CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio — Ahead of Election Day, Republican Congressman Dave Joyce spoke exclusively with Spectrum Washington bureau reporter Taylor Popielarz about his race against Democrat Hillary O’Connor Mueri in the 14th District.
You can watch the full, uncut conversation above or read the full transcript below.
And you can watch the full report on the race in the 14th Congressional District by clicking here.
Taylor Popielarz: So, I want to start off with a pretty cliche question. You’ve obviously been in Congress for a couple years now. At a time when the institution of Congress is viewed so [unfavorably], why do you want to keep this job?
Rep. Dave Joyce: Well, I’d like to think we’ve been making some positive movement in trying to bring bipartisanship back. Because, you know, if you would’ve ask me the morning that we put together the Problem Solvers $1.5 trillion package, which was hard work by 25 Dems and 25 Republicans — there’s give and take and push and pull to finally get to this and put it out there — I didn’t think it would go too far. And then all of a sudden, the president jumped on it and it really had some momentum there. And I think it still has some momentum that could probably get through the Senate, and maybe even get the president’s signature on. And that’s the fallacy of things right now with the one side only, is that you put together a package like the Heroes Act — there was some good parts to it, but there was a lot of stuff that wasn’t good for the district in there. And you put that forward and say, well, you put together a package — yeah you could pass it through the House because you have the majority, but if the Senate doesn’t take it up and the president doesn’t sign it, we haven’t provided relief to the people who really need it. And I’m hoping — I’m one of those people who sees a glass half full and think, well, there’s plenty more around here somewhere. That the opportunity is going to exist here, eventually, to get us back to bipartisanship, and that people will take off their red or blue jerseys after they’re elected and put on a red, white and blue jersey, and do what’s right for our country.
Taylor Popielarz: As somebody who’s part of the Problem Solvers Caucus, and who, at least outwardly, seeks to be bipartisan, after seven years in Congress, does it frustrate you just kind of the general state of things? Do you feel like you’ve been able to inject more bipartisanship into it? Or do you feel like it’s an uphill battle?
Rep. Dave Joyce: I think that we’ve made some difference. The trouble comes on, like the night of the vote for the second Heroes Act, or the reduced Heroes Act. You know, there’s 25 of us. And if all 25 Democrats would have voted with Republicans in a block, it would’ve blocked that bill, and then you’d force the speaker to deal with it. But we’re guilty of the same thing when we were in the majority. You know, there’s those of us who wouldn’t vote with the majority, and trying to make, you know — do what’s right for our district and make a statement about it. And the other ones, well, the whip came to see me and I felt I had to do this for my district or for whatever reason they picked up on. I mean, that’s fine. But if you’re really going to have movement or create this movement to get things done, then we need to stand up when times call for us to stand up. One of the things we got accomplished, and I got to give Josh Gottheimer a shoutout for this, was the fact that now they put in their rules for this term, that if you have 290 cosponsors on a bill, you force the vote to the floor. And that’s something that I think we need to do more of because there are a lot of bills that have that type of ruling majority, but they just can’t get access to the floor for the vote.
Taylor Popielarz: Obviously, you’ve run a couple campaigns. People know you in this district. This cycle though, what would you say your top two or three legislative priorities — that when you’re out campaigning, whether it’s virtually or in-person, you’re making sure you top line to people to say this is my next goal or this is what I’m working on and I’m getting close on in Congress?
Rep. Dave Joyce: Well certainly, people in this district have always cared about the jobs and economy equations, like what we’re doing to bring back manufacturing. If we’ve learned anything from this pandemic it’s that China is not a friend, not an ally, and we need to bring that manufacturing back here. So we need to make sure that A) we have the wherewithal to do it. The electrical capacity, the grid capacity, and the workforce. And we need to train the workforce — let’s, if we’re being honest with each other, post-COVID here, some companies, some restaurants, some jobs don’t come back. So we need to be able to train those workers for the jobs that will exist and hopefully in manufacturing. You know, it’s scary when you think that 95% of the ibuprofen and acetaminophen that you take is made in China. 85% of the mental health drugs are all made in China. That’s the kind of stuff that we should make in the USA, or if not ,certainly make it with an ally and not somebody like China. Secondly, I’ve always made the Great Lakes a priority. Having, as I say, the north coast of America as part of my district, it’s important that we protect and preserve what is a real economic driver in northeastern Ohio. It provides water for 48 million folks. It’s the largest fresh surface water pond or pool of water in the world. So I mean, it’s a big deal and it needs to be treated as such. And then one of the other unfortunate byproducts of something I’ve worked on since I got there, because I saw it unfortunately in my time as a prosecutor, has been the opioid epidemic. And we were making some strides in that and all of a sudden, because of people being inside and loneliness, frustration, whatever has taken place because of this COVID, has helped increase those numbers and that’s something we have to bring back down. We can’t afford to lose that many citizens a day.
