What Committees were you on in your first term?
I was on two: the National Security Committee, and the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. First, the National Security Committee. If you know the first district in Maine, you know that we really have a district that is defense dependent. I asked to be on the National Security Committee because it related to the district. I knew that of all the committees (except for the exclusive committees freshmen don't get on) that committee would be where I could do the most for my district. But our defense industries are not there to provide jobs. Their primary mission is to defend the country and protect United States interests. If there isn't that justification then we shouldn't be spending the money at all. There's no question that there's some parochialism in arguing about what should go into our defense budget. I think in the end parochialism is counterbalanced by some broader arguments about the threats that are out there, the kinds of responses we need to be able to make. I think with the Cold War over you're going to find that what's going on in Bosnia is more common for the foreseeable future. We're going to be in different parts of the world to try to stabilize a conflict to prevent it from growing into a regional conflict. We need to have a defense connected to that. We ought to have a reasonably strong defense related to the threats that are out there. I'm not as proud of the second committee-the Government Reform Oversight Committee. The Government Reform Oversight Committee is Dan Burton's committee. We did very little except investigate the 1996 campaign; or let's put it this way: half the 1996 campaign, only the Democratic Party activity. The investigation was widely perceived as partisan, and was, frankly, widely perceived as inept. It was really pretty pathetic. The best thing I think that committee did was in behalf of Maine. I had the minority staff come here to Maine to do a study of the cost of prescription drugs for the elderly. That study has been now replicated in seven districts around the country; and it's the basis for legislation that I introduced at the end of the session. I plan to re-introduce it again in January. The plan will lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing pharmacies to buy their drugs through the federal supply schedule. Right now seniors pay twice as much on average for prescription drugs as the drug companies best customers do. The best customers are big HMOs and the government itself-the VA.

What should be our goals for improved Health Care?
Universal Health Care should be the goal But it's hard to figure our how you get there. The problem is that we have such a fragmented system. There's not the political support there to have one national health care system. We love the diversity, we love the choice, but too many people fall through the cracks and it is very hard to figure how to deal with it. There are now 43 million people who don't have health care insurance in this country. A lot of them may be working for a small business that doesn't provide care, they may be owners of small businesses and can't afford their own private insurance, or they may be unemployed but don't qualify for Medicaid. Or they may be employed but not at a job that provides Health Care for them. There are simply too many exceptions. Now, there are solutions to stop the cracking. For instance, down in Florida they pooled all the kids in a particular county and provided health insurance for them. The parents can buy private insurance for them if they wish, and if they need a bit of a subsidy they can get it. So it's a private insurance program covering all kids. And it's cheap. Kids are cheap to insure, so they can go to the doctors, get the tests they need, and do what they should be doing to maintain their health. It's programs like these I think that we should give more consideration to in Congress.

What were some your other accomplishments during of your first term as Congressman that you are most proud of?
I would say one is my role in campaign finance reform. As co-chair of a freshmen taskforce on that subject we eventually got a bill, developed in June of 97, to the floor Of Congress in July of 1998. I had to drive that bill forward, helping pass the Sheys-Meehan bill which passed the House, but died in the Senate. That was my major learning experience I would say. I'm also proud of helping to develop a path towards the Children's Health Care Initiative, which in the next 5 years will provide $24 billion to children nationwide. In Maine, I helped the Department of Human Services develop this program called Cub Care which will cover 35,000 kids who do not have health coverage now. Ninety percent of these are kids who come families where at least one parent is working, but don't apply for Medicaid because their income level is too high, and don't have enough health insurance on the market. So I'm also proud of that.

What are your thoughts on last year's Ice Storm?
The Ice Storm was interesting time because people really learned to pull together. During the Ice Storm everybody, even a lot of teenagers, took advantage of the opportunity to help out-and they did, they moved beds, took care of the elderly and passed out food. It seemed to be a time for them to really make a contribution. And they did it with a lot of enthusiasm. I went around to all the shelters and the soup kitchens. But I also spent a lot in time in Congress trying to get money to flow through a block grant program that will help reimburse the state for utilities costs. FEMA is the federal agency that provides for to the utility infrastructure and at the end of the day, if you can't get some compensation, there's a decent chance there'll be a rate increase to cover the cost of repairing the utility infrastructure. So we worked with FEMA to create a reasonable reimbursement plan with the local utilities.

