Fullerton Observer interviews Congressman Ed Royce, 40th District

This is the entire interview (verbatim) I had with my U.S. Congressman and submitted to the Fullerton Observer. This article was optimized and published on page 4 in the Fullerton Observer. One can view this edition visiting the Online Fullerton Observer at:

http://www.fullertonobserver.com/artman/uploads/sept_1_2005_observer_small.pdf

Fullerton Observer EXCLUSIVE!
Fullerton Observer interviews Congressman Ed Royce, 40th District
At the Coffee Bean, Cypress, CA
8/20/2005


FO: I am here with Ed Royce, Congressman from the 40th District.

ER: (enthusastically responding back) The 40th District, Danny!

FO: We are here at the Coffee Bean in Cypress. Congressman, thank you for this time. There were a couple of pressing issues that I had as a citizen of why you voted the way you did, the two bills being the Energy bill and CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement)?

ER: The Energy bill had in it, a lot of breaks you might say, for drilling. One of the things I don’t understand, we got a budget deficit, why do we need any more incentives on drilling? The return is so high now anyway, to me, I just don’t see giving away any more breaks or tax reductions on drilling where that’s going to give us any more production than we would have otherwise have. To me, I think the answer is on energy. I chaired the Africa subcommittee for a number of years, right now I’m the vice-chairman of it, the answer is to try to get to countries outside of OPEC, because that’s a cartel that keeps the prices high, and it encourages them two things. One, to do more development of the seafloor, off their costal regions, but two, right now we are burning off the natural gas. We are wasting a resource that is going into space. If you were to be on the Space Shuttle and you looked down at night, you would see a string of lights off the coast of West Africa. That’s the flaring of this natural gas. So what we are doing , we are trying to collect this and liquefy natural gas (LNG), we are trying to provide a more cleaner burning alternative source of energy. Secondly, we need to do more conservation. We really need to understand that part of the solution here is for us to ratchet up the effort on conservation. But putting more cost on the consumer by passing an energy bill that increases cost and increases budget deficit and rewards companies for drilling, as I say, to produce more….that’s a false economy to me. That is why I voted against the bill and continue on my efforts, especially in this natural gas, to get that captured, so it is not flared off…to get NLG produced….

FO: To clarify, you voted against the Energy bill.

ER: I voted against the Energy bill. I voted No. That is correct.

FO: Did you see things like bringing back nuclear power and mining for coal as good things in that bill?

ER: I voted no. I think that a big part of the expense of that bill was that we were going to reduce taxes on the oil production out of the gulf with the argument that was going to produce more oil. My guess is that oil will be produced anyway. There is no reason for us to ratchet down the tax assessment. Second, the cost of the bill was very, very high in terms of the effect of the deficit.

FO: There was going to be a lot of handouts to big energy companies….

ER: That’s what I am saying. There’s a handout to big energy companies under that bill and that’s why I voted against that bill.

Now on CAFTA, let me explain my vote on CAFTA.

FO: You voted how on CAFTA?

ER: I voted against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) but voted for CAFTA. I don’t think that the same dynamics that were in play in NAFTA, were in play with CAFTA, and here’s why…

In the CAFTA agreement, what we were looking at is a trading agreement with El Salvador, Nicaragua, (and) Honduras basically with the Central American trading countries. Now those countries that trade with the US, they have some tariffs remaining on their goods that we put on that come in. Likewise their tariffs they have on our goods that go into those countries. Let me give you an example:

Let’s take textiles. We ship yarn and we ship fabric to Central America. In Central America, they make shirts; they ship the shirts to the US. As I look at this agreement 70% of the shirts that come from Central America have fabric and yarn made in the US, so it is a kind of a win-win.

Now the alternative is shipments from China. The t-shirts, to pick one, that come from China, for example, which is a main competitor in shipping, have no US yarn or fabric, less than 1%. Strategically, from the stand point of the US, it helps our hemisphere, at least that’s what we are hearing from the Central Americans and that is what we are hearing here in the US. If we get the tariffs down, we can do more shipping… they do more shipping… they do more trading investment….

FO: But even many in your own party had a hard time voting for CAFTA this time out. The voting deadline had to be extended one hour and past midnight to get this bill passed. There were people in your party that did not support an extension of NAFTA into CAFTA, (with issues like) the forbidding of public health groups from buying generic drugs for HIV and working US families and (labor) unions losing more jobs, going that way...

ER: I don’t think will see more jobs going that way under CAFTA.

FO: Even though we saw that with NAFTA?

ER: I saw that under NAFTA. But this is a different situation. For one reason, most of the goods that come in from Central America now have virtually no tariffs on them anyway on our side. There isn’t a lot of tariff reduction going on the US side. But, this will be advantage the shipment of goods into the markets of Central America; by the fact, it will reduce, let's say medical equipment, and other things we manufacture here. It’s going to reduce the tariff; it will be less expensive to ship into those markets. Those jobs will benefit Californians, shipping these kinds of products. This kind of goods, arigculture, it is going to reduce for our arigculture shipments into Central America; the tariff will be reduced. I really think that this is a different situation than NAFTA. I looked hard at this agreement, it seemed to me, type of jobs that we are talking about here, is not where the competition was with the American workers. I saw it as these are jobs; there are shipments that otherwise come in from China. China competes. If we can get the tariff down and ship in and at the same time have the advantage of shipping more of our manufactured goods into Central America, after carefully reading the agreement that is the conclusion I came to. Although I thought that NAFTA was a disadvantage to the workers here, I think CAFTA, the way this was worded is going to be advantageous.

