The Dispatch Podcast - Former Congressmen Burn Down the House

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Former Rep. Dan Lipinski, Democrat from the Chicago area, and Reid Ribble, Republican from Wisconsin, join Sarah and Steve about how Congress works or doesn’t work, rather. The two former elected officials highlight the failures of the House of Representatives with troubling personal stories and insights. Fair warning, this conversation is as distressing as it is informative. Plus, stick around to hear what the Wisconsinite and Illinoisian think about this weekend’s Packers vs. Bears game. Show Notes: “The House of Representatives Is Failing American Democracy” - Lipinski in The Atlantic “Confessions of a pro-life Catholic Democrat in a divided nation” - Lipinski in America Magazine Dan Lipinski’s website “Daniel Lipinski on Common-Good Republicans” - First Things Podcast Reid Ribble’s Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. And this week, I want to let you behind the curtain a little bit about how we thought about putting this one together. So earlier this week, there was a piece in the Atlantic called the House of Representatives is failing American democracy by former Congressman Daniel Lipinski. He served in Congress from 2005 to 2021 representing Illinois's third congressional district. And we thought that would be such an interesting conversation to have with him. along with a friend of his from the other side of the aisle in Congress, former Congressman Reid Ripple, who represented Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District from 2011 to 2017. It's not a coincidence that Steve perhaps thought of these two guys, given the Bears Packers game upcoming. But nevertheless, it's going to be a fantastic conversation about what's wrong in Congress. Let's dive right in.

Thank you both so much for being here. I have really been looking forward to this conversation. You know, we want to talk largely about how Congress is broken, how the house is broken. And I feel confident that we are going to solve it. We are going to solve Congress with the two of you, I'm sure of it. But I want to start with how you got here, how you ran for Congress, why you left, a little bit about yourself, anything like that. So, Congressman Lipinski, let's start with you. How many hours do we have here?

Several. Well, I was a political science professor, which I hate to admit that because I wouldn't put most political science professors into Congress. But I was teaching, got my Ph.D. in P.A. Duke, after getting two engineering degrees, I won't go into that. People always question that one. But I was teaching taught Notre Dame, taught University of Tennessee. My father was in Congress, though. My father, my father who didn't go to college, as opposed to my background, worked his way up in Chicago Democratic Machine. He was retiring in 2004. and I moved back to Chicago and ran for Congress because it was something that I had thought when I was younger I wanted to do. I decided, no, I'm just going to teach about Congress, which is what I was doing. But I came back home, ran for Congress, and was there for 16 years. It became increasingly frustrating that Congress did not work.

Individual members gave up their own power. Everything's run by leadership. And it, uh, Congress has, uh, really made itself, especially the house, institution that, uh, is not at all serving the role that's supposed to serve for the American people. You were a deeply conservative Democratic member. First, I'll note that you went to Northwestern, which is, um, the best thing on your whole resume. Obviously, go cats. Uh, we'll get into that later. An extensive conversation about that. But did you consider running as a Republican? Did you consider switching parties? Was that part of your frustration at all? Well, you know, you sound like the left-wing media when you say I was very conservative

because, you know, I had a 90% score with the EFL, CIO, and 90% was League of Conservation voters. I was, I'm pro life. And that really was what wound up doing me in in the, in the Democratic primary. The abortion lobby came after me, three million dollars in 2018 and nearly won. And they had even more out after me in 2020 when, where I lost. So I'm not a, I never, I never was a, you know, a party line Democrat. But always, especially growing up in Chicago, who was, was a Democrat. And funny people wouldn't, wouldn't know, even today, still, there are some conservative Democrats in Chicago, people who just have always called themselves Democrats and haven't changed,

but are fairly conservative. So, no, I mean, I did not ever consider running as a Republican. It was a Democratic district. I consider myself more of a Democrat, although it's become extremely difficult these days to be a Democrat with as far left as the party has gone. Congressman Ribble, it's your turn. All right, thanks.

Well, hello, everyone. My name is Reed Ribble, and I'm from Northeast Wisconsin. I was a roofing contractor for 35 years. I had my own company there. And in 2009, I started getting frustrated by what today seems quite novel, a $12 trillion deficit. And by anybody's standards, it's the $28 trillion.

So I'm just made at my total ineffectiveness at slowing that down a bit. But I was frustrated by that. And so I thought, well, maybe run for a car. Congress. I was challenged by my oldest son to do so and, and decided to do it. I found myself in a, what started out to be an eight-way Republican primary. We were represented in the district, Wisconsin's eighth district, by Democrat congressman by the name of Steve Kagan. And the Democrats had full control of government. And so I thought, why couldn't a regular citizen run? I had no political experience whatsoever. I'm the exact opposite of Dan Lipinski.

