The Secure Rural Schools act has provided crucial federal funding for rural schools and counties for 25 years. But for the past two years, funding has lapsed as efforts to renew the act failed and House Republicans omitted the program’s funding from federal spending in July. Now, that funding could be reinstated.
On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the Secure Rural Schools Reauthorization Act, which was approved by the Senate earlier this year. The bill now heads to the president to be signed and made into law. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat representing southwest Washington, co-lead the push for this bill. She joins us to share more.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Secure Rural Schools [SRS] Act has provided crucial federal funding for timber-dependent counties and their schools for about 25 years. But the program lapsed in 2023, and for two years, that federal money has not been flowing to these rural communities – not for lack of trying. A group of bipartisan senators led by Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden have approved a reauthorization of SRS numerous times. And Marie Glusenkamp Perez, the Democrat who represents Southwest Washington in the House, pushed over and over for the bill in her chamber. But it went nowhere, until yesterday, when the House overwhelmingly supported the reauthorization of this program.
Representative Glusesenkamp Perez joins us now to talk about this and more. Welcome back to the show.
Marie Glusenkamp Perez: Thank you so much, Dave.
Miller: In the last few years, we have talked about the fact that no state lost more money from the end of Secure Rural Schools than Oregon, but your district, which includes Skamania County, has also been particularly reliant. What has this money meant for your district for more than 20 years?
Glusenkamp Perez: Well, it’s been hard. It’s really difficult to feel like we’re dependent on a more and more indifferent system and group of legislators. Having the rug pulled out from us this year was just devastating. One of the middle schools in my district was closed. We had bus routes consolidated, we had a lot of paraeducators fired and let go, we had some teachers … It was really devastating. And these budget cuts, for me, are unignorable, it’s in my face. But the challenge of trying to convince a body of legislators where it feels like, (a) not that many of them have kids in school, and (b) a lot of them have kids in private school if they do have kids.
Miller: Or they’re not in states or counties that are affected by this to begin with.
Glusenkamp Perez: That’s right, it’s a fundamentally different experience on the western part of the U.S. because so much more of our timber is federal land. And that’s really the crux of it is that we had some of the best schools and best funded schools. People talk about the class of 1997 being one of the last times that was like a very strongly felt reality, and it’s just been this sort of long atrophy. Really asserting that this is a necessary investment, this is a deal that was made and we can’t leave rural kids out to dry in the western states.
Miller: You said that you’ve tried to get the attention of your colleagues. Can you give us a sense for what you have done to try to bring this to House leadership over the last two years?
Glusenkamp Perez: Boy, I’ve gotten good at turning conversations to SRS. In the gym, on the floor, in Bible study, every tangential issue, just really elevating that this is a really painful reality for our kids and not a position that we asked to be put in. We cannot indebt future generations of Americans because of indifference or inaction here. A lot of letters … and that’s just sort of the forward facing thing. I’m not going to overstate the utility of letters, I think they’re necessary to have that undeniable part. But it’s just a lot of one-on-one lobbying, and just persistence, and talking about it, and in human-scale terms. I think it’s easy for people to think about this as an issue on a spreadsheet or in a pile of paperwork. But to really put it in human scale, one of the middle schools my son could have gone to is now closed, bus routes consolidating. Friends from daycare, their older kids and their jobs too. It’s been really painful back home.
Miller: But it wasn’t just you. As I noted, a group of bipartisan senators, including Oregon’s Democrat Ron Wyden and Idaho Republican Mike Crapo, supported and successfully passed the reauthorization of this program a number of times. And then when they would do so, the bill would go nowhere in the House. And then it was super fast tracked just in the last week and passed overwhelmingly yesterday. Do you know what changed?
Glusenkamp Perez: Well, one challenge was, during the shutdown, the House was not in session. So during that time, I was talking to my colleagues, making phone calls and just really saying this cannot wait any longer.
Miller: But that’s the most recent time. Before that, it was a couple times when it passed and then it went nowhere in the House. So it seems like the shutdown alone doesn’t explain it. For the life of me, I don’t understand what has changed politically to make it pass now.
