Latest / America's Why Project / Episode 20: Rediscovering Common Ground – How Congress Can Work Better

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Episode 20: Rediscovering Common Ground – How Congress Can Work Better · America's Why Project

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: There are much worse jobs than being a former member of Congress.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so my elevator pitch to them is be willing to lose.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Be willing to lose.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: At least you'll go down fighting for something you believe in and an issue, you will advance it.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the America's Why Podcast.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm your host, Matt Leavinger.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're back today with Professor Casey Burgett, who's the director of the Legislative Affairs Program at the George Washington University and host of the Mastering the Room podcast, which explores the question of whether we can find common ground in our hyper-politicized worlds.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the question that we want to come back to in the second episode of this interview, by asking the question: how can politics help us find common ground and how Congress can work better?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so having promised our listeners in our last episode that we would turn to the bright side of politics this time around, let me ask you, Casey, can you give us one or two recent examples of cases when Congress has worked well in solving hard problems together?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: If so, what have been the keys to success?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh boy, yes.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: There have been instances.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is because of the infrastructure, the the incentive structure that we see within Congress, a lot of the good work of Congress goes on behind the scenes on purpose, right?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like it is in the briefings behind closed doors.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: It is when cameras are off.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: It is when staffers are able to sit and not be worried about getting gotcha questions or being filmed.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of good faith legislating going on all of the time.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And the problem is, is I'm gonna just have to ask your listeners to trust me on it because that ain't what they see.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that for sure.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: But even recently, we saw, we say bipartisanship doesn't happen at all anymore, right?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's impossible.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, just 10 days ago, we saw a housing bill, one of the pressing issues of at least my students' careers, uh, having affordable housing, especially in DC.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: It passed with overwhelming majorities, veto-proof majorities, Democrats, Republicans from left, right, and center saying, yep, this is a problem.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a solution.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Not the whole thing, but a step in the right direction.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: And they sent it to the White House, which I don't know if the word ironic fits here, but the president didn't sign it.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and ultimately after 10 days it became law of if he did because he didn't veto it.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, we see legislation.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: If it goes to the president, it's almost always going to have overwhelming majorities, as it has in previous eras.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the biggest misnomers about Congress.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is that Congress is legislating less and less, and they're using different vehicles to do it, where we're having thousand-page bills now because they stuff everything that couldn't pass on its own in an up or down vote into one big package, forcing members to say, Are you willing to tank this whole thing rather than get this individual piece of legislation done?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so Congress is happening all the time, including Senators John Cornyn and Tom Tillis standing up to the president's nominee despite threats for attorney generals getting concessions.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: These are the types of backs and forths that uh the sausage making is probably not pretty to people back home, but this is how Congress is supposed to work.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: It just doesn't work as often as we all would like it to.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what do you find that congressional Democrats and Congressional Republicans agree about?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is the hard part, right?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because they agree, you'll hear candidates say this all of the time.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Obama was most notorious about is that uh what unites us is more powerful than what divides us.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And if you look at the issues, if you look at polling, if you look at statements of politicians, they agree on 75-80% of almost every issue outside of the big ones like uh guns and abortion mostly, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: But like there, there's a ton of agreement on immigration.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, we had a very compromised bill with compromising bill with Senator James Langford a couple years ago, conservative bill that Trump ultimately spiked, that was negotiated with Democrats, immigration, uh the economy, jobs, healthcare, and education.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of consensus, a ton of overlooked consensus.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is the enemy of the good has become the perfect.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: And they are not willing to take to take half a loaf, like Reagan used to say, and come back and fight for the rest.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: They want the whole enchilada right now, because if they don't get it, they can blame the other side for obstructing them, and that's a great campaign message.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And if they do get it, they get acclaim credit on what they want.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: But we they disagree at the 20% margins on almost everything.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a lot more consensus about issues, even on things we think they fundamentally disagree on, um, that that gets the vast majority of media attention.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, given how much agreement there is about really, really important issues, do you think that there are certain habits uh or certain skill sets uh that people could cultivate together to actually make some progress in in constructively addressing important issues?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or are they just going to be voted out of office if they're seen uh collaborating with the other side?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad you brought that up so I didn't have to say it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: So to me, this is an external problem.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Members of Congress are rational beings.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Rational.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: They will chase the votes.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: They will chase the votes, they will chase where their voters are.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Which means if you have an election system, most notably within the primaries, because most compet elections are not competitive, if you have a primary system that rewards um being loud and well known and stopping the other side obstructionists, then that's what they're gonna do in Congress.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: And they are right to do so, they are rational to do so.