Along with some New York colleagues from both sides of the aisle and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Hudson Valley Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney is one of dozens of Democrats who broke ranks with President Obama over the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. The president was on Capitol Hill last week to lobby representatives to support the agreement, but speaking on WAMC’s Congressional Corner with Alan Chartock on Tuesday, Maloney says that didn’t sway him.
Alan Chartock: When you take a position contrary to the president do you hear from the White House?
Sean Patrick Maloney: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I mean, this administration is much less interactive with members of Congress than ones in the past. I think that’s been well-reported. There’s truth to that. I think they showed up real late and with some half-baked arguments and they don’t have a lot of good relationships up here and they’re paying a price for it.
But the fact of the matter is that most of us don’t let that get in the way. Most of us do what we think is right and when we agree with the president we’ll support him. But I do think the problem the administration has right now is that this is all hat and no cattle. There is no real substance in here for communities like the ones I represent. I mean I represent a specific part of the world that has had a specific experience with 30 years of policies like this. Go talk to a 53-year-old former factory worker in Port Jervis or Middletown and ask them how trade assistance retraining is going for them.
The point is, they don’t want a welfare program [and] they don’t want some good foreign policy program. They want something that rebuilds their main streets again and gives guys walking down Liberty Street in Newburgh an opportunity to go get a job with some decent benefits and support a family and maybe afford college for their kids and maybe be able to look forward to a retirement where they can have some security and some decent healthcare. And none of that is in the argument the president is making. My test is, why? I’m not saying no. I’m saying why? Why does it help middle class families like the one I grew up in? How does it help us in Hudson Valley? And when I see that, I’ll get interested. That’s what I’m working for in transportation and infrastructure. That’s what I’m working for on some of these things like bring down the cost of college and helping people get training for the industries of the future and good stem cell education for our kids. Because we do have to evolve and we do have to change and we have to grow. And exports are part of that. And leading the world is part of that. But we can’t leave out the American worker, the American middle class family. Because that’s what we’ve done for 30 years while well-wired corporations and lobbyists have had what’s important to them get taken care of while the rest of us are still waiting for solutions to help the communities like the ones I represent.
