Senator Whitehouse fields questions in South Providence

"...the quicker streets are shady because of urban trees, have clean air because of electric vehicles, and cooler because of both, the quicker we're in a better position."

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat, Rhode Island) held an hour-long Community Town Hall at the Sackett Recreation Center in South Providence on Saturday. About three dozen people attended, including Representative Grace Diaz (Democrat, District 11, Providence) and Providence City Councilmembers Ana Vargas (Ward 7) and Juan Pichardo (Ward 9).

During his time Senator Whitehouse filled questions about environmental justice for neighborhoods adjacent to the Port of Providence, climate change mitigation efforts to be funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the housing crisis, the addiction crisis, and more.

The audio in the room was bad because there were multiple large fans scattered about the room to help defray the heat. [Note to charitable organizations such as the Rhode Island Foundation: The Sackett Recreation Center serves neighborhood kids who deserve air conditioning.] As a result, the following transcript has been edited for clarity, but a few details may have been lost.

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Senator Whitehouse: These always work better the sooner I shut up, so I'm going to touch on a couple of points and then we can go back and forth and have a conversation.

I first want to talk about Social Security and Medicare because we had that moment when President [Joe] Biden was giving his State of the Union Speech and said, "You know, there are Republicans that want to cut Social Security and Medicare," and all the Republicans who wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare objected to that.

So the President had that moment when he could say, "Wow, I guess cutting Social Security and Medicare is off the table, at last."

But of course that's not entirely true. I'm the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. We had a hearing on Social Security and the Republicans are allowed to bring a witness. They choose the witness, I don't choose. They chose a witness who came in and testified that Social Security benefits are too high.

I don't know where to go with that, but clearly, Republicans are still digging. They're still fielding cuts to Social Security and Medicare in the deals they're trying to reach. Democrats are working to make sure that doesn't happen. I'm trying to hold Republicans to their word. The hearing was about the bill to ensure that no matter how much money you make - we will honor President Biden's $400,000 pledge - but above that, you should contribute to Social Security.

At the moment, if you make $160,000 as a successful plumber, every dollar you earn has Social Security charged to it. If you are a Wall Street financier, making $160 million, you don't add a penny more to Social Security than that plumber does, and that's just nuts.

We had the actuary for Social Security come in and he said, "If you pass the bill, that's 75 years’ worth of solvency for Social Security." And by the way, 75 years is as far as they look. They don't go beyond 75 years so 75 years, in their view, is like forever. So we can do something as simple and fair as that and put concerns about Social Security to rest.

Medicare is very much the same. In the Inflation Reduction Act [IRA], prescription costs were capped. If you're on Medicare and you're a diabetic and you need insulin, you're capped. You don't have to pay more than 25 bucks a month. If you need extra expenses beyond your Medicare, when you hit $2000, you're capped. Medicare picks up all the rest of the expenditure. IRA Medicare reform means Rhode Island families on Medicare will save money compared to before.

And the biggest one, my favorite one, is that Medicare is now able to go to the pharmaceutical industry and negotiate prices. Walmart gives you low prices because they negotiate like crazy with suppliers. They get the lowest possible costs from suppliers and then pass on the lowest possible costs to you. Medicare is big. They can get those same deals.

So we're going to make sure that Medicare uses that new law and I think we'll see costs come down for Medicare.

The last thing I'll talk about is infrastructure. We've got a lot of work to do on our roads and bridges. I developed a new law that allows the federal government to make larger distributions of money to states than they've been allowed to before. We've got three projects underway in Rhode Island that came through that new law.

One is the viaducts that go behind the mall in Providence where 95 cuts through Rhode Island. That was a big project, it got about $60 million. The other is Route 146, which if you drive you know is a challenge. We got $65 million for Route 146 to help the Rhode Island Department of Transportation [DOT] complete that project. Then, the Newport Bridge has been around for 50 years and needs a major redo. Without raising the toll rate it's going to be hard for the Turnpike and Bridge Authority to do it, so they applied and got an $82 million grant. The biggest grant Rhode Island has ever gotten for road and highway construction to make sure that the Newport Bridge stays with us for another 50 years. With any luck, we'll take on the Mount Hope Bridge as our next project.

Those are some of the distinct ways, despite a lot of opposition, that we've been able to get things done that are making life less expensive and services better for people around Rhode Island.

Question 1: Can you tell us some of the things you're working on besides the United States Supreme Court ethics and dark money? What are some of your other favorite projects?

