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Overcast Suozzi sees chances for bipartisanship
Suozzi, on the record
“One reason Glen Cove is so safe,” U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi said, “is that everyone knows everyone else.” The subject was community policing and the low crime rate in the city. Whether or not the two are related, one thing is certain: Everyone knows Suozzi. From the waitress who served him breakfast last Friday morning, when the Herald Gazette met with him, to the guy he asked for a quote to move a piano, this was a man in his element, surrounded by people he has spent a lifetime serving.
Initially, the congressman was asked to comment on recent high-visibility cases of alleged sexual harassment. He is a cosponsor of a bill in the House of Representatives, introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from Manhattan, that would require companies to publicly acknowledge any harassment suits they have been involved in, almost like a corporate version of Megan’s Law. This would give prospective employees a warning if they were entering a hostile work environment.
Asked why it has taken lawmakers so long to act, Suozzi described a dysfunctional federal government. “In the House, representatives make their own policies,” he said. “It’s like 435 individual entities instead of one cohesive body.”
And when it comes to sexual harassment in Washington, the problem doesn’t stop there. “When a person files a complaint, they have to wait 30 days before it can go forward,” according to House rules, Suozzi said. “During that time, the [complainant] is required to undergo counseling. It’s all stacked in favor of the abuser.”
Asked if he was aware that his own hometown did even less — that it has no sexual harassment policy — he admitted that he did not know that.
On the subject of the opioid crisis, Suozzi said he was introducing legislation to limit the amount of medication available after common procedures. “Chronic pain patients would still have access, given responsible oversight,” he said. “But I’ve seen cases where doctors prescribe 30-day supplies of these medications after routine procedures,” such as root canal.
The bill would limit access to pain medication in these cases to a seven-day initial prescription. He cautioned, however, that “the problem is fundamentally a health crisis. The answer is to treat those who are sick more than it is to punish them.”
Asked about Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recurring efforts to drum up support for a bridge connecting Oyster Bay and Rye, Suozzi was initially very blunt. “One hundred percent opposed,” he said, “It would be an environmental disaster.”
But his tone softened somewhat as he touched on what he felt were his own most significant accomplishments. “When I was Nassau County executive, one of the first things the county faced was a downgrade of its ratings to junk status,” he said. “It would have cost taxpayers billions of dollars and cut services across the board. We avoided the downgrade and balanced the budget, got the county back on track financially. Within six months of leaving office, my successor undid all our gains. It was as if I’d never been there.
“But something like the Theodore Roosevelt Building” in Garden City, where the County Legislature meets, Suozzi continued, “is a source of pride to me every time I pass it or hear it’s been used in a movie. It’s tangible. It’ll be there for generations to come. So I understand the desire on the part of elected officials to build things that last” — like a bridge.
Suozzi has been more successful than most at building his own bridges. A quick survey of legislation he has sponsored or co-sponsored as a freshman congressman shows an unusual ability to garner support on both sides of the aisle. “It’s incredibly polarized” in Washington, he said. “Just getting 48 Democrats and Republicans in the same place is huge,” he added, referring to the Problem Solvers Caucus, of which he is a member. “But we do much more than just meet and talk.”
As vice chairman of the caucus, Suozzi helped introduce a bipartisan plan last July to stabilize the individual health care market.
In all these issues, Suozzi said, he detected a common theme. “I see so much anxiety in people,” he said. “People are working two or three jobs just to get by. My job is to understand the fear people feel and try to give them some hope.”
On one of his regular telephone Town Halls recently, Suozzi said, “We had 6,000 callers. Six thousand!” He said he was encouraged by the response of constituents, who, much like his work in Congress, appear to cut across political lines. Perhaps his message of hope is being heard.
