Transcripts For CSPAN Senator 20240706 : vimarsana.com

Experience as a lawmaker. You making the decision that he wanted to come to washington and served in congress, you had a successful business in South Carolina. Why was this institution something that interested you . To be honest, it was not. I wanted to stay in South Carolina and had embarked upon a race for the senate and governor and stayed in town fulltime. The more i campaigned, the more people told me that they thought i would be a Better Congress member. Ultimately, my congressman who was running for reelection decided to retire in the middle of reelection in february 2010. After much prayer and a lot of phone calls, i thought the people were right and i switched over to become a congressman. That was the impetus of the switch, the Health Care Law and my desire to see a guy who spent 23 years within the Insurance Industry want to make sure that had the opportunity to make their health cares decisions in the private sector. The impetus is that thinking coming here, one person can make a difference in the space . Certainly the echo chamber needed more voices and having experience in a part of that, they would be important. I was not necessarily naive enough to think that one person could change it overnight, but i believe the beauty of our country is that one person can make a difference. Why dont you talk to me about that . We are trying to understand what role this institution has in society today. I think it is perhaps the most unique governing body in the world. We empower the minorities and representatives in a way that very few other legislative bodies do. And we do that out of a conscientious approach. I think that the role we play, we have a microphone that is significant and important. We have millions of folks who Pay Attention to cspan. And we have an opportunity to raise issues. And the need to thing about being a member of congress is that something if a member gets something across, they can make a difference in that issue important to other folks because of the microphone they have. It is ultimately the ability to persuade and then to hopefully build a coalition of folks of likeminded thinkers in the senate and at home that will coalesce around the issues you find important. What can you tell me about what you did learn about the differences between the two institutions . There is no question the house is a more centralized body, whereas the senate, we are certainly more the power structure is spread across the senators more evenly where there is a hierarchy that exists in the house. I would like to say just because of the nature, the house is more like a football team. The coach, captains, and quarterback will make most of the decisions. The senate are the track team. Everyone is running their individual races, and hopefully if you have enough folks in the race on your team, you score victories and you get more points. The reality is that the centralized command laws of folks. Sometimes it takes an awful lot of laps around the tracks before you get to your ultimate victory line. Coming from private business, were you surprised of how long the wheels of progress would take on this . Absolutely surprising. Without question, when you were a ceo of a Small Company like i was, my decisions were made and everyone followed them. Here, the president or the leader of the senate can make a decision and nobody follows it. It is just the way that we are designed where you have different senators who all believe they are in charge to some extent, and then you have an administration that puts all of that together. It can be a little chaotic, but that is the meaning of a democracy if you live in a republic to have voices of all the people and we come here assuming that we have the ability to hopefully persuade people to follow. The beauty of our democracy is the fact that it does take longer than we think it would take sometimes, but in the end, we have a Consistent Movement in the right direction even though sometimes we take a step or two back. Coming into the senate with limited experience in federal government, did you have someone that helped you along the way . Combo burn was assigned to me as a mentor when i first came to the senate. Tom bo byrne was assigned to me as a mentor when i first came to the state. We also had john marotta who took up the mental and served in the first took up the m antle. Being appointed, you run immediately and then for the full term. He was prepared to mentor me politically and from a legislative standpoint. He appreciated the nuances of the body which were helpful for me to be able to embrace the leadership now and realize where i am trying to go, he has already been. That was very powerful. And we both share a common bond around certain mentors we have been listening to for years. We have tapes, dvds, ncds, and we both listen to guys that we both love. Can you tell me who they are . One is a business philosopher. A lot of times talking about how important their work has been in both of our lives before we met, and that gave us a hopeful understanding and appreciative of how the body functions from the perspective. That is interesting because the senator is a doctor. He did not come from a business background and you found common background in your mentors. He fell asleep at 4 00 a. M. And i fell asleep at 2 00 a. M. A lot of things to get started, so we were able to bridge the gap and find that Common Ground on our approach, and even the quotes that we use sometimes. He says that sometimes some things are more important than others, but everything is important. We both have the same foundation that allows for us to communicate effectively and quickly with each other. The public must think when they look at this institution based on the public Approval Ratings that they are pretty dismal. They are hovering around 20. Better than last year. [laughter] so that this place is perhaps somewhat dysfunctional. Can you tell us what it is really like from the inside versus what the public would see through the lens of the media . Unfortunately i think the media shows what is selling, and chaos sells better than it ever has and the attraction people have to soap opera life narratives. The hind the scenes, what i have found