Before moving forward on health care, “the White House and the Democrats should pay close attention to my race,” says Senator-elect Scott Brown (R., Mass.) to National Review Online. “From the backroom deals to the lack of transparency and Medicaid carve outs, people are irate. They want us to bring it back to the drawing board.” Brown says he made that message clear to fellow senators on Thursday, his first day on Capitol Hill.
Besides talking health care, Brown says that he enjoyed meeting his new colleagues in the upper chamber. “I had a little bit of trepidation when I got there, but everyone was really wonderful and reached out to me,” he says. “I’m still focused on getting everything up and running. I still have to get a business card and telephone.”
While clearly looking forward to challenging President Obama to a game of pick-up basketball, Brown says that before then, he has some advice for the president as he prepares for next week’s State of the Union address. “I hope he focuses on job creation,” says Brown. “Let’s hope he takes a look at tax breaks. We’ve done everything else, from bailouts to stimulus bills, yet we haven’t had any meaningful reductions. Since what they’ve tried hasn’t worked, let’s try targeted tax breaks to stimulate certain sectors of the economy.”
“We also need the president to start trying to solve the other very real issues that are out there, from how we treat enemy combatants to making a top-to-bottom review of federal programs in order to find ways to eliminate waste and fraud,” says Brown. “National security is going to be one of my top priorities. We can try to solve the fiscal problems, but if people are trying to kill us at airports and shopping malls, we have to give those issues serious time and weight.” If Obama continues to support trying terrorists in the U.S. “at our expense,” and “giving al-Qaeda operatives Constitutional rights instead of getting information,” then he’ll “have to answer to the people.”
“On national security, I can see the American people rising up just like they did in my race to be heard,” says Brown. “The president needs to realize that the people will be heard on this. They’ll say, ‘You know, Mr. President, one reason we voted for you is because we knew you could analyze issues and change your mind if you knew something had to be done.’ We saw the president do a 180-degree turn on Afghanistan, and I think he has it in him to change his policies on how we handle terrorists in America. If he changed, the people would respect him for that.”
As the GOP’s hottest star, will Brown help Republican hopefuls on the campaign trail this year? “I just did a robo-call for Senator McCain because he was the first guy to come on and support me,” says Brown. With regards to stumping for others, Brown says he’s focused on “doing the people’s work for Massachusetts” but is open to helping others “if I get to know them, agree with who they are and what they believe.”
And about that truck? Brown says he’s planning to drive it down to Washington in early February.