This politician is still going strong at 75 years old
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) could be called a renaissance man of Congress. He’s been a successful businessman, ambassador, philanthropist, civic booster and elected official at the state and tfederal levels. A life-long learner, he’s also been a regular guest on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin, and joined Tom for a final interview.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin Congressman Beyer, good to have you back.
Don Beyer Thank you, Tom, very much. And I get a lot of lifelong learning on your show.
Tom Temin Well, I appreciate that very much. And I have to ask you one personal question. As a former owner, I know you sold your interest some time ago, to a chain of well-known car dealers in Northern Virginia. What do you drive?
Don Beyer I’m actually driving a Volvo XC60. The loyalty goes deep. It was the mainstay of our family business for 51 years, so hard to walk away.
Tom Temin And so you’re a plug-in hybrid type of guy.
Don Beyer Actually, no, mine is a mild hybrid, but my wife now has a fully electric Volvo.
Tom Temin All right, and the fact that…
Don Beyer She has the garage and I have to park on the street.
Tom Temin Yeah, I know that feeling. We have three vehicles and one of them has two wheels, but the two-wheel one gets the garage on my half. And, of course, Volvo is now controlled by a Chinese conglomerate. That bother you at all?
Don Beyer Well, initially, except that they put so much money into it that we got a lot more new product and even better product, and the cars are actually assembled and made in Sweden and in Charleston, South Carolina.
Tom Temin All right, so, yeah, that’s a good pedigree, then.
Don Beyer Yeah, they’re not imported from China, which is very good.
Tom Temin All right, good. And you have been working, and we’ve had this discussion on both your pursuing a degree in machine learning and the general way in which machine learning in artificial intelligence is coming to the government. First of all, how’s the degree going? Or are you there yet?
Don Beyer I’m about halfway. My final in a coding course in early May, and then I start linear algebra over the summer. And then I think my final undergraduate computer science course in the fall. So I’m getting there. But I think, Tom, I might be 80 by the time I finish.
Tom Temin I was going to say we should let the audience know that you’re starting linear algebra at the age of 75. That puts a lot of 15-year-olds to shame, you might say.
Don Beyer Well, I don’t yet know how I’m gonna do, but I’m looking forward to it.
Tom Temin All right, good. And let me ask you this. Congress has been a tough place to be lately. Is it any fun being a congressman these days?
Don Beyer It’s less fun, but it’s still fulfilling. As disappointed as I am right now in the many things the new Trump administration is doing, I still am grateful to be in the arena, that there’s still much that I can do to fight back, and I’m part of a community of people that are trying to fight back in every way we can.
Tom Temin And in the bigger picture, I think a lot of people worry, maybe not enough people worry about the fiscal health, the fiscal sustainability of the country, and the only way to get back to some kind of fiscal sustainability – and this is the [Government Accountability Office] saying it, this is not kind of a crazy conspiracy – is to do something about the curve and the spending trends for the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. No one in Congress seems to be willing on either side to step up and say, we’ve got to get together and think about this, not to slash benefits or kill the old ladies and so forth and that kind of rhetoric, but what can we do on the patterns of this program long-term to get some sustainability back? Can that happen at this point?
Don Beyer Yeah, Tom, although it’s going to be really hard, I was a co-sponsor of the legislation in the last Congress to renew Simpson-Boltz, get the committee together bipartisan to think structurally about our debt. We’re $ 37 trillion right now under the current Trump plans; that’s going to go up to the mid-$ 50 trillions in the next couple of years. Elon was going to come in and save $ 2 trillion. But then over the weekend, we found out he’s downgraded that down to $ 150 billion from $ 2 trillion.
Tom Temin That’s an order of magnitude, and I don’t even know linear algebra.
Don Beyer And the budget experts say that $ 150 billion is actually probably closer to $ 30 billion. So you just can’t fire half the employees of the Department of Education and make any dent in the federal deficit. You have to think on the revenue side too that we have, typically we’re bouncing around 16%-17% revenue as a percentage of GDP and we’re spending 21% or 22%. We have to shrink those gap together. One way is to add more revenue. I mean, we cut the corporate tax from 35% to 21% and it’s actually functionally more like 13%. We have an awful lot of people at the top end that are not paying very much taxes. And then on the other hand, we need to think structurally about Medicare and Medicaid. Tom, I’m sure you know this, a third of the Medicare budget alone is dialysis. So anything we can do to deal with our early type 2 diabetes, and deal with the obesity crisis in America will save us a tremendous amount of money.
