The Editorial Board interviews Congressman Mike Thompson

The ‘O.G. of telehealth’ spoke on affordability issues, the Democratic party’s goals and his re-election campaign

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

On May 14, the Editorial Board met with Representative Mike Thompson of California’s 4th congressional district, which includes the City of Davis, for an interview. This is the third year that The California Aggie has interviewed Thompson.

Below is a transcript of the meeting, edited for length and clarity.

The Editorial Board: On Dec. 18, you introduced the American Affordability Act, meant to lower housing, energy and transportation, childcare, education and healthcare costs across the U.S. Can you explain how you feel this act will benefit all Americans if passed, and what progress has been made so far in attempting to have the bill passed? 

Thompson: As you probably know, in this particular Congress there is no chance that the American Affordability Act is going to pass. The reason I did this bill is because I had great success in the last Congress with the GREEN Act, and that was my legislation to promote renewable energy. It was passed into law and signed into law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and it dealt with using tax credits to expedite the rollout of renewable energy. It was wildly successful, created jobs, created manufacturing investments, lowered utility rates. It brought in a whole bunch of renewable energy products into our space. Then H.R. 1, the big ugly bill, cut a bunch of that. Some of it is still intact, but it cut a bunch of that. 

But it was so successful that, as the top Democrat on the Tax Subcommittee of Ways and Means, I was asked to design a similar package to deal with affordability. The bill that you mentioned is in that package. It covers the different areas that you mentioned, and it uses the tax code to promote that. In the housing space, for instance, it makes some changes to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit bill. We've had great success with that for as long as it has been around — even more success a few years ago when I did a carve-out for tax credits in areas that were hit with natural disasters. In our district alone, we built 1,565 new units of housing. So, we're going to expand on that. 

It also has a tax credit for first-time home buyers and a provision to readjust the tax you pay on your equity when you sell your house. Because there are a lot of people who, maybe they have a big house, their kids grew up, went to UC Davis, got a great education, took that education to go get a job someplace and they're not coming home. And the parents wanna sell the house and get into a smaller place. The tax on their equity is a deterrent from doing that, so we rearranged that. 

It also deals with education stuff — something that I'm sure all of you would be interested in. Specifically, it lowers the interest rates on student loans and then retroactively rolls back the interest rates on existing student loans. There are some tax provisions in there for students that work and reduce the amount of taxes that they would pay, etc. 

At this particular point, when you have a Republican legislature and a Republican president who is more concerned about giving tax cuts to gazillionaires and corporations, this is to set up a juxtaposition. It's like a message to the voters: Elect us, and this is what we're going to do. The American Affordability Act will be one of the principal planks in our platform going forward, and this is what it looks like. 

We're using the time between now and when we flip the House, and I believe flip the Senate, to be able to socialize that. Make sure people know what it's gonna do, understand how it's gonna help folks afford school, afford food, afford healthcare, afford housing, etc. Right now, the Republicans control the agenda. They're not gonna let us have a hearing on it. So we're getting co-authors; we're socializing it. It really depends on what all is going on. We may do non-official hearings, hearings kind of on the side to bring witnesses in to testify, to let folks know what their thoughts are and any suggestions they have for change. A lot in Congress moves kind of slow. And when we're pushing up against a majority party who doesn't want to do these things, it makes it even more difficult.

The Editorial Board: In your time as an American politician, is there a particular challenge you have faced or lesson learned that now shapes how you now approach leadership, advocacy or policy creation? 

Thompson: I'm a big believer in knowing the issue, knowing the problem, being able to identify the problem, explain it, figure out what solves the problem and then just get to work. I'll tell you a really good example. You know, our district changed because of Proposition 50, and in the new part of the district, the peach growers in Yuba and Sutter County got hit with a major disaster. Del Monte went bankrupt, and they closed their cannery. So there were tens of thousands of tons of peaches with no home, and they lost their member of Congress. 

