Rep. Marcy Kaptur has represented Ohio's 9th district in Congress since 1983. Newsy talked with her about President Trump's first state of the union address, and his agenda for Congress through the rest of the year.
Newsy's Alex Miller: "So Congresswoman, what did you think of the President's speech tonight?"
Rep. Marcy Kaptur: "I thought that he covered the waterfront and he tried to present a very positive message to the country. I will have to say coming from automotive country, and from Ohio obviously, he really can't take responsibility for the recovery in the automotive industry. That was President Obama and the Democratic Congress. The vast majority of Republicans voted against the recovery of the industry. And then on energy, thank you President Obama for an all-of-the-above energy strategy that has helped America become 95 percent energy independent. This president really didn't have anything to do with that, I think his speechwriters really didn't do a great service there.
I think on some of the other issues we're with him. Reduce the price of prescription drugs, my question is — how? How are you going to do that? Infrastructure — how? Where's the money for that? Opioid crisis: when the president was talking about that, he was laughing because I went like this. Where's the money? Where's the money going to come from for additional law enforcement officers. For treatment. Where? There were no specifics. It was an hour and a half speech, there should have been a little more, in my opinion, specifics. Infrastructure bill, where's the money going to come from. When you give a billion — actually, $1.5 trillion, billions to the top one percent, and all that's gone out the window. How are you going to pay for these other great needs for the country? He really didn't talk about that."
"He hit, like you said, on a variety of issues that many times Democrats would be supportive of. Do you think he did enough within the speech to reach across the aisle, to make Democrats feel comfortable that he really wants to work with them?"
"No, you could tell by the chamber there was quite a split. On the prescription drugs, obviously, and making them more affordable, I stood up and applauded. Support for our veterans, support for a strong defense, yes. But not only that. We have to figure out how to pay for domestic programs. My goodness, all over the country we can't even get the streets paved. There are potholes, local governments can't even afford the cost of asphalt right now. We've had a lot of hard winters in our part of the country, these local governments are strapped. So I think he could have had proposals that were more refined.
We need one America, yes we need one America. And that's what we all hope for. But you have to get into the weeds a little bit on how you're going to pay for this on immigration — another issue that is unresolved. When he talked about it, his side of the aisle didn't applaud. A few of them did, but I thought, 'Uh oh.' Again, he hasn't been able to put together a governing majority for vast arenas of public policy that need solutions."
"Well I was going to ask you about that because he did touch on topics, like immigration and infrastructure, that in the past have not been popular with his party. Do you think that this is something that they're going to want to take up?"
"I haven't seen it yet. They can't even pass a budget. That's one of the reasons we had another vote today on one small part of the budget, the defense bill. It's not incidental, I mean it's half of what we spend, over half of what we spend. But they don't have a budget, so they can't even adopt a budget as a party. That leaves everything in free fall all around us. I didn't get the rigor that this president, though his advisors, is presenting proposals that are actionable to Congress. He hasn't put together that strong center yet."
"We've got a deadline about a week, and in about a month. Do you think that he set you guys on the path to get government funding accomplished and then immigration accomplished?"
"It wasn't that kind of speech. It didn't have that kind of specific roadmap. He covered, as I said, everything. But you need to take it in pieces in order to move it forward for the country. So I think that's going to be quite difficult and will continue to be difficult in this chamber."
