Breaking The Ice w/ Sen. Tammy Baldwin
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bit.ly slash book club IRL for tickets. Grab yours before they sell out. Rise and shine, Fever Dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V Spear. Sammy's not with us today, but this is still American Fever Dream presented by Betches News, where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing one of my favorites, Senator Tammy Baldwin. Welcome to the show. How are you? I am well.

It's been a wonderful summer and now we're in the sprint both to keep the government running and towards November 5th. So all on my mind right now. We are recording this on debate night. Now, are you going to any watch parties? Will you be staying up to the nine o'clock hour to watch it all? I will definitely be watching it.

But I have not decided yet whether I'm going to join a few of my colleagues to watch it or whether I want to do it in isolation so that I can make any noise that I want when I'm cheering or booing or all that sort of thing. I feel that. I thought I was going to be watching it like me and Sammy were going to be watching it from a closed room and then do the recap. And they were like, no, we really want you girls to go down and help host the Creator Watch Party in Philly. So now...

I'm going to have to like hold my facial expressions and I just don't know that I can. The neutral, right? I know. We're not neutral on this show. I'm decidedly super coconut pilled.

So I wanted to invite you on, not just to talk about what's going on with Kamala, which is, of course, very interesting, but to talk specifically about Wisconsin, because a lot of folks don't have a really good understanding of Wisconsin, what makes it so great, what life is like out there. But it has been a destination that as the cities and the coasts get more dense and a little harder to live in, a lot of folks are looking to Wisconsin as like, maybe that is for me. Can you tell me what's so great about Wisconsin? Oh, my gosh. Well...

Let's start with just how beautiful it is and how wonderful the people are. Our state, you know, people think of it as flyover country, but we actually have our east coast is Lake Michigan. Our north coast is Lake Superior. Our west coast is the St. Croix and then the mighty Mississippi River. And despite the fact that Minnesota brags about having 10,000 lakes on their license plates, we have more. Yeah.

And I get to travel the state all the time, so I get to see that beauty. But I also am traveling the state extensively because I really want to hear from the people. And we have, in terms of our economy, we have a great manufacturing tradition. Like we make things in Wisconsin. We're known for a lot of the products we make. We also have a great agricultural tradition, including in dairy. We have a lot of dairy farms. We produce more cheese than any other state.

And it's the best. It's the best.

So there's lots of things that people who haven't visited there don't know. But I hail from the city of Madison, the second biggest city in the state. It's the state capital. We have a beautiful capital. People will come to it and say, oh my gosh, that rivals the nation's capital with its dome. And then we also have a great public university system, including the flagship campus, UW-Madison, but great...

other campuses in UW-Milwaukee, some great private universities. So really cutting edge research happening in our state.

There's a lot to brag about. Well, that's the thing, right? Like I live in Rochester, New York, and I am always talking about how much I love Rochester and like why I think folks should move there. And I've heard from a lot of people who live, you know, in some of the Southern states where they're losing a lot of their rights, that they're looking for a place to move where they can feel safe. And what I'm hearing from you is like, come for the great schools, the cheese, the women's bodily autonomy, the gay rights. Like what else do we got up there?

Well, let's talk about the impact of the reversal of Roe v. Wade on a state like Wisconsin. It's really a very serious matter. We have all the things I'd brag about Wisconsin. I will not brag about the laws that we have on the books relating to women's control over their own body. We have a criminal law.

abortion ban that was signed into law one year after statehood in 1849. And that meant for 15 months after the Dobbs decision came down that there was absolutely no access to abortion care unless you were about to die.

And we heard some of those stories of people who were bleeding or people who fever spiked because they were facing sepsis and just these tragic stories that should happen nowhere in the 21st century. And then a trial court judge ruled that that 1849 statute wasn't intended to deal with consensual abortion.

which made Planned Parenthood feel safe enough to reestablish care in three counties in our state. We have 72 counties in Wisconsin. So there's huge parts of the state where people still cannot access full, comprehensive reproductive health care. But in those three counties, Planned Parenthood felt that their providers would not be prosecuted or risk criminal penalty charges.

