Congressman Brendan F. Boyle has represented Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District since January of 2015. Prior to his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Boyle graduated from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2005 and was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2008, becoming the first Democrat to represent the state’s 170th legislative district. In addition to currently serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he is a champion of educational reform and economic equality for his district.
Harvard Political Review: How do you deal with the gridlock in Congress these days, just because there’s so much partisanship?
Brendan Boyle: It can be frustrating. Although, what I find is that on big issues you have total gridlock, and to be frank, you have a certain core group of Republicans that refuse to compromise with President Obama on anything. They have held hostage other Republicans that want to compromise, let alone the rest of us who are Democrats. So that’s frustrating. At the same time, though, those are the headlines and what’s happening on some of the big issues. What you don’t see and what is very little covered by the media is that actually, there are a lot of bills that get passed and things that get done beneath that. We just had, for the first time in fifteen years, a major transportation bill that passed three-to-one. We had a fix to the Medicare system that was passed with overwhelming compromise on an issue that had lingered for about a decade.
HPR: We’ve been hearing from the media about how Bernie Sanders is such an ideologue and won’t be able to get anything passed. Do you see that as something that’s true for him?
BB: One person’s idealist is another person’s ideologue. They can be flip sides of the same coin. If you like Bernie, you see him as an idealist; if you don’t like Bernie, you see him as an ideologue. Speaking as a Democrat, I think this debate is a very healthy one. I gave a quote for a New York Times article a couple of months ago during which they asked me why I hadn’t made an endorsement, and I said that a constructive, healthy debate needs to take place in the Democratic Party. I also think that Bernie is giving voice to income inequality issues. For me, income inequality and the lack of social mobility is the central issue of our time, and the fact that Bernie is running so strongly on that is a positive thing.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that, in the end, I’m going to vote for him – there are other issues – but overall I’m glad that he is running and creating debate in this primary. I also think that if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, which I fully expect, she’s a better candidate today than she was six months ago, in large part because of having this primary.
HPR: What do you think would be the most constructive solution for working against income inequality?
BB: There are a couple of different ways of looking at this. First, on the short-term basis, there are things that we could change today to make our tax system more equal and fair: the fact that we treat so-called “passive income,” which is largely investment income, so much more favorably than income earned by wage earners; the fact that you can be someone who’s making tens of millions of dollars a year and through gaming the system, you can push off paying any taxes for decades and then pass that on to your heirs. Meanwhile, if you’re like my dad, making $40,000 a year, you’re paying every single tax. That’s something that we could change literally tomorrow…
In terms of the long-term, I think having greater investment in education is crucial. Right now, when you look at early childhood education in the United States, we lag dramatically, even though that’s probably the best bang for our buck. My wife is a kindergarten teacher, and she’ll even say that she notices the differences between five and six year olds entering school, based on who had parents that took the time to pay attention and educate them, versus the kids who didn’t have that same grounding… I think a dramatic investment in education would pay off, not today, not tomorrow, but in the long run.
HPR: Philadelphia and other school districts around the country have just awful school systems, and there doesn’t seem to be any real solution to it. Why do you think cities across America can’t get their education systems up to par?
BB: First, unfortunately, at least in Pennsylvania over the last five years, the state has dramatically cut public education, over a billion dollars in cuts… That having been said, I’m a Democrat who challenges my own party on this issue because while I strongly support greater funding and believe the Republicans are wrong when they want to cut funding and say resources don’t matter, I’m also realistic enough to realize that it’s not just the matter of greater resources; that you need greater reforms with them as well.
Whether public charter, traditional public, or parochial, the schools that tend to have the best outcomes, from what I’ve studied, are the ones that get the most buy-in from parents. That is a strategy that needs to be further replicated. I went to the schools in inner city Philadelphia, Catholic schools that my parents struggled to pay the tuition for, but it wasn’t just the schooling. I had parents that made sure that I studied and did my homework. The education of kids doesn’t just happen for the six or seven hours that they’re in the classroom. It also happens for the other, approximately, 75 percent of the day. Making sure, as best we can, not as government but as society, that they have the support system that they need is actually the toughest piece, I think, to achieve.
HPR: Switching to your position on the Foreign Affairs Committee, with the current Syrian refugee crisis, what do you think America’s role is in making sure that refugees have a safe place?
BB: Maybe it’s because I’m the son of an immigrant, but I happen to believe that the Statue of Liberty means something, and the wonderful poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty means something. So I’m very concerned when a number of my Republican colleagues wants to rip away the welcome mat in front of this country. We’re not going to defeat ISIS by targeting the victims of ISIS. The entire tenor on this discussion has been inappropriate, and it does nothing to keep the American people safe. Focusing our attention on the Syrian refugees as if they are a threat is a real mistake. Keep in mind that only a few thousand have made it through the refugee system and entered into our country. It’s an 18 to 24 month process. They are among the most vetted people that come into our country.
HPR: If you get reelected, what do you hope to achieve in your second term?
BB: The Senate is in play, and the White House is in play, and the House will probably remain Republican, but in this crazy political year, who knows? A certain amount of the answer to that question depends on what the results in November will be.
In terms of things I can control, I’d say, locally, continuing to build up our presence in the district so that people know that we’re a resource where they can turn to when they need assistance. Even though legislation and policy is what is focused on in this job and those are incredibly important, there is the other half of the job: the constituent service aspect. Something that when I was here [studying at the Kennedy School] a dozen years ago, I didn’t appreciate how important the constituent service work is. Sometimes, we’re helping people with really big issues, literally life and death issues in a couple of cases when we’ve helped people get health insurance, and generally when they turn to us, they have nowhere else to turn. Getting as good at that as possible and letting people know in a big and diverse district that we’re there, that’s really important to me.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Image source: Wikimedia/United States House of Representatives