Political Roundtable: Auchincloss on Ukraine, Biden, Fall River’s economy & more
The 35 year-old congressman has emerged as a rising star in Massachusetts politics.
Jake Auchincloss emerged from a seven-way Democratic field in 2020 to succeed Joe Kennendy and become the new congressman in Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District. He had no primary opponents last year and easily won a second term in office. But what can Auchincloss do to help raise the economic fortunes in the southern half of the Fourth District, which includes Fall River, Taunton and Attleboro? I’m Ian Donnis. This week, I’m going in-depth with the U.S. representative from Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District.
Transcript:
Ian Donnis: Congressman, Jake Auchincloss, Welcome to The Public's Radio.
Rep. Auchincloss: Good to be with you.
Ian Donnis: Let's start with the war in Ukraine. It seems like things are at a bit of a standoff. Despite exceeding initial expectations, Ukraine has not been able to eject Russian forces. Russia is absorbing big losses while making some tiny incremental gains. What will it take for Ukraine to win this war?
Rep. Auchincloss: Ukraine's fighting on the frontlines of the free world. Their cause is not just the cause of the lives and livelihoods of the Ukrainian people. It is also about defending democracy the world over. We do not want our children to grow up in a world where might makes right and where the rules based international order that America helped architect after World War Two and that has helped spread peace and prosperity to ever more people is degraded by megalomania. megalomaniacs like Vladimir Putin or ultimately Xi Jinping or others. We need to win this war. And there's a number of measures that the United States can take in concert with Ukraine. One is we have got to sustain our military and economic aid, to allow their economy to support their war effort, and to give them the weapons and the munitions that they need for their spring counter offensive. Second, we need to continue to try to isolate and asphyxiate the Kremlin war machine. That means stepping up our sanctions: commercial, central bank and, and energy. And it also means preventing them from finding gray market workarounds. And then finally, we've got to continue to maintain international support. So far, this effort has been largely a Western effort. It's been the United States with NATO. And then with some support from East Asian allies. We should seek to expand the coalition into the global south countries like India, Brazil, Nigeria, would be critical supporters.
Ian Donnis: Would you support providing fighter jets to Ukraine?
Rep. Auchincloss: I want to see the Pentagon's assessment of that from my position, I don't have the up to date intelligence, battleground assessments and munitions and procurement information to be able to just from an armchair confidently assert it, but I will say this, we should give Ukraine whatever it needs. For as long as it takes for them to retake all territory up to and including Crimea. This cannot be a war that settles into a stalemate. This needs to be a war that Ukraine is declaratively the victor.
Ian Donnis: The Chinese government was not happy with you, when you were part of a congressional delegation to Taiwan last month, and you responded on Twitter in part, they're angry, I don't care, we're gonna stand up with freedom and democracy wherever it is in the world. Does this mean that the US should support independence for Taiwan?
Rep. Auchincloss: The United States, in collaboration with our Taiwanese partners should prevent war on the straights of Taiwan, it would be a disaster for the Taiwanese people, for the Chinese people, for the American people and really for the world order. And that was the message that I heard loud and clear on my bipartisan congressional delegation to Taiwan, they understand the situation that they are in the situation in Taiwan really crystallizes the scope and severity of the challenge from the Chinese Communist Party who is constantly harassing them. And they want to maintain what they refer to as the dynamic status quo, meaning they want to prevent war, but they also want to prevent reunification, and that strategic balance is critical for the foreseeable future. We do need to deepen our partnership with Taiwan to maintain that strategic balance. So we have to expedite our military arms sales and our military to military training. We should be ending the policy of double taxation on Taiwanese investments in the United States, which is impairing our own semiconductor manufacturing industry. And we should be working on standards and market access in bilateral trade talks.
Ian Donnis: China is a rising economic and military power does the US have the right strategy to avoid getting eclipsed by China on the world stage.
Rep. Auchincloss: That is the focus of the Select Committee on strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party of which I am a member. This committee's mandate is to rise above day in day out domestic politics and chart a long term generational strategy with a discrete set of policy recommendations that a supermajority of members of Congress can get behind so that it transcends a Republican or a Democratic administration, we need to have a long term view on this because goodness knows the CCP does. They think in 50 years strategies, and the United States needs to do that as well. So what does that mean in in concrete terms? Well, we're, we're working on that. So I don't want to speak with authority. But there is some clear indications one, we have got to prepare for an Indo Pacific conflict, whether it's on the straights of Taiwan, whether it's South China Sea, whether it's in Southeast Asia, the Chinese navy has grown massively in the last 15 years, they have adopted a precision guided missile regime that makes our own bases and assets vulnerable, we have got to adapt. And I'm proud to say that my former service, the Marine Corps is actually on the cutting edge of that evolution. And we should support the US military in doing that.
Ian Donnis: Let's switch over to a few political questions. Your office has knocked down the idea of you challenging your Massachusetts colleague, Senator Elizabeth Warren next year, but let's hear from you. Are you ruling that out?
Rep. Auchincloss: Yes, I don't know how much more declaratively I need to state it and how many more different media formats, there is? zero chance. And I think it just speaks to the age old adage that those who talk don't know and those who know don't talk.
