Katie Porter - Summer Staff Picks

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. It's officially summer, and that means it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where our staff shares their favorite episodes in our Summer staff series. Next up is our producer Maureen Hoben.

Thanks Alec. There are many things I admire about California Representative Katie Porter. She's a single mother who fearlessly speaks truth to power, from pharmaceutical executives to Wall Street CEOs. Which if you've ever seen her at a congressional hearing using her infamous whiteboard, you know she fights to crack down on price gouging to protect public land, and she

My guest today is United States Congresswoman Katie Porter, a Democrat in her second term. Porter represents California's forty fifth district in Orange County, which is traditionally conservative. She's a consumer protection attorney and a law professor. She quickly developed a name for herself in her first term with tough questioning of people testifying before Congress, often using her famous whiteboard to hold CEOs and political appointees accountable. Katie Porter

I like to be challenged.

I like to learn, and I think that was a huge part of, you know, why I chose to go, you know, off to college far away from Iowa to kind of stretch myself. I loved being a professor. I was a professor here at the University of California, Irvine, teaching business law courses, and then really stretched myself when I ran for Congress. And one of the great things about being in Congress that I never hear anyone talking about, which makes me kind of skeptical.

Act frankly, is that.

The great thing about this job is every minute you should be learning something. Whether that's listening to your constituents, whether that's a briefing from about national security, you know, whether that's you know, having a meeting with your staff. There's just so much to learn to be able to do this job effectively.

And I like that.

So in some ways it's very much like being a professor. My job is to learn stuff.

And then to help teach.

And so in this case, instead of teaching a classroom, I think about teaching the American people.

You graduated Harvard Law School.

What year, two thousand and one?

So when you left there? Where did you go from there? Where did you first go out of school?

So I went to clerk for a federal judge in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was a wonderful judge. And this mon't surprise people. There weren't a lot of other law clerks who wanted to work on the bankruptcy cases, and so literally, I think I got to work on every single bankruptcy opinion in the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which stretches from North Dakota down to Arkansas.

Worked on that year, and then I went off and I practiced.

I took the bar exam, and I practiced law in Portland, Oregon for a couple of years.

What led you to Portland from Little Rock?

My now ex husband is from there, right, family? Yeah, family, and you know it was a good place to practice there. And then decided that I wanted to become a law professor. And I hadn't really gone to law school thinking maybe I want to be a professor. I had thought about getting a PhD. And at the time, the idea of writing a book seemed really long to me, which is funny because I've now written two law textbooks that are like a thousand pages each. But when I got to

This is why you were in law school.

This is when I went to law school. My third year of law school.

Tell the story if you would have you approached Warren after she was less than cuddly toward you in class.

Yeah.

Yeah, So Elizabeth was a really great professor. She called on students and you had to have your homework done. You had to be prepared if you showed up. And so I was a rule follower. I did my homework. I sat in the front row, which I thought would help her overlook me, but it didn't really work out that way. And so, you know, one of the solutions to not being called on is to raise your hand.

Right now. When you made that request of Warren, did she grant it? Was she more give and take with you in the classroom, did she really?

I mean no, it actually was the opposite. She came back to me even more because she knew I really cared. Like she knew that it mattered to me. My message to her wasn't taken easy on me. It was don't give up on me. And a lot of professors, I mean, I see this in witness rooms actually in hearings, and people will ask a witness a question and the witness will stonewall give a nonsense answer, another question, answer another question. And what my colleagues will do is they'll just give up,

She told me. Think she's stuck with me as I was learning.

So whenever I hear someone, you know, they give a nonsense answer, I'm not going anywhere.

You said something interesting. When people don't give a good answer, you know, I myself become exhausted by the unwillingness of people to answer the questions of the duly elected members of Congress. You are here, and Congresswoman Porter or anybody, You're not doing this for your health. You're doing this on behalf of your constituency, the American people. You're representing the American people, and many of them are so smug

So I think that some of the things that we've been able to do with our hearings is actually restore a sense of accountability to this, which is if you if I ask you a question and you give me a nonsense answer, I'm not going to pretend that what you said makes sense. I'm not going to accept a wrong answer. If you're dodging, if you're stonewalling, I'm going to try to get you to answer, so.

You would think. I mean, it's sort of an interesting to me.

I remember, like maybe the second or third hearing I was at, I said, well, surely you know now everyone will come really prepared, like I won't stump anybody anymore because they'll know that you have to show up and take me seriously. But you know, I've been underestimated my whole life.

At this point.

