Modernizing Congress with Rep. Derek Kilmer

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Update on CDC Survey Results

  • Rep. Derek Kilmer on Modernizing Congress

  • Outside of Politics: Quirky National Holidays

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EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're going to talk about a very interesting update on the CDC Youth Risk Behavior survey that we recently talked about on the show. Then we're going to share our conversation with Representative Derek Kilmer from Washington's sixth Congressional District about his work as the chair of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. And our conversation with Representative Kilmer took a delightful turn, that we are going to share Outside of Politics today that we can't wait for you to hear.  

Beth [00:00:54] Before we begin, we're so close to the premiere of the final season of Succession, which we are going to be recapping and analyzing on our premium channels. Succession really sits at the intersection of so many fascinating conversations that we have here on the podcast about politics and media and wealth and status, and we cannot wait to expand those through this show with our premium community. So, you can find all the links in the show notes about how to be part of those conversations.  

Sarah [00:01:23] Up next, the CDC survey and the headlines it provoked about teen mental health. Last month we had Dr. Kathleen Ethier on the show. She and I sat down about her work at the CDC on the Youth Risk Behavior Survey and some pretty alarming statistics from that survey, specifically with regards to teen girls and sexual assault. You probably saw these statistics. They were everywhere, all over the headlines about this reported dramatic rise in the percentage of teen girls who had been sexually assaulted. Well, thanks to the reporting of the Washington Post's fact checkers, we are learning that these numbers were the result of rounding more precise decimal points and overestimating the increase and the fact that several schools leave out those specific questions. And so, the sample size was affected. All that to say, Beth, it looks like this dramatic increase was not so dramatic.  

Beth [00:02:23] Not to say it still isn't a problem that any teenage girl is being subjected to sexual violence in any context. I'm sure that these numbers are still underreported. That's what everything we know about sexual assault suggest. But when we're talking about a rounding error, it's several rounding errors that compound to make a pretty big difference. The rate of growth highlighted in the CDC news release was 27%. Calculated with the decimal points, it's 18.4%. So, it is a striking difference. And we felt that it was only responsible for us to share this with you and have a conversation about it.  

Sarah [00:03:02] Well, it is so interesting because when I read those statistics, I was like, wait, what? Over the pandemic, kids were home by themselves. They weren't socializing. And I thought, well, maybe the being at home was exposure to increased risk. But there were so many pieces of this that didn't quite fit or make sense to me. I'll be honest, when I saw this, I thought, okay, so this wasn't this just out of nowhere meteoric rise that doesn't really align with the other trends we're seeing in teen socialization and teen sexuality and all these other things.  

Beth [00:03:38] Well, we had a conversation on our premium channels when I came back from being sick after you had had this discussion. And I remember saying I just don't understand where these numbers came from and I don't understand the source of this increase. How do you treat a problem if you can't diagnose it more precisely? And we got flooded with messages from people about the impact of pornography. And while I think that there is an important discussion to have about pornography, and I do not discount any of those messages, that did not explain these numbers to me because that phenomenon is not new. And it's not even new as to teens, it might be increasing. It might be more prevalent, especially in certain areas of the country, than it's been in the past. But that just didn't click in with me as an explanation for something this big. So, I felt relieved when I saw this report. And then also sad because I think institutional trust building for the CDC is so vital. And I don't want to have a conversation where we're just busting on the CDC. I appreciate this work. Doing this survey is so important and shining a light on the real problems here-- and there are many real problems-- is important. I also think accuracy is prized. And it's important to be really specific when we're diagnosing issues.  

Sarah [00:04:57] Yeah, I'm really confused about how they got here. I mean, all of our interactions as a show with the CDC have been hyper professional and really wonderful. I don't know a lot of statistics, but I do know that rounding like this across the board could compound the results in a way that skew the reality of what you're finding. And they've been doing this survey for so many years; have they always been rounding like this? I don't understand how they got here. I don't understand why there wasn't more effort to communicate. And, look, I think a lot of times as I was reading something about middle age and how the psychologists that sort of coined the term midlife crisis was like, no, that's not what I meant. It happens a lot that scientists and researchers put information out there and they're like, no, that's not what we meant. I'm not saying that the effects of lots of data can't be twisted and manipulated at every turn, but I wonder if they'll re-evaluate and say, okay, well, we won't release the survey results until we can really release our data sets, which was part of the issue here as you get the survey results before the data sets. I don't know, but I hope that they will communicate more transparently about whatever procedural changes they put in place to prevent something like this happening again.  

Beth [00:06:15] Well, there's really important information in the fact that some schools will not allow the rape and sexual assault questions to be asked. That is headline worthy in and of itself, because we're living through this period where many of us, and as we've discussed, many of us who are sitting in state legislatures act like if we don't talk about something with kids, it will cease to exist. And if you are unwilling to present a question about rape to a student body of teens, that's something that we all need to understand and we need to think about. Is this really how we want to approach this topic or not approach it? Do we really want to make this something that we're silent on in the face of kids as though they don't have a real window into what's happening?  

Sarah [00:07:02] I'm living this in my life right now. My eighth grader is receiving some sex ed from an outside group. The principal basically communicated to me it's because the teachers don't want to touch this. And I said, well, this curriculum is problematic. It's basically abstinence only, which all our social science says doesn't work. And he's like, well, this is the Kentucky statute that requires me to teach children that the only way to prevent pregnancy and STDs, 100%, is abstinence. It's just so discouraging. It's like all these laws where they try to control something that is inherently amorphous and human and expansive, which is not just humanity, but teenagers, it's just such a mess. It's just such a ridiculous disaster. And they're still out there trying to do more and more of it as if you're going to legislate your way out of generational change? I don't understand. I really don't understand. It's the march of history. Each generation is going to be different and more expansive and by degrees less and more understanding than the one before it. And the idea that as a legislator, you're just going to pass a law and say stop no further is so ludicrous to me. And it results in such unexpected but also weirdly predictable outcomes.  

Beth [00:08:22] The other thing that bugs me in this, is that I'm worried that we are telling a generation of kids that we think we've ruined them before they reach adulthood. I want to be honest where there is a crisis, and I do believe especially around teen girls and self-harm and depression, that we have a lot of important work to do. But I was just talking with a teacher who said district wide, there is a conversation about how exceptional our sixth graders are. District wide, he said every person he talks to who teaches sixth grade is saying, "This class is amazing. They're bright, they're engaged, they're well-behaved, they're enthusiastic." Another anecdote, I talked to the director of our community children's choir about how this choir is the best she's ever had. The best behaved. They sound great. They're enthusiastic. They're engaged. And I thought, I wish that we could just put this on billboards, because I think that the narrative is COVID hurt all of them so much. And it did. And I don't want to deny that or bury my head in the sand about it or be in a kind of toxic positivity space, but I don't want to correct for that so hard that we forget to celebrate where kids are excelling. And if we have a trend that is truly that sexual violence against teen girls has been decreasing for several years, and this data as revised is actually in line with that trend, I want to be excited about that trend and ask what's been working and how do we keep moving that number down?  

Sarah [00:09:53] Well, that's what's interesting is so many people who advocate in the space of children and violence were surprised. They were, like, these are not the trends we're seeing. I think the crisis that I see with teens revolves so much around media and our informational environment and us not giving them the tools to navigate that. I see that in porn. The best thing I've ever read about porn in teens was a class, and the class really didn't focus on sexuality. It focused on media consumption because that's what you have to do. And what you have to understand about porn is that it's an industry and it's a media. I think that's true when you read this great piece today about Andrew Tate and why young boys were sucked in by the very, very addictive, engaging, emotional media that he was creating. I think that's true of teen girls and social media. We're not teaching them the critical skills to consume media. We have state legislators that are, like, I know we'll just shut it off. Shut off what, at school? You think where they're consuming the most media and learning these lessons is through teachers at school? I wish that was the case. I wish that teachers and the time they spent in the classroom had a disproportionate effect to our informational and media and technological environment. And that's before AI really takes off. I wish that was true. I wish we were empowering teachers to tackle this instead of chilling their speech and making them afraid to say anything Inside an environment where teens are desperate for tools and strategies and approaches to manage this water hydrant of information coming at them all the time. But the reason we can't teach them that is because we don't really know how to do that either. We haven't really cracked the code on how to deal with porn or the addictive nature of Tik Tok or the comparing and joy stealing reality that is a place like Instagram. That's why. And so, we're trying to say, well, we'll fix it by doing this over here. That'll make us feel better. Let's do something. When we're not really paying attention, to me, the real source of all this stress.  

Beth [00:12:13] I think that's 100% right. And I wish that we had more tools as parents. I'm reading this book that is just blowing my mind called Almost Christian about teens responses to a survey about their faith. And what the book really pulls out is that teens are just a good mirror for adults, and adults do not talk about our faith in a lived way. We don't use vocabulary that explains, here's how faith is influencing my life today. Here's how it influenced this decision I was making. It's all very theoretical and out there instead of in here. And that concept is working on me in so many areas that have nothing to do with faith. And I have been thinking especially about media, when I pull something up on my phone and the girls are with me, or when they show me something that they found on the internet, I'm trying to do a better job saying, "Who made this? What were their incentives for making it? Who might have been harmed or exploited in the making of this? For whom was this intended and why? How long ago was it made?" Can we even answer those questions? Is there enough transparency? And it can feel like overkill, but where else are they going to get that dialog that they need to be running internally? And I agree with you. I wish that we had not so tied teacher’s hands, even though they're doing some of that good work as much as they can, but tied their hands especially around issues of sex and sexuality, because that's the space where hearing it from multiple adults is going to matter with the highest stakes.  

