 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Navigating the journey. Today our journey is far, far away, Washington, D.C. And we are talking to my dear friend, and everybody knows I only talk to dear friends, and we are talking to Andy Weiner, who is the Chief of Staff for our dear Senator Ryan Schatz. Aloha, Andy. Aloha, Marcia. How are you? It's wonderful to talk to you, as always. Good to talk to you too. First, let's decide on how cold you are. I left Hawaii last week, and it was in the mid-80s, and landed here, and it has been in the low 40s since I got back, and it's supposed to snow tomorrow. Which is the earliest snow I can remember since I've moved up to D.C. So it is actually quite chilly outside. Do you live in the city, or in... I live right outside the city in Alexandria, Virginia. But the weather is the same. It's the same. It's amazing that we here on Oahu have 11 different weather zones, and on the mainland you have one. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. And this week it just happens to be very cold. Oh, God. Well, listen, let me tell the audience that everybody that knows Senator Ryan Schatz is our senior senator from Hawaii. And so tell us what it means to be senior senator, especially in a Senate that is controlled by the Republicans. So both Senator Schatz and Senator Hirono, they're fairly close in seniority. Senator Schatz is a little bit ahead in seniority. He joined the Senate a few days before Senator Hirono. Yeah, like it was within a week. And so, I mean, there's a few things that are a little bit different. But as a practical matter, not that much. I mean, both of them, I think in the six years that they've been here, have been able to move up in their respective committees. And Brian is now a part of the leadership team. You know, Maisie has been an active part of the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. And so, you know, even though the number difference is a little bit, I think Brian has now moved up to Senator number 52 or 53. Maisie's pretty close behind him. But in six years, they've both been able to build up some seniority. And the way that the Senate ends up working is that committee assignments are very much based on seniority, and that very much translates into a greater ability to get things done on behalf of Hawaii. So the investment that Hawaii made by sending the two of them up here and then keeping them up here is already starting to pay dividends. But I think you'll see even more dividends over the next few years. Wonderful. So tell us now the new makeup of the Senate. You lost some Democrats. You got some new Democrats. What is it like now? Or have you met the new people? Have they arrived yet? So the makeup is not fully known yet. Right now, the number is there are 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats. We're still waiting to see what's going to happen in Florida with Senator Nelson, who's in that close race, where they're doing a recount. And then we're also waiting to see what happens in Mississippi. There is a runoff election on November 27th with Cindy Hyde-Smith, who's the senator right now who replaced that Cochran, and Mike Espi, who is the Secretary of Agriculture under President Clinton, is running. So as of now, we haven't seated everybody, but if the numbers stay the same and Senator Nelson loses and it has expected Cindy Hyde-Smith wins in Mississippi, we'd be looking at a 53-47 split, which means that from a few weeks ago, it would mean that the Republicans would have picked up two seats, but it was a brutal map this cycle for Democrats. Ten states plus where we had Democrats who were incumbents who were running in states that Donald Trump had won by more than 10%. And so these were places that were going to be hard for us to hold. And if we end up losing a seat or two, although that sounds bad, that's actually a remarkable result because it sets us up for being able to take the Senate back in 2020 when the map is a little more favorable. So that's how the numbers work. As far as our colleagues go, the newest members will be Jackie Rosen from Nevada and Kirsten Sinema from Arizona. Both of them are members of the House right now. Both of them actually came to Hawaii earlier this year to campaign, so we already have existing relationships with both of them. And they will both be, I think, terrific additions to the Senate. They're starting to do their orientation over here while winding down their responsibilities over in the House. Wonderful. Now, do you see any, because everybody's thinking of 2020 and that major election, do you think that your McConnell will be careful not to go over the cliff with Trump? Do you think that he will think that maybe we need to back up and not be so totally into, or am I wishing? Well, I think it's interesting because Senator McConnell, I think if you work in the Senate, what people would say about him is that he is somebody who knows how to maximize power. And so when he has the power and authority to do something, such as stopping Merrick Garland's appointment or promoting Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court and all the other judges, he'll push as hard as he can. Interestingly enough though, yesterday he published an op-ed in which he was suggesting that the Democrats needed to work with him in a more bipartisan fashion, that the Republicans wanted to do that. I'm a little bit skeptical