Our man in Washington predicts progress from next Congress

Focus on economics, accountability

Looking ahead to next year, when Republicans will hold leadership posts in both houses, Gibson predicts the focus will remain on economic issues, rather than hot-button social issues, like a bill he supports which would ban abortion after 20 weeks. Gibson also said he believes GOP dominance of Congress won’t leave Democrats cut out of the process. The way he sees it, Republican leaders will be under pressure to demonstrate their ability to govern and pass legislation. To do that, they will have to work with their Democratic counterparts to craft bills that President Obama will actually sign.

“I think there’s going to be more accountability in the system in every direction,” said Gibson. “We will need to shape reasonable legislation that puts the president in a position where he needs to support it. Putting Democratic ideas into the bills, it makes it harder for the president to veto them.”

Gibson said he believes the next Congress will finally take up immigration reform. The question of how reform would deal with the more than 11 million people currently in the country illegally has led to gridlock on the issue in recent years. Conservatives have resisted any measure that would include “amnesty” or a path to legal citizenship for illegal immigrants. They’ve also opposed legislation that would put undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children on a path to legal status.

But Gibson said he believes the new House majority will be able to work out what he called a pragmatic solution. The reform would consist of mandatory use of “E-Verify” systems by employers and government agencies to track the legal status of prospective employees to recipients of benefits, beefed-up border security and a guest worker program. Current undocumented immigrants, he said, could obtain legal status, but only after coming forward, pleading guilty to entering the country illegally, paying a fine and passing a background check. Gibson said this solution would avoid the “amnesty” label while allowing hard-working, otherwise law-abiding immigrants to remain in the country.

“We’re not going to send them back,” said Gibson of undocumented immigrants. “We have to reconcile the fact that we are a nation of laws with the fact that we are a nation of immigrants.”

Tax reform

Gibson also predicted that the 114th Congress would take on the first major reform of the nation’s tax code since 1986. Gibson said that he believed a bipartisan compromise would likely include tax relief for working families and small businesses. As for large corporations, Gibson said, a bipartisan bill would likely close some tax loopholes while providing “sweeteners” to encourage big business to take money currently invested overseas and put it back into the American economy. The resulting bill, however, would have to incorporate ideas from both the left and the right.

“I think the tax reform proposal will be more center-right than right because I think that’s where the nation is,” said Gibson. “But for something as big as tax reform to pass, it has to be bipartisan.”

Gibson also said a new infrastructure bill, with money for bridge and highway improvements nationwide, would likely find bipartisan support in the next Congress.

Gibson honed his negotiating skills during three combat tours in Iraq. There he was frequently called upon to mediate disputes and forge alliances in a complex landscape of competing sects, factions, ethnic groups and militias. While he sees some parallels to the partisan political landscape in Washington, his message to constituents is, “We’ve got it pretty good here.”

“As Americans, we’re lucky,” said Gibson. “The fact is that we have a lot more in common than we have differences.”