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U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Democrat seeking her fifth term representing Illinois’ 17th Congressional district, faces Republican Esther Joy King. The women, both East Moline residents, talked with Shaw Media Editorial Board members via video conference to address important election issues.
The daughter of Christian missionaries raised on the U.S.-Mexico border near El Paso, Texas, King did women’s rights work in Afghanistan, then became a judge advocate general in the U.S. Army Reserve. She moved to Western Illinois after an assignment at the Rock Island Arsenal.
“We do not have good representation right now,” King said, noting “Bustos is doing a better job representing New York and California. She votes 100 percent of the time with Nancy Pelosi, she votes 94 percent of the time with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. … Here in Western Illinois, those aren’t our values. That’s not what we believe in.”
Bustos said she has been an Illinois resident her entire life, with the exception of her time at the University of Maryland, and has lived in her district for more than 35 years.
“I run my congressional office like I am mayor, in the sense that I focus on what is needed locally. There’s nobody who is my boss other than the 711,000 people who live in this Congressional district. It’s clear I have focused on results to the tune of bringing back hundreds of millions of dollars to our Congressional district. In every one of the 14 counties we’ve been able to bring back millions of dollars and help families.”
While King blasted Bustos as unreceptive to the everyday concerns of constituents needing access to federal government services, Bustos characterized King as someone who “was literally unpacking her boxes while she made a decision to run for Congress in an area that she’s lived in for maybe a year now.” By contrast, she said she has visited workers on the job throughout the district, virtually every library and often spends Saturdays walking through supermarkets to encounter her constituents.
Criminal justice
The candidates agreed it is important for Americans to tackle the issue of equity in terms of criminal justice, but differed on approaches.
Bustos supported the House’s Justice in Policing Act, specifically provisions regarding training, de-escalation and databases tracking officers’ disciplinary histories.
King said she backed South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s criminal justice reform legislation in response to the George Floyd killing in Minnesota, but says it got held up and tainted by partisan “liberal wish lists that the House was trying to jam through. Any hope of reform was taken off of the table.” King added Bustos was “right there working hand-in-hand with Nancy Pelosi to prevent any reform from happening.”
Bustos noted her husband is a career police officer and current elected Rock Island County sheriff. “Most police officers are very, very, good people, they care deeply about their community, they care deeply about communities of color and they want to do right,” she said. “And I think that’s worth acknowledging. On the other side, there are communities of color, they have been way too often treated unfairly and unjustly.”
She added there are meetings away from reporters and cameras where law enforcement officers and “communities of color” are having productive conversations.
“What is happening in our country,” King said, is “a worthy conversation and an important cause to make sure everyone has equal access to the justice system and to make sure that Black Americans have true equality and justice, and that is a completely valid and important cause to support and to represent in our country. Protecting and ensuring that people have a voice and a First Amendment right to speak and to express the need for reform, we’ve seen it play out in — there have been good responses.”
Bustos promoted the Social Determinants Accelerator Act, which set aside $10 million for pilot programs studying access to fresh produce, quality medical care and early childhood education. It also is awaiting Senate consideration.
“This is much more than just a law enforcement issue. It is making sure that no matter where you come from, your education — if you come from a wealthy area, or if you come from an area that is not wealthy — education for our kids has to be good. One of the greatest lifters of poverty is good education. Same thing with access to health care, access to good food to healthy food.”
King suggested partnering police departments with mental health agencies as one of many possible reforms.
“I want to work across party lines in a bipartisan way to make sure that we’re creating solutions to address these — the outcry that is happening in our country,” she said. “I believe the pathway to reform … comes by supporting our law enforcement, not by trying to undercut them or take away the support that they have or the funding that they have.
“Let’s make sure they have further methodologies of training. … Many police departments really support the use of body cameras, for example, but they need funding to make sure they can buy the equipment and maintain the data programs and the staff that they need to implement those reforms."
