This interview was conducted via phone in the fall of 2015, but the questions and responses remain relevant, and will be so for the foreseeable future.
The Representative: Democrat Alan Lowenthal has represented California's 47th congressional district since 2013. The district includes portions of Long Beach, Signal Hill, Lakewood, Cypress, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Garden Grove, Westminster, Stanton, and Buena Park. Lowenthal serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Natural Resources.
The interviewer: John Broadway is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach.
Odyssey: What actions have you taken in Congress or causes have you championed to improve the lives of college students and recent graduates in your district?
Rep. Adam Lowenthal: I’ve supported making college better, I’ve supported making it more accessible, and more affordable, and specifically what I’ve done is I cosponsored a number of bills in Congress if you’d like me to go through them. I co-sponsored H.R. 2962, America’s College Promise Act. When I was in the California State Legislature, I wrote the enabling legislation for all of the college promise act, I wrote the legislation for the Long Beach Promise Act. So I’ve also sponsored H.R. 214, which is debt-free college, I cosponsored the student loan-refinancing act which made sure that new student loans would be at the lowest interest rate. I also cosponsored the bill that said we have to take existing loans, and we have to reduce those completely. Cosponsor of the All Year Access Act, which says that we have more and more students going to school during summer, they need pell grants. Pell grants are only for nine months we have to increase that. I’ve sponsored things about Perkins loans,so I’ve done a lot, and I’ve been a cosponsor on all of the affordable and accessible education acts.
Odyssey: Increases in college tuition have been outpacing inflation for a few decades, and now the amount of student loan debt has surpassed the credit card debt held by all Americans. What specifically can Congress do to rein in these costs?
Rep. Lowenthal: Well we need to refinance existing loans, we need to expand Pell Grants, both the amount of pell grants that we do and make sure they go through summer. We need to have the College Promise Act in place which has free college for community colleges, that we need to do. We need to increase Perkins loans, those are the things immediately that we can do, we can also provide grants back to the states so that they can support their state institutions, and to make sure that we’re doing our share to fund education.
Those are the immediate things that we can do, the actually lowering of tuition cost has to be done at the state level. We can provide the resources to students but we can’t set the amount of tuition at universities which are either state or privately run
Odyssey: Beyond these, which three political issues affecting 18 to 30-year-olds aren’t being talked about enough?
Rep. Lowenthal: We’re not talking enough about income equality. We tell young people to get ahead in life, we tell them you need to go to school, but once they're in the world after school their upward mobility is being suppressed by the increasing gap in lower and middle classes and upper classes. We need to work on the income inequality gap because it affects people who are just graduating, or students who are in school and have outside jobs, that we have to work on, that gap, so resources are provided to those entering the workforce also.
We need to deal with climate change. Young people get it, there no more critical issue facing us as a species. They’re going to be impacted more than I am. People in college now are going to have to live through the next 50, 60 years, 70 years and we’re talking about tremendous changes that are going to impact their lives and that is a critical issue. The Pope is coming to Congress in another week to address this very issue, and I think tremendous impact will be on 18 to 30-year-olds. We also need to make sure that young people who are just graduating from college, just starting out and wanting to go into business, that they have access to startup cash, the most difficult thing that young people face is finding access to capital. We need set up institutions and ways for young people starting out to find access to capital, those are the three things that we really need to do.
Odyssey: Congress has a notoriously low approval rating among Americans, regardless of the party in control. Why do so poorly they think of the branch that’s supposed to represent the people?
Rep. Lowenthal: There are a couple of issues, one is because people see gridlock and they don’t see us getting anything done. They wonder why the people that represent them don’t end the gridlock, well part of the reason that they don’t end the gridlock is they don’t represent the communities of interest, that we have so much gerrymandering of district throughout the nation, not in California now, but throughout the nation, because they don’t have independent commissions that’s draw the districts. They’re drawn by state legislatures, that just try to protect incumbents and the party in power, making sure that the party in power keeps those seats. We have to end that practice, we have to have members of Congress that are responsible to the communities that they serve and not the self-interest of the politicians, until we change that people are going to have a very low view of congress. Until we have elections and we nominate and elect people who are truly accountable to their districts and in competitive states the districts are drawn fairly, and people now have no reason to vote because they feel their vote doesn’t mean anything and in a large part they’re right. It’s because the elections have been gerrymandered
Odyssey: What’s one specific policy issue on which you’ve bucked your party’s position?