Glusenkamp Perez: Well, I think a lot of Americans are experiencing really tight budgets and everybody’s trying to make things stretch further, and that goes for our public schools. I’ve worked pretty diligently to be an independent representative here and say I think that does help with elevating this as genuinely in the interest. We cannot let partisanship overrule our loyalty and our duty to our constituents. So raising it all the time, demonstrating independence, continuing to lobby for this with my colleagues.
But I think it is also perhaps in response to the recognition that our schools, our families are hurting right now.
Miller: Do you know when schools will actually get money from this reauthorization?
Glusenkamp Perez: So for your listeners who didn’t follow along with the whole saga, it was the House passed it with HB 1, the Senate parliamentarians stripped it out, the Senate passed their own standalone, and then that’s the waiting and the lobbying here back in the House to get it pushed back up as a standalone. I know that it’s on its way the president’s desk to be signed. It takes time, but I do know they will retroactively get their payments ...
Miller: For the years 2024 and 2025, and then one more year, 2026?
Glusenkamp Perez: Yeah.
Miller: I want to turn to some other issues while we have you on the line. Last Thursday, bystander cell phone video, captured during the arrest of a man in Vancouver, appears to show the man’s foot being run over by an ICE agent’s vehicle. The Vancouver Police Department says that they’ve opened an investigation. Meanwhile, Senator Patty Murray of Washington said that last month, another man in Vancouver was mauled by an ICE agent’s attack dog during his arrest, even though she says he wasn’t resisting or attempting to flee.
What’s your reaction to these two cases?
Glusenkamp Perez: Nobody wants to see anyone get hurt. This is really horrifying. And I think, especially on the back end of National Guard being assassinated in DC, the temperature is just going up and up and up. It should not be a partisan or a political concept that following the orders of law enforcement, doesn’t matter who you are, you should follow those. We want law enforcement that’s operating under correct law and order. Those things go both ways.
Miller: What have you heard personally about how ICE enforcement is impacting people in your district?
Glusenkamp Perez: Well, it’s varied. I know that nationally we have one of the lowest rates of action in Washington state. But I also know that for families who are impacted by this, you have a better chance of good representation if you are closer to home. And so closing down facilities can sometimes have adverse effects on families who are impacted because having somebody close, knowing where they are, that’s really important.
As a federal legislator, one of my most powerful tools is when I am directly working for constituents. So my team has been really persistent, when we hear about any kind of enforcement, contacting families two, three, four times, saying if they sign a privacy release, I can start digging. So far, my office has not gotten any privacy release forms to pursue these, but we’ve been persistent in making sure people know that we’re available as a resource.
Miller: You were critical of the way Joe Biden handled immigration policy. You pushed for, among other things, more funding for border patrol in the last couple of years of his administration. Just to ask it simply and broadly, what do you think of the current administration’s approach?
Glusenkamp Perez: Well, I think what we all want is a flywheel. It feels like things jerk back and forth so hard. What we want is a system of law and order, and knowing who and what is coming in. I think it’s been really understated how impacted especially working class families have been by fentanyl trafficking and distribution, and human trafficking. Nobody wants to see a system advanced where through inaction, human smugglers have a more lucrative clientele. That is horrifying.
But at the same side, what makes this country so strong is that we are a place where we have law and order. So we can’t be forced, we should not be forced into a false choice between having secure borders and having a system of law and order.
Miller: I didn’t hear you say too much there specifically about what the Trump administration has been doing and what many of your colleagues have been criticizing the administration for.
Glusenkamp Perez: Well, in my conversations with law enforcement, it does not help bring the temperature down to have this become a giant national federalizing. That’s not helpful to law enforcement here.
Miller: You mean, for example, having federalized national troops in American cities?
Glusenkamp Perez: Well, specifically, I’m talking to my law enforcement. And that hasn’t been under discussion here, but given what’s going on in Portland, we had some of those conversations and they’re like “we don’t need the temperatures to go up any higher because it increases officer risk and it’s not productive.”
