Editor’s note: Civil Beat reporter Chad Blair and photographer Cory Lum were in the nation’s capital last week.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — By Mark Takai’s count, he’s now met the president of the United States five times, including escorting him during the 2015 State of the Union address in January.
Last Tuesday, Takai marked that fifth encounter at the White House, where Barack Obama signed the executive order designating Oahu’s Honouliuli internment camp as a national landmark.
Takai is a new addition to Hawaii’s four-member congressional delegation. Three of those members met with Civil Beat to talk about their priorities for federal legislation affecting the islands amid the distractions of a showdown over funding the Department of Homeland Security — one more sign that Republicans are now solidly in control of both houses of Congress.
Rep. Mark Takai in his office in the Cannon Building in Washington, D.C.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Takai, the freshman representing Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District, clearly relishes being in Washington, D.C.
His office in the Cannon building includes a framed black-and-white photograph of the late Dan Inouye, Patsy Mink and Spark Matsunaga. There is a painting of a C-17 flying over Diamond Head (“Waikiki Sunrise”), one that used to hang in Neil Abercrombie’s congressional office.
Home is never far from his mind, however. There are also photos of Takai with his wife and kids, a family that he is 5,000 miles away from, yet in daily contact with.
“It’s a challenge — one of the toughest aspects of this job,” he said. “I called this morning. Around noon time it’s 7 a.m. I try to call in the evening, but I try to go to sleep by 10, but that’s 5 p.m. when they are at (sports) practice.”
Meanwhile, Takai’s House calendar is loaded with hearings and votes, constituent greetings and meetings with officials (including Council members from Hawaii), as well as dealing with media (like Civil Beat). But the congressman also strives to not forget his origins: Last Friday, he and his staff donned aloha wear to keep a local tradition alive in the nation’s capital.
Takai was so busy last week that it was easy to forget that Washington was consumed by yet another fiscal crisis.
Republicans chose to add language to the Department of Homeland Secuirty funding measure to constrain executive actions by the Obama administration that seek to provide “deportation relief and work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants.”
While that bill easily passed in the House, it was stopped in the Senate by filibustering Democrats, which started the clock ticking toward a Friday midnight deadline.
Many in the GOP say the president’s actions are unconstitutional and amount to undeserved amnesty. Some also argue that it is Democrats that are holding up funding DHS. The charge rings hollow to Democrats, given that Republicans control both chambers.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the minority leaders of the U.S. House and Senate, hold a press conference to discuss the dispute over funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
“House Republicans are adding these riders (to the bill) because they want to win a fight with the president,” said Mazie Hirono, one of Hawaii’s two senators.
In the view of Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker and a Democrat from California with close ties to the Hawaii delegation, the GOP’s strategy is a “comedy of errors” that constitutes a “major amateur hour.”
At a press conference with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday at the Capitol, the leaders were united in their defiance of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner.
Reid, wearing glasses with one lens blurred to cover an eye damaged from a recent accident, pointed out that the DHS shutdown loomed even as national security threats (e.g., from ISIS) are on the rise.
“The American people are frightened, and rightly so,” he said.
Reid may be bruised physically, but his party seems undiminished despite the loss of the Senate to the GOP last November. Reid and Pelosi retain strong control over their members, and they are winning (for now) the public relations battle over the funding impasse.
The most recent campaign ended late Friday, as Congress managed to agree on a bill that funds DHS — but for one week only.
The GOP failure to push through its preferred legislation was a major embarrassment for Boehner and, to a lesser degree, McConnell, who proposed a plan to vote on DHS in one bill and on immigration in another.
Sen. Mazie Hirono walks to the Capitol for a vote on Homeland Security funding.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
“It’s a manufactured crisis,” said Hirono, employing a description she has used often in recent days, including in a speech on the Senate floor.
“This week has been goofy,” said Hawaii’s other senator, Brian Schatz, using a word not likely to make it into an official press release yet one that sums up the view of many.
Hirono, Schatz and Takai all made time to sit down with Civil Beat. (U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s office said she was too busy.)
For Hirono, immigration reform remains a priority, albeit one that may get little traction in the current political climate. She is also focused on making sure the nation follows through on shifting its foreign policy attention away from Europe and the Middle East and toward Asia and the Pacific.
