Convention Conversations: NPI catches up with U.S. Representative Kim Schrier

Edi­tor’s Note: On Fri­day, June 24th and Sat­ur­day, June 25th, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty held its 2022 con­ven­tion in the City of Des­tiny at the Greater Taco­ma Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. The staff of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute trav­eled to Taco­ma to speak with par­ty lead­ers and elect­ed offi­cials about the work they’re doing in advance of the midterm elections. 

This is one of those Con­ven­tion Con­ver­sa­tions, fea­tur­ing Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schri­er, D‑Washington. Press play below to lis­ten to the audio, or read the tran­script below. You can use the link in this para­graph to access the oth­er install­ments that we record­ed from the con­ven­tion hall. 

Listen to the conversation

Press play to begin lis­ten­ing; use the slid­er to the right to adjust the volume.

Read the transcript

Note: Tran­script has been light­ly edit­ed for clarity. 

CAYA BERNDT: Wel­come to Con­ven­tion Con­ver­sa­tions, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series from the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute record­ed live from the 2022 Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion in Taco­ma. I’m your host, Caya Berndt; we’re glad to have you with us! For this install­ment, we are hon­ored to be joined by Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schri­er, who rep­re­sents the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict and is seek­ing a third term in Congress.

Wel­come, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Schrier!

REPRESENTATIVE SCHRIER: Thank you, Caya. It’s great to be here.

CAYA BERNDT: First ques­tion that I have for you — just a ques­tion that I’ve been ask­ing every­body today — is that the Top Two elec­tion is just a few weeks away. Bal­lots are being dropped any minute to voters.

Tell me, how is your cam­paign going?

REPRESENTATIVE SCHRIER: Well, the cam­paign’s going great. I am very clear.: I that this is gonna be a tough elec­tion and tough year. But I am so excit­ed. We’ve got a ton of vol­un­teers, knock­ing doors, mak­ing phone calls, and I’m excit­ed to com­mu­ni­cate to the 8th Dis­trict and parts of the state that were not in the 8th Dis­trict [before redis­trict­ing] about what I’ve been up to and how I can help.

CAYA BERNDT: What are your pri­or­i­ties for the next two years, should you be reelect­ed? What would you most like to accomplish?

REPRESENTATIVE SCHRIER: Well, I think you can tell my pri­or­i­ties for the next two years by look­ing at some of the things that I’ve been work­ing on already and real­ly mak­ing it a pri­or­i­ty to work with both par­ties to deliv­er for the district.

And this includes every­thing from an infra­struc­ture bill that is bring­ing salmon pas­sage to Howard Hansen dam and a safer inter­sec­tion of High­way 18 and Inter­state 90 to work­ing to bring down the cost of insulin and make peo­ple’s lives a lit­tle bet­ter. I’m excit­ed about what I’ve been able to do so far. We just passed a gas goug­ing bill to make sure that peo­ple are not tak­en advan­tage of by Big Oil. I’m doing every­thing I can to make peo­ple’s lives a lit­tle eas­i­er when prices are high right now.

CAYA BERNDT: That flows nice­ly into my next ques­tion. You did men­tion the con­sumer fuel price goug­ing pre­ven­tion act that you spon­sored. There’s been a cou­ple of oth­er bills that the house has passed to address the cost of liv­ing, [like] the Low­er Food and Fuel Costs Act, which many peo­ple may not be as famil­iar with because they haven’t received a lot of media cov­er­age. Can you sum­ma­rize what these bills do and how they could help Amer­i­cans who are grap­pling with ris­ing prices?

REPRESENTATIVE SCHRIER: Absolute­ly. I think fun­da­men­tal­ly what peo­ple need to know is, we get that every­body’s hurt­ing right now. We feel it at the gas sta­tion and we feel it at the gro­cery store. I mean, every­thing is more expen­sive right now. And so I’ve real­ly tak­en this on to see what I can do to make life a lit­tle eas­i­er for peo­ple. And one of the ways is the con­sumer price goug­ing pro­tec­tion act, which basi­cal­ly says in a fuel emer­gency, it allows the FEC to crack down on oil com­pa­nies that are price goug­ing. And you know, all you need to do is look at a cou­ple num­bers to know that some­thing fishy is going on. Right?

