At Harvard orientation for freshman lawmakers, skeptical Democrats confront lobbyists and CEOs
The talk was not billed as being about politics. "A Discussion with Business Leaders," hosted on Harvard's campus earlier this week for freshman lawmakers elected in 2018, featured the CEOs of General Motors, Johnson & Johnson and Boeing.
But Rep.-elect Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), one of the incoming lawmakers, said she was taken aback when, in a meeting after the talk, GM chief executive Mary Barra suggested laid off GM workers who live in the Detroit area could still seek employment at a plant in Flint, Mich., more than an hour's drive away.
"I was very much trying to actively listen and understand why the decision was made, but I pushed back when the discussion was, 'Well, they're going to have options to work in Flint,'" Tlaib said in an interview. "I pushed back and said, 'You make it sound like it's so easy,' and she said, 'It's better than not having no job at all.'"
Tlaib's disagreement with Barra came amid wider criticism from several incoming House Democratic lawmakers of the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics Bipartisan Orientation Program, a traditionally uncontroversial affair that has hosted more than 700 members of Congress since 1972. (Tlaib's account was confirmed by Rep.-elect Andy Levin, another Michigan Democrat, who was at the meeting. A spokesman for GM confirmed Barra told incoming lawmakers that laid off employees could apply to the Flint plant.)
Harvard's Gearan told reporters that the point of the orientation was not "to push any agenda," adding that the program was responsive to feedback from incoming lawmakers. The orientation schedule was crafted with input from both Democratic and Republican House leadership, Gearan said. New lawmakers were encouraged but not required to attend.
"Our interest is creating a space for Republicans and Democrats, as I think you heard the members-elect say, to really have that convening so that they can build the bonds of friendship in this discourse," Gearan said. "This is a university. Any good university reviews its curriculum, reviews its coursework, and thinks the ways we might want to go forward."
The event listed as collaborators the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank; the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another think tank; and the Congressional Institute, which often sponsors retreats for lawmakers.
The Harvard event met controversy almost from the outset. On Tuesday, several freshman Democrats joined Rep.-elect Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) for a health-care rally instead of attending a talk by President Trump's Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao, according to HuffPost.
"I was not sent to Washington to play nice," Pressley told single-payer health-care activists at the rally, HuffPost reported.
