Local Voices

The Lives Affecting Wausaus Past

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Dave Obey
Dave grew up in Wausau and graduated from Wausau East
High School. He was elected to Congress in 1969 to represent
the
7th Congressional District.

What position do you now occupy in Congress?

I am a member of Congress, the 7th Congressional District of Wisconsin.

Were you elected or appointed?

You can t be appointed to the House of Representatives. The only way you can get
be elected. You can be appointed to the Senate, you can be appointed Vice Presid
Jerry Ford was, but you have to be elected to get into the House.

What are your campaigns like?

Well, they vary. I ve had a lot of them. The last time was the first time in all
that I didn t have a Republican opponent. I had two third party opponents, but
Republican opponent. Basically, my campaigns, I guess you can talk about them
?
in
els: the main campaign is just going from county to county, going down Main Stre
to people, letting them chew on you, rallying the troops, speaking if they
? are
men or candidates, like we had Edwards and Kerry come into the district a number
We campaign with them. And then you also have a media campaign with radio and te
ads and some newspaper ads. That s pretty much it.
How many Congressional terms have you had?
Well, I was elected the first time on April Fool s Day of 1969.

What is your political platform like?

Well, I am a Wisconsin Progressive Democrat. Before Bob LaFollette came along, t
Wisconsin government was owned lock, stock, and barrel by the mines, by the
? timb
panies, by the railroads, and by big business. LaFollette made democracy safe fo
else. I mean, he essentially pushed through his social legislation that created
compensation, workman s compensation, regulated the utilities so the railroads c
price farmers right out of business through their shipping costs. I am for whate
average working families get a fair share in life. I think we need to make sure
come into this world will get an equal shot at a decent education, which means t
to increase the education budget. I think it s a mortal sin that every family is
health insurance. I m very much for that. I think that when people work for 40 o
and they are worn out and are looking forward to a decent, secure retirement, th
a right to expect it, which is why I am so fundamentally opposed to what Preside
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trying to do, because I think he would

essentially tear up Social Security as
know it today and ruin it. I think we n
more protection for workers in the
? work
place. I used to work with asbestos, fo
instance, which I didn t know at the ti
would cause cancer. Lots of people in t
workplace every day are working with
materials and compounds that could be
problems for their health, and I think
someone needs to step in to make sure
that they are as safe as possible.
? In f
eign policy, I think it would be nice..
want this country to be strong and I wa
us to defend our interests around the
world, but I would also like us to stay out of stupid wars like Iraq.

How are you fighting for those issues, and have you been successful?
Well, you make progress and then you get knocked back. Right now, the Republican
this place and they are not going to vote for most of the things that I am for.
for the government doing something significant to provide healthcare. They will
amount to provide tax cuts, especially for people in high income brackets. But t
the devil against major increases for education, healthcare, or environmental pr
Right now, I am the Senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, which? is th
mittee that decides where the money goes. So we decide how much goes for environ
protection, how much for nurses training, h
much for education, you name it.

I mean, in politics its

just like life-- you lose
most of the time. But
you have to remember,
even Babe Ruth struck
out
1300 times.

What are the main issues involving

Wisconsin that you have focused on during
your campaigns and how they have
changed?
Wisconsin s problems are very similar to mos
of the rest of the country. I think you
? keep
ting back to the basics what does it take
give a family a chance to get ahead in life.
to me, it takes knowing that if you are goin
send your kid through school, it s going to
a quality school with a decent building, dec
technology, a well?trained teacher, a class
small enough so that you get some personal
attention. If you are going to college, whet
you can afford to go to college or not should be determined by your head and you
not what you have in your wallet. When you are trying to raise a bunch of kids a
two people in the family working outside the home, you need a place for those ki
This means that lots of people need after?school centers, for instance, which no
people have. You need to know that if you get sick, you ll be taken care of.
? I m
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ber when my father worked for 3M in

Wausau and he went to the hospital for an
appendix operation; he came back ?para
lyzed. His arms wouldn t work; nobody
knew what happened. He couldn t do
anything; he couldn t shave. Herb
Frankie, the old barber, used to come
over and shave him. We thought our
? fam
ily was ruined, but we were very lucky
because slowly he got the use of his arms
back and wound up being okay. Lots of
people aren t so lucky. You are just an
illness or an accident away from ?econom
ic destruction. Families shouldn t have to
go through life playing Russian Roulette. Those are the issues. Then you ?have y
ized issues, obviously agriculture is very important to Wisconsin. In fact, I wa
with the Secretary of Agriculture this morning, and tourism is awfully important
clean water, lakes, air, that s what attracts people. The Ice Age National Trail
a wonderful recreation opportunity for people. I try to get funding to expand th
chance I get. I am working on the same priority issues.

What would say you are most proud of in your career?