Miller: You’re one of just six Democrats in the House who voted for the Republican measure to reopen the federal government after the recent record-breaking shutdown. It’s been about a month now, so some time for hindsight. What most stands out to you now about that time?
Glusenkamp Perez: So, for my friends who rely on assistance like SNAP, it was really, really scary for federal employees in my district. One thing that I think is not acknowledged enough is that executive power during a shutdown is profound and it was established during the Carter administration. I don’t see the current administration giving a lot of weight to precedents set during the Carter administration. So the risk of entering a shutdown and handing even more power … I think our system relies on a balance of power between the House, Senate, Executive. Congress should not be abdicating more power to the executive, so that was a real concern.
It was also very troubling to see it sort of shifting from a discussion about legislative priorities and what is good for the country, to a messaging war of who’s winning the shutdown. Maybe a partisan organization wins a shutdown, maybe. But it’s the American people that lose. And I didn’t get paid during the shutdown, and we’re fortunate, but it’s still stressful to not know where next month’s payment’s coming from. I think it should trouble all of us that this lever is so easily pulled to enter a shutdown and puts so much at risk. We want stability in this country, we want negotiations, not messaging wars.
Miller: I want to turn to the policy question that, if there was a central policy question that stayed consistent over time, it was about whether or not a funding deal had to be tied to an extension of tax credits for people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act markets. State officials in Washington have said that an estimated 80,000 Washingtonians will lose their health insurance if these ACA tax credits are not renewed. What would that mean for people in your district?
Glusenkamp Perez: Health insurance is a really important safety and security, and people rely on that. It can make it easier to sleep at night, for sure.
But I also think that we spend so much time sort of talking about subsidizing the negative externalities of poor national health. And I think about what can we actually do on the front end of that to increase national health? Like when you look at things like PBM reforms, like there’s an estimated 180 million Americans who are impacted by this system.
Miller: These are pharmacy benefit managers?
Glusenkamp Perez: Right, they go between your insurance and the pharmacy and the hospitals, who’s the prescriber. So when I fill my prescriptions at a local pharmacy that’s independently owned in Stevenson, it costs me $28. If I have to fill those prescriptions in DC at the PBM-managed pharmacy, it’s $330. And a lot of people don’t have that point of comparison to say how much money this is actually sucking out of a household budget.
So I think, yes, it’s important that we have health insurance. We also should be thinking about all of the measures that we can take to also increase national health through things like food security and farming practice, and just having more time with our family to cook and sleep. But also, the sort of nickel and diming of everything in between that has made us one of the highest spending countries on our health system.
Miller: I appreciate your effort here to sort of show just how complicated and multifactorial American health care is. But there is this current, urgent question about whether or not millions of Americans will be able to afford this health insurance the way they have been. And that’s a current question for you and other members of Congress right now. Republicans just released this counterproposal that, instead of extending the tax credits, would put federal money into savings accounts and then people could use that money for high deductible plans. Will you vote for that, or do you prefer the Democratic proposal?
Glusenkamp Perez: I am happy to work across the aisle. I’m on several of those bills and discharge petitions on extending those subsidies, and I’m not here to make perfect enemy of good. It’s also figuring out what is the most likely path to success, and that’s one of the reasons that I am on many of these bills, because what I’ve heard is that it’s about just getting numbers in the House to help the Senate move and take this seriously.
Some of the discussions on the ACA, there’s all these questions about what the household income caps will be. I think, right now, they grade at it like $400,000-$500,000 household income. Some of the Republican proposals include limiting the eligibility standards to household income of $250,000-$300,000. So there’s a lot of dials to turn here. But I think again, my sentiment is just that people need to have access to insurance.
Miller: Marie Glusenkamp Perez, thanks very much for your time.
Glusenkamp Perez: Thank you, Dave.
Miller: Marie Glusenkamp Perez is a Democratic Representative from Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.
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