Q & A With Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Mark Schauer

MARK SCHAUER SERVED as a U.S. Representative for Michigan’s 7th congressional district between 2009 and 2011. Schauer was a member of the Michigan Senate, where he served as the Minority Leader, and the Michigan House of Representatives. In May 2013 Schauer announced that he would run as the Democratic candidate to challenge Governor Rick Snyder in 2014.

A2 Indy: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Mark. Let’s start out by asking what you’ve been doing since you lost your Congressional seat to Tim Walberg.

MS: I’ve pursued a passion of mine—growing clean energy jobs in Michigan and in America to put hard-working men and women to work in jobs that protect the environment and make us more energy independent. I was honored to join the BlueGreen Alliance as National Co-Chair of the Jobs 21! campaign. I’m also doing exciting work with the Construction Laborers’ union and their contractors, with a specific focus on building wind farms in Michigan. Bottom line, my work is focused on jobs, jobs, jobs—that support families and sustain our communities.

A2Indy: To what do you attribute the nearly “clean sweep” by Republicans in 2010? Do you think it was overstepping by Democrats or something else?

MS:  It’s jobs. The economy. Quite simply, America was in a deep ditch and we haven’t climbed out of it yet. I think this renewed focus on the economy — after the manufactured debt ceiling crisis — is important and it’s resonating with people because it’s what they’re focused on in daily lives. In 2010 voters were angry and anxious about jobs and their economic security. In 2012 voters will realize who has a real jobs plan for America and who doesn’t, and who’s willing to privatize Medicare and Social Security and tax pensions in order to protect arcane tax loopholes for corporations.

A2 Indy: Given Republican pushback against the stimulus and their claims that it hasn’t created a single job, is it realistic to think they will vote for MORE stimulus-type investments?

MS: At some point, you would hope that politicians would move past this self-destructive cycle they are in where everything is about the next election and simply do the right thing for the American people. No wonder that the Congressional approval rating is so low and will continue to drop unless both parties focus on working together on a real jobs plan.

I think there’s common ground that can be found. Those claims about the stimulus are wrong, by the way. We put out a report on the anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that showed the green investments in it created or save almost a million green jobs.  

A2 Indy: One of the things that you propose is a National Energy Efficiency Resource Standard to encourage “more efficient generation, transmission, and use of electricity and natural gas”. That sounds like regulation to me. What hope do you have of getting more regulations passed in the current political climate?

MS: We waste a lot of energy in this country, and efforts to make us more energy efficient are going to be vital to leaning our businesses so they can compete globally against China, Germany, India and the rest of the world. We can’t just go about things business as usual, otherwise you risk falling behind and losing America’s leadership in the global economy.

Private sector businesses and trained workers are retrofitting businesses, apartment buildings, homes, and public buildings—including government building, hospitals, schools, and colleges. Good local jobs are being created and are being paid for by the very energy savings that result from their work.

The bottom line is that the Energy Efficiency Resource Standard will create a lot of jobs and save a bunch more by making sure our businesses can compete globally. It will benefit consumers and business owners by saving us $170 billion a year in wasted energy.

Call it what you want, but I call it a good idea. A no-brainer, actually.

A2 Indy: With regard to transportation, it’s clear the BlueGreen Alliance is big on investing in mass transit and high-speed rail infrastructure development. However, Republicans in Congress and in the states seem hell-bent on sabotaging anything related to this effort. How do you get them to stop chanting “Cut spending! Less government!” long enough to bring them on board with these types of investments?

MS: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently joined with the AFL-CIO to call for renewed transportation infrastructure investments. So, we’re part of the way there by getting businesses on board to help put pressure on them to do the right thing and get millions of Americans back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and making our transportation system efficient again.

Our generation inherited a great system of railroads, roads and bridges. We fell down on the job keeping them up. It’d be a huge disserve to our children and their children if we don’t give them the same kind of strong transportation infrastructure we inherited simply because we were too worried about giving tax cuts to millionaires to do the right thing.