Dems See Mandate For Health Care Fixes, Trump Oversight In New Congress

Dec. 27--The three Democrats in Palm Beach County's U.S. House delegation say they'll use their newly won majority status to push for health care legislation, an infrastructure bill, immigration reform, gun control and other issues when the 116th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.

And if the Republican-controlled Senate and President Donald Trump don't go along, Democrats believe they'll have ready-made issues for the 2020 elections.

Democrats picked up 40 U.S. House seats in the midterm elections to gain control of the chamber for the first time in eight years. That means the three Democrats who represent portions of Palm Beach County -- U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings of Delray Beach, Ted Deutch of Boca Raton and Lois Frankel of West Palm Beach -- will see their status upgraded from minority to majority. The fourth member of Palm Beach County's House delegation, Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Mast of Palm City, will go from the majority to the minority in the coming Congress.

Hastings, elected to the House in 1992, has spent only six of his 26 congressional years in the majority. Deutch, seated in an April 2010 special election, enjoyed less than eight months in the majority before that year's tea party tsunami swept Republicans into control. Frankel has never served in the majority since her 2012 election.

As the longest-serving member of Florida's 27-member U.S. House delegation, Hastings said he's learned to temper his expectations.

"We're going to have a tiger by the tail, largely for the reason that there are a lot of people coming to Congress that do not understand ... that the institution is glacial. Many of the 40 people coming here think that they're going to turn the institution upside-down. I kind of had that zeal 25 years ago but it was blunted almost immediately," Hastings said.

Even so, Hastings said he's optimistic that the House will legislation aimed at reducing the cost of health care and prescription drugs.

"I do believe that health care is part of what the public was crying out for at all levels and I believe in that sense there was a mandate. The Democrats should do something, along with Republicans, I hope, about the cost of health care, fixing Obamacare and the cost of prescription drugs. I think that is a clear mandate from the election," said Hastings.

Frankel and Deutch also mentioned health care access and affordability and lowering prescription drug prices as top priorities in the new Congress.

"Democrats have to show that we can govern, that we are for the people, that we push forward the agenda that we campaigned on around the country. I think these are the things that people want -- lower prescription drugs, access to health care and pre-existing conditions covered," said Frankel. She also mentioned legislation to reduce the impact of money in campaigns, expand voting rights, reform immigration laws and "definitely a major infrastructure bill."

Deutch noted that Trump at one time or another has voiced some level of sympathy for gun background checks, an infrastructure bill, reducing prescription drug prices and protecting non-citizen "Dreamers" who were brought into the country by their parents and raised in the U.S.

"If he's serious about any of those things, he's got a willing House of Representatives to work in a bipartisan way to get those done, even if he needs to drag the Senate along with him," said Deutch. "If, on the other hand, he refuses to engage on anything except his regular rants on Twitter, then it's going to make it difficult to do the things that clearly the American people want us to do."

Hastings said the Democrat-controlled House can craft health care legislation that will also pass the GOP-controlled Senate, but "probably nothing that will get the approval of the president."

Doing so would lay down a marker for the 2020 elections, Hastings said.

"We can fashion the prescription drug costs, for example, in a way that it would be impossible for them (Senate Republicans) not to vote for it. What that boils down to then is looking at 2020 as much as whether we are really going to be able to accomplish it," Hastings said.

"It is our job to pass it in the House of Representatives," Hastings added. "But if we fashion the fix of Obamacare in a way that the public will understand that we are doing all we can, then we will keep the House, win the Senate and the presidency in 2020."

Hastings said he viewed the midterms as "a rebuke of Donald Trump and the enablers of Donald Trump in the Senate and the House. Clearly it's a rebuke of them. Mandates are hard to identify. But remember, Democrats got 8 million-plus more votes than the Republicans in this particular election and what it is a mandate for is the eternal mantra of politicians and that's change. And I think what people want to see is us trying to get something done. It's just that simple."

Deutch, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said voters handed Democrats a mandate to act as a check on the Trump administration.

"It's our job to hold hearings on what constitutes obstruction of justice ... It's our job to look at efforts by the president to interfere with the Mueller investigation. Those are the kinds of things that we should have been doing these past two years but unfortunately, under Republican leadership, the majority saw its role as one of defending the president at all costs rather than defending the constitution," Deutch said.

Asked specifically about impeachment, Deutch said, "it's premature to talk about where all of this leads. But the question is are we going to be serious about doing our jobs to pursue the many questions that exist based on so many things that this administration and that the president has said over the last two years that have been ignored by the House of Representatives."

Frankel said the midterm election results give her confidence to work on a variety of women's issues, including legislation guaranteeing equal pay for women, addressing workplace sexual harassment, providing more affordable child care and "promoting girls and women around the world in terms of being able to have access to education and combating gender-based violence ... protecting women's health in this country and worldwide."

Frankel said women were keys to Democratic success in the midterms. The 116th Congress will include 42 new women in the House and Senate -- 38 of them Democrats.

"I don't know if you call it a mandate, but we're on a mission," Frankel said. "I think it definitely was a blue wave -- a blue-pink wave because the women really came out and we elected a lot of new women."

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