artmouth Free Press: First things first$mdash;$mdash;why are you a better candidate for the Democratic Party than Brett Clemons?

Paul Hodes: I am happy to talk about my positions and my experience, and I think that is going to be up to the voters to decide. I think they have a clear choice between us; I am proud of my service to the state of New Hampshire, I am proud that I raised my kids in New Hampshire, I am proud of my record, and I am happy to let the voters judge us as candidates.

DFP: Do you think it will hurt your campaign, and did it hurt the last campaign, that Congressman Bass is known as a moderate in the New York Times, CNN, et cetera?

PH: Whatever he is known as, the question that voters really need to ask is, does this guy stand for anything? If you look at his record, you do not know what he stands for…He certainly stands for getting re-elected to Congress, and we are seeing that this year with an election year conversion [on Tom DeLay and other reform issues]…He is an election year reformer. When you ask what he stands for, I do not think the word moderate is very descriptive of anything, and that is about what the voters get from Charlie Bass. He is hard to pin down because you don’t know what he stands for.

DFP: The theme of your campaign is reform. What would you say is the best ethics reform bill right now in the House or Senate?

PH: The Democrats in both branches of Congress have a pretty good handle on it. I am not going to choose between all different kinds of reform. Some of the things that I think are important about reform…[are] having transparency about contacts with lobbyists, making sure that former members are not lobbying their colleagues before too long, making sure that there are important restrictions on lobbyist and corporate-paid travel, and introducing transparency in the legislative process….

The second thing is that there are rules about the ways Congress works that need to be either enforced or reinforced, and those include making sure that legislation is not monkeyed with behind closed doors without giving legislators a chance to read it. You need enough time to look at bills and not vote on mammoth legislation without having enough time to look at it, and then there are some other things that are really important: controlling earmarks in budget legislation. I support controlling earmarks; let’s say that they cannot be more than one percent of a budget. One of the statistics that is of great interest to me is that Ronald Reagan vetoed a budget bill because it had 451 earmarks in it, and the last budget bill before the current budget ended up with 6,700-plus earmarks. Those are pork projects that our legislators are giving away to lobbyists, and our pet projects, that we have to look very closely at, and the only way to do that is to separate them from the main budget.

Then finally, I think you need to look at the ethics oversight in the House. I am a former prosecutor; I am an attorney. Attorneys are regulated, if you will, by a professional conduct committee. The professional conduct committee is supervised by the Supreme Court and is composed of lawyers and lay people. I think that something to take a look at is Congressional oversight that is removed from inside the House and is fashioned in such a way as to have some real teeth and some real objectivity about what’s going on.

DFP: Your website says you stand for “universal access to health insurance.” Do you support a single payer system, a multi payer system, or is it on the table?

PH: I think it is on the table…The first question is creating and agreeing that as a matter of national priority, that we have the will to say the goal is universal access to health insurance. Now, let’s have the important dialogue about how to get it done. I have heard good reasons for single payer systems from some people, and I have heard lots of good reasons for different kinds of systems that use a public-private partnership to help the free market provide universal access combined with expanded government help. So, for me, it is on the table.

What I have not seen is the political will to really deal with that issue. I certainly have not seen it from the Republicans, and simply saying “health savings accounts,” which really only benefit people with enough money to take out a high deductible policy and have insurance, is no answer for our health insurance crisis.

DFP: You have called for a “Manhattan Project” on energy, which suggests that energy is our most important environmental policy. What other environmental policies do we need to focus on, and how should we focus on the environment in general as an issue?

PH: There are local issues and there are global issues…There is no purely local answer to environmental problems. For instance, you can go to the farthest northern reaches of our beautiful state, to the headwaters of the great rivers and to the pristine-appearing lakes, and catch fish which you cannot eat because of mercury. That mercury did not come from New Hampshire. The problem is coal-fired plants without adequate pollution controls in the Midwest, and perhaps from farther afield.

