David Dayen, one of my favorite journalists, interviews my favorite congressman:
Last question, going back to Syria for a moment, do you think your work with House Republicans this year, passing more amendments than any member of Congress, created a level of trust that allowed you to cross the aisle and get support for your opposition to military action?
Well, every time I walk over across the aisle, they’re happy to see me. Not because we’re good friends, but because I offer an interesting perspective. They appreciate it. At the committee level, I picked two committees where I would not get into death battles. I didn’t want to go back to Financial Services to lose every single vote. That’s not how it works on Foreign Affairs and the Science and Technology Committee. So I read the bills, I find ways to bridge partisan differences, and make our stuff better. The other side is not so bent and crazy that they don’t appreciate that.
You have to find shared interests. There is this error that the Village makes over and over again, if I can use that term. It’s to think that Republicans are going to vote for Democratic objectives, and vice-versa, because they like each other. This leads to things like the President golfing with John Boehner. It’s this idea that if we play patty-cake, that will make everything better, and it’s not the case. Liberals vote and conservatives vote for the most part on underlying principles. The creative work that leads to someone like me, a 2nd-term Congressman with no leadership role, no position chairing a committee or a subcommittee, what gives me power is that I can understand how they look at things, find ways to make things better, not by compromising and meeting somewhere in between, but in a way that actually respects them and honors them and finds a way to make it better.
That’s not the only way, of course. I’ll give an example, I got a 50 percent increase forbilingual HUD housing counseling. The way Congress works these days, you can imagine how hard it would be to get a 50 percent increase on a cure for cancer. This matters a lot in my district, where 20 percent don’t speak English, and another 20 percent are bilingual. And they need housing counseling, it’s an area where housing values dropped 50 percent. So how did I get that? I said to Republicans explicitly, you can watch it on C-SPAN. I said “You claim you want to improve your image among Hispanics, put up or shut up. If you vote for this, it’s not much money, and you show you have a minimal concern for Hispanics; and if you vote against it, you don’t.” And they rolled their eyes, they said Grayson doesn’t understand, this would rob Peter to pay Paul. But when push came to shove, they accepted the amendment, they wouldn’t allow a roll call vote on it. They didn’t want to have their people vote against Spanish-language housing counseling. They didn’t do it because I made pals with them. I scared the crap out of them!
