Street Roots • March 20-26, 2015
leaders now the way there were, even 35
years ago, as an influence. Members of
Congress have become much more
individual entrepreneurs. Secondly - and
this is by far the most important change - ;
when I got to Congress in 1981, we still had
the situation where the South, was A)
Conservative and B) Democratic, although it
was shifting. By 1981 the majority of the
members of the House of Representatives
and the Senate from the South were
Democrats, even though they voted
significantly with the Republicans. There
were also a smaller number of Republicans,
mostly on the East and
some on the West
Who: Barney
Coast, who were more
on the liberal side.
Frank
That is while the
W hat: Book
Democrats were more
reading followed
liberal and Republicans
by question and
were more
answer session
conservative, there
When: 4 p.m.,
were 10 or 15, even 20
Saturday, March 28. percent, split between
W here: Powell’s
the two parties.
City of Books,
But now that is
1005 W Burnside St. simply not the case. I
don’t think there is a
single Republican
member who is to the
left of any Democratic member; the parties
have become much more ideologically
coherent
The next big change was and this
started in the 80s, but was given an
enormous boost by this right-wing Supreme
Court majority - is the role of money.
Money plays a much greater role now in
elections to' the detriment of democracy.
Democrats have become more on the
liberal side and Republicans on the
conservative side. The Republicans have
taken that a step further and moved even
further to the right. So the most important
change that affects the current situation is
that, beginning in 2009, the Republicans
moved to a more unified, conservative
position, which really changed. Speed up to
warp speed and now you have a Republican
party that is an angry, antigovernment, very
extreme conservative party.
News
power over Congress than constituents do is
simply not true. Can you explain this and also
how constituents can most effectively wield the
power they have?
B.F.: Constituents can wield.the power by
talking to their members of Congress. On
the day-to-day affairs, it is true that big
money influence is greater because the
people with a lot of money are monitoring
things on a regular basis, and the voters are
not paying a lot of attention. But in those
cases when the voters care, and/they, get
engaged, for example, they helped us get
more in financial reform than we thought we
were going to get The big banks really lost
badly in that one.
The whole effort to make it harder for
people to access music and other things on
the Internet, there was an effort to largely
end the intellectual property laws. That got
defeated. Net neutrality clearly is opposed
by the most important financial interests,
but it’s going to happen.
It’s true that members of Congress, out
of human nature, will listen to the money.
But members of Congress, most of us, didn’t
get elected without having a pretty good
sense of what people in our district want,
and knowing in particular what it is that’s
important to them. It would get you into
political difficulty if you denied them. I wish
constituents would speak out more, but even
when they don’t speak out, there is an
ongoing understanding by members of
Congress of what the constituents will
accept There is an ongoing understanding
of the need to keep the constituents happy,
and even more importantly, the need to not
anger them, that is a factor.
Money is more influential? There’s more
truth to that than there used to be. I don’t .
think money has as much an influence on
the decisions that are made once members
are elected. The real negative power of
money is in who gets elected. The people
with all the money, they know who to *•
support. In many cases, they don’t have to
lobby these people once they’ve helped
them get elected.
E.G.: You also wrote that working on
affordable housing took up more of your time
E.G.: While you say
money has played a role
in changing politics,
you wrote in your book
that the widely held
belief that campaign
finances have more
than anything else in your public life. As
income inequality continues to grow in the
United States, why do you think there is push
by some presidential candidates to abolish The
department of Housing and Urban
Development, and what do you think the next
President should do for affordable housing?
B.F.: When we talk about affordable
housing or subsidized housing, generally,
we’re talking about rental housing. I have
always believed, for a variety of reasons,
most very low-income people are going to
be renters, not homeowners. And we have
neglected rental. And the problem is, when
you talk about rental housing, people still
conjure up in their heads these terrible,
anti-social, large towers that we built. We
don’t do that anymore. We haven’t for a long
time. We know how to build and how to fund
decent affordable housings and that’s what I
have most worked on.
The objection we’ve had, is there’s still
this picture in people’s heads, this cultural
lag, that rental housing built with public
assistance somehow is going to be this
terrible drab and dangerous tower — but the
poor didn’t build those, society built those
because they thought it was the cheapest
way to house people, and we’ve learned that
does more harm than good.
