Who?
Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA)
LISTEN: Laslo & LaMalfa
Ask a Pol asks:
What is your pitch to voters for this election, given that the 118th Congress has been historically unproductive?
Key LaMalfa:
“After these two years? I'm having a hard time,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa exclusively tells Ask a Pol. “I've been really cynical lately.”
ICYMI — Interview first included in Matt Laslo’s Raw Story feature, “Dysfunction on display: Republicans complain Speaker Johnson is no Pelosi”
On some Republican colleagues and voters:
“When you ask the initial question like, ‘How do you go about bragging on that?’ I can't brag on that, you know? But I can say all the bad things we blocked that would have happened had the Dems been in the majority,” LaMalfa tells us. “And we passed some good bills here and there, and we've kept the place going. I think we've curbed spending to a degree that would not have happened otherwise so we will put some breaks on some things here. But is that — you know, do people wanna hear putting breaks on things or do they want to hear great new things?”
Below find a rough transcript of Ask a Pol’s exclusive interview with Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), slightly edited for clarity.
TRANSCRIPT: Rep. Doug LaMalfa
SCENE: Ask a Pol’s Matt Laslo interviews Rep. Doug LaMalfa as he makes his way to a vote on the floor of the US House of Representatives via an underground tunnel.
Matt Laslo: “Do you know — how do you — what's your pitch to voters?”
Doug LaMalfa: “Would you get on this side?”
ML: “Yeah, yeah. What's your pitch to voters?”
DL: “Pitch to voters?”
ML: “Send me back…”
DL: “Not a good one.”
ML: “Send me back so I can not...”
DL: “After these two years?”
ML: “…fund the government. Yeah.”
DL: “I'm having a hard time.”
ML: “Why is that?”
DL: “You've seen this — are we recording?”
ML: “Yeah.”
DL: “Okay. So I'll have to zip it some up.”
Laslo laughs.
DL: “(inaudible) your turn for it, but it ends in a show.”
ML: “Yeah?”
Laslo laughs.
DL: “Okay.”
ML: “But what — do you blame it on...”
DL: “I mean, Republicans are basically have been — our majority has been stoppers.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “As far as home run policy, we passed some good bills, but they — you know, nothing's in the Senate.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “Yeah.”
ML: “So do you think the problem is that the Senate's been Democrats? Or...”
DL: “That's always a problem, isn't it?”
ML: “But this time it seems like many members of your party...”
DL: “The Senate is always a stopper for our stuff, you know. Even when we have the majority, they can't get 60 [votes] very often. So it has to use maneuvers like you know, re… — for budgeting. Reconsidering? What do you call it?”
ML: “Reconciliation.”
DL: “Reconciliation, there's a word, yeah. Reconciliation. So…”
ML: “How disappointing is it that you guys can't even get the GOP on the same...”
DL: “Very. We screwed around getting rid of the speaker. Thank you, appreciate it.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “Yeah, so we wasted a few days in the beginning on that and about a month in the middle of it. Yeah, it's a problem. And then, you know, our — the package the other day, we had a CR with a SAVE Act in it.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “And our folks on the — well, a lot of the people that write from — or comment from the right say, now that it's out, ‘Oh, [Speaker] Mike Johnson is a traitor because he took it out.’ Like no, hey, we passed the bill as a standalone in July or so. We had it included, and about 10-11 of us couldn't vote for it.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “I gotta get this vote down.”
ML: “Cool.”
Rep. LaMalfa checks in on status of House vote.
DL: “The vote has closed.”
ML: “Did they?”
DL: “Yeah.”
ML: “What?”
DL: “There’s two more. Hey, let's catch up.”
ML: “There's still a lot of lawmakers coming in this home.”
DL: “Yeah, they freaking closed it.”
ML: “Weird.”
DL: “There was 200 when I left the office and so that's usually enough.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “I mean, I've been, you know, finding the number, right?”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “And when it's down to 100, I've been getting in trouble.”
ML: “Oh, I know.”
DL: “Now I got pinched on 200.”
ML: “See, I always tell my interns, I'm like, ‘Never keep a lawmaker from their vote because then they're never going to talk to you again.’”
DL: “Well, you know, it's our own discipline. We have to walk faster until you know. And you walked with me, so anyway.”
ML: “Yeah. I'm sorry about that.”
DL: “No, you didn't do it.”
ML: “Yeah, it's strange. So how do you guys — is this growing pains for the party? Naturally happens historically? Or…?”