is that the vast majority of republicans and democrats, i know them pretty well when i go to the Senate Breakfast dining and the bottom line is there almost every morning. We have a very cordial conversation and chat and the Ranking Member on the subcommittee of housing, we find ourselves enjoying each Others Company in a social way. We dont always agree on the issues. The fact of the matter of camaraderie is that you do not always see if you are watching any of the news channels, it does exist here. The second thing that is interesting is most legislation that makes it to the floor onto the president s desk is going to be a Bipartisan Legislation because the power of the minority and the 60 vote threshold on legislation requires and encourages there to be cooperation on both sides, which is a fabulous tool to make us work together. Unfortunately, the 10 or 15 of the issues we do not agree on our the issues that are always highlighted. The things that get done in the senate are done because there is a Bipartisan Coalition that makes it so. Talking about the 60 vote threshold, did you support the change in rules for the senate . November 2013, we saw that harry reid changed that to the option for the 60 vote threshold. All live with the results of that. It is the way that it is, so we are not going to break the rules to change rules back. We have to live with the environment that has been. And for the most recent change on the supreme court, certainly there is no question that our president on the left had decided to filibuster this nominee, so changes in the rules would affect the supreme court. Some members of the senate say it is a glide past against a simple majority for passing legislation. Would you agree with that . There are a few senators who have already signed a letter saying they will not ever negotiate on the 60 vote threshold on legislation. Would you explain why that is important to the institution . If you want to make sure that all voices in the country are heard as elected representatives to the United States senate, particularly on issues of legislation, is to reinforce the success of the 60 vote threshold on legislation. The importance of it does provide the minority some opportunity to rein in the majority, which is important. I feel like it is a provocative task as a nation from civil rights to civil war. We may be sitting in a very different nation had there not been the notion that the senate is that which cools within the cup. So the whole concept was one about the ability to slow things down and make it more methodical and make folks think through their decisions longterm. How much of that did you know before you came here and how much of it did you grow to appreciate while serving . I took a law course in college and i am sure attacked me something about the senate. I am sure it taught me something about the senate. Firsthand experience taught me more than the academic pursuit, so being in the senate teaches you more than you learned in class about how you function as a governing body. You waited until july to make your maiden speech on the senate floor, and i watched it yesterday. You spoke about your mentors, your mother, and a businessman from South Carolina who helped you, and how your own biography shaped what he will bring to this institution. What you will bring to this institution. Let me back up to you taking the oath for the first time. What was that like for you . It was an amazing experience, when i had never dreamed of. One i had never dreamed of. It was nerveracking and peaceful at the same time. Peaceful is a night peaceful in that i prayed on where i was going and i did not hear from the governor for several days. She had the opportunity to appoint someone and it was sunday before the monday morning when she appointed me that i had my first chat with her. I had already come to the conclusion that this was never going to happen. Fast forward three weeks later, i have my hand on the bible, my other hand in the air. It was definitely unbelievable. And the daunting responsibility of being a United States senator , looking for ways for a country to look forward and think about legislative priorities based on our personal history was nerveracking and exciting. At the same time, having my mother there who raised two boys in a singleparent household, worked 16 hours a day, and wanted something more for us to be relevant in this society, to think of her joy and the pride that she felt to realize that in many ways, i was living my mothers American Dream while they paved the path forward to making this a special occasion. Being a u. S. Senator for me will look better as i look back at that experience when i am no longer a u. S. Senator because every day it has been interesting. But you are in the moment, so even during that first swearing in ceremony, you are looking forward to what is next and not necessarily appreciating the gravity of the Actual Experience of the swearing in. Having taken the oath, what was it like walking into the Senate Chamber for the first time as a senator . It was amazing. You look around and everything is bigger and you look around this amazing body and think about the senators who have come before you and think about South Carolina. We had a strong servant who was a master of the filibuster. You think about senator hollings who was a great man and served for 36 years for a long period of time. You think about the civil rights and civil worriers warriors. You think about having the responsibility to declare war and invoke conflict areas. You think about the economic reality of trying to find our way to build the culture that is producing for growth. You think about the magnitude of all the issues and insert yourself into that conversation. A humbling experience and one that also was very exciting. So when you worked on your maiden speech, how long did you work on it . When did you decide this was the direction i wanted to go . I was patient. I wanted the body to talk less, think more, and listen as carefully for as long as possible. So i decided it was time to come forward with a maiden speech and i wanted to remind them of where i am and who sent me here, and my life story had to do with that. For me, when i talk to my fellow senators and my friends in