maybe America's least educated member of Congress at the time. I graduated from high school, but just barely. But it's really successful in construction and learned a few things just by living life along the way. And so I decided to run. I ended up winning my Republican primary with 48% of the vote. And then I went on to defeat the incumbent Democrat. That was in 2010, what is affectionately looked back upon these days as the Tea Party wave

of 2010. And so I went in with that big group of freshmen members filled with piss and vinegar wanting to change America. And I soon found out that members of Congress had less say on legislation than the chief of staff of their office did or the legislative director. And it was a constant push upstream against the tide of leadership. And the first thing I was taught when I got and it's kind of ironic. There are a few votes that you're told as a partisan that you are to never vote against. One of those is a rule bill, which is just a procedural bill, and Dan can appreciate that. You're told as a Republican, when you're in the majority, you vote for the rule no matter what, you know, and then a motion to recommit, you always vote against that. And so for the most part,

we were pretty good. But then all of a sudden, the speaker would begin to put things in the rule bill that were actually based on policy. So I wasn't just voting on how to set up how many minutes of debate each side got and what we're going to be talking about, but I was actually having to vote on policy. So I found myself on occasion having to vote against rules, which put me in kind of a bad spot with the leadership because you have to vote for everything. But, you know, I got the crap beat out of me for voting to vote for a budget I didn't even agree with. And I was on the budget committee. And then within months, the rules bills were waiving the budget that they just beat me up to pass. And so I said, okay, this is just a bunch of nonsense. And I just began to vote.

If there was policy in a bill, I voted in a policy without regard. And so I think I ended up my six years there. I went in with the self-imposed term limit with being the only member of that class who never had a bill come to the floor of the house. And there's reasons for that other than naming a post office after a fallen soldier in my district. That was it. So that was my sad story. Congressman Lipinski, you have a piece in the Atlantic this week, which, you know, lots of people can write about how Congress is broken and the move of the administrative state, the growth of that, the judiciary, the executive, kind of taking over a lot of the traditionally legislative functions. Steve and I have talked about it at length, but your piece in the Atlantic got me thinking

on a whole other level about why it's not just Congress writ large as broken, but the House of Representatives specifically is what is driving a lot of the brokenness. I was wondering if you could summarize your piece for us, tell us, you know, why you are, uh, you are, uh, diagnosing the problem as it is. Well, I love the House of Representatives. I love the institution. I was always amazed. I tell you one thing when I would go out to Washington

and my father was in Congress and visit with him is how representative of the country, Congress is in the diversity of the country, that the members of the house are. And that's the way it was meant to be. And the Madison largely set up Congress to have the house, you know, be the closest to the people, the only ones in the federal government who are directly elected by the people were members of the house.

And they're supposed to go there and represent their constituents, the diverse views of their their constituents. Today, people run for Congress to represent their party to a large extent and just to fall in line with the party, as if it were a parliament. And we do not have a parliamentary system. We purposely don't have a parliamentary system. The framework of the Constitution wanted Americans, they have both a House and the Senate, two different places they've input. They want the House and the Senate to actually debate and deliberate. They're supposed to come together and bring their constituents diverse views, especially the House, bring, you know, come together, talk about these diverse views, debate, deliberate, and try to come up with the best

policy for the country. Today, we have more of a system where people run for Congress. And some of them don't even run these days to be legislators. They run for the blue check mark. And that's it. By which, just to clarify for listeners, you're referring to a blue checkmark on Twitter, which means you are verified, which is sort of a stand-in for, I don't know, being important or something. I'm not quite sure what it's a stand-in for. Yeah, I still haven't figured that out.

I don't think I have a blue check mark right now on my account. That's a whole nother story I could get into with social media for a former member. But right now, members, you know, are expected. Look, what's going on right now with this infrastructure bill? All these people are saying, and this isn't the House, it's the Senate. They're saying, oh, cinema and mansion need to get in line with the party. Like, no, cinema and mansion need to represent their states. That's what they're sent to do.

And in this whole idea that there's just, we're members of Congress, to represent their party completely runs counter to our American system. So in the House, now what happens? I talk about in the Atlantic piece, the last decade, every major law has largely been written in the Senate because the House only on major legislation especially, but it goes to a lot of the legislation, just passed partisan bills, which are written to large largely, they're written as political pieces. They're written aiming towards the next election to please the donors, the interest groups, that the party wants to make sure gets revved up for

the next election. And these legislation that's passed by House is too far the mainstream. dream. The Senate takes the House bill and says, we can't pass this. We're going to pass our own bill. Most of the time, it winds up in gridlock. But when there are situations, for example, with this infrastructure bill, House passed its own infrastructure bill. But the Senate said, no, we're, you know, there's a bipartisan group of senators came together. And the Senate said, if there's going to be infrastructure bill, and the president said he wants an infrastructure bills. House says it wants an infrastructure bill. Senate says, well, it's going to be this one, the one that we passed in the Senate. That's the way things work these days. And it is

really detrimental to our country. I think it usually leaves the gridlock. People are not, Americans are not really being represented by their representatives in the House. And I don't see how we continue to go on this way with, you know, one House of Congress just not, not really working. And so it's a, it's a major problem. I, it got my time there, it just got worse and worse. I'm not sure how we get out of this. The American people are, seem to be happy to elect people who make all these wild promises and, you know, I'm the Democrat and I'm going to, we're going to make all these changes and Medicare for all, free this, free that. And Republicans who say, I'm going to stop all the spending and we're going to shut down. You know, we're going to have a

balanced budget. We're going to cut your taxes down to nothing. And those people get elected. And nothing happens. And it's a big problem for our country. Well, let me, I want to drill down on, on something you wrote in, in the Atlantic piece that really sort of jumped off the page at me. In describing the House of Representatives today and how it functions or how it doesn't, you basically conclude that it has little purpose in our constitutional structure as it exists today. You say it's a chamber that, quote, is not contributing to lawmaking on the most important issues facing our country. You've given us a little background on why you think that's happening.

