Congressman Mark Pocan spoke to University of Wisconsin students, faculty and staff Tuesday about mitigating the effects of the sequester and dealing with the current Congress.
Pocan said it was necessary to deal with the sequester and get rid of it, if possible.
He placed much of the blame for having “the most unproductive congress in history” on Tea Party Republicans and said they were holding all of Congress “hostage.”
Pocan said with the current Congress there was a small chance of any legislation passing, regardless of what it was.
“It’s an interesting time to be in Washington,” Pocan said. “Public opinion polls show people like cockroaches and head lice better than Congress…I think we beat the Kardashian family and the Ebola virus. At least we’re not Toronto.”
Pocan highlighted the importance of January 15, the date the budget proposal needs to pass before military cuts go into effect.
The next two months will be an important negotiating time as Republicans are more likely to hold conversations before military cuts go into effect as a result of the sequester, Pocan said.
Pocan said he feared that if Republicans said only fees could be used to reduce the deficit, it would make it hard to complete things Democrats wanted.
The majority of the audience at Pocan’s talk consisted of faculty and staff members, who brought up concerns regarding funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Maureen Durkin, a representative from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health said Congress had an important role in overseeing the funding by NIH. She said she had witnessed a lower value of university and investigator initiated funding by NIH.
Pocan said Congress wanted to make the funding process less objective and anonymous, but he and other congress members were working in the other direction. He added he hoped the oversight committee would be be able to return to its original job of oversight some day.
Pocan also addressed voting rights during the meeting. He said voting rights are implied in the federal constitution but not written explicitly, and that he has introduced a constitutional amendment to change this.
There are over 80 different laws on things such as requiring voter identification in 30 states, Pocan said. He said Wisconsin has a constitutional amendment that makes it harder to put restrictions in place, adding that other states should implement similar amendments.