the senate, it appears most of us have the important time that is who we are. Have that point in time that is who we are. And that point in time teams to inform on many of the things we fight for seems to inform on many of the things we fight for. For me, growing up in poverty in a singleparent household watching mom work, that framed my worldview in many ways. So i tried to fight for that from a conservative perspective, those kids trapped where i was and others who are working longer hours and fighting to make ways work. I am fighting for them. Was that first speech nerves making . Was it something you had to get over . Definitely something you had to get over. I had 15 years in Training Programs and speaking for a very long time, so it was not as nerveracking as it could have been, but when you are on the floor of the senate, the weight of responsibility is very present. And i still have reference for that floor when delivering speeches. For me, i think of it as a tremendous honor and a great responsibility to deliver a speech to the country on the floor of the senate. And the maiden speech was like nothing else. Certainly exciting and instructive. There were a lot of instructions for me on my speech to remind me of what i will hold myself accountable to doing and accomplishing. Was your mother is in the chamber . She was not. She watched it. She was watching on cspan. The senate is full of history. Whose desk do you have . There were a number of other senators in their, but i always wanted to find strong staff and be part of the historical. Why him . What a unique character in American History from a public perspective. Here is a guy who was a segregationist who ran for president based on a Court Conviction that was in complete contradiction to a personal narrative, which i think is honestly consistent with people. Sometimes our public persona and our personal lives can be in conflict. And i think his was in many ways. I believe that as time went on, he evolved as a person. Here is a guy who was a segregationist and won the naacp awards who ended up receiving the endorsement of africanamerican mayors throughout South Carolina. Someone suggested he even received 30 of the africanamerican vote in his later years. That transformation in public life was remarkable. So he served to be 100 years old , nearly a day long plus filibuster, a lot of history. He was the chairman of the Armed Services committee. There are so many parts of who he was to the legislative public and to be able to have your name named after his, it is quite a powerful thought. I am not sure i would have earlier, but in the 1996 campaign, i ended up being the vice chairman of his reelection. I could see how far he had come and he invited me to participate in his class run. I would not have known the 1996 that in 2013, i would be in the body and in one of the seats that he had occupied for so long. On your wikipedia page, this is the second paragraph. Scott is one of three africanamerican senators serving in the United States senate. Is the first black republican elected to the United States senate since the election of Edward Brooks in 1996. He is the first republican africanamerican congressman from South Carolina since 1897 and since the passage of the Voting Rights act. He is also the first africanamerican to have been elected in the u. S. House of representatives and the u. S. Senate since pbf pitch back in 1972. What does all of that mean to you and to the institution . It reflects that we are still in an era where one person has lots of firsts, and that is important to the history, so that makes it important to the body. For me, that is not nearly as important with what i do then what i look like. How much melon and is in my skin is not as important to me. I am very proud to be an africanamerican. I live in a country that has evolved from a place where i am able to be in the United States senate. I am proud that charlston and South Carolina has also evolved and transformed to a place where in 2010 when i ran against john bowman in the heart of the first shot of the civil war, i was able to be successful in that campaign. That tells me that who we are as a nation, our South Carolina heart has been transformed in a way that people who lived just 50 years ago would say is impossible. So it says something about the nation. I also believe that what i stand for and what i fight for is far more important than what i look like. For me, what i try to do is not focus on the race side of issues, but focus on Common Solutions that work for anyone anywhere at anytime in america. If i can transcend the racial conversation, i can have nuggets of legislation and a position that makes my color irrelevant. Then i will have done what needed to be done. Given that philosophy, just to help people understand, right now 3 of the senate is africanamerican, 21 is female. I am wondering if the presence of that 3 and 21 makes a difference on how this institution functions . Absolutely. This is the 115th congress, one of five with the house and the senate combined come from a diverse background. The country is making progress in the right direction. Our country serves us, which is a phenomenal statement, and the senate specifically having Kamala Harris from california, my good friend cory booker from jersey, from texas, ted cruz and marco rubio, all from hispanic origins. Here you have a real combination of america. You think of the senator from hawaii and ocasiocortez from new york. You think of all of these officials and they are not necessarily elected by the states collectively, which is a powerful statement to the world of the advancement of america. I also believe the number of women in the senate speaks to the leadership of women in america. I have at home in South Carolina what we call a womens and Leadership Institute that i started a couple of years ago to encourage more women to be involved with public life. The reality of it is, our senate is better and more diverse and our footprint is larger because of the diversity we bring into the body. One aspect we talk about a lot is your faith. The United States senate has a chaplain. There is a prayer group of members that meet and i am wondering how you as a public official square that and talk about it