Description: Creating consensus isn't easy.

Question: Beyond a simple title, how would you describe what you do for a living?

Transcript: I change the world every day.  I am an agent of change, and hopefully positive change.  And that’s the way I view my work.  And when I say “change the world every day,” well, how do we try to ensure that no child in America goes to sleep at night worried that they don’t have healthcare coverage and cannot get ill?  How do we ensure that every kid’s God-given potential is fulfilled? How do we use the power of our collective intellect as a more powerful tool than the power of our bombs?  And how do we do it in a way that promotes democracy and human rights across the world?  And how do we take American ingenuity and turn it for good in other parts of the world?  So what I get to do is work every day at changing the world. 

Question: What is the joy in what you do?

Transcript: Being part of changing the course of events; of being able to make the wind that blows over our people blow a lot more gently.  And at the end of the day, moving in a direction that says to me personally that I have left the world better off today than it was yesterday.

Question: What is the struggle in what you do?

Transcript: Well, change isn’t always easy, and it doesn’t always happen.  And sometimes I wonder did I leave the world better off today than it was yesterday.  But bringing people together in a common cause is a great challenge.  It’s also a great opportunity to do great things.  And obviously that’s a struggle because we don’t all come from the same experiences, come from the same backgrounds, look at everything the same way, even when sometimes we believe in a common goal but we have different views as to how we achieve them.  And so that’s a struggle.  It’s a struggle from someone who grew up poor to be in an institution which getting there often requires, for example, raising money to expend in very expensive elections, and media markets that are very expensive so that you can get your message . . . so that what you want to do . . . so that you can be elected to then do the things that will change the course of events.  And that’s a struggle. 

Question: What are you best known for?

Transcript: I think I’m best known for trying to give Hispanic Americans a place at the table, particularly as it relates to being part of the political space in our country; empowering . . . seeking to empower Latinos which I’ve done from my home state of New Jersey.  I’ve been involved with nationally.  And also riveting attention within the fastest part of America’s population growth in the largest single minority; that there is a great potential not just for that community itself, but for the broader American community.  This is a community that is younger by a decade than the rest of the population.  And so as the nation grays and grows older, it will increasingly look to members of this community within the American family for the quality of their lives.  Some of us will be washing a surgeon’s . . . a kitchen knife in a restaurant, and another one of us will be holding a surgeon’s knife in an operating room.  And how well-educated and trained that individual will be will be increasingly important to those who are going to be his or her patients.  And so if we are younger by a decade, and going to be about 25% of all of the nation’s school children within the next 20 years, it means the educational future of the nation is also at stake in large part to this community.  And so how well educated that part of American society is is going to be important for the nation’s competitive future.  So having Hispanic Americans play a significant role in having policy issues that affect the quality of their lives, and in return therefore, the quality of opportunity in America is something that I think that not only have I been doing, but that I am known for in terms of part of my work.

Question: What is your message to the Latino community?

Transcript: It would be that it is a sleeping giant that I think is about to awaken and needs to wake up.  It needs to wake up by using its electoral power in a way that can decide the course of events immediately in our country, and for the long term.  I think the community has a transformational opportunity to change and impact not only, for example, who the next President of the United States will be – which in and of itself would be significant – but where public policy will head.  When you have 17 million Latinos in the country who are eligible to vote, and when you see where they’re located in the states that are critical for an electoral victory for the next President of the United States, you have an opportunity to have transformational change by the use of your power.  Our challenge . . .  My message to the community would be you’ve got to use that power, because that power ultimately comes back in the things that you care about for the future of your family, for the future of the community that you live in, and in the nation that you call your own.

And now in Spanish?

Question: How is service in the House of Representatives different than in the Senate?

Transcript: Very different.  In the House of Representatives, an institution of 435 people that is incredibly diverse, getting enough people in common cause – 218 people to pass anything – is a real challenge.  But particularly one of the big differences between the House and the Senate is if you’re in the House of Representatives, and if you happen to be in the minority party, whatever that might be – whether it’s Republicans now or Democrats in the past – it’s almost an abject minority because the rules of the House control the process in such a way that the majority largely controls everything primarily through a traffic cop called the Rules Committee.  And in doing so, that committee, which is a super majority . . .  The majority controls what gets to the floor of the House of Representatives . . . under what way it’s debated, how much time, what amendments and all that.  So . . . And it can even change the legislation that you may have gotten out of another committee that ultimately comes before the Rules Committees.  The Rules Committee can say, “You know what?  We’re gonna re-write this bill, and we’re gonna send it to the floor in a different way.”  So in the House of Representatives, not only is getting common cause a much more difficult challenge because you need 218 votes, but you also have the differences between a majority and a minority, with a minority facing enormous hurdles to have its views or propositions to be voted on.  In the United States Senate, not only, of course, is it a smaller institution – 100 members – but the powers given to an individual Senator can make a minority Senator one in which they play a majority role.  And because there is no traffic cop – the Rules Committee – and so much moves in the Senate by what we call unanimous consent, it just means that.  There has to be unanimity among the 100 members to have something move forward.  And one Senator can get up and object. 

For example…

Transcript: I had an early experience of that upon coming to the Senate where there was legislation in the final days of the Republican Senate in 2006 that wanted to change and authorize Ryan White funding, which is important.  It’s about AIDS prevention and how we help the HIV affected community.   And it was going to be done in such a way that clearly would have hurt my state of New Jersey in ways that I could not tolerate on behalf of that community.  And it was in my power then as a minority. . . part of the minority party, but as an individual Senator to say, “I object”; and by my objections, stopping a process that until a negotiation took place with me that changed the course of events; that made that legislation and its reauthorization far more acceptable to those people who suffered with HIV/AIDS in my home state of New Jersey.  It’s an example of how even a member of the minority party in the Senate can have a disproportionate opportunity to affect the course of events than a minority member of the House of Representatives.

Question: Do you see profiles in courage in Washington?

Transcript: Maybe not as many as I’d like, since it is one of those books that inspire me; but there are moments.  There are moments.  I think that there are moments people who are the party of the President, and are willing to buck the President.  And that is, I think, a profile in courage.  There are those people who are willing to speak out against what might be seen as the popular view in the country, or among their colleagues.  Last year, I know I was one of only 12 members to vote to transition out of Iraq out of a 100 member body.  And you know for a lot of those individuals that was not an easy choice, but they felt it was the right choice.  And so there are moments of that.  You know I think, though, that to say what is one person’s profile in courage may not be seen as significant as another’s.  But I think the passage from Profiles in Courage that speaks to this in a prologue which says, “In whatever arena of life one meets a challenge of courage, no matter the sacrifices they face, if they follow their conscience, the loss of their friends, their fortunes, their contentment, even the esteem of their fellow man, each person must decide for themself the course they will follow.”  The stories of past courage, they can teach; they can offer hope; they can provide inspiration, but they cannot provide courage itself.  For this, each person must look into their own self.  And I think there are members of the Senate, in their own ways on different issues, who from time to time look into their own soul and act in a way that is courageous.

Recorded on: 9/12/07