Taylor Popielarz: I love talking the Great Lakes with you from my time living in northern Indiana and southwest Michigan, I fell in love with Lake Michigan over there. And I know it’s your big passion. And I know you’ve gone against President Trump at points for funding for the Great Lakes. Your opponent points out that the League of Conservation Voters gives you a lifetime score of 10% on its National Environmental scorecard. Last year’s score was 21%. And I was looking up, there was actually a piece that the New York Times published in July of this year, 2020, and the headline was “The Trump administration is reversing 100 environmental rules.” Not all of them applied to the Great Lakes, but a lot of them do. So what do you say to voters who, even though they’ve seen the times you’ve stood up to the administration, they still question your dedication to kind of the environment and to helping the Great Lakes?
Rep. Dave Joyce: Well, if I went from 10 to 21, then I’ve doubled my average there with the Conservation Voters [laughs]. But that’s a cherrypicking of a record, you know, of votes. And there’s some people who you’ll never be conservation-minded enough. And there’s — I look at it as a balance. You know, we can protect and preserve something like the Great Lakes and allow industry to work, but they have to work in harmony. You have to get the EPA to work and give guidance instead of immediately citing folks for something that they may not know they’re doing wrong. So it’s important that the two regulatory bodies don’t work as judge and jury, but work in an advisory and regulatory capacity to help these folks do what’s necessary for the businesses to stay alive and to not pollute our great resources like the Great Lakes. If I’m such a bad person, then why did Ducks Unlimited name me the conservationist of the year in 2018? So you know, certainly you can pick, and she has, cherrypicked my record and picked the worst statistics from the worst outlets to say that I’m doing something wrong, but I’ve become the ‘Great Lakes Guy’ in Congress, it’s not because I’m out there promoting pollution, it’s because I’m trying to take care of our greatest natural resource.
Taylor Popielarz: On the topic of health care, especially in a pandemic it’s an important topic, I kind of went through the last few years of where you’ve stood on health care, because in our previous interviews you’ve talked about protecting pre-existing conditions. With the pending Supreme Court case, it’s a big topic right now. So last cycle in 2018, you ran a television ad that said, “When Republican leaders in Congress tried to take away protections for pre-existing conditions. I said, no.” That was you on camera saying that. The year before that, in 2017, you voted against the American Health Care Act and you talked about how it could potentially skyrocket the cost for pre-existing conditions in terms of premiums for people. But then I found an archived version of your campaign website from 2015 where it said, “Dave Joyce has fought to repeal and defund Obamacare every chance he’s had. He’s voted to repeal Obamacare outright, to defund it and permanently delay it. And he voted to delay the individual and employer mandates.” With the Trump administration now, and largely your party, supporting the Supreme Court case that would end Obamacare without a replacement, what do you say to people who look at the last few years and say, where do you actually stand on protecting pre-existing conditions? Have you changed? And can you support what your party is asking for right now?
