- Maria Cantwell: Questioning the Plan B decision.
Washington's junior U.S. Senator, Maria Cantwell, was in town last week to do a fundraiser with Massachusetts Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren. The two of them raised $200,000 together—which they'll be splitting—and on Tuesday, after all the hubbub around the event died down, Cantwell spoke to me by phone.
Eli Sanders: Ron Suskind calls you and Elizabeth Warren "a small but powerful contingent of the sisterhood" in his new book on the Obama administration. Do you see yourself as part of a D.C. sisterhood, and do you agree with Senator Patty Murray's recent statement that more would get done in D.C. if there were a greater number of women in Congress?
Senator Maria Cantwell: Well, I know that Brooksley Born, who was the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was very brave and instrumental in first calling out the problem with derivatives. And, basically a whole bunch of people just kind of came down on her head, and said, you know, 'Not only do we not we agree that they need to be regulated, but we’re going to make sure states don’t regulate them and we’re basically going to keep running toward deregulation.'
So I am struck that there have been a number of key women who have been trying to make the point that the system is broken, and this isn’t the right way to go about it.
I think we definitely need more women in D.C. The fact that in the whole history of the country, in 200 plus years, we’ve had like 39 women [in the U.S. Senate], or some number like that, is too few. So we definitely need more representation. And I definitely think that women are willing to, for the good of the order, try to put important ideas on the table and work together. I do think that they are a little more agents of change, in the context that they are willing to help usher in that change. And so, the notion that we’re underrepresented and we need to be more represented I think is a good point.
On Monday, parts of the local Occupy movement tried to shut down the Port of Seattle. Broadly speaking, they're talking about some of the same things you're talking about. What do you make of the Occupy movement?
Well, I don’t know a lot yet about [Monday's events]—who was involved—but in general I’ve been very struck by the huge sign that was at one of the sites, this was probably three or four weeks ago. It said, "Bail Out America." And, I think that said what the real frustration is. People think that Wall Street got bailed out, and now they need help and assistance, and government’s nowhere. And I think that they’re very frustrated with Washington, D.C. being too cozy with Wall Street.
Were you frustrated by Senate Republicans' recent move to block the appointment of a leader for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
Yes, of course. And I’m frustrated by a number of things. The fact that they block key appointments. The fact that they don’t want to properly regulate derivatives... The fact that they seem to want to go back to the same problems that caused this great economic downturn that we now have. They seem to want to go back to those policies, and that is just mind-blowing.
You’ve been a huge advocate for financial reform. What’s the number one thing that needs to be done right now in Washington to prevent another Great Recession?
Well, I’d certainly go back to Glass-Steagall and separate commercial and investment banking. And I would basically recapture resources from those banks and put it toward job training and education. Right now we have a lot of openings in the Northwest, with Boeing and Microsoft and lots of health-care-related industries. But we also have huge unemployment. So how can we have so much of that unemployment and yet so many of these economic opportunities? … The more that we can help skill and educate people to take these vital jobs, it’s going to help our economy.
Do you think your populism on big financial issues is helping keep away serious challengers to your re-election effort?
I think there’s only two ways to run in politics: scared and unopposed. I’m in the first category right now.
What do you think about the president’s decision not to allow women under 17 to get Plan B without a prescription?
I think we sent you, or are going to send you a letter. We want information about the science behind that decision. What was the science? How was the decision made? Is it being based on science? So we’re definitely going to push for that information.
Does it seem like a decision that was based on science?
We don’t know because we don’t have a copy of the science. That’s why we want it. Then we can figure out how to move ahead. I’m troubled by the decision, and I want to see the science.
What do you think about the push for legalizing gay marriage at the state legislature this year?
If the legislature comes up with something that they get to the ballot—if that’s what the legislature has decided—we’ll be supportive.
What's your opinion of the field of Republican presidential candidates?
I've been spending less time focusing on them, and much more time focusing on what we can do to get our economy going again—and how I can get some of my Republican colleagues to join in on some job creation activity. So, to the degree that Republicans have talked about things—you know, it sounded like Huntsman might be articulating Glass-Steagall. It sounded like some of them might be for doing some things on the predictability of the tax code that might be helpful. But, unless they’ve been saying something that I think is helpful to getting our economy going at the moment, I haven’t really been paying much attention.
