WLS 89 AM: Connected to Chicago with Bill Cameron
The following is a transcript of an interview that originally took place on WLS 89 AM's Connected to Chicago with Bill Cameron on January 19, 2014. A link to the audio can be found here.
TRANSCRIPT
Bill Cameron: And I’m happy to welcome back to the microphone, Mike Quigley, North Side Congressman. Mike, welcome back.
Rep. Mike Quigley:Thanks for having me, good morning.
Cameron: I see your beloved Cubs have a new mascot named Clark. What do you think?
Quigley: Um, I’m actually a big fan of the Cubs rebuild. I think it’s working in the low A and AA that we are starting to see some players, but I think the only help Clark provides this year is if he’s willing to maul the Cardinals starting staff.
Cameron: But it’s a kid’s thing. He won’t maul anything.
Quigley: I appreciate that. You know my advice is they keep Clark under wraps except when they have promotions where the kids run the bases or something. It’s a 100 year old ball park, and your first reaction is that it doesn’t necessarily fit into anything but an expansion team.
Cameron: Onto the serious stuff. On Friday the president finally unveiled some reforms for NSA snooping, including you’ve got to go to judge before you can dig into that meta data. What do you think of what he’s proposing.
Quigley: I think it makes sense. There is a balance to be struck here. There are still people out there who want to do us harm. Since 9/11 there have been approximately 60 plans to attack this country again. All but one of those attempts were failed, and they were all failed because of good police work. It strikes very close to home because if people in Lakeview remember, one of the gentlemen who was planning to put a bomb right there at Clark and Eddy, one block from my house, at the Dave Matthews concert, again that was foiled by good police work. On the other hand the courts, the FISA courts need more transparency, they need to release their decisions. They also need to have an adversarial process to this and several other proposals that were put forward by the president’s panel. I think he announced the one that seemed to be most pronounced in the news, the one you are referring to, to the blanket coverage that was taking place. Because he knew it was so important. But this isn’t something we should do one way or another in haste. This is the quintessential type of legislation that should require hearings in Congress where people can talk about this, and remind the public what threats this country still faces.
Cameron: So the leaker Mr. Snowden—patriot or criminal?
Quigley: You know there’s a way to do what he was intending to do that didn’t put our nation at risk. That didn’t put so much other important information out there to people who hate us. Let’s remember who welcomed him in—Russia. Clearly not a supporter or anywhere near an ally to the United States. Mr. Putin has done more to harm the relationships we are trying to build and the address the critical issues that we’re trying to address, as in Syria and Iran. Putin hasn’t been our friend. So let’s remember who he’s kept company with.
Cameron: OK, you’re sitting on Appropriations now in the House, what bacon are you bringing home?
Quigley: Well, you know, it’s interesting, people ask me what’s happened in the last year that’s mattered. The fact that the House and Senate passed identical appropriations bills may be the biggest news in the last 12 months. And the fact that something that Congress did, showing that it was working, that it’s effective and that it matters, that’s pretty important. You know what it means for Chicagoans is, we passed a bill that’s bringing back, for example, $120 million into core capacity. It’s never been funded before.
Cameron: What’s core capacity?
Quigley: Well people...if people don’t know, what Congress has been funding for mass transit is new systems, right. In towns in the West where they want to have a new train system, they’ve been funding that. But they’ve been giving very little funding for existing systems in old cities like Chicago. So as we know we’ve had to rebuild the Red line and we need to do it on the north. Well Chicago is the only city that qualifies right now for that program, and we’ll have a very good chance of getting much, if not all, of that $120 million to rebuild our train system on the North Side. That’s critical, I mean it’s very few things that we can fund that get people jobs, get people to their jobs, reduce dependence on foreign oil and help the environment at the same time.
Cameron: Now what do you think of Metra?
Quigley: Well there’s going to be opportunities for Metra as well. In addition to the money for core capacity there’s $600 million for TIGER grants, which fund all kinds of transportation construction programs. $80 million available for something called Positive Train Control. All you need to know is it helps improve safety in rail systems that Metra has to comply with. So Metra will be able to improve its safety when it applies successfully for that money. Heck, we got $25 million for McCook Fort and Reservoirs to end flooding, and there’s $3 billion available through the community development block grant program which will help a lot of issues like affordable housing. So it doesn’t mean we’re spending much more money, actually spending is pretty static or going down in Congress. It just means that local legislators, while we appropriate, have more relevance and have the ability to being more funds back to Chicago.