Sarah [00:13:40] Well, and I think the reason we don't do it as adults is because we don't want to come to Jesus with how the media influences us. We think it's working on other people, but we've got our media consumption under control. And I think that's the problem. To teach you have to do. And I think that lots of people including myself and in my husband and sons, my own family, we use media to numb. We don't ask those hard questions. I think this happens a lot. You sort of wear as a badge of pride the media you use to numb out, that you think silly or a guilty pleasure. And you don't say, like, "I know this is a fun reality show, but it's detrimental but I’ma keep watching anyway." And this sort of defensive posture, instead of articulating to our kids this is why I choose not to take this in. The biggest source of conflict in our family is the tech Sabbath I try to enforce every weekend, but I'm not going to give it up. I know it's hard. I know it's supposed to be a day of rest, and really what it creates is conflict. But I'm just constantly at them, like, we cannot live here. We have to train our attention spans and our minds and give ourselves a break and ask who wins when we're on screens all the time? Who's benefiting from that? But it's hard. It's really, really hard work because you know what I want to do? I want to just have some peace and quiet. And I have peace and quiet when they're playing Minecraft for 3 hours. But I have to, like, fight that instinct all the time. All the time?  

Beth [00:15:10] Yeah. I will raise my hand and say my media consumption is definitely not under control. I'm just trying to build the plane while I'm flying, you know, as they say. And I think that we all have to do that. And I want to circle back to where we started. I value information and resources from the CDC in that process. It is an important, critical organization, and I am disappointed that the fact checking on this has not been as solid as I hoped it would be, but I am not writing off the CDC's work by any stretch of the imagination or even the entirety of the survey here, because this is one piece of something that gives us a lot of information about a very important topic. Sarah, I read the newsletter Politico Huddle faithfully, and every time there is a little blurb on the House Modernization Committee, my eyes would line up, put a spring in my step because all of those blurbs would be about something actually getting done. Wow. This has happened and it has made our job so much easier. Or staffers say it has helped them so much. Or look at these members who usually can't work together on anything and they're both excited about this. And that was the only place I saw those stories until you sent a Washington Post piece around to our team about this committee and its chair and their final report.  

Sarah [00:16:38] Yeah, we're going to share our conversation with Representative Kilmer and how the Select committee got started. But it was such a brilliant cross-section of so many things we're interested in here. The modernization of Congress, who isn't interested in that? But also, how to get difficult work done when you sit in a place of conflict and disagreement and so many people on the committee, representatives on the committee gave interviews and talked about this work and talked about what they changed. And that's why we definitely wanted to invite him here so he could share all of that with us firsthand.  

Beth [00:17:10] Representative Kilmer, thank you so much for joining us. We are really excited about the work that you've been doing. I would love for you to take us back to the beginning of the modernization committee. What did you hope for when the committee started? How did it come to be?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:17:23] Prior to the 116th Congress, so like four and a half years ago, there were some discussions afoot about how to change the rules of the House. I think we were all recognizing that as members of Congress we're part of an organization that, according to recent polling, is less popular than head lice, colonoscopies, and the rock and metal band. And so, we were like, well, not knowing who's going to be in charge come January, how do you set some rules that may make the place function a little bit better? We would have these conversations, and it was a bipartisan group that was convened by some outside kind of reform oriented stakeholders. We would have these discussions and some of it was about rules, and how do we make sure that people are empowered to offer amendments and things like that. But every now and then someone would mention an issue like, hey, staff turnover is really high in this institution. And as a consequence, it's harder to solve problems because we're sort of eroding the institutional brains. And people would say like, yeah, it is a big problem, but it's not really a rules problem. But let's kind of stick that in a parking lot that we'll look at later on. Someone would say we're really backwards when it comes to the use of technology. Congress has been described as an 18th century institution using 20th century technology to solve 21st century problems. That's pretty accurate. I mean, literally when I came to Congress, I was given a pager. I still don't know what it is or how to use it. So, we said, okay, technology that's kind of a problem, but it's not really a rules problem. Let's stick it kind of in a bucket. And then at the end of it, we had some ideas around how to change the rules, but we also had this big bucket of stuff that wasn't working properly. And as we looked at it about every 20 or 30 years or so, Congress realizes things aren't working the way they ought to and they create a committee to do something about it. And so, our recommendation was, hey, let's create a committee to do something about it. And it was called the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which makes it sound like we were the I.T Help Desk, but we were sort of nicknamed the Fix Congress Committee. And our mission was pretty simple. It was making Congress work better for the American people. You likely didn't hear about our work on cable news. We were not a viral phenomenon on social media. It's possible you even missed watching the fireworks of our hearings on C-SPAN eight. We were able to get a lot of really important bipartisan work done with an eye towards making Congress work better.  

