Dave grew up in Wausau and graduated from Wausau East High School.  He was elected to Congress in 1969 to represent the 7th Congressional District.

What position do you now occupy in Congress?

I am a member of Congress, the 7th Congressional District of Wisconsin.

Were you elected or appointed?

You can’t be appointed to the House of Representatives.  The only way you can get here is be elected.  You can be appointed to the Senate, you can be appointed VP, like Jerry Ford was, but you have to be elected to go into the House.

What are your campaigns like?

Well, they vary.  I’ve had a lot of them.  The last time was the first time in all of the campaigns that I  didn’t have a Republican opponent.  I had 2 Third Party opponents, but not a Republican opponent. Basically, my campaigns, I guess you can talk about them in 3 levels, the main campaign is just going from county to county, going down Main Street talking to people, letting them “chew” on you; rallying the troops, speaking if they are visiting firemen or candidates, like we had Edwards come into the district a number of times, Kerry, we campaign with them.  And then you also have immediate campaign with radio and television ads and some newspaper ads.  That’s pretty much it.

How many Congressional terms have you had?

Well, I was elected the first time, April Fools Day of 1969.

What is your political platform like?

Well, I am a Wisconsin Progressive Democrat.  Before Bob Lafollette came along, Wisconsin government was owned lock, stock, and barrel by the mines, by the timber companies, by the railroads, and by big business.  Lafollette made democracy safe for everybody else.  I mean, he essentially pushed through social legislation that created unemployment compensation, workmen's compensation, regulated the utilities so the railroads couldn’t just price farmers right out of business by their shipping costs.  I am for whatever helps average working families get a fair shake in life.  I think we need to make sure that kids who come into this world will get an equal shot at a decent education which means that I fight to increase the education budget. I think it’s a mortal sin that every family is not covered by health insurance, etc.  I’m very much for that.  I think that when people work for 40 or 50 years, and they are worn out and are looking forward to a decent secure retirement, that they have a right to expect it, which is why I am so fundamentally opposed to what President Bush is trying to do, because I think he would essentially tear up Social Security as we know it today and ruin it.  I think we need more protection for workers in the workplace.  I used to work with asbestos, for instance, I didn’t know at the time that it would cause cancer.  Lots people in the workplace every day are working with materials and compounds that could be problems for their health and I think someone needs to step in to make sure that they are as safe as possible.  In foreign policy, I think it would be nice.  I want this country to be strong and I want us to defend our interests around the world, but I would also like us to stay out of stupid wars like Iraq. 

The issues that we were just discussing, how are you fighting for that, and have you achieved success for these issues?

Well you make progress, and then you get knocked back.  Right now the Republicans control this place and they are not going to vote for most of the things that I am for.  They are not for the government doing something to provide healthcare.  They will spend any amount to provide tax cuts, especially for people in high income standards.  But they fight like the devil against major increases for education or healthcare, environmental protection, things like that.  Right now, I am the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, that is the committee that decides where the money goes.  So we decide how much goes for environmental protection, and how much for nurses training, how much for education, you name it.

What are the main issues involving Wisconsin that you have focused on during your campaigns and how they have changed?

Wisconsin’s problems are very similar to most of the rest of the country.  I think you keep getting back to the basics – what does it take to give a family a chance to get ahead in life?  And to me, it takes knowing that if you are going to send your kid through school, it’s going to be a quality school with a decent building, decent technology, well trained teachers, class sizes small enough so that you get some personal attention.  If you are going to college, whether you can afford to go to college or not should be determined by your head and your heart, not what you have in your wallet.  When you are trying to raise a bunch of kids and you got 2 people in the family working at the same time, you need a place for those kids to be.  Which means that lots of people need after-school centers, for instance, which not enough people have.  You need to know that if you get sick, I mean, I remember when my father worked for 3M in Wausau, and he went to the hospital for an appendix operation, he came back paralyzed.  His arms wouldn’t work, nobody knew what happened.  He couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t shave.  Herb Frankie, the old barber, used to come over and shave him.  We thought our family was ruined but we were very lucky because slowly he got the use of his arms back and wound up being OK.  Lots of people aren’t so lucky.  So, you are just an illness or accident away from economic destruction.  Families shouldn’t have to go through life playing Russian Roulette.  Those are the issues, then you have your specialized issues, obviously agriculture is very important to Wisconsin.  In fact, I was in a hearing with the Secretary of Agriculture this morning and tourism is awfully important.  You want clean water, lakes, air, that’s what attracts people.  The Ice Age National Trail in Wisconsin is a wonderful recreation opportunity for people.  I try to get funding to expand that every chance I get.  I am working on the same priority issues.

What would say you are most proud of in your career?

