A political, if not paradigm, shift in Washington. Republicans take over as the majority party in Congress this month. And Democrats in the United States Senate are looking for ways to stay relevant. New Jersey’s Senior Senator Robert Menendez is losing his power position chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez spoke with NJTV News Correspondent David Cruz to talk about what he expects in the new year.
Cruz: So here you are now getting ready for this new Congress and you are going to be the minority. What’s different? What’s going to be different?
Menendez: The fundamental differences that of course the majority sets the agenda and you try to affect it. So I am going to try to continue to affect it on behalf of the people of New Jersey and the country.
Cruz: People talked about how President Bill Clinton was able to deal with a Congress that was in the opposition party. It seems though that today, relations are a lot different. The tenor of things is a lot different. Do you see President Barak Obama being able to work with this new Congress?
Menendez: I think it depends which Republican party shows up on swearing in day next week. Is it a Republican party that wants to have a record of progress? If that’s the one that shows up then I think Obama will work with them. There is a whole host of issues that we can work on. Why can’t we work on tax reform that helps middle-class working families be able to achieve their dreams and overcome their challenges? Why can’t we have a major transportation bill that can fuel prosperity in the country, get people to work, create less carbon emissions, and at the same time create jobs along the way? So there’s plenty of issues that they can. Now the question is if it’s the Republican party that for the last two years has opposed everything Obama has wanted to do and that’s who shows up on swearing in day, then we are going to have a lot of gridlock and no a lot of progress.
Cruz: Obama took unilateral action on two major issues that are interest to New Jersey particularly. One was immigration where you seem to be on the same page. My question about that though is, you I think said as well that it didn’t go far enough to do what it should do. Did Obama kind of give the Congress an out by acting unilaterally and then not having any pressure on them to act?
Menendez: Obama waited until the final moments of this Congress as it ended to see if Republicans would act on immigration reform. And the Senate, which I was a part of a group of eight that crafted a bipartisan bill that overwhelmingly passed the Senate with bipartisan votes, saw it sit in the House of Representatives for a year and a half with no vote. So Obama finally took action. Now when I said it didn’t go far enough, it’s not because Obama had the power to go even further, he didn’t, he went as far as I think he could and I applaud him for doing it in the absence of the Congress acting. Many presidents, 11 presidents well over several decades, have acted on immigration by executive action and so this is nothing new. No matter how many times the Republicans want to say it’s something new, it’s not. President Bush, President Reagan, and other did it. Now the problem is it doesn’t go far enough because only a law can go as far as necessary to secure the country, promote the economy, and preserve our history as a nation of immigrants and a pathway to citizenship. So I hope the Republicans understand that the road to the White House in two years is going to come through communities of Latinos across the country in states where the electoral votes necessary needed to elect the next president of the United States where they largely reside and now they are unhappy with a Republican party that just won’t get immigration reform right.
Cruz: On this other unilateral action, Cuba, you were vehement in your opposition that. Is there nothing good that can come out of Obama’s actions.
Menendez: Well listen I have hope that maybe something good can come out of it but I have seen already just in the last few days, they was a major gathering or attempted gathering in Havana, by peaceful civil rights activists, where they were going to take one minute in Havana Square and speak about what they envision the future of Cuba and its citizens should be. And the Castro regime arrested these people to tame them before they could even get to the mass gathering and arrested many others as well. So it seems to me that Obama struck a bad deal because he got no guarantees or no concessions on democracy in human rights. So Americans are maybe going to be able to go to Cuba and learn how to salsa but the reality is that those who want to create change in their country are going to be languishing in jail.
Cruz: Is it a real lost opportunity now?
Menendez: I think Obama had a tremendously lost opportunity. The time in which the Castro regime had been more oppressive, even as it has enjoyed relationships with other countries in the world, so those relationships have not changed its way of being, got a economic lifeline thrown to it by Obama. Because Venezuela, which has been the patron on Cuba these days, as the Soviet Union used to be the patron of Cuba when it existed, now it is having challenges. So at a time in which economic necessity, which has always shown to be the only way that the Castro regime has moved in ways that we might say is better for the people of Cuba and for the hemisphere, Obama through them an economic lifeline where basically they don’t really have to change and the demonstration of that is just days after the announcement when there is an attempt by civil society to peacefully assemble, to peacefully protest, to talk about their vision of what the Cuba of tomorrow should be, that simple act ended up putting people in jail. And that’s the lost opportunity that Obama could have assisted on getting commitments from human rights in democracy.
Cruz: You know 5 percent growth over the last quarter. Is this economy, the U.S. economy, has it now really turned this corner?
Menendez: I think the economy is humming. 5 percent growth, Europe would give anything tin have that. The highest stock market in history, the lowest unemployment rate in six years, six years of private sector, job growth, the lowest deficit in 20 years. Now what’s the problem? That middle-class and working families find their income stagnant, despite all those economic figures. Middle-class families find their income stagnant. We have to think of tax and other policies, and sitting on the Senate Finance Committee, I’ll be looking at some of those initiatives. How do we create a greater ability for middle-class families to move up in the income scale so that they can realize their dreams and overcome their challenges.