By Sarah Hall
Editor
Rep. John Katko has a bone to pick with the media—but it might not be the one you think it is.
“My frustration now is it’s pretty hard to get out things, like I had two bills pass this week, because everything is so focused on the president, and the controversy,” Katko said. “There were nine articles in The Post-Standard about the president’s executive order, and zero articles about [any of that]. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.”
Katko said while the local and national media focused on President Donald J. Trump’s executive order calling for a travel ban from seven countries in the Middle East, as well as the addition of former Breitbart executive chair Steve Bannon to the National Security Council, the men and women in Congress were going about the business of keeping the country running. Two of his bills were passed in the House of Representatives this week: The Fort Ontario Study Act, which commissions a study of Fort Ontario and Safe Haven in Oswego County to determine the site’s historical significance and its viability as a national park, and the Counterterrorism Advisory Board Act. The bill establishes a Counterterrorism Advisory Board (CTAB) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to coordinate and integrate departmental intelligence, activities and policy related to counterterrorism.
Katko said bills like these are why he’s in Washington.
“It’s important because it’s my job,” he said. “My job is supposed to help my constituents from New York, and it’s not just to react whenever anything a president does. My job is to take care of my constituents.”
While he would prefer that local media focus on legislation that impacts the area, Katko did acknowledge that there has been concerning news coming out of the White House. He pointed to the travel ban, which was written without consulting the Department of Homeland Security and passed by executive order.
“The fact that he’s not necessarily working with Congress, not working with the people that they’re supposed to be working with? That so much seems to be coming from the White House, as opposed to Congress… I definitely have concerns about that,” Katko said. “I’ve had concerns about that from the moment I came to Congress, because this is how Barack Obama legislated. He pretty much ignored working with Congress, and did so much by executive order, and this president is taking a cue from him. To me, I think that’s a problem that’s a concern moving forward.”
Katko said Congress hopes to put a stop to similar actions with the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, a measure first passed by the Republican House in July of 2016. The bill limits the executive branch’s ability to take action without congressional approval. While the bill was rejected by the Senate last year, the House has reintroduced it this session.
“I think we need to get more balance back between the legislative and executive branches,” Katko said. “I think to a large extent, this act is going to help do that. There’s a trend that started several presidents ago where they basically, if they didn’t get what they wanted from Congress, legislatively they would just start issuing executive orders. It got really out of control with the Obama administration. I think the REINS Act is going to help bring that in.”
In addition to the REINS Act, Katko said there are a number of other pieces of legislation coming up in this session he’s looking forward to passing.
“We’ve got a bill that’s going to be released on Monday [Feb. 6], and I’m very excited about it,” he said. “We did a very detailed examination of airports nationwide and found a lot of security gaps with respect to employees. Scary security gaps. You get 10 times more scrutiny going through an airport as a traveler than you do as an employee, and that’s pretty frightening. This is designed to fix that problem.”
Katko said other priorities include paid family leave, addressing the area’s heroin epidemic and the reconstruction of I-81.
He also said he has yet to see anything that looks like a viable replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
“You hear a lot of discussions from my colleagues in congress, but so far, I haven’t seen anything that satisfies me, that we have a suitable replacement, if in fact repeal is the way they’re going to go,” he said. “That being said, I’m going to hold tight until I actually see a real replacement. If there’s not a real replacement I’m going to stand tall.”