Rep. Dave Joyce: Well, first off, I have a bill right now that should anything happen to the Affordable Care Act through the court system, that it’s ready to go, that will cover — and make sure that insurance companies cover — pre-existing conditions. I’ve always been firm on that. Because, you know, people who have those issues deserve to have the coverage and not have it taken away from them just because of a change in employment or other issues that they may have. Certainly like in this pandemic, where they may be out of work, but they have an unfortunate condition that needs coverage. We have a duty to take care of those type of things. My complaint has always been, even with the other bills that they’ve put forward, the Democrats have put forward while they’ve been in the majority, is they’ve never had a hearing. You know, for whatever reason, in Washington, D.C., we don’t work hard. You know, we’re allergic to having hearings that have any substance. Everybody wants to do their sound bites so they can get on a show like yours, or any of the new shows, and be the one who’s supposedly had the gotcha questions. That’s BS. What we need to do is have real hearings with real experts. Let them explain the problems. I’m big on how we can bring down the cost of health care. All we were doing with the AHCA was shifting who was going to pay for the premiums and how they were going to pay those. And we should have a system that gives employers’ flexibility so they can continue to do what they have done in the past, was extend health care to the workers as one of their benefits that they have that they were proud of. And it’s important that we continue to do those things so the employers will continue to do that. Because we’re giving them a devil’s choice. Either I have to cut health care, or I can’t afford to pay 100% or 80% or 75% anymore because the costs are going higher and higher under the Affordable Care Act. There’s some good parts to the Affordable Care Act. I mean, the part that you could keep your kids on until they were 26-years-old, having three kids under 26 at the time, you know I appreciate that. I had somebody yell at me, no, they should be off at 18. If you don’t want to pay for your kids’ health care, that’s your business. But if I want to pay it till they’re 26, while they go through school and other things, that’s my business, I should have the option to be able to do that. I think it’s important that we give options to folks, instead of mandating how they’re going to get health care, give options to them, so they can make the decisions, best for their interests, best for their family, between themselves and their physician, and not have to worry about whether or not an insurance company’s going to cover it.
Taylor Popielarz: President Trump won this district by double digits in 2016. Obama had lost it in his two elections, but by a much tighter margin. The president was here in this area back in August, I think it was. I’m curious, as somebody who’s not one of the kind of outspoken dramatic figures in D.C., who doesn’t want to comment on every tweet or every scandal, how have you approached the president’s support in this district at times when you may not agree with him fully? And has there been any point in his four years in office where you’ve questioned your support for him?
Rep. Dave Joyce: Well, look, I’m my own guy, I run my own race. People in the district know me like that because I was a prosecutor for 25 years. And I figure we’re all adults. You tell people the truth, they know how to handle the truth. When you get up to the presidential race, a lot gets said, and nothing against you, sir, but some of the media tends to cherrypick out the things and distort the records. People are old enough and smart enough to make their own decisions based upon the research they’re going to do as to whether or not they like the president or don’t like the president. Fair enough. When President Obama was in when I first got in, people thought he should be impeached. You’d hear that all the time. I don’t believe the president did anything — President Obama did anything impeachable. I don’t think that President Trump’s done anything impeachable. Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean they should be impeached. You know, that impeachment process occurs every four years when you have the opportunity to vote. And you know, we have a job to do. It’s not to run with one side or the other. Our job is to make sure, in Congress, we work on trying to get the things through the House or, myself being on Appropriations, get our bills through and take care of our business to make sure that America can work. America doesn’t have these stops and starts that, unfortunately, we do — we’re going to shut down the government. That’s nonsense. No business does that, at least up to COVID. Nobody did it. Unfortunately, that was mandated upon them. But it’s important that we give America the opportunity to do the things that they do best. And I think government is best when limited and people get out of the way of the people who are doing the jobs every day, trying to facilitate growth for the things that people, on their own, can’t do like infrastructure, like highways, like ports. I think if you would’ve asked me before all this, I would have never thought broadband to be part of an infrastructure package, but obviously seeing the use now in telehealth and telemedicine, I think broadband should be included in any type of infrastructure package. And we should be debating that. And you’ve been around in Washington long enough to know we have infrastructure week every other and we still haven’t done a damn thing. That’s wrong. So you know, I’m not afraid to call people out. When the president said that they should zero out the bill for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, I stood up and said that’s wrong, he’s absolutely wrong on that. And guess what, next time you have a chance to educate the president and you brought to his attention the amount of jobs and the economic development, and the water supply to 48 million people, and the fact if we don’t protect it, there’s no redundant supply. It’s not like 48 million people can go to another spigot and turn on their water, we need to take care of this for that reason, but also for generations to come, and protect and preserve it. All of a sudden, now he’s been on with me for the raise of $300 million, now to $325 million. And hopefully in the next Congress, we can get our appropriations done on a timely basis, we’ll get it up to $335 million — we’re gonna raise it by $25 million over the next five years to get it up to a $450 million cap. Why is that important? Is because the continuity of government, and continuity of the funding systems, allow all the people, all the agencies, all the non-governmental operations that work with the GLRI know that the funding exists. You don’t want to start a study, and then a year later, oh, we’re out of money, can’t finish our study, even though you’ve made great strides and getting results. It’s important that we bring that continuity to America and do it on a daily basis. And so if the next president is not of our party, you know, God bless. I wish him well, because if the president does well, the rest of the country does well.