Tom Temin Yeah, so there might be some area of confluence with that thinking and the RFK Jr. thinking. Not saying you’re ever going to totally overlap, but that idea of making America healthy. I mean, size, sugar consumption, diabetes, that’s all part of it.
Don Beyer Yeah, absolutely. Making America healthy again will definitely help. Applying artificial intelligence to much of Medicare and Medicaid can help, too, because we lose $ 10 billion a year just in misdiagnosis fees, 10,000 deaths a year from misdiagnosis. And there are breakthroughs every day in terms of what AI is being able to do with our health care.
Tom Temin We’re speaking with Congressman Don Beyer, who represents Virginia’s 8th District. And on the Social Security side, again, Congress has, over the decades, changed the formula and the calculus, raising the age and so forth, and without harming the benefits of those currently under the system. So you have, if you’re 25 now, you might have to wait until 72 to get full benefits, this kind of thing. What about the possibilities there?
Don Beyer I think we should be honest in thinking about it. For knowledge workers, Tom, like you and like me who are mostly sitting at a desk or driving around in a car, I’m almost 75 and doing fine. However, I worked with mechanics for an awful lot of years in the dealerships, and they’re worn out at 60. So we need a way to differentiate between the people who really do need to retire and they need the Social Security benefits at 65 and the people who can postpone them. Right now you’re required to take them at 70 and a half maybe just pushing that date back would help.
Tom Temin And also maybe alteration of the minimum withdrawal and the tax structure around them, that could help not on the Social Security side, but on the savings side that people have that accompany their Social Security.
Don Beyer We have to recognize that when it went into place back in 1937, 38, the average American male lifespan was 62. And it’s 74, 75 right now, getting higher all the time. And yet we haven’t really adjusted Social Security to that.
Tom Temin All right, and well, what else, aside from battling Trump and getting a budget out, are there any other big thoughts in Congress these days, or what are your big thoughts for what should happen next?
Don Beyer Tom, my biggest thought is continuing to push forward on fusion energy, the energy of the sun derived from seawater with no radioactive waste, because if we think about abundance, if we can make electricity or just energy relatively, completely inexpensive and abundant, we solve an awful lot of problems — poverty and climate change — and maybe help really overcome the structural budget deficit that we’re just talking about.
Tom Temin Fusion and in the short term, what about hydrogen powered cars?
Don Beyer All those things in the short run, hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal, they’re all moving us in the right direction. And they’re exciting. And then I’m very optimistic about the impact of artificial intelligence. I know there will inevitably be downsides, but every breakthrough in technology and the history of our race has led to more jobs rather than fewer.
Tom Temin It’s the fewer people making buggy whips syndrome.
Don Beyer Yeah, exactly, but an awful lot of people making cars, and, I know that when they invented the wheel, there were people that were upset, but it can really create a whole brand new world for us. That will be very exciting, and perhaps in the long run, give us much more leisure time, which I think will be great for our souls, for our arts, for enjoyment of life, rather than just working 60 hours a week.
Tom Temin Well, I think that’s a little bit more the Finnish attitude of where your cars are made. The German competitors, that country, their big saying is “arbeit macht das Leben sus:” “Work is the basis of zest for life.” Little different attitude, maybe.
Don Beyer Yeah, yeah, well, I like working, but not only work.
Tom Temin Yeah, what do you do, by the way, before we close, when you’re not studying linear algebra or getting ready to and trying to do battle in Congress?
Don Beyer I finished hiking the Appalachian Trail in October. It took me 22 years section hiking it because I was always too happily married to go off and do it six months at a time. And so I’m looking forward to the next hiking adventure. And I play golf poorly, but enthusiastically.
Tom Temin And speaking of walking the remote areas of the country alone, maybe in solo, you once proposed a 1000% increase in the tax on so-called assault weapons, the AR-15 type of thing. You are a Virginian. Are you an owner?
Don Beyer No, I’m not, I am not. My dad was a military police officer, so there was always a pistol in the house. But no, I’ve been persuaded by the many studies I’ve shown that with a gun in my house, it’s more likely to be used afoul by somebody in my own home rather than defending myself against a bad guy.
Tom Temin All right, well, we’ll get off that morbid topic and just let me say thanks for being a regular guest and I’ve really enjoyed our interviews.
Don Beyer Me too and Tom, great luck with whatever comes in your next 30 years. I look forward to following your career and hope that if your retirement is really retired, that it’s filled with a lot of fulfilling things.
Tom Temin Well, it’s going to be semi, but I won’t be on the air every day. But I do thank you for the sentiment, and we’ll follow one another.
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