Part of the problem is a continuation of
what I said earlier: the Republican Party is
more far to the right When I was in the
Massachusetts Legislature working on
housing, one of the people I worked most
closely with was a Republican senator,
Edward Brooke. He was a great supporter
of affordable rental housing. When I got to
Congress, when Republicans took over in
the mid-90s, they tried to undo legislation
called the Brooke Amendment, to help low-
income tenants, and then Brooke even
supported it I called him and said, “Can you
help on this?” And he said, “Barney, I wish I
could, it’s not my party anymore. These
people have just moved away from me.”
The problem is you have these ideologues
who run the Republican Party today, and
who are very attuned to that group of
regulatory foes and the extremists of the
Fox network and elsewhere, who really don’t
think the government has a positive role in
our society. And there’s very little they let
the government do besides defense and law
enforcement: This is a manifestation of their
ideology.
Page 9
defense spending. What cuts can be made,
without compromising national security, that
would equal the amount of money needed to
Properly fund social programs like affordable
rental housing??
B.F.: Oh that’s the best question of all,
because that’s my major goal going forward.
I think a lot of the programs individually are
popular, and the fact people are angry with
th e government is not because we’ve been
doing too much in these areas, but too. little.
And then people blame the government for
not doing enough, and then they get angry
and vote for people who make the
government worse.
First of all, we do not need to have three
ways to destroy the Soviet Union in a
thermonuclear war. There is no more Soviet
Union, there is Russia, a very unpleasant
place, you may agree. Putin is one of the
great threats to democracy, but he does not
remotely have the kind of capacity that we
have. When the Soviet Union collapsed^
George H. W. Bush began to cut things
back. We have three ways of dropping
thermonuclear weapons on the Soviet
Union, by missiles, by airplanes and by
submarines. Keep two. Give up one. Save
billions of dollars.
We don’t need to have troops in Western
Europe, The Western European nations and
the European Union collectively have a
larger gross domestic product and they have
a larger population. Now, I get it. Putin is a
problem for Ukraine, but the answer to that
is not the American army, no one thinks it
is, and they should be doing more there
themselves.
Most importantly in the near term, the
president was right to withdraw from
combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Unfortunately he’s committed a little too
much to the pressure to go back.
I believe it’s good that we’ve engaged in
the bombing of those murderous fanatics
that call themselves the Islamic State, and
it’s had some impact, but the notion that
America has to go back in and bring about
stability in Iraq, in Afghanistan and maybe
even in Syria, which is what you hear from
many of the Republicans, is just wrong. We
cannot do that. Our military is a great
military. Militaries are very good at stopping
bad things from happening. They cannot
make good things happen. We’re spending
See FRANK, page 10
E.G.: You are one of few members of
Congress to speak out against our country 's
consumers from fraud and instafed oversight
of flhandalderivalves,
2011: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is repealed.
on security clearances
for LGBT people after
2012: Frank marries longtime partner Jim
urgingfromFrank,
Ready, becoming the first member’of
11
Congress to be in a same-sex marriage.
1998: Frank leads the
fight against GOP efforts
•to impeach President Bill
Clinton.
.
R e O t ERSZIASONREED
Congressmen Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank walk to speak to
2013: Leaves office, becoming a private
the press outside the West Wing of the White House to discuss
citizen, but then seeks temporary appointment
financial reform legislation later known as the Dodd-Frank Act,
, to U.S, Senate. He is not selected
2007: Frank begins
dating Jim Ready. Frank
writes, “By that summer, I was deeply in love,
2010: President Barack Obama signs a bill
written by Frank and Christopher Dodd. The
experiencing at 67 more profound feelings than
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer
ever before.”
Protection Act created a bureau to protect
2013-present: Frank continues to speak, write
and campaign for personal freedoms, support
for social-service programs and reducing
defense spending.
R EU TER S/JO N A TH A N ERNST
Frank wipes away tears'as he arrives to
watch House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sign the
bill repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, Dec. 21,
2010.
— compiled by Emily Green