U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) is up for reelection in the Tuesday, Nov. 6 General Election. She took time out of a busy day in Washington, D.C., to discuss her campaign and issues of importance to Wisconsin voters.
You’re in the middle of your campaign, and you’ve been traveling around the state. What are you hearing from your constituents?
I would say in some cases it’s issues and in some cases, it’s wanting to be involved politically. Constituents are concerned about healthcare and about getting ahead in a system that seems really stacked against them. I think that where those collide is how people are affected, say, by the increased cost of prescription drugs.
I also have constituents come to me and say, “I decided a while back that I was going to get off the couch and start working because I’m concerned about the state of affairs in our country and in our state.” A lot of those conversations are about activism and organizing and participation and elevating people’s voices, and that has been a very heartening thing.
According to the reports, the rightwing Republican millionaires and billionaires have put twice as much money into attack ads against you than any other Democratic senator. Why are they so out to get you over, say, Joe Donnelly of Indiana or Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who come from pretty red states?
I think there are several reasons. Let’s start with the fact that Wisconsin is a battleground state. Even though we kind of thought of ourselves as a blue state in presidential years, Al Gore won by only 5,000 votes in 2000, and John Kerry won by only 11,000 votes in 2004, so they’re recognizing the battleground nature of Wisconsin.
Why they’re attacking me is I have never been afraid to stand up to them, and they have an agenda. They have an interest in their own profits and success at the expense of people in Wisconsin and other states so they want to buy themselves a senator who will do their bidding.
I think about the example that I just gave you about the high cost of prescription drugs. I hear so many stories from constituents about life-saving or life-extending drugs that are out of reach for them or things like the EpiPen for allergic reactions or insulin going up in price so drastically. Why is that the case? Because nobody has really clamped down on them. They’ve been focused on their own profits, whether it’s in the tax bill or by other means. They know that I’ve joined forces with Arizona Sen. John McCain to rein them in and require that they be transparent. They don’t like it so they’re attacking me.
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You have put out to the public that you were raised by your grandmother. You never talked about your mother’s struggles with opioid addiction. Now you are telling the story of that part of your childhood. Why are you discussing this now?
I lost my mother last August, and I know that, over the years, she had personal pain and shame around the fact that she wasn’t able to raise me. I always wanted to do everything I could to protect her privacy. It’s not that I never mentioned it, but I usually didn’t go into great detail.
In the last five-to-six years, not only did I watch her continuing struggle with addiction, but I also heard so many courageous Wisconsinites tell their stories in an effort to bring about change. I have heard from too many mothers who have lost their children to overdoses. I have listened to families express their grief publicly or how hard it is to have a loved one who is struggling with addiction, how it affects the whole family—the whole community. I’ve been inspired by their courage and know that they’re making a difference, and I wanted to do the same. So, that’s why now.
How painful is it to publically discuss your mother’s struggles?
I wouldn’t pick that word. It’s a journey. I think at first I felt apprehension because I’ve spent so much of my life focused on how to protect my mother’s privacy, etc., and letting go of that and just telling my story and her story was difficult at first. But I can tell you that there’s also a sort of therapy here in being able to talk about things that I’ve held in for my whole life.
How have your constituents responded?
I am really amazed and inspired by the people who have reached out. There’s all sorts of different messages. Sometimes it’s a simple “Thank you. This is important. This is how we create change and fight this awful epidemic.” But so many of the times it’s someone coming to me and saying, “Tammy, I’ve never told my own story, and this is it…” I feel like in some cases they are telling their own story or releasing their own grief publically at this time because they feel that, by my doing so, they could, too.
The U.S. Senate is about as partisan as it has been since World War II, and you are in the minority party. How do you manage to have any impact on policy? Can you give us concrete examples of some of your accomplishments?
One of the big things—especially since we were just talking about addiction issues—was a bipartisan effort. I worked with Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia to pass a major reform in the Veterans Administration (VA) relating to the way they prescribe opioids that included the adoption of the latest prescribing time, the retraining of their entire prescribing workforce and the ability to monitor in real time opioid prescribing within the VA. The results we’re seeing from that being passed into law are encouraging in terms of the systemic cases.