So I'm going to be their member of Congress, but not until after the election. They came to me, asked me to come meet with them, help them figure out how to deal with this really crushing problem. We came up with an idea of having a tree removal program and getting disaster aid from the Department of Agriculture to do it. So I came back to Washington D.C., I laid out the problem, I lobbied starting with all of the California delegation on both sides of the aisle. I got every member of the California delegation to sign my letter to the Department of Agriculture. I got Senator [Adam] Schiff and Senator [Alex] Padilla to do that as well. 

Then, I identified a Republican member of the California delegation, and I got Republicans in that area to work with him to encourage him to join efforts with me and then sent that to the Department of Agriculture. I lobbied strongly to the California representative from the Department of Agriculture to make the pitch. I even went to the Speaker of the House and explained to him why this was a problem and why he needed to help. It was interesting, because the head of the peach growers up in Sutter County called my office and wanted to know what in the world I had done, because from the day they met with me to the day we got the program, it was 2 months and 5 days. The guy said, “I've been working in federal [agricultural] policy forever and Congress works in dog years. Nothing happens in 2 months and 5 days.” So, I think that's an effort. 

I don't think you ever foreclose on any possibility to move something that you care about. Another example is when the fires went through our district; I lost about 3,300 homes in my district. A bunch of those people had to sue in order to get their benefits for their home loss. They sued PG&E, and they won. So, they got a settlement. The settlement wasn't enough to rebuild their home, but it was more than they would have otherwise received. But the real ugly part was they were taxed on that settlement, so they didn't get enough money to rebuild their home and then they had to pay taxes on it. 

So, I did legislation to exclude them from having to pay tax. It went through the House and died in the Senate. Then the next year, it died in the Senate, because the Republicans wouldn't support it — because they knew they were gonna flip the Senate, and they wanted to do tax policy under their leadership, not ours. So, the next year I did it again. I sent it through the House, and then they wouldn't take it up on the floor for a vote. Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn't do it. So, I went to a Florida member, a very right-wing Republican, Greg Steube, who had a disaster in his district and was facing the same problem. He and I teamed up, and we led an effort to pass a discharge petition. If 118 House members sign a discharge petition, the leadership has to take the bill up. We got 118 members to sign. They took it up, and it passed. It was the first discharge petition success in like 10 years. It went over to the Senate with so much momentum that they passed it. It went to the president's desk. He signed it into law, and that brought $500 million in tax relief back to the 4th Congressional District: to homeowners. 

I just think you have to be tenacious. You have to know what you're doing. You have to understand the local impact that it has. You have to have a good relationship with folks in the House where you work, in the legislature, in the Congress. You have to know what levers to pull in order to get things done. That's something I have going for me: I know what I'm doing. I'm battle-tested, and I'm effective. I'm also on the Ways and Means Committee, which is a very important and powerful committee and allows me to get a lot of things done.

The Editorial Board: You recently allocated $1 million to Davis to construct a pedestrian and bicycle connection between the Davis Amtrak Station and Olive Drive. Do you have any other similar goals or ideas you would like to see implemented in Davis or Yolo County?

Thompson: I have a bunch. I got $350,000 to buy a new van for the food center. That was something that was really important for them so they could get food to hungry people. I got money for the education program in Winters — I think it was $850,000. Those are three big ones in this last community-funded project effort that we did. The one before that, I was able to get money for the new library in South Davis, which is incredibly important not only for the library, but for a meeting place for South Davis residents. I was able to get money for a smoke taint research program at UC Davis, because one of the problems that the wildfires did was create a disastrous situation for the wine community. The grape skins absorbed the smoke, and it ruined the grape crop. Then, I had to come back and re-litigate that, so to speak, because the Trump administration cut funding for the researchers at Davis. They fired the smoke taint research professor, and I had to come back and fight to get that person reinstated. 

The Editorial Board: In March, you introduced HR 7810, the Lowering Student Loans Act, which seeks to cap federal student loan interest rates at 2%. You’ve met with students (including from UC Davis) about HR 7810 in the process: What has introducing the bill taught you about the financial challenges facing students today?