Sarah [00:19:47] Can you tell us the difference between a select committee and a regular committee?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:19:51] Yeah, for sure. A select committee is given a discrete task, and when that task is over, the committee disappears. The January six committee was an example of a select committee. There was a select committee on the climate crisis, which arguably didn't solve the problem, but they did a lot of good work like laying out a roadmap for how to address climate change. There was a select committee on economic disparity that really laid out a roadmap of here's some ideas to deal with that. So, we were a select committee. We existed for four years, and now the select committee has gone away. Now, interestingly, one of our final recommendations was we made two final recommendations. One, we shouldn't wait every 20 or 30 years to look at the effectiveness and functionality of the institution. Most functional organizations look at how they're doing more than every 20 or 30 years. And so, we recommended that every three or four Congresses, as a matter of course, a select committee like this should be created. And, secondly, we said rather than making recommendations that kind of go into the ether, we should focus on implementing them. So, we recommended the creation of a new subcommittee under the standing committee of the House Administration Committee that is now focused on implementation. Thankfully, of the 202 recommendations that we passed, 45 have been fully implemented. About 70 something are on their way to implementation. And then there are a whole bunch that we still have to get to. And so, that's the work of the subcommittee that was recently created.  

Sarah [00:21:16] How did you set your expectations knowing that it was a select committee? What did you hope to accomplish? How did you say, "Well, we're not going to modernize Congress completely, but here are our expectations of when we will fulfill our purpose as a select committee.”?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:21:31] There was a lot that was in our charge that made our task difficult. One, just the task of trying to fix Congress. Oftentimes, I would tell people we are working on that, and they've either offered to pray for me or giggle. So, that's a challenging task as it is. On top of that, the rule that established our committee created some interesting hurdles, but I think that we're pretty wise. One, our committee had an equal number of Democrats and Republicans because I think if you're going to do lasting institutional change, it has to be bipartisan. Second, to make any recommendation, the rule that established our committee required a two thirds vote, which is also really difficult. And as a consequence, when I became chair of this committee, one of the sort of mantras that I had is if you want Congress to work differently, you have to do things differently. I'll give some examples of what we did. One of the first things I did is I called my Republican counterpart, which in the first Congress that we worked on was a guy named Tom Graves from Georgia, who is a terrific partner, has since retired from Congress, and his seat was filled by Marjorie Taylor Greene. You may have heard of.  

Sarah [00:22:40] Oh, my gosh.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:22:41] I called Tom and said, "Hey, I've got a I've got kind of a crazy idea." When you start a committee, committee gets its budget and usually the first thing that happens is you divide by two, sometimes two thirds, one third. Democrats get their part of the money; Republicans get their part of the money. Democrats use their part of the money to hire people with a Democratic background who put on blue jerseys. Republicans use their party money to hire people with a Republican background who put on red jerseys, and then they spend the rest of the time fighting with each other. And so, I said to Tom, "Hey, here's a crazy idea. What if we don't do this? But what if we actually just hire one staff and some of them will be people with a Democratic background and some will be people with a Republican background. But we will make these hiring decisions together, and they're all just put on jerseys that say, hey, let's fix Congress." And to his credit, Tom said, "Sure, let's give it a shot." And that was foundational in terms of how our committee approached one another. It was with an eye towards solving problems, not with an eye towards being adversarial. If you watch one of our hearings on C-SPAN, you probably have too much time on your hands. But if you watch one of our hearings on C-SPAN, you'll notice a few things. So, for example, we didn't sit with Republicans on one side of a dais and Democrats on the other side. We staggered our seating. So, as a Democrat, I had a Republican on my left and on my right. Now, why did we do that? We did that because when you hear a witness say something interesting, my genetic predisposition is to lean over to the person next to me and say "That was kind of interesting. What do you think about that?" And in our committee, you did that leaning over next to someone from a different party. We didn't even sit at a dias. We sat around a round table. Why? Well, I don't know. But you have never had a good conversation speaking to the back of somebody's head. And so, in our committee, you were able to look each other in the eye and actually have dialog that was not cosmetic. There's all sorts of interesting organizational psychology about how to have an effective meeting and how to have a functional team. And we actually tried to incorporate a lot of that into the work of our committee.  

