In January, after David Perdue was
sworn in to the Senate, the Georgia Republican had his staff gather down the
street from the Capitol for their first-ever meeting together.
Inside the rotunda of the National
Archives—where original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are housed—the former CEO of Dollar
General was trying to convey a sense of purpose to his team.
“I was basically saying, ‘Look this
is bigger than us. There is something very special going on here,’” Perdue
recalled telling his staff in an interview with The Daily Caller in his Capitol
Hill office last week.
“A guy like me from the outside of
politics getting elected, I felt like there was something special going on,”
Perdue said. “We’ve got a crisis going on right now and we’ve got an
opportunity to do something to affect that. And I basically reminded them that
I didn’t want to be a member of the first generation in American history that
had to tell their kids, ‘I’m leaving you a country worse off than my dad gave
me.’”
Until November, Perdue had never
been elected to public office. (He isn’t a complete stranger to politics, though:
his first cousin is former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue).
But about two months into his term,
Perdue seems to relish coming in as an outsider to an institution that includes
people who’ve been around for 40 years.
“I just think that outside
perspective is the biggest asset I bring here,” Perdue said. “Bigger than the
CEO background.”
Perdue — who sits on the budget,
foreign relations, agriculture and judiciary committees — says he thinks he can
especially add value, as a former CEO, to budget issues.
“I’m using the crisis word because I
really believe we’re so far past the tipping point that it’s almost
unmanageable,” Perdue said. “Here’s why I say this: We already have 18 to 20
trillion dollars of debt. If interest rates were at their 30-year historic rate
of five and a half percent, we’d already be paying a trillion dollars in
interest almost.”
“That’s not manageable,” Perdue
added. “That’s twice what we spend on the Department of Defense. That’s more
than we spend on our total discretionary budget. And that’s just not workable.
So I’m not looking for a balanced budget, I’m looking for a surplus budget to
help begin paying this down.”
But while Perdue — who has led a
number of other companies, including Reebok—often stresses his business
background, he’s still adjusting to the difference of being one of 100 rather
than at the top of a company.
“As the CEO, I could drive the
priorities of the company,” he said. “It was my job, along with the people
around me, to determine those priorities. In a political process, it’s not that
easy, particularly when you have the partisanship that we have. It’s really
hard to drive the priorities. And you can see that in the first two months.”
“There are some smart people here, I
will tell you that, on both sides,” Perdue added. “If we could ever get people
to focus on what we agree on and stop bickering about what we disagree on we
could get some of these things fixed.”
During his campaign, Perdue
emphasized his desire for term-limits for legislators, something he says he still
strongly supports.
After he was sworn in, Perdue
co-sponsored a bill limiting senators to serving two six-year terms. He has
also pledged to abide by that on his own. “I’m only going to be here, at max,
two terms.”
“Last Congress, there were 36 senators
who had been an elected officer for over 30 years,” Perdue said. “I just don’t
think that the founders ever even dreamed of that as a possibility.”
Comments
David Perdue is correct to attack our federal
fiscal insanity. It’s the one thing that
can “do us in” and it is doing just that.
He needs our full support.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party leader
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