Dave Bradley and his wife, Carol, are activists from West Liberty. Both feel that retiring Chuck Grassley and finding the person to do that job, are the most important tasks for Iowa Democrats next year.  Dave has known Tom Fiegen since his re-election campaign for the Iowa Senate in 2004 in Senate District 40, where both reside. Dave and Carol met with Tom in Tipton at a new coffee shop called “A Place To Land.”

BFIA:  Why did you decide to run for U.S. Senate?  What process did you go through to arrive at your decision?

I guess the first thing I'd say was  the dissatisfaction with the incumbent on economic issues.  As a bankruptcy lawyer, I see people in dire straits every day, and I heard him saying that it's not that bad – if you look at the Great Depression,  it's not that bad, 10% unemployment is not bad – and my first reaction is, who are you talking to, buddy? 

The second thing is, as I look at what the President is trying to accomplish, I see that there are people who either call themselves Blue Dog Democrats or the Republicans that don't believe in the President, they don't believe in the things he ran on, and they are resisting change.  A second factor besides disgust with the incumbent,  is a desire to help the president enact many of the programs he talked about, especially health care. 

Third, I would say that I have something to add to the U.S. Senate, to be one of the 100 people in the room, talking about the problems facing the country, and what can we do to solve those problems.

BFIA:  Of course, Blog for Iowa is a progressive blog.  How would you describe yourself on the political spectrum?  Would you describe yourself as progressive on some issues?

I would say I'm progressive to populist.  My folks were active in the Democratic Party and the National Farmers Organization.  My perspective is that the government should be on the side of the working person, not on the side of the rich or the big corporations.  Especially on fiscal and economic issues, I see myself a progressive and a populist. 

On social issues, it depends, and I would say there are certain issues where I think Iowa has a way to come.  One of them is equal rights for gays and gay marriage.  When I was running in 2004,  I was going through a divorce.  One of the things that all of us want is someone at home at the end of the day –  to give us a hug, to say I love you, and tomorrow's going to be better.  Having gone through a period of time where I didn't have that, the question I have to ask everyone is, why does the government care what the race or the gender is of that person at home at the end of the day?  If you think about all of us as human beings, that's what we want.  We want somebody who loves us, cares about us, and is home waiting for us, and it doesn't matter what your sexual orientation is.

BFIA:  Speaking specifically about gay marriage and other so-called wedge issues, Republicans have basically controlled the message framing for the past 10-15 years.   What will you do when you're up against Grassley?  They're going to try to define you with God, Guns, and Gays.  They'll go after you with that.

On the gun issue, I have been an on-again, off-again member of the NRA.  All of my brothers own many guns.  I would say, just like the President, the people who are gun owners in America don't have to worry about Tom Fiegen taking away their right to hunt. 

What I would say to anybody that is going to make the decision [of who to vote for] based upon that is this:  If you believe the most pressing issue facing the country right now is the fact that 3% of the population wants to be treated equally, and wants to formalize their commitment to their partner, then you need to vote for the other guy.  If you think the most pressing issue facing the country is that some of us have no health coverage, and many of us have poor health coverage, then you need to vote for me, because I'm for solving the problems that we face as a country, and that are the most pressing economic issues.  

So, if somebody says to me, my sole issue is whether or not you support traditional marriage, then I'm going to say okay, go vote for the other guy because I can respect that that's your sole issue, but I don't view that as the most pressing problem facing Iowa or the country.  I'm here to talk about the most pressing problems, and to talk about how we, as a country, can solve the most pressing problems.

BFIA:  And could you list what you feel are the most pressing problems?

To me right now, jobs.  The new numbers came out today (September 3) and it's interesting, everybody got excited about the fact that there are 10,000 fewer new unemployment claims, but if you go back a week ago there were 15,000 more.  So in reality, over the two weeks, we're still 5,000 claims higher than we were three weeks ago, and we still had 550,000 walk in for new unemployment claims last week.  To me, as an economist and as a bankruptcy lawyer, that's an “oh my god” moment.  How can we talk about the economy recovering when we've got that many new unemployment claims?  And the other thing is, we've got people who are now getting discouraged, and who've stopped looking.  They've moved back in with their parents and in some cases, moved in with  their children, and just given up.  This is a  new phenomenon for our generation –  I have clients who are in their fifties,  moving in with their children because they can't find work – talk about role reversal. 