Rep. Lowenthal: Well a number of them. I voted against the trade promotion authority which the president was promoting saying it was a critical issue. I voted against the NSA collection of data; I voted against their appropriation because I thought the policies of the president and the administration in terms of collecting phone records was over the top, and inappropriate. We collected records of people which invaded their privacy and there was no reason to collect those records. I voted against the Democratic position on rolling back Dodd-Frank, I did not want to see any changes in Dodd-Frank, and I also voted against labor and the Democrats on the Keystone Pipeline.
Odyssey: Since 1965, who was the best president not named Barack Obama or Bill Clinton and why? [The question was asked this way to remove the most likely choices for the Democratic congressman. Republicans Odyssey interviewed were asked the same question, excepting Ronald Reagan.]
Rep. Lowenthal: I think the answer is Lyndon Johnson, I think there are only two presidents, two Democratic presidents [since then]. One was Jimmy Carter and then Lyndon Johnson. While we think often of Lyndon Johnson in terms of Vietnam War, if we look at Johnson what he accomplished in his presidency was overwhelming. He did Medicare, federal education funding, Higher Education Act, the voting act, he strengthened social security and made permanent food stamps, created the national endowment for the arts, corporation for public broadcasting, and he did massive environmental legislation, Clean Water Act, Water Quality Act, wilderness act, the endangered species act, all of those came under the Lyndon B Johnson administration. Tremendous legacy and tremendous record even though lots of times we only think about him in terms of the Vietnam War, which badly divided the nation but he did amazing things beyond that.
Odyssey: Which interest group or lobby has the most undue influence on Capitol Hill, and why?
Rep. Lowenthal: Oil companies. They are the leading facilitators of climate change denial and inaction. It can’t be understated for the Congress now, and how critical it is for us to start taking action on climate change and yet these industries lobby us, are some of the most vociferous in advocating for nothing to be done. You know we have the Koch brothers who are a part of that group, who distribute gas and oil and they are committing to maintaining us on a carbon based economy. They are very powerful lobbyists who spend hundreds of millions of dollars to affect the outcome of upcoming election. They are very very powerful and have undue influence.
Odyssey: The gap between the rich and poor continues to get bigger and is on many people’s minds. What statistical indicators do you use to analyze this? What is your solution?
Rep. Lowenthal: Well I think just about statistical indicator tells you what’s happening, for example income growth for middle and lower income families has slowed sharply since the 1970s. Another indictor is the concentration of income at the very top, it is the highest its been in 80 years. Another indicator is household wealth, and we’ve seen it's dropped. Household wealth is dramatically wealth concentrated in a small group at the top, in the top three percent. So overwhelmingly, over and over again all of these statistics show that there is a greater chasm opening up between the lower and middle class, and the top few percentage on the other hand, and I think as I mentioned before that the nation has to deal with income inequality whether its raising minimum wage, or investing in the middle class or providing access to capital to young people entering the job market who have ideas and need access, all of hose will begin to address the income gap.
Odyssey: What does the word “equality” mean to you and how do we achieve it as a country?
Rep. Lowenthal: Equality means that we all share the same rights, we live by the same rules, and we all share access to opportunities that our society provides that everyone has access to. So we’re talking about access, and we’re talking about rights, that’s what equality means to me.
Odyssey: Finally, if you could have a drink with any non-politician dead or alive, who would it be and what would you drink?
Rep. Lowenthal: I’d have a drink with Jackie Robinson, he was a hero when I was growing up, I’d have Schaefer beer, because it's from Brooklyn. The beer company no longer exists but there was a big sign at Ebbets Field about Schaefer beer and it’d be an honor to have a beer with Jackie Robinson, he was a person that really changed the nation and it’d be an honor to have a beer with him.