Can the re-centering of the Democratic Party by the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) alienate labor?
I think the DLC did very important work getting the party moving again. If the Democrats want to retain their status as the majority party, they needed to refocus their agenda. They couldn't stay limited in Northeastern big cities and expect to survive. The DLC grew in reaction to labor unions. To some extent people grow queasy about labor unions. I think that is a mistake because by and large you can look at unions that have done bad things in the past in terms of trying to organize, as well as employers that have done horrible things to try to prevent labor unions from organizing. We have the slowest percentage of union labor in the western world. In fact the only group that's out that's arguing for better health care, higher wages and improved safety standards is labor. That's it. There's no one else trying get people to join them. You have to avoid the instinct always to rush to the center though. If you're not there on the edge ready to fight on some issues, if you're always trying to compromise, you can't get too much done. You have to sometimes raise an issue up, and create enough noise around it, and if it's a somewhat radical idea you got to get out there and lead and not just put a bill in an immediate try to compromise. If the parties get too close together they lose their identities, if they get too far apart you're not going to get a whole lot done because you almost always need to have some folks on the other side of the aisle to accomplish anything.

Could you explain to us your stance on the 1998 Budget?
I could have voted against the 1998 budget, but I decided to vote for it. In 1990, Congress passed the Budget Enforcement Act. We were running huge debts at this time. Under this new bill "Pay-Go rules"-Pay as you Go rules-were developed. Those rules set some spending caps-$500 billion roughly. You couldn't violate those caps. If you needed new spending programs or new tax cuts you would have to offset them to stay under those caps. There was an exception for emergency funding. Every year there's about $20 billion dollars set aside for emergency funding. Everything is paid for, everything else except the emergency funding. The emergency funds have always been treated separately because they go to things like Bosnia, floods, and hurricanes, and the Year 2000 problem-all those things you can't predict. When we were allocating emergency funds for this year's budget (Oct 1, 1998- September 30, 1999), the Republicans appropriated additional money for defense-several billion dollars. There was an additional $1.9 billion for Bosnia which I accept. I think that should have been in there. But there was a billion for missile defense which in my view is simply not emergency spending, especially since the joint chiefs say we need to solve other technological problems first. So there are parts with the $20 billion that I quarreled with. There were also good parts with the budget; mostly we restored funding for K-12 education and won an additional $1.2 billion for 100,000 new teachers in grades 1-3 around the country. So there were a lot of parts that were good, a lot of parts that made no sense, but with so much in there it's hard to decide what to do with it. So I voted for it.

Should Mainers have adopted the Green Party's Clear-Cutting proposal, or the Compact's?
I supported the compact. I think that pulp and paper industry is still one of major industries in this state. You have to place some limits on as far as lumbering practices, and to make sure that there are some basic rules. I thought the compact was the right way to go because it tightened restrictions against clear-cutting while having at the same time the support of the paper companies, the support of environmentalists, such as the Maine Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Council, and also the support of the legislature and the governor. And all these groups don't agree very often. So I think it was a missed opportunity to tighten up the regulations. I don't know how you get back to that place now because it's still true that the pulp and paper industry is fairly strong in the legislature. So many people in Maine depend on the paper industry for their jobs. It's a situation where you have real division between some people who are not connected with the industry who don't realize it's importance and other people who are dependent on it. Because of these serious differences, and because the compact brought all these groups together in agreement, I thought the approach to the compact was right one.

What was your reaction to Maine's repeal of its Homosexual Rights law?
I think the law should have been upheld. When I was mayor of Portland, we passed a similar and law. It took us a long time to pass a gay rights law in Portland. The Portland ordinance was passed because too many gay men were being beaten up and they wouldn't report the crime-they were afraid of losing their apartment, afraid of losing their job because of discrimination. The argument on the other side of special rights is completely bogus. It's bogus because you could make exactly the same claim about racial or ethnic or religious minorities. They don't have special rights because we have civil rights laws that protect them. The laws work both ways. If you are an African American, and you own an apartment building, and you refuse to allow whites to move, that's a violation of civil rights laws. The same thing would be true if you added sexual orientation to those civil rights laws either in the state or federal level. These kinds of laws are only passed because you have only some groups that are subject to discrimination of different kinds. Hopefully in ten to twenty years our society will get to the point where sexual orientation is not as big of deal. I think passage of anti-discrimination laws is important step toward this goal. And I think we'll come back and we'll have another referendum in Maine again, at some point.