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WLS 89 AM: John Kass and Lauren Cohn Show

January 29, 2014
In the News

The following is a transcript of an interview that originally took place on WLS 89 AM's John Kass and Lauren Cohn Show on January 19, 2014. A link to the audio can be found here.

WLS Host John Kass: Who’s on the phone with us?

WLS Hose Lauren Cohn: Representative Mike Quigley.

Kass: Mike Quigley, hockey player, northwest side Congressman. Good morning, you Cub fan.

Quigley: People ask me why I’m so optimistic; you have to be as a Cubs fan.

Kass: So what did you think of the speech? Ouch, by the way.

Quigley: Look, the bottom line is, you go back and watch the last 20 State of the Union addresses, they’re pretty much optimistic and a call to action. No president is going to get up there and say “The state of the Union is horrible”, whether it is or not. It is a classic State of the Union. I like the President. I support him on most things, so I thought he did a good job. You said this before I came on, it reveals yourself when you watch this and you decide how you thought he did.

Kass: Yes I did. And I think also that some of the Republican establishment critiques are disingenuous, but also some of the Democratic cheerleading sounds a little desperate. Part of this is the election that is coming up. It’s really about framing the next election. How do you think he did for the Democratic Party, in terms of framing the elections?

Quigley: I thought he did fine. You have to think about it from a comparative point of view. I understand what you were saying just before I came on, that the recovery has worked best for those who are best off. That is almost always the case in a recovery. And I’m reminded that when I took office just after the president, the economy was shedding 800,000 jobs a month, and unemployment was 10%. It was clearly 11 in my district. So it’s a comparative thing, and I think the job now is to make sure everybody in all of our districts are part of the recovery.

Cohn: Well how do we do that though? I mean, he’s talking in little increments of raising the minimum wage or extending unemployment benefits. We’re talking about the reality of creating viable jobs, real jobs for people, not the single mom that’s gotta work two part-time jobs, and that’s the best that can happen. How do you do that, because I didn’t hear that in the speech, I haven’t heard that in the last five years, clearly it’s not happening, we need to do something different. What’s the solution?

Quigley: Well the President didn’t say much about it in the speech last night, but in a previous speech, he gave a single speech about a transportation bill, which is pretty bipartisan. The Chamber of Commerce supports a big transportation bill, where we rebuild the country and its infrastructure. Rebuild the Red line, the Blue line. It lasts 30 or 40 years, unlike some government spending. It reduces our dependence on foreign oil; it creates jobs, and gets people to their jobs. So it may not have been the focus of last night’s speech, but it’s not something that he didn’t talk about. Frankly, it should have been the cornerstone of the Recovery Act. I think, what, 6 or 7% of the Recovery Act, which passed before I got here, dealt with infrastructure. And that 6 or 7% created about 65% of the permanent jobs that the bill created. So I think infrastructure is part of it, reforming the tax code is part of it to provide more incentives, and I think how the President handles upcoming trade negotiations is going to be absolutely critical, because every billion dollars in trade is about 5,000 jobs.

Cohn: Well what about here in Illinois, when we talk about the possibility of a progressive tax, or extending the income tax, the Governor’s likely to come out with one of those plans. We’re getting taxed to death here in Illinois, and we’re broke, and we have high unemployment.

Quigley: I don’t have a vote in Springfield, but the tax policy needs to make sure it doesn’t suppress investment and the creation of jobs. That’s the most important thing tax policy should do is not discourage economic growth.

Kass: That sounds spoken like a Chicago Democratic realist, versus the, I don’t know what they are in Washington now.

Quigley: When we get to tax reform, no matter what party you are, I thought the good news was the Speaker of the House talked about moving forward bigger issues. Whether or not you agreed with the budget or the appropriations bill, the fact that we weren’t stagnant. So hopefully we’ll get to tax reform. Hopefully we’ll get to immigration reform, because even if people disagree with it on some sort of, I don’t understand it, moral basis, every budget analysis says that immigration reform would bring about $1.5 trillion to the Gross Domestic Product. While he may do it on a piecemeal basis, the Speaker is talking about putting that on the House Floor. So, look, the President’s call to me was “let’s try to work together like we did at the end of the year and get some of these things done.” I didn’t think it was a big speech or a small speech, the fact of the matter is that is something we need to do.

Kass: What about the politics that are coming? I’m getting the sense, and I see this on the Republican side as well, when a lame duck is a President, you’ll see it as a Democrat, the peeling off. The peeling away. Congressman, or Senators that don’t want to get nailed with this promise about “You can keep your healthcare, period”. They’re going to start peeling a little bit. When do you see that happening?

Quigley: Look, there are divides in the Republican Party that are very public, and there’ve always been divides in the Democratic Party. You’re right, you see that a little more at the end of the second term, the second half of a second term of any President, no matter what their party is. In the end, that’s why, when I got here, Rep. Kirk told me, “Everything that actually happens here happens in the middle”, and while compromise may seem like a dirty word, in the end, that’s how we got all the big deals and projects done in DC. You may lose folks to the extremes on both sides, but in the final analysis, the bipartisan efforts are going to be the only things that succeed.

Kass: Mike Quigley, Congressman, northwest side, and avid hockey player and fan. Thanks for being with us Michael.

Issues:Economy and Jobs