When we start talking about environmental degradation, sometimes you can say it is a local issue. [Maybe] there is an old plant that is dumping bad things in the river, and we clean up the plant and clean up the river and we have addressed that locality, but in general the issues are much bigger, which is why I think you need a very comprehensive federal solution. This administration and Congress have cut back on environmental protection, cut back on the Superfund program; they are selling out in terms of control on coal-fired plants and mercury admission standards; they’re forcing the states to try to band together for regional solutions because they’re not willing to tackle these issues on the federal level. We need a comprehensive energy program that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels [and] moves us to renewable and alternative energy. We have to set an example for the rest of the world.

The reason I think that national energy policy is so important is that it touches all facets of the great national debates. A real energy policy is about preserving and safeguarding the environment, locally and globally. It is about creating jobs and opening new markets as a result of entrepreneurial initiatives and government support to change the way we use our fossil fuels, and it is about our national security, because ultimately our national security is propelled by our voracious need for energy. Our foreign policy is in many ways governed by our appetite for oil, and we will create new jobs, safeguard the environment, and make ourselves a stronger, more secure nation with an energy policy that is a forward thinking, 21st century energy policy instead of being tied in to obsolete thinking of the past.

DFP: You mentioned national security. You are a critic of the President’s handling of the war in Iraq. What do you think a proper exit strategy is?

PH: First, an exit strategy, and most importantly, an exit strategy. The lesson that this country learned the hard way, a long time ago, was you do not commit troops without an exit strategy. When you do commit the troops, you make sure you planned properly in terms of supplying the troops, and you make sure that you have an appropriate buy-in, internationally and nationally. In this case, this administration’s failures and incompetence on all levels has put us in a very difficult position.

If you step back, things are very dynamic in the Middle East. Hamas has been elected in the Palestinian territories; Iran is posing a significant threat. I do not think that our presence in Iraq, stretching our armed forces thin and conducting offensive military operations, is making us safer, more secure, and better able to deal with those tensions in the Middle East. The reality is that the Iraqis now have a Constitution and a governme
nt. There is what I think is a sectarian civil war happening. Billions and billions of dollars of reconstruction money has been wasted. I think our focus needs to shift from offensive military action to counter-insurgency, towards credible efforts at reconstruction, to advancing as rapidly as possible the training of Iraqi security and armed forces, giving these people employment, electricity, water, sewers, and their oil back, and transitioning out of there some time within six months to a year. We must send a signal in the Mideast that we are not going to be a permanent military occupying force.

DFP: George Bush is cutting from his budget, which you called “mean-spirited,” twelve billion dollars in student loans. What do you think we need in terms of education reform, be it college or No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?

PH: Well, what I’ve said about NCLB is, you reform it and fund it or repeal it….We all agree that schools and school systems and teachers should be accountable for performance, good teaching, and working with students. I have fundamental disagreements about the premise of NCLB, because I think it creates a kind of punitive system that forces teachers to teach to tests, and I don’t think that is the right way to go about education, and I don’t think it’s the right way to go about ensuring teacher compliance or school compliance. There are plenty of voluntary programs to be done, and…to be competitive in a global economy, we have to increase our educational opportunities and do a better job at the basics, especially math and science. It is irresponsible to force students to pay more for student loans and cut educational opportunities for college students.

DFP: You have said you want to raise the minimum wage. What effects would that have on the economy and what level would you raise it to?

PH: I think the level the minimum wage is at is morally unacceptable. Nobody can live on the minimum wage as it is. I have seen proposals that suggest raising the minimum wage to $7.50, and I would say from what I have read, I do not believe there would be any adverse impact on our economy; and in fact, I believe that an adequate or more adequate and a morally justifiable minimum wage would help increase productivity and actually be a boon to the economy.

DFP: There has been a lot of controversy lately around Wal-Mart. Do you have any position on that store and its effect on the economy, both nationally and globally?