Beth [00:24:34] I would love to know how people responded initially. In my limited experience trying to modernize an institution not as big and difficult as Congress, when I brought these sort of relationship forward ideas to people, I met a lot of skepticism and some cynicism. And I just wonder how you met that in Congress.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:24:54] It was cool. One of the other things that we did that was really unusual-- and to my knowledge, we're the only committee in Congress that has done this. I've never been part of a functional operation that at the beginning of its work, say, "Hey, so what do we want to get done?" So, I had us do a bipartisan planning retreat. We actually got a room at the Library of Congress, and we sat around a table and we talked about what we wanted to do. And the first thing that we did, largely in an attempt to find some common threads among us, because we had very progressive Democrats, we had very conservative Republicans, and we had all sorts of folks in between, we started off by saying, "Hey, why did you come to Congress and how has your service met or failed to meet your expectations and what drove you to run in the first place?" And I'll tell you what, if you've been a fly on the wall, I actually don't think you would have been able to know who the Democrats were and who the Republicans were. I really don't. And as a consequence, I think people came out of that exercise saying, hey, this is going to be different. This work is going to be different. And people were pretty bought in from the beginning. And, again, I lucked out largely because we had people who wanted to be stewards of the institution that actually wanted to make the institution function better. There's this great quote that I've been staring at for four years of this work, and it's from a guy named John Gardner, who was a cabinet secretary in the Lyndon Johnson administration. And John Gardner talks about the importance of institutional stewardship, and he talks about being a loving critic. He said you can't be an uncritical lover because you sort of deny an institution of the necessary improvement to actually make it function better. You actually have to have some semblance of a critical eye towards the function of an institution. But he also said you can't be an unloving critic because then you just treat the institution like the pinata at the party and bash it, which is obviously politically very popular in Congress. And the best thing I can do and I already cracked some jokes doing it right is to make fun of Congress. But you actually have to care enough about the institution to want to improve it. And to the credit of the folks, almost without exception, over the course of two Congresses who served on the committee, they were all loving critics.  

Beth [00:27:13] What about your constituents, were they supportive of this work? You mentioned that it's easier to bash it. So, how did it go over in your district that you invested this time here?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:27:23] I think generally the American people want Congress to function better. And I think people liked that we were engaged on that topic and that we were doing things differently. One of the things that keeps me up at night, there was an NBC News poll last year that 70% of Americans agree with the statement that America is so divided, it is now incapable of solving big problems. And I don't think my constituents want to just accept that as fact. Well, I guess we're just not going to solve any big problems anymore. And as a consequence, I think my constituents were largely bought into our work. The other thing they were bought into is just some of the stuff that we did. So, one of the examples was we had these hearings related to civility and collaboration, which I think our constituents are pretty hungry for. There's exhaustion with how dysfunctional Congress is. We pulled together organizational psychologists and management consultants and political scientists. We actually had a marriage counselor who testified at our hearing who founded the organization Braver Angels. And they gave us all sorts of suggestions around trying to foster civility and collaboration. And afterwards, the organizational psychologist said to me, you know what, you should talk to some sports coaches who took over teams that kind of had bad culture and who turned them around. So I call up this NCAA football coach and I said, "Coach, would you be willing to talk to me about fixing Congress?" And he said, "Derek, I don't know anything about Congress." And I said, "Well, I don't need to know about Congress. Tell me how you fix a broken team. What do you do when you have folks on the team who are actively trying to sabotage the team?" And he said, "Well, I cut them off." Well, we don't really have that. And he said, "Well, then I bench them." I said, "We don't really have that option either. And he said, "Let me ask you something." I said, "Shoot." He said, "How do you do new player orientation?" And I said, "Well, we don't really have new players, but we do have new member orientation." He said, "How does it work?" And I said, "You know, it's really funny that you ask this because it really works the wrong way." My colleagues tell stories of showing up for freshman orientation and literally being told, okay, Democrats, you sit on this bus and Republicans, you go on that bus.  

