Rep. Derek Kilmer, a former Washington state senator, is serving in his second term representing Washington’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He formerly served on the House Armed Services Committee, and is now a member of the influential Appropriations Committee.
Kilmer is one of the House members committed to working in a bipartisan way to get legislation approved. Examples:
Republicans Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania and James Renacci of Ohio co-sponsored Kilmer’s bill to reform the Federal Elections Commission so it can more effectively carry out its original mission to oversee campaign finance laws.
Kilmer and Scott Rigell, R-Virginia, cosponsored a bill that would extend and bolster identity theft protection for those who may have been exposed to data breaches at the Office of Personnel Management.
Kilmer and Walter Jones, R-North Carolina, introduced legislation to stop a policy that would lower compensation for federal employees and active-duty service members who travel for work; the Department of Defense policy passes the burden of finding affordable lodging while on assignment onto the individual employee rather than the Department of Defense or the service.
A bill introduced by Kilmer and Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, to allow banks to offer more incentives to encourage Americans to save was signed into law by President Obama.
A few days before House Speaker John Boehner announced he would resign at the end of October, U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer met with editors of the Bainbridge Review’s sister newspapers — the Bremerton Patriot, Central Kitsap Reporter, North Kitsap Herald and Port Orchard Independent — and discussed some of the challenges facing Congress in the coming months, as well as his favorite part of the job.
Funding for local, countywide and statewide transportation projects:
“The primary means the federal government funds transportation projects is through the Highway Trust Fund, which will go into the red by the end of October if Congress doesn’t do anything …
“How this works is that cities like Port Orchard, Bremerton and Poulsbo apply to the federal government for grant funding. How do you do that in an environment when those programs get funded only three months at a time? You start to see how this unpredictability undermines the ability of our communities to plan and make these investments …
“I think there’s bi-partisan support for (retaining the trust fund allocation) it, but you’re not seeing Congress act. Unfortunately that’s true for a lot of things we do that affect the economy. The Export/Import Bank is an example of this.”
Reauthorization of the Export/Import Bank:
“Funding for the Export/Import Bank expired at the end of July. So now, there’s no export financing happening … It’s going to cost us jobs here in the Puget Sound region.
“We’ve had to do a lot of myth-busting about this issue. The argument against the bank is that it costs the federal taxpayers money. That’s actually not true. For years, the Export/Import Bank has contributed money back into the federal treasury. We have folks who say the federal government is unique in having a tool like this in its tool box. That’s not true, either. Nearly every industrialized nation we compete with has some sort of export financing. In fact, China has four different export/import banks. When our Export/Import Bank expired, the head of China’s banks said, ‘This is good news for China …’”
“If you count the number of legislators who’ve co-sponsored a bill reauthorizing the bank, you have two-thirds of the Congress. Meanwhile, this is costing us jobs.”
Predominant issue district constituents are talking about: “Frankly, it varies by the time of year and what’s in the news or what Congress is debating at the time.
“We’ve gotten a big spike in calls about the Syrian refugee problem and the Export/Import Bank. As we approach the possibility of a government shutdown, the call rate for that is climbing … The federal government is the largest employer in the county. It took us more than a year to dig out from the last shutdown.”
How he keeps in touch with constituents:
“Part of the reason I get out to meet people here is I try to look at different avenues to communicate. I rode the ferry and a Kitsap Transit bus to listen to constituents. I stand outside the shipyard to talk.
“I’m very conscious of the fact that democracy works best when people actually feel empowered to engage their elected officials. I feel that puts an additional responsibility on me being available and accessible to the people I represent …
“Not everyone can attend a town hall. People have to work they have families and their own lives, so I try to figure out that, if they can’t come to the Admiral Theatre for a town hall, I can come see them. We do a lot of ‘Kilmer at your Company.’ I’ll sit down with their management team, and oftentimes we’ll do a town hall with their employees. We did one at Harrison Hospital where we had 100 employees and took questions for a couple of hours. We also do a lot of one-on-one conversations.”
On bipartisan efforts in Congress:
“A question I get asked is, ‘Why would you want to serve in Congress when it’s such a mess and you have two little kids?’ And my response is always the same. It’s because it’s such a mess and I have two little kids and I care about this country they grow up in. I don’t want their future dictated by a totally screwed up federal government …
“There’s a lot of people who came in when I did who had that same recognition … and wanted to do something about it. The rub [is], you don’t need all that many who want to bring the place down to gum up the works. That’s the challenge.”
“I have tried to be opportunistic [in working with members from across the aisle]. What I’ve tried to do is say, ‘Listen, I know there are going to be areas that Democrats and Republicans disagree on. Can we at least agree to make progress on the things we agree on?’ Because God knows there’s a lot of problems that need solving right now.”
The new service center to assist veterans at Olympic College:
“It’s a great testament to the amazing work Olympic College has been doing. Of every two-year and four-year in the state of Washington, OC has the second-most military connected students in the state … That’s because we’ve got a large population of military families and veterans who live here and it’s because OC has really impressively gone the extra mile to make sure they are serving the men and women who have served our country.”
His favorite part of the job:
“A guy had contacted our office. He had been in Vietnam on a classified mission to Laos and he was the only one who made it home. He was injured, but because he was on a classified mission he never got the Purple Heart. He contacted our office and said, I would really like to have the Purple Heart, so my staff worked with him and got his mission declassified and I got to stand in his living room and pin a Purple Heart to his chest. Those are the kinds of things that we can do if people know to contact us. If residents are grappling with a federal agency, they don’t have to do that on their own. That’s part of what our office does is to go to bat.”
