U.S. Representative, Congressional District 31

U.S. Representative, Congressional District 31

Written by Patrick Brendel Friday, 10 October 2008

John Carter, Republican (incumbent)

• Lived in District: 35 years
• Education: Bachelor's degree, Texas Tech University; Juris Doctor, University of Texas Law School
• Career: General practice lawyer; appointed judge of 277th District Court of Williamson County in 1981; District Judge 1982-2001; Congressional District 31 representative since 2002
• Contact: 246-1600 • carter.house.gov

Q. What are the three or four most important issues for your constituents?

A. Well the No. 1 issue, probably large issue, is the economy overall, energy being a subsection of the economy. Right now [constituents] they’re more concerned about energy and the cost of fuel than any other single issue right now across the country. The war in Iraq always remains an issue, and the war in Afghanistan, the war against terrorism. Healthcare is an issue. This time last year immigration would have been the No. 1 issue, clearly, in my district. It's a sleeper, probably the No. 2 issue besides energy. Energy is the top one only because people remember it every time they fill up their car.

Q. What actions would you take on these if re-elected?

A. Well I've been taking action on all of these issues since I've been in Congress. The issue of the economy is very simple. You have to look at the economy and decide what your view of how the economy works is. There's two big prevailing views. I happen to be one who believes that the best economy is the economy in which we keep most of the taxpayers' money in his pockets, so he makes the spending decisions, and he grows the economy through his investments and spending decisions. That's the conservative view. I believe that if we raise taxes, which is being proposed this year by the Democratic Party, we will see the economy begin to decline. There's clear evidence that upon the cut of taxes, the overall revenues to government actually go up, and there's clear evidence. It's been demonstrated the past 20 years, 30 years. I think we'll see revenues eventually go down. The first lift is big, but after that, because people have to pay more taxes and invest less, less jobs, there's less opportunity and the economy stagnates. The Jimmy Carter era is the example.

Q. What do you think are the greatest international threats to the United States?

A. Terrorism is the No. 1 threat to the United States, but I think we have to keep an eye on some folks that some people would say are old enemies. I think that we're clearly seeing the emergence of the Russians, and some would say they may even be trying to put back together the old Soviet Union. But their clear invasion of the sovereign nation of Georgia is something that ought to concern us all as we look down the tunnel of time. We also ought to be concerned about China. Right now China is very much into competition with us, and that's good. I'm not against competition. But they still have and maintain a very aggressive army and a very aggressive spy network, and in fact we've had some computers on the Hill that have been invaded, according to multiple sources, have been tapped into by the Chinese intelligence folks. And so they're still spying on us and that means we should be cautiously watching our Chinese trading partner.

Q. What steps do you think the government should take to meet the country's future energy needs?

A. All of the above. Everything that’s out there should be left on the table. It is a huge mistake to start off by saying, "We need to deal with energy, but we're going to let you deal with those energy things that I like, but we're not going to deal with the ones that I don’t like." So the proposal that the Democrats put forward initially was "No more hydrocarbons. We're not going to deal with hydrocarbons." It's kind of a joke, Mrs. Pelosi said, "We've got to get off our hydrocarbons. We're going to go with natural gas." Sorry, that's a hydrocarbon. But that's another story. Facts are when they say no hydrocarbon, you're talking about oil, gas and coal. If you put oil, gas and coal together, as far as the sources of power for the United States, both industry and transportation, they make up about 75% or 80% of the energy that the United States use it today, maybe a little less than that. Let's call it 60%. I have a pie chart someplace, but I don't know what the numbers are. I personally think that we have to reinstate our nuclear. I think nuclear should be on the table. I think geothermal should be on the table. I think wind should be on the table. I think solar. I think hydroelectric. I think we ought to look at using the tides. We ought to use lots of things. We ought to be creative, and that's why I say "all of the above." The American people, if you turn creativity loose, will come up with a lot of solutions that will reduce our dependence on oil. We do need to clearly reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we also need to explore and produce those resources that are American resources. We probably have the largest coal deposits in the world. Let's figure out a way to use coal in a clean manner, coal as a liquid in a clean manner. Let's look at the shale oil in the mountain states. Let's look at offshore drilling up and down the coast. If we do it cleanly, there hasn't been more than a tablespoon of oil spilled by drilling offshore in the last five years. Total worldwide. By everybody. And believe me, we're the best, but there's some other people who aren't as good as we are. But the facts are we know how to drill and produce effectively. Our issues are with shipping. That's where we've had oil spills. The transportation of those things is a challenge in some incidences, but the drilling for those resources, there's just no indication it's any kind of a challenge anymore. the days of big gushers and spilt blowouts have been gone for decades and decades and decades. So let's look at everything. A very interesting side is there's some people working on a refinery. They're putting $250 million to $350 million of private money, no government money, in a refinery that they're going to put beside the garbage dump of Fort Hood in Killeen, up in our neighbor to the north, Bell County, and they're going to refine garbage. And from that they say they will produce 50,000 barrels of gasoline and 50,000 barrels of diesel and 50 megawatts of electricity every day. They will sequester 18 truckloads of CO2, and their entire process will not have an emission in the air or in the water. So it's pretty exciting stuff if it works. And somebody thinks it will because they're putting that much money into it.

