Rep. Barrett promises honest answers, albeit sometimes circuitous

Even with a notebook full of questions, one curiosity lingered as I waited for U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, to meet me for an interview at his hometown Biggby: what his drink order would be.

I never learned. A man in line at our meeting time stood out for wearing a suit. He turned out to be Ron Kendall, Barrett’s district director, who’d arrived ahead of Barrett and ordered his drink. When Barrett arrived 10 minutes later in an Army green zip-up jacket, the table was already set with a cup of ice water and his mystery beverage.

I was nervous about meeting him. Up till now, my coverage of him had been about protests over his unwillingness to appear in person at town halls. But he sat down smiling, shook my hand and asked about my work as if it were just as important as his own work in Washington.

I started our interview off easy with the first-term congressman, who beat Democrat Curtis Hertel last November by 4%. Noting his steady rise from state representative to state senator to now U.S. representative, I asked what was different taking the big step up to D.C. He was quick to reply that he had never perceived elected office as a ladder and expressed frustration with the number who do.

“Every member of Congress seems to want to be a U.S. senator,” he said. “Every senator or governor wants to be president.”

One change he was happy to note was the number of post-9/11 veterans in federal office. When he was elected to the state House of Representatives, he said, he was the only Iraq War veteran there. The same situation played out in the state Senate. But in Washington, he said, “there are more Iraq and Afghanistan veterans,” which he finds encouraging because “our insight on foreign policy and conflicts has been a little bit missing.”

A difference I was curious about was the makeup of his constituency. Michigan’s 7th District is solidly purple, something Barrett learned firsthand when he lost it to Democrat Elissa Slotkin in 2022. At his telephone town hall April 7, Barrett bemoaned political polarization and a lack of common goals, suggesting constituents put more trust in their representative. I asked how he was working to represent all his constituents, including those who voted against him.

He answered that voters had spoken at the ballot box, and that the best he could do now was to stick to his guns.

“I can’t represent every single person’s viewpoint because it may be in conflict with the viewpoints I presented to voters when I was out campaigning,” he said.

While some disagree with his actions, he said, no one can call him a hypocrite.

“That’s something I take seriously. I never want to mislead people as to what my viewpoints are, or what I intend to do while I’m serving in office.”

I asked next about a comment by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who said two weeks ago that “we are all afraid” of retaliation by Trump. I referenced other sources of fear, including the stock market’s rapid fluctuations and student protesters I had spoken to who were unwilling to provide a name. Had he seen that fear, and what could the government do to mitigate it?

This was the first question Barrett did not fully answer. Rather than suggest a way out of this fear, he argued that it was irrational. “We shouldn’t be reckless” with the stock market, because it is “a lot of times emotionally driven” and not a perfect economic indicator, he said. As for free speech, he referenced “a multitude of protests that have taken place outside my own district office” without incident.

I wanted to ask further about the hundreds of international students whose visas had been revoked, some seemingly over pro-Palestine stances. For the sake of time — his office had granted me 30 minutes, which stretched into 35 — I did not. Those visas were reinstated over the weekend.

Our meeting took place just hours after Trump declared that “Crimea will stay with Russia.” One of four “pillars of security” he campaigned on was national security. Did he believe Trump’s plan would accomplish that?

His answer was roundabout, at best. An active-duty helicopter pilot for more than two decades, Barrett, 44, spoke about his first Army assignment, “just a few miles south of the Korean DMZ.” He pointed out that the Korean War “never had a formalized peace treaty,” seeming to suggest Russia and Ukraine might not either. He also said the Global War on Terror taught him that “the United States’ national security interest is not to get engaged in every single foreign conflict.”

He said over 7,000 had died during the war on terror and over 30,000 had died of suicide. He said our government does not pay enough attention to the human cost of war. He asked if I’d ever seen “M*A*S*H” — I hadn’t — and recalled a scene in which a character describes war as worse than hell, because the suffering in war is undeserved. 

Without directly referencing Crimea, he told me there “aren’t going to be perfect solutions to every single conflict.”  He was, he said, “willing to give a little bit of maneuver space to the administration” to “best achieve a durable peace.”

