An Interview With Charles Rangel

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L.G.: From your experience, can you ever get the politics out of this sort of situation?

C.R.: Don't say "in my experience," because on each and every day, things change. We have a lame-duck, unpopular president; we have one third of our Senate up for reelection; the entire House of Representatives is up for reelection; the president coupled with a lot of embarrassing situations with the Republican Party; and we have the war. If it was perceived politically that we have a 90-million-people tax cut out there, the politics of that, I'd like to believe, would fall on our side. It would seem to be that's the politics I want, rather than the politics of "are you against the Bush tax cuts?"

L.G.: What's your relationship with Paulson? Do you talk to him a bit?

C.R.: Yes.

L.G.: How often do you speak with him?

C.R.: Every week.

L.G.: Do you have breakfast with him?

C.R.: Lunch.

L.G.: Do you like him?

C.R.: Yes.

L.G.: Why?

C.R.: Because he likes me. [Laughs]

L.G.: Well, he's bound to like the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

C.R.: I like a fellow New Yorker that's a straight shooter, who doesn't waste a lot of time. I don't know whether he said it or I said it, but we both say it: Saying it over and over is not going to change anything. We learned that early in our conversation, no matter how strongly we feel, saying it over and over is a waste of time and energy. Even if we're not able to do as much business as we would like, it saves us both a lot of time.

L.G.: How often do you speak with the president?

C.R.: Hardly ever. Speaking with him doesn't help me with my legislative agenda as much as it does with Paulson. Paulson would allow me to avoid the land mines. You haven't heard of private accounts since Paulson and I have been talking because he knows that this is one of the land mines that the president doesn't want to step on.

L.G.: It seems like they immolated themselves on that last year.

C.R.: Well, the president wanted to come back again with it this year; there were some rumblings about the private accounts. But I would gather that somewhere Paulson says, "If you want it, deal with Social Security, Mr. President. Don't get these people all excited about what happened last year in private accounts. Just let me see whether there's a time and place for this to be raised in a different type of atmosphere and you'll see what happens." I'm not saying that did happen, but it would make a lot of sense. I think he has really been a great referee, Paulson. I've never used that term before, but he's kept us from getting into clinches.

L.G.: Would you call him an honest broker? Is that another way of putting it?

C.R.: I would, but there's very little to broker, except on trade. But the few issues that we had to work with, he's been very forthcoming.

L.G.: You've been attempting to be helpful to them in trade policy.

C.R.: We've got a long way to go. I have a great working relationship with Paulson and a little less than with U.S.T.R. [U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab], but we do have the same objectives to get [agreements with] Peru and Panama out of the way so that we can look at Korea and Colombia.

L.G.: That's put you in kind of an odd position where a lot of the labor unions that have traditionally been your supporters are a little upset. They're looking carefully at what you're doing, and they're probably telling you that they don't like certain things.

C.R.: That's true, but what I have found is that the administration and the multinationals have really not done a good job in talking about the advantages of trade. They haven't done a good job in protecting American businesses and American jobs. They've just said "trade is good," and we have communities all over the country that have lost a lot of plants. A lot of people, and the kids even, some can't afford to get college educations. So part of our trade policy has been for me talking with the Business Roundtable and the Business Council and the Chamber of Commerce, and saying, "If you want to give your support for trade, you first have to give trade a good name...

But you know things we can do; you've got all these universities, you've got all these talented people. We're bringing in people from India [and telling them] hey, in the next five or 10 years, you can be our brains. We need you in the multinational corporations. And not only that, but we're prepared—the same money that we're prepared to spend to bring these people over here, we're prepared to spend what the federal government does to give you an education. All these ideas, we are developing so that people don't have to campaign against trade. They may campaign against a bill because it's going to be devastating for their region. Those from Michigan may be campaigning against the Korean bill because they have 700,000 cars here, we've got 5,000 over there, and so that won't change them in Detroit, but maybe because of beef and because of services, the rest of the country may say, hey, trade isn't bad for me. And so, when unions come and say they're against trade, to a large extent, they mean trade policy as we know it. And the fact that I'm saying, I'm not asking you to vote for any trade bill, I'm just saying any trade bill that has these principles in it, it should be easier for you to look at the bill objectively rather than being against trade. So I'm hoping that the multinationals will pay just as much attention to us and the impact of trade negatively as they do in developing new sources of trade.

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