[00:29:32] And most of the orientation process was designed to keep the two parties from interacting with each other. And this coach says to me, "Well, Derek, I don't know much about Congress, but it seems like you ought to stop doing that." And so, one of our recommendations was literally stop doing that. Like, try to have some bipartisan engagement at the jump. There are little things that really matter to members when a member of Congress is coming on board. Speaking of incoming freshmen, they were largely flying blind and didn't even have any sort of staff help to help them transition into Congress. So, we made a recommendation saying you should be able to pay a transition staffer to help with your transition into Congress. And 95% of those folks actually get hired on to the office. That's been a real value in helping our new members be better at their jobs. We made recommendations trying to make Congress a place that was better at recruiting and retaining and having more diverse staff. So, why did we do that? Well, we didn't do that to benefit ourselves. We did that to benefit the American people because, I mean, all you have to do is watch the social media hearings where it seems like Congress doesn't know what it's talking about. And it's largely because Congress doesn't know what it's talking about. And building up some brains and being able to hold on to talented people who know a lot about issues that matter to the American people will benefit the American people. We made a recommendation so that Congress could sort of fulfill its article one responsibility, the power of the purse, and that it could fund projects in local communities. That recommendation was written with some important guardrails to prevent abuse. That was a bipartisan recommendation. And the Appropriations Committee has done that. And as a consequence, you can look in district after district and there's community projects that are getting funded. In my district, there's a men's shelter for people experiencing homelessness that is now getting funded as a consequence of that. There's a soup kitchen, a foodbank that received funding. There are three coastal tribes in my district that got funding to try to move to higher ground because they're getting washed off the planet by climate change. These things wouldn't have happened. But for some of the recommendations that our committee made and there's a whole bunch of others. We made 202 recommendations, but those are just a few examples of things that I think actually matter to the folks we represent.  

Sarah [00:31:53] When we talk about Congress, I think we can get really consumed with systemic issues, gerrymandering. I am obsessed with how few congressional members we have. Before the Washington Post op-ed came out. I've been preaching the gospel for a year and years, which is there's just not enough. We need more representatives in the House of Representatives for the size of our population. So, how did you focus on achievable things without feeling all the time like we have all these big procedural, systemic institutional challenges in front of us that tie our hands? How did you not become sort of discouraged and cynical in the face of some bigger-- and how do we make those bigger changes too? That that as well.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:32:42] Yeah, I think it really matters. I mentioned the high bar that was created for our committee and in the end, unfortunately, that made it difficult to take up issues that I think are really foundational in terms of being able to fix Congress. Campaign finance reform is one of them.  

Sarah [00:32:59] We always also hear about the representatives going back home all the time and how that changed with the Contract for America. That's like a very common narrative, I think, around the dysfunction of Congress, is that there's no socialization, which you're sort of getting out with that new member orientation.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:33:13] There are some big ticket items like Partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance. And I would argue the role of media and social media that we just weren't able to crack the code on, certainly not in a way that could get a super majority vote out of our committee. I actually do think if Congress wants to get serious about making things work better for the American people, simply put, it has to has to do those things. It has to address money in politics. It has to look at things like how district boundaries are drawn. It has to look at how we choose our primary candidates. There are states that have done some interesting stuff around ranked choice voting or around the state of Washington or California have done top two primaries that I think have limited, at least in some way, some of the polarization that we've seen in our country. If we want to get serious about doing that in a big, systemic way, then I think having that happen on a national basis would be to our benefit. Nevertheless, what we what we said is, well, let's get done the things we can get done. So, you just mentioned the fact that Congress spends a lot of time in their districts. One of the big problems is Congress spends too much time on trains and airplanes. If you look at before the pandemic-- I think I'm going to get these numbers right. But it's been a little while since I've used them. In 2019, before the pandemic, Congress was in session 66 travel days, 65 full days. There are actually more travel days than full days. So, for travel day, just for me as a West Coast member, what that means is we have votes Monday night. Monday morning, I get up at five, I drive to the airport, I get on an 8:00 flight. I land in D.C. at 4:30 and I vote at 6:30. Usually it's what they call bed check, about one or two votes. And then I'm there all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday. Thursday is a travel day. So, we usually vote by before noon on Thursday. And then as a West Coast member, I take a bunch of meetings between then and my 5:40 p.m. flight and I fly back to Washington State on Thursday night and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday I'm in the district and then the next week, rinse, wash, repeat.  

[00:35:26] Well, if you think about that, what that means is Congress is spending a lot of time-- listen, I love the people of Alaska Airlines, but I'm spending more time with people of Alaska Airlines than being able to do productive work. Why does that matter? For what it's worth, I use my time on Alaska Airlines to write constituent letters and try to be productive or to watch season three of The Mandorian [inaudible]. Why does that matter? Well, if you want Congress to be a place where tough problems are solved, one, Congress has to be there. And, two, most of that difficult problem solving happens in committees. Now, here's the problem. Committees generally meet on those two days a week that you're there. There's two full days a week that you're there. The average member on the average is 5.4 committees and subcommittees, all of which meet during those two days. So, if you're watching a committee hearing on C-SPAN and it looks like members of Congress aren't there, it's because they're probably in one of their other three hearings that are scheduled for the exact same time. And what that means is members sort of pinball from committee to committee, by and large, using the time just to speak to five for 5 minutes to throw something to social media, trying to show how sharp they are, but not actually sitting in committee, understanding issues and trying to solve significant problems. So, one of our recommendations was, hey, we got to fix that. We got to fix that one. But at the very least, having more full days than travel days, Two, every high school and college in America has figured out how to deconflict the calendar. Congress has not. And so, one of our recommendations was to quote the beginning of the TV show, The $6 Million Man, we have the technology. We know how to fix it. Let's use technology to deconflict the calendar at least somewhat, so the members are actually able to go to committee and be constructive and have Congress work better. So, there's a little bit about that presence in D.C. that's about relationships that certainly matters. But I actually think the bigger thing is the fact that Congress isn't there as much as it ought to be, and that when it is there, there's so much schedule conflict means that the institution is less functional and less able to solve big problems.  

