Scalise Featured In Baton Rouge Business Report As A 2016 Louisiana Newsmaker
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Steve Scalise (R-La.) recently sat down with The Greater Baton Rouge Business Report for the feature, “Conversations with 14 Louisiana newsmakers.” Highlights from the Q&A are below:
A conversation with Congressman Steve Scalise on Washington politics
By: Stephanie Riegel
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise became the third-most powerful member of Congress last year, when he was elected Majority Whip by his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives. In the seven months since, Scalise, who has represented Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District since 2008, has helped build coalitions in a fractured GOP and played an instrumental role in the passage of key pieces of legislation like the recent omnibus spending bill. Life in the House leadership has been a big change for Scalise...but he still manages to come home most weekends to see his wife and two children, who remain in his Metairie district.
You are fresh off a big victory with the omnibus spending bill. Tell us about the significance of it for Louisiana and the role you played in getting it passed.
Part of the job as whip is to help put coalitions together to pass the bills we bring to the House floor and also work on the policy along the way. Getting the ban on oil exports lifted was a priority of mine this year, and we were able to get it included in this bill. That helped us with a lot of votes on the spending bill. If you look at the Texas delegation and Oklahoma, even, we were able to get a lot of support to make that happen.
When you talk about bringing these factions together, the political climate is so polarized today. How have you been able to do it?
It’s a relationship business. You’ve got to build relationships with people…I have a very strong relationship with every member, and I cherish that. We work hard at it. We like bringing our southern Louisiana culture to D.C. I’ve brought a couple of Louisiana chefs up there. Many of them have tried charbroiled oysters and blackened redfish now. You do some of that to help build better relationships, but it also is nice to be able to share our culture with people from around the country and they love it.
What are some of the Louisiana issues you have been able to address in your new role?
I was very active in the flood insurance reform debate a year and a half ago, and that is going to come up again next year. And also revenue sharing, which is critical for coastal restoration. The president’s budget proposed gutting our revenue sharing, and I worked with our leadership team to make sure when we did a House budget we preserved the revenue sharing that our state is set to get in 2017. We were able to get language in the highway bill that just passed that benefits projects like Louisiana Highway 1, which is critical to the energy infrastructure in Louisiana.
What are your priorities for 2016, both for the country and for Louisiana?
For the country, the top priority is to get the economy moving again, and a lot of that means getting a lot of these radical regulations out of the way, from the EPA to Obamacare. They are real impediments to job creation that are coming out of Washington, and south Louisiana is affected like everybody else. Every small business owner I talk to is negatively impacted by regulation coming out ofWashington right now.
With respect to Obamacare, are you actively working to repeal it?
Yes. One of the things Paul Ryan laid out was that he wants to see us move a bill that replaces Obamacare in 2016. I’m real excited about that because when I was chairman of the Republican Study Committee I led the effort to draft a bill that was an alternative to Obamacare. We put together a bill that was less than 200 pages that not only repealed Obamacare but replaced it with conservative reforms that put patients back in charge of their health care decisions and also helped lower the cost. So I would like to approve a bill that does that and pass it to the Senate and have a national debate on this.
And environmental regulations?
The EPA is out of control. It is one of the biggest impediments to job growth in America. I’d like us to change the relationship between unelected regulators in Washington and the rest of the country so that if a regulation is proposed by an unelected bureaucrat it should have to first go through the elected representatives of the people first. Right now, you can’t hold anyone accountable when some unelected bureaucrat comes up with a really bad idea that kills jobs in America.