I m most proud of the fight that I led and lost when Ronald Reagan was president
came in here, we had never had a deficit larger than $70 billion, and he propose
which we knew would triple the deficit and he tried to pay for some of it by cut
out of education and healthcare programs. The Democratic party was kind of weak
because they had just lost 26 seats in the previous election, so they really wer
on with any clarity. Mo Udall, Henry Rice, and I organized the Progressive? Democ
ing that package warning that it would
lead to a big deficit and warning that it
would also cause us to disinvest in things
we needed to invest in, like long?term
?
sci
ence and things like that. We lost it, we When I was in 7th grade, I was
knew we would lose it, but we got a? major
a confused, frustrated kid. I
ity of Democrats to vote for it. That was the
basis of our campaign two years later whenskipped school two days a week
we won back a lot of those seats, which
and I hated everything
enabled us to stop the bleeding. Those
budgets put us in the ditch for 10 years and
we wound up with huge deficits. You know,
it s a fight I lost, but it was a fight worth
making. And then there are other things:
I ve gotten lots of funding for things in the
district, like the new nursing and health education facility at the Tech in Waus
over $50 million in special highway funds to modernize the transportation system
Marathon County. I support economic development and lots of things like that.
Do you have any failures in your office that you would like to share?
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Sure, you have failures all the time. I

talked about the most important one
when Reagan beat our socks off. I mean,
in politics, it s just like life ?? you
most of the time. And that can be very
frustrating. But you have to remember,
even Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times.
So, if you put it in that perspective,
just like any other walk of life ?? if
get licked, you get up, dust yourself o
and keep going.

What drove you to consider public

service?
A nun. When I was in 7th grade, I was a confused, frustrated kid. I skipped scho
a week and I hated everything. My folks were getting a divorce, and one day Sist
said You re going to participate in a debate about Senator Joe McCarthy. ? I did
thing about Joe McCarthy. I found out he was the worst public servant Wisconsin
But, she gave me some stuff to read and I thought it was interesting. It was th
months I was interested in anything, and that started my attention to politics.
with the Young Republicans because my mother was a big Republican and she was cr
about Douglas MacArthur. And then I saw what the local McCarthy supporters did t
teacher I ever had they tried to have him fired for being a red. He was abou
Red Skeleton, the old comedian. They tried to have Henderson fired and that made
a look at McCarthy and realize what a savage he was. By the time Adlai Stevenson
second time as president, I became a Democrat and have been a strong Democrat ev

Did you have any other public service jobs in Wisconsin before you came here?
Yes, I was in the State Legislature for 6 years. I was the Deputy Party Leader a
I was in college. I thought I was going to be teaching Russian Government somewh
Instead, I got waylaid into this crazy life.

When you came into office, what was the community like then?
It was split right down the middle of the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King had ju
killed, Bobby Kennedy had just been killed, and everything that we had worked to
turning to sand. It was a very bitter time for people. Physically, the downtown
didn t even exist. Wausau Insurance Company was still located where the City Ha
And you didn t have the downtown open square that you ve got today, the Arts Blo
the bridges in Wausau have all been replaced with modern bridges today, so physi
town is very different.

What is the most interesting experience you have had in Congress?

I would say, the 10 years that I chaired the Foreign Operations Appropriation Su
I was chairman when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and the Iron Curtain coll
Russia and the Soviet Union collapsed. I was in charge of the Congressional resp
in terms of providing aid to the emerging countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Just this week I met some people from the Ukraine. It was fascinating to deal
?
wi
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lapse of the Soviet Union and being in

conferences with them. When Yeltsin
stood on the tank after the Communists
had the counter?revolution and tried to
take power back, then ten days later me
in Budapest with Russian Minister Andre
Kozyrov and Deputy Defense Minister
Andre Kokoshin. Those meetings led to a
program that is known as the Nunn?
Lugar Program today. It s a program
under which we provide money to buy up
loose nuclear weapons floating around
the former Soviet Union because there
were many Russian sergeants who
weren t getting paid after the country collapsed, and we were worried that terro
or terrorist organizations would bribe them and grab some tactical nuclear weapo
were worried that some of those scientists who were out of work would go to work
organizations and we tried to put up money so they could find other things to do
until the economy stabilized. That was a challenging time. Right now, this whole
what is going to happen to Social Security is a fascinating issue because people
and large, don t recognize it, but Social Security is not just a retirement prog
you are a 30?year?old person working and you get injured and can t work for the
life, Social Security will, in fact, over your lifetime pay you about $300,000.
of a $300,000 term insurance policy. It is so crucial that that program not be s
There is a story in the paper about this conservative alliance plans to spend ab
$200,000,000 on propaganda to try to convince the American public that it s a go
is a wretched idea. It will wreck Social Security as we know it, it will plunge
deeper in debt, and it won t solve the
problem. There are adjustments that
have to be made long?term, but we have
had to make the adjustments in the
? pro
People like Dick Bolling from
gram for 70 years. We ought to be doing
that rather than blowing it up.
Missouri and Bob Kastenmeier

from Wisconsin and Gaylord

What would you consider the most ?dif

Nelson sort of took me under their
ficult experience you ve had?
I would say the most difficult was trying wings and helped me learn the
to find a way to keep everything from
ropes, and now I do the same thing
being poisoned by the Vietnam War. This
for newer members.
country was so bitterly divided at the
time. I would also say that knowing we
were going to lose the fight with Reagan
and knowing what that would mean in
the long?term by screwing up our ?coun
try. I was very involved in trying to shut
down our financial support for the
Contra?War in Central America. The last
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2 years trying to preserve education and

health care programs from Bush s
budget axe were difficult times.