Senator Whitehouse: The climate change/oceans issue is very important. As you know, Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council [CRMC] has done maps of what Rhode Island is going to look like if we don't fix the climate change problem. And the state looks completely different. Warwick Neck becomes Warwick Neck Island. Poppasquash Point in Bristol becomes Poppasquash Island off of Bristol Island. There's an enormous amount of Rhode Island seashore that vanishes into the sea because of climate change. We need to solve this problem because it's going to matter a lot to Rhode Island.

The biggest federally backed mortgage company is called Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac does mortgages. They do not do environment, they do not do climate, they do mortgages. The company says that the threat to the coast from climate change and sea level rise is going to cause coastal property values to crash. That is going to cascade through the whole economy the way the 2008 mortgage crisis cascaded through the whole economy. It's not just the person who has a house at Bonnet Shores who is at risk of losing something valuable and important to them, it is also anybody who is in the wake of the tsunami of economic collapse that follows when the coastal property values crash happens.

A lot of this stuff got into the Inflation Reduction Act. We're going to see a lot of value in Rhode Island from the IRA as people enjoy tax benefits on electric vehicles, shift to more efficient appliances, and small businesses redo the way they power their offices. Please get in touch with my office of the state's Office of Energy Resources to make sure you get connected to those programs. Because there is $370 billion, at least, out there. That's a lot of money and we want to make sure that Rhode Island gets more than our fair share.

Kristina Fox (Question 2): Following up on that, I represent the Rhode Island Black Business Association [RIBBA] and a lot of our businesses would like to access the funds you just mentioned. Should I tell them to get in touch with your office?

Senator Whitehouse: Yes. And congratulations on the $500k in Congressionally directed spending that we got for the new building.

Katrina Fox: That was huge. We're hoping to open by the end of this year, just in time for the next legislative session of the Rhode Island General Assembly.

Linda Perri (Question 3): My question/comment is purely environmental. There's nothing more important. If we preserve our environment, the rest will fall into place.

We need more trees. To get down to the micro, if we don't have healthy neighborhoods we don't have healthy people, we don't have a healthy economy, and on and on and on. I'd like to see a major initiative in Providence, as Mayor [Michelle] Wu did in Boston, to plant trees. This means collaboration with the Rhode Island Department of Transportation [DOT] - when they put in 50 feet of sidewalks they need to put in tree beds. And also, because of climate change, we need money for watering the trees. It's that simple. So how can you, at the federal government, help us do that?

Senator Whitehouse: There is an urban trees budget that flows through programs in the federal government. It was increased through the IRA so those dollars should be on the way. We're working with the Mayor and the City Council to make sure that the city is taking advantage of those funds. It's an obvious thing, but when you've got shady streets, you've got cooler and healthier air for everyone. Making sure we provide that shade, you can almost call it an amenity, for people living in the neighborhood is important.

Jennifer Vincent (Question 4): I have two questions about housing. One is about supporting people who are low-income through Section 8 vouchers as an entitlement program, which has not yet been established. The other is that right now, when the government provides support to builders who are developing low-income housing, one of the mechanisms they use is the low-income housing tax credit. The way that works is that through these state agencies developers get tax credits that they sell to a company that has a larger tax burden, at a discount. Why can't we just use a direct pay model for developers instead of a tax credit they sell at a discount and have limited use for?

Senator Whitehouse: I don't know. Maybe just tradition? Maybe the way these deals are commonly structured makes it necessary. I would check in with Rhode Island Housing and see what they have to say about that. It's an interesting suggestion.

It reminds me of two very interesting programs that I would like to see continued. They were done for covid and they were done with covid emergency funding, and they expired. One was the child tax credit which made a huge difference in people's lives. It lifted whole families out of poverty and did that effectively. We're pushing very hard to get that restored because it's not just an idea. We watched it work and it worked. The time will come very soon, I think in 2025, when the Trump tax cuts will expire. To bring those back the Republicans will have to deal with us on taxes. That has to be our moment to make sure the child tax credit comes back and stays.

I know I'm talking about the child tax credit and you're talking about housing, but the reason I link the two together is because there was a really good housing program during covid as well. It provided support for people behind on their mortgages and for people behind on their rent. They had people waiting at the housing courts so when an eviction proceeding came up they could talk to the landlord and talk to the tenant and say "Hey, we have resources to bridge this gap and keep this person in their home."

That worked so well I would like to see that continue as well. I doubt it would fair well on the Republican House side of Congress. So we'll see how the election goes in 2024. We'll have to do this afterward. Housing is a baseline for people to apply for jobs - It's essential to our recovery. If you don't have housing your chances of a successful economic recovery collapse. If you're trying to build a life for yourself after coming out of incarceration, and you don't have a house, your chances of rehabilitation are way worse.