A very basic question for you, what do members of Congress do all day? What are members of the House? Do all that. If they're not lawmaking, what are they doing? Tweeting, going on TV and performing. You've all of Vin has a great book. And this is part of what he talks about it. He talks about the whole, all of our institutions are now being used to,

instead of forming people, they use the institutions to perform. And that really applies strongly to, Congress and especially to the House. They also fundraise. It's, you know, the amount of money that is raised now is just incredible. So those, all those things are done. When I was in the House, I spent a lot of time trying to get things done and trying to work. And there are, you know, I don't want anyone to think that the House never passes anything. It never has any say anywhere. it's just the major legislation they do not. And so little has been getting done the last couple years.

But look, the House passed a bipartisan National Science Foundation bill. I was just talking to a colleague of mine over there who said they're hoping that the Senate will take that up and they'll actually get something done. But most people don't, I think it's important. Most people don't really care, know about the National Science Foundation. Some things like that can still get done. But unfortunately, this partisanship and this gridlock has crept down into, you know, a lot of things. So what does the House do?

Well, these days, a lot of times they sit around waiting for Nancy Pelosi to tell them what's going to happen. Congressman Rivel, I want to ask you sort of a follow-up to that question. And you've made this, you've made similar points. Everyone knows that members of Congress spend an inordinate amount of time raising money. And Congressman Lipinski just referenced that. What most people don't know and what I really didn't appreciate for years, even as I covered Congress pretty intently, is that your ability to raise money affects everything from your standing in the party to your committee assignments. You have to raise money for the congressional campaign committees for each party. and you're judged by how much you contribute.

Can you explain that dynamic? It's something I think most people don't really understand, maybe not even aware of. How does that work? What are the expectations for members of Congress in raising money, not just for their own re-election, but for the party itself? Yeah, you know, when I was first elected,

I was told right away that, I mean, literally, in December, I had, even been sworn in yet. In December, I was told by my incoming chief of staff that I needed to start raising money for my re-elect that before it was even sworn in. And then very shortly after I got there, they started talking to me about starting a leadership pack. And I had no idea what a leadership pack was. Remember, I had never served in any political capacity before. So I was really new at it. And they said, well, if you want to get better committee assignments, if you want to maybe become a subcommittee chairman someday, you've got to be a team player and you've got to donate

money to the, in my case, I'm a Republican, donate money to the NRCC, and you've got to help colleagues that maybe are in tough districts to get, win their election, you've got to raise money for them, and all that stuff is monitored and measured. I remember almost laughing out loud once when I heard Speaker Ryan in a podcast like this say, that the House representatives is a true merit organization and that the cream of the crop rises based on their ability to legislate. Well, that's all nonsense. They rise based on the ability to raise money.

And in essence, those committee assignments, those committee chairmanship and all that are bought and paid for. I won't give the name of the member because I don't have permission to use it. I remember one time I was going after a subcommittee chairmanship. And I was doing all the work necessary. I was talking to people and trying to build up support. I'd put a packet together and all my qualifications and why should be subcommittee chairman.

The first question I got asked by everybody on the steering committee is, how are you doing across the street? Meaning, how are you doing over at NRCC and raising money for the team? And I told them and I was doing okay, but I wouldn't say I was doing great. I ultimately didn't get that subcommittee chairmanship. And so I went to the person that did. And I said, so how does this whole thing work? I don't get it.

And he said, well, you screwed up. You gave the money in advance. I raised the money and I kept it in my account and said, if you want this money, then I want this subcommittee chairmanship. And you see how the trading goes on. So that was the merit. Now, I had already written bills and had tried to advance stuff in committee. It was a very active legislator.

you asked what people did during the day, Stephen. I actually tried to legislate. I was never good at it. It was never really successful at it. I remember even having a bill with 235 co-sponsors on it, bipartisan, that I couldn't even get a markup in a committee on it. And this was a bill that had the Speaker of the House as a co-sponsor. And I couldn't get a markup in a committee.

And so Merit was all about the money. It's unfortunate. It's a sad tale, but it's true. And this goes the other direction as well, right? I mean, if, you know, you have somebody like Kevin McCarthy, who is a prodigious fundraiser, he is responsible for helping to fund the campaigns of many of the people who are now serving in Congress, and it builds this kind of loyalty from these members that he's helped get elected. The same, of course, is true with Nancy Pelosi.

How much does that matter? And, you know, for Republicans, I mean, I would look at, the job that Kevin McCarthy is doing right now, and I think he's been a horrible leader in virtually every respect, because he's not actually a leader, he's just following. But if Republicans win the House of Representatives back next fall, as I think most people expect that they will, there's not much chance that he would be removed or that somebody else would be elected because he's built up so much loyalty among the rank and file by helping to fund their races. Is that, is that an, am I crazy to? No, no, you've, you've described it

accurately. That's how, that's how the system works. And, and so the real question is, how do you rest, how do you pull that power back and give it back to the, the members? The speaker is voted on by the members, and so the members can remove a speaker. And let me tell you, who the members can't remove. They can't remove a committee chairman because the committee chairman are selected by the speaker. And so the speaker's in control of everything. And so members have very little say. The only way you can fix that, in my opinion, is to invert that process where not only does a speaker get elected by the members, but the committee chair get selected and voted in by the committee members. Now the chairman would be subject to the committee members

and going to what Dan said, this would allow the great voice of the crowd, the American people to be heard because they're not being heard right now. Because the voices in, for example, when Paul Ryan was speaker, the voices of the constituents in Wisconsin 1 were exponentially louder

than the voices of the citizens in Wisconsin 8. And so it's a massive change in thinking and it would return power to members that they don't have. I brought that up as a rule change in the Republican conference, and I practically got booed out of the room. How in the world can you imagine that these elected members of Congress would want to just cede all their power to somebody else and then have no saying anything?