Do you feel you have made an impact

on your community?
I don t think there is any doubt about it.
You look at any county in that district
and you will see dozens of things that
wouldn t be there if we hadn t been
around to get it done. We got lots of
money to complete that four?lane on
Highway 29, and on Highway 51. The
same thing with student aid. There are
literally probably 30,000 students who have gotten much more help to go to colle
they would have gotten if I hadn t helped. I mean, I am the point man on educati
in this place on the Democratic side of the house. This country is spending $16
on education than it would have been spending if I had not been negotiating thos
We had to run over Newt Gingrich and the Republican majority and we had to run o
George Bush the first year he was in the office in order to get that done. We ha
success in the last two years, but that $16 billion investment has made a big di
the quality of education.

Have you changed as a person since being in office?

Oh, I think everybody changes. You know, I think I have learned to roll with the
little better. I take a longer view of things. I mean, when I came here I? was l
tors. People like Dick Bolling from Missouri and Bob Kastenmeier from Wisconsin
Nelson sort of took me under their wings and helped me learn the ropes, and now
same thing for newer members. But one thing that hasn t changed are my beliefs a
passions. I am just as fiercely committed to economic justice today as I ever w
into perspective, in 1975 the wealthiest 20% of people in this society had a fam
every year that was about 8 times greater than somebody in the lower 20%. Now th
already obscene. But if you take a look today, that same family in the upper 20%
family income for them is 15 times as large as a lower income family. When you h
wealthiest 1% of people in this society that control 33% of the nation s wealth,
gap between rich and poor has doubled over the last generation, I think that s o
that s why there are so many families who can t afford health insurance, can t a
their kids to college, and can t afford decent housing. This is a capitalist sys
that everyone can t wind up with equal income. You want people to demonstrate in
and you want them to be rewarded for it, but you certainly want some norms of de
between those who have the most and those who have the least in this society. We
way away from that.

Do you like being in D.C. and what you do?

Well, my old friend from Ireland, John Hume, was the leader of the Peace Forces
Ireland and he won the Nobel Prize for Peace a number of years ago for peace. Jo
my office one day and he was taking note of how much people were disparaging pol
this country, and he said, David, don t your constituents understand that? polit
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violent substitute for war? If you doub

that for one minute, look at what is
happening in my own country. I am
thrilled every day to be able to walk
around this building to see that dome
and think of what it is supposed to
mean and realize that I have got a say,
even if it is just a small one, in the
decisions that we make here. Having
said that, it is very distressing to me
to see the huge role that big money
plays in politics. When you see the
hundreds of millions of dollars that
big business will spend. Right now,
picture caption picture caption picture caption picture caption picture
caption picture caption picture caption picture caption picture caption the Washington Post pointed out that
there are over 450 lobbyists hired in
order to try to persuade the Congress
to blow up Social Security. Now those lobbyists are not hired by little people, the
by the big corporate giants of this world who think that they have no obligation to
else on the planet and I enjoy every day of getting up and thinking of ways to bloc
like that! I ve always had two signs hanging on the wall. I took them down last wee
when the President gave the State of the Union message, the first lady usually uses
as a holding room before she goes in. But, whenever somebody s in asking for money,
what I ask them, make them read it out loud What do you want me to do for somebo
besides yourself. You would be surprised how many people resent that. But? that s t
tion. There is always going to be somebody who needs something more than you do. If
are looking for money, we have a $500 billion deficit coming at us; we can t afford
another trillion dollars in tax cuts. If I cut taxes for my generation without havi
pay for it, that means your generation is going to pick up the tab. That s not exac
business.

If someone is considering public service, what advice would you give them?
Well, it depends on what kind of public service they want. I mean, my niece
? is a fo
ice officer. She has been in the foreign service for a long time. If that s the kin
service you look for, you have to specialize. Y
have to learn languages, you have to learn
Dave Obey has represented the 7th Congressional
District for 37 years. His seniority in the Congress makes international relations, you have to learn our
country s history. Other public service? You re
him a leading member of his party in the house.
in public service if you re feeding somebody in
the soup kitchen and you re in public service i
you are in the White House. If people ?are look
ing to get into elective office, there are a do
different ways. All I can tell you is the way I did
Interviewers: Kalyn Stroik and Sara Stieber
got
involved because I was a kid who got turned on
Transcriber: Patricia Schultz
about politics, so I used to stand up on Third Stree
Wausau every Friday night, passing out literature
fo
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candidates I was supporting. While I was still in high school, I took my sister s w

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to my bicycle, filled it full of literature, and distributed that to the entire

?
ing the campaign. Then when I went to college, I was involved in Young Democrats
would be down to party headquarters and stuff envelopes and lick stamps. That s
John Kennedy, Bob Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson; just doing stuff li
never expected to be in college. I got persuaded to run for the Assembly and it
changed my life.

End Bio

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