Taylor Popielarz: One last question, I know we’ve got to wrap up. With the pandemic, over 210,000 Americans have died. It hasn’t stopped, you know, the numbers are still going up. Especially as somebody who’s married to a registered nurse, I’m curious, and I’ve asked some other incumbents this question, do you feel that the federal government’s failure to respond better to the pandemic is reason enough for constituents to feel like maybe we shouldn’t re-elect you?
Rep. Dave Joyce: Well, I think that we did an admirable job of getting relief out in the last two weeks of March. If you look at the hurricanes or other issues that were national disasters we’ve had, it takes months, years to get things out. In two weeks, we fashioned a recovery program on a bipartisan basis that brought real relief to real citizens and businesses. And, you know, some of it didn’t work. Main street lending was not all it was cracked up to be. The economic injury disaster loans didn’t take off quite like it thought. But certainly unemployment compensation was used, and certainly the PPP project. And now we still have money left over from those type of things. I understand and appreciate the fact that states are independent, and we collectively make decisions in D.C. for them, but every state was different in how the disease was hitting them. Obviously, in the beginning, New York and California and other hotspots, Washington, D.C. as a matter of fact, where you have a lot of international travel and international business taking place, you had more of an outbreak or more of a worry for much greater outbreak. So they prioritized our resources and sent them there. Now here in northeastern Ohio, we shut down all the hospital systems and set it up just for COVID relief. And a lot of those facilities went completely unused. And even the offsite facilities that we built went completely unused. So having a more targeted state approach, I think, was in the best interest of everybody. But we should have given states the opportunity to also then tailor it to how the numbers were coming in. I think Governor DeWine did a hell of a job. He deserves a shoutout from the roofs of every home for shutting down Ohio in an orderly fashion, and bringing it back out in an orderly fashion. And having to remind people even again, yesterday, these masks matter. If you want the things that are individual freedoms, you wear your mask, that keeps our numbers down and keeps the place going. And having kids start back to play a little bit of sports action and having their education, to do that in a safe and healthy manner is an important thing. And that’s best done at the state level and district by district. They have to make the decisions on how they can do that, if they can do it, how they can do it. There’s going to be some cost to that. We need to be putting another bill together to make sure that we are helping school systems adjust to those costs. We have 634 school districts in this state, we need to make sure every one of them has the wherewithal to do those type of things. The problem is when you put out big package relief like we did, here in Geauga County, I was just talking to a commissioner the other day. From the CARES Act, they got another $479,000. They want to buy 10 trucks with snowplows. What the hell does that have to do with COVID? Once you put money out like that, it doesn’t come back. That’s one of the reasons we’re arguing with why states or cities in this Heroes act wanted more relief. Let them demonstrate a case for relief. And then we can certainly fashion it for that. But to just throwout blanket relief like that, there’s going to be more snowplows, chainsaws, the other things that we’re going to buy — have nothing to do with COVID. The idea of that funding was to set up testing stations so people could get tested on a daily basis. So they can understand whether or not they have a problem. If they do that, and they find out they’ve contracted the disease, then the contact tracing goes into place. And we can try to limit then, the exponential effect of what happens when someone goes around for two, three days when they’ve already had it and unfortunately spread that disease. And as we found out, it spreads like wildfire. So the idea was to get money to the states, let the states do and localities do things to help contain the virus as best they could.
Taylor Popielarz: Anything else you want to add?
Rep. Dave Joyce: Well, it’s an honor to represent the people of this district and I get up every morning and fight for them because this is where I grew up in Ohio. This is where, my wife and I went to the same high school, she’s a little younger, and we both raised and educated inside the confines of the great state of Ohio and we raised our children here. And I think it’s a wonderful place, northeastern Ohio. And the 14th District, I’m honored to represent and it’s something that I look forward to do every single day.
Taylor Popielarz: Thanks a lot, Congressman.
Rep. Dave Joyce: Thank you, Taylor.