U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich stopped by the KRWG Public Media studios recently to talk about many issues. The Democratic senator talked with Anthony Moreno about housing issues, water concerns, gun violence, border infrastructure, fires, and other issues facing the country.
Transcript:
Anthony Moreno: Joining us is Democratic U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich to discuss some issues facing New Mexico and the U.S.. Senator, Thanks for joining us.
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: It's always great to be here.
Anthony Moreno: Housing concerns are major issue in New Mexico and across the country. I'd like to hear from you. How do you feel this can be addressed at the federal level?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Couple of different approaches, in fact we're working on legislation right now, that would create a a sort of a new market tax credits kind of approach to supporting the development of new housing specifically for low and moderate income. I also think that, you know, one of the things I realized when I took over as Chair of of the Agriculture Subcommittee of Appropriations is that there were opportunities to actually support affordable housing directly through the USDA and I think we need to increase and grow those as well.
Anthony Moreno: So, what other steps do you think can be done at the federal level to make housing markets more fair and transparent?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Transparency is one of the things we're looking at and one of the things that I found really interesting is I chair the Joint Economic Committee and oftentimes we'll convene a hearing and you'll have different points of view in different parts of the political spectrum and I chaired a hearing on housing recently and one of the things I heard across the board was the need for zoning reform, and that's not something I can necessarily do at the federal level, but it's something I can certainly support, and it was think tanks and actual affordable housing builders across the spectrum saying if we could build duplexes and triplexes or accessory quarters on these R1 lots, we could dramatically increase the supply of affordable housing right away and take some of the pressure off. That is driving the rents and the mortgage prices that we're seeing right now.
Anthony Moreno: I want to move on and talk about another issue that's so important to all of us in New Mexico; water. Your office announced $60 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to aid Doña Ana County and Sierra County residents and farmers with drought mitigation and climate adaption efforts, can you tell us exactly how soon this could possibly help?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: It'll be moving in the course of the next months and year it is largely dollars that will go towards specific projects that yield real water, in other words efficiency projects where instead of losing water to seepage to evaporation that we're able to recapture that water and sort of balance the supply and demand mismatch that we have right now which is impacting everything from agriculture to municipalities to everyone who relies on that water industry as well.
Anthony Moreno: Do you think there's enough awareness at the federal level to really address this pressing issue?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Not enough if you look at the entirety of, say, the US Senate, but there is a whole group of us from the West, Republicans and Democrats who've been meeting for several years now seeing this coming. And it started, you know, the Colorado River got alot of attention nationally, which did educate some of my colleagues. One of the things that I've really focused on is making sure as there is that attention on the Colorado River, which is absolutely appropriate, that we don't forget about the Rio Grande base and the Pecos, the other rivers that we have in New Mexico and that we share with our neighbors.
Anthony Moreno: Contamination of water sources also a big concern for many in our area. You recently pressed the head of NASA about this issue to compensate New Mexico for White Sands Test Facility’s groundwater contamination. Do you see this getting addressed anytime soon?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Well, I do. I don't know precisely what the timeline is going to be on that project, but I used to actually do that work at the state with when I was the state’s natural resources trustee and so I know how this dynamic works, where the two sides are oftentimes need a little nudge from. Other directions from state leaders from national elected leaders to get those final negotiations to something that's actually meaningful for the state and that's why I was pushing the NASA Commissioner is because it a little attention from him, will go a long way towards getting both sides to agree to what the compensation is going to look like and then we get that on the ground and put it to work.
Anthony Moreno: We've also seen some concern in the southern part of Doña Ana County in Sunland Park, Santa Teresa with the high levels of arsenic and the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority has faced a lot of criticism, of course. But what about the federal level? What do you see lawmakers like you at that level, being able to help in a situation like?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: There are a number of grant programs, for example, that support local water utilities, both municipal and then also some of the mutual domestic and those are programs that are incredibly important, especially when you make a step change from treating water one way and then realizing that you have an arsenic problem, you have to increase the level of treatment and investing in some of those through those grants allows these on the ground, local water utilities and mutual domestics to be able to meet what we know is the right way to treat our public health.