Q. What do you think about the National Animal Identification System?

A. The National Animal Identification System is the offshoot of the Mad Cow Disease and the anthrax in China. I think it's going to be a burden upon American agriculture. And if it was modified in such away that the individual small ranchers and farmers wouldn't have to pay to tag and track their animals.
The concept is good and some of the cattle ranchers and livestock producers favor it. And quite frankly I'm not in that business, and I'll take advice from the cattlemen in my district, and they're pretty well divided on it quite frankly. This district is pretty well divided on it, but it has its pros, and it has its cons. But to be honest with you, the overall concept goes a little bit against my conservative nature. If they make it useable to where it's not a burden on industry, I could support it, but I've got to make sure it doesn't hurt the small producer.

Q. What is your stance on the Trans Texas Corridor, and how do you feel about eminent domain?

A. I think the Trans Texas Corridor by its presentation and its concept has been a huge mistake, and it has frightened the dickens out of everybody involved in it. And it has people just madder than Cain in my district and across the state. And it's just the concept, by the very way that they've presented it. It's a bad concept, but we've got transportation issues that are just about second to none in this state. And so I'm a very big proponent of creative transportation solutions, but they have basically messed up the concept of Trans Texas corridor so badly by the way they have brought it forward, that I think that it's back to the drawing board. There's got to be a better solution. On eminent domain, eminent domain is the law of the land since the beginning of the Republic, and one of the number one reasons why eminent domain is allowed is for highways, railroad right of ways and other things. When I was a judge, my court had jurisdiction over eminent domain cases. We would, there were three of us -- later in my career there were three district judges in our county, and we would basically rotate. We'd draw names out of a hat, and we'd rotate each year who had the eminent domain cases. I handled probably most of the eminent domains cases that went to our court on [Hwy.] 183A, the condemnation of [Hwy.] 183A. I don't think you can eliminate eminent domain. It has been around forever. The issue is, are people being treated fairly? At least in the cases that went to trial or that were settled as a result of trails I watched, the landowners were very very adequately compensated for their taking.

Q. Do you feel that the immigration system in the US is in need of reform? If so, how do you suggest changing it? Do you support the border wall? Do you support sanctions for people who employ illegal immigrants?

A. The immigration system, in my personal opinion, is broken from top to bottom. We, for some reason, have a policy that looks the other way for people who break the law. An unwritten policy — it just seems to have evolved that way. Millions break into our country, and then those who try to do it the right way… We have created a system that is so onerous and punitive that they have a very difficult time trying to come here and do the right thing. That's kind of completely backwards from the way it ought to be. This country needs to have an active source of new labor and new human beings making new Americans, and we ought to have a legal system that is manageable so that you don’t frighten them or punish them so badly that they don't want tot try to do it the right way. But, in turn, I spent 20 years of my life saying I don't approve of breaking the law. I'm not going to change that. For 20 years I put people in prison for breaking the law. I'm not going to change that by saying you can break into my country, and I'm going to give you everything free and pat you on the back and say, “Congratulations, here's your citizenship.” I am opposed to that. As I analyze the problem of the illegal immigration issue, it has, and that's where we should start. That's what people are upset about. That's where our national risk is, the illegal immigration. We should start out by defending our borders, and we should use all the tools. Fences, and if you want to call them walls, walls, but really it's fences in certain places help with the immigration problem. In other places they're worthless. A fence between Del Rio and the Big Bend is pretty well worthless. By the time anybody got to where the fence was, you could have cut a hole that you could drive an 18-wheel truck through it. So it's just a joke to put it out there. However, I sat with a border patrolmen down in Laredo one night for most of the night. And he pointed out to me that — he had basically four miles he was watching by camera — if he could just slow them down, it didn't have to stop them, but just slow them down, he could catch them. Even though it was difficult, because the way his particular sector was, you had the river bottom, which was very brushy, and then a road. If the illegal immigrant could get across the road — it was a three- or four-lane city street — they were in a densely populated area of Laredo, and they were not identifiable from anyone else there. So they were gone. He said if there's a fence there along the side of that road it could slow them down. The fence wouldn't keep them from going over the fence, but he'd be able to get there to enforce the law. That's the kind of intelligent fencing we can do, and I think that’s needed. We need to have electronics. We need to have more people. I would personally propose that until we can enforce our borders effectively north and south, we should increase the border patrol by 2,000 border patrol agents every year until we get the resources around to get it fixed. The second thing we need to do is, we need to be able to identify, we need to have a new identity system for ourselves and for those people who are coming into this country. I propose a biometric Social Security card. For those people who have Social Security cards today, it would be voluntary. You wouldn't have to do it. For those people, those kids that are born tomorrow, if it went into effect today, would have a biometric Social Security card. By biometric, you'd have electronics built into it, which would identify at least a fingerprint or a photograph and possibly like an iris scan or something like that. The whole purpose of this is not just immigration, although it helps a lot with immigration and helps the employer know the person that hired is the person whose social security card that is. But in addition to that, the largest single crime in the United States today is identity theft. It's the fastest growing crime in the world. Texas is number two in the nation in having our identities stolen. So from Texas' standpoint, the fact that we have a cardboard piece of paper with a series of numbers on it as our identity form, that identifies us for almost everything we do these days, just is a magnet to those who would steal our identity and use it for their purpose. That’s why I think the idea is not just an immigration idea; it's protection for all Americans.
The next thing we need to do is figure out what to do with the people who are here. For 20 years, I put people on what is called deferred adjudication probation, which means you come in and you sign a document where you admit to the crime you are charged with. That document is the evidence against you, but we won't use that evidence. We set it aside and place you on probation and give you a set of rules to live by. These rules are not onerous. They start off with "Don't break the law." Well every American citizen is not supposed to break the law anyway so that's not onerous. Work at suitable employment, take care of your dependents. Don't take benefits that you're not entitled to. And set out a series of rules. They would have to have an employer who would have to notified that they are under this system, because one of the things they would get by being on deferred adjudication probation is the right to work. If they are employed, they would be given the right to work. But the employer in turn, who employs the type of people on probation, would have to report if they took off. They would also have to report to the Immigration and Naturalization System every year from between Jan. 1 and let's see, it's Jan. 31; there's 31 days in January. By the way my wife's an immigrant. That's what we had to do when she came to this country. We had to re-register so she could keep her green card every year between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31. It was done at the post office with basically a post card. It's not that big a deal, but you had to do it. And in fact my daddy would call us on New Year's Day for the five years until Erika became a citizen. It was just like religion. He would call us on New Year's Day and say, “Don't forget to go down and register my daughter-in-law so they don't kick her out of this country because I love her.” OK. And to accompany that way of dealing with the people who are here, then we would set up a work program that would be at the border or at stations that would count as the border, so that people could come in to, like New York City, and go to a station and apply to be on a limited work visa to come here. And they would have to follow certain rules too. So like I say, it takes a long time to talk about this. I have a Hispanic counsel that is in, that has representatives from all over my district. We've met on this issue on numerous occasions. American citizens are good law-abiding people and that includes all American citizens. And they agree that people shouldn't be breaking the law, and they agree there should be consequences. But they say it should be done with compassion. I think this could be done with compassion. A person who serves out his probation would get a priority for work permit. But no pathway to citizenship. You want citizenship, now go back and get in line with those people coning back from the country of your origin that are applying for citizenship. These things that I've just outlined fix the immediate problem. Then we have to go through and redo the entire immigration system to make it less onerous and yet secure.

Q. Would you do away with the lottery on skilled worker visas?

A. Actually the skilled worker visas need to be expanded. I have expanded it. I have cosponsored a bill to expand a first-come first-serve, it's an H1-B, first-come first-serve, 50,000 I think. I guess it’s not a lottery then. I don't know what the number is. The last two sessions we have expanded that number because the high-tech industry is very critical to our area, and they are very concerned about making sure they have these visas that get trained people in here they need, especially the PhDs in physics and engineering.

Q. Do you support sanctions for people who employ illegal immigrants?

A. Yes, there should be sanctions. But that's why you have to give them a good, identifiable card. And then I would propose as part of this plan that they would have access, if they were large enough, they could pay to have a machine installed in their company. If they are smaller businesses, they could go to a location like the post office, the city hall, wherever you set it up in the community. They could take the applicant or applicants, their documents, feed it into the machine, let them check their biometrics and see that that is the right person. And then I think we'd help them meet their obligation. Then those who don't do that, those who intentionally employ people that are illegal, then they should be punished. Because if you don’t, you're never going to stop the lure of employment.

Q. What are your plans for ensuring that Americans have adequate access to health care? What changes, if any, should be made to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security? Or is it even a proper function of government to help citizens get health care?

A. The proper function of government. First, I will tell you that I am opposed to socialized medicine. And you can call it anything you want to, single-pay system or whatever you want to call it. But I am opposed to socialized medicine. I have lived under it in Holland. It is not a good system, and I don't think the American people would be happy with it or be well served with it. What we have to do is learn, through things like Association of Healthcare Plans which allow, which we have proposed now for, well for three congresses that I know of, because I've been there for three congresses ,and it's been killed by special interests in the Senate. It's passed the House every time. Well there are some creative things we can do. Expand health savings accounts. Give tax credits. I think it's a good idea to give a tax credit for a person. The idea we maybe ought to do it with tax credits whether than big business, they don't like that idea, but I think that's possibly a good idea. That you should get the same write-off for your going out and buying your healthcare as the company gets for buying the healthcare for you. We need to come up with these kinds of creative things to let the market work, because I don't think the type of service and the type of innovation that comes out of socialized medicine is going to do anything but set us backwards. For instance, when my wife's mother in Holland, where they have a one-pay system, the government pays the healthcare. Supposedly one of the best in Europe. It is one of the best, and if you go to the hospital they got one of the nicest hospitals. But you share your room with six other people. They make life-or-death decisions about who lives and who dies when you get to be elderly. If you're going to be a burden on the system, they don't help you. That's the kinds of decisions that get made that concern me very greatly, and I just don't think it's right for America. So I oppose a single-pay system. Also by the way, by 2050 Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will be off the charts in the amount of expense it will cost the average taxpayer. Some estimates are the top brackets will pay 92%.

Q. Do you think health insurance should be separated from employment?

A. Right now the employer gets to write off what he gives you. It's compensation to you if they give you a health plan, but they get to write it off. Maybe we should let you buy your own healthcare. If you let people shop for their own healthcare in a free market, if we lift all these governmental mandates. For instance, my wife and I are past childbearing age. We don't need a maternity benefit on our healthcare program. We should be able to go shop in any state in the union. Expand it for the whole country and be able to shop and find a healthcare plan that says we're going to be heavy on long-term care and light on things like pap smears, which are mandated. And maternity benefits, because if you’ve had a hysterectomy, you don’t need maternity benefits. That's just common sense. Some people who have a history of cancer in their family might say, “I want a policy that's heavy on cancer and a policy light on something else.” They should be able to make those healthcare choices. We should assume that we are intelligent enough to make those choices.

Q. Are there any issues you want you constituents to know about?

A. I think that one of things that I've talked about since I've been here that hasn't changed. It has just gotten worse. At some time we are going to face our unfunded mandates, which is basically Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. We are going to have to figure this out, because — it takes a simple mathematician to figure out; it's not complex — that these things are not going to being paying for themselves. Probably by 2017, they're going to start going in the opposite direction. That, like propounding interest, propounds, too, and before we know it, we're just not going to be able to afford these programs. We owe the duty and the responsibility of keeping Social Security available for those who gave their lives to it. So we have a duty to meet that responsibility to those people. But we have to come up with other solutions to make that thing work, so that my children, so that, the two of you. There's a pretty good chance you're both young. There's a very good chance that when you're each 65 years of age, that Social Security may not be here. We owe just as much an obligation to you, but we're going to do what we have to do to make this program work. And Medicare's way worse than Social Security. And the whole idea with S-CHIP to put the young people under Medicare and then drop the age of Medicare down to 50, which is being proposed over in the Senate. It's just, that's just two new steps to get to universal health are, which we can't afford.

Q. How about Medicare Part D?

A. Well, that's one of the tough votes I had to take. I will say that Medicare Part D is actually working a lot better than the skeptics think it is, but it's still mighty expensive. And so ultimately everybody knows, and that includes the hospitals and the doctors and everybody else, knows that we've got to sometime get Medicare going in a different direction. It's just going to be a bottomless pit of expenses to us. And we've got to fix it. And right now we're just kicking the can down the road. And the problem is, when you start fixing some of these things, some people are going to get beat the next election. And that's just being honest, and it's going to take courageous people. But it's going to have to be done, or else you're going to have to do it when you get to Congress.