Olympia Snowe is a former Republican Senator from Maine. She recently retired from the Senate and launched Olympia’s List, a centrist political action committee focused on ending gridlock in Washington. She recently spoke with BPR’s Henry Knight.
Brown Political Review: What is the mission of Olympia’s List and how do you envision its future?
Olympia Snowe: I created [Olympia’s List] because I want to support candidates in electoral primaries that are centrists willing to work across the political aisle. Right now, more ideologically driven candidates are emerging from the primaries…I’m going to contribute to those who are willing to maximize the potential of public office…[and] expose these candidates to a larger platform nationally. In conjunction with the Bipartisan Policy Center, I launched Citizens for Political Reform last spring…to implement initiatives — such as independent redistricting commissions, open primaries, and perhaps campaign finance reform — that we think could dilute the ideological impact of the polarizing political environment we’re grappling with today.
BPR: The individual mandate was originally proposed as the conservative alternative to President Clinton’s employer mandate plan in the 1990s. Now Republicans in the House have voted to repeal it more than 40 times. How have party politics shifted that drastically in just 20 years?
OS: It’s interesting, when I look back on my own career in public office…how dramatically the whole legislative and political environment has transformed into…polarizing gridlock. Unfortunately, with respect to the Affordable Care Act, both sides were unwilling to work together to figure out what was possible. I was a member of the Gang of Six that tried to negotiate a compromise on health care reform. The ACA broke down in the finance committee because it became so complex. The bottom line is, you need to have both sides weighing in on the issue. The individual mandate was a lightning rod. Despite the fact that I opposed it, I worked in the finance committee with Senator Schumer to lower the penalties in the first years until it could be ascertained what these plans coming out of the health exchanges would cost. I didn’t like the whole notion, but I think members of Congress have a responsibility to make it work.
BPR: When can we expect either of the major parties to accept the legitimacy of a law they fundamentally disagree with?
OS: I never thought it was a winning or achievable strategy to tie the defunding of the Affordable Care Act to funding the government or averting the breach in the debt ceiling. Because what’s to say that the next president won’t be denied the ability to implement a law enacted by Congress? We could go down that path in perpetuity, but obviously to the detriment of the country. Republicans have an obligation to try to find ways to improve the ACA, as do Democrats. If one side locks down, we’re never going to be in a position as a country to come up with solutions to major problems. It matters because it gets to the heart of bipartisanship. Social security, Medicare, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Welfare Reform — [are] all landmark initiatives woven into the fabric of our country because of those strong bipartisan margins in both the House and the Senate. Not a single Republican voted for the ACA…I came up with [healthcare] initiatives back in the early 2000s because I was ranking member of the small business committee and half of the uninsured in the whole country work for small businesses. Unfortunately, on my side they weren’t prepared to address those issues even when we held the majority.
BPR: Was it unwise to eliminate the use of the filibuster in judicial nominations?
OS: I think it was unwise for the same reasons I thought it was unwise in 2005 when the Republican majority leader proposed jettisoning the 60-vote requirement for judicial nominees. The Democrats were the minority and they were filibustering some of President Bush’s nominations. You see what happens? Each employs the other’s tactics depending on what position they’re in. My concern is that you’re going to have this vicious, perpetual cycle of retaliation and vindictiveness as opposed to figuring out how you face one another across a table and try to resolve those issues. That’s how the Senate should function, through accommodation and consensus. I regret the decision of the majority leader because I’m concerned there could be tremendous pressure, if the Republicans regain the majority, to jettison the 60-vote requirement for [ending a filibuster on] legislation. And then you’re making the U.S. Senate a majority institution, which it was not designed to be. That was not the intention of our Founding Fathers.
BPR: How do you approach changing someone’s mind in Congress?
OS: Talking to them, and using facts. Governor Chafee co-chaired the Centrist Coalition when he was in the Senate, a bipartisan group that I eventually co-chaired. It was the means by which we brought both sides together on big issues. Despite our passionate viewpoints, we could resolve our differences. We actually formed during the shutdown of 1995 precisely because we wanted to demonstrate to the public that bipartisanship was alive and well, and that the legislative agenda would not be derailed. It became the predecessor to the balanced budgets passed in 1997. You have to work with one another. You have to respect differing views, not lock down and say “it’s my way or the highway,” which is precisely what’s happening these days. You argue and compete on the best of ideas, but at the end of the day, you do it with an understanding that you’re going to reconcile your differences. In the shutdown of 1995, there wasn’t really a question about whether or not we would be able to solve it. But during the shutdown last fall, everyone wondered if it was even possible. That’s a very different proposition from the past and I think it’s jarred the American people, resulting in the loss of historic confidence in our elected officials.