i3 - May/June 2019 - 10

Tech

such a top-down driven organization that is controlled by
one to four people, it's all being pushed up to the top office
leadership. You could have 434 people read a piece of legislation, but the rules of the House and how the House governs prevent that bill from coming to the floor for an open
and honest debate and an up or down vote on it with substance. Last year we said we would not support a speaker
candidate in either party who did not support reforming
the rules of the House to encourage that type of debate
and allow members to bring their ideas forward. If they got
consensus from both positions, then they were guaranteed
to have that on the floor regardless of what leadership said.
And it's working. It's changing how the institution works.
Kudos to Josh, and the Democratic individuals in particular,
who withstood tremendous pressure to withhold that support until those reforms were agreed to.

Q Will the rules change because of this caucus?
A Gottheimer: Yes, people weren't thrilled as we were going

through it. Because we were basically saying, we are willing
to put our belief that we need to find broad bipartisan support for a chance to be heard and voted on the house floor.
We kept having legislation, where we had enough votes off
the floor - the last congress had 33 bills with over 300 cosponsors - but never got a debate or a vote. We would work
really hard to build the coalitions and build the support. We
had a state-wide individual marketplace for health care, we
worked five months for a path for dreamers and tough borders, but we couldn't get a vote on the House floor. We finally
said, "If we build bipartisan support for something, it should
be heard." And that is what our reforms are about - to try and
change the institution and allow things to get to the floor and
not let a few extremists or a few obstructionists block it.

Q Traditionally, can any chair of a committee
block legislation?
A Reed: Yes, but it's even worse now to be honest with
you. It has been driven out of the committees and this is a
Republican and Democrat agenda that was started years
ago with Newt Gingrich and then Nancy Pelosi perfected it.
Committee chairs still have a tremendous amount of influence, but even more has been sent up to the speaker's office
and it is all about political posturing. Ninety-nine percent is
asking themselves, "How are we going to posture this into the
next election cycle to either win the majority or maintain the
majority?" If politics is the driving priority, then in my humble
opinion the policy that we came here to do to help the
American people gets sidetracked. And that is a problem. If
we don't fix this moving forward, we are going to get bogged
down in perpetuity.
Gottheimer: But the good news is, we had some very good
wins last year. We had the opioids legislation moving forward
that we got behind and criminal justice reform. In fact, Tom
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MAY/JUNE 2019

and I went to the White House earlier this week. It was a great
bipartisan piece of legislation that we were able to help on.
Reed: We united as a caucus on prison reform. Jared
Kushner, Grover Norquist and Van Jones reached out to us,
along with Hakeem Jeffries, and asked, "Is this an issue that
you can help us with?" We got behind that bipartisan initiative
and by helping them push it through the House and Senate
it was actually signed into law. It wasn't exactly our bill, but
it was that power of a block of votes that was pushing that
legislation through the system.

Q What issues are you looking at now?
A Reed: From a substantive perspective, the two highest

level headline issues are infrastructure and drug pricing
in my opinion.
Gottheimer: We also have some other initiatives coming up
including the 911 bill that we are getting behind with compensation for first responders. There is some work on the BDS
[Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] Movement that could be
influential. The caucus is a group that is becoming known as
the go-to place to see if you can get some bipartisan support.

Q How do you get your message out?
A Gottheimer: People should ask their member of Congress
I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

i3 - May/June 2019

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