Sarah [00:37:36] Well, and I have to believe that once you open up a little space where people can see a different way, that creates momentum for bigger changes. Once you say, oh, this feels really good to be able to function and go to committees and be present, how else can we make this even better? I applaud the members who are, like, I'm moving here. I have little kids. I can't do this. And I think hopefully we will create space for more people and for constituents to understand that as well.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:38:05] I hope so, too. One of the things that we looked at, we weren't able to land the plane on, but I actually think would make sense is, you could build a calendar where members of Congress flew in Monday nights, as we do right now, stay all the way through Friday at 5:00 and then start the next Monday at 9 a.m. For a West Coast member like me, I'd have to stay on the East Coast, which might, to your point, be not terrible from a relationship standpoint with my colleagues. And then go the next week, Monday at 9 a.m. all the way through Friday. You can still do Friday at noon. And the funny thing is and then you could have the next two weeks in your district. The interesting part that happens from that is you actually have more time in D.C., more time in the district. The only thing you have less time is when you spend less time with the truly delightful people of Alaska Airlines. That's the only thing you miss out on.  

Beth [00:38:54] If you could take one learning from the way you conducted this committee and give it to all of the other committees in the House, one piece of advice for their chairs on how to make their committees more functional; what would it be?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:39:07] Actually, I do think having a bipartisan planning retreat at the beginning matter. Listen, you're not going to get agreement on everything. You just won't. And there are some committees where you may not get agreement on anything. But, again, I actually do think there's value in having Democrats and Republicans spend the better part of a day sitting in a room saying, hey, here's what we got planned and you guys are going to like some of this and we're not going to like some of what you want to do, but let's actually have dialog. Most functional organizations do that. So, I think that's probably the biggest.  

Beth [00:39:39] Did you feel finished when your work wrapped up?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:39:42] I thought we had done a lot and I'm excited that there's this subcommittee that's created on implementation because I don't think organizational improvement is something where you just check a box and you're done. I think it has to happen on an ongoing basis. It's funny, when our committee started, we had this presentation from the Congressional Research Service about the history of these reform committees. And the person who ran through it would say, like, in the failed committee of 19, blah, blah, blah, when the like somewhat successful committee of this year-- And afterwards I said, can we all just agree that we want to be described by history as like one of the successful committees and not one of the failed committees. Which is why, as an aside, like most of these committees write a white paper. In essence, they make a bunch of recommendations and the implementation part doesn't start until after the committee is no longer in existence. We made an intentional decision to do it differently, to say we're going to make recommendations and we're going to work on implementation in real time because we want to make sure this happens. And that's why already 45 of our 202 recommendations got implemented and about 70 something has seen some progress because we decided to focus in real time on it. We're not done. There are some big plate tectonics kind of issues that influence the functionality of Congress. There just are. And those, I think, need some attention too.  

Beth [00:41:05] Well, thank you for your work and congratulations to you. It is heart and soul work to be a loving critic.  

Sarah [00:41:10] Thank you.  

Beth [00:41:10] I'm so glad that you and your committee brought that to Congress.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:41:13] Thanks.  

Beth [00:41:23] Well, Representative Gilmer, we always end our show talking about what's on our minds outside of politics. And we learned at the beginning of this conversation that you and Sarah share a love for national holidays and thought we could chat with you about that for a minute.  

Sarah [00:41:35] Yeah. It's so sad we weren't recording because we discovered that you and I are actually best friends, and that's really exciting for me to discover that I don't have a lot of people who share my passion for national holidays, the weird, wacky holidays that exist every day. It started because we're recording the day after Daylight Savings Time, and I said, It's National Napping Day. And you said, I also was looking at the national holidays today. Because when did you discover this passion that we share?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:42:06] It's been at least a year. I've tried to track what the weird day it is for at least a year. And I think it randomly happened on something like Baking Day, because I heard on the radio that it was baking day. And I'm like, yeah, it is. Let's celebrate.  