DL: “No, I think this is kind of extraordinary.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “Because, you know, we might have our battles where we usually have come together. This goes back to the state legislature when I was there, and here. And now it's like, you know, you got certain guys that are gonna be like (??Mikey and the like??). They universally hate everything, you know? And so that means we don't really have a working majority on the stuff, you know, like the appropriations bills. When I was preaching at home like, ‘Hey, this term, we're gonna do the appropriations bills, and we're gonna do it right. We're gonna get them out and we'll send them to the Senate and we're going to have a real debate and a real, you know, process.’ And so we got about seven of them out during McCarthy [speakership] and the committee has moved them out but they haven't all moved across the floor of the 12. I mean, I think we'll do one or two more after that since. And just, well, hell, man, what?”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “So I've been really cynical lately.”
ML: “So, how do you — and like the young guard, they're not listening to...?”
DL: “The who?”
ML: “The younger members or newer members?”
DL: “Oh I wouldn't put it on age.”
ML: “Yeah.”
DL: “I would put it more on some philosophical issue of this sort of guys.”
ML: “How do you — do you think this election will shake that up and give you guys a better working majority? Or...?”
DL: “Well, there will be at least some slight modifications. There's a couple of our guys that aren't coming back and stuff like that. But, you know, unless we add a lot to our majority and there's a pretty big lineup change amongst us, it's probably, you know, it could look similar next time, but...”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “…but if we blow the majority, like we blow the CR here, you know.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “The shutdown doesn't accrue well on the Republican side no matter what. It seems like there was one a few years ago when Trump was still in and it was the [Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer shutdown and it stayed where it was.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: ”But it's always our fault no matter what we put across, you know, we put across reasonable bills and, you know, I don't know — same reason about the SAVE Act that was a bill we passed already so. And 11 or so of our guys wouldn't go for it, because they had the CR and we're like, “What the hell do you want?’”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “You know? And there's people out there, as I was saying, there's people out there tweeting or commenting like, ‘[Speaker] Mike [Johnson] took it out, you know, and just passing the spending bill.’ We did, we just — did you see we just tried last week?”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “We just tried, and it's maybe the same folks who you think are the heroes for this, didn't vote for it, so you shot down those. We could’ve at least golfed it over to the Senate and they would have had to deal with it, or strip it out, or something, and send it back and then okay, then that'll be a terrible bill you can all vote against, right?”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “A hundred Republicans will vote for it and a hundred Democrats, or whatever we need. And then we go, you know. We released this — and in some sense of reality it is a bit of an exercise because, you know, the Senate's not gonna vote for it and you know the president won't vote for it.”
ML: “Yeah?”
DL: “So do we demonstrate that we are for that or — and we did, we've done it twice: put the bill on the floor, passed the bill by itself in committee, and so we've demonstrated — we've demonstrated the Dems are not for the SAVE Act. So, but last week, it’s also eleven or so Republicans weren't either and that was that narrow piece we needed to at least move the bill and continue the discussion in the Senate. So, that's what my frustrations are about. You know, when you ask the initial question like, ‘How do you go about bragging on that?’ I can't brag on that, you know? But I can say all the bad things we blocked that would have happened had the Dems been in the majority. And we passed some good bills here and there, and we've kept the place going. I think we've curbed spending to a degree that would not have happened otherwise so we will put some breaks on some things here. But is that — you know, do people wanna hear putting breaks on things or do they want to hear great new things? You know, that's what…”
ML: “Right?”
DL: “Especially the voters that we're trying to talk to right now in this presidential. You know, you got the two — 35% on each side, 40% — whatever. But you wanna see, okay, who are these — who are these joy voters, what are they gonna wanna to hear? ‘Republicans put the breaks on things’? Or do they wanna hear aspirations and things like that. Like, you know, [Dem presidential candidate] Kamala [Harris] talks about it. If you want to get some of these voters, you have to say, ‘Well, here's the positive things we're doing,’ you know, here's some of the things we've done, and that's a little harder to grasp in this malaise, or muddle, or whatever you wanna call what's been going on.”
ML: “But it seems like a lot of these members aren't running on ‘Reelect us because what we did in Congress.’ Their message…”
DL: “Is what?”
ML: “…deviates.”
DL: “What do you hear?”
ML: “Well, for some, they're pushing conspiracies.”
DL: “Conspiracies? Of what?”
ML: “You know [Rep.] Matt Gaetz says there's five assassination teams roving around the US?”
DL: “Oh, I don’t.”
ML: “He says one's Iranian, one's Ukrainian, and one's Pakistani.”
DL: “For Trump, or for everybody?”
ML: “I think for Trump, but…”
DL: “Well, I mean, in a way, there probably are people harboring those ideas. But are these five set teams that are, you know, trying to line up and playing cards, you know. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that would be on that team that would generically, you know.”
ML: “Good chatting.”
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