Cameron: Will any of that Metra money help them deal with the next polar vortex?
Quigley: Actually the kind of funding that they need for safety programs will. Some of the problems they had because things got so cold with the vortex are switching systems. The way to keep people safe on positive train control is really to divide the systems between freight and passenger. This will help us a little bit toward that end, but there’s a long way to go. It’ll also help the freight industry, which is critical to this region, providing a tremendous number of jobs. That industry is hindered mostly by the fact that they don’t operate a lot during the key passenger times. So I think that’ll do much to help the local economy as well.
Cameron: The new noise contours around O’Hare, with 4 new east-west runways? What are you doing on this?
Quigley: Well look. O’Hare is important. It’s not hard to magnify that. O’Hare is the economic engine of the region, the most important economic engine of the region. It provides billions of dollars. I think it’s about $38 billion right now. It’s credited with about 450,000 jobs. When they remodeled O’Hare, the modernization program, you’re adding about $18 billion more and about as many new jobs, about 195,000 new jobs. It’s also going to help the national air traffic industry. It’s going to save passengers hundreds of billions, something like 380. It’s going to save the airlines $370 million every year. All national traffic is going to go east-west now because of the new reconfiguration. The problem is all those savings and all those improvements are being borne on the backs of fewer and fewer residents. They’re operating on fewer runways, they’re all east-west, and especially at certain times at night they are operating on just one or two runways. You know, to me, we can have a robust O’Hare and thriving neighborhoods. On a short term basis they need to expand how many runways they use 24/7. Second there are aspects of something called Fly Quiet, it’s the way they take off and land that can reduce this noise. On the midterm basis, short term basis here, they still have something called 65 DNL. That’s how they average how much noise residents can handle. It’s an arbitrary level set a long time ago in the 80s when air traffic was much lower. The plan that we have is to reduce it to what was originally recommended, 55, which would create far more sound proofing opportunities for residents and schools. And then finally we have a bill called “Silent Skies,” which will help the airlines get rid of their very noisiest airlines and replace those engines with quieter, more fuel efficient planes.
Cameron: Is this going to be more than little comfort to those residents that have been complaining by the thousands?
Quigley: Oh sure. The complaints that took place in November, just a month after the new runway opened up. They were about a 500% increase since the year before, the same month of November. One can only imagine that those complaints in the spring and summer are going to be even higher as people come out of their homes and leave the windows open. I think that the expansion of the runway is a more equal distribution, will make a big difference, and if they do some of the Fly Quiet provisions, it will make a difference. We need long term solutions too, though.
Cameron: Ok back in Washington, do you think we’re going to get immigration reform this year?
Quigley: I think that, as the public probably knows, we already passed comprehensive immigration reform out of the Senate. What’s aggravating is that if that Senate bill were to find itself on the House floor it would probably get 300 votes today and pass. Unfortunately, Speaker Boehner, has kowtowed to his farthest right who still oppose this legislation and has said we’re only going to this on a piecemeal basis. The problem with that is we see them as cherry-picking issues they really like, like overkill on border security, and not a meaningful attempt to pass what needs to happen in immigration reform, a pathway to citizenship.
Cameron: Well if you’ve got 300 votes, why not suspend the rules and go over his head?
Quigley: Yeah you’d think you could do that. You can’t suspend the rules, what you have is something called a discharge petition. Now while there are Republicans that would vote for immigration reform, I think they’d seem in their minds like traitors if they signed the discharge petition to overrule, in effect, the Speaker of the House. So if the Speaker said ‘Ok, I’m putting it out there, you can vote for it,’ they would be part of the majority that supported it. But I don’t think they’d take the step and sign a discharge position to get it on the floor.
Cameron: Did you see what the former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, has been saying about you guys lately? He’s just ‘seething’ close quote with anger about Congress.
Quigley: Yeah, you know it’s interesting. If you go back far enough and read what Mr. Gates has said in the past about military spending, this is a much different course. This is a person who said that the Department of Defense is dramatically overbuilt. It’s out of control spending, it needs Congress to walk it back. Let’s remember this is a Pentagon that cannot be audited. It cannot tell you how much money it’s spending and how soon it’s spending that money. So I think that Mr. Gates would be better served if he looked inward toward the defense complex and the mistakes that have been made there.