Sarah [00:42:20] That's right.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:42:22] I found some website that told me what national day it is, and it brought me great joy.  

Sarah [00:42:26] And I've alerted you to that. You can subscribe and get them in your inbox every day, which is like next level. I had a wall calendar last year that told me and I think through the wall calendar I got subscribed. I started doing it during COVID lockdown with my kids and homeschooling because a lot of times it would give us something fun to do that day like bake. I love the food ones. I love the pineapple upside down day. Today is coconut torte day. I don't think I'll be making a coconut torte because that requires a little more prep. But I would like map out, like, is there any food we want to try? Is there any historical event we want to look up? It just adds a little fun and flavor to every day. It's so, so delightful.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:43:06] I'm with you. We just celebrated National Pancake Day this week or two ago. National Waffle Day is coming up later this month.  

Sarah [00:43:14] I’ma celebrate. 

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:43:15] I'm more of a pancake guy than a waffle guy.  

Sarah [00:43:17] Of course, you are because so am I. And we're best friends now, so that makes sense. Listen, I was telling you I love the viral video of the woman complaining about the heat, and she says everyday can't be a holiday, which is the funniest part of that video to me, which is ironic because I actually enjoy the idea that every day can in fact be a holiday. Now, are you a birthday person? Because I feel like the Venn diagram of like holiday people and the people who want to celebrate their birthday every year at max capacity must be a lot of overlap.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:43:46] Well, so I have a weird birthday. I'm a New Year's baby, so everybody celebrates my birthday.  

Sarah [00:43:50] That's fun, though. Well, do you like that overlap? Do you like the birthday on a holiday?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:43:55] It has its benefits in that people remember it. So, after New Year's, after the buzzer sounds, I get a lot of texts and calls and that's delightful. Growing up, I got a lot of joint Christmas birthday presents, which was sort of a drug. 

Sarah [00:44:08] No, that's not okay. So, have you discovered a national wacky holiday that's like your favorite besides Bacon Day?  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:44:15] You know what? We're about to have it, Pie Day.  

Sarah [00:44:19] I love Pie Day. 

Beth [00:44:20] What kind of pie?  

Sarah [00:44:21] Do you do pizza? Do you do dessert pie? There are very many pie options when you're celebrating Pie Day.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:44:26] Dessert pie. I like all the berry pies.  

Sarah [00:44:28] Okay.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:44:29] When I grew up, we had this amazing Raspberry pie, it was my neighbor's recipe and it was tremendous. Thank you to the late Elizabeth Hodges for her delicious raspberry pie recipe. I like the kind of mixed berry pies. I like cherry pie.  

Sarah [00:44:44] We're all in here. That we eat a pizza. We eat quiche for breakfast. I really like pie day because everybody celebrates. I like it when it's a wacky holiday that we've all embraced. I feel like we're pretty close with Donut Day, like Dunkin Donuts will give you a free donut. I love the ones where we're all in. Everybody's like this is the day we're celebrating something completely quotidian. I just love it.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:45:06] Do you have a favorite?  

Sarah [00:45:08] I do like Pie Day. I do love Donut Day. I mean, I like the ones that are just my favorite foods and I feel like we get to celebrate. I love Chocolate Cake Day. I'm a big fan of Chocolate Cake Day and Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. Cpuldn't tell you what days they are because I need it to be a surprise every year, but I love it when it shows up.  

Beth [00:45:25] I feel like you all are ignoring Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is indisputably the best of these holidays, especially if you have kids.  

Sarah [00:45:32] Yes. And there's also like Backwards Day. I like Backwards Day. I think that's a fun one where you switch things around. And April Fool's Day, that's another one we kind of all celebrate. But it depends on if you're a prankster, if you like a mean prank or a funny prank.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:45:45] In this line of work, I feel like I'm constantly getting pranked so... 

Beth [00:45:50] I get enough of that.  

Sarah [00:45:51] I get enough of that. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this little delightful bonus. I'm going to just name this like national holiday celebration day. I'm just going to declare it myself. You're in Congress, you can make that happen.  

Rep Derek Kilmer [00:46:03] I'm going to write a bill, Sarah. Are you going to testify and support?  

Sarah [00:46:06] Absolutely. Thank you to Representative Kilmer. Thank you to all of you who joined us here today. Please join us on our premium community as we get ready for the final season of Succession. And, listen, it's not like that's the only thing on our premium content. We will still be producing More to Say and Good Morning and all kinds of content. So, if you haven't checked out our premium channels, they make the work we do here possible. It is that simple. We would not be able to do Pantsuit Politics and have this amazing team that produces this podcast were it not for our premium members and their financial support. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

Beth [00:47:05] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:47:11] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:47:17] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh.   

Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

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