The national elections on Tuesday brought the blue wave that many pollsters and pundits had predicted. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said with Democrats controlling Congress, there will be a significant shift in how the legislative branch can check the power of the executive. He spoke to KUNM on Tuesday just before polls closed in New Mexico and before it was clear whether Democrats would flip both the House and the Senate.
MARTIN HEINRICH: A lot would change. There would be guardrails. Some of the excesses would be curbed, and certainly the ability to implement oversight has a hugely beneficial impact on government, and especially on government that is being excessive and going well beyond what the people gave it the charge to do. And so I think we're going to see a lot of oversight in the next Congress. But there's also going to be a focus on bringing everything back to the economic reality that voters right now are experiencing, which is what is driving the potential for change. I think we may well win the Senate tonight as well.
KUNM: So help us understand what it means to have the opposing party controlling both chambers of Congress with a Republican president.
HEINRICH: For one, it means that the administration officials rarely have to come in front of Congress and answer hard questions. That would change under a divided government. This administration has made many decisions that are making energy more expensive for my constituents. They don't really have to answer for that right now because they're not being asked to come in front of the Energy Committee and explain why they're slow walking clean energy permits or why they're forcing a coal plant to stay online and then shifting the cost for that over to consumers. If we are in the majority in the next Congress, those secretaries are going to have to come before the committee on a regular basis and explain what they're doing.
KUNM: What do you anticipate could happen in terms of investigations or other measures Congress could take to push back on the executive if indeed Democrats take one or both houses?
HEINRICH: I think there will be a focus on some of what appears from the outside to be very corrupt activity. There's so much call sheet trading, stock trading, cryptocurrency things going on, gifts from Qatar of airplanes. I mean, I think for what oversight, and we're going to need to be judicious, but we should focus it in ways that people understand what the impact is to their own economic well-being.
KUNM: Our news team has spoken with some voters. They're pretty jaded about both parties, let's say Democrats take control of one or both chambers in Washington. How quickly can they address some of the key issues like affordability, inflation, and foreign wars?
HEINRICH: I think people have every right to be jaded. I think if we have a big night tonight, that should not be viewed as you've got the job. It should be viewed as you move to the next level of the job interview, I want to be real transparent with the public. Some of the things that are driving the incredible costs that we see right now, especially the war in Iran that Trump got us into with no plan to get us out, is going to have impacts on their energy costs for years to come, so not everything is going to be fixed quickly. But I do think if we don't just get in a tit for tat over every stupid thing that the president happens to say or tweet, and we really focus on the economic well-being of hardworking Americans that don't have time to read the politics stuff every day, then I think they'll give us a chance.
KUNM: What do you think Democrats need to do to hold on to those voters?
HEINRICH: If there is a big wave election tonight, it will be because this administration has ignored the economic pain of average Americans, and so we need to keep affordability as the north star of whatever we put on the floor of the Senate, whatever we send to the president's desk. We should be thinking about how we put money back in people's pockets, whether that's through their healthcare plan, whether that's by funding Medicaid better, whether that's by bringing down their energy costs. In my own committee of energy and natural resources. You know, one of the issues that I think we have the ability to solve and hopefully do it in a bipartisan way is in a lot of places in this country right now, data centers are being developed, but the costs of the grid upgrades are actually going on regular people's electric bills. The developer of that data center is not paying that. We can change that, and that's the kind of stuff that will resonate with people.
