
A former aide to the late Congressman Joseph Moakley, McGovern also owes his position on the powerful Rules Committee to the South Boston pol who chaired that committee and was its ranking member before his death in 2001. When he only had a few months left to live, Moakley told McGovern he would join the Rules Committee, and McGovern protested that a number of other members had requested a slot there and he doubted that Dick Gephardt, who was then the minority leader, would give it to him, the congressman said.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.’ So he goes to see Dick Gephardt. He says, ‘Dick, I’ve got three months to live.’ ‘Oh, jeez. Can I do anything for you? Whatever you want, I’ll do.’ He says, ‘Yeah, just one thing. McGovern needs to take my seat on the Rules Committee.’ And so Gephardt had no choice,” the congressman said. McGovern said Moakley predicted that he would one day become chairman of the committee.
“So there’s a good possibility,” the 57-year-old McGovern, continued, noting the committee’s ranking Democrat, New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, is in her late 80s.