Thompson: I've introduced that bill twice. I introduced it as a standalone bill, as you just mentioned, because I think this is a very important issue for students and for higher education. I also introduced the same bill as part of my American Affordability Act. I don't know that I learned anything meeting with students about this, but I know that it reintroduced me to issues that students are facing. I think you guys know this: I have a very unconventional history in regard to education. I wasn't as smart as you guys; I didn't graduate from school, go to college. I dropped out of high school after my last basketball season because — as I tell students today, trying to make them think about their future and try and make them think about doing it the smart way — I thought I knew more than my teachers and my parents. So I dropped out. 

I went to Santa Rosa Junior College, and I was smarter than the professors there, too. Long story short, I ended up in the U.S. Army. I took my GED class in basic training, so I got a high school education equivalence. I went through all my training. I went to Vietnam. I was shot up. I came home. When I recovered, I still had a military obligation, so I served out my time in the Army. When I got out of the Army, I came home to St. Helena, where I live today. I took classes at Napa Community College. I'll be honest with you — I didn't take them because I necessarily had a hunger for education. I was able to get $385 a month from the GI Bill. And what happened was I just fell in love with education. It really woke me up as to how stupid I was. 

I had a family, and I worked and went to community college for 2 years. Then I left and transferred to a four-year school. I graduated with an undergraduate degree, and I started graduate school. When I started graduate school, I went back to St. Helena High School, and I said, “Hey, what do I need to do to finish my high school diploma?” I had an English class and a science class I had to take. I took those concurrently at Butte Community College. So, my education reads like this: I have a GED [diploma], an undergraduate degree, a high school diploma and a master's degree, in that order. 

As I said, I had a family. Jan and I had two young kids. We belonged to a campus daycare center, and we belonged to a student babysitting co-op. We exchanged babysitting, and I took out student loans. I got a Pell Grant, I got [veterans affairs] VA education funding, and I did my education that way. I know how tough it is. I know how difficult it is. And I think it probably reacquainted me with that. It also gave me an opportunity to see how motivated and dedicated our students are today. I knew that as well.

I think you guys know that I started, years ago now, the Student Leadership Council, open to high school students throughout my district. We have over 350 Student Leadership Council alumni who have graduated from that program. They've done everything from using that diploma on their resume and their college applications to actually turning it into internships, part-time jobs and now careers in public service or philanthropy — whatever that they might be doing. I know that young people are our future, and they're our leaders. Not just our future leaders — they're our leaders today. I've done some work with student groups that have really turned things around. I do all the gun violence prevention work in the Congress. If it weren't for student leadership groups across the country, we would not have been able to pass the Safer Community Act. We would not have been able to make the progress that we've made in promoting things such as my background checks to buy a firearm legislation. It's hugely important. 

The Editorial Board: Are there plans to expand California residents’ access to Medicare and medical services via telehealth, and what are the potential implications of the recent deferral of Medicaid funds?

Thompson: Let's start with the H.R. 1 cuts to Medicaid. It doesn't just cut Medicaid. You can't take a trillion bucks out of the healthcare budget and not have it affect everything. It's gonna affect Medicaid — Medi-Cal in California. It's gonna affect Medicare. It's going to affect private coverage. It's going to affect cash-out-of-pocket coverage. Hospitals will close. Clinics will close. Skilled nursing facilities will close. A lot of those facilities will reduce staff in order to keep the doors open. That's not a good thing. There are going to be facilities, hospitals and clinics treating people who are ill or injured, and they're not gonna get paid for it. That's gonna further harm our healthcare facilities.

Then there are a lot of programs that most people don't recognize as part of the healthcare program, but there are things, especially in the behavioral science area, where you have diversionary programs paid for by Medicaid that keep people out of jail. Maybe they're domestic violence people, and they have anger management issues. You can either send somebody to jail or you can get them counseling and the help they need to manage their problems, keep them out of jail, keep them in the workforce, etc. Same thing with addiction issues. Those programs are going to be cut as well. So, this is something that's gonna be huge. If you add to that the cut on the [Affordable Care Act] ACA tax credits, it's gonna be even bigger. So, that's something that we really have to reverse. It's one of the reasons why it's so important to win back the House. 