Linda Perri (Question 5): We need money for abatement in the Port of Providence to protect us from a major spill. Also, insurance companies are dropping people because of extreme climate change. Is there a way to prevent that on your end?

Senator Whitehouse: Senator Ron Wyden [Democrat, Oregon], Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and I, as Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, wrote a letter to the major insurance companies asking them to explain themselves because they are walking away from providing coverage to climate risk areas, whether it's coastal or wildfires, yet at the same time they're investing your money in projects that are causing this to happen. That doesn't make sense. We're waiting for answers to come in. They've been relatively cooperative, so we're in the process of doing that.

In the Port, we're trying to make sure that the offshore wind projects survive and move forward. Rhode Island has a huge footprint there. We're working on the Port facilities to support off-shore wind construction. We're also keenly aware of the pollution coming off ProvPort, and we're meeting regularly with the environmental justice community. April Brown is the leader we're working with. She's formidable and terrific in making sure the community's voices are being heard. Part of the Inflation Reduction Act was a lot of money for environmental justice.

The problem with the federal government putting a lot of money in is that if the recipients aren't there to receive it, sign up for it, or apply for grants, then you get into a situation where people are eligible for the money, they're entitled to funds, and they don't get it because the link hasn't been forged. We're working with those groups to make sure they know how to fill out grant applications. We're working with Conservation Law Foundation and April Brown has helped organize that.

We're not there yet, but we're building the infrastructure to be successful in getting the Port of Providence cleaned up, and the environmental community has a big voice in making sure that's done right.

Linda Perri: I live in that fictitious environmental justice radius - because the State of Rhode Island doesn't have an environmental justice law. So there's no zone yet.

Senator Whitehouse: It was a near miss in the last General Assembly session I hear, and we'll have another run at that next session.

Yaimani Rivera (Question 6): It's nice to see someone at your level coming to the community. In South Providence, there are a lot of new developments happening, but it feels like people are going rogue when it comes to who they rent to. Could there be some kind of law or initiative where new developments can consider a percentage of their housing to be allocated to those who are low-income? That way people in the area won't feel like they're being pushed out, especially when it feels like landlords are pricing things for a very specific community that doesn't necessarily reflect the one they're stepping into.

While there is a lot of opportunity in South Providence, I'd like to think it should be a respectful opportunity, where developers consider the areas they're going into and not completely adapt it to themselves, but take the time to understand the community they're stepping into, to come in and join the existing community.

On top of that, I know there is a housing crisis and it feels like the city, and maybe at the state level too, tends to come up with quick solutions. Our area has several housing shelters and organizations, but could we maybe our on the safety component? Because it doesn't seem like at the state level there's oversight. Another example of how these organizations are going rogue.

Senator Whitehouse: The setup is that you can get favorable tax treatment if you dedicate a certain amount of the development to low-income housing. So the structure is there. The problem is that pulling those deals together requires a lot of local initiative. So the deals are highly specific. I'm thrilled that [Providence] Mayor [Brett] Smiley is very skilled and capable...

Yaimani Rivera gives a so-so wave of her hand.

Senator Whitehouse: He has more to prove then. But I think this very much turns out to be a local problem. I don't know if there are problems with the structure, but the last thing we want to do is slow down the approval of low-income construction because the housing crisis is a housing shortage at the root, so we need to build more.

Speaker Joseph Shekarchi pushed out a very aggressive housing program through the General Assembly. It was his top priority in the last session. Representative Grace Diaz is here. She is a major player in the House leadership structure. She is much respected and much beloved. She punches way above her weight class.

Representative Grace Diaz: We put a lot of work into increased opportunity for housing at reduced prices. One of the good things that happened this year was legislation to require the Housing Secretary to update the Rhode Island Rental Resource Guide. The guide allows tenants to know their rights. The House also passed a Rental Registry, which will allow renters to see which landlords are complying with lead and sewer connection laws.

Question 7: We need expanded funding for childcare and Head Start. At a time when we're wondering about what's going to happen to the economy, we must ensure that women and families have the childcare that they need to make sure that their children are carefully cared for. I understand that the funding for Head Start is not guaranteed but it's essential. That's a program Rhode Island has relied on for the past 40 years and it's ridiculous that we're arguing about this.

