Five months in, Nolan says he’s still frustrated, but sees hope

WASHINGTON — It’s almost a cliché, that one of a Minnesota congressman’s favorite legislative victories has to do with, of all things, fish.

In May, the House Agriculture Committee set out to mark up the Farm Bill and held an open call for lawmakers to amend the legislation. Members pitched some 90 amendments, and Democrat Rick Nolan, who has long bemoaned the more rigid and partisan nature of modern congressional lawmaking, got in on the game.

At one point, the bill called for Department of Agriculture inspections of catfish processors, something already done by the Food and Drug Administration, Nolan said. The provision would have cost $170 million, and put processing facilities through two separate government inspections.

“I had an amendment to delete that and I got good bipartisan cooperation and I passed that,” he said. “There are a number of other little bills that passed that day where the party lines were breaking down.”

Nolan came to Washington in January and launched a media blitz, telling cable news, the New York Times, and anyone else who would listen that partisanship and endless campaigning have crippled Congress since his first House tenure in the 1970s. Five months into his new term, Nolan’s viewpoint hasn’t changed, though he said he’s beginning to see signs of hope, even if Congress isn’t yet ready to pass an agenda as liberal as the one he’d like.

“The good news is, there really is strong desire on the part of the new 84 member Republicans and Democrats [elected in 2012],” he said. “They got the message, they really, truly genuinely want to see some bipartisan cooperation.”

But that’s not to say they’ve succeeded.

Nolan: Gridlock still preventing progress

Congress is still at a right-left impasse that, for several months at least, has left it dealing with one must-pass piece of legislation after another and getting very little done in the meantime. As such, Nolan’s basic complaints about the state of American politics are about the same.

For example, he still wants to see legislation come to the floor under “open rules,” or those that allow any member to offer up amendments (the National Defense Authorization Act had such a rule last week, and lawmakers filed nearly  300 amendments to it). The one bill Nolan has introduced is a constitutional amendment to crack down on outside spending on campaigns, and he has another coming up, meant to set fundraising limits and provide for public financing of elections (Nolan says he’s yet to make a single fundraising call from Democrats’ campaign headquarters this session, though he’s held half a dozen fundraisers).

“The partisan gridlock has taken over the bipartisan collaboration, cooperation, compromise of the past,” he said. “The big role that money has played, versus time you spend governing, is discouraging. And the results, you know, are discouraging.”

But Nolan said he’s been surprised by two things so far: The congeniality among the House’s new members (A May Boston Globe profile followed Nolan to a seemingly regular pizza dinner he shared with several fellow freshmen), and the early willingness of House Republican leadership to rely on Democrats to pass major legislation.

The latter point was a well-documented phenomenon early this term. The House has passed three bills this term that a majority of the Republican conference opposed: January’s fiscal-cliff deal, Hurricane Sandy relief, and the Violence Against Women Act. Leadership needed Democratic votes to pass the bills, and Nolan said he relished those few opportunities to see his party legislate.

“That gave us leverage,” he said. “We didn’t get what we wanted, but we strengthened every one of those bills.”

Focus on environmentally-friendly jobs

But otherwise, Nolan said he doesn’t have any illusions about how effective, legislatively, Democrats will be, given that they’re in the minority. So he’s stuck mostly to local issues — like catfish inspections — and working with bureaucratic agencies like the EPA to push 8th District-specific priorities. His stated goal has been “creating jobs in a way that is environmentally friendly,” something that has earned him high marks from former foes.

“As I always say, the only thing we care about are jobs,” said Jason George, the political director for the Local 49 operating engineers union, which endorsed Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack last fall. “When it comes to our work, he’s been great.”

On national issues, though, he’s often embraced very liberal positions. His amendment to last week’s defense policy bill would have cut the defense budget by 10 percent — $60 billion — in order to divert spending from “wars of choice” to projects back home. The bill garnered just 71 aye votes, the second-fewest of any defense amendment the House considered.

“That ties in with, let’s change the way we do politics and let’s change our budgeting and spending priorities,” Nolan said of his often-liberal proposals. “Let’s shift away from being the world’s policeman, shift away from nation building abroad, shift away from these wars of choice. Start making the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, and start helping the middle class and rebuilding America. That’s my primary reason for being here.”

He’s an active member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and made headlines in April rallying against proposed Social Security cuts in President Obama’s budget proposal. Nolan would eventually vote for several failed budget plans from the House’s liberal wing, the Progressive Caucus’s among them.

“He’s uncompromisingly about the people, and speaks up on it and doesn’t water down his perspective, and believes, in an unapologetic way, about economic justice, and doesn’t mind speaking up on it,” Rep. Keith Ellison, the chairman of the Progressive Caucus, said. “Having Rick in the delegation is awesome.”

Republicans: Nolan has ‘old, tired ideas’

Ellison has the luxury of embracing progressive politics in a completely safe Democratic district. But Nolan, in Northern Minnesota, might not.

Already, national Republicans have looked to paint Nolan as too liberal for his district, which gave him a 9-point victory last fall, during a presidential year. The district leans slightly to the left, but Nolan has unabashedly embraced liberal positions that National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Alleigh Marré called, “old, tired ideas … far out of step with Minnesota families.”

Aaron Brown, a Northern Minnesota writer and blogger and former DFL operative, said Nolan’s progressive streak probably hasn’t hurt him too much, at least with the old DFL base in the northern reaches of the district, where higher income taxes, for example, wouldn’t take too much of toll on the electorate at large. But that message will have legs in the Twin Cities exurbs in the 8th’s south.

Brown said Nolan’s focus on local issues, such as mining (he supports the slow-moving PolyMet copper-nickel mine, despite environmental groups’ unease) or an 8^th District highway project, could endear him to voters who care more about that than they do the tax brackets for high-income earners.

“I think what Rick Nolan needs is to bring home some bacon and achieve some results on a couple of these projects in the district that he could point to,” Brown said. “The problem is, he’s in a House of Representatives that is going to make it pretty hard for him to do that.”

Nolan said he has a two-pronged agenda this time around: Work the bureaucracy to get things done for the 8th, and advocate for longer-term liberal priorities that he knows have no chance in Washington today. 

“I like doing things big and small, and I’ve got to get stuff done to feel like it’s worthwhile,” he said. “The larger issues take more patience and more understanding, and I think that age has given me a perspective on that, so that’s helpful. Maybe in my youth I’d have been more frustrated about it, but now I understand.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry