Finding hope in 2024

Happy New Year! We're starting off 2024 with a conversation about finding hope in politics. We often hear from listeners that our show brings feelings of hope, and this episode is no exception.

Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington state joins us for a discussion on the Building Civic Bridges Act, a bipartisan bill that would provide funding for service projects aimed at bridging divides and reducing political polarization. We also discuss his work on the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which invited experts like Danielle Allen and Lee Drutman to discuss reforms including multi-member districts and increasing the size of the House of Representatives.

It's hard to listen to Kilmer without feeling at least a little hopeful about where politics might go in the coming year. We hope this episode will help you start 2024 on a good note.

Jenna Spinelle
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, welcome to Democracy Works. I'm Jenna Spinelle. Happy New Year, everybody. We are going to be on winter break for a few more weeks. But in the meantime, I wanted to share with you a conversation I had back in December with Congressman Derek Kilmer. If I had to pick someone whose ethos I think most closely aligned with the ethos and the spirit of the show. I think Congressman Kilmer would be it. In this conversation, we talk about his work on the building civic bridges Act, as well as the select committee on the modernization of Congress. Don't worry, he'll explain what both of those things are in in great detail. But it's really all about changing the way that Congress does things and what it chooses to focus on. Streamlining operations, making it easier for people to work together to do the hard work of, of democracy, both within Congress through the modernization committee, and outside of it through the Civic bridge building work. I also talked with Representative Kilmer about the idea of hope. And if there's one thing that we hear over and over again, from listeners of the show is that it makes you feel hopeful. Now, I know that we don't try to sugarcoat anything here, and I don't think that Congressman Kilmer does either. But the sense of hope just naturally comes across I think in the way he presents ideas and the work that he is putting in to make those ideas a reality. I hope that the sense of hope that Representative Kilmer conveys here can carry through with all of you as we go throughout 2024 and beyond.

Jenna Spinelle
Congressman Derek Kilmer, welcome to Democracy work. Thanks for joining us today.

Derek Kilmer
You bet. Good to be with you.

Jenna Spinelle
We're going to talk today about the work that you've done in the bridging space and the Building Civic Bridges Act and maybe some of the other things that you've done in Congress as well. But I want to start first, with with a definition of bridging. Some of our listeners know that sometimes it's used in a very narrow sense to talk about, you know, reducing partisan polarization or maybe overcoming urban rural divide or issues of race, those sorts of things. But sometimes it's it's broader than that. So I wonder how you think about it. And in the context of the building civic bridges Act and the other work you've done in this space.

Derek Kilmer
For me, simply put, it's about bringing people together across lines of difference. And it's important, because it's a recognition that we live in a diverse society, and that we're going to live next to people who think and look and pray differently than we do. And it can't come to violence and conflict. And we are, I think, in sore need of trying to develop those muscles better as a country.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. And so how did the ideas that would become the building civic bridges act? Come onto your radar?