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: But if you have one that rewards compromise, if you have one that rewards legislative achievement, they'll go do that.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: They are high schoolers, and this is really comforting to know about them.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: They will do whatever keeps them in their position, which gives the power to the people, to the elections, to the people showing up and voting.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to see them change their behavior on the inside, reward different behavior.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Don't reward the same type of behavior and then expect a different result when you're just like when you just voted someone out who was labeled a Republican in name only, a rhino or a dino.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um that is just gonna scare the hell out of them to basically don't go be that example because that just proved them if I vote against my party or my president, like go ask Mitt Romney, go ask Tillis, go ask Cornyn.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Their job, they're on the outside looking in now because they have been labeled insufficiently loyal.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's horrible.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the voters who have that ultimate authority.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, does that mean that we voters are the ones to blame here because we're rewarding ideological purity instead of problem solving?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is a beautiful thing.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's blame to go around, but boy, we are at the top of the list, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: Because again, they have to get enough votes to go back.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: They have to do, whether it's in the primary or the general, they're gonna do what it takes to keep their power.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: That gives us the leverage.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, is our vote as a singular voter oftentimes decisive?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely not.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: But it never was.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: It never was.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so we have to do the hard work of politics if we want different changes in behavior.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: That means we have to change our behavior as well, and then punish the ones who don't uh ascribe to what we're after and reward the ones who do.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: We're very, very bad at that.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately that the the vast majority of blame lies at our feet because we're the ultimate deciders in elections.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we we talked in our last episode about how the phenomenon of insecure majorities uh incentivizes cutthroat competition in contemporary American politics.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't go all out in discrediting the other side, you may lose your majority and you'll be powerless.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk a little bit about how we might tackle this issue.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're you're saying part of it's on us as voters.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: We just need to reward cooperative behavior.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but cooperative behavior doesn't get the headlines, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um are there structural fixes that could mitigate this problem?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Bingo.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not just reward them, but let's have a conversation about the environment and the infrastructure that creates this type of incentive structure, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: And mostly we're talking about elections.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's a simple formula.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: You want re-election, you have to do what enough people back home want, which means how these people vote will have a huge impact on not only who runs for these seats, but who wins them and how they perform once they get there.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: So primaries are a big problem.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right now we have 90% of our our seats, House and Senate, which right now, in fact, if I gave you a map of the presidential election in 2032, Matt, I'm asking you genuinely, 2032, how many states do you think that you could color in right now and be reasonably confident in?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: At least 40, I'd say.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: 40, at least.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Probably 42.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like we know the swing states in the 2028 election right now, and we know them probably in 2032.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Everything else, you would take a marker right now to your presidential map in 2032.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that's true within almost all of the districts and almost all of the states for Senate elections as well.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: They're non-competitive elections.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: So how do we raise the competition in those elections?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: First, we can do away with closed primaries where only 15% of the most ardent loyal partisans show up to vote to choose who ultimately will be the winner in the general election.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um we can open them up to independents, we can open them up to uh Democrats, but even then you're facing a participation problem.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: So what else can we do?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: We can have conversations about proportional representation, where within a certain boundary or state, if your party gets 60% of the seats or votes, you get 60% of the seats for your state instead of just winner-take all in one district, where if you win by one vote, you get 100% of the power.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: That creates a very different dynamic in your elections.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: You can do what are called jungle primaries, like in California or Washington or Alaska, where the ones who advance out of the primaries are the top two vote getters regardless of party, meaning that you can have two Democrats face off each against each other in the general, meaning one is going to be more moderate than the other, appealing to Republicans.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a way to moderate who runs for the seats and who ultimately gets elected.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we can talk about campaign finance, which exacerbates all of these things.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: We can talk about regulation of social media, misinformation, disinformation.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: You can see the list is long and hard, but so are our challenges.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And if we want to have honest conversations about what to do with them, let's not pretend that these marginal fixes are going to create huge systemic changes.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: They're not.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: We have systemic problems and we should have systemic solutions.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a lot of times incremental changes are what get the ball rolling.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't necessarily have to solve the whole problem.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: What would be the first thing you you would focus on?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're a uh political strategist, among other things.