After serving six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, Dan Kildee, D-Flint, recently announced he will not seek re-election in Michigan’s competitive eighth district, which includes the cities of Midland, Bay City, Saginaw and Flint.
WCMU's Rick Brewer recently spoke with Kildee about his decision to retire, how he's seen Washington change over the last decade, and what's next for the Flint native.
Later in the conversation, Kildee lays out his legislative priorities going into his final year in Congress, including capping insulin at $35 a month for all Americans, restoring the pension benefits of Delphi salaried employees, and legislation that would compensate veterans who have been exposed to toxic forever chemicals known as PFAS while serving in the military.
This transcript has been lighted edited for clarity and length.
Rick Brewer: Why did you decide to retire now?
Dan Kildee: So, this was a decision that really started a decade or more ago. My wife and I had a very clear conversation when I decided to run. It's been 12 years since I announced I was running for Congress, and it was that I would do it for a decade, and then we'd take it one term at a time. This time around, as we were going through that process of making the decision we just couldn't get to 100%. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I’d gone through cancer and had a chance to reflect a bit on what I want to do with the rest of my working life, but it was it was not something that was a big shock to anybody in my family because they knew that my plan was not to do this, you know, long, long term.
RB: In your six terms in Congress, what did you see change the most in Washington?
DK: Well, unfortunately, the tone of political dialogue in this country has changed for the worse. You know, when I came to Washington, I was in the minority then, as I am now. Democrats were not in control, but it was a different dynamic between Democrats and Republicans. When I arrived in Washington after the 2012 election, John Boehner was the speaker. I didn't agree with him on a lot of things but I talked to him a lot and we got along. Paul Ryan succeeded him, I was able to work very well with Paul Ryan but then things changed, and you know, Democrats were in the majority for four years. We got a lot of work done. It's changed dramatically and there's just an anger and a kind of venom in political speech that has unfortunately made things really tough in Congress.
RB: That type of environment did it ever feel maybe this isn't the right word, demoralizing, or wear on you personally, did that factor in to maybe it's time to to retire.
DK: It is demoralizing, and it did wear on me personally. You know some specific events like January 6th was the really difficult time for me because I was a part of that, as we talked in the past, I was, you know, trapped in the gallery of the House. So those events, but even the things that followed the fact that there are people who tried to explain that insurrection away as if it were just a walk in the park. It is demoralizing. It had an effect on my decision in the sense that as I was going through the calculation, is it worth it to go to a place that is so angry and dysfunctional?
DK: I have to admit that I had to come to the conclusion that that trade off was no longer working for me. Somebody else needs to come in with ability to you know, invest their time and energy and and I think they'll whoever follows me will do a great job and maybe they'll serve about the same amount of time and then leave it to somebody else that's kind of what I hope for.
RB: What is a path forward that you see of getting out of this state of as you just said, dysfunction? What do you think needs to change and what's feasible that could change in in the near future? I think is what so many of our listeners could agree they want to see?
DK: One thing which I think everyone could agree with, or should, is that people on both sides of the political spectrum need leaders who will just dial it down a little bit. That won't focus on our differences. That will focus on our areas of common ground. The individual leaders do make a difference. And so I'm hoping that there is a movement toward that sort of leadership model. The Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, for example, Hakeem Jeffries, who's a very close friend of mine has a very moderate approach in terms of his tone. He's very good at, you know, attacking his opposition in bounds, but he's never made it personal. The specific thing that I think will have to change, and many listeners may not agree with this and that is that Donald Trump being off the political stage will make a difference. He's not the cause of a lot of this anger and venom, but he pours fuel on that fire every chance he gets, and as long as the leader of the Republican Party is a person who operates with that style, I think it's going to be tough for us to move past this moment.
RB: How do you respond to the criticism that removing Trump from the ballot in Maine and Colorado is election interference and that he has not been convicted of insurrection through due process or in the court, but that therefore is fueling the other side to ramp to ramp things up? How do you respond to that type of criticism?
DK: Yeah, and this is one of the areas where I do have some disagreement with some people that I otherwise align with. I am concerned that the decisions to keep him off the ballot don't follow a conviction in a courtroom. I have my opinion that Donald Trump was was a driver of the insurrection. I don't have much doubt about that and I don't think very many people do either. But there hasn't been a finding of fact in a court of law that says that. I do get concerned about making decisions about who has access to the ballot without having a finding in a court of law so that I'm no Donald Trump fan, I think he is really a despicable person in a lot of ways, but I also think we have to be careful whenever a decision like this is made to imagine the shoe being on the other foot. To imagine if the Republican secretaries of state were making decisions about Democrats access to the ballot because of very strong views without having a finding of fact in a court of law. So I am concerned about that.
RB: What do you think is next for you?
DK: It would be almost certainly in the non-profit World. I mean, it's where I sort of came from. I was at local government, I was in the non-profit sector. It's a chance to do good. So, it will be generally in thein the area of working to improve life, you know, through policy change through advocacy of some type but not I'm not going to become a lobbyist like a lot of people do. I'm just not. That's just not something that interests me.
RB: What's at the top of your to-do list heading into this next legislative session and your final year? What do you want to accomplish the most?
DK: I would first and foremost want to see more stability. You know we kick the can down the road on the budget. We've got a budget deadline coming up here in about two weeks I'd like to see us get that resolved.
DK: I'd like to see focus a little bit more attention on national security and that includes border security, but also ensuring that our ally Ukraine has the resources it needs to to deal with the unprecedented attack by Vladimir Putin and the Russian army.
DK: If I could have a magic wand, I would say let's finish the job we started on improving the cost of healthcare by extending that $35 a month cap on insulin to everybody.
DK: I'd like to see us take care of the Delphi salaried retirees.