Cameron: Well he says he was able working with Congress, despite Congress, to phase out the 7 or 9 huge examples of wasteful spending by the Pentagon, but that so many people in Congress are more interested in the next election or their own comfort.
Quigley: Well there is some truth to that. And if he admits that, I think he would have helped us more go after programs such as our extraordinarily overbuilt nuclear arsenal. Some of his best generals, like General Cartwright said, some of our nuclear weapons like the B61 have no military value. So here we are about to recondition those bombs, It’s going to cost more than their weight in gold to recondition, refurbish each one of those nuclear bombs. Are there people in Congress pushing back on that? Absolutely. Could Mr. Gates have done more to talk about this from a public point of view? Absolutely.
Cameron: We’re talking issues with Chicago Congressman Mike Quigley. Let’s talk a little raw politics now Mike. What do you think of Bruce Rauner?
Quigley: It’s interesting. For those of us who have watched politics in Illinois for a long time, you often see an otherwise very intelligent, very wealthy person, who is successful at everything else in their life, wade into politics, probably sure that they know everything that they need to know. And then they learn that this is a tough business. And inevitably they say things that I suppose they wish they could take back, as Mr. Rauner certainly did talking about the minimum wage.
Cameron: Were you surprised?
Quigley: Was I surprised he said that? I was surprised that he even imagined that. That we would not just not raise the minimum wage, but that in fact we would lower it to become competitive with other states.
Cameron: How about clouting his daughter into Peyton Prep?
Quigley: I didn’t hear about that one as much, but I suppose after watching this for 30 years in Chicago, you watch a lot of parents attempt to do such things as the report that came out in 2010 talked about. I guess people would probably understand somebody doing something…trying to help his daughter, versus something which would bother most I think most people, trying to reduce the minimum wage. Because it’s hard to imagine that there are many people in the state of Illinois, who at one time or another in their life, didn’t work for minimum wage when they were growing up.
Cameron: And the now imprisoned Steward Levine, on a subcontractor’s payroll for $25,000 a month?
Quigley: I guess someone out there believes in redemption.
Cameron: Are we marching toward, I guess, the reelection of Pat Quinn? Or is there, among the other 3 Republicans, somebody who could be a real threat?
Quigley: Well I, from a purely political point of view, I think the Governor’s greatest challenge would be one of others who will be viewed as more moderate. From a purely political point of view, he probably stacks up best in a general election against someone who is viewed as a more extreme candidate, such as Mr. Rauner or Mr. Brady, as we saw last time. It is far too early. I remember when Governor Quinn ran last time, people had written him off as well. And the polling didn’t look so great. But as the public starts to watch the election, things get much closer. Regardless this will be a very close general election.
Cameron: Ok. Let’s go back to your days on the Cook County Board, where you were trying to reinvent the county government, dragging it from the 19th century maybe into the 20th. Here we are deeply into the 21st. How to do you think Toni Preckwinkle is doing?
Quigley: I think the president has made some great strides. It would be a much different world for me to serve on the Cook County Board now from when I started in 1998. So I applaud the president. I think that there’s still much that needs to take place. What has to happen now in Illinois, in the local government, is we can’t think about reinventing one government at a time. We can’t think about government in a column. If we are going to reinvent government and make it more efficient, not because we dislike it but because we recognize how important it is and how important it is to save taxpayer dollars, we now have to look across the spectrum. You have to ask yourself, if you could start over and eliminate all the political boundaries, and that includes townships and towns and fire districts and sanitary districts and school districts and so forth. If you could start over, what would you do, how would you do it and who would do it? The governments needs to be a little bit more like businesses, who when they want to survive, have to reconstruct themselves and say what is our core mission? What do we need to do? And I say this again, not as a Tea Party proposal, which is to shrink government small enough to drown in bathtub. Because they hate government. But rather as someone who respects the role that government plays. The heroes of 9/11 were government workers. The people who teach our children are government workers. Those that keep us safe here, and across the sea are government workers. So government matters. I’m just arguing that after 120 years or so, you have to reorganize, streamline and consolidate to make it as efficient as possible to provide those critical services and save taxpayer dollars.