Another one: This January, I teamed up with Susan Collins from Maine. We have for a number of years worked on a bill called the RAISE Family Caregivers Act—RAISE standing for “Recognize, Assist, Include, Support and Engage.” That also came from personal experience, first taking care of my grandmother when she aged and needed more help and became frail, and then, in very recent years, needing to step up and really help my mother out when she was in failing health. I think many of us who do that feel pretty alone, and this act would create a national strategy on how we can better support family caregivers. If you had to pay for what family caregivers do for free, it would cost the same as our annual Medicaid budget. That’s how much loved ones contribute to the care of disabled, frail or ailing relatives.
Finally, a very specific measure. Last week, Donald Trump signed into law something called the JUST Act—the “Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act of 2017”—which I authored with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and which relates to Holocaust-era property, and survivors and heirs being able to either get back that property or be paid restitutions for the loss of that property during the Holocaust (during World War Two). That was motivated by a Milwaukee resident who has been trying for years to get justice for her family who fled from Romania.
You’re in the minority. Why have Republican senators wanted to work with you?
Even going back to my days in the Wisconsin State Assembly, I’ve always looked for common ground. There might not be a lot of it, but there’s always going to be some, and I think deeply about that in the U.S. Senate.
I consider what the major industries of a particular state are. Maybe I could work with members of the Georgia delegation on paper issues because they’re the second-largest paper producer after Wisconsin; or maybe I could work with members of another delegation from the coast on shipbuilding issues because we also do shipbuilding on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
They’re fighting for their constituents, and I’m fighting for my constituents, but it really doesn’t matter what party you’re in if you’re in agreement on these issues. Sometimes I introduce bills without a Republican sponsor to make a point about the vision we should be setting and values that we hold, but if I can pass one with a Republican it’s much better because to pass bills in the Senate you need 60 votes.
What things about the Trump administration have disappointed you.
Oh, where to start? I think if I gave you issues it would be a litany. I was reading my morning clip, and I thought that what Rex Tillerson said in his Virginia Military Institute commencement speech summed up the larger set of issues that weigh heavily on others and me. It’s about truthfulness. “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.” I think that covers a lot of different issues and a lot of different things about Trump, and that’s probably the deepest set of worries for me.
You’ve spoken in support of the #MeToo Movement. What have been the top one or two positive effects to come out of the movement so far? What’s next?
Close to home, several the highest-profile exposures of wrongdoing in the #MeToo movement came from politicians. We recognize that the rules of the Senate and the rules of the House—the workplace that elected officials and our staff exist in—were insufficient to fight back for women and men who were being sexually harassed, so we sought a rewrite of those rules. We’re going to see an end to taxpayer dollars being used for secretive payoffs to keep people quiet and instead replace that system. That’s the good news. The bad news is it has not been fully implemented yet, and we need to get that job done very soon.
I think that, if I were to look at issues more globally, one of the greatest challenges that remains is that this doesn’t just happen to people who interact with movie stars or powerful politicians or sports figures or other celebrities. This happens to wait staff. This happens to janitors who are working third shift with a supervisor. This happens to fast food workers. We have not yet sufficiently empowered people who depend on their job for their lives, to keep a roof over their heads, to feed their children. The #MeToo movement has not yet empowered working-class people to have their full voice, to get justice and to fight back.
You’ve been a leader in Buy America policies in Wisconsin and nationally. Why is this issue so important to you?
Wisconsin’s a major manufacturing state. We’re top one or two in the country by percentage of our workforce engaged in making things. It’s part of our state’s ethic and history, but because of policies at the national level as well as other countries cheating, we have seen real challenges nationally to our manufacturing. Certainly, this has impacted the state over decades. I believe that, at minimum, when we spend your taxpayer dollars on infrastructure projects—public works projects—when the government buys things, we ought to buy American. And, because of our manufacturing sector, that means buy Wisconsin products.
Also, we need fair trade—especially if we’re confronting the cheating that goes on in other countries. For example, in China many of their industries and manufacturers are owned by the state or are given huge subsidies so they can ultimately undercut the products that we make by pricing theirs lower. If we don’t realize that they’re cheating in order to be able to do that, our industry is going to suffer greatly. So, I think it’s important to support those workers and industries that we depend on for our national security as well as our infrastructure. Buy America is a key way of doing that.
To learn more about Sen. Tammy Baldwin, visit tammybaldwin.com. Remember to register and cast your ballot in the important U.S. General Election, Tuesday, Nov. 6.