Ian Donnis: Last month, a report by a nonprofit group, American Family Voices found that the Democratic Party brand is "pretty damaged" in the white working class communities that will help decide the next presidential race. From your perspective. What do Democrats need to do differently to win back more voters in those kinds of communities?
Rep. Auchincloss: Costs, crime, and classrooms, we have to speak in specific, actionable terms about how we are going to improve education, how we are going to ensure public safety and how we are how we are going to lower costs, particularly in housing and health care.
Ian Donnis: You cited home rule for Washington, DC, in siding with other Democrats in allowing a controversial rewrite of the Criminal Code in Washington, DC, to move ahead. This lessens penalties for some serious crimes and Republicans are trying to make political hay of this. Is this going to be an effective issue for Republicans against Democrats.
Rep. Auchincloss: If I were a DC city councilor, I would have voted against the law. But I'm not. I'm a member of Congress who respects Home Rule. And I'll let Washington DC govern itself, as in cities across the country, I think have recognized that they need to invest in smart policing, policing that is, is able to respond to violent and property crime, which is not acceptable. But it's also able to respond to mental health, homelessness and substance abuse with trained with trained professionals who can deal compassionately with these issues. That's what the American people want. And I think if the Republicans tried to flip the script here, they're going to be forced to answer why they don't think it's a problem that America has more gun deaths than basically every other nation in the world combined. And why they don't think that it's that our schools, our churches, our grocery stores, deserve to be places where people feel safe to go about their daily business, because we are in the middle of a scores of gun violence that Republicans are aiding and abetting.
Ian Donnis: Congressman Auchincloss. One of the striking things about your district the fourth district in Massachusetts, is how it includes both affluent Boston suburbs like Brookline, and Newton and some more economically challenged communities closer to Rhode Island like Taunton, and Fall River, what can you do as a congressman to help expand economic opportunities for the constituents in your more hardscrabble communities?
Rep. Auchincloss: Deliver. I'll give you a couple of examples. One is water infrastructure. Water Infrastructure is a major impediment to economic development on the 495 belt as well as in southeastern Massachusetts. Fall River struggles with with combined sewer overflow issues and with waterfront infrastructure to support housing development, Foxboro, North Attleboro, Plainville, Wrentham, these towns have challenges with root one sewer infrastructure and it impedes their ability to do commercial development. We are working closely with each of the 35 cities and towns but particularly in central and southeastern parts of the district to understand how can infrastructure investments in particular, but water, specifically unlock economic development. And then the second is mental health, homelessness and housing. These are, these are all challenges of the same ilk. And we've increased federal funding to help tackle them. But I'm also working in concert with local officials to provide solutions on the ground.
Ian Donnis: You've criticized some aspects of military spending, I wonder what you make out of the littoral combat ship canceled by the Navy because it was not working after billions of dollars were spent? Is there any kind of accountability for taxpayers in that kind of instance?
Rep. Auchincloss: It's emblematic of a widespread problem that has led me to vote against the defense budget over the last several years, despite supporting to be clear, a strong and growing military because of the challenges in the Indo Pacific that I raised. The military needs to spend smarter, not bigger, they create these contracts that are these exquisite fee for service fee for time contracts that basically make an incentive for contractors to drag out the process and deliver over budget and late. Whereas if they could amend FAR Part 10, which I've worked on, to just pay for performance, like most business does, where you say, here's a problem. If you solve it, you get paid. If you don't, you don't get paid. It sounds obvious. Unfortunately, it's taken a long time to sink that in, depending on bureaucracy, but we are we are making progress.
Ian Donnis: You've recently read a speech written by chat GPT on the House floor to dramatize the emergence of artificial intelligence. What should government regulation look like? And do you expect that to happen?
Rep. Auchincloss: I do. At this stage at the congressional level, it's a question of who more than what what I mean by that is who is at the table setting the pace of AI development and putting in place the guidelines will determine much of what the policy becomes. And right now the who is concentrated on Microsoft, Google, Facebook, open AI, these big tech companies, that's not an acceptable cross section of society. And so I've put forward several different initiatives to democratize access to AI to cloud computing power and in the data in particular, so that startups and universities and government officials and journalists and civil society can access these resources and help shape their rules. And then sector by sector we're going to need to see guidelines put in place what how healthcare adopts AI versus education versus financial services versus insurance versus construction is all going to look different. There's no one size fits all approach but we need now each sector to start those conversations and bring their stakeholders to the table and probably that's why I gave this speech is to spotlight it.
Ian Donnis: We've got to hold it there. Congressman Jake Auchinclosss from Massachusetts Fourth Congressional District. Thank you for joining us.
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Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera is celebrating her birthday in the coming week. She’s marking the occasion with a fundraiser at a Peruvian restaurant in her community. The host committee is a who’s who of Rhode Island politicos, showing how Rivera has emerged as a well-liked up-and-comer. It’s unclear for now if she’ll do more than kick the tires on a potential run for the open seat in Rhode Island’s First Congressional District. But the idea of Rivera running for higher office is more a matter of when than if. For more insights on Rhode Island politics, check out my Friday TGIF column posting around 4 today on my twitter at IanDon or at the publics radio.org
That’s our show for this week. Our producer is James Baumgartner.
I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.
By: Ian Donnis
Source: The Public's Radio