Derek Kilmer
You know, I had a couple of experiences in my district that were, that really shook me. Probably now almost two years ago, I went to the YMCA and one of the YMCA is in my district, thinking they were going to talk to me about the fact that gymnasiums were losing money during the pandemic. That's not what they wanted to talk to me about. They wanted to talk to me about fights breaking out at the Y over politics over that someone was wearing or the t shirt someone was wearing, or the cable news channel someone was wearing on the elliptical. And they said, it's become so bad, we can't ignore it anymore. So they said they've hired a consultant that was training their staff and training their board and conflict resolution and they were hosting. They were pulling together some bridging events to try to get people to talk about their differences, rather than having the YMCA turned into the Jerry Springer show. And at the end of that conversation, he said, Just out of curiosity, any federal support for something like that I said, you know, not really at least not not currently. A few months later, unfortunately, we had a series of attacks on religious institutions. In my district. The Islamic center in Tacoma was burned to the ground by an arsonist. We had two Buddhist faith leaders assaulted outside their temple, we had a church get vandalized within the span of about six weeks, and in the spirit of something good coming out of something bad. The faith community pulled together a solidarity event and it was awesome it was invented to come a community college and you know if you could think of a religion they were there and it was largely to send a message that that's not you know, that type of thing was not what we're about that you know that we're going to celebrate our religious diversity and and celebrate the fact that we can all Pray in different ways, but that we're all part of one community. And afterwards, one of the faith leaders approached me and said, you know, that was a really powerful 90 minutes. But if we were going to do this right, we would do this in an ongoing way. And then he asked the same question, just out of curiosity, is there any federal support for something like that, and I said, you know, not really, I looked into it. As it so happens, the United States actually does spend 10s of millions of dollars trying to foster social cohesion, and build bridges across lines of difference as a means of strengthening democracy in other countries through the National Endowment for Democracy, but we do not do that, here in America. And that was really the genesis of the building civic bridges act, it was a recognition that part of strengthening democracy involves this important work of bringing people together. And that, that just that where that is happening, and thankfully, it is happening in some communities, including the faith community in Tacoma and the YMCA in Gig Harbor, Washington, but that there ought to be support for that. And so the bill, we introduced as a few things, one, it sets up a grant program, a pilot program, to provide financial support to entities that are doing this hard work at the local level. And to recognizes that we need to do more work to train people, this is a skill, right, bridging. Bridging is a skill. And so our proposal is to do that through AmeriCorps to train AmeriCorps members in the skills related to bridge building, in part because we have amazing AmeriCorps members that are situated in communities all around the country. And if they can take those skills, and bring them to bear in those communities across the country, I think our nation will be stronger for it. And then finally, there's a component of research in it to you know, thankfully, we have colleges and universities in the country that are doing this hard work of research and trying to get an understanding of what works. And this bill would support that important research. So that's really the the nuts and bolts of both the genesis of the bill and what the bill does.

Jenna Spinelle
So you mentioned that both of the groups you spoke with the YMCA and the interfaith gathering in in Tacoma, they asked you, is there federal support for this? And I could see how that makes sense, given that you are a member of Congress. But I wonder I could see maybe another scenario and what someone would say that like, the government might just make this worse. So as as you know, there's already room a fairly robust, I would say, civil society infrastructure set up around, you know, doing some of this, this bridging work. So I guess I wonder how you think about, like, what government can bring here, and then the role that government can play in this space, given what how government is often portrayed as itself being very divided and not able to build many bridges itself?

Derek Kilmer
Well, so here's what I would say, I think if folks are looking to marble buildings in Washington, DC, for building community, they're looking in the wrong place. But if it's simply a matter of both providing training to folks who are in our communities, and if it's simply providing financial resources to support some of that good work that's happening on the ground in our communities, then I think there is a viable role for the federal government. And that's not just Derek Kilmer saying that that's entities like the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, which did the our common purpose report and called for the creation of a trust for civic infrastructure. You know, their idea was largely philanthropic. But I think the reality is we've seen time and again, where, with a little bit of federal money, it can leverage a whole lot of philanthropic money and drive greater impact. And I think that this model may be pretty apt for that.

Jenna Spinelle
So bring us up to speed on where things stand with the bill. I know it was introduced in the last Congress. And I there were some rumblings about it maybe being introduced earlier this fall. Where do you think Stan, and and where do you hope that it might go for the rest of the 100 and 18th? Congress?

Derek Kilmer
Well, the next thing on my calendar, when I finished talking to you is to go testify at member day of the Education and Workforce Committee, where I am going to pitch the building civic bridges. So work we are, we're full steam ahead trying to see forward motion on this. It's tricky, right. You know, there is not a zeal by the current majority in the House, either for the creation of new programs, nor for America for that matter. Nevertheless, I think we've got to keep pushing on this. This is, you know, there, there needs to be a recognition that we cannot just accept toxic polarization as the new normal in our country, that we need to address some of these sources of conflict and bridge differences within our country. And that's really what this bill is about.