I kind of explain like that, and witnesses still show up and they're contemptuous or they're unprepared. I mean the other day Steve Menuchin said, well, are you a lawyer? Like, yes, I am, like since you mentioned it, but I think that you know, the goal is that these shouldn't be performance art moments.

They shouldn't be substantive.

And so you know, the one thing I'll say about the whiteboard is it's not about trying to go viral, right, It's.

Not about it's not an antic, it's.

Not an ANTIQ.

It is a tool, and so sometimes I use it. Sometimes I don't sometimes I use other things.

Whose idea was that, I don't you know.

I think it was maybe one of my staffers when we start. The first time we ever used it was with Jamie Diamond. We were trying to go through the budget of a worker where a typical family would spend and compare it.

To the salary and show that.

Even though he's paying more than minimum wage, people can't make against meat On that she had twenty four hundred, twenty five dollars a month. She rents a one bedroom apartment. She and her daughter sleep together in the same room in Irvine, California. That average one better apartment is going to be sixteen hundred dollars.

She spends one.

Hundred dollars on utilities, take away the seventeen hundred, and she has nets seven hundred and twenty five dollars, four hundred dollars for car expenses and gas net three twenty five. A low food budget is four hundred dollars. That leaves her seventy seven dollars in the red. She has a Cricket cell phone, the cheapest cell phone she can get for forty dollars. She's in the red one hundred and seventeen dollars a month she has after school childcare because

That's a courtroom tactic, Yeah.

Exactly, So, especially in Congress, we only have five minutes. So if someone says could you repeat that, and you've spent a minute setting up the question, your loss. So the idea of the whiteboard was to prevent him from being able to, you know, sort of dodge install. And you know the interesting thing that he said is I'd have to think about it. And I asked him, you know again, and he said, I have to think about it. And I asked him, well, what about this? And he

When I was doing Saturday Night Live for this long run during Trump's thing, and we would be there and I would pitch ideas, and I wanted your character to have the whiteboard everywhere, like you were with your kids at the breakfast table. All right, let me show you and think you have the whiteboard out of here, drawing everything for your children and your boyfriend and your at the gas station and whatever. Everywhere you go, someone is

No, not always. I mean I think that you know it just depends on the witness. We try to anticipate what the witness will say. In other words, what's the obvious thing they're going to try to dodge with Where are they going to try to misdirect us? If we research the witnesses, sometimes we'll watch video clips of them to try to understand kind of what they're like, whether they get easily frustrated, whether they launch into long, boring explanations.

So I'm prepared to cut that off.

But I think one of the great myths is that, you know, the Oversight Committee, where I'm so excited to be serving again in this Congress, somehow is less important or less exciting in a democratic administration, given that I'm a Democrat than it was when you know, we were Trump administration on so opposite. I would just tell you that these are both oversight stay is important. I mean, once we're enacting programs that I have supported and I have voted for as a Democrat, I'm even more concerned

Now, do you go back to your office sometimes and watch yourself watch clips of yourself and review what you've done to see how effective or ineffective you think it might have been.

Not usually, I mean it's interesting after I question, and when I'm questioning, I typically have no idea what anybody else around me is doing or saying or reacting. It's just me and that witness, right and just looking at them, you know. I question postmaster to Joy.

Oh my god, Oh my god.

I wasn't sure that I made the point that I wanted to make. Now it turns out I think I did. But when I got off, I was just like, I don't think I did it.

I think I messed it up.

So it's often, you know, it's it's not about how I'm feeling, it's about whether it's resonating with the American people. So it often, you know, that's about how people react to it. So you can make something that you think is great, you know, but if other people don't.

Find it moves them, then it doesn't really work.

What's going to happen with the Joy? Is it a civil service thing? In his job is safe, he can't be fired.

Well, so he was appointed by the Postal Board, which oversees the post office. So they can remove him, and I hope they do. There's also the possibility that he does what so many people have done it, you know who came from the Trump administration, which is that they quit, which I certainly hope is what happens.

If he doesn't quit, then I helped.

The Postal Board holds him accountable because they really a lot of the problems that he created, you know, he has not been able to fix. And the most revealing part of that was when I asked him, I said, well, you keep saying you didn't do.

All these things. Not my fault.

Someone else did this, So I am the very last person to question. I think I am the forty eighth person to ask questions or something crazy like that.

So I asked him, well, you said you didn't do this, who did?

I'm with you, which seems like.

A pretty obvious question, right, But nobody had.

Asked something he should know, Like all day long.

People had just said why did you do this? And the answer had been well I didn't. And I asked him, well, who did it? And he said he couldn't tell me, which tells you there's an even bigger problem.