And the answer is because they don't want saying anything. They want to be protected. And the tragedy of all this is, Article 1, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution says this. All legislative powers here and granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which will consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. They don't want that power. They continually cede that power and that authority to the administration because it protects them.

They're looking for a protector so they can hold on to this bit of fame or whatever it is they're holding on to. The job's not all that great, so I don't know what it is they're holding on to. So the only thing I could conclude was people just, they're attached to the fame of it all, whatever that fame provides for them emotionally. I don't know. This is why I love Reed, even though he's a Packers fan. The idea that somehow a member of Congress is actually going to care to be a legislator and care to represent their constituents above all else. not just want to be there and keep in and stay there um yeah that it says we need more we need a whole lot more of that in uh in in congress in uh we're we're just we are not getting that and i

again i think another part of the american people need to american people need to to see this understand this and they need to vote for something different um but I think it's hard for people to see that. And everyone's taken over now by we're two battling tribes or I've written about there. We're actually, we're a sectarian society. And Congress has just fallen into this, especially the House. I mean, there are some senators who will, you know, I give them credit.

They will stand up and stand apart. I mean, cinema mansion, they are, they are representing, I think they're representing their constituents. And every time someone talks about, oh, Manchin should get in line, I say, Democrats should be really, really happy that Joe Manchin, for the state that elected Donald Trump, you know, Trump won by 39 percent in that state, Manchin is nowhere near. I mean, he's much further to the left. I hate to say this, hope it doesn't hurt Joe, much further than the state of West Virginia. So all the people who are complaining, about Joe Manchin, they don't understand or they don't care what America is supposed to be, what representation is supposed to be, how government is supposed to work. And so that's really

been bothering me recently every time I, every time I see that. And you see it from senators. And Senator Sanders, I mean, he really stepped into it with that tweet that 48 senators and 210 House members all want one thing. Everyone else needs to get in line. And, I don't I love the retweet. I wish I had done this. The retweet someone put out there saying, Republicans would be really happy to see that. They've more than 48 senators and more than 210 members in the house. So I thought that was perfect. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect

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and thousands of families already applying through Ethos. It builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Congressman Lipinski, you have studied this, so I'm going to go to you with this question in your political science hat. Is there a moment that Congress broke along the way? Is it the introduction of TV cameras? Is it social media taking off?

Is it what caused this? Or has it just been a slow rot? It has largely been a slow rot. And you don't want me to go into the political science. There's actually some good political science written about this that you can you could trace it back in some ways to the 70s. You can trace it back to the Watergate babies and the changes they started making to the rules back then. And then speakers started picking up the increased power.

But Newt Gingrich was really a turning point. Newt Gingrich really made the speakership a lot stronger than it had ever been. And, you know, he continued that on. You know, Denny Haster picked it up from him. once it switched over and anti-Ploci, you know, it just, it has just ramped up more and more. So I think that it's been a slow rot. And one of the big problems is you have a few members of Congress who are there now who know how the institution can actually work and what power they actually can wield, what members

should be doing. And I watched people leave, people like Reed, just who said, you know, forget it. I don't, I've got better things to do with my life than to be not able to get anything done here. I saw people, so many people like that leave Congress, others who were not reelected because people like me who said, I'm not just going along with the party on everything. And so that's a problem. That makes it even tougher now. You're losing the members who can actually step up and say,

hey, I know what this place can actually be. And members come in now, new members come in and think, well, this is the only way. The only way things can be is, you know, the speaker has all the power to decide everything, and we just have to let the speaker do everything. And if you're in a minority, we just need to give our minority leader all the power that they can have. so that we can get everything back, so then we can have power. Actually, then the speaker has the power. And so that's how we get out of this, I don't know.

Congressman Ribble, I think I have a slightly more depressing observation. Is that possible? Congressman Lipinski was saying, you know, people are leaving who want to legislate. And he said earlier that the American people need to pick a different way if we want to fix this. But oftentimes in these races, the American people aren't being offered a choice of a different way because the only people interested in running for Congress are the ones who want to sign up for this job, what it currently is, not the one that you, how adorably thought it might be. And do people like you still run for Congress?

And if not, we can't get that back, can we? No, people like me do run for Congress. They run in every race. And you can look at North Carolina. You can look at, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green won a primary, you know. But here's what's happened is there is a large group of Republicans. And I'm going to say a primary voter is about 25 to 30 percent, which is generally enough to swing a primary election. That the only metric that they're interested in is the one where someone campaigns that I'm going to go fight.

I'm a fighter. I'm a fighter. I'm a fighter. And what I discovered when I got there was that the Republicans were off in the right corner with paper swords flailing them in the wind, and the Democrats were off in the left corner of the room flailing their paper swords in the wind. Nobody's striking a blow, and the speaker just doing whatever the hell they want it. But they could go back home and talk about fighting, because fighting is how you talk.