openly with our constitutional separation of church and state. That is very easy. The constitution is designed to make sure we protect our church from the state, not our faith from the public force. There is a reason why our currency has in god we trust on it. And why our legislation is based on the 10 commandments. Judaism christian is undeniable to the foundation of our nation. The good news is you can be an american and not practice any specific faith because our government does not require it like so many governments throughout the world, but if we are going to be a successful nation, we have to have a core set of values. Our values that raise diversity and allows you to practice worship in any way you want to in the senate or house or in your home, and that should be protected. My time is short and i have a lot of questions, so i will give you a number of questions paid i want to be respectful of that. You reconcile your work on five full committees in the senate. I wonder about allocation of time, very different from the house committees. That is one of the challenges of being a senator. So much of what we do, while you can take a bill to the floor, the reality of it is that unless there is some major delay, getting it passed in concept. Most of the hard work is done in committees. That is on finance, banking, health and labor, as well as office of aging, and you have a place full of work that needs to be done that leads to working six to seven days a week and three or four hours of study and i study a night. The good news is my background in insurance and private services prepared me in many ways for my service on those committees, so i had the good fortune of being assigned committees where my experience lends itself to understanding and appreciating what is happening on those committees. It you can become an expert in one sliver of something much quicker than you can with the work floor we have as senators. You are very active on social media, how is it legislating in the age of social media . As i said i have more likes than my legislation, people care more about who you are than what you are doing at times. If you step out of the folks that follow you there very loud and energetic in their opposition is sometimes as energetic as their support, in most often its those that dont agree with you that stand up and shout and those who do. It is an interesting combination of how to present yourself through the media of technology but it is an important part of understanding where we are going as well because if you dont have a large presence then you are out of sync with the average person in the country and if you want to communicate with that person where they are you have to go the way they communicate. For me it has been an interesting experience and an exciting one that i have a chance to connect with kids and have the conversation about legislation and talk about something that is important and emotional issue and that we can talk about the issues that are important of the day. One of the downsides of course with the internet and social media is it is an anonymous form for people who hate. How do you in public life process that aspect . We have had plenty of it. We have shared on the floor and senate some of the tweets we have received of racial hatred that are venomous towards me and other elected officials. As a member of the house we had to shut our phones down because we received so many racially derogatory calls during the 2011 budget control act vote. It is interesting to see the impact of technology on what we are doing and how we do it, in the end we are going to have to learn as a nation how to embrace new technology and harness how we use it. I have a question for you, what is the single most momentous vote you have cast since becoming a senator . The biggest vote probably are some of the budget deals we have done, they have been painful because there is a lot of good and a whole lot of bad in any of the omnibuss. We are on a perpetual scale for continued resolutions or omnibus which means we are not following the regular order of getting our bills through committee and then bringing it through the floor one at a time so we have these hodgepodge legislation that are clear as mud and at the end of the day several hundred pages if not thousands of pages long so you have 72 hours to read through it all. Those are some of the more difficult votes because you certainly cannot know what all is in the legislation because i think if there is no clarity, the smarter, wiser vote is a no consistently. Unless there is an unusual circumstance that requires us to fund our troops or fund our military operations or something that is consistent with our Founding Fathers perspective on our responsibilities. Finally since this is an institution that operates on consensus and with a couple hundred years of tradition, if you could change anything about how it operates what would it be . If i could change anything about how it operates, i would get more legislation passed. Ultimately it is interesting, i dont think it was a mistake for us to change the rules as it relates to the nominations. We are very much a personnel body, we have to make the personnel decisions for government and if we had more cooperation from both sides when either side is in the minority, i think it would be healthier for the country. You get the sense that used to be more in this is a particular time . I do think if we were to look at all the factors that are leading us in the direction we are going, i would say it is a couple things. The notions one of our Founding Fathers spoke about the fact that the ability to legislate, to pass legislation that gives you more of what you want without having to pay for it, is a dangerous place to be in the second thing is almost everything comes down to what someone outside, some Interest Group, not interest not your voters but an Interest Group says your voters think, the outweighed impact of groups that score legislation, groups that tell senators how to vote, is an interesting dynamic in the conversation today. I think today if the tea party was on my side which i was part of with the new Indivisible Group on the left, leads those parties away from each other and i am not sure how healthy that will be