BFIA:  What other problems are high on Tom Fiegen's list?

Of my top three, in Fiegenomics, the second one is health care.  I am very hopeful the President has a health care bill on his desk he can sign, but if not, I'm going to pick up the ball on January 2011 and work to pass true health care reform, which includes a strong public option. 

The third thing that I think that we've got to address, and this is something we'll have to work on, is re-regulating the big banks, Wall Street, and the financial industry.  We're going to have to erect walls to make sure that a melt-down that occurs in one sector of Wall Street doesn't spill over and affect our hometown banks and our insurance companies.  The other thing is, I think that consumers and borrowers are still getting the short end of the stick in their dealings with credit card companies, payday loan people, and sub-prime mortgages.  I want to see more disclosures, more consumer protections, more protections for borrowers. 

One of the saddest things to me about this bail-out of Wall street is that we handed them 750 billion dollars –  with no strings.  We had a handshake deal that said, we'll loan money, we'll rewrite mortgages.  They didn't do it.  They backed out.  We should have put in law a requirement that if you get taxpayer money, you are going to give your borrowers a fair shake.  You're going to rewrite their mortgage.  You're going to reannotize their loan. 

An example that I use is, when Federal Land Bank and the Farm Credit System came to Congress with their hand out in 1987, I actually got to testify before the Congressional Subcommittee on Credit Commerce and Economic Development, and I testified about the abuses that we saw by PCA and Federal Land Bank loan officers, and how they treated their borrowers almost like slaves.  If you recall, Federal Land Bank – Farm Credit got 8 billion dollars, but included in that were things like mandatory mediation,  and a whole set of borrower rights that really reframed how they dealt with their borrowers,  and it was almost like a change of personality –  the farm credit federal land bank of 1987 forward  – as compared to the 1980's before that. 

Those same protections should have been part of that 750 billion dollar bailout, and now we're finding that we, as taxpayers, are holding the bag both ways.  We're bailing them out so they can give billion dollar bonuses, keep alive and protect their top dogs, and they're still putting it to us as mortgage holders, as credit card holders, as people who rely on payday loans.

BFIA:  But of course,  all of that was done during a crisis mode, so the whole concept of protections was shunted off to the side in order to bring the economy back from the cliff.

Well, the short answer is yes.  But the other thing is, Federal Land Bank – Farm Credit, PCA, were also on the edge of the cliff, in imminent danger, and there was talk in '86-87 that if they fail, it's going to call into question the whole bond market, all of these federal instrumentalities and agencies that are backed by the full faith and credit through the government.

One of the things you probably heard today is that the FDIC is down to ten billion in reserves and they've had a number of people say okay,  that's all created by insurance premiums if you will, or assessments paid by member banks, but if that should not be enough  because they've got 416 banks on the troubled list, they're backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government.  Farm credit was listing both. 

And there was very similar talk, perhaps not to the magnitude, I don't want to represent a 7 or 8 billion bailout as the same as 750 billion, but I really see the Senate, and particularly the senior Senator from Iowa, has abdicated their role of oversight in that TARP legislation. 

Henry Paulson, who was Bush's Treasurer Secretary, came in and said, this is the way it's going to be.   We saw push-back from the Congress.  We saw push-back from Loebsack, from Braley, from Pelosi, from Hoyer.  Everybody on the Congressional side pushed back on the Paulson proposal.  Nobody on the Senate side pushed back.  Chris Dodd made noises, but nobody really pushed back and as a taxpayer and a bankruptcy lawyer and an economist, I think that we've gotta go back and we've gotta fix it.  The things that they don't fix in 2010, we definitely need to fix in 2011 and 2012, and  if we don't, what's to prevent this problem from happening again?

One of the things about Wall St. is that there's this cycle of greed and then it's “oh, we're not going to do it again, help us out, bail us out,” and then greed again, and the problem is the people who are alive in '29,  were not around when they talked about deregulation in 2002, 2003, 2004.  One of Jim Leach's proudest moments was repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, because that allowed for full and fair competition between insurance companies, Wall Street and the banks

BFIA:  Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act