This interview was conducted via phone in the fall of 2015, but the questions and responses remain relevant, and will be so for the foreseeable future.

The Representative: A Philadelphia native, Brendan Boyle has been the representative for the 13th district of Pennsylvania since January 2015. Previously, he served as a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representative from 2009-2015. He has a bachelor's in government from the University of Notre Dame, and Master's in public policy from Harvard University.

The interviewer: Marilyn Yang is a junior at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania studying finance and marketing. She is the editor-in-chief of Odyssey at the University of Pennsylvania, and serves as the COO of Smart Woman Securities, the VP of Marketing for the Wharton Private Equity and Venture Capital Club, the Art Director of The WALK fashion magazine, and the Public Relations Chair of Alpha Delta Pi sorority.

Odyssey: What actions have you taken in Congress or causes have you championed to improve the lives of college students and recent graduates in your district?

Rep. Brendan Boyle: I’ve been in Congress for nine months and have personally been active on the student loan and debt crisis. I’m a member of Congress that’s fairly young and I have over $50,000 of student loan debt. I believe that this is one of the major problems in the country today and have been cosponsoring legislation that would allow students and those in repayment to be able to refinance their student loans like refinancing mortgages at any time to take advantage of lower interest rates. It would save those in repayment literally billions of dollars. That’s just one thing we can do to address the student debt and loan crisis, which obviously affects college students today but also those in years to come.

Odyssey: Increases in college tuition have been outpacing inflation for a few decades, and now the amount of student loan debt has surpassed the credit card debt held by all Americans. What specifically can Congress do to rein in these costs, if anything?

Rep. Boyle: It is a national disgrace that higher education has become so out of reach for so many families.

I’m the first in my family to go to college; I think this is an equity and fairness issue. There are two things that the federal government can do: first, and you’ve seen the Obama White House move forward with this already, is to make affordability part of colleges’ federal rating. Now, this will be factored in when colleges and universities apply for certain grants. The fact that they are getting a great deal of public support even if it’s a private institution makes it important to take affordability into account. That’s number one, and then number two, for about 30 to 40 years, we have year after year increased the amount going to student loans to the point where we have then inadvertently allowed colleges to price themselves out of market. That is something we have to change more toward a grant model and pull back a bit on student loans, because like I said, it has unintended consequences.

Odyssey: Beyond college costs, which three political issues affecting 18 to 30-year-olds aren’t being talked about enough?

Rep. Boyle: Even though it gets some attention, it doesn’t get as much as it should: global climate change. While this affects everyone, those of us who will be on average living a lot longer, living in a world where the average temperature is four degrees higher than it is will have a major effect on us, not just the environment but economically and the way we live. This is a change that is beginning to happen now and will only accelerate, and we will be in the middle of our lives when the world changes dramatically. Climate change has to be a generational issue for us, and those of us in our 30s and 20s need to talk about it even more. This is exactly why we need to vote in higher numbers.

Odyssey: Congress has a notoriously low approval rating among Americans, regardless of the party in control. Why is the branch that’s supposed to represent the people thought of so poorly by them?

Rep. Boyle: I joked in my campaign last year that if Congress has a nine percent approval rating, elect me, I couldn’t possibly do worse. I was saying that tongue-in-cheek, but the fact is that the low approval rating Congress faces is due to the hyper-polarized climate in which there is a deep amount of partisanship and where there is gridlock. It would be a mistake if people pulled back from public service because in a representative democracy it is still the best way to affect change and to make a difference. If you don’t have bright, well-intentioned, ethical people entering public service, then the whole country will suffer.

Odyssey: What’s one specific policy issue on which you’ve bucked your party’s consensus?

Rep. Boyle: Literally two weeks ago I voted against the Iran Deal; I am a proud Democrat and I support the party most of the time, but the Iran Deal I felt was a mistake. In the total analysis I thought that we were giving up far too much than we were getting in return, so despite the fact that it was heavily lobbied by the party leadership and President Obama personally, I voted on my conscience and voted “No” on it.

Odyssey: In your current position, which vote do you most regret making and why?

Rep. Boyle: In the nine months I’ve been in Congress so far, no. I’m sure that if one is intellectually honest and reflective, it’s only inevitable that over the course of my congressional career that there will be votes that I cast that years later I will feel differently. Right now, I wouldn’t say that I could point to one where I feel that I made a mistake.

Odyssey: Since 1965, who was the best president not named Barack Obama or Bill Clinton and why? [The question was asked this way to remove the most likely choices for the Democratic congressman. Republicans Odyssey interviewed were asked the same question, excepting Ronald Reagan.]

Rep. Boyle: Lyndon Johnson. So many of the things that we take for granted today domestically whether it is Medicaid, Medicare, Higher Education Act, Civil Rights, voting rights; all of those things specifically go to Lyndon Johnson as president and a lot of them right in 1965. Because of the Vietnam War and the way he left office, he is not thought of as highly as others, but I think that there is a reevaluation going on now of the Johnson presidency that it tends to be unappreciated.

Odyssey: Which interest group or lobby has the most undue influence on Capitol Hill, and why?

Rep. Boyle: There’s no question that the interest group that has the most undue influence is the Tea Party. The very extreme, right-wing groups that refuse to compromise on anything and insist on punishing Republican members that will compromise on one or two things, have a very destructive effect on campus to the point that Speaker Boehner would rather up and resign than having to deal with getting reelected within his own caucus. That is the major problem I see in Congress today.

Odyssey: The gap between the rich and poor continues to get bigger and is on many people’s minds. What statistical indicators do you use to analyze this? What is your solution?

Rep. Boyle: I talked about this a lot in my campaign; today, in the United States, the gap between the wealthiest one percent and the remaining 99 percent of us is greater than at any other point in American history. There are a couple of concrete things you can do in the short term.

The first is frankly tax fairness. We have a tax code right now where multibillionaires are able to pay zero in taxes through all sorts of loopholes and deductions, whether it is carried interest, taxing capital gains in a much more advantageous way than earned income, this has skewed the tax code in such a way where you have middle-class workers – teachers, police officers – who are paying a higher income tax rate than billionaires. I’m a public service worker and my wife is a public school teacher, and we paid a higher tax rate than Mitt Romney did just a couple of years ago.

Another prescription -- and this is longer term -- is that I believe that we do need to see an increase in the domestic workforce that is unionized. I don’t think it is an accident that in the last 60 to 70 years, as the percentage of the workforce that is unionized increases, the middle class’s percentage of income has also increased. And also as the percentage of the workforce that is unionized declined, you saw middle class income also decline. They have moved in parallel in the last 70 years. When we see at the very lowest level of the workforce, fast food workers, for example, when we see them making $7.25 for an hour, a minimum wage that hasn’t risen in a decade, if they had the power to collectively bargain, they would make a greater income and you would see the wealth gap shrink.

Odyssey: What does the word "equality" mean to you and how do we achieve it as a country?

Rep. Boyle: When I think “equality,” I think everyone should have a fair shot regardless of the color of your skin, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation – that everyone has a fair and open shot.

Odyssey: Finally, if you could have a drink with any non-politician dead or alive, who would it be and what would you drink?

Rep. Boyle: Benjamin Franklin's a politician so I can’t count him, but it would actually be Albert Einstein because I’m a political junkie and my background is in public policy, but in the last few years I’ve developed a great interest in astronomy and space. I would love to ask Einstein all sorts of questions and be able to pick his brain. I would probably be having a beer with him – anything from Yards Brewery.