In the telehealth area, I've been very successful. I started telehealth when I was in the State Senate in California. It used to be that you had to have face-to-face contact with your provider in order to get reimbursed. I changed that law in California, and that's what started the telehealth movement. I had a group come in a couple of months ago — I got an award from the telehealth people, and they referred to me as the “O.G. of telehealth.” And that's Original Gangster, not Old Guy. It's been wildly successful. 

I had legislation that was passed in Congress during COVID-19 that allowed Medicare individuals to get their healthcare through telehealth so they wouldn't have to go to a facility where they'd be exposed to COVID-19, which could have made them really sick or killed them. That opened up a whole different appreciation of telemedicine. People used to be focused just on underserved areas, but now people in areas that were served were experiencing this. People found out that they could go to work, go to the grocery store, drop their clothes off at the cleaners and do a telehealth visit to deal with their healthcare. It just became wildly popular. 

Right now, I have legislation to make it permanent. We keep extending it. We extend it, you know, one more year, we send it two more years, which is good. More people learn about it, more people use it, more people love it, but it's not good for planning. You can't just kick the can down the road a year or two at a time. There are 66 members of the Senate that are co-authors of my bill. And there are over, I think, 160 House members who are co-authors. So, we're getting really close to the critical mass that we need to make this thing permanent. That's gonna be really beneficial. But the other thing is, Democrats get in control and we do everything to make sure we expand benefits to as many people as possible. We wanna get as many people covered as we possibly can. We lose control, and Republicans wanna get people off coverage. Then we win control, and we try and get them back on. That's just the reality of things. That's going to happen.

There's power in numbers. We need the majority. But we also need to be thinking longer term. How do we fix this so it's not a constant “tear it down, build it back up?” I believe we need to have single-payer medical care, such as Medicare for All. It's not some sort of pipe dream idea anymore. I have more doctors every year telling me: “Just do single payer. I would rather have one government agency telling me what they'll pay for and what they won't, rather than having to deal with 25 different insurance companies.” We can streamline it, make it easier for the healthcare providers, take a lot of the people out who were takers. Every dollar that the insurance company puts in the bank is a dollar less that we can pay doctors and nurses and lab techs, and a dollar less we can use to deliver healthcare for the people who need it.

The Editorial Board: Entrepreneur Eric Jones, your primary competitor in your reelection race, has argued that it is time for a new generation of legislators to take office. How do you respond to Jones and others who think it's time for legislators your age to step down?

Thompson: I’m 75 years old. I think every generation has something to offer, and I think that's important to note. I don't think people should stay in Congress or anyplace else when they're not in their prime. I happen to be in my prime. I just gave you some examples of different ways that I've really been able to deliver. Going into this next Congress is gonna be a tough Congress. We're gonna have to battle Trump. We're gonna have to battle his [Make America Great Again] MAGA enablers. We need people who know what they're doing, know how to get things done and who are battle-tested. I am clearly battle-tested. I am clearly effective. 

I'm on the most important committee in Congress. In the next Congress, I will be the chairman of the Health Subcommittee. We just finished talking about important health issues that we need to tackle, and I'm the guy that can deliver that. This next Congress especially is not the Congress for on-the-job training. We need people who are battle-tested and able to deliver. Even the young people have looked at both candidates, and those endorsements all came to me. If it's Davis College Democrats, the Sacramento Young Democrats, the Redwood Empire Young Democrats, the California Young Democrats — I have all of those endorsements. I would argue that those groups really did a deep dive to figure out who is the most qualified person to do this job. 

You know, Nancy Pelosi is 10 years older than I am, and I don't think there is anybody who would suggest that she wasn't the most important and the most successful speaker in the history of the Congress. She was doing that in her 80s, so I've got a ways to go.

The Editorial Board: With California’s upcoming gubernatorial primary in June, and with the race split between several Democratic and Republican candidates, do you have any message to voters who remain undecided about the race?