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how would you be bringing two sides together to do things that they would see as being mutually beneficial to make our you might have asked me on the mutually beneficial part because at any given point, this is the hard part, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so my original answer to your question was going to be, especially in this last year where everyone's shaking their heads about this, where everyone knows it's wrong, is an anti-gerrymandering amendment is something that, again, if we're talking about consensus, this is a 90% plus issue from voters to even members who are actively gerrymandering.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: They know it's wrong, but they are not willing to put down their guns in this Cold War mentality if the other side's not willing to do theirs.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we can make a lot of steps of just saying, all right, gerrymandering is a federally and a legal, constitutionally banned process.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: Then we can get to drawing districts that can incentivize or better create competitive elections.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: It won't solve the whole thing.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I think people will be surprised at how uh few states gerrymander, even though a lot of the states getting the attention are big ones.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it can go a long way of at least saying, all right, we disagree on almost everything, but at least we can agree that you can't draw the boundaries to select voters rather than the other way around how it's supposed to work.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: One of our last, one of our early guests in the podcast, Jeremy Surrey, talked about gerrymandering to increase the competition level within uh within a district.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that that's reliant on the fact that you are so anytime you put partisan actors in charge of drawing boundaries, they're gonna act as partisans.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're surprised that they do, then boy, do I have many bridges to sell you.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so in his answer, he's saying, all right, let's put people in charge where their whole goal is to draw the most competitive districts.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: But at some point, those people are not going to be involved in the decision-making process anymore.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Or it can be corrupted by other people being added to the commission or people who pass get through the filtering process to be involved, and they're gonna, even if it's on the margins, just change the boundaries just enough.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm for one, am not uh putting my my entire faith in commissions who um soon will be made up by by other people.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: So so don't trust the experts just You can trust them now, but don't put your whole basket in their car and say uh I'm gonna be hungry later.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right, fair enough.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that was my follow-up question, though.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any chance of implementing some of these changes in the in the current political environment?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's say you want to take the issue of gerrymandering.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we'd be better off politically, we'd have a more robust democracy if people actually were represented as opposed to just being chosen as uh as the voters for a given candidate.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um what would be your strategy?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about messaging, you talk about the politics, you talk about the story, which is certainly related to the messaging.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: What would you do first?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Man, because this would require a constitutional amendment, right?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And which is one of the huge threats.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: We've only had 27 of them in our entire 250-year history, and two of them are related to alcohol, right?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like these is a really high bar to pass.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh you'd have to just really be cognizant of the fact that you have to go through Republican and Democratic states to get the sufficient threshold uh to ratify a constitutional amendment that even has a huge bar within Congress themselves.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is you talk about incremental change.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh this is one of the processes is like you can start this conversation now, but it would take probably multiple Congresses just to get it out of Congress to then go back to the state legislatures where three fourths of them have to ratify it.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: So my first step would obviously be introducing that that amendment legislation within Congress, or go the other route where you have a new constitutional convention, which sounds impossible until it isn't anymore.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so you got to get people running on pledges and platforms of these things where they put their name attached to it saying, I will, if elected, do X, Y, and Z.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Then you have something to compare it to.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: This is why the contract of with America was so so it ended up not being as powerful as we remember it in history, but it did attach these people's reputations to what they would do in office before they ever got to office.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: We're too late, oftentimes, in our advocacy, where we wait for people to be elected, then go in and ask them to do something for us.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Pre-pledges uh are something that have proven to be effective if for no other reason than reputationally for these people who want to be around in this type of job.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: So getting politicians to pledge uh support to the same uh type of amendment or same type of gerrymandering ban uh across the board, not many different competing types of uh proposals.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: One proposal pre-pledges would uh at least have some measure of accountability, which right now there's not strong enough ones of.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, democracy is in theory about uh joint problem solving to support the common interests of the of the electorate.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I wonder if you might just talk about some examples of of people in Congress uh who you think are particularly admirable in really reaching out to try to listen to one another, uh to find shared stories, to find shared objectives, and to collaborate constructively both within their caucus and across the aisle.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: This is gonna sound like a cop-out answer, but the reality, I I work with a lot of these members a lot.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so when these types of name the the good and the bad, um, there are very good members at different things.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna be reluctant to name members who are the best legislators because it really depends on the issue and it really depends on their electoral circumstances.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen good legislators turn to be bad legislators when election time came around, or that they were just playing the game when their votes required them of it.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: But what I will say is pay attention to the ones who are not in the news.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you see their names over and over and over again, they're playing a performance game.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: They're not wrong to do it necessarily, but they're not playing the legislative game.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: The ones who are introducing legislation with co-sponsors before it even hits the floor, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Before it's even introduced.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: So when it's introduced and they have 90 people signing the bill with them, that takes so much coalition building.