about that. I don't really have a sense as to what that might look like. But I do think at least in a few different areas it's probably worth exploring and I think we'll know within a fairly short period of time whether or not there's really any opportunity for us to develop common ground with the Republicans. I think that for sure, however, McConnell is going to make it appear like he wants to work with us and to create a situation where he can later argue that it was the Democrats that were at fault for any dysfunctionality that exists over the next couple of years. But the way I see it, that it is to his advantage because they will have to defend so many seats in 2020 that it would be to his advantage to make sure that they are working together so they can defend those seats. I think that's right. I think that he'll at least want to give the veneer of that whether or not that's actually a realistic possibility I think is a different question though. Like I said, I'm sure that our office and Senator Schatz we're going to look for some opportunities to find some areas to work together and if there's a willingness to do that in good faith then that would be great. If this is nothing more than a smoke screen, however, to give the appearance that they're working with us when in fact what they're doing is just a continuation of the sort of heavy-handed partisanship that we've experienced the last two years then I think we have to be ready to fight back. Great. Well listen, now tell me what committees, Brian, will they change committees or will he keep the same committees he's been on? I would suspect that he'll keep the committees that he's been on. He is currently a member of the Appropriations Committee and he is the ranking member, meaning the lead Democrat Military Construction VA subcommittee. He's also on the Commerce Committee. He is the ranking member of the Telecom and Internet subcommittee. He's also on the Banking and Housing and Urban Development Committee, the Indian Affairs Committee and the Ethics Committee. I don't expect that anything will change. He has such plum assignments that for us right now there's not anything that we really are striving to get on or we don't want to really lose any of these committees that we're on. If Senator Nelson ends up losing his race in Florida, he is the current ranking member of the full committee of the Commerce Committee and what that will mean is that Brian will keep his subcommittee but he'll move up in the seniority and so he could be as high as the third ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee, which is fairly remarkable after only six years. So he's getting very, very close to being either a ranking member or hopefully a chair some day of a committee. He's moved up that much in that short of a period of time. Well, let's talk about this Telecom, tell us whatever you said that committee was. Yes. As you know, Maynok, I think we talked about it before, my big thing is the infrastructure on the neighbor islands. Because in order to get telemedicine and some other things, they need the infrastructure, the cables, whatever you call those cables that go underground. They need all of this stuff. How can he help? What can he do? We are so desperate to get those people online on telemedicine. Well, that's actually a place, and I think we talked a little bit about this the last time I was on, where it's one of the focuses of the Commerce Committee generally and the Telecom subcommittee in particular has been rural broadband deployment. And that is a topic that is extremely important to the Republicans. A lot of the members of that committee who are Republicans are in very rural areas. Roger Wicker is from Mississippi. He's going to be the chair of the Commerce Committee. John Thune is from South Dakota. He's going to be the chair of the subcommittee where Brian is the ranking member. And I think that there are some opportunities to take some of the universal service funds that are collected by the FCC and to deploy them in a way that will actually help with rural areas. And for us, of course, that is more the Neighbor Islands than anything else. So that has been an area of discussion. So that's definitely one area where there's funding available. The other place that we've talked about rural deployment has also been in the Indian Affairs Committee. And so I think that there may be some opportunities, especially in some of the Hawaiian homelands that are on the Neighbor Islands, to take advantage of some funding that may come through there to start to address those problems. But that definitely is an area where his membership on that subcommittee will be helpful. Well, okay, so because, you know, like I said, I'm really pushing for that, as you may suspect during the campaign, we interviewed 20 different candidates almost to a person for those running from Neighbor Islands. That was a big issue is the access. You know, everybody's got, theoretically everybody's got, Obamacare. But if you don't have a facility to take it to, if you don't have a facility that some way to use it, what good does it do? So I am out here campaigning for rural health, for infrastructure, so people can have telemedicine. And I think that on the telemedicine side, that's the other side of the equation. And we're working on that as well, because Brian has been a champion of telehealth. And one of the big problems for telehealth