PH: You know, it’s an interesting question. I do not have any particular position on it, except to say this—that over the past few years, we have seen a general decline in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. We have a significant trade imbalance with China, who provides most of the products Americans buy, including at Wal-Mart. Many people who used to have good jobs in the manufacturing sector with health care and benefits are now working at places like Wal-Mart for minimum wage and without health benefits. I personally believe that while we have an employer-based health care system, the country’s largest and most profitable corporations have responsibilities to their workers and to society to provide the kind of basic benefits that help us become a healthy, strong nation and help their workers to stay healthy. I certainly hope and expect that companies like Wal-Mart will recognize their responsibility, and I think it is important.

DFP: What do you think the most ignored problem facing this country is, international or domestic?

PH: Domestically, I think it is poverty, and internationally, I think it is energy.

DFP: We talked about energy. Do you care to elaborate on the poverty?

PH: The nature of the problem is self-evident from the President’s recent budget proposal, which cuts $39 billion from the elderly, the poor, the disabled, students, [and] people without big voices and the big money to spend on congressmen, and the flipside is $79 billion in tax cuts whose effect will actually deepen our deficit while providing a benefit largely to the super rich. We have seen an economy where the super rich have done great and the middle class and the poor in this country are suffering progressively harsher consequences, so I think it is pretty evident. It goes back to my original question: what kind of country do you want to be?

DFP: You said the President’s tax cuts will just deepen the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office has said you cannot permanize these tax cuts and cut the deficit, and the President more or less ignored the report. How would you balance the budget?

PH: We probably don’t have enough time to talk about all the ways I would do it. In general, budgets reflect the priorities of an administration, and suffice it to say I favor fairness, equity, and balance. I think we should have a balanced budget, and I think we need to deal with our deficits. I think that the middle class needs relief, and the super rich have enjoyed an enormous advantage under this administration. When you look at waste and useless programs in numbers of different areas, there is plenty of fat to cut. We will be helped when this Iraq war is over, and in general, I favor a budget that is fair about its tax code.

At the moment I think things are skewed, and you have to make sure that there is real competition in our economic system, and that the free markets are working, and if you take a look at the kind of corporate welfare that is being handed out, and the results, there is a major area to cut in terms of corporate welfare, and you have to take a look at which tax cuts are permanent and how you deal with the tax code, and that is a huge question.

DFP: Would those cuts be large enough to pay for universal access to health care and an energy Manhattan Project?

PH: I believe that the budget can be rebalanced, [but] you have got to take a look at budgets and their effect over the long term. Looking at the president’s budget for 2007, what they don’t tell you, because the budget process lacks transparency, is that the effect of that budget over the next ten years is to increase the deficit by $192 billion from where it would be if things were just left as they were. You take the budget and the tax cuts—it is a deficit-busting exercise. With that said, what you have to understand is that investing money in the kind of forward-thinking energy policy I favor, as opposed to giving billions of dollars to oil and gas and refineries, would be better-spent making that investment, because we are going to reap economic rewards.

Take one area of health insurance; in fact, there are 46 million people uninsured. The cost to the rest of us from those people who are uninsured is in the billions of dollars. If we spent ten billion now on programs to insure people, we would reap the value many, many times over in the future. We have a hard time thinking in this country about investing to reap rewards down the line, and we have to have leaders who are thinking about those kinds of investments.

DFP: What positive qualities do you look for in Washington politicians?

PH: Robert Kennedy was a role model of mine. I admired President Clinton’s grasp of policy and his ability to find a way through the diatribe from both sides, and I am interested in political leaders who can listen to good ideas from all sides of the political spectrum, and apply common sense to getting things done.

DFP: You promised us ten minutes, and you’ve given us almost forty. We’ve probably taken enough of your time; thank you so much!

PH: It was a pleasure!

For more information, visit www.hodesforcongress.com.