Senator Whitehouse: Two things about that. The first is that there's this argument bandied about Washington that says if you provide childcare, or provide for parents to pay for childcare, that will prevent them from going to work because they're going to spend the day sitting on the couch watching daytime television. That is completely inconsistent with everything that I've seen, heard, and experienced. Childcare is what frees people up to go to work. If you can't get adequate, safe, and affordable childcare, then you can't show up at the workplace.

I see it as exactly the opposite, and pretty much everybody that sits on the finance committee, on the Democratic side, 100% agrees. We just had a good hearing on that exact subject. This argument that if you help people with their childcare expenses they're just going to lie around and not do stuff is completely ridiculous.

The second thing is that when we have a child tax credit - it was a little distorted because of covid - but it seems that there was abundant business for childcare providers. People had the money to afford childcare and it was working. That ran out when the child tax credit stopped. And now we're seeing very low wages in the childcare centers. I think we're going to be in a good position to fix that.

I'd give a thumb's up to Head Start and David Caprio [President and Chief Executive Officer at Children's Friend]. They just gave everybody a big raise and that has kept their employees intact. It has allowed them to hire new employees, open up rooms and provide services they couldn't have provided before, which earns them more money. Previously they were in this "doom loop" of "I can't make money because I can't put a teacher in that room because I can't pay the teacher because I don't have the money..." David Caprio decided to break that and give significant wages and it's been terrific. I met with him and his team the other day and those kids were smiling ear to ear. They also got a five-star rating, so double thumbs up.

Representative Diaz: Childcare has been crucial for people to go to work. So with that in mind, the General Assembly put an extra $7 million into pre-K and Kindergarten. And also, for the first time in Rhode Island, we gave free access to childcare to childcare workers. From here on, any childcare worker has free access to childcare.

Senator Whitehouse: This is an area where Representative Diaz knows her stuff because before she was a respected elected official she was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who arrived here with $40 and three dresses and started working in childcare. She knows the subject at a policy level and through lived experience.

Question 8: I'm somebody who likes that phrase, “seeing is believing” and I remember 15 years ago you were at a presentation about sea-level rise, and those images are so powerful. When you see those maps and realize that in many parts of Providence, you'll need a boat to get around - is there some way to make those images more available?

Senator Whitehouse: The Coastal Resources Management Council [CRMC] website. The program is called StormTools. You can plug in a street address and see what's predicted for that street address. You can turn the dials so if we do something good on climate change and sea-level rise is only two feet you can see what it's going to look like in 30 years and if we don't do enough and sea-level rise is three feet, you can see that too.

The former CRMC chief, Grover Fugate, and I go around the state and put on what I call the Grover and Sheldon show and we show those images. The one I use for Providence is an image of City Hall from above, with the water lapping up against the front steps. Do you all remember Buddy Cianci and his gondolas? The gondolas were a scenic amenity but if we don't get ahead of this we're going to need gondolas for real to get around downtown.

In the next Congress, I'm probably going to have the chance to choose between chairing the Budget Committee or the Environment and Public Works Committee. Public Works is a big deal, there's a lot of construction and it includes the Army Corps of Engineers. We're working with the City of Providence and the Army Corps of Engineers to do preliminary studies to see how you protect the City of Providence from bad flooding. That Hurricane Barrier we got is not going to do it.

We have to look further south, probably Field's Point, a natural narrowing of the Bay, and figure out what we can build there. We need to protect our capital city and have everything open back up on regular days because the Port is up there, and there are fish that go back and forth, and Community Boating Center is sailing up there, so we can't block it permanently. That's going to be a big project, one of the biggest projects in Rhode Island history, and we're starting to lay the foundation for that now.

Question 9: I was inspired to be here because of the Port of Providence and the surrounding environmental justice community. Providence has consistently ranked as having one of the highest rates of asthma in the country and the area around the Port has some of the highest rates of asthma in the entire state. I'd like you to elaborate a bit on your comments on the Inflation Reduction Act's available tax credits. A lot of those tax credits cover 30% of the installation and material costs, but in terms of environmental justice, the area has some of the lowest average incomes and lowest access to comprehensive health care.

Given that people are having trouble paying bills associated with asthma and other medical issues, I can't see it as realistic to encourage them to take on the upfront costs of installing rooftop solar. I'm interested to hear more of your thoughts about the responsibility for the unfair and disproportionate impacts of pollution. It sounds like it falls on the individual, and I don't see how that's fair.

Senator Whitehouse: The purpose is to have it not work that way. We want to make sure that when individuals want to put solar on their roofs, put heat pumps in the ground, or upgrade all their appliances, they get support to do that. That's very good for the American economy because it will increase investment in all this. That's one piece of the problem.