It's not about what you do. And so as long as you go on a podcast like this or you go on five, news or MSNBC and you blast the other side, the American voter, that primary voter who's tuned into that political life, they just think you're fighting and they're cheering you on. And I can't even tell you how many times I had people, Republicans in my district, tell me I'm not a good enough fighter because I'm not blasting President Obama on TV every day. And my response was, well, if I want the president to sign legislation that somebody lands on his desk, how inclined is he going to be if I'm kidding?

kicking them every time I go on TV. It's just an ineffective way of managing human relationships. But for some reason, in this relationship that we have, that gets rewarded. And so you end up with folks like Lauren Bolbert beating a Scott Tipton, who was a very pragmatic, thoughtful member of Congress, but she beat him in a primary. You've got Marjorie Taylor Green, who beat a very competent and capable candidate that would have been much more pragmatic and thoughtful. And so all based on the screaming and yelling and shouting. Now, this happened before Trump, but Trump just amplified it. It was like he put a thousand-watt amplifier behind all those voices and began to push that out there. And I mean, I was just super dismayed at it because there are good members

of Congress, but they're going to struggle keeping their positions because on the left, You've got Bernie and AOC doing the same thing to their pragmatic members that the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world and that kind of ilk are going to do to the right. And this just continues to degrade until the American people stand up and say, enough is enough. And they ultimately hold the power. They really do if they would just seize it. They can stop any member of Congress. There is term limits in this country. I self-imposed one.

But every two years, a term certain happens for every single member of the House of Representatives. That term ends. And people don't check yes on the box. That person goes home. And the problem is we need better decision making. And we need a society that is listing above the din of the media that is just constantly pushing hard left and hard right. I mean, I'm embarrassed to turn on a lot of what I hear on cable news today. because it's just, it's just gotten to be crazy town.

How big a contributing factor is gerrymandering? I mean, we have now a very small percentage of congressional districts that are actually competitive, that are really what we would call swing districts. And so what you see is sitting members of Congress are often more concerned about a primary, about being primaried than they are about a general election battle. And in order to ward off primaries, they do these things that will appeal to the extremes. And I think we're seeing that right now, particularly on the Republican side, with all of the nonsense about the stolen election.

I think if you took a survey of Republicans in the House of Representatives and forced them to tell the truth, you'd find very few of them who actually believe the nonsense that Donald Trump is spouting about the election haven't been stolen. But when you listen to them, speaking in public, they will, many of them, go along with the idea, at the very least go along, sometimes amplify it, sometimes promote the idea that the election was stolen because they're trying to fight off a primary. So long and loaded question. I'll go back to you, Congressman Ribble, first. How big a factor is gerrymandering, are these carved districts? I think it's a factor.

It's not the total factor. It's not as big a factor as what we believe. People self-select where they live. Democrats live in urban areas and Republicans live in rural areas and they kind of self-select. I mean, if you look at the counties in the U.S., the country is vastly red. If you look at every urban area in the country, those cities are vastly yellow, or blue, I'm sorry. And so there's a self-selection there so it can make it difficult to do districting in a way that would try to get a little bit more balanced. But the parties have gotten good at packing districts. I think, I think in many respects, in the state of Wisconsin, my state, Democrats overpack districts. They've made districts too blue. They've shoved too many blue voters in a handful of districts, and now they only have a handful. And so it swings both ways, for sure. And there are, like you said, only a handful of truly competitive districts. but I think it's almost as much the result of self-selection where people live. And so it does make it difficult, but anything that would move a district closer to the middle would shove a left and right.

And, you know, you could also do top five type of primary, nonpartisan primaries. You could break that cycle in different ways by changing how we do elections in this country. But that also gets the party bosses nervous because they like this. system because for them it's about controlling power. Congressman Lipinski, just picking up on that, feel free to address the question about gerrymandering, but you mentioned earlier Twitter and social media and this sort of information environment that we're all operating in. How much do you point to that as a causal factor of what we're seeing today of the House of Representatives essentially not functioning?

You've all lived in, as you pointed out, has written quite a bit about performative lawmaking or performative I guess you can't really call it lawmaking because it's the absence of lawmaking but people who are basically playing for cameras more than actually interested in doing their job it's a common theme of this podcast as well is that the dominant factor

how would you compare that relative to things like gerrymandered districts I think that is a dominant factor I think social media, I think the playing to the, you know, playing to the bleachers on both sides, it works. I mean, that's the thing that is that it works because I, you know, I remember a lot of, a lot of Democrats, liberal Democrats, always talking about, we need more small dollar donors. That's the thing. We've got to change. In, you know, in theory, sure, you know, they're saying we need to fight the corporate interests and.

We need more small dollar donors. And then who comes along and is the best that who raised more money ever from the small dollar donors? Donald Trump. It doesn't matter which you're left or you're right. The crazier you are, the more willing you are to say things that are just outrageous and fire people up in really appeal to the worst of people. the more money you're going to raise. I mean, that was always a major problem that I has. Like, who wants to give, who gets fired up to send off their $10, $25, $50 to someone who says,

yeah, I'm working to, I'm working with Republicans to we're going to get something good done here. We're going to, I'm for pragmatism. I'm for making, making things a little bit better. No, they give them the people to say, hey, I'm going to change it. I'm changing, I'm changing this country. I'm bringing a revolution. That's where, that's who gets all the attention. They get attention to social media.

