Congressional Japan Caucus
One of the things the 11th District has been lacking over the past 4 years has been strong leadership from its elected representatives. I will change this not just by working hard to get seated on the committees and sub-committees in the House of Representatives that have a major impact on the district, but also by taking the lead in creating a Congressional Japan Caucus, a bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators with business, family, district, or historical ties to the maintenance of friendly and open relations with the nation of Japan. Currently, no such group exists and, despite the presence of a congressional caucuses dealing with Azerbaijan, the Caribbean, and shellfish, there is as yet no caucus dedicated to working jointly with one of our largest trading partners, the second largest economy in the world, and our most important Pacific ally.
Such a caucus would be of immense value as the United States seems destined to drift into our own ‘Lost Decade,’ an economic phenomenon that Japan has experience for the last two decades. I have studied this economic issue intensely, have experienced it first-hand while living in Japan, and am watching the travails that the Japanese side of my family suffered being mirrored by the economic plight of Americans since 2007. We need to work together, legislature to legislature; to pull both of ourselves out of this self-generated mire using free-market principles, sound monetary policy, and bilateral goodwill.
Creating bilateral legislative ties are intensely important, as Japan and America routinely grapple with trade and tariff issues. An open governmental dialogue, supported by a Congressional working group representing multiple interests and representing both political parties would go a long way to dispel rancor and establish norms and methods for voicing problems in matters of trade, foreign policy, and military coordination. Japan has much to teach us, particularly regarding free market green technology integration and development, ‘soft power’ projection and the implementation of a humane social safety net (Social Security and Medicare) that does not become a hammock. We, likewise, have much to work with together with the Japanese – sustainable fisheries practices, diplomatic resolution of Japan’s outstanding territorial disputes, working with Japan to bring that country into the norms of International Whaling Commission practices, agreeing to a non-contentious distribution of our deployed military, and resolving disputes that drove Japan away from the signing table of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction.
For these reasons and to these ends, I will take the reins of leadership to forge a bipartisan caucus and move relations between these two historical partners in a positive direction.