And so we have to work to overturn that 1849 statute. We have to work by passing the bill that I lead in the Senate, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would restore the rights and freedoms in Roe v. Wade nationally in the United States and take the additional and very necessary step telling states like Wisconsin and Texas and Florida and Idaho, and I could go on and on and on, that you can't pass laws at the state level that interfere with those rights and freedoms.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, another thing that's been sort of less in the news, but that I look for when I'm researching politicians is how they handle veteran and military affairs. And you've got a great track record in this space, not just for the work that you did in, was it 2022 to ensure that predatory loans for service members weren't happening? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? I think this is something that like my people know, but the general public didn't know was happening.

Yeah. So I think people, certain sort of fraudulent businesses recognize that service members who leave the military transition back to civilian life have access to GI benefits in particular.

And therefore, there are fraudsters out there who are trying to lure people in. And whether it's educational benefits, we saw a lot of for-profit colleges particularly preying on our military veterans.

Or, you know, there are legitimate folks who are out there helping folks achieve a goal of homeownership. But there's also fraudsters knowing, again, that the GI benefits that our military veterans get are

You know, they're trying to lure them in and give them bad deals rather than help. Yeah, they were telling like army guys who were getting out after four years with their benefits or whatever, like, oh yeah, we'll give you a Dodge Challenger, $100,000 car with like an 80% APR on it, like crazy stuff. And then repoing their cars and just completely taking advantage of folks who

didn't deserve it at all. And so I appreciate that you were able to put some laws in place because that is the role of government, right? Is to protect people from fraudsters. Absolutely. And, you know, I also pride myself in just the work we do with individual veterans who are having trouble getting their case heard or their disability claim processed.

having trouble getting their health care. And that's how we hear about some of these things. You know, it's the fraud that was going on. You know, we heard from individual veterans and like there's a pattern here. There's a pattern here that we need to get on top of.

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Now, if I didn't have this job, my dream job was to be a Coastie icebreaker, which is another group that you guys, I know I could, I could have been yours. I was so close. If I didn't go to the journalism way, I could have been in Wisconsin working on one of these $350 million for the new Great Lakes icebreaker that you've got up there. Can you talk to me about, this is something that I love and that I think people should know more about up in Wisconsin, what you're doing to bring recorders,

recreation, joy, and also commerce to the Great Lakes. Absolutely. So yeah, I described when I was describing Wisconsin and how wonderful and beautiful it was, I started with the Great Lakes. I mean, oh my gosh, such a precious resource. And

Okay. So let's just talk about why we need icebreakers to begin with. It gets cold in the upper Midwest in winter. And so ice forms on the Great Lakes. We do a lot of commerce still on the Great Lakes. It's also a passageway for folks who want to ship products through the canals to get to the Atlantic Ocean. But

As the lakes cover with ice, we want to keep commerce going as long as possible. So we have a fleet of icebreakers, one heavy icebreaker and a bunch of smaller ones. By the way, I just have to say, you know, this is now since it was your dream to do this. I got to ride on an icebreaker, not this past winter, but the winter before. How did you feel? Oh, my gosh. It was so amazing.

Amazing. Yes. And we were just breaking through quite a lot of ice and go through several inches of ice. But to keep those shipping pathways open as long as we can, because when when ships get bound, I mean, the economic consequences are really significant. We can have hundreds of jobs that people are laid off. We can it affects just billions of dollars worth of commerce.

But anyways, we only have one heavy icebreaker and it's old and it is sometimes, you know, needing to be repaired and maintenance done. And we need more than one. And so I have been fighting to get a second heavy Great Lakes icebreaker so that we can keep commerce going as close to year round as possible.

And, uh, anyways, um, we're having some success, but that ride that I got was amazing just to see, uh, the, the important, uh, critical work that these, um, uh,

That the Coast Guard does through their icebreaking mission. And those same ships in the summer do very different activities, buoy tending and all sorts of things that are so important to our recreation and safety as we enjoy and use our Great Lakes for commerce.

So you've had a long career in politics and helping people. Let's go back to where it all kind of began. You and I also share the fact that we had teenage parents, which I loved. My mom was very young when she had me, and I absolutely loved growing up with her. It was like my favorite thing. But we do spend a lot of time at grandma and grandpa's house also because we've, you know, that's just the way that it works sometimes. Do you think that those early formative years of growing up sort of multi-generational prepared you for your role as a senator right now?