Well, I'm sorry that you don't have the opportunity to remove him yourself, because I mean he basically turned the post office into an office max for the Republican Party. But I want to get back to something else, and that is so when you're down in southern California and you go to Orange County, it was primarily to take the teaching giket you see Irvine. If you see Irvine as a ca us inside the red, red red part of California, there in Orange County, what was it like

No.

I mean, look, Irvine has changed a lot, and a big part of the reason that Irvine and Orange County has changed is in part the presence of the university. It's a large employer here. It attracts bright and interesting and thoughtful people from all around the country and even the world. And so you know, my kids go to school in public school here and they have some very conservative classmates. I mean, one of my former Cub Scouts, I was his Cub Scout dead leader for five years.

So I don't know what that says. About my cub Scout skills.

But you know, actually there are a real diversity of opinion here. But there are very progressive people here too. There are people in the middle, there are Republicans. I like that diversity. I represent roughly equal numbers of Republicans, Democrats, and no party preference or independent voters. And what that means is, on any given topic, I need to know how to talk to people who will come at it

Frankly, so when you won in twenty eighteen, it it was close. It was tightrase correct, very close.

I lost.

I like to say I lost before I won. So on election night, you typically have three speeches in California, you have I won, I lost, and we don't know because it often takes a while to count all the mail ballots. And so I gave that I don't know speech that we don't know. But everybody was crying and telling me, good try. I got all these sympathy calls and sympathy emails.

You know, we love you anyway. Nice try.

You know you made a difference even though you're you're not going to make a difference kind of things. And then slowly but surely, over the next couple days, took about seven days.

I won.

And so why would get these messages back? Never mind delete my message?

You're my hero.

I knew you could do it.

I always I lost faith in you.

Yeah.

Now in the second race, this last election, you won more handily. Correct.

I won by a couple six percent I think, and the first time it was four, So I made I made up a little bit of ground.

Yeah, who was your opponent in the twenty twenty race.

My twenty twenty opponent was a man named Greg Raths who's been on the city Council of Mission Viejo here.

And what did he come after you with? What was his pitch?

It was just, you know, she is a Democrat. She's a Democrat and this is Orange County. Yeah, I mean just sort of like, like, you.

Know, I think there is an attitude that you know, sort of people are entitled to have Republican representation here.

What they're entitled to is.

Good representation, right, people who listen to them, people who fight for the people, who are not corrupt, And that can come in your Democratic or Republican forms. And so the fact that I don't take corporate pack money, that I'm grassroots funded, I think that really helped me reach a lot of those independent voters and even Republican voters who are really skeptical, including younger Democratic voters who are really skeptical about whether in people in Washington really work for them.

Congressperson Katie Porter, I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing from iHeartRadio. If you like conversations about politics, go to our archives from my live show with Nixon, Whitehouse and Watergate figure John Deane.

It's after listening to that conversation, I let my fingers do the walking in the criminal code to figure out what in the world are we doing. And I discovered the obstruction statute, and I discovered the conspiracy statute, and I realized we're in a whole lot of trouble.

Now. You might have thought that.

First reaction would be to run for the hills. I mean I had exactly the opposite reaction. That's when I double down, That's when I try to make the cover up work.

Here more of my conversation with John Dean in our archives at Here's Thething dot org. After the break, I talked to Katie Porter about what surprised her when she got to Washington in early twenty nineteen. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing. I wanted to know how Katie Porter won her seat.

People people send me money.

How much you spend in twenty twenty.

I spent six million dollars.

To raise six million from individual contribution.

I spent six million, and I spent six million in twenty eighteen. TV is incredibly expensive here. I have to advertise to all of Los Angeles and all of Orange County, even though I just represent a little part of a part of Orange County. But you know, people will send five dollars, ten dollars, they'll send notes with it.

When you got there in twenty eighteen, what did you think the job was going to be like? And what did you find out it was really like?

I think one thing that surprised me, and I know it surprised some of my fellow colleagues is how much I really loved doing the work in the district with my constituents here in my home, and how much I really didn't like being in Washington, right, So I ran for Congress because I wanted to make policy. I wanted to make people's lives better, and I think I associated

You, you really learned every nook and cranny of your district. And what's really going on there.

I'm still learning. I absolutely love it.

And when you went to Washington, and you talk about the importance of the work that you do within the district, But when you went to Washington, what did you think that was going to be like with your colleagues and so forth, and what did it turn out to be.

I thought there'd be more substantive policy discussion among regular members. House Representatives is four hundred and thirty plus people, so it's big. And so it turns out that a lot of things are kind of decided before they get to you, that they're decided by leadership, that you know, the relevant committee has kind of figured everything out before it comes to you, and you're just in a situation of yes or no on the vote.

