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: Mike Capuano is a Democratic Congressman who represents Massachusetts’ seventh district. The seventh congressional district includes approximately 75% of northern Boston, Somerville and Cambridge. He has been in his present elected position since 2013. From 1999 to 2013 he represented the eighth district. Prior to serving in Congress he was an Alderman and then Mayor of Somerville.
The interviewer: Genevieve DiNatale is a student of journalism at Emerson College in Boston. She has a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in philosophy and a master's degree in survey research from the University of Connecticut.
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. Mike Capuano: I’d like to think that pretty much everything I do would do that, specifically targeted toward college students would be mostly the student loan stuff. That battle has been engaged for a long time, spent some more ink lately, but obviously with my district, with 34 colleges and universities, and the cost of higher education is a big deal. It has been going on for a while. I don’t know that we will make any serious progress, but I’m hoping. But everything else we do, tax policy is important, environmental policy is important, war and peace should be important to young people, pretty much everything I do has some relationship to them, either directly as a student or in the near future when they graduate.
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. Capuano: Most specifically, what Congress could and should do is to make a decision that highlights higher education for most Americans as a social good and not just something that might be good for the individual. It is also good for society. If they did that then hopefully they would get back into the business of the government providing student loans, therefore being able to do them at very low interest and controlling them a little bit better and that being the case it wouldn’t be an investment to pay money up front but you would be able to get that money back at low rates and make the payment affordable. We will have a much lower default rate, number one, number two, that money theoretically could and should go back right into providing higher education for the next tier down the line. So for me personally if I could do one thing with a magic wand it would be getting back the government to making direct student loans of significant nature.
Odyssey: Beyond these, which three political issues affecting 18 to 30-year-olds aren’t being talked about enough?
Rep. Capuano: War and peace for one thing as far as I’m concerned because it is going to be young people who fight wars not people my age. I think that obviously has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t have either a draft or a universal service so that most young people don’t necessarily see these issues as directly impacting them, but I will guarantee that if there is a World War III or something that has spun out of control into a World War III there would be a draft or something and young people would die and be directly involved. Being a child of the Vietnam era I can tell you when people’s lives are on the line and not just people who served, were being drafted or could be drafted, every single young person in America paid attention to that situation. It was much different than the current situation we have now where the only people who serve are those who want to serve.
Odyssey: Congress has a notoriously low approval rating among Americans, regardless of the party in control. Why is the branch that’s supposed to represent the people thought of so poorly by them?
Rep. Capuano: It has always been that way it has been that way with city councils and state legislatures. Everybody thinks that they know what’s right to do in any given instance and that is probably true until you get in the room with 434 other people from around the country with different opinions most people don’t understand that the dynamics of that have always been the case. People don’t like the legislative body on any level but they tend to like their own personal legislator. The idea has always been that, well, my legislator is different than the legislative body, that may or may not be true in the final analysis the legislative body because of the nature of the beast. There is no one person driving the train. There is not event 10 people driving the train. It’s 435 in the House and another 100 in the Senate. It is absolutely guaranteed to be a mess, but Democracy is and should be messy.
Odyssey: What’s one specific policy issue on which you’ve bucked your party’s position?
Rep. Capuano: There’s a lot of them I have been doing this for a while. If I had to pick one it would be out of the ordinary it wouldn’t be student loans because that is pretty traditional stuff now. I’d have to say the Sudan issue only because it was unexpected people would expect a person like me representing so many colleges and urban areas would have a certain viewpoint of certain things. I don’t think most people would have selected me to be interested in the Sudan situation.
Odyssey: In your current position, which vote do you most regret making and why?
Rep. Capuano: I don’t have any votes that I would regret. There are some small ones that I would change. On the big issues there are none thus far. There are some that I would like to have regretted but so far, I hate to say it, but on the big issues I feel like I have been right. On the big issues I voted against the Iraq War, I voted against the PATRIOT Act, against No Child Left Behind. In hindsight I would have liked to have been wrong on all of those things, but in hindsight I think I was right.
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. Capuano: Probably Lyndon Johnson. I think he eventually saw the follies of his way in Vietnam, it took him a while but I think he finally figured it out by the end and he was such a hero of human rights and civil liberties and because he was one of the best politicians as far as embracing the need to be a politician to get things through. The Voting Rights Act was a classic example. Without him there would be none and he did that on the basis of political knowledge and political skill, which I think is one of the things we have been lacking for a while.
Odyssey: Which interest group or lobby has the most undue influence on Capitol Hill, and why?
Rep. Capuano: The NRA. It is overblown. They are there every single minute of every day of every year. Those of us who believe in reasonable gun control, not against the Second Amendment but reasonable gun control. The average public tends to pay attention when there has been a tragedy and they are very vehement for a week or two, or three or a few months, but then they slowly fade into the background and lose their political activism. The NRA is politically active every single day. They are a one issue group for the most part and that gives them influence and to me their influence is overblown, but then again it could be because I come from a district that doesn’t embrace those issues.
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 and what is your solution?
Rep. Capuano: There is no one. I look at economic issues all the time and they all point in the same direction. This is something that has been growing again this is the economic and tax policy of the U.S government. Republicans leading the charge with too many Democrats embracing those policies as well. I’ve done everything I can and I will continue to do everything I can to narrow that gap I want to be real clear that does not mean I bash rich people there is nothing wrong with being wealthy there is something wrong when a society says it is okay for very few people to be extremely wealthy and a lot of other people to be struggling as much as possible. I believe in a bigger and broader middle class I also believe there is always going to be rich people there is nothing wrong with that it is a good thing but the poor people in America shouldn’t be falling behind. They should be keeping up.
Odyssey: What does the word “equality” mean to you and how do we achieve it as a country?
Rep. Capuano: That is probably the one word, the one reason I am in politics, equality and equity. For me, equality is about equality of opportunity. There are going to be different outcomes for people I get that some people are going to be brilliant surgeons some other people may not be so brilliant and be a little bit economically further behind. That’s natural that’s the way life is, but for me the concept is, everyone should be able to reach their highest potential without regard to limitations and that has to do with the opportunity to have an education. That has to do with discrimination, it has to do with all kinds of things. As far as I am concerned it is the one thing that drives me on everything, economic policy, housing policy, on everything is to try to find a way to get every person in America as best as we can, that’s the goal, to have equal opportunity to succeed to the highest way they can do it. And for those who can’t there are always going to be some who cannot succeed, then I would hope that the next part of it is the equity of not having them live an undignified life. Even people who can’t make ends meet should not live in a cardboard box under a bridge. There should be no place for that in America.
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. Capuano: Right now I would have to say probably the Pope. Right now he is reinvigorating not just the Catholic Church but he is reigniting a lot of people’s view of the world and maybe it is not all just about me. Maybe it is about us a little bit. It might be a little premature, but I would love to have the opportunity and I would drink anything he’d want including holy water.