That helps with the fundraising that gets people out knocking on the doors for these, these crazy candidates. And then they play off each other. I mean, the woman who replaced me got into a battle with Marjorie Taylor Green. Their offices very, I thought it was hilarious. Their offices are crossed from each other in the office building, house office building. But look, so they start this battle and they're each putting out their tweets and their videos of how horrible the other one is. And they just feed off each other.

and they both raise a lot of money, and they're talking about nothing that has anything to do about being a member of Congress. So I think that's the biggest problem. Jurymandering is a bit of the problem. I'm not saying it's not a part of the problem at all. It's so easy now to draw these maps exactly the way that at least the parties think from the data that they have. they're going to be able to win and distribute the voters in the correct possible way for the party. But I think the other things that make it worse. I want to talk about the – oh, yeah, no, please, Congressman.

Yeah, I'm just saying one follow-up, Stephen, on the whole big lie about the election, you mentioned Republican members. If any one of – for example, the Arizona delegation, if any one of them had an ounce of integrity, those House members would say, you know what? This election, we just can't trust it. So I'm going to step back and voluntarily resign my seat until the count is redone. But you see, they want you to believe that they won their election, but Donald Trump, the Democrats were so dumb in their district that the only person that they were going to cheat out of an election was the president and not the congressman or the senator. You know, and so, I mean, either the election was bad in its entirety or the

election was good in its entirety. But see, they don't want, they need to parse that because Donald Trump spent months and months telling everybody was going to be rigged if he lost. It was just embarrassing. I want to actually talk a little bit about the two parties and where they've been headed recently policy-wise as a structure as a mood. Congressman Ripple, you came in, as you said, with the Tea Party wave that was about limited government, cutting spending, all sorts of things that the Republican Party doesn't really seem

to believe in anymore, certainly didn't for the last four years, maybe is now saying that they do. Should we believe that Republicans still believe in that? Looking back now, should I believe that even the Tea Party folks ever believed that? Or is every iteration just a new way to rile up voters and get power? I think both of those things are true. I think there's a group of people in the House, a group of Republicans in the House, that are dismayed by the spending.

They didn't have the courage to man up and tell Donald Trump no. But at the same hand, in the six years that I was there, the first five years discretionary spending went down. First time since the Korean War that that happened. And then Donald Trump got elected with full Republican House and Senate. Spending went up every single year.

Deficits spending went up every single year under the Trump administration. And so they abandoned. and the high ground on that, on that issue. And part of it was the intense pressure to get tax reform done. But I was always an advocate of setting taxation at whatever level the Congress wanted to spend. So if you want to spend $5 trillion, then you should be willing to tell the American people we're going to tax it $5 trillion. And what would have happened if they did that, if they actually passed the real cost of government down to the American people,

the American people might agree that government should be more limited. But right now, the American people are getting government at a 40 or 50% discount. So they're happy to take it. So if I had your experience going back 10 months ago and was sitting in your office, getting the phone calls you were getting, what would I think the Republican Party stood for these days? Trumpism. The Republican Party stood for supporting the president. Every single campaign finance letter I get from Republicans, it's all.

all about standing with Trump. Not a single thing about principle. It's all about standing with Trump. And then every now and again, you get somebody bashing Biden over the head with a stick. But for the most part, it's about stand. I stand with Trump. I stand with Trump. I stand with Trump. And so Trumpism is the platform. And if you remember in the 2020 election, Republicans abandoned their platform and said whatever the president wants is our platform. And so if that's what it is, And stop and think about this. I was really struck at this. All spending authority comes and starts in the House of Representatives. They control the power of the purse. Three times in a row, the Congress of the United States voted to not fund the border wall. They voted not to do that. Trump said, screw you. I'm going to reappropriate money that you appropriated for building schools for children of active duty and military. I'm going to direct that to the wall because I have full authority. And Republicans just fell right in line, only 12 or 13, very proud that my congressman Mike Gallagher voted against it. But the fact of the matter is, they just capitulated.

And they succeeded all their authority to the White House on it. And once you do it once, you encourage them to keep doing it. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.

slash y annex. So Congressman Lipinski, the Republican Party believes nothing is in power-hungry, authoritarian cult. I might be putting some words in Congressman Ribble's mouth there. That's what I heard. Yeah, definitely. Pretty close. Pretty close. So if that's all you knew, it seems to me that the Democrats should have.

75 seats in the Senate, 300 plus seats in the House. But that hasn't happened because the Democratic Party also has a problem. David Shore, the Democratic data guy from the Obama campaign, who funny enough was then canceled on Twitter, but has a profile written by Ezra Klein that was fascinating to me. He notes that split-ticket voting is gone just across the country, there is now the Senate presidential vote was 71% tied together in 2008. It's now 95.6% tied together in 2020. And he talks about how the Democratic Party is overrepresented by liberal white people who then control sort of that messaging that David Schur says is unpopular.