Without any question, and my mother was 19 when I was born, she was

going through a divorce, but she also struggled throughout her life with mental illness and chronic physical pain. And she struggled with addiction to the pain pills that she was prescribed throughout her life. Very relatable to people today are going through the same things. Nothing's changed. That's right. And although we're fighting to change it. And then she moved back with her parents, my grandparents, when I was just two months old and they were there for me. They were

my stability, my, you know, I'm so fortunate for them.

And I watched my mother struggle in the healthcare system. And then I had an experience of my own. I had a serious childhood illness similar to spinal meningitis that landed me in the hospital for three months when I was nine years old. And my grandparents had health insurance. They didn't realize at the time that it didn't cover grandkids. I was not a legal dependent of my grandparents. Right.

And so they fought to find health insurance. And as you may know, back in that day, there was no legal obligation for health care insurers to cover people who were sick or who had been sick, had pre-existing conditions.

And so I was labeled with, you know, being a child with a preexisting health condition and never had healthcare coverage throughout my youth. And I know how much my grandparents worried about, you know, what if she gets sick again? What if she's injured or something and we need to use the healthcare system? And so,

Between my mother's experiences and my own, that was my fire in the belly of, I want to make a difference. This healthcare system is totally screwed up, and I want to help fix it. And that was my calling to run for office. And I started really locally when I ran for the Dane County Board of Supervisors. It was the same time period where we were having the first people who had HIV, AIDS,

move to our county. And that became my passion at the local level of how do we make sure that our healthcare system responds without bias. Of course, it wasn't responding without bias. That was a huge, huge fight. And then, you know, I took that passion to Congress and got to help write the Affordable Care Act when I was in the House of Representatives.

And been continuing to keep that fight, especially as we deal with a mental health epidemic, substance use disorder epidemic. Boy, do I feel passionately about the role that I think we have to step up and play at this moment in time. And now that you've had a long career and gotten some tenure up there in Washington, D.C., you sit on some really powerful committees. You're on the Committee for Appropriations, Health, Labor and Pensions, Commerce, Science and Transportation committees.

We're in an election year where in a couple of months, the work that you've been doing with the Biden administration to do things like enforce and protect the Affordable Care Act, make sure that people aren't dealing with predatory loans, all this kind of stuff. If there is a flip and Trump is elected, that could put a stop to a lot of this progressive work and health and healing that you've been doing. How important is it for us to elect Kamala Harris for your work to continue and for the betterment of the United States?

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of folks sort of characterizing it as we have to keep on moving forward. We can't go back.

And I think about under Trump's presidency, you know, we came one vote in the Senate away from having the Affordable Care Act ripped away. Wow. One vote. And we know from what Trump has said recently, what my opponent has said recently, that overturning the Affordable Care Act, repealing it would be on the agenda for

And we just can't let that happen. I think about where we are with regard to, you know, reproductive freedoms. And we know that a nationwide ban would be on their agenda.

But we also have such hope and promise with regard to moving forward. We had some incredible wins in passing the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act. And by the way, the Republicans also want to repeal that.

But we took some first steps that need to be followed through. I think of the Inflation Reduction Act, and a lot of people don't know what's in it. We use the name of the bill, but it is the biggest single investment we have ever made in this country or in the world in pivoting to a clean and renewable energy system.

And they want to repeal that. I want that to grow because while the goal is in that bill to reduce carbon output by 40% by 2030,

We have to do more than that if we're going to really tackle the existential threat that climate change presents. And so, yes. On that point, maybe see if you can help drive down a little bit more for folks, too. We talk about clean energy. I've talked to folks in Appalachia and in West Virginia and in these like traditional coal towns who are like,

Look, my daddy did that. My grandpa did that. I do not yearn for the mines. Okay. Like I do not want to do this. Are you telling me there's like another job we could do? That's maybe in like a cleaner factory. Maybe it's a union. Maybe it's better paying. Maybe I won't get a black lung. Maybe my, I'll see my kids sometimes. What are those jobs look like? You don't know what a clean energy job is like in the past. Like what would a day in the life be like? Yeah. And I want to, before I do, I want to just talk about, um,

why these jobs are going to be in America and not overseas. So one of the things that I champion in the Senate is by America rules. So when we pass the infrastructure bill, let's source the components in the U.S., not overseas. And the same is true in the Inflation Reduction Act. When we make that investment in our clean and renewable energy economy,

I want those components to be produced in America with good union-paying jobs that we create here.

