The Hill’s Jim Mills talks with retiring Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) about her time serving in Congress, and gets her take on why Republicans are in the minority now.

We a lot had an orientation, where we got a feel for Washington, where we got a lot of details about setting up an office. We’re doing a lot back in the District between now and when I come, so I can tell thank you to all the people who voted for me.

I think we’ll start dealing with the economic recovery right away — it depends on what committee I end up on, but I am an educator so I would like to be there. Renewable energy is a huge issue for Nevada, so I’m looking at working on those issues.

We have to re-examine our trade policies. Michigan has been especially hard hit by trade policy that doesn’t like to balance trade. Clearly, we have got to address the automotive crisis right now. There are three million jobs nationally that are directly related to the auto industry and a large concentration of those are in Michigan.

A couple of other things that I am particularly passionate about– that our new president is as well– is creating green collar jobs. I think we’ve got incredible potential in Michigan and around the country to create millions of jobs in clean and renewable energy. And then, I think something that relates to the economic challenges that we experience in Michigan is healthcare. And I’m not quite sure how we’re going to start on that– whether it’s the children’s health insurance program, SCHIP or whether we tackle it in a much broader way, but I think we’ve got to help solve our healthcare crisis in this country.

Obviously, we’re going to have to deal with the budget, what kind of fiscal policy we’re going to have, the bailout–things like that. But for me personally, what I campaigned on is energy independence. Obviously, we have a lot of veterans in our district so we need to improve veterans benefits care and also, I taught at West Point, so I’m trying to get on armed services and try to do a lot with regards to returning veterans–especially those with severe brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. A lot of it depends on which committee I get, which I don’t know yet. But those will be the top priorities for me.

First and foremost, I hail from Ohio and Ohio has suffered disproportionate to the rest of the country with economic job loss. In fact, in the last eight years we have had 180,000 job losses. That means that every day that George Bush has been in office, 61 pinks slips have been handed out to families, so we’ve got to put our state on track and put those people back to work.

Of course this issue that we’re dealing with with the Big Three automobile dealers is extremely important to me, because 25 percent of our state’s economy is based on how well or how poorly the automotive industry does, as is getting our people back to work, bringing our troops home from Iraq safely and honorably, and making sure that Ohio citizens have access to affordable healthcare.

I think that everybody is focused on the economy right, so there is no question that that is going to be at the top of the list. For my district, one of the most significant issues at the moment is the Kennedy Space Center and the hopes and dreams to keeping people employed there and create a new nucleus of research and development. We will keep people there working and flying into space.

I’ve been traveling the district and talking to people all over the district about what’s important to them and I think that I’ve discovered that what they feel most strongly about is that Congress come together and act in a bipartisan kind of common sense way about the issues that are confronting us. I’m very encouraged about what I’ve heard this week from our leadership that that is exactly what they intend to do.

Here we are seven weeks after passing this economic rescue package and we are still faced with confusion and uncertainty surrounding its implementation. Most disturbing are reports that financial firms are expending TARP funds on increased bonuses to employees, higher dividends to shareholders, lavish conferences, and corporate acquisitions that serve not to save struggling institutions, but rather to increase profits at healthy ones. Such uses of taxpayer money do nothing to help restore liquidity to financial markets and are not in the best interests of taxpayers. They are unacceptable, and Treasury must not allow them to occur.

We at POGO have watched in amazement and growing disbelief at the bailout proceeded with little information being released about the how, and even the why, behind the historical “bailout,” now several weeks along.  The public needs to know how the beneficiaries of their tax funds are chosen, how conflicts of interest are guarded against, and whether the integrity of the process has been assured.  So far, a stunning lack of openness has marked this effort, which has taken place largely behind closed doors and often without even notifying Congress.
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Stabilizing home values and getting the housing market moving again has to be a fundamental goal of any new economic stimulus package considered by Congress. Otherwise, we are doomed to see more of the same – more foreclosures, more problems with toxic mortgage assets and a deepening slump in home sales, which in turn will drag down home prices even more and put millions of additional Americans underwater on their mortgages.

The numbers are alarming. In the past year, home values have dropped an average of 16 percent in the nation’s top 20 markets. New home sales are down more than 60 percent from just a few years ago, and housing production has dropped to the lowest level since World War II. Total job losses in housing and housing-related industries are now approaching three million, and millions more Americans are in danger of losing their homes.
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The Hill’s Jim Mills interviews retiring Congressman Tom Davis(R-Virginia) about why he’s leaving the House and what advice he would offer to the GOP working with a democratic majority.