I’m most proud of the fact that I led and lost when Ronald Reagan was president.  When he came in here we never had a deficit larger than $70 billion, and he proposed a budget which we knew would triple the deficit and he tried to pay for some of it by cutting the blazes out of education and healthcare programs.  The Democratic party was kind of “weak knee'd” because they just lost 26 seats in the previous election, and so they really weren’t taking it on with any clarity. So, Mo Udall and I and Henry Rice organized the Progressive Democrats in fighting that package – warning that it would lead to a big deficit and warning that it would also cause us to disinvest in things we needed to invest in, like long-term science and things like that.  We lost it, we knew we would lose it, but we got a majority of Democrats to vote for it and that was the basis of our campaign two years later when we won back a lot of those seats, which enabled us to stop the bleeding.  Those budgets put us in the ditch for 10 years and we wound up with huge deficits.  You know, so it’s a fight I lost, but it was a fight worth making.  And then there are other things, I’ve got lots of funding for things in the district, the new nursing and health education facility at the Tech in Wausau.  I’ve gotten over $50 million in special highway funds, modernized the transportation system around Marathon County.  I support economic development and lots of things like that.

Do you have any failures in your office that you would like to share?

Sure you have failures all the time.  I just talked about the most important one – when Reagan beat our socks off.  I mean in politics, it’s just like life, you lose most of the time.  And that can be very frustrating.  But you have to remember, even Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times.  So, if you put it in that perspective, it’s just like any other walk of life, if you get licked, you get up, dust yourself off, and keep going.

What drove you to consider public service?

A nun.  When I was in 7th grade, I was a confused frustrated kid.  I skipped school 2 days a week.  And I hated everything.  My folks were getting a divorce, and one day Sister Techlia said “You’re going to participate in a debate about Senator Joe McCarthy.”  I didn’t know anything about Joe McCarthy.  I found out he was the worst public servant Wisconsin ever had.  But, she gave me some stuff to read and I thought it was interesting.  It was the first time in months I was interested in anything and that started my attention to politics and I got involved with the Young Republicans because my mother was a big Republican and she was crazy about Douglas McCarthy.  And then when I saw what the “Kill McCarthy” supporters did to the best teacher I ever had – they tried to have him fired for being a “red.”  He was about as red as Red Skeleton, the old comedian.  They tried to have Henderson fired and that made me take a look at McCarthy and realize what a savage he was.  By the time Adli Stevenson ran for the second time as president, I became a Democrat and have been a strong Democrat ever since. 

Did you have any other public service jobs in Wisconsin before you came here?

Yes, I was in the State Legislature for 6 years.  I was the Deputy Party Leader, and before that, I was in college.  I thought I was going to be teaching Russian Government some where.  Instead, I got waylaid into this crazy life.

When you came into office, what was the community like then?

It was right down the middle of the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King had just been killed, Bobby Kennedy had just been killed, and everything that we had worked to build was turning to sand.  It was a very bitter time for people.  Physically, the downtown mall in Wausau didn’t even exist  yet.  Wausau Insurance Companies were still located where the City Hall is today.  And you didn’t have the downtown open square that you’ve got today, the Arts Block.  All of the bridges in Wausau have all been replaced with modern bridges today, so physically, the town is very different.

What is the most interesting experience you have had in Congress?

I would say, the 10 years that I chaired the Foreign Operations Appropriation Subcommittee.  Because, I was chairman when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and the Iron Curtain collapsed in Russia and the Soviet Union collapsed.  I was in charge of the congressional response to that in terms of providing aid to the emerging countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine.  I just met some people from the Ukraine.  I mean that was fascinating in dealing with the collapse of the Soviet Union and being in conferences with them. When Yelson stood on the tank after the Communists had the counter revolution, trying to take power back, 10 days later were meeting in Budapest with Russian Minister Andre Cosognif and Deputy Defense Minister, Andre Coshin.  Those meetings led to a program that is known as Non-Luber Program today.  It’s a program under which we provide money to buy up loose nuclear weapons floating around the former Soviet Union because you had lots of Russian sergeants who weren’t getting paid after the country collapsed and we were worried that terrorist countries or terrorist organizations would bribe these guys and grab some tactical nuclear weapons.  We were worried that some of those scientists who were out of work would go to work for these organizations and we tried to put up money so you could find other things for them to do short-term until the economy stabilized.  That was a challenging time.  Right now, this whole issue of what is going to happen to Social Security, it's a fascinating issue because people your age, by in large, don’t recognize it, but Social Security is not just a retirement program.  I mean if you are a 30-year-old person working and you get injured and can’t work for the rest of your life, Social Security will, in fact, over your lifetime pay you about $300,000.  It’s the equivalent of a $300,000 term policy.  It is so crucial that that program not be screwed up.  There is a story in the paper about this conservative alliance that plans to spend about $200,000,000 on propaganda to try to convince the American public that it’s a good idea.  It is a wretched idea.  It will wreck Social Security as we know it, it will plunge us $2 trillion deeper in debt and won’t solve the problem.  There are adjustments that have to be made long term, but we have had to make the adjustments in the program for 70 years.  We ought to be doing that rather than blowing it up.

What would you consider the most difficult experience you’ve had?