FO: The Children’s Defense Fund Action Council reported in its annual nonpartisan rankings of US legislators on their voting records in Congress for 2004. The mission of the Children’s Defense Fund Action Council is to Leave No Child Behind and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. What they did is they took a scorecard how the legislators voted…

ER: A lot of these groups pick those votes because I know of a lot of votes I made.

FO: But my point, allow me to finish…

ER: O.K.

FO: Point being that you got a zero rating…

ER: Like I said certain groups….

FO: Wait, I will let you finish, but this was a non-partisan group….

ER: I am not sure how non-partisan.

FO: My point being that you got a total zero, where other people (representatives) nearby like Linda Sanchez, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman received 100% scores. What is your response to that?

ER: Different organizations pick different votes. If you go out on the right, you’ll find certain organization that carefully pick votes that try to make their opponents look bad. You go on the left, you see the same thing. What I am sharing with you, there are votes like the “No Child Left Behind Act” that increased aid to education that I voted for championed, that are not on that particular list. All I am saying there tends to be a perspective with groups that tend to be a little political. What I am sharing with you is that my wife was a university teacher, my sister, my sister-in-law are teachers. I think that it is important that we move an agenda that prepares every child in education and gets them the resources. Frankly, I face a real challenge because the world is becoming a tougher and tougher place to compete in.

FO: Follow up question. Can you name a couple of progressive child acts that you voted for?

ER: Yes, absolutely. I voted for the “No Child Left Behind Act”. In increased funding for K-12 education, it assists children. It makes certain that resources are there.

FO: Global warming, on a scale from one to ten, ten being extreme, where would you rank global warming? Sen. Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. McCain (R-AZ) just returned from Alaska and they were both struck by how much devastation is going on. If you are concerned with global warming, do have any willingness do something about this in Congress?

ER: I am very concerned. Let me share with you my worry about the industrialization of the world, what is going on. What we see, as there is more and more factories coming online in the world, more and more people buying automobiles, especially with developing worlds. If you look at China, they are trying to quadruple, by four-fold their economy in the next 20 years. It’s only logical that this kind of growth, in terms of output pollutants, is going to have some effect on the environment. The question is how can we minimize it? The Germans had an interesting approach to this. When they wanted to clean up the rivers they put a tax assessment on the pollutants that went into the Rhine (River). Suddenly, industry found an innovative way to try to reduce the level of pollution because every time you reduced it, you reduced the tax. You set up an incentive system. I think we should be doing is moving to an incentive system, where the social cost of creating pollution are captured in a tax base system and we try to hammer out an arrangement to do that so that, suddenly, (it’s) technology that finds innovative ways to reduce the amount of the pollutant. All of a sudden, that is where research and development is occurring. At the same time, we want to discourage certain types. We don’t want coal that has heavy sulfur.

FO: Adding mercury to the waters….

ER: Yes, you want to discourage that. You want to use clean burning coal, natural gas.

FO: How about uranium? How about nuclear power? That’s a source that needs a lot of money and leaves wastes for billion of years…..

ER: It’s a real question. There is a social cost there too, in what you do with the spent uranium and how do you protect against that. I get a little nervous when I see the world move towards (nuclear)….

FO: Especially with terrorism?

ER: There are some tough choices here. One of the things we can do that I put a lot of time and effort into, along with Colin Powell, who assisted in Nigeria, is to convince these countries that flaring off their natural gas when it comes out with their oil, to capture it, liquefy it, and use it as an alternative more cleaner fuel. There is a tremendous source of energy there. Things like this make a lot more sense along with conservation. There are some tough choices here. The world, industrialization, all over the developing world especially India, (and) China is going to continue to increase the amount of pollutants into the air. I think part of the answer is what the Germen government did, get this tax base system that assess that, and thus creates a whole new industry that is based on trying to find technological breakthroughs that decrease the amount pollutants in order to give the advantage of lessening the burden from the tax side. That is an incentive way to do it.

(Starting to break, the congressman states, we got to get going on to “Super Senior Saturday”.)

FO: Thank you very much. One more question, overall there was a great turnout, about 200 people. It was very, very good. What were the people asking you? What were on their minds?

ER: It was all over the map.

FO: Was Iraq on the map?

ER: Yes, that came up too.

FO: For the president, against the president?

ER: I think that the people feel that we got to train the Iraqi soldiers, stand up that army, as quickly as we can, get the Jordanians and the some of the other countries involved in training the intelligence officers and there is an effort to do that. We got to make a better effort of training the Iraqi troops so they can take on the burden, I guess there is about 100 units right on that are involved on the ground that are trained, and that are carry out operations on the Iraqi side. But we got to get more involvement, and with that, drawing down US forces and sort of turning the responsibility to the Iraqi.

FO: So I take it that you do not want the troops out yet?

ER: What we want to do is to create an environment where as quickly, as possible, we train Iraqis, as I say, the Jordanians are now assisting in trying to train officers and enlisted men, in how to infiltrate Al-Qaida type organizations and other organizations like that inside Iraq, so that there is more buy in from other troops in the region. As we do that, draw down the US forces. I think that is the solution now.

FO: Congressman, thank you for your time. We truly appreciate it.

ER: Thank you.

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