Thompson: There are a lot of people who are undecided. I see it in my race watching how many people vote, and we're way behind normal. There's a big group of people in my district that vote early. They're not voting early. People are waiting to see where this thing breaks. 

The big concern — and this is probably not from Mrs. Crapalucci at home watching the debates on television — but in our discussions amongst my Democratic colleagues from California, we're all watching it really closely and waiting to see if there's something that we should do to make sure that there aren't two Republicans in the general election. We want a Democrat — and we would want two Democrats — but it’s a Democrat and a Republican. Right now, Steve Hilton looks like he's gonna be the Republican guy, and we just need to make sure it's another Democrat. So, we're kind of waiting to see. 

I suspect that the two leading Democrats right now, and I don't think it will change, will be Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer. It's down to those two. We just need to make sure one of them gets in.

The Editorial Board: Given the ever-evolving political climate we're experiencing, where do you see the future of the Democratic Party? And in your opinion, what steps should Democratic leaders take to unify the voter base ahead of the 2028 presidential election?

Thompson: I think what the Democrats need to do is win in November and show the American people that we can deliver. I think we need to really work within our caucuses in both the House and the Senate to put together that legislative package — those priorities that are most important to the American people — and deliver on those priorities. And don't get distracted. Don't get bogged down in things that aren't gonna make a difference in the lives of Americans. Deliver on issues that will provide opportunities for the American people. Deliver on issues of equity to make sure that we don't have a situation as we do today, where billionaires, centi-millionaires, venture capitalists and corporations get all these tax breaks, but that working families get what they need in order to have a decent life and the opportunities that I had when I was growing up. 

If we deliver for the American people, we will win the presidency in the next presidential election. I sense that everybody in the Democratic caucus in Congress gets that and is focused on trying to figure out how we deliver, not how we do gotcha stuff. Like today on the floor, we had bills that were designed just to getcha. The Republicans put these bills up and it's, you know, ‘the mom and apple pie’ bill. But there's a line in there that says something that is just unacceptable for people. We need to do grown-up legislative work that delivers for the American people.

The Editorial Board: That was all the questions that we had for today. But is there anything

that you'd like to share that we didn't address in any of our questions?

Thompson: I'd like to thank you very much for taking the time to meet with me. I've always

enjoyed meeting with you. You always ask the right questions, and it's from a place of sincerity.

I know we all share that. We want the best America. We want the best universities. We want the best communities. We want what's best for the American people and for our future. I hope that you understand that and you know in your heart that that's where I'm coming from. 

I do this job because I believe in the institution of representative government. I believe in serving the American people. I'm a public servant. I'm a public official who wants to work for what the American people need. You can see that in everything I do. You know, there's nothing that says a member of Congress has to have a Student Leadership Council. I do that because it's important for the future of our country. There's nothing that says you should construct your office to make sure that any phone call that comes in from any constituent is addressed. I co-locate; [State Senator] Christopher Cabaldon, [State Assemblymember] Cecilia Aguiar-Curry and I are in the same office in Napa. If somebody goes to the trouble to call their member of Congress, the last thing they need to hear is: “That's a state issue, call Cecilia,” or “That's a county issue, call the supervisor.” It's no, you call my office, we take your name, we take your contact, we take your issue, we figure out how to get your issue addressed. That's what public service is about, and I think that's what I bring to the job. 

There are all kinds of examples of it. In the last few years, my office, my staff and I have brought $87 million back from the federal government that federal agencies owed our constituents. I know that because I was in my Santa Rosa office one day and one of my staff said, “We just got an $80,000 IRS claim back for somebody.” I said, “That's a lot of money.” And they said, “Oh yeah, we got $150,000 two weeks ago.” I said, “You get $1 million, I'll take the whole office out to dinner.” Three days later, I got a call: “Where are we going to dinner?” So, we deliver. That's what it's all about, is delivering for the American people.

I really enjoyed meeting with you, and I'm honored to represent our area —  the district where I was born, grew up and still live — in the Congress of the United States of America.

Written by: The Editorial Board — opinion@theaggie.org