I would say the most difficult was trying to find a way to keep everything from being poisoned by the Vietnam War.  This country was so bitterly divided at the time.  I would also say that knowing we were going to lose the fight with Reagan and knowing what that would mean in terms of long-term screwing up our country, and I was very involved in trying to shut down our financial support for the Contra War in Central America.  I think the last 2 years trying to preserve education and health care programs from Bush’s budget ax.  Those were the most difficult times.

Do you feel you have made an impact on your community?

I don’t think there is any doubt about it.  You look at any county in that district and you will see dozens of things that wouldn’t be there if we hadn’t been around to get it done.  Highway 29, we got lots of money to complete that 4-lane, highway 51 the same thing.  Student aid, there are literally probably 30,000 students that have gotten much more help to go to college than they would have gotten if I hadn’t helped.  I mean, I am the point man on education funding in this place on the Democratic side of the house.  This country is spending $16 billion more on education than it would have been spending if I had not been negotiating those budgets.  We had to run over Newt Gingrich and the Republican majority, and we liked to run over George Bush the first year he was in the office in order to get that done.  We had less success lately in the last two years, but that $16 billion investment has made a big difference in the quality of education.

Have you changed as a person since being in office?

Oh, I think everybody changes  You know, I think I have learned to roll with the punches a little better.  I take a longer view of things.  I mean when I came here I was looking for mentors.  People like Dick  Bowling from Missouri, Bob Kastenmier from Wisconsin and Gaylord Nelson sort of took me under their wing and helped me learn the ropes and now, I do the same thing for newer members.  But one thing that hasn’t changed, are my beliefs and my passions.  I am just as fiercely  committed to economic justice today as I ever was.  To put it into prospective, what I’m talking about, in 1975 the wealthiest 20% of people in this society had a family income every year that was about 8 times greater than somebody in the lower 20%.  Now that’s already obscene.  But if you take a look today, that same family in the upper 20%, the average family income for them is 15 times as large as a lower income family.  When you have the wealthiest 1% of people in this society that control 33% of the nation’s wealth, and when the gap between rich and poor has doubled over the last generation, I think that’s obscene and that’s why there are so many families who can’t afford health insurance, can’t afford to send their kids to school, and can’t afford decent housing.  This is a capitalist system, but I don’t believe that everyone is equal.  You want people to demonstrate initiative and you want them to be rewarded for it, but you certainly want some norms of decency between those who have the most and those who have the least in this society.  We’ve gotten way, way from that.

Do you like being in DC and what  you do?

Well, my old friend from Ireland, John Hume, was the leader of the Peace Forces in Northern Ireland won the Nobel Prize a number of years ago for peace.  John was in my office one day and he was taking note of how much people were disparaging politics in this country, and he said, “David, don’t your constituents understand that politics is a nonviolent substitute for war?  If you doubt that for one minute, look at what is happening in my own country.”  I am thrilled every day to be able to walk around this building to see that dome and think of what it is supposed to mean and realize that I have got a say, even if it is just a small one in the decisions that we make here.  Having said that, it is very distressing to me to see the huge role that big money plays in politics.  When you see the hundreds of millions of dollars that big business will spend.  Right now, the Washington Post pointed out that there are over 450 lobbyists hired in order to try to persuade the Congress to blow up Social Security.  Now those lobbyists are not hired by little people, they are hired by the big corporate giants of this world who think that they have no obligation to anybody else on the planet and enjoy every day of getting up and thinking of ways to block people like that!  I’ve always had these signs up.  I took them down last week because when the President gave the State of the Union message, the first lady usually uses this office as a holding room before she goes in.  But, whenever somebody’s in asking for money, that’s what I ask them, make them read it out loud – “What do you want me to do for somebody besides yourself.”    You would be surprised how many people resent that.  But that’s the question, the're always going to be somebody who needs something more than you do and if you don’t put that first “besides yourself” in, and then in practical terms, if they are looking for money, you got a $500 billion deficit coming at us, you can’t afford it if you are going to provide another trillion dollars in tax cuts.  If  I cut taxes for my generation without having a way to pay for it, that means your generation is going to pick up the tab.  That’s not exactly good business.

If someone is considering public service, what advice would you give them?

Well, it depends on what kind of public service they want.  I mean, my niece is a foreign service officer.  She has been in the foreign service for a long time. If that’s the kind of public service you look for, you have to specialize.  You have to learn languages, you have to learn international clearance, you have to learn the country’s history.   Other public service, you’re in public service if you’re feeding somebody in the soup kitchen and you’re in public service if you are in the White House.  If people are looking to get into elective office, there are a dozen different ways.  All I can tell you is the way I did it.  I just got involved because I was a kid who got turned on about politics so I used to stand up on Third Street in Wausau every Friday night, passing out literature for candidates I was supporting. While I was still in High School I took my sister’s wagon, tied it to my bicycle, filled it full of literature, and distributed to all of the City of Wausau during the campaign.  Then when I went to college, I was involved in Young Democrats and I would be down to party headquarters and stuff envelopes and lick stamps.  That’s how I met John Kennedy, Bob Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Adli Stevenson, just doing stuff like that.  I never expected to be in college.  I got persuaded to run for the Assembly and it totally changed my life.