Gluesenkamp Perez on CNN: “It’s About Systemic Transparency and Accountability”
Yesterday, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) joined CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper to discuss her amendment to strengthen ethics guidelines related to the cognitive acuity of Members of Congress – which was voted down by the House Appropriations Committee last week.
Video of the interview can be found here. The following is a transcript of the interview:
“GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: When I go back home, what I hear from my neighbors is a conviction that Congress is this amorphous mass that hides behind their offices. This is an amendment that seeks to provide more information to voters so that they can make an informed decision and have effective representation.
TAPPER: Our politics lead, a proposed method to identify members of Congress who could be struggling with their mental acuity. That amendment was struck down last week by Members of Congress. You just were listening to Washington Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. She was behind the amendment voted down by the House Appropriations Committee. She joins us now.
So Congresswoman, I just want to read out the entirety of this amendment you propose. It’s pretty simple, just one sentence. It would direct the Office of Congressional Conduct to develop a standard for what constitutes conduct that does not reflect creditably upon the House as it relates to a Member of Congress’s ability to perform the duties of office unimpeded by significant, irreversible cognitive impairment. And we have seen a lot of this in Congress in the last decades, but especially now. There are more Members of Congress in their seventies and older than ever before. Tell us more about this.
GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: I have rules up, down, and sideways about what kind of hat I can accept as a gift, but these bigger questions about whether or not an office is being run by the person who’s elected or their staff has not been addressed in the way that it needs to be, and, you know, there are a very few number of offices where this is called into question, but I would argue that the failure to address this and to reflect the experience of everybody who owns a farm and has to have these discussions in advance about … who’s driving the bus when, we need to have those in Congress.
TAPPER: Yeah, you said in your remarks specifically, this is not about age and it’s true. There have been recent examples of staff members raising alarms about mental health of lawmakers who are on the younger side for Congress, but we did the math, a majority of members of your Committee, the Appropriations Committee, are 60 or older, including both the Chairman Tom Cole and the Ranking Democrat Rosa DeLauro. They’re 76 and 82. Do you think that had anything to do with why your amendment was defeated?
GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: No, I mean, some of our older members are the most impactful. It’s about building a representative body of the full spectrum of age, but a confidence that it is the elected themselves driving the decisions and making those votes. There is a profound erosion in trust in government. And when I go back home, people ask me about this all the time. And so, the failure to address it, I think is an indictment against all of us, but a refusal to have these … They’re hard conversations.
TAPPER: Very difficult. So, you probably know, or maybe you don’t. Alex Thompson and I wrote a book about President Biden and these issues during his presidency, and one of the things that was unescapable is that it wasn’t just President Biden or Reagan before him or whatever, Washington has this tradition of this that doesn’t happen on a farm, it doesn’t happen in broadcasting, it doesn’t happen in sports or business, because there are other groups that will come in and say it’s time for you to retire. But in politics, all you have to do is convince your voters, and they’re busy, they’re living their lives, they can be snookered.
GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: Yeah, I think ensuring that there is clear information. And look, I’m not changing the Constitution. There are only three ways for a Member of Congress to be removed from office. You can lose your election, you can die, or you can have two-thirds of the body vote to remove you. That doesn’t change any of this. What we want is a clear, impartial body of information with which the Ethics Committee could then review and make a determination.
TAPPER: But they don’t even look into that right now.
GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: It’s not in the ethics code.
TAPPER: And last year, the woman who was Chair of Appropriations, Kay Granger, she was the Chair, she stepped down as Chair, she stayed a Member of Congress, and then her family drove her to a home, where, you know, God bless her, she’s dealing with dementia issues, and for months, she was the Congresswoman from her district. Nobody told Members of Congress. Nobody told her Congressional district. We only know this because a journalist in the area looked into it.
GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: Yeah, and there is no way for their staff to file a complaint if it’s not clear that there’s a criteria with which to evaluate that. There’s not an opportunity to say like, this matters to our democratic process to ensure that it is that Member. And, you know, it’s not about a single Member of Congress, it’s about systemic transparency and accountability and the body respecting itself enough to say, we will hold ourselves to a standard that engenders confidence in the body itself.
TAPPER: But your amendment is not insulting at all. It’s just saying, here’s a process. If there’s an issue, then the House Ethics Committee can be alerted to it. It seems to me, this is me saying it, not you, but that the fellow Members of your House Appropriations Committee voting that down by voice vote, says that they’re more interested in protecting their jobs than in making sure that the American people have credible representation.
GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s easy to say that it’s always somebody else’s job, but I think at the end of the day, like the question is, is the work being done? It’s easy to feel like somebody else should be doing it, but I think we need to ensure that our loyalty is clearly oriented towards our districts and not an individual Member, and … I got a lot of hard questions about my amendment, and some people did take it as a personal attack, but I think there’s still a profound appetite in our country to ensure that these conversations are happening, [that] there is a process, that it is nonpartisan and transparent. And so I’m still having internal discussions and looking for folks to collaborate on this.
TAPPER: And, just for the record, after the debate, you were the only Democratic elected official in the country that not only said President Biden should not be the candidate anymore, you said he shouldn’t be the President anymore.
GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: Yeah, I actually didn’t talk about the campaign in particular, because I don’t view my duty as being involved in campaigns, but saying what I heard at home, is this person the one steering the ship? And it’s about the office itself, it’s about the loyalty to your district, and a commitment to real, effective representation and clarity on who is calling the shots.
TAPPER: One of the gutsiest members of the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. Thank you so much for being here.”