Jobs
Bustos said it will be important to look at jobs “that may be lost forever” as a result of coronavirus “and making sure that training is part of that. I’ve got a bill that helps address what do the jobs of the future look like? How do community colleges play into that? How do our building trades play into that? Second of all, when we do get on the other side of this pandemic, we’re not going to be able to crawl. It’s not going to work. We’re going to have to run at a sprint level.”
She said the president should support the Moving Forward Act, which is designed to create 9 million jobs by focusing on physical infrastructure for schools, hospitals and widespread internet access, along with highways, railroads and river lock-and-dam systems. Pointing to federal investment in the Thomson prison, Bustos said it also has been important to invest in housing and child care in Carroll County through federal grants.
With respect to nuclear power plants, Bustos said the federal government worked to keep open the Exelon plant in Cordova — the largest property tax payer in Rock Island County — and stressed the importance of doing so for other Exelon plants targeted for closure.
“It takes teamwork,” King said. “There’s a huge opportunity right now, particularly following the pandemic, there’s a lot of companies who see the value of locating in the United States, particularly after we had the supply chain complications with China. We weren’t able to get the protective equipment that we needed. There was a lot of complications that were highlighted because of the pandemic, where United States companies, particularly manufacturing companies, are looking to come back to the United States particularly because of the complicated relationship that we have with the country of China. …
“We have incredible workforce, the people, the location is so central for manufacturers to distribute their products. There are so many competitive advantages that we have right here in Western Illinois. I believe I can play a critical role in bringing jobs here to this part of our state. And on top of that, it is partnering with state-level officials and making sure that we promote a business-friendly environment.”
King said the state government places a burden on businesses making it difficult to retain employers based on taxation and the need for reformer worker compensation legislation.
“We are hopeful, we are full of energy and motivation to make our communities better. I believe that will translate into companies choosing to double down and invest in our communities here because they see the value of the people we have right here in Illinois.”
Health care
In response to the question of whether health care is a human right, King released a statement after the interview: “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, established by the United Nations, identifies health care as a basic human right. As Americans, I believe it goes beyond that. For decades, health care has been a political football. Americans deserve legislators who are committed to solving the health care crisis and making access to high quality health care for all Americans possible. My opponent has been promising that since she was elected and has no progress to show for her time in office.”
King also said competitive markets could help decrease costs for consumers. She suggested states should be empowered to create their own marketplaces and pointed to Maryland’s system as a successful model of lowering costs for its residents.
Before the Affordable Care Act, Bustos said, health care was second only to higher education in terms of escalating costs, “yet outcomes for patients weren’t getting any better.” She said the ACA rollout was flawed, but several years into the system “we can see some of the good that has come out of it.” Among successes, she said, are getting an additional 20 million additional Americans covered, allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plans up to age 26 and ensuring people with pre-existing conditions could not be denied coverage.
Bustos is concerned the Supreme Court will consider eliminating the ACA a week after the election and was a lead sponsor of legislation — “one of the 400-plus bills that’s sitting on the Senate side waiting for action” — to improve health care by allowing the federal government to negotiate prescription drugs and cap families’ out-of-pocket expenses. She also said there needs to be more competition among insurers.
Agriculture and climate:
Bustos is descended from and related to several current livestock and grain farmers. “These are hard times for our family farmers right now,” Bustos said, pointing to “climate chaos that we’re living through” and long-term effects on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers as well as extreme outliers such as the recent derecho.
“I do believe that climate change is something that we as people can have an effect on,” King said. “Farmers are some of the most responsible environmentalists. … I don’t believe the government in Washington, D.C., is going to do a better job at environmental concerns for the Illinois 17th than we are. Farmers should be able to make their own environmental decisions on how to operate their businesses and their farms on the ground on a day-to-day basis. I think there’s absolutely space for responsible environmentalism from the federal level.”
Bustos said the current administration is not doing enough for the ag sector.