So the defund the police, the Latin acts, these type things which in fact are, um, The dog whistle is the opposite way they want. It's a dog whistle that we're not like you. We don't think like you. We don't talk like you. And we don't hang out with people like you. And as a result, the Democratic Party has been pretty, for political science purposes, pretty quickly losing non-college educated white voters. And we saw Donald Trump pick up, I mean, a shocking number of Hispanic and Latino voters, especially in the Texas border area and parts of Florida.

why can't the Democratic Party capitalize on the total collapse of the Republican Party? Well, let me first say that is exactly why I'm no longer in Congress is because those people have sort of taken over the party. And I always had my, you know, always got most of my support, even though as a college professor who lives in a nice suburb. of Chicago, you know, my support came from the lower in the middle class, you know, working class people, those people that the Democratic Party has basically pushed aside, said, we really don't, we really don't care about you anymore. It's been taken over by the well-off white liberal

suburbanites who are really don't have to, they make all these pronouncements about the way things should be that, first of all, don't really impact them. They don't really, I mean, it's very, very counter to the Democratic Party that I've always believed in, is standing up for, you know, staying up for the little guy. You know, that was, that was always it. And that's always why people say, well, why are you a Democrat? Well, Democrats have stood up for the little guy. And that's not really.

Although I think some people think they are. I don't, I think they have this image that they're standing up for the little guy, but they're not really. So look, the Democratic Party has gone off the rails. Just as much of the Republican Party, Republican Party is a cult of personality now. And I think that largely comes from the fact that the Republican Party has been without really big ideas for a while. And that's the way I see it. I actually, I have a piece in the latest edition of First Things magazine where I talk about common good Republicans.

And I talk about are the Republicans turning essentially a Trumpism without Trump. are they are they going to turn more in talking about being common good you know following catholic social teaching um sort of a lot along the ways of the ways i've always i was as a member of of congress in my political thinking about um the way the the government should operate who needs to to be help. Not big government, but government can help some people. Government should, we should not just be a completely free open market, sort of a middle ground there on economics. And I hope the Republican Party goes that way. I think Donald Trump opened the door to that. He didn't ever do anything. Look, Donald Trump talked a lot about a lot of important issues. I mean, he really

knew he understood things that are troubling people and problems that people have and that's why he was able to win he talked about those problems but then he came in he did nothing about him you know the only thing that the major piece of legislation in their time was a tax cut that you know mostly went to the top um so he did not at all know how to govern that that way but so i actually looked at the republican party and say If the Republican Party can go in that direction, I think that it will be good for our country. And I hope the Democrats wake up and say, hey, I think the Democrats are really freaked out by the, especially Hispanic voters, who are going more towards the Republican Party. And the expectation that the future is the Democrats, because the Hispanic voting numbers are going to be rising so much,

I think that really has the Democrats worried, but they're yet to respond to that because the people who are leading are still these suburban college-educated, well-to-do white liberals who, now progressives, who are really completely out of touch with what's really going on out there. And so it's, it needs, what parties are bankrupt right now? I mean, there's just no question. Both parties are bankrupt. I mean, it's interesting. Yes, sure. Can I have something quick that, Stephen, on the Hispanic vote, you know, I've always heard Republicans don't want to do comprehensive immigration.

We're just going to create a bunch of Democrat voters. And I think Donald Trump proved that wrong. That's not true. When you think in terms of Central American, you think in terms of the Hispanic voter, They're mostly very family-oriented. They're entrepreneurial. They're hardworking. They're Catholic.

They're pro-life. They're in many respects, Dan Lipinski. And we think that there's something bad about that. But Republicans are starting to begin to appreciate that work ethic and that desire for self-improvement and self-accomplishment. And I think Hispanics are going to be more. more inclined to vote toward a conservative side, maybe not exclusively so, but moving more to the right, because it falls more in alignment with that basic understanding of who they are and the culture that they've come from. So we shouldn't be afraid, as Republican, we shouldn't be afraid

of comprehensive immigration reform. We ought to be, we ought to be advocating for it. Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting. Congressman Lipinski, I would suggest that in many ways you would be a better person to lead the charge on this kind of common good conservatism than many of the people who actually are trying to lead the charge on common good conservatism because they're using sort of Catholic Catholic social teaching it feels like as sort of a power move more than anything else and I think in many cases this doesn't apply universally but in many cases, some of the people who are sort of most outspoken about creating this new common good conservatism lack credibility to do so because they were most enthusiastic about the candidacy

and the presidency of Donald Trump. And you're talking about a thrice married philanderer who paid off porn stars who, I mean, I don't need to go down the list exhaustively or we'd be here for several hours. But this is not exactly somebody who stands as a paragon. of virtue or who did much to advance the common good. And I guess the question I would have back to you as you look at some of the people have made these arguments in the pages of first things and the New York Post and elsewhere, do you worry that the way that they talk about common good is less about actually promoting some understanding of the common good?

and more about a power play to say, it's our common good. We're the ones who understand it to hell with everybody else. Stephen, don't burst the only hope I have. I'm sorry. I like to think of myself as skeptical and not cynical, but there are times where I give in to the cynicism. Well, unfortunately, I fall into that same camp. So I'll just say, I'm hoping that that's,

not the case. But yes, it certainly looks like perhaps, but I don't want to judge this, but perhaps these are just people who see, hey, this worked for Trump. I'm going to talk this way also. But I think the facts are that there is a pathway here. Now Trump showed there's a halfway for hopefully people who truly believe this and want to want to run for office and govern for the for the common good i i it's i you know people have talked about ross doubt is one who's always talked about you know that that's a great unrepresented portion of the american people and i i just laugh because i've been there i just that where that's where was my entire local career, but where's, where's this, where's the support? I mean, that's right.