“If you talk to any of the (armed services) chiefs that come to testify before us, I am usually the one to ask, ‘What about the’ — I don’t call it the pivot to the Asia-Pacific but the rebalance — and they say, ‘In fact, we need to do both,'” said Hirono, a member of the Armed Services Committee.
Visitors from Hawaii gather for photographs in front of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s office at the Longworth Building.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Hirono also sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“In terms of national security, I just can’t ever talk about anything that we do on the Intelligence Committee,” she explained.
Reminded that the late Sen. Dan Inouye, who once chaired the committee, said he learned things that sometimes kept him up at night, Hirono laughed.
“Oh yes!” she responded. “Suffice it to say that we need to be ever alert.”
Hirono said she has formed close relationships with her female colleagues from both parties, and the women meet every two months or so for dinner.
“We take turns finding the venues and decide what we are going to bring,” she said, adding that her place is too “tiny” for the get-togethers. “Sometimes we do potluck, which is really lots of fun.”
The gatherings are without staff and media and serve as an opportunity to speak freely.
“We don’t agree on substantive issues all of the time, but I think the fact that we sit and talk to each other helps a lot,” Hirono said.
Do her male colleagues get together like the female senators?
“I don’t think so — why don’t you ask them?” she responds, smiling. “I am pretty sure they don’t, not in the way we do.”
Hirono added, “If all of us got together more often, I think it would be more helpful.”
From left: Honolulu Council members Trevor Ozawa, Joey Manahan and Brandon Elefante at the National Association of Counties annual conference.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
The senator was asked about the so-called “Inouye cliff,” that is, the fear that federal funding for Hawaii would dry up after the senator’s death in 2012.
Hirono said the drop in funding has not been “precipitous,” thanks in large part to the array of committee assignments for Hawaii’s delegates and the foresight of Inouye, who saw tight times on the horizon and worked to embed key funding provisions in the federal budget.
Schatz, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, sees it as a key area where the two parties can sometimes still work together.
“There are moments when we all need to put on our armor and have the battle,” said Schatz. “But beneath the surface there is still as much desire to get as much done as possible.”
Schatz pointed to other areas of potential agreement, including reauthorization of funding for the tsunami warning system and reform of reporting and analysis from the Federal Communications Commission.
“Our work on tsunamis is not going to make it into a 30-second ad, but it’s not a trivial matter,” he said. “We haven’t done a tsunami reauthorization in a long time. It’s an example of under-the-radar legislation that is going on.”
Sen. Brian Schatz at his office in the Hart Building.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Takai said he is working on the areas he promised he would during last year’s campaign: federal support for Hawaii, especially for education and the military; sustainability; and equal pay for equal work.
The congressman was asked to compare the U.S. Congress with the Hawaii Legislature, where he served for 20 years.
“The commonality is relationships,” he said. “The bigger process is the same — a bill has to pass the House and Senate and go the president, just like a bill has to pass the House and Senate and go to the governor.”
What is different, said Takai, is the process by which bills get reported to the floor.
“There is no three readings, no advance notice, no public testimony — that’s very different,” he said. “The speaker can introduce a bill right now and it will be on the floor tonight and go straight to the Senate.”
Late Friday, the House GOP introduced a compromise measure on funding DHS. It came after Democrats and tea party Republicans humiliated Boehner by blocking his plan for a three-week funding bill.
Pelosi agreed to the one-week measure, and so the bill passed in a 357-60 vote just after 10 p.m., with 55 Republicans and five Democrats voting against it. The Senate then passed the same measure in a voice vote and the president signed it just minutes before DHS funding ran out at midnight.
This week, Congress will take up the funding matter once again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The U.S. Capitol dome is being restored. What about relations between Republicans and Democrats?
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Takai takes it all in stride. After Friday’s contentious vote, he mingled with House colleagues in the raucous chamber, speaking with Pelosi and Rep. Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat of Illinois who served in student government with Takai at the University of Hawaii more than two decades ago.
Takai wore a maile lei on the House floor. Earlier in the day he gave a lei to Rep. John Lewis, the Democrat from Georgia and legendary civil rights activist. Next week, Takai will join Lewis, Hirono, Obama and others for the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama.
These are exciting, if fractious, times to be in Washington. And, just like back home, it’s all about relationships.
“I’ll say this: Members on both sides of the aisle, you watch TV and you kind of get an impression of who they are,” said Takai. “But on the (House and Senate) floor, people are human. I’ve gotten to know some of these guys, and they are people.”
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