in the country has been that Medicare up until recently has provided no reimbursement for telehealth services. And so even though other insurance, it'll cover through the VA or Medicaid or if you have HMSA, it will cover, because Medicare is such an overwhelming part of the medical payment system in the United States, that if you don't have coverage for that, there's not the financial incentive for hospitals and community health centers to set up telehealth as a benefit that's being offered. And we're starting to tear some of those barriers down. And now about half of the bill that we've introduced is now in law, so now Medicare is going to provide reimbursement for telehealth for things like kidney dialysis, counseling that occurs by phone, psychiatric and social work counseling, opioid counseling, and those are just sort of the beginning pieces of having telehealth. So you have to have both. You have to have the reimbursement set up so that there's an economic incentive for these rural facilities to want to do telehealth, but then of course you also have to have the broadband. And I think those will be issues that we work on in the early part of next year. I think on the deployment side, I think there'll be an infrastructure bill that will be one of the first things that is introduced in the House, probably sometime in March or April. One of the things that we'll work on doing is that as part of that infrastructure package is to advocate for having rural broadband deployment as part of that package so that that then sets up the ability to fund it later on. We have to take a break. And when we come back, let's talk about the quote Indian affairs. So we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Dave Stevens, the host of Cyber Underground. Every Friday here at 1 p.m. on thinktechkawaii.com. And then every episode is uploaded to the Cyber Underground. That library of shows that you can see of mine on YouTube.com. And I hope you'll join us here every Friday. We have some topical discussions about why security matters and what could be done. And I hope you'll join us here every Friday. We have some topical discussions about why security matters and what could scare the absolute bejesus out of you. If you just try to watch my show all the way through. Hope to see you next time on the Cyber Underground. Stay safe. Hello, huh? I'm Marcia Joyner and we're back. And we are talking today with my dear, dear friend, Andy Weiner, who is the Chief of Staff for our Senator Brian Schatz. Now, you said that Brian is on the Indian Affairs Committee as was his predecessor on the Indian Affairs. That phrase just bothers me. And I have to tell you that up front. It's called it Indian Affairs. When you have the Hawaiians and the Alaskan Natives and all of these people, Indian Affairs has a federal government ever, ever done anything right for the Indians? That's an awfully broad question. I mean, I think that the history of this country with Native peoples is one of the sadder chapters in our nation's history. You know, over time, I can at least talk about some of the things that we've been able to do for Native Hawaiians through the work we've done. I mean, we've been able to fund Native Hawaiian education, Native Hawaiian healthcare, Native Hawaiian housing. And those programs, I think, have been fairly robust. I think we're particularly proud of the immersion programs that have helped to bring back the Hawaiian language. And so I think this country's debt to its Native people is one that will probably never be able to pay back fully. But I think that the work that we do on the Indian Affairs Committee at least is attempting to address some of those problems. And, you know, having a member from Hawaii as you referred, both Senator Akaka and Senator Inouye, our former chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. So Hawaii has a long history with that committee. And I think it's allowed Hawaii to benefit in a number of different ways. I think it pales in comparison to some of the problems that we're still trying to address across Hawaii and, of course, with the Alaska Natives and the Native Americans. And then this new judge did not seem... The new judge on the Supreme Court did not seem to see the importance of the Native Hawaiians. That's right. And I think that's actually one of the reasons that Senator Murkowski voted no on the nomination because she was concerned that his views may also impact Alaska Natives as well. But Judge Kavanaugh has a particularly narrow and I believe wrong view of the way that the law should treat Native Hawaiians and Alaska Natives. And, you know, I hope that the day doesn't come where he's the deciding vote on some issues that involve Native Hawaiian benefits or rights. Hopefully that day will not come, but he's obviously not a friend of Native Hawaiians. No. He's not a friend of anybody other than Mr. Trump. But that's a different story. So what else does this committee do? The Indian Affairs Committee? Yeah. So the Indian Affairs Committee broadly has jurisdiction over all Indian country land, so the reservations, the infrastructure relating to them. There are land issues that relate to it. There are gaming issues, especially for Indian country lands. So some of those kinds of issues come up. But the main focus areas, at least as far as our office go, are the areas I described earlier, which are housing, education, and healthcare. Those are the things that we focus on on that committee. Well, the last time we talked, you mentioned the problems that the Native people were having in, was it North Dakota? It was North Dakota and Montana. Well, how did that turn out? Better in Montana than in North Dakota. We actually sent 30 people from Hawaii or affiliated with our office up to Montana to work on, as poll watchers. And I think that we were able to do a good job of making sure that Native Americans were able to vote. Senator Tester won his election. It was very hard fought and close. We're proud of that. North Dakota, I think, was kind of a sad chapter. They made it very difficult for Native people to vote. They had requirements in the state law that required actual street addresses instead of PO boxes and unreservation land. A lot of times there are no such things as street addresses. And so I think they effectively disenfranchised a number of people up in North Dakota, which is truly unfortunate. Well, you know, there's a lot of places across the mainland that have RFD addresses and not a street address in lots of cities, I mean states. Well, I think that the issue of voter suppression for this election, which, you know, I think is you're seeing it in Georgia. You're seeing it in Florida. And I think that the fact that Democrats in the House will now have the majority are saying that the first bill that they want to introduce is a Voting Rights Act bill, I think, is actually a really positive thing to hear. Because I think that the Republican tactics of voter suppression, making it more difficult to vote, making people stand in line hours than not counting ballots for reasons that are really silly, are just antithetical to, like, the way that this country should be running. The right to vote is a fundamental right in this country and the way that those rights have been treated over the last decade or two, if not beyond, but certainly over the last decade where you've seen a diminishment of voting rights, the rulings of the Voting Rights Act no longer requires scrutiny in certain states is pretty despicable stuff. And I hope that at some point soon you'll see Congress act. It may take a new president to sign that kind of legislation, but it's a particularly shameful thing to see. Well, yes, it is, because, as you know, I bought hard for the Voting Rights Act. And then we go back to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which gave us rights to vote. And then to see them, the court dismantle it and this Republican legislature, Congress not wanting to deal with it, I'm very pleased. Have you tell me that that's one of the first things this new Congress is going to deal with? That's wonderful. Yeah, I think that's a positive development. One of the other positive developments from the election last week was what happened where they had a state initiative that restored the Voting Rights to felons that have served their time, which means that there's going to be hundreds of thousands of voters now in Florida who are going to be able to vote. These are people that have served their time. They're now back in society. And the law that was in effect was essentially a Jim Crow law that was designed to disenfranchise African-Americans primarily and to see the state of Florida actually vote overwhelmingly to end that practice as encouraging. So, I mean, it's going to be, I think, a hard fight. And I think that, unfortunately, I think we as Democrats probably took this for granted for longer than we should have. But to see us fighting back now by making this the first piece of legislation for the House and by seeing initiatives like the one in Florida and what Governor McAuliffe did in Virginia, which was the same thing, which was to restore the Voting Rights for felons and to allow people that have paid their debt to society who are now back in society, they should be allowed to vote. And it's a fundamental right. It's a fundamental makeup of this country and something that we as Democrats should be really putting first in line, I think, in terms of things that we should be fighting for. Well, just to let our audience know that we in Hawaii have that same ability for felons once they have served their time to apply for whatever it's called so that they can vote. So we've had that for a while, even though we don't talk about it a lot. That's right. And it's also a trine in our employment discrimination law that you can't discriminate against somebody applying for a job when, based on their arrest and court records, which allows people to go back into society and to be productive citizens again. It's something that our office has really focused on quite extensively is prison rights and providing opportunities for prisoners to get education and to get back into society. So a number of our legislative initiatives have been down that path. And I actually do think that there's a chance in the next Congress to work on that that there are some Republicans who see that as a cost issue that we shouldn't just be putting people in jail endlessly. And so I'm hoping to see us actually make progress along those lines. Well, Andy, it's always a pleasure to talk to you and I could go on for hours, but our clock says our time is up. So as we move through the Congress, we will talk to you again. Sounds good. Anytime, Marsha. It's good to talk to you. You take care. Aloha. And we'll see you next time.