There's always the thing. Where, where is the support for that? I think the support amongst the people is there, but the, you know, it's hard to run that way. I mean, Donald Trump, that was, that was an appeal of Donald Trump, but, you know, let's not, let's not kid ourselves. That wasn't Donald Trump's only appeal. And there's a lot of things very much opposite that Donald Trump appealed to people on. But that possibility is there for good candidates. And I'm hoping that there are some who are not just opportunists. Yeah. I mean, as I listen to you talk, I mean, I guess I'm struck by the fact that what I see, what I'm hearing from both of you, what I've seen in following your careers was sort of a willingness to accept political opponents on good faith terms, to try to

work with them to make progress where you can make progress, not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And what I hear from some of the most outspoken proponents of this new common good conservatism, I'm thinking here in particular of Sorab Amari, formerly of the New York Post. he's left that position to do something else. But so Robin and people who make the arguments he makes, they don't even want to talk to people on the other side. They point to people like our own David French as the problem because they're willing to engage on a good faith basis,

because they believe in classical liberalism and the structures that allow good faith debate to yield progress. And I think that's where I'm, I mean, to dwell on this topic, but that's where my, my cynicism kicks in pretty strong. You've, you've earned that cynicism to a certain degree. I prefer the word skepticism, just like you do, Stephen. But I'll give you one quick anecdote. And I know we're pushing up against the clock here. But I remember early on in my time in Congress, I was reaching out to members like Dan Lepinsey, because what I saw in Dan was somebody who, while never compromising a principle was always willing to seek a principal compromise.

And I think there's a distinction there. But I was getting ripped on by one of the local conservative radio talk show posts. And, you know, I think my chief of staff came in and said, you may want to just dial in. I was in D.C. I listened to it on my computer. And then I called in up and he was yelling at me and all this stuff. And because I was working with the Democrats and something. And so he picked up the phone.

He said, well, speak of the devil. Congressman Ribble is on the phone with us. And I said, oh, I got a quick question for it, because I've been listening to the show. And here's my question, and then you can ask me anything you want. I said, what is it about your conservative beliefs that you have so little faith in that you don't want me to take those beliefs into the arena with my fellow members of Congress? Because it sounds in me like you're a coward that you don't really believe in what you believe because you don't want me talking about it with them.

You act as if it's not persuasive. And then I just shut up. What was his answer? Well, that's a damn good question, Congressman. And we just kind of went on. He pivoted away. But you understand the point is that we shouldn't be fearful of engaging in the arena. And Dan and I have had wonderful conversations.

We'd go out to dinner. And he knew that I was a conservative and pretty far to the right guy. but we had great conversations that were filled with mutual respect, and I could begin to understand his passion and heart for people that actually needed help from the government, and that you need to be cautious about how you speak and how you legislate and how you communicate with colleagues so that you don't diminish yourself in their eyes, because at some point you might need their vote for things. And Dan was a great mentor for me early on, and I was I was thrilled to be part of this podcast with him especially.

Well, that brings us to our second hour, which is your relationship together vis-à-vis the Packers versus the Bears. Real quick, do you all have a bet still going now that you're no longer in Congress? And how did those bets tend to turn out what was on the table? If you could just give us your high-level analysis of your teams and your individual rivalry. I think I was willing to provide his staff an entire Broughtworths and beer lunch. And fortunately, I never really had to pay that day. So I have a picture, and I wish I had pulled it out, at least for those of a son who are doing this right now, to see it, of me handing over Home Run In pizzas, one of my favorite pizza places in Chicago. So it's not deep dish pizza.

We also have good thin crust pizza in Chicago, but homer and in pizza handing it over to read. But now that we have Justin Fields, who is going to be the best quarterback for the bearers in Sid Luckman, whenever that was, way before Maya was born, we're taking over this. But, yeah, I talked to read yesterday.

I gave him a call. I didn't want to bring up the upcoming game because I don't have a whole lot of faith in what's going to happen. Well, Congressman Lipinski, I do have good news for you. So I am married to a Purdue grad as a Northwestern grad. And Northwestern football is playing Purdue football at Wrigley Field in mid-November. And I hope you're going and can send me some FOMO emails or text from that game because I have very high hopes for that little situation.

I don't. The worst Northwestern team we've had since I don't know when. They need, they will be inspired by Wrigley. It'll be the, you know, they'll see it. It'll be like,

like, Field of Dreams. They'll walk out and be like, we must win this, defend. I went to the game, Northwestern played Illinois a few years back at Rigley Field. And I was like,

I got to be there. I'm a Cubs fan. even though I'm a southwest side or I'm a Cubs fan and so I went I went to that game and it was incredible it's being Wrigley field in November for a football game I mean that that was that was so much fun but but that was before they expanded Wrigley field a little bit they they moved things and so they can only play in one direction so they the offense always had to go in one direction so my favorite point in the game was there was a Northwestern had made an interception so they're running it back so now you're in danger zone and so he runs into the end zone and I wanted him to keep a run and run right into the brick wall that's what I was that's what I was I'm going to need to step out here and go pack go bear very good go packers thank you both so much for joining this this is It's good to see everybody. Thank you.

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