The focus of our recent interview with Representative Louise
Slaughter was her work as the incoming chair of the House Rules Committee. But
the conversation touched on everything from the war in Iraq
to Renaissance Square (which she has fought, vigorously). Among her comments:

On this fall’s
elections:

I think it means that we’re going to get our government
back. I’ve really believed and said often and meant it to the core of my soul,
that if we didn’t win this November, it was over. We wouldn’t have another
chance. We’ve been losing the Bill of Rights; we’ve been losing the
constitutional rights that we have. We’ve been handing over all kinds of power
to the president and just backing off, and it’s been awful.

We were losing our democracy. I mean, we were wiretapping
people and putting them in protective custody or whatever the hell. And it
wasn’t really much of a relationship to the America
we believed we lived in.

It was really alarming to me, because I made an agreement a
long time ago, before I ever got there, I would never do a thing to hurt the
Constitution or the bill of rights. And I never have. Not for guns or flags or
any of that.

On the war in Iraq:

One of the things obviously we have to deal with very early
on here is the war. We’ve got to start talking to everybody in sight over
there. Everybody. And try to come up with some plan that’s doable and do it in
a hurry.

On other Democratic
priorities:

We’ve got to build the economy back. The war is costing $10
billion a month, borrowed, for the most part, from China.
Now we can’t sustain that forever. We’ve got to get our own economy set back up
and ready to go so that young people have a place to go to work. It breaks my
heart to think of the young people who have to leave here when they want to be
here with their family and live here and bring up their kids.

On Renaissance
Square:

That’s still the biggest boondoggle I ever saw. They’re not
going to have enough money to operate the thing, and they’re going to have to
go begging from the city and county governments, and I hate to see it coming.
There was so much they could’ve done. They could’ve redone Sibley’s old
department store there into a bus station. And they could’ve had restrooms and
places to come in off the street and to stage people off of Main
Street, not piling everybody there like they’re
going to. It wouldn’t have cost much of anything. But they wouldn’t hear it.
And the reason is that the contractors run the place.

On contractors
running the place:

It’s like when I was talking to you a while ago about
members of Congress writing legislation for themselves. There’s not much
difference when the contractors here write the legislation and make the plans
and get the jobs and decide what Rochester’s
going to be. It won’t work.

Anything else?

No, but I’m hell bent on that one, I’ll tell you.

And I watch it over and over again: it’s the same thing.
Contractors come to all the dinners and pay big money. They sit on all the
boards, and then they decide they’re going to reform the government. And so
they’re reforming the government, and all the time they got their hand out for
some project they want to do to benefit themselves. And I’m just not playing
that game.

If you’re in this making a profit and you want public money
to benefit yourself, don’t come to me. It’s unfair to competitors. It’s unfair
to the taxpayers. And it certainly doesn’t get us much bargain for the buck
either, I’ll tell you.

This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2006.