Anthony Moreno: As I mentioned, the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, you rolled your eyes. Why is that?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Because, we've had challenges there that just should not exist.
Anthony Moreno: What are some of those challenges?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: You know, it's something that my staff has been involved with for a long time and we need to have confidence in all of our water utilities. It's such a basic thing and if you don't have transparency and if you don't have confidence that what they're telling you as a customer, and as the person who's actually consuming that water is completely accurate, then you know everything breaks down. So, that's kind of my approach to governance generally is have transparency, be honest with your constituents and when there are problems, recognize those problems, pull people together and work to solve them.
Anthony Moreno: This is a problem that's been going on since pretty much the creation of CRRUA so I want to hear from you, from somebody who's operating at a federal level. What do you see happening there and what are some of the breakdowns that could have been avoided?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Well, one I mean, it goes back to that issue of transparency, because we need confidence in those entities, and we need leadership in those entities that's going to take responsibility and that allows you to move forward.
Anthony Moreno: Gun violence...many communities in the US are dealing with that issue. I want to move on to this issue because we got a number of topics we want to talk with you about. You've introduced the GOSAFE (Gas-Operated Semi-Automatic Firearms Exclusion) Act that aims to regulate the sale, transfer and manufacture of gas-operated semi-automatic firearms.
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: That's what other people would call assault rifles.
Anthony Moreno: Exactly, so I want to hear from you. How do you really feel this can make a difference?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: First, I want to take a step back and talk about legislation that I was actually able to get signed into law that also impacts this gun violence issue, which is historically gun trafficking was something we legislated around at the federal level, thinking that the problem was going to be guns coming into the United States. For the last several decades, the problem has largely been American firearms being trafficked to our neighbors, destabilizing the governments in those places, feeding the violence with cartels, and so in the last Congress, I was able to work with my Republican colleagues to really give new tools for law enforcement, to be able to prosecute gun trafficking, I think that's a really important issue, especially with respect to the southern border. On the issue of GOSAFE, in looking really deeply at a number of these shootings, and I started digging into this after the Las Vegas shooting, which was so horrendous, and I just felt like as somebody who for my whole life has been around guns, owns guns, is a firearms owner, that I had to take responsibility and come up with something that addressed some of the issues, but also was workable and within the context of what you can do with the Supreme Court rulings that we've had. What GOSAFE does is it limits the number of rounds in a magazine that is attached permanently to what most people would call an assault rifle. Most of these horrendous mass shootings come to an end when there is a gap in time where the shooter has to reload or change something and takes a pause. That's when law enforcement rushes in that's when volunteers sometimes rush in, and what GOSAFE would do is say you can still have these firearms, but they can only hold 10 rounds, and at the end of that 10 rounds, you're going to have to sit there and manually reload that from the top that gives law enforcement a moment to be able to intervene, and it really constrains the scale of the carnage that we've seen in some of these shootings.
Anthony Moreno: We've seen gun violence and, you know, happen just in about every type of community that we have in the U.S., so are there any other conversations happening at the federal level to address this issue besides regulating firearms?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: One of the things that I think needs to happen, and this is just from my perspective of somebody who grew up in a small rural community in the midst of a a of gun culture back in the 1970s and 1980s, is at that time there was really a culture of responsibility, and it was from the time I was in fourth or fifth grade and took hunter safety to what I heard from my family members to what I heard from my friends, fathers and uncles, gun safety and being a responsible firearm owner was really central and somewhere along the way, I think we allowed the incredible industry that grew up around that to create a culture of permissiveness where it's all about the freedoms, but you kind of forget about the responsibilities, if we could recreate some of that responsibility culture, it would go a long way towards, I think some of the ridiculous firearms behavior that we've seen in recent years.
Anthony Moreno: Do you think we're even at a point right now where we can have a serious conversation about guns in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: No, we are and in fact, the bipartisan Safer Communities Act that I helped negotiate a couple of years ago, we did that with Republican support, and it was the first time in 30 years we were able to do a meaningful bill on gun safety, and it it happened because of the Uvalde shooting, and a number of my Republican colleagues looked at that and said we have to do something. So what can we do? And we spent a long time negotiating and we were able to do some very meaningful things, both in terms of regulating firearms activity, giving law enforcement new tools to prosecute, and also giving schools mental health tools to be able to make sure that when you have someone who is losing touch with their community that you have the tools to be able to intervene before you get to the point of a of a mass shooting.
Anthony Moreno: I want to move on and talk about another issue that I know is very important to you and important to a lot of folks in our area and that's border infrastructure. You've been very vocal about the need to upgrade the Santa Teresa Port of Entry. How close are we now to seeing that being a reality?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: I think we turned a corner once we were able to fund the study that came back recently and said absolutely this is the right place to expand border infrastructure, to expand the number of lanes, and to do it in a twenty-first century way where we can really increase our security at the same time as we're increasing our economic activity that creates buy in Washington, D.C, it creates buy in with CBP. So, I see this now as we have, we've turned a corner, everyone agrees this is something we need to do. We all just have to work together to make sure that we fund it.
Anthony Moreno: Alright, now with that enhanced port of entry, how do you think that could possibly lead to an economic boom here in our region?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Oh my goodness, it is that it is one of the few places that is not already constrained by existing development, so we could see a real expansion of manufacturing. I mean, I was talking to someone looking for a new manufacturing site for some advanced electronics that are related to home energy use, and they had looked at Santa Teresa and said oh my gosh, this looks like a place we have to evaluate. If we build that, they will come. There will be additional economic activity on both sides of the border. It will be at scale and it is a real opportunity for the State of New Mexico to grow its economy and increase public safety.
Anthony Moreno: I want to move on and talk about wildfires in our state. Bonito Lake here in southern New Mexico recently opened up after a decade of remediation after the Little Bear fire.
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Right.
Anthony Moreno: As we talk, a number of communities in our area are dealing with fires. What can be done and what hasn't been done yet at the federal level to help communities face the ripple effects of these disasters?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Couple of things there. One is that we were able to really make a difference in the scale of funding for watershed treatments in the last Congress where we put money both through the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act into the kind of treatments that really make a difference and the fire behavior on the ground, we know how to treat for us to make that fire behavior manageable versus catastrophic, and the two are incredibly, they couldn't be more different. I've been on the ground in fires multiple times where a treatment had happened before, or there had been fire on the ground before, and the behavior of fire in that situation is manageable and it's burning the small ladder fuels, the fine fuels, and it's leaving the big old trees intact. Then you look at what happens when you have an overstocked forest that hasn't had those kinds of treatments, isn't it a shape where you could even introduce prescribed fire and you see this extreme fire behavior that takes decades if not longer to recover from, we need to be able to do those treatments at scale, and we also need a FEMA that is responsive to the fact that these are different emergencies than what they've historically dealt with. They kind of grew up as an agency dealing with tornadoes and dealing with hurricanes and those emergencies are one point in time typically. With these fires you have the fire and that's an emergency, and then you have the floods that come again and again. We need to build a better FEMA and that is something that I'm going to continue to push for as long as I'm in the U.S. Senate.
Anthony Moreno: You sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee. I'd like to talk with you in this election year. What do you feel (that you can share with us) are the biggest foreign threats facing the U.S. in this election?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: We've seen for a number of years now that if you look around at our biggest competitors and certainly countries like Russia and China that that view us in a very adversarial way. They will look for opportunities to divide Americans because the more we are divided, the less we can focus on it as a leadership role in the world. I saw actual ads that were run in 2016 because I said on that committee that were paid for not by U.S. dollars, that were paid for by outsiders, and they were specifically to divide Americans around the most divisive issues. We need to be aware as a culture that there are those who like us to fight each other so that we won't be standing up to them. And I think it's a good lesson that we need to turn the temperature down on our politics and focus on what we can agree on and how we can make this a stronger country by working together instead of always just retreating to our corners and fighting over our politics.
Anthony Moreno: You mentioned Russia as being an adversary to the US. Of course, there's a lot of concern about what's happening with Russia and Ukraine. There's a big debate going on in the US as well, with supporting Ukraine, there's been different perspectives that have really taken different areas, like to hear from you. Where you stand on that issue?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Ukraine is the sovereign nation and we need to respect that and support that and the fact that they are willing to stand up to their neighbor as an aggressor who has multiple times done this before. You cannot have a workable order in the western world if you have certain nations that do not respect their neighbor’s sovereignty. So, I think the support that we have showed for Ukraine is incredibly well placed and I'm just grateful to their tenacity. I mean, I had briefings where there were people who thought that Kiev would fall in days of an invasion, and here we are, months and months, and months later. If you don't say no at Ukraine, then you're at Poland. Poland's a NATO country. We have a treaty responsibility to send American kids to defend Poland. Ukraine is the right place to support their ability to stand up, and stand up to the aggression that we've seen from Putin and from Russia.
Anthony Moreno: Another big concern of course for many, is seeing the violence in the Middle East and concern for that growing into a larger war in the region. I know you have been vocal and voiced concerns to the Biden administration about arms deals and sales to Israel. Can you share with us a little bit about where you stand on that conflict?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Sure, you bet.
Anthony Moreno: And what you think needs to be really addressed and also taking into account the humanitarian concerns?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: For starters, Israel has a right to defend itself against the terrorist group like Hamas. They also have a responsibility to do what I've seen our armed forces do time and again in places like Afghanistan, where you minimize impacts to innocent civilians, and that's the rub, is the challenge is you have to be very targeted when you're operating in areas with civilians and that's been the frustration as we've seen some of these strikes that were fatal for many civilians that had nothing to do with Hamas. That's why this is such a challenging issue. I think generally we have to be in a position where we're trying to deescalate this on every opportunity we get where we're working to see the hostages returned, where we're working to see a durable ceasefire, and all of those things are connected. They're not disconnected from one another, and they're not all entirely within our control, but that is what we should be pressing for.
Anthony Moreno: Some have called for the U.S. to recognize Palestine as a state where do you stand on that?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: I think that should be a long-term goal. We have to a government there that can serve the Palestinian people. Hamas is not that. Hamas is a terrorist organization. So, you have to figure out as you work towards a two-state solution which I absolutely continue to support, I think is really important for the security of the entire region long term. You have to have some idea of what that governance looks like and how it's going to serve the people. That is where we could really use a lot of help from our regional allies who have the status to be able to step up and help in places like Gaza to create some stability and build towards actual governance.
Anthony Moreno: OK, my final question for you. I'd like to get your thoughts on this. We had some big news recently. A jury of his peers in New York unanimously found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to influence the 2016 presidential election. The former President, of course, running again for that office. What are your takeaways from this?
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: You know, I did not watch the details of that trial and certainly any one of us has to be held accountable if we commit a crime. What I will say about Donald Trump is I saw first hand how law enforcement officers at the Capitol on January 6th were attacked and beaten and bludgeoned because of his incitement, and that to me, more than whatever he may have done in New York State, and certainly I commend the jury for being willing to sit, and like it can't be easy to go through a trial like that when the whole world is looking. But what he did on January 6th, that to me, says he is not fit to ever set foot in the White House again. We have to have respect for the very foundations of our democracy, and that means that people have to be willing to lose as well as win, and not throw out 240 years of progress towards a better democracy simply because the math didn't add up in your favor.
Anthony Moreno: U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, thank you so much for joining us.
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich: Thank you.
This interview was taped on May 31st, 2024 in the KRWG-FM studios.