Currently, that economy of making solar panels, many of the components of wind generation are made overseas. We have a toehold here in the U.S. But when you have buy America rules that say, as we build this out, we've got to source everything in the U.S., that means our economy needs to ramp up to meet this occasion. So when we're talking about what are these clean and renewable energy jobs,

It is about producing every component of solar installation. And it's about the installation jobs too. Right. And it's about apprenticeships that will make you a master of your craft. Yes.

so that you can bring those electrical worker skills or carpentry skills or machinist skills anywhere because you've mastered the trade. And I just see this as such an incredible job growth measure as we make serious investments in the full pivot from fossil fuel derived electricity to wind, solar, geothermal, energy.

battery storage capacity like we've never seen before. I also see it as a

a way that we can be the innovators of the world in this regard. And so some of these are engineering jobs, high technical skills that will allow us to create the breakthroughs here that will really literally change the world. Now, Kamal is promising, you know, to try and get the Small Business Administration loans for new small businesses up to $50,000 instead of $5,000 in help.

With this green energy revolution that we'd be coming into and these new businesses that would need to start, do you think there'd be a link between the SBA and like maybe somebody who's listening right now, not just going in to be a machinist or an electrician or a carpenter, but maybe owning the business that does something in here? No, absolutely. So, you know, a lot of times people learn the skills in the trades and then say, wow, I could...

Start a business. I want to I want to give an example in a different area that I'm very familiar with in the infrastructure bill, which also, by the way, has Buy America rules attached to it. We made sure that it did.

One of the programs is to get rid of lead laterals in our drinking water utilities. Yeah, they're doing this in Rochester right now. I've seen it starting. And in Milwaukee, there's 70,000, at least when we passed the bill, there's 70,000 lead laterals that we knew of.

And before the infrastructure bill, Milwaukee, who cobbling together different funds, was able to remove about a thousand per year. If you think about that, that would take 70 years. We can't afford generation after generation being exposed to lead in the water. So the infrastructure bill, we need to ramp that up. Well, if you're going to ramp that up, you need a lot more people skilled in the pipe trades.

And so we've had a number of efforts to help people who maybe are underemployed or unemployed gain those skills, get jobs in the pipe trades doing this important work. Well, some of them have said, all right, now that I have become a master of this trade,

And I know Milwaukee needs to hire more folks. I'm going to start my own business and hire some folks that are apprentices. And so we're seeing like a generational change that people who are unemployed or underemployed gaining the skills, starting their own businesses and meeting this need to help create water utility that doesn't have, you know, lead that's exposing people to harm.

And let's, if I have just two more minutes of your time, because I know it's right back and you're super busy, but all of this, right? The reason why we go to work, the reason why we want clean air and clean energy, and we need to break the ice to keep the business moving is so that we can have the next generation. And you sit on a coalition for adoption, which I think is really important.

quite interesting. And there's a lot of folks out there right now who struggle to have children. We've heard all about IVF and we hear about that quite a bit. And I think we know what direction Kamala and the progressives want to go when it comes to reproductive health in those ways. But when it comes to adoption, what are your goals for the future of adoption to ensure that every kid has a home where they can be loved and every parent that wants to love a kid can get one?

Absolutely. So in fact, this week we have a ceremony every year on Capitol Hill, but this week is where we recognize what we call our angels in adoption. And these are folks who work tirelessly every day.

whether they're adoption attorneys who are advocating for parents, whether they're working in the foster care system so that when in the tragic circumstances where parental rights are terminated, that foster parents who aspire to be adoptive parents can do so. There's so many different arenas for this issue.

We also, it can be very expensive. And just like IVF, and how do we make sure that people can get at least tax deductions for the adoption expenses that they're incurring? And to try to reduce barriers so that children who are in less than ideal circumstances in group homes or other situations can get their permanent family home.

I love to hear it. Senator Baldwin, it is always such a treat to talk with you. Thank you for making the time for me right on the first week back to Congress. This was this was a big sacrifice for you. I appreciate it. Is there anything else you want folks to know before you run? Just don't forget to register to vote and to vote. All right. You heard it here first, Senator Tammy Baldwin. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

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