And I think that's where I saw.

Hearings as this great opportunity because if you're not if you're a newcomer to Congress, you don't have a lot of power, especially on the Democratic side.

But we have a strong seniority system.

But one of the few equal things about Congress is everybody gets five minutes for their questioning. So I decided I was going to use my five minutes better than anybody else or as well as I could the maximum of kind of my ability, And that's where I found the greatest reward, really, And the thing that's rewarding for me is it's not the answers that these witnesses give, because they're often really bad answers. It's the American people watch and they see that lady is.

Asking what I've always wondered. Why do the drugs cost so much?

Right?

Why does the drug keep getting more expensive?

Do you know what the price of revealment was in twenty thirteen.

I can look it up, but I don't recall. I don't have it in front of me.

Four hundred and twelve per pill. How about twenty seventeen, I would.

Say approximately seven hundred dollars a pill, but again I don't have it in front of me.

Seven hundred and nineteen per pill, and today Revelmed costs seven hundred.

And sixty three dollars per pill.

I'm curious did the drug get substantially more effective in that time?

Did cancer patients need fewer pills?

She's asking about me, and that's really for me. In the most rewarding part.

You were a single mom, Well you got divorced when your kids are how old now?

They're now fifteen, twelve, nine.

So you were a single mom now for almost a decade. And do you maintain because I know that we one of the things you focus on is about all the women that are losing jobs. We're losing a lot of women in the workplace because of the COVID.

Correct, absolutely huge issue.

What are some of the legislation you might or might not propose to address that.

So when I was elected in the last Congress, at that time, I was the only single mother of young children to serve. Since then, the Republicans have elected one. But this idea of the single household, the single parent household, isn't well represented in Washington, to put it mildly, So when we talk about issues like child poverty, one of the reasons for that is women, single women, single moms, single dads, trying to raise a family on one income.

Now, obviously, we have a graduated income tax in this country. The more money you make, the more you pay in taxes. Why isn't the same principle applied to these trillion dollar COVID relief bills? Meaning why are we giving a single penny to a family that's making over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?

Okay, great question. So I want to push back on a couple of things. One is you said we have a graduated income tax. I want to push back on that and say, we theoretically have a graduated income tax. Okay, that's what it says on paper when you look it up on the little back of the IRS booklet.

If you still do your taxes.

On paper, but in actuality, people who earn a lot often pay a lower effective tax rate because we have loopholes. We have problems in our tax system, and so we need to close that gap because a lot of people who are running around talking about how they're in the highest tax bracket aren't paying taxes in that higher bracket because of capital gains, because of all kinds of other things.

It'll be into pressure. Howard Dean was on the show the other day and said the same thing. I said, do you think we're running a risk by printing trillions of dollars? He said, the problem will be if we don't spend that money.

Absolutely, we have to invest it wisely. We have to make sure we're putting it into programs that are working. We have to out fraud, waste, and abuse, you know. So I think it's ridiculous, for example, that we passed a paycheck Protection program, a PPP program for small businesses that allowed Congress members to get loans.

That's nuts.

That's a mistake in the program. But our biggest risk here is not doing enough and leaving people mired in long term poverty, in hardship, out of the workplace with atrophying skills when other countries are not making that same mistake.

So obviously the current senator there Padilla is an appointee interim because Harris is now the vice president. Do you think that that's his seat to hold on to or does the congresswoman have other ideas about her future in California politics.

I'm really excited about Alex Padilla representing me and my family in the Senate, and I've contributed to his reelection campaign already.

You know, I think he's going to be a.

Wonderful partner and a really important voice for California. He has an a amazing life story, he went to MIT, he's incredibly smart. So I think you can safely paint me as a fan of Alex Padia and somebody who's really excited about working with him. He just got added to the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, so I told my staff, like, call him up, let's start working on bills together.

Do you think that you have what it takes to serve in the Senate or do you think you're better off where you are on the Congress.

Oh, look, wherever you put me, I'm going to fight for the American people, I'm gonna I mean, this is when I was a professor. I became a professor to understand what was wrong with our laws and how we could make it better. When I'm in the house, that's what I'm thinking about, what's wrong, how can we make it better. It's going to be the same thing whether I would be in the administration, whatever I go on to do after this. You know, these are the fundamental questions.

The Honorable Katie Porter. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, please leave US A review. I really appreciate it. When we come back, Katie Porter talks about why Trump must be convicted by the Senate. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this

I was on the Capitol grounds in my office, which is not in the Capitol.

