Senator Warner joined Virginia Public Radio’s ‘Virginia Conversations’ for over an hour today, taking questions from host May-Lily Lee as well as listeners from across the Commonwealth in a remarkably open and wide-ranging interview.  He addressed a broad spectrum of issues important to Virginians, including his bipartisan approach in Washington, the lingering effects of the financial crisis, and 21^st century strategies for economic development.

Robert from Hampton was one of the first callers.  His frustration was evident as he lamented the stubborn refusal of members of Congress to sacrifice some of their personal principles in order to find solutions to the nation’s larger problems.

“Amen,” said Senator Warner. “What I used to say is that if you hired me to the Senate, I’d be a bipartisan, radical centrist.  If you’re on either end of the spectrum, left or right, you don’t need to think that much because there’s an ironclad, ideological position on each side.  If you’re trying to be a centrist, you need to think about each issue and try to take some of the best ideas from both sides of the spectrum.”

Tony, a caller from Chesapeake, dialed in to raise an issue of vital importance to homeowners and their families across the state. “Why is it that mortgage investors are still making billions putting Americans out of their homes?” she asked Senator Warner.

 “You’re right,” he told her, in a lengthy answer that lead the host to joke about a commercial break.  “If we look back to when the financial crisis took place, we did a whole lot of things to reinforce the banking system.  And I think, while it was terribly unpopular, it was the right thing to do because if credit had frozen up we would’ve been in an even worse place.”

“Where we didn’t do a very good job,” he continued, “was with homeowner relief.  There’s still an awful lot of folks underwater.  What I’ve been willing to support is legislation that would allow principle modification to keep the homeowner in the home.  That’s better than letting the home go vacant for months on end, which decreases the value not only of that home, but of the homes in the neighborhood.  We’ve not been able to get that through [Congress].”

“I am working on a major reform in this area with a Republican colleague,” said Sen. Warner,  “that will revamp Fannie and Freddie and put more private capital into some of these organizations so the taxpayer’s not at risk, because we’re still owed over $100 billion for helping bail them out.  We also have to recognize that consumers need to be better educated on loans that are too good to be true, including subprime loans.  I don’t think they should come back.” 

A caller from Charlottesville, asked Senator Warner about why America’s education system, and Virginia’s in particular, seemed to be less important to many elected officials than economic issues.

Education and the economy were intimately connected, said Senator Warner. “I believe that educationis an essential piece of the economy,” he replied.  “America’s value add in the world economy is not going to be cheap labor.  It’s going to be intellectual capital creation and a well-educated, well-trained workforce.”

“I would respectfully disagree with you that Virginia does not do well in education,” he countered.  “When I was Governor ‘Education Week’ said that Virginia, for a lifetime of educational opportunity from preschool through graduate school, offered a child the best opportunities of any state in the nation…I would also argue that while I’d like to see more public support for our colleges and universities, I would take our public higher education system and match it against any other state in the country.”

“However, it’s true that when you look at the rest of the world, there are things about our education we need to fix,” Senator Warner continued. “We need to break some more glass in education.  I tried a series of things as Governor, for example giving high school seniors the opportunity to earn a free semester of college.  We’ve also got to do a better job of getting girls and children of color to stay interested in math and science past middle school.  When you look at Virginia, we’re 30% people of color and 52% women.  So if we don’t get more of those Virginians into math and science, that’s a bad economic deal.”

Finally, Senator Warner addressed a higher education issue that he has been working on throughout his political career.

“This may sound like a little bit of heresy,” he said, “and I think college is great, but a 4-year liberal arts college may not be the right choice for every student.  One of the things I’ve been passionate about is that technical education is a valuable path for a lot of folks.”

Senator Warner related how he is actively working in Congress to help students navigate these higher education decisions. “A new piece of legislation I put in just this past week called ‘Know Before You Go’ basically says, for each degree or industry certification, one, how long it’s going to take you to finish? Two, what is the percentage of students who graduate?  And three, what are your chances of getting a job and what’s that job going to pay? Particularly with the cost of higher education skyrocketing, you ought to have that information.”

“This’ll be valuable not just for that high school student picking their college and their major,” he explained, “but particularly important for that increasing number of people in higher education who are people after high school coming back to a community college.”

One of his final questions came from Robert of Halifax, who was concerned about the lack of jobs in Southside Virginia.  Senator Warner spoke about the numerous areas he’s looking at to try and get new jobs to regions like Southside and Southwest Virginia.

Senator Warner, as new chair of a Senate subcommittee focused on tourism, emphasized that as one area that would be important moving forward. “For every extra 1% of foreign tourism we get coming to the United States,” he said in reply to Robert’s concerns, “that adds 128,000 jobs.  We have an international gateway airport at Dulles, and I’m thinking about how we can try to draw those tourists down to Southside and Southwest Virginia.  I think about things we did like the Crooked Road Music Heritage Trail.  To try and get people off the 64-95 corridor is important.” 

“There are also a lot of challenges around the issue of trade,” he said, moving on to another area of the economy that has an outsize impact on the region. “The fact is, 95% of all the new customers for American stuff are going to be foreign, and we do a really crummy job in the U.S. of helping small and midsize businesses figure out how to sell their goods and products abroad.  So one of the things I’m looking at is how we can rationalize those various trade support services that are spread out through about eight different agencies in the federal government.”

“Clearly, we’ve seen job losses, as textiles and furniture jobs in particular left the region.  In trade we’ve got to have a level playing field, and it doesn’t help that these other countries ignore environmental and labor laws,” he said.  “But I remember when I was Governor trying to bring to Southside an Indian company called Essel Propack that has now expanded four times in Danville, and has got hundreds of people working on polymers.  That didn’t change everybody’s mind about trade down in Danville, but it showed that there’s a reverse benefit as we try to attract foreign-based businesses into America.” 

“America is becoming more competitive for the insourcing of jobs, including in manufacturing.  We need to do more to push that manufacturing back here,” he told Robert as he explained his larger trade-oriented goals.  “So there are things we can do to change parts of the tax code that promote companies moving offshore so that there are instead tax benefits for companies that move back onshore.” 

“My proudest day as Governor,” Senator Warner reminisced, “was when we were able to bring about 700 high quality information technology jobs from CGI and Northrop Grumman down to Lebanon, in Russell County.  That to my mind was the best example of how in the internet-driven world you can build a company or place a company anywhere.” 

“Those jobs have helped revitalize that community,” he concluded.  “But to get those jobs there, you’ve got to have a well-educated workforce, and you’ve got to have a 21^st century infrastructure, including broadband.  I made major investments when I was governor in broadband technology and one of the reasons I talk so much about the debt and deficit is that if we continue on this stupid sequestration path, it’s going to cut domestic investment to a point where you’re not going to see any further public sector investment in research and development or infrastructure from roads and bridges to broadband.  And that’s going to put the Southsides and Southwest Virginias of this country further behind.”