At this point, I had already tried to interject multiple times to clarify his stance on Trump’s plan. I pressed him here: what if the peace did not last? He said he could not hypothesize.

But, again, did he think Trump’s plan would achieve that durable peace?

“Well, I can tell you this,” he started, before firing back his own question: Did I remember who was president the first time Putin invaded Ukraine?

Barrett had a habit of quizzing me while building an argument, and I let him tell me it was Obama. Who was president next time? Biden, of course.

A minute or so into his subsequent reflections on Biden’s withdrawal from Iraq, I realized we’d reached a dead end on Crimea. I moved on.

Next, I asked about his comment to broadcast journalist Charlie LeDuff (a Michigander, by the way) that lost jobs had led to “a whole generation of young men that are living off marijuana and DoorDash and staying in their mom’s basement,” having lost “the dignity of work.” I asked him what he was doing for these young men.

Another Barrett-ism is restating his premise rather than drawing a conclusion. He said there were 7 million working-age men not in the labor market (a statistic even the libertarian Cato Institute takes issue with, since many of those men are disabled, caretaking or in school) and that we need “a cultural recognition that the best thing for an individual is for them to achieve their highest potential.”

Yes, I asked, but how can you achieve that?

“We have to get back to an accountability where people who are capable of work are expected to support themselves,” he said. That involves “passing policies that look to benefit those who want to start a family, that make it more affordable to go out and earn a living and raise a family,” such as eliminating so-called “marriage penalties,” such as tax brackets that disincentivize dual-income marriages or federal programs available only to bachelors.

His response reminded me of another comment he made in his second telephone town hall, where he said that creating “an economy that allows people to earn a living and support their family” would reduce the need for Medicaid. I asked how he would get us there.

Again, he restated his premise, clarifying that he supported Medicaid “for those who are not capable of supporting themselves” and that his congressional colleagues agreed.

I asked again, directly, how he would create that economy. I also asked how he would ensure coverage stayed consistent as the government takes an axe to federal spending.

He did not address the first question; the second he did only to restate his intentions not to cut anyone off. He spent longer discussing those he did seek to cut off: undocumented immigrants and those who are no longer eligible but still receive benefits.

Finally, I asked about the situation some are calling a constitutional crisis, with the executive branch refusing to comply with court orders to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian citizen deported in error to an El Salvador prison. Why wasn’t this a threat to individual liberty, I asked?

Barrett repeated claims that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 gang member and declared that “people overwhelmingly voted to see enforcement of keeping Americans safe.” He said the American immigration system “had entirely collapsed under Joe Biden” and that the wave of deportations was in line with what voters chose in November.

In terms of the Supreme Court’s order, Barrett asserted Trump has no authority to direct El Salvador to send back a Salvadorean citizen who had entered the U.S. illegally.

Before I had the opportunity to draw a comparison to Barrett’s excursion to Mexico to secure the release of Paul and Christy Akeo, a Michigan couple who had been held in a Mexican maximum-security prison over a credit card dispute, he brought them up for me.

“Those were American citizens held in a foreign country,” he said. “This is a foreign national held in his own country. It is beyond the scope and jurisdiction of the United States.”

Though our scheduled time was up, Barrett was happy to stick around and tell me about two bills he planned to introduce.

The first would diminish barriers for veterans aiming to get into transportation and supply-chain professions. The second, which expands the Veterans Administration’s Community Care network to include hearing aid specialists, made his eyes light up. He explained with passion that only licensed audiologists were covered, but that they were in high demand and not necessary for simple readjustments. No onlooker could have denied that Barrett is genuinely passionate about improving the VA. He serves on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

But will his intentions stand up to the chaotic dismantling of the federal government Barrett has supported? It’s hard to say.

When I shook his hand, I thanked him for his commitment to preserving Medicaid. As the only child of a single, disabled mother, I said, I was grateful to hear federal cuts would not affect her coverage.

I hope he’s right.

— LEO V. KAPLAN