Cameron: So should Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle cross the building and come over and be mayor and try to do the same thing there?
Quigley: Well I think she can work with the current mayor. What I propose is that the Governor call a panel together of all these governments and outside experts and academic experts to say to ourselves, we know what government services are provided here. We know what matters. Toward each one, we need to ask ourselves who should provide that service, what kind of service should they provide and how should they do it. Toward that end, I think we’d save billions over a decade and provide better services.
Cameron: How’s Rahm doing? He seems to have offended much of his base with all the school closings, the continuing street violence and so forth. Probably there’s an opportunity there for movement, a candidate to challenge him in the black community. Is Rahm in any sense in trouble?
Quigley: I think the problem for anybody running against the mayor is that no one has articulated an alternative to dealing with the financial problems that the city and the region face. There are those who criticize the mayor for school closures or dealing with the strikes that have taken place in the manner in which he has. But no one has yet to articulate what they would do in its place. How they would raise revenues for example or cut costs in some manner to address the fact that we face a very strong financial problem at the city level and the state level. So unless someone can articulate that, I think the public’s smart enough to recognize, while they may not like the manner in which the mayor did certain things, there’s really no alternative but some of these tough choices. I don’t think the major is in trouble politically. I think he’s had to make very difficult choices and he’s done an admirable job in the meantime.
Cameron: And that’s especially true on pensions isn’t it?
Quigley: It’s very, very difficult. I mean here the sins for the 30 or 40 years are brought forth all at one time. At the state level Democratic and Republican governors failed to fund the pensions appropriately. Or they promised too much. Or some combination thereof. You know for me, I hate to see people who are already retired impacted by this. I think if you’re going to reform pensions, if there’s a spectrum there, those furthest away from retirement should be expected to impact the most change about their program, because they have the longest period of time ahead of them to adjust appropriately. It’s hard to watch people who have worked 30 years or more as a police, fireman or teacher, who are going to have their lives impacted and there is almost nothing they can do to adjust to that situation.
Cameron: And how about your party, the Democratic Party? Is it in trouble in the midterms because you know Obamacare is so controversial, and supposedly unpopular with a lot of people? And a variety of other things on the Obama agenda. Some think it should be a Republican year. What do you think?
Quigley: Look, I thought when the roll out took place that the Republican-controlled House would probably gain about 8 or 9 Democratic seats. I think there’s some leveling off that takes place in the middle of a midterm year. I think that things will adjust. I think that the American public understands what’s taken place in the House. It’s a House that’s done almost nothing. Hasn’t touch immigration reform, education reform. Hasn’t passed a single bill dealing with jobs. So I think that they’ll look at this in a balanced approach, and I think that the health care law will begin moving forward in very positive way. I think you are already starting to see that. I remind people that let’s remember why we passed the health care law, alright? People could get knocked off their coverage for preexisting conditions. They could be denied, their kid could be denied health care for preexisting conditions. 47 million Americans didn’t have any health care at all. Senior citizens had something called the doughnut hole where in the middle of the year they had to decide whether to buy prescription drugs or food. And all those things have changed. This is an historical piece of legislation. What bothered me most about it was rather than try to cure the legislation, as we did with Medicare Part D under President Bush, they simply attempted to defund the legislation 46 times.
Cameron: And the other side says you could have done most of that really great stuff with a bill maybe 10 pages long, instead of the one with 2,000 pages.
Quigley: No, this is historical legislation that every president since Roosevelt has tried to pass. Teddy Roosevelt. It’s extraordinarily complicated legislation, changing the very nature of an important aspect of our country. Again, let’s remember, the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States was that people had a catastrophic health illness that they couldn’t afford. So there was a lot to do. Did it need curative legislation? Sure. Just as President Bush’s Medicare Part D legislation needed 2 corrective changes. And by the way, the legislation, while seen as unpopular at the time, it’s hard to imagine people ever wanting to give up that piece of legislation that protects them now.
Cameron: But Obama probably shouldn’t have said “If you like your medical plan you can keep it.”
Quigley: You know I think the president’s advisers probably gave him bad information toward that end. And there was and underestimation of how bad some of the existing programs, premiums that some insurers were providing were.
Cameron: That’s Congressman Mike Quigley of Chicago. Mike, thanks for coming in.
Quigley: Thanks for having me.