Jenna Spinelle
And so given that it's really Not that much money that you're asking for your 25 million for for a three year program. This might be naivete on my part about how money is allocated in the government. But is it? Would it be possible to kind of put this into one of the continuing resolutions for the budget or kind of slip it in some other way, rather than having to, you know, go through the whole process of getting a bill passed in and of itself?

Derek Kilmer
Yeah, it's been a priority for me, and I serve on the Appropriations Committee and trying to get this just funded without authorization. You know, the value of passing an authorizing bill is that you create statute, right, you create guardrails, you can flush out a program more explicitly. And it's it provides a grounding, for some sense of permanence, even for a pilot program like this, which is what the authorizing bill does. Nevertheless, we're also making an appropriations play trying to get funding for this as well. So stay tuned. You know, we're really pushing on this, I will say what has been heartening to me, and this is largely my approach in Congress. I didn't introduce this bill with, you know, 100, democratic sponsors, I introduced this bill with 10 democratic sponsors and 10 Republican sponsors. And we've really seen broad bipartisan support for this, because just as I shared the stories of, of faith based conflict in my district, and of the dynamic at the local YMCA, you can talk to nearly every member of Congress, and they can tell you a similar story. And the members that I've been talking to about this legislation have largely responded with that tough problem. And we should not just accept that as the new normal in our country, we ought to do something about it.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and I think that there are certainly, you know, you mentioned political violence at the very top of our conversation, I think, you know, I certainly hear more concerns about that, whether it's, you know, related to what's happening in Gaza, or thinking about the election coming up next year, I think that there is definitely a palpable sense of fear. But on the other side of that, at least what I hear, I don't, you know, curious here how this matches up with what you hear, but there's kind of a, a cynicism that, you know, well, what can we possibly do to fix this? Right? And that's, you know, we're just gonna get people in a room and, you know, even even doing some bridging work might not be enough, because the problem is so great. So how do you hear that that cynicism? And if so, how do you push back against it?