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: It takes so much work at a relationship level to get people, especially if the co-sponsors are of a different party, to join you on a vehicle.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: That takes so much good faith relationship building that is not created on a Tuesday.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is a years-long process.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Find the ones who are introducing legislation regularly, not just at the beginning of a Congress or when something is high profile.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's something that they have a bill ready to go and they've done the work with co-sponsors.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Go find your member of Congress and look at their legislative activity.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: If they sponsored two, three, four bills and they're only talking about national issues rather than something really specific, then that's an indication that they're trying to get a headline and a press release rather than actually move something.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I think rather than naming people, go find people who are you are uh have votes to give to or withhold from and see what their history is.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Are they tweeting more than they are asking good questions in hearings?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: Watch how they question witnesses in hearings.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: If their whole goal seems to be loud and confrontational and say, gotcha to the witness, then that is a signal that they're not looking for a back and forth with experts who can inform their either oversight prerogatives or their policy-making uh prerogatives.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: How they act in Congress, especially when the cameras are on, will give you a huge indication of how they behave behind the scenes.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because if they're behaving well in front of the cameras when there's not much to gain for doing so, that's a that's a great, great indicator that they're doing even more of that work behind the scenes.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Casey, this has been such an informative and thought-provoking conversation.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've really, really enjoyed it.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna close with just a couple of brief questions.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in our last episode, we ended up uh hearing a lot about your worries about democratic backsliding, not only in the United States, but in many countries uh around the world these days.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: What makes you hopeful about the future of American democracy?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: I I hope to see you nodding with this.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: I know you're recently retired, Matt, but you were in the classroom as well.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: And my hope often, and it has for a while, comes from students, right?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like when you're in the classroom, there is an energy.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: As much as they get a bad rap for being complacent and lazy and expecting the world without having to work for it.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in my classroom, I mean, there is an energy, there is a motion, rotation of just unacceptance of the status quo.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you guys are old, you screwed it up, it is up to us to fix it.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, all right, fine.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's have some creative ideas.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: So they are the most creative, they are the most digitally savvy, which sometimes can backfire, especially in academic settings.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they are the most tolerant, they are the most willing to uh uh think of outside the box in an instance where the box is really getting smaller and smaller.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I am hopeful because of the the energy that students bring, and I'm hopeful because of just the the silver lining of the the widespread disgust with politics means people are paying attention at least enough.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: The hardest thing to do is get people to pay attention.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now, are they paying attention because the the social media algorithms are uh are firing them up, knowing that engagement follows that?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, probably, but give me the attention uh because then I can we can start to have conversations about what's really wrong versus what's wrong on Instagram, uh, about who is working for for the general welfare versus their next talking head segment.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: The the hope is coming from the attention because I know how hard it is to keep to get and keep people's attention on something about politics where most people just want to disengage.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Second question.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: What's the elevator speech that you give to politicians and political operatives about how to strengthen democratic governance in America?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: Man, how long is my elevator ride?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is where it's really frustrating.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: This is where it's really frustrating, is because one of the things that just makes my skin crawl uh with politicians, and this is what makes people hate politics, is that who they are in front of the camera is too often different than who they are behind the scenes.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have members of Congress who I can text and be like, man, I wish I didn't have to do that.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: And my response is, you don't.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: You literally don't have to do that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: You do not have to perpetuate what you know to be wrong.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're doing that, go find another job.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Go find a different one.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: If your whole goal is to stay in power and you will do whatever it takes to do it, go find something else.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: There is something, there are much worse jobs than being a former member of Congress.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so my elevator pitch to them is be willing to lose.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Be willing to lose.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: At least you'll go down fighting for something you believe in and an issue, you will advance it.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: The history book, not there's been thousands and thousands of members, very few of them have been uh remembered.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: The ones who have, more often than not, they're remembered because they lost.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: They stood up and fought for something.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: And if your fight is for democracy itself, I can think of no better legacy to leave behind in an instance, in a time where we need a lot more help.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Casey Burgett, thanks so much for your time.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: This has been an incredibly stimulating conversation.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I'm really happy to have you as a guest on the America's Why Podcast.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it, Matt.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for the time.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the America's Why Podcast.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our music is by James Fernando.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: For more information and to join the conversation, please visit our website at America's Why Project.com.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.