DK: I'd like to see some work that would reinstate the child tax credit, the refundable child tax credit, which lifted half of children in the country out of poverty. We we did that, but sadly only for a year.
DK: I say if I had a magic wand, I would like to do those things because I don't see a whole lot of optimism that the Congress, under its current leadership, is going to be capable of doing big and important things. It's one of the areas of frustration for me, this last Congress was one of the least productive congresses in the history of the United States Congress.
RB: An issue that you've been a strong advocate for is PFAS contamination, whether that's for people receiving treatment in hospitals, whether it's veterans getting it through a VA benefit. When it comes to getting PFAS in the mind of this Congress, as you mentioned, which is going to be really difficult, do you think it really comes down to education? Representatives from across the country might not even ever heard of it. Is that do you think that is maybe where it starts with the PFAS issue?
DK: It it makes all the difference in the world and what we've seen with PFAS specifically is that when we started our work, it's because of the Wurtsmith Air Force Base contamination. But I hadn't heard much about it before that myself. And I suddenly when I began working on this, realized that I was one of two or three members of Congress that were talking about it.
DK: Since then, there are fifty, sixty, seventy members of Congress who speak about this on a regular basis and work together, and they're being educated by their own constituents who are coming to them after a discovery of a PFAS contamination, and so it's not an issue that's partisan and it's not an issue that requires complex explanations. Once a member of Congress has a PFAS exposure or contamination in their district, they become an immediate ally, no matter what their other political ideology might be. And that's, I think the success of some of the work that we've done on PFAS has because of that, we've kept it out of that typical partisan frame.
RB: One of the uphill battles it seems for veterans in PFAS is going to be connection to correlation and causation of did PFAS cause there fill in the blank of terrible illness or disease that this this poor veteran has succumbed to? Is there a way to cross that threshold in terms of convincing the VA or whoever the critics of the bill might be to try and convince people that there are PFAS cases of people becoming really, really ill because of this.
DK: There are and we've been working on this. The way to do it would be to pass my legislation which called, which is called the Vet PFAS Act, which would determine that certain conditions that research shows related to PFAS contamination be considered service connected and so there's a presumptive diagnosis. The presumption is that if an individual who happened to serve in the US military at a facility that had PFAS exposure and they have one of the conditions that we know to be connected to PFAS, that the burden of proof is taken off that service member, they are presumed to have that illness, whatever it might be, cancer, whatever it would be resulting from that PFAS exposure. But, there's another piece of that, and that is to do the research and so some number of years ago, I got legislation enacted that stood up, a longitudinal study on PFAS contamination for military members to identify the all the possible conditions that would be related to PFAS exposure. Right now, we can rely on something called the the C8 study, which was a study done a decade or so ago that determined certain cancers, birth defects, other issues were directly related to PFAS. But we think there are more conditions that are directly related to PFAS and our research will show that. If we get that done and have the vet PFAS act as a part of the law, any condition that ties back to PFAS contamination would be considered service connected, and that former member of the military, wouldn't have to prove to anyone that they should get support for that condition.
RB: You're behind the formation of a first of its kind Congressional Child Labor Task Force to eliminate illegal child labor across the country, maybe just give listeners a quick update on what this task force is planning on doing in the year ahead.
DK: It's a really important issue and one that I never imagined would be a problem right here in the United States. But it has become one. So, Congresswoman Hillary Scholten and I, freshman member from the West side of the state, formed this task force and specifically to support bipartisan legislation. We're hoping it'll be bipartisan to number one, significantly increase the enforcement activity because this is happening in a lot of places, but it's not being enforced, there's not the resources to enforce it number 1. Second, to increase the penalties for the use of child labor in a factory situation, for example. Right now, the penalty is small enough where unscrupulous business people might just be willing to take the risk of having to pay a fine because they know that the benefit to them is going to be this is a sad way to look at it, but the way that they view it, the benefit to them is greater than the fine that they might get pay if something get have to pay if they somehow got caught. We want to make it cost prohibitive. We want to make sure that if somebody engages in the use of child labor, they're very likely if they get caught, they're very likely going to be put out of business. That's really what I want to do.
RB: You've also co-sponsored legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks. I think the majority of Americans, as we've talked previously, maybe could agree that's something that should happen. The public has seen members of Congress pull stocks right before the pandemic. Do you think that acting upon your legislation would help maybe restore some trust in Congress, which of course, as we know, as we see polling, is really low right now.
DK: Yeah, I think it would be a step. First of all, I think the the policy by itself, my legislation would be good policy, no member of Congress should be actively trading stocks when they have information that would allow them to make those decisions to their own benefit that other people don't have. So, our legislation wouldn't say you can't own stocks. It would just say that if you do, when you become a member of Congress, you have to put them in a qualified blind trust and somebody else makes the decisions that you don't have any knowledge of. You may benefit, but you don't have any knowledge and you can't influence that.
DK: So, I think it creates greater integrity. I do believe that it would help restore some faith in the basic elements of a democracy where people are supposed to expect their elected officials aren't looking out for their interest, not their own. It's not the only thing that we should do, but that would be a step in the right direction.
RB: Is there an appetite for that at all amongst your members of Congress? Because this is not, quite frankly, not a partisan issue. This happens on both sides of the spectrum.
DK: There's an appetite for it, but there's also a lot of sort of quiet resistance to it. It's really tough for somebody to argue with me on the merit of the legislation I put forward. But there are a lot of people who just sit on their hands when it comes to legislation like this, because they'd prefer it not to become law. They prefer to have it stay the way it is and that's disappointing, obviously.
RB: Congressman Dan Kildee, thank you so much for your time today. Congratulations on your retirement and best of luck in your final year in Congress.
DK: Yeah, thank you so much.
