Five Minutes With: Sen. Charles Schumer
By Keisha Senter, Campus Progress
Following his 1998 victory over incumbent New York mainstay Senator Al D’Amato, Chuck Schumer solidified his stature as New York’s senior Senator last November when he was re-elected with over 70% of the vote- the highest ever for a Senate race in that state. As a Senator, Schumer has led on issues like judges, crime, homeland security, and consumer protection. Schumer talked with Campus Progress about filibusters, keeping young people progressive, and New York on $20 and 30 miles a day.
You’ve been one of the leaders in the fight to keep extreme judges off the federal bench. What is your response to Sen. Frist’s effort to change the senate rules?
Well, I think Senator Frist is sort of acting like a kid who doesn’t win the game and then wants to change the rules. Or, let’s put it this way- as one of my colleagues said, if we have approved 205 of 215 judges, that’s 95 percent. If your child came home and said “I got a 95%,” would you say that’s great or would you say “change the rules so you can get 100?” Of course you’d say it’s great, because 95% is very high for George Bush, and yet the hard, hard-right extremists, way off the deep end, are pushing the Republican Party to an untenable position where they say “unless we get 100% of the judges we want to change everything.” And now what they want to do is get rid of one of the major checks and balances our founding fathers put in the government.
What would you suggest students do to let Washington know that they disagree with Frist’s proposal?
I think you should deluge Senator Frist’s office and all the Republican senators. And let me name some senators; if you’re in these states they should particularly get your message because they’re Republican senators, and to their credit they haven’t yet said they’d go for the nuclear option. I think they know it’s wrong, but they’re under a lot of pressure. You should e-mail or write or call Senator Collins of Maine, Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, Senator Warner of Virginia, Senator DeWine of Ohio, Senator Smith of Oregon, Senator Hagel of Nebraska, and Senator Chafee of Rhode Island, and let them know that you do not want them to be for the nuclear option.
In the last election, young people supported the more progressive candidate by a clear margin. But, Winston Churchill said “if you’re not a liberal at 20 you don’t have a heart and if you’re not a conservative at 40 you don’t have a brain.” What’s to keep this generation from sliding into conservatism, and what will political leaders like you do to keep this from happening?
Well, the best thing we can do is talk to people about their real needs, and when the Democratic Party does that, we win. People trust us on the meat and potato issues far more than they trust Republicans- issues like jobs, and education, and health care. But when we get lost and just talk to one another, the average person says “what does this have to do with me” then people get apathetic, and once they get apathetic they tend to slide towards conservative. So we can get people involved, listen to their ideas, but most of all let them know the government can really do some good for them. For instance, I wrote a law that allows $4,000 of tuition to be deductible from taxes. Those kinds of laws, that directly affect people and make their lives better, is what we should focus on.
Speaking of which, with the rise of education and student debt, what role can the federal government play to help students?
Well, the other thing we should do is make sure we fund education from K through 12 and then through college as best we can. The greatest problem America faces right now, in my judgment, is that we don’t have the number one education system in the world. We used to; we don’t anymore. If we don’t improve we’re going to lose jobs, we’re going to lose wealth, we’re going to lose the kind of society we’ve always had.
President Bush has spent the last 60 days promoting a plan that made progressives feel we’re endangering social security. Advocates of privatization are targeting young people. What would you say about his proposal to young Americans?
My first message is, under the Bush plan, you would get far less than your current benefits even under present law, if we did nothing for social security. And my second message is this: when you need something vitally, you don’t risk it in the stock market, because while the stock market might go up it also might go down. My wife and I saved for our kids’ college education. We put a small amount away each month, and the government doesn’t tell us where to put it, but we don’t put it in the stock market, because it might go down and we would lose this investment which our kids very much need. If anything, you need retirement even more than you need college education, because you don’t have an income and you need to feed yourself.
In the last election, you effectively avoided facing any serious challenge. It certainly helped that you shattered fundraising records and amassed a campaign war chest of over 27 million dollars. Putting aside your popularity in New York and the fact that you were the better candidate, do you think it’s a good idea for money to play such an important role in political races?
I wish it didn’t. Obviously races in New York cost a whole lot, and when I started out people said either Rudy Giuliani or George Pataki would run against me, so I had to protect myself. But it would be a lot better if we had real limits on how much people could raise and spend, if TV costs were lower, and if we had public financing of campaigns.
It’s almost summer in New York City. You have $20 and a free Sunday. What do you do?
I’d ride my bike 30-40 miles from Brooklyn, where I live, to Manhattan, to the Bronx, to Queens. I love going on bike rides. You see the city and the people. It’s my little island of peace and I try to do it every weekend. With the $20 I guess I’ll buy some food after the bike ride.