Bill Maske visits Waukon in his bid for Iowa's 4th Congressional District

by Bob Beach

Democrat Bill Maske, who is running for U.S. Congress in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, a seat currently held by Republican incumbent Tom Latham, stopped by the Standard’s office in Waukon for an interview May 7. Unopposed in the Democratic primary June 8, Maske is concentrating his efforts on defeating Latham in November.
As a number of Iowa companies have moved to Mexico, Maske said that Congressman Latham has not been around. “A representative doesn’t just show up to cut ribbons and take pictures when something good is going on and then claim credit for it. The job of a representative is to be there when people need the help. It’s unconscionable and it’s a negligence of duty to not be where people need you when they’ve elected you to be their representative.”
“As a representative in Congress, I would have my eye on what’s going on in my district so that perhaps I could do things to try to stop these job losses. I certainly wouldn’t stay in hiding and I certainly wouldn’t stay away,” Maske said.
Maske said that a desire to serve is his motivation for running for Congress. “I’ve been in education for 34 years, and my whole purpose during those years has been to serve families and their children,” he said. “When this opportunity to run for Congress came along, I saw it as another opportunity to serve at a different level and be able to do a whole lot of good for a whole lot more people. The fact that Congress seems to be dysfunctional only calls out more for good people to step forward and say, ‘Hey, I want to try to help.’”

According to Maske, part of serving the district he hopes to represent is being accountable to voters. “The people that go to Washington are only our representatives and so we should expect, and hold them accountable, to do what it is that we, the people, want to see done. And so if we reach a point where the will of the people is ‘let’s have term limits,” then it’s the responsibility of our representatives to make that happen.”
Despite the current divide between the Democratic and Republic parties, Maske feels that there has to be a path back to bipartisanship. He said that, despite a long history of compromise in Congress, now battle lines have been drawn and Republicans are voting as a block. He added that Democrats need to change their ways as well, but pointed out that everyone in Washington should recognize that Democrats have the majority in Congress and a President in the White House because voters in 2008 wanted change.
Despite cynicism caused by a political divide among voters, Maske said that key to getting back to bipartisanship is for representatives to think for themselves. “When representatives aren’t thinking as individuals and aren’t acting in accordance with the people they represent, then it’s time for changes,” He said. “We also need to bring lobbyists under control. There is too much influence from big money and big corporations.”
Maske says that in light of the current economic crisis, Congress needs to act, not argue. “It’s not about big government,” He said. “It’s about better government. It’s about government being an instrument to help improve the quality of life for people. With this flagging economy, we need jobs, and we need jobs now. We don’t need Congress to sit there and argue about jobs. We need them to act to create jobs. We can do that by infusing some stimulus into Main Street and into small businesses and small communities to help stimulate the economy at the local level.”
While recently passed stimulus legislation had some merits, Maske said there were parts that he simply could not support. “I would not have supported that amount of money that went to big corporations and Wall Street, because it never trickles down,” he said. “We can’t let companies get ‘too big to fail,’ because if a company gets too big to fail, then they can hold us hostage. That’s where government regulations and interventions have to occur so that we don’t ever find ourselves in that situation again.”
Maske said that keeping jobs in the United States, creating new jobs and fixing the economy will require a combination of investment in “green energy” jobs, investment and commitment to education, financial reform and reform of NAFTA. Immigration reform, he said, will also be very important. “We need comprehensive immigration reform. We need to invest in local, state and federal enforcement of our borders. It needs to be coordinated by the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security. I’m talking about border patrol and that type of enforcement. I’m completely opposed to this notion of a fence or anything like that. We also need to create an avenue for people to become legal in this country.”