Derek Kilmer
Well, you know, I have hope, because I've seen it work, right, I spent four years chairing the select committee on the modernization of Congress, which had progressive Democrats and very conservative Republicans on it. And we manage, you know, in the history of those select committees, our committee had a pretty big job, it was make Congress work better. And the history of those select committees is generally pretty bad. It's more often than not, so our committees don't pass anything. And, you know, the approach I took was, if you want things to work differently in Congress, you have to do things differently in Congress. And so we did a bunch of things very differently. You know, we had, you know, one of the first things I did is I called my Republican counterpart, a guy named Tom Graves from Georgia, who was a very conservative Republican. In fact, when he left Congress, his seat is now held by Marjorie Taylor Greene. And when I called him, I said, Okay, you're going to be my Republican lead, you know, we're going to be partnering for the next few years. I got a crazy idea for you. What if rather than when we get the money for our committee, what usually happens is you divide by two and Democrats get their half of the money, they generally use their half to hire people with the Democratic background who put on blue jerseys. You get your half and you hire people the Republican background and put on red jerseys. What if we don't do that? What if we just hire one staff, and we will make hiring decisions together, some of the people will have a democratic background, someone will have a Republican background. But rather than putting on red and blue jerseys, they'll put on jerseys that say, let's fix Congress. And to his credit, he said, Sure, let's try it. If you watch one of our hearings, on C span, you probably have too much time on your hands. But if you watch one of our hearings on C span, you'll notice a few things. One, we didn't sit with Democrats on one side of the Dyess and Republicans. On the other we staggered our seating Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican. Why? Well, I don't know about you. I'm you know, when I hear something interesting, my predisposition is to lean over to the person next to me and say, That's kind of interesting. What do you think about that? In our committee, you leaned over to someone from a different party. We didn't even sit at a Dyess again, if you watch one of our hearings on C span, we were commonly on C span aid. You know, we sat around a round table. Why? Well, I've never had a good conversation speaking to the back of somebody's head, you know, so we were able to actually sit in around two able to like actually look each other in the eye have dialogue, not be on the clock for five minutes, like most committees, but actually have discussion. And that that was not cosmetic, it fundamentally changed how we engage one another. We also to my knowledge are the only committee in Congress that had a bipartisan planning retreat where we brought in a facilitator and said, Hey, what do we want to get done? I've never been part of a successful organization that didn't at the beginning, define success. And yet Congress and committee after committee, and, and even as an institution doesn't define what success is. So our committee said, let's define what do we want to get done. And not everybody agreed on what we wanted to get done. But we, you know, I believe that it's hard to get people there for the landing if you don't invite them for the takeoff. And so we brought people in on the front end, all of that was bridging. And the consequence was, unlike all of these committees that pass zero recommendations over the life, we passed 202 recommendations, and for years, about a third have now been implemented about another third are in the process of implementation, and we got to get the other third of the parking garage. But we're really, you know, we we have seen progress in a way that I think auto provide a sense of hope, not a sense of despair. And, you know, and I'm conscious of the word choice there. You know, I used to say, I was optimistic people would say, How's it going back there? And I'd say, well, um, it's a fixer upper. But I'm optimistic. You know, I started changing my choice of words, when someone gave me a quote from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Jonathan Sacks said, there's a difference between optimism and hope. He said, optimism is a passive virtue is the belief that things will get better. He said, hope is an act of virtue. It's the belief that together, we can make things better. He said, it doesn't take courage to have optimism, but it does take courage dope. And I like that, because he understands and appreciates that we all have a sense of agency, that we're not just passive viewers of dysfunction, but we can actually do something about it. And I think, not just for me, as a member of Congress, but for everybody listening to this, you know, recognizing that sense of agency, I think is really important. And in being able to ask ourselves, how do we want to try to alter the trajectory to make things better, I think is fundamental.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm glad you brought up the select committee. I have actually watched part of one of the hearings on CSPAN was when you had Lee Drutman and Danielle Allen, talking about expanding the size of the house and multi member districts and some of those things. And I know that our listeners are also very interested in some of those structural reform issues. So would you put things like that less? Are they still in the parking garage or go? Where did those kind of bigger scale changes stand in terms of the work that the select committee did?

Derek Kilmer
I think they're really important, and they've been a harder thing to land the plane on. We've created something called the fix Congress caucus that is really trying to elevate and socialized some of those ideas and bring in expertise from outside to say, you know, what are some of the out of box out of the box ideas? I actually think the and I was just having a conversation with a Republican colleague of mine, two nights ago about this, I really do think the way we do political primaries is one of the is one of the core problems right now. People are afraid of compromise, because, you know, they're worried about drawing a primary opponent. And we have a political system that lends itself to just bashing the other side. You know, there are models, and you heard Danielle and Lee testify to the value of a system like rank choice voting or instant runoff voting. And part of the value of that is that it, it creates a disincentive to negative campaigning, because even if you're not someone's first choice, you're hoping they're, you're their second or third. And if you spent most of your campaign bashing the first choice, rather than selling what you would be good for the job, chances are, the people who liked the person you're bashing aren't going to put you as their second or third choice. And I actually think that's a really interesting idea, and one that ought to gain more traction for every American who watches our political system and is just exhausted with the dysfunction. You know, my observation is, you know, maybe there's a way to change that up through, you know, my state has a top two primary system, and the consequences, you know, we have, you know, have a member of Congress like Dan Newhouse, so I have a lot of, of respect for it. I don't agree with Dan on everything. But you know, his district is pretty red. When Dan was elected to Congress. He ran against a very far right wing radio host. And Dan was, you know, the former Ag Secretary for a day McCr attic governor in the state of Washington, you know, I'm not sure in a closed primary system, Dan would have made it through the primary. But because we had a Top Two primary system, Dan was able to make it through. And I think that citizens of his district are better off for that than if they'd had the very, very right wing radio talk show host. So looking at things like that are is important. But it's also hard, right? I mean, literally, I've had conversations with people where I've said, let's look at changing up our primary system, and they say, that's a really good idea. But if I work on that with you, I'm gonna get a primary. That's the point. Right, like, I'm, but there is, you know, there's an anxiety about that in, in Congress, as it currently stands. So, you know, we just have to keep pushing. And that means both internally and externally, the more the citizenry, says, Hey, we don't like how it is right now. And we want to push for reforms to make it better. You know, I'm a believer in what Lincoln said, Lincoln said, public sentiment is everything and say what you will about Congress, but by and large members of Congress are responsive to their constituents.

Jenna Spinelle
And that, you know, this this environment you described, both in in Congress, and also among the general public have been wanting to bash the other side. And that's the, you know, what you described at the why about the t shirt on the elliptical, right? It's kind of the same, same sort of, of culture. And so it can sometimes I think, feel like the world's biggest chicken and the egg problem of like changing the structural incentives versus changing the culture that comes from them or changing, you know, how do we really get at the heart of what ails democracy? Is it culture or structure or how much of each and so that's, that's kind of the world that I live in. And I think many of our listeners live in whether they're coming at it from an academic perspective, or maybe working at some of these organizations that are tackling, you know, individual parts of this problem. But you seem to have kind of a holistic view of it just from the the work that you've done in what you described. How do you think about the question of culture and structure and how those two things should should fit together?

Derek Kilmer
Well, I feel like I'm, you know, officially the worst. person responding to the you know, if you could only do one thing, question, because I think it's, you know, I'd asked my genie for more wishes, right? You know, there's not one thing, there's there's a multiplicity of things I think we've got to do, if we want to strengthen democracy, and I think looking at some of these structural issues, including money in politics, including partisan gerrymandering, including primary reform, I think is really substantive and could be really impactful. And at the same time is incredibly hard. Right? I'm looking at some of the cultural challenges. And part of the reason I've worked on this bridging work is I do think there there, you know, to some degree, there are instances where members of Congress are responding to their constituents. In we've got a, we've got to help communities have the resources to not turn the YMCA into the Jerry Springer show for lack of a better analogy. The other thing, though, that I would say is there's also some of these like very tangible things that we were able to push through the modernization committee. And let me give you an example of just something tangible, right, so we had a hearing where we had in Adam Grant, who's an organizational psychologist, we had in a management consultant. We had a political scientist, and we had the founder of braver angels, who was whose background was as a marriage counselor. To talk about fixing culture, we talked to so many people about culture, we talked to sports coaches, and we talked to business leaders, and we talked to marriage coach, I thought about consulting an exorcist, right to just think through, like, how do you fix broken culture. And we had a great conversation. And afterwards, I was pointed in the direction of a sports coach who took over a team that had notoriously bad culture, and he turned it into winter. So I call up this coach, I said, I want to talk to you about, you know, this work we're doing in Congress. And he said, Well, I don't know anything about Congress. And I said, Well, I don't want to really ask you about Congress, I want to ask you about fixing culture. I said, What do you do when you got players on the team that are actively trying to sabotage the team? And he said, like, cut them? So we don't really have that option in Congress? And he said, Well, I then benched him. And he's, again, we don't really have that option either. And he said, Well, let me ask you something. I said, sure. He said, How do you do new player orientation? And I said, Well, we don't we don't really have new players. So we do have new member orientation. And he said, How does it work? And I said, you know, it's funny you say that I said, you know, it works entirely the wrong weigh your members who literally talk about coming in for orientation and being told, okay, Democrats, you get on this bus Republicans you get on that fast. And the entire orientation process is designed to keep the two parties apart. And he said, Well, Derek, I don't know much about Congress. But it seems like you ought to stop doing that. And so one of the recommendations, one of the 202 recommendations that the select committee made was stop doing that right, to have a bipartisan orientation pride process, where even the importance of working across the aisle is part of the orientation. And this last year was the first time in decades that that happened within congressional orientation. Now, will that fix Congress overnight? No. Could that over time have a extremely positive impact on congressional culture? You bet. And so that's how I think about some of these issues, we've got to, you know, it is a mistake to think, Well, if we just pull this one lever, everything will be fine. I think we've got a lot of levers to pull.

Jenna Spinelle
So you know, you've been describing all of this good work that that you've done, both on culture and structure, and bridging and all of these things. But you also announced recently that you're not seeking reelection in it next year. So I guess, two questions on that one, how are you going to spend the next year it trying to move the Civic bridges Act and other priorities forward? And in also, do you feel that you've kind of set a firm enough foundation for what seems to me to be a pretty innovative approach to how Congress works and how it could work? And and, you know, changing the way things have been done? You know, how are you feeling about that attitude? And that work continuing once? You're no longer there to steer the ship, so to speak?

Derek Kilmer
Well, let me answer the first question first, which is, you know, my intent is to run to the tape, and spend the next 13 months working on trying to strengthen our democracy and strengthen Congress as an institution, I serve as the ranking member of the modernization Subcommittee on House admin, we just did up this fix Congress caucus, which I co chair, and we're going to really continue to push on these issues, because I think they matter. I mean, as I mentioned, literally, I'm going to the end Workforce Committee, to testify about the building civic bridges Act, as soon as I hang up with you. So you know, we're going to keep pushing on that. I do think, you know, thankfully, part of the legacy of the modernization committee is people saying, Gosh, that was actually really interesting. Why aren't we doing that? You know, in fact, the Subcommittee on House admin is modeling some of that same behavior. And I'm not running that right. Stephanie Bice, the chair of that committee is, you know, having us not sit on a Dyess there, she's, you know, not she's doing the more open ended questioning that we did were we actually had a planning retreat that was bipartisan. We're, you know, we're doing a lot of that. And I think it was been very constructive. And my hope is, you know, some of the best things you can do, not just in Congress, but in life is to do the best to model good behavior. And I think we're, we're trying to serve as a model of how things could work in Congress. And I think, too, you know, and that to some degree answers, your second question is, you know, that, that starts to lay some important foundations for, for how Congress could work. Part of the notion of creating the fix Congress caucus, was to try to create more avenues for members of Congress who want to see the institution get closer to punching at its weight, rather than wait below its weight, to engage. Here's the good news. There are more members of Congress that are interested in fixing Congress today than there was five years ago when we started at this work. You know, the, you know, so weird being in this job, because, you know, I go back home, and I go to the grocery store, and people ask me how I'm doing as though I've been diagnosed with a terminal disease. And, you know, I'm conscious of the fact that as a member of Congress, I'm part of an organization that, according to recent polling is less popular than headlights. Colonoscopy is in the Rock Band Nickelback, but you know that the good news is, there are good people in Congress who want to see the institution function better. To wit, we had our fixed Congress caucus meeting a few weeks ago. And we brought in former member Mickey Edwards, who through Princeton University is working on what he called the article one initiative, looking at how to restore the constitutional powers of Congress looking at everything from war powers to budgetary issues, and the like. We had 30 Something members of Congress show up at a lunch to talk about Article One with a former member of Congress and some academic leaders. I mean, I didn't get Taylor Swift to come to Congress. I'm not sure I can get 37 members to show up at lunch. So the fact that that happened, I think was actually pretty astounding, and gives you a sense of just the strong appetite that exists in Congress for trying to strengthen the institution. That's good news.

Jenna Spinelle
And I think that's a good place to leave our conversation. Congressman, we'll let you go get to that hearing to testify. Thank you so much for joining us today and I'm helping us end the year with with a bit of hope or optimism. Hope Yeah. Derek Kilmer. Thank you so much. Thank you

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