In the environmental justice world, it's also important to work on empowering the environmental justice communities and their organizations and we are doing that by making sure the money can go to those organizations for studies and organizing. That's why we're working with environmental justice groups here in Rhode Island. The Port is of particular concern, but there are others. The groups won't be putting solar on rooftops, they will be getting funding to accomplish the purposes of the bill, which are partly to head off climate change, partly to lower health costs, and also to significantly reduce the economic and environmental disparities that too many communities have had to live with for too long.

I should mention one other thing. In addition to Ports, there's also transportation. We pushed hard to get as many electric buses as possible. But we can do school buses as well, because in areas like this one where there is a lot of traffic, an idling diesel bus is doing a kid with asthma no good. So the quicker streets are shady because of urban trees, have clean air because of electric vehicles, and cooler because of both, the quicker we're in a better position.

There's one other piece that I'll mention. Some asthma relates to ozone. Ozone in Rhode Island usually does not come from Rhode Island. It comes from the Midwest. Prevailing winds blow the emissions from their power plants over Rhode Island. We have had days that DEM has documented where we would fail at air quality if we shut off every motor in Rhode Island because of what is inbound from those high-pollution states. That is one of the reasons I am such an antagonist of the fossil fuel industry. They built higher smokestacks so that their pollution would be carried further away from their homes, families, and communities and instead fall on us here in Rhode Island. Instead of cleaning up their mess, they just piped more of it our way.

There's a lot we can do locally. The Inflation Reduction Act will help us do a lot more locally, but we also have to address the problem of airborne pollution that is coming our way from fossil fuel power plants in the core polluting states. That has to stop.

Question 9: I'd like to ask you to support S.831 - the Transnational Repression Policy Act which "would establish United States policy to hold foreign governments and individuals accountable when they stalk, intimidate, or assault people within the United States and United States citizens in foreign countries."

Senator Whitehouse: Trying to clean up the abuse by foreign kleptocrats and dictators has been a side crusade of mine for a while. I'm trying to clean up the shell corporations through which foreign crooks and dictators can have their money in the United States by having [financial institutions] report who the real owner is behind the shell corporation. The Treasury is starting to work on that.

Right now, if you're an American corporation and you accept a bribe in a foreign country, you can be charged with a crime for that bribe, but the person who shook you down for that bribe couldn't be charged. Now we can get at both sides of the bribe transaction. I'm constantly going after the "hidden economy" that supports drug dealers, kleptocrats, dictators, and oligarchs; and to our shame, a lot of the Western world that where that money lands. They enjoy the benefit of secrecy in the Western world to hide their ill-gotten gains. So you have countries where the roads aren't adequate, where corruption is rife, and instead of the leaders of those countries fixing those problems, they just keep stealing and sending it off to Switzerland, the islands, to a Trust in the Dakotas, and all that kind of nonsense.

These are dangerous people, it's dangerous for us to hunt them so I'm thrilled to have a look at that bill

Diego Arene-Morley (Question 10): You have acknowledged that people in recovery exist. You've acknowledged that people who are formerly incarcerated exist. So thank you for that.

The Republicans are winning on the issue of overdose. Republicans talk about fentanyl way more than Democrats. They think that building a wall will somehow keep drugs out, which is ridiculous. There are drugs in prisons. Four walls aren't enough to keep drugs out.

Something that [almost] happened at the state level that would have allowed more dollars to come into Rhode Island to fund treatment beds, public services, and harm reduction services would be to have a medicalized psychedelic system for things like psilocybin and MDMA. There's a bill in Rhode Island that would effectively allow us to do that once the Food and Drug Administration reschedules some of those drugs. Do you favor rescheduling some of those drugs and trying to find some Republicans to try and reschedule some of those drugs? They have a medical benefit for things like post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and things of that nature.

Senator Whitehouse: I have a brother who has been in recovery for nearly 40 years now and part of his recovery is helping other people in recovery. He worked in a recovery center. I trust his judgment and he believes that psychedelic drugs have a real potential to help deal with both mental health and addiction. There's more to learn about this but the initial research seems to show that this works. We need to do all the necessary homework, but I think this could be the thing we look back on 20 years from now and say, "This changed everything."

I'll give myself a final plug for the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016. That was my bill. I did it with a Republican so we could have both sides of the aisle. We worked our way through some challenges, particularly the Republicans not wanting to pass my bill because I was on it and the Democrats not wanting to pass my Republican colleague's bill, because he was on it. But we just pushed through that and it ended up passing with something like 80% of the vote.

You can watch the video, with bad audio, here: