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From local leaders and hometown heroes to breaking stories and in-depth conversations, the KMAS Podcast brings you the voices that matter in Mason County, Washington. Hosted by longtime broadcaster Jeff Slakey, each episode dives into what’s happening around the Hood Canal—government, education, small business, the outdoors, and everything in between.
New episodes drop throughout the week, featuring interviews, community spotlights, and extended versions of the stories you hear on the air at KMAS.
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Well, I have the pleasure of talking with our congressional delegate from the Sixth District here in the great state of Washington, Emily Randall. How are you, Congresswoman? You know, I'm doing pretty well, Jeff. I'm happy to join you today.
And also, you know, glad to be back to work for the American people here in our nation's capital. Yeah. So late Wednesday night, you voted along with your fellow colleagues in the House, and the vote was to reopen the government.
You voted no on this. We'll get to that in a second. But it's been 44 days, and it has been quite the impact across the whole country, the whole world, really, as we're trying to figure this whole thing out.
The Sixth District is so diverse with different economic pockets, with the base there in Bremerton, and we've got all the logging history across Jefferson and Mason. What, as you spent most of your time in D.C., but some of the time here, or just hearing from the constituents, what was the overarching message you heard? Yeah, I heard almost exclusively from neighbors about affordability, you know, whether they were furloughed or working without pay as essential workers for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard or, you know, any of the other federal workers. We've got 27,000 in the Sixth Congressional District.
You know, folks were worried about how they were going to feed their families. Some people, you know, veterans who have been through many a shutdown had money set aside, but, you know, newer workers or families with a lot of, you know, expenses, a lot of kids, you know, parents to take care of, they were struggling. And our food banks really stepped up to make more hours available and to, you know, raise more supplies to be able to deliver to these workers, but they were worried about affordability.
But so too were the tens of thousands of Washingtonians who are seeing their healthcare prices spike. They've been getting their notices, you know, going into open enrollment and seeing doubling, tripling of their healthcare premiums and are worried about how they're going to pay it. And if they decide they can't pay it, they're worried about how they're going to pay their prescription costs and surprise healthcare expenses.
Like our families all across the country are struggling with the cost of living. They were promised by this president during his campaign that he would tackle the cost of living and affordability and make it easier on folks. And that has not been the reality in the Sixth District or anywhere in our nation.
And, you know, I got into politics because I believe that everyone deserves access to healthcare when and where they need it. My federal worker dad had good insurance, but my sister relied on Medicaid to pay for everything she needed. And I just couldn't stand by when so many of our neighbors were going to be forced off their healthcare plans because of the decisions of this Republican Congress and this president.
When I saw videos of families standing at food banks across the country and especially seeing families on like military bases and things like that, it was really impactful because they're still doing the job. You know, you would see online, two people would maybe post their pay stubs that there were air traffic controllers, for example, working well over 40, 60 hours a week, but the pay it's at zero. And while, you know, hopefully retroactively they'll get that reimbursements from the work they had done.
It doesn't help during those 45 days when you have mortgage payments and car payments plus weekly groceries and things like that. I saw on your website, randall.house.gov that you have plenty of resources there and kind of a frequently asked question section. But for a lot of folks, it's kind of a gray area when you are trying to figure out, well, what's open, what's not open.
One of the things that I didn't really even think about until I read it on your page was small business loans and the help and support that is out there that was not available during this. I mean, that is another huge part of the Sixth District. Absolutely.
We have so many small business owners who, you know, are seeing their costs rise too. But I'll also say that I heard from the most small business owners who also buy their health care on the exchange. Small business owners who don't have employer-sponsored health coverage, who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but relied on the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium subsidies and the tax credits to be able to afford health coverage for themselves, for their families, kids, parents, spouses.
You know, I had a woman in my office week before last who owns a flower shop and is trying to grow her business, trying to buy a building so that she can increase her revenue and not be just making it. But not because of the shutdown. She didn't qualify for a loan to buy the building because they only use your gross receipts for a small business loan.
And, you know, she doesn't have a high margin business. She has the ability to back that loan, but, you know, she didn't have the flexibility. But what she was most worried about was the fact that she couldn't figure out how she was going to pay the extra thousands of dollars a year for her health coverage under the increase that she was going to see and how her fellow business owners in her community were going to be able to afford that increase too.
How are you going to be able to share those types of stories of these new business owners, these young families that need this support when there was in the Senate a promise of a potential vote for these extended subsidies, but then we heard pretty much right away from Speaker Johnson that might not happen. So what are you going to do to try to convince, well, I guess, 217 of your fellow members to get in on supporting these opportunities because it's good across both sides of the aisle? Absolutely. You know, I was really, I think, moved by the conversations in the Rules Committee on Tuesday night.
There was a big increase in coverage of Rules Committee, so I think some of our neighbors may have been following along too, in which, you know, Chip Roy and other Republicans talked about the challenges facing our healthcare system in, you know, a really raw way. I think all of my colleagues know or should know that their neighbors are facing challenges affording healthcare, accessing healthcare because rural hospitals are closing all across the country, and those that aren't closing, like in our district, are really, you know, having to make tough decisions about departments staying open or closing, about staffing, about all sorts of things. I mean, it is hard for everyone, no matter red or blue, your representative, to afford healthcare access.
And, you know, I mean, Chip Roy's speech in the Rules Committee sounded like a call for, like, single-payer healthcare. It was so radical. So I do think there's space for us to have bipartisan conversations.
I don't trust the Republicans to bring forth a plan on healthcare because they have been saying they would have a plan in two weeks for over a decade and have not produced one. I don't believe that the first step should be to demolish our healthcare system and then try to rebuild it. I think we should keep people insured and keep people able to access healthcare while we work to fix it.
That's why I led the Universal Healthcare Commission legislation at the state level. That's why I worked so hard on Washington's healthcare system before I came to Congress, because I believe it's our responsibility to make sure folks have access to healthcare even as we improve the system. So the government has reopened, but it's not just like a light switch where all of a sudden everything is going to start working.
I'm interested, on your way back into town this week, you came in a little early, you mentioned, before we started this. Did you see any of the impacts of the shutdown, I'm presuming through CTAC, when you flew out? I was a little worried. That's part of the reason I left Tuesday morning instead of Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning to get here in time for votes.
I didn't want to let a delay keep me from my constitutional duty. But I will say that the CTAC was operating pretty seamlessly. The lines were longer.
Sure. But I'm really impressed by the work that the Port of Seattle commissioners have been doing to try and help support TSA agents and airport staff during the shutdown, even as the White House directed airports to ratchet down their flights. I think CTAC didn't just flip a switch to go to 10% deduction, they like slowly lowered.
I had to walk down to security gate checkpoint one instead of five, which is my goal. But it went pretty fast for me and my fellow travelers. Yeah, that's very good.
And they're always, you know, working there to try to increase the time it takes to go through. And yeah, you know, it's a pretty good airport, great hub for the port and for the state. What are some of the things over your time that you've taken from when you were in the state senate to DC to shine the light on how you think some of the Washington, some of our Washington policies could make for good DC policies? Yeah.
You know, one of the things that I think about the most often is how bipartisan our Washington state was during my time in Olympia. You know, 93, 95, 97, it changed every year. Percent of the bills that we passed had bipartisan support.
And as a member of leadership in the Senate, you know, we met every week with the Republican caucus leadership to talk about what was coming up before the floor, what policies we could get folks from our caucuses to work together on, how we might find a path forward. And I miss that. I miss that feeling that we were really aligned as a legislative body, not always in agreement on policy, obviously.
You know, there are some issues, you know, of LGBTQ rights and abortion care access that are going to be partisan, going to continue to be partisan. But on the meat and potatoes of the legislature, we were able to find a path to work together more often than not. And even in the capital budget negotiations, you know, when the state had a 60 vote threshold to pass the capital budget, Democratic budget writers worked with Republican budget writers to make sure that we were aligned and had the votes.
And I thought about that so much during the shutdown, as we would see vote after vote after vote that couldn't hit that 60 vote threshold. And I thought, I mean, who was in the room when you decided that this was the path forward? Do you know how to count votes? But so that spirit of working together, I think, is important for our country. It's also important that we remember that the legislative branch is separate and independent from the executive branch.
And I introduced in Emergency Powers, you know, check and balance bill during Governor Inslee's term following COVID, because we had seen, you know, have really overreach and his executive authority in Washington be out of step with the rest of the country in where we set our limits. And, you know, and in my time, we also sued the governor twice as the legislature because he had overstepped his veto authority. And to think about like that reality, as compared with the reality in which members of the Republican House Conference say in committee that it is their job to carry out the priorities of this president.
And that President Trump says he's got two jobs, the President and Speaker of the House. The lines are so blurred that it feels like our Constitution is under constant attack. And, you know, I think the American people, whether they identify as Republicans or Democrats or independents or, you know, no party identification, they deserve a Constitution that is upheld and separate branches of government that are co-equal.
I was just thinking about this as we're kind of waiting to see what the Supreme Court says about the tariffs and how a lot of folks are thinking about this as what the president has done with his tariffs is essentially kind of taking away the House's role, the power of the purse, the Article 1 stuff. You know, you do the money, they sign the bills or the laws and things like that. And when it comes to that blur, well, I mean, how concerned are you about the precedent that this is setting as we move just through the end of this first year of of his term here? Yeah, I'm I'm very concerned.
And I mean, my neighbors are too. We get so many letters and calls from folks who, you know, decry what is happening as authoritarianism, who feel like anxious about the future of our democracy. What kind of country will there be for their children? And, you know, I think the American people said loud and clear last Tuesday that they want a different kind of leadership in elections all across the country.
And we will see if that is still the feeling next fall, a year from now. And, you know, if Democrats have the gavels in 2027, at least in the House, we will be able to be a much more meaningful check and balance on this administration. And, yeah, I look forward to committee hearings in which we don't say that we are here to carry out the wishes of the president, but we show that we are here to act in the best interest of the American people.
The shutdown has just ended after a record setting 44 days of the 10 districts here in the state. Three voted yes, two from the Republican side and one from the Democratic side, a counterpart down in the Lewis County area, Congresswoman Gluzenkamp-Perez. What can you share with the voters here in the six as we wrap things up on your no vote and what that means to you for them? Yeah, I was very clear and aligned with the messages that I got from so many of my neighbors that my job was to fight to maintain health care access, to cancel the terrible cuts that the Republicans had made in H.R. 1 that decimated our Medicaid program, that preserve the Affordable Care Act tax credits that American people, including so many in the 6th Congressional District, rely on to afford their health care.
Republicans made the billionaire tax credits permanent in July when they called us back from recess, but this seemed to be a bridge too far for them. And to make life more affordable. And nothing in this bill, in this budget deal, did that.
In fact, we didn't talk about this, but one of the things that was included in the Senate language that was sent over was guaranteed eight million dollars in payouts to eight Republican senators who were subpoenaed over their involvement in the January 6th insurrection. And I saw that and I saw Senator Graham quickly said, I'm I'm cashing in on that one. I'm going to see how that works.
Yes, this is. And, you know, we talked about it in rules. Like, could we amend it out? The Republicans were equally furious by this inclusion, maybe because it didn't include House members.
I don't know. But they refused to amend it out and send it back. I don't know, thinking that maybe the senators wouldn't.
Wouldn't vote, in which case is it a bribe? I don't know. But like that kind of self-dealing is not what my constituents sent me to Washington, D.C. to support. So for that, for its inability to save health care, I had to vote no.
And I'm grateful that our federal workers are going to be paid. I'm grateful that my staff, who's been working without pay, will be paid. I'm grateful that the government will be reopened and folks will be able to depend on other services.
But the fight for our health care is not over. And I'm proud to continue alongside so many advocates across the country. The website is randall.house.gov. I'll put that in the link so you can connect with Congresswoman Randall directly on any issues that you may have here in the 6th District.
I appreciate some time today. It was really nice talking with you. And I look forward to doing it more here to keep voters updated in the 6th.
And now I guess you got to get back to work now. Yes. Back to meetings.
And I have a few other interviews today. But so glad to spend some time with you. Yeah.
Thank you. Have a good one. You too.