Congressman Lamar Smith Interview, Part 1

BY: KEFF CIARDELLO, EXECUTIVE EDITOR

@Keff_C

Congressman Lamar Smith has been the Representative for Texas District 21 for more than 25 years. We were fortunate enough to sit down with him to reminisce on the past, discuss present situations and what this means for the future. This the first part of a three part series with this interview. The following are the first half of quotes from Congress Smith. Part two will be the second half of the interview, while the third and final installment will be a conclusive article on our conversation and what it means for our District and the state of Texas.

(Newspaper reporter anecdote)

“For many years, I was a reporter before I was a politician. I was editor of the high school paper and then I was actually a newspaper reporter in Boston for two years on the business financial page.  I was the editor of the newspaper for m y law school (SMU) and we won the A.B.A. award for best newspaper in our category. There were two categories for law schools; one for the top half in size and one for the bottom half. We won the award for bottom half in size. The problem was I thought I was going to be the next Pulitzer Prize winner when I went to Boston to be a reporter. I suddenly realized it took me three times as long to write a page as anybody else and I was not going to win the Pulitzer Prize, so I did what you always do if you aren’t sure what you want to do and I went to law school.”

(About District 21)

“I won the election in 1986; I was sworn in ’87. When I was first elected, the district went from San Antonio, including almost all the hill country, including San Angelo, included Midland and I went almost out to El Paso. I had Big Bend National Park, I had Presidio, I had Alpine, just beautiful spans of west Texas. The district was 400 miles, east to west. When I was first elected, it was 4,200 square miles. In an effort to try to keep my northeastern colleagues humble, I repeatedly reminded them that my district was five times the size of Massachusetts. That got their attention. The state closest to the size of my district when I was first elected was Pennsylvania, so that’s how big it was. I also had 200 miles of Texas-Mexico border and that is what kind of riveted my attention and got me interested in border issues, whether they be drug smuggling or illegal immigration or human trafficking. I became very active on the judiciary committee because there was a crime subcommittee and that’s where I put a lot of my attention for awhile. Over the years I was chairman of the immigration subcommittee, the crime subcommittee, the intellectual property subcommittee and then I became chairman of the full committee.

In the last Congress, I was chairman of the judiciary committee but, on our side of the aisle, the Republican side, we have term limits on committee chairs and I served four years as ranking and two years as chairman ranking, being the senior Republican in a Democrat controlled Congress, so I was term limited. Fortunately, so was the Chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, so that opened up another Committee Chairmanship. Three of us sought it and I was fortunate enough to be selected to be the chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, which I am in this Congress today. When I was first elected, there were 21 counties and, over the years, the only two counties to remain constant in the district, the only two counties I have represented the entire time I have been in office are Bexar and Comal (Counties). All the others have changed. Some went out of my district; the hill country went out of my district for awhile then came back into the district. My second largest county, in terms of population, is now Travis County. I have 190,000 constituents in Travis County, 250,000 in Bexar, 100,000 in Comal and 33,000 in Hays. This is a slight over simplification, but Lloyd Doggett is east of 35 and I am west 35 going up into the Corridor. Every member of Congress represents about 700,000 people. I think it’s a wonderful district to represent.

I try to get out in the district as much as I possible. I conduct telephone town meetings. In fact, I’ve done four in the last two weeks. It takes about five or six calls to do the whole district and I try to do the whole district two or three times a year. People seem to enjoy it. We get hundreds of people and they’re all random calls. Unlike a lot of members of Congress, I don’t screen any calls and I think people appreciate that. They can be critical; they can ask me anything they want to. (The calls) are made randomly. We have this high-tech company that automatically dials individuals, randomly, throughout the district. I take all-comers. During the hour-long telephone town meeting, I typically ask four poll questions and they can push one for yes, two for no and three for undecided on the telephone keypad. You know its real fun to do that. I find out how people feel and then, during the question and comment response period, I find out how strongly they feel about issues. The number one issue for the last month has been immigration. Number two might be veterans. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has come out with rules that affect almost everybody. Its to the point where they want control all water, even if it’s a rain puddle. They say they are water bodies caused by rain and they can only be there part of the year and they want control over it.”

(On Hays County being the fastest growing county in the nation, San Marcos being the fastest growing city and the importance of education and other challenges that come with the growth)

“Isn’t that just incredible; it’s been that way for the past two years. A big part of it is being right next to Travis County. Housing is so expensive in Travis that people are living in adjacent counties, whether it be Williamson or whether it be Hays, and now Coldwell. With growth comes challenges and you have to anticipate the growth. Whether it be public infrastructure or schools or water. Folks in San Marcos will probably know better than I, so many of those issues are local issues as opposed to federal issues. On the federal issue side, education is 90% local and 10% federal, but we still have an interest in it. As far as education goes, I want the government to get out of it as much as possible, the federal government to get out of it as much as possible. Education decisions should be local decisions made by parents and school administrators.

The one area that I get into education over is STEM education; science, technology, engineering and math. We had jurisdiction over about a billion dollars in expenditures for STEM education. What we are trying to do with the committee is to encourage people to take those courses in science, technology, engineering and math. Stay with them, major with them. Anybody that majors in a STEM subject today is going to be able to pick the job they want, they’ll be able to get twice the average pay and they are going to be able to take care of their families. So we are doing a lot to encourage STEM education and we also encourage teachers to be been trained in the STEM subjects. We found out this year, to our absolute amazement, that STEM education did not include computer science. The definition of STEM was written 20 years ago. We had a hearing this year and one of the witnesses said “By the way, STEM doesn’t include computer science and I thought “That can’t be right” because computer science is so basic to STEM education. We checked and he was right. So I introduced a bill to add computer science to the STEM education definition. Now, it’s STEM plus computer science. I’m not sure if we are going to change the acronym from S-T-E-M to S-T-E-M-C-S. I’m pretty sure we are going to leave it the way it is.”