When we are pay­ing record prices that gas pump and gas and oil com­pa­nies are mak­ing record prof­its — like high­er than the last ten years kind of prof­its — and return­ing that to their shareholders.

They’re doing stock buy­backs rather than giv­ing us some relief of the pump. I think we need to have some pres­sure on them to make our lives easier.

And then, the Fuel and Food Act: This allows things like ethanol 15, which is cheap­er than pre­mi­um gas. It also helps farm­ers who are pay­ing high prices for fer­til­iz­er right now. And it helps meat pro­duc­ers who are pay­ing a very high cost for pro­cess­ing, but not real­ly get­ting any reward finan­cial­ly themselves.

CAYA BERNDT: Thank you. Yes­ter­day, the Supreme court over­turned Roe v. Wade. Can you sum­ma­rize what House Democ­rats are doing to defend Amer­i­cans’ repro­duc­tive rights right now?

REPRESENTATIVE SCHRIER: Yep. First let me just say that I am absolute­ly furi­ous that they just over­turned fifty years of prece­dent. That they took away a right that women have lived with and become accus­tomed to, and real­ly inter­nal­ized for the, for the past half a century.

And, you know what this means for women in half the states in this coun­try is that they will not have access to abor­tion unless they are wealthy enough to be able to fly to anoth­er state or dri­ve to anoth­er state and have it done there.

This is a com­mon pro­ce­dure that one out of four women under forty-five has done. And to make this inac­ces­si­ble is… I mean, it’s just infu­ri­at­ing to me. It takes away a wom­an’s abil­i­ty to con­trol her own life and des­tiny, and to choose when and if to have a child.

That said, let me tell you some of the things that we’ve already done, we passed the wom­en’s health pro­tec­tion act, which essen­tial­ly makes row the law of the land.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, none of the Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate — and two Democ­rats in the Sen­ate — did not sup­port that bill. And so we will con­tin­ue to try again and we need big­ger majori­ties. And so if you’re won­der­ing what Democ­rats will do, give us big­ger majori­ties and we will show you.

CAYA BERNDT: Okay, thank you. And mov­ing on to vot­ing rights: Are there any actions Con­gress could take through the bud­get­ing process, also known as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, to shore up vot­ing rights, which are under attack in Repub­li­can con­trolled states?

REPRESENTATIVE SCHRIER: I have not heard any sug­ges­tions about using rec­on­cil­i­a­tion specif­i­cal­ly to work on vot­ing rights. Joe Manchin is essen­tial­ly the keep­er of all secrets rec­on­cil­i­a­tion right now. But I could imag­ine being able to use that in a bud­getary way… rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is tied to bud­gets, but if you said you could put a cer­tain num­ber of dol­lars toward help­ing states do mail and bal­lots, those kinds of things you pos­si­bly could use it. I have to say, I have not heard this [idea] yet, but I will take it back to Con­gress and ask.

CAYA BERNDT: And then, just one more quick ques­tion for you is that in the cur­rent Con­gress, one of your areas of focus has been crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, espe­cial­ly access to clean drink­ing water. So can you talk about the leg­is­la­tion you’ve been devel­op­ing to enable local gov­ern­ments to invest in pipes, irri­ga­tion, facil­i­ties, and treat­ment plants need­ed for Wash­ing­ton’s farms, fam­i­lies, and busi­ness­es thrive?

REPRESENTATIVE SCHRIER: Yes, this is, this is called WIFIA [Water Infra­struc­ture Finance and Inno­va­tion Act]. That’s the short name for the water infra­struc­ture fund­ing [bill]. And the idea here is that, you know, when [we] embark on a big infra­struc­ture project, espe­cial­ly if it involves water, [or] waste­water treat­ment, it is a very cost­ly endeav­or, and the abil­i­ty to finance that upfront and pay that off over fifty-five years instead of thir­ty makes all the dif­fer­ence in the world on whether a com­mu­ni­ty can afford to do this.

And so these are projects that will con­serve water that will make sure we have clean drink­ing water, and that we’ll do waste water treat­ment all with the abil­i­ty to finance them.

CAYA BERNDT: Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Schri­er, it’s great to be able to catch up with you. Thanks for tak­ing the time to talk with us about your cam­paign. If you enjoyed this pod­cast, we invite you to check out our oth­er Con­ven­tion Conversations.

For NPI, I’m Caya Berndt. Take care!