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: Eric Swalwell has represented California's 15th congressional district since 2013, and serves on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He holds a bachelor's and a law degree from the University of Maryland. Upon graduation, he returned to California to serve as Alameda County’s deputy district attorney and a city council member for his hometown of Dublin.
The interviewer: Bianca deKock is a senior majoring in History at the University of California, Berkeley.
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. Eric Swalwell: I’m fighting every day to make college debt free, and make sure that the 40 million college students have more money at the end of every month to buy a house, buy a car, have a family. Have legislation for refinancing student loan debt, increasing interest, making sure you can discharge or restructure it if you hit bankruptcy.
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. Swalwell: We have a huge role to play. We give out and federally back billions in student debt every year, but I don’t think we are doing enough to tie the institution that can receive student loans aid, to whether they are actually producing degrees, whether their administration pays are hauled in. So I think there needs to be better metrics on those types of things. Not just saying, “Hey, if you’re an institution, regardless of what your degrees are worth, or how you control tuition, you can have student aid.” So I think we can better tie those things together. and that will put pressure on them and put leverage on them to reduce overall tuitions.
Odyssey: Beyond college costs, which three political issues affecting 18 to 30-year-olds aren’t being talked about enough?
Rep. Swalwell: First the fact that our incomes are lower than the incomes of generations before us with the same eduction if we adjust it for inflation, we are not seeing a progressive increase in income, the wages are staying flat. We are working just as hard, if not harder getting advanced degrees and we’re stuck in neutral. Another one is that we are the least home owning generation that America has ever known. People are just are not making enough to buy a home, and so its tough to buy a home, there’s now a new acceptance that we will be a renter generation. I think that defies what the American Dream is which being able to have your own lot of land and a place to call your own. Those are big ones, but a third one that needs to be talked about more is restoring the faith that young people have in their leaders, and I think we can do that by keeping money out of politics. Right now money has quite a corrupting influence in politics and there are lots of ways to fix that. I think young people should care about these elections.
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: Swalweell: I think especially for young people, we are a get things done generation, we like to collaborate in our pursuit to get things done. Right now we look at commerce and we don’t see a collaborative or cohesive bunch. So since solutions come from collaboration, so I feel that if Congress tried to do that they would be successful.
Odyssey: What’s one specific policy issue on which you’ve bucked your party’s consensus.
Rep. Swalwell: There’s a number of them, but recently I would say on trade. I voted against the president on trade promotion authority. I think we see too many countries abuse our trading relationships with us by having really low wages, doing business over there is not how we do business here, by paying flat wages. I bucked the president on that recently, that wasn’t easy, but I really believe that we need to give the American worker a fair playing ground.
Odyssey: In your current position, which vote do you most regret making and why?
Rep. Swalwell: I wouldn’t say that there is one. I’m in my second term, just over two years, I think time will tell if I should have voted a different way, and I’m certainly to that and different ideas, so I think we just have to wait for time to pass. It’s still a little early in my service to determine that.
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. Swalwell: I think Lyndon Johnson. What he did for civil rights, what he did to create Medicare and security for our seniors was admirable. He way to work with Congress, he presided over a time when congress and the presidency were opposites, but they worked together.I think that’s a model for us. His foreign policy around Vietnam is what he is largely remembered for and that was disastrous, but I think as far as he took care of people at home, he was admirable.
Odyssey: Which interest group or lobby has the most undue influence on Capitol Hill, and why?
Rep. Swalwell: I would say the NRA. I believe we’ve received so many massacres of innocent children and people at their workplace, at malls, in churches just slaughtered by people who should not have had firearms. There’s just been no action. The Republicans, they own Congress right now, this is their enterprise, they're in charge. They have the ability to put up the legislation that can make a difference and the NRA has said no firmly every step of the way. I think the fact that there’s not been a single piece of legislation, not a page passed to address gun violence just shows how undue the influence is. It seems that we have a moment of silence every few weeks for gun violence.
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. Swalwell: I think the biggest factor that I look at right now is that for the past ten years, our country, 70% of Americans' wages have stayed flat or gone down. You’re seeing the hollowing out of the working class American. Were not going anywhere, we’re not making progress, and that is what I worry about. We are having a smaller and smaller class of working Americans and a deeper divide between the very rich.
Odyssey: What does the word “equality” mean to you and how do we achieve it as a country?
Rep. Swalwell: It means that you have opportunity to do anything you want as long as you are not hurting someone else. I think nothing stands in the way of who you love, I think nothing stands in the way of taking the job or solving the problem you want, and nothing gets in the way of worshiping or not worshipping a faith that you want. Do no harm to others, and nothing should stand in the way of you doing that.
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. Swalwell: That’s a good question because we surround ourselves all around politicians. I’d probably have to say, honestly, I was pretty moved last week by the Pope. He comes from very humble beginnings, I would drink whatever he was offering, maybe a wine of the Italian varietal or something sacramental, or something we have from my congressional district.