Which house building are you in?

Longworth?

In Longworth and More as AOC has now memorialized it, the dunkin Donuts building, which was actually a factor and why I picked that. It's very handy to be able to go get coffee in the morning. But I was in my office and Alexandri Kasio Cortez. I passed her in the hallway as I went into my office, and you know, she kind of you know, she waved, and a few seconds later she came back and knocked on the door and said can I come in? And I said, of course, and you know, she came inside. She was

And when you look back on it, now, what do you think should happen?

Oh, to protect us? I mean, look, we have to.

We have a real problem in this country with misinformation, with violence. You know, our democracy is strong, but it is not unshakable, and this was a this was a powerful kind of I think earthquake a powerful shake to our democratic principles. So I think we have to reaffirm that it's okay to disagree, so kay to have different ideas. I represent Range County, I represent a lot of constituents that I disagree with. That's okay, that's healthy. But violence in a democracy is never.

Okay, do you voted to impeach Trump? I did twice, and the Senate's not going to convict him.

You know, I think they should convict him.

I think that this is and I think too many people are thinking about this just from the punitive angle about up. But we have a rule of law in this country, and part of that rule of law is precedent. So what we are doing here is saying this conduct was not acceptable.

And if anyone who we are, again, it's not who we are.

So if you're wondering future president whether you can act like President Trump did, the answer is no, you will be impeached.

This is illegal. So we need to set that precedent and establish that boundary.

I would have bet you everything I own at the onset of Trump's administration that it never would have ended this way. I mean, it ends. His political legacy ends on this note, one of destruction and hate and lawlessness and stuff with which defines them. You know, I've always said that the government's purposes to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. This is

Yeah, No, corporate pack money is a huge part of it.

Citizens United saying companies are are people, right.

So, you know, reversing Citizens United stopping corporate pack contributions or at least forcing corporations to disclose them to shareholders and justify how this actually provides any value to the corporation.

I think that's really important.

I think campaign finance generally, you know, I think small dollar contributions are great because you know, five dollars a dollar, you know, volunteering your time. People can feel themselves part of democracy, part of the process. But you know, until we clean that up, until we clean up some of the corruption, it's going to be really hard.

I think it's the source of all of the problems of.

This country, source of all of the problems.

Which committee you want to You're on one exclusive committee.

I was on an exclusive committee lost Congress, which is financial services.

You're not there anymore.

I'm not there anymore now I'm not.

I was on financial Services, and then later in the year I got added to oversight when they were openings. So now I'm on continuing on the Oversight Committee. I'm really excited about that. I love that oversight and I like doing it for all different kinds of areas, everything from you know, pentagon spending to pharmaceuticals to car seats to civil liberties. And then I'm now joined the Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over public lands, over tribal lands,

We need that to be us.

Bobby Kennedy Junior used to say, let's force them to bring their products to market at their actual cost. YEP, what are the American people really paying for a gallon of gas? You throw the PCBs in the Hudson River and we have to clean it up. That should be a part of the cost of your thing. The woman who's studied bankruptcy law at Harvard with Elizabeth Warren. Are you sorry you're out on the Finance Committee anymore?

Sure, I'm definitely sorry. I mean, I asked to serve because I wanted to. I want to continue working on those issues, and I hope there'll be an opportunity for me to fill a vacancy in the future to get back to that committee. You know, I'm excited to be on the Economic and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of Oversight.

I'm going to keep doing a.

Lot of work on financial services issues from that. So absolutely wish.

I were on.

What happened?

You know, they just decid they had so many spots. They voted people on and off. I was one of two people who didn't get it. You know, eight or ten people.

Did get it.

Other people were chosen, other people were chosen.

But you know what, Like remember what I said about I've been underestimated a lot.

When I went on now, people are like, oh, well, she can't go off financial services. Financial services is where all the hot committee action is.

Trust me.

When I went on financial services, everyone was like, oh my god, that's the most boring committee.

No one's going to pay attention to you.

Let's go deductive donuts, right, So.

I go I'm going to try to engage the American people. And I don't think there is a bad committee in Congress. These are all important.

Well, let me just say I really mean this. People who really are so disheartened. I mean they're crushed and demoralized by the inefficiency of the American government. They've lost faith. And then along you come, and all my friends who see you, you know what they are. They're proud of you. They're so proud of you because they get when you're there.

Oh absolutely, thank you so much for having.

Me us representative Katie Porter. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that is brought to you by iHeartRadio, produced by Kathleen Russo, Krie Donahue, and Zach MacNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.