“We have a president who has not been kind to the family farmer,” she said. “Ethanol and biofuels are critical, critical industries for our family farmers, especially in an area like ours where, in Iowa and in Illinois, you’ve got the No. 1 and 2 highest-producing corn and soybean states in the nation, the president has made a decision to pass out these small refinery waivers like they’re candy on Halloween — they’ve actually quadrupled the number of these small refinery waivers since the Obama administration.”
Under Trump, she said, waivers have gone instead to companies like ExxonMobil, which crowds the marketplace for true small producers looking to compete. She also noted the HEROES Act the House passed — which Senate Republicans have not taken up for action — includes $16.5 billion in pandemic relief funding for farmers. She also said the administration’s international trade policies have been detrimental to the district’s 9,600 family farms.
Without naming the Green New Deal, Bustos also discussed climate proposals that have overlooked agricultural and Midwestern concerns. She said her office drafted the Rural Green Partnership and testified regarding its elements — ethanol production, carbon capture, conservation practices, precision agriculture — before the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis for inclusion in its proposal.
“We can be part of the solution,” Bustos said. “We don’t want folks from other parts of the country to point their fingers at us as if all we are is part of the problem. … You can’t keep asking our family farmers to keep doing new things at their expense to their bottom line. You can’t do it.”
King agreed there are areas where the federal government can have positive influence.
“I do think subsidies in some energy fields are great because it allows us to create innovation and to further innovate and invent technologies that will allow us to have cleaner energy down the road,” King said. “But making sure the government is not artificially choosing winners and losers on environmental concerns I think is an important aspect of it as well.”
Her response to extreme weather events like the derecho would focus on back-end support such as crop insurance and subsidies to make sure farming remains a sustainable business model with a mitigated risk profile.
COVID-19 response
Bustos called the federal government’s response “Miserable. It has not been a coordinated response. We’re dealing with a pandemic that has no respect for any boundaries. And yet the Trump administration has told every one of our 50 states and our territories, ‘You’re on your own. You figure it out.’ ” She said the White House’s policies have forced competition for resources like personal protective equipment and ventilators rather than leveraging authority to address supply shortages.
“Initially there was some great work,” King said. “We did get the CARES package that helped provide some stimulus support for small businesses, for workers. … I think the Paycheck Protection Program was an excellent program.” However, she added, the government needs to do more.
“We are seeing how partisanship, and Nancy Pelosi in particular, is holding up further support for our communities because she has what I believe is a far-left liberal agenda that she’s trying to get jammed through Congress, and so she’s holding captive the stimulus package. I believe we need to target support for our economy for workers, specifically in response to the crisis. And we don’t need to have a long wish list of let’s try to jam everything through in this one crisis, but let’s make sure to be responsive to the economic needs of our communities as they are and as they have been increased because of the pandemic.”
King supports extending the PPP and giving support to schools to continue to offer in-person education safely, making sure businesses and public organizations have liability protections to get up and running. She favors targeted solutions over broad government actions.
The White House
Bustos said at least 40% of Americans plan to support the president regardless. While she said she doesn’t intend to spend time “badmouthing” the president’s character or controversial remarks, “it is certainly my responsibility as a member of Congress to talk about the policies that have been failures.”
She said inaction on the HEROES Act, passed more than four months ago to provide direct COVID-19 relief but which has stalled in the Senate and lacks White House support, is an example of the divided nature of the government and society, along with partisan positions on things like mask-wearing, social distance recommendations and other science-based suggestions for mitigating virus spread.
“I think there’s a lot of healing that needs to happen,” Bustos said. “I happen to think it’s a pretty good thing to try to find people you can work with, because we are going to need that desperately in the coming term.”
King said the race in the 17th isn’t about Washington.
“This election, right here, locally, is a referendum on Cheri Bustos and the partisanship that she is bringing to this district. That’s not something that we support, that’s not something that we believe in. We want to see functional government. We’re Midwestern, hard-working, whether farmers or manufacturers, we believe in just getting things done. People are paying attention and people know that Cheri Bustos is not working for us.”
Bustos also touted her legislative experience and the value of being the only voice representing the Midwest among party leadership and her service on the Agriculture and House Appropriations committees.