>> will be national guard at least be on standby? how long do you think they will be needed? have[indiscernible]l

shi>> the new york congressman carolyn mccarthy. then we will get your reaction to the grand jury decision. on the next washington journal, ll discuss the

resignation of secretary hagel. lghman will join us. 8:45 a.m., billy sure will join us with hunger in america. and then we will discuss the shooting death of michael brown. washington journal errors every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern -- day at 7:00 a.m. eastern time. petri fromive tom wisconsin retired and talked about his time in washington. congressman tom petri, you have been in the congress since 1979 and now you are retiring. what has it been like?

>> i think it was a good run. i'm in transition now and i am told not to use the retirement word but the transition word. you be staying in washington or are you going back to wisconsin? >> i am hoping to do both. my wife is from indiana, but she has a job here, so she goes back and forth as she can. i am going to keep the family together with the little time here. what do you think you are going to miss most about your time in congress? meeting people from all walks of life and working with people from different organizations and trying to help people in organizations within the district who work their way through the washington maes and maze and to be competitive

. one of the things about a job like this is that it is a social connector job. you learn about all different kinds of things. you specialize in a particular area. here you have to learn a little bit about almost anything. it is amazing the things that become a concern as you are doing the congressional job. and then likewise, what is the most frustrating thing about being here? , i don't know. i guess the one thing that is frustrating is there is not enough time in the day to deal with all of the different things you would like to deal with. we are fortunate in that each congressional representative represents some 650 -- two 650,000 tople --

700,000 people. in my kay's we have had very good at effective people in our congressional district offices who really carry most of the daily burden. your arrival here is almost completely coincidental with the arrival of a televised congress. inserted started in march of 1979, and you started one month later. tell me about your observations on the changing media and the effect on your institution. we have gotten to the 24-hour news channels and social media, and i am wondering how that has impacted the work that you do and the ability to do your work. >> well, i have never been in the congress when it was not televised. there has been electronic voting before as well, so

there were two innovations that occur just before i got here. procedures were followed before there was electronic voting, people had to stand up to get a rollcall vote, and so forth. and nowically went away rollcall votes are essentially automatic. ,efore they were very rare partly because they took so long. namesd the full 435 twice, and then people were gathering, if anybody had to be called the second time, it was another hour. so people actually cast their ore yet or name -- vote yay nay. it shows what a great efficiency there has been. ofre was a proliferation

votes on procedural issues that we are casting, and thousands of votes for congress before they might have cast, i don't know the number, and a couple hundred votes. i am not sure the quality of the thing has gone up. i have talked to people who have served in the congress before television, and of course you can't fight change. you have to figure out how to work it to your advantage. as we all know in washington, the supreme court has been very reluctant to televise their proceedings. to beo allow them broadcast now on radio. edging -- now they are edging into it. before television, representatives would actually stand up and start negotiating bills on the floor of the house and talk with each other back sort ofh and engage in

substantive discussions. now it tends to be more show for television. deviate, and if they go against what they are doing, they go again some sort of the goal. i first got here, there was actually some question as to whether or not you are allowed to use written material when speaking on the floor of the house. you are not supposed to be -- you could not put things directly. yours supposed to be not your reading. now of course, it is totally different. ipads members can bring on the floor now. >> summit members are doing selfies, which is against the rules. -- some members are doing selfies, which is against the

rules. [laughter] with social media, anything that happens will be disseminated instantly. is that how you legislate, is that how you do your job? >> i think all kinds of institutions are in the process of trying to adjust to the changes in technology and this has been going on since the telegraph was invented. it has been going on in an accelerated fashion why this does not cause any brought -- anybody problems, well, oh well. when you are trying to figure out what is important and you are trying to earn your keep by trying to accurately summarize and prioritize information a particular area, it can become instantaneous online and it can become very flat and messy.

there's all kinds of good and bad and ugly stuff on the web. of peopleod for a lot in the news business and other businesses. there is something to be said adage to work at your leisure. before, and certainly before going back to the days when we were a colony, you could take a couple of weeks to get over to europe and then a couple of weeks to get back. see you had two or three months to send a letter, and you can send another letter. see you had a lot of time to think about a figure out what made sense and what did not. and to focus on things. now people are trying to figure off how they can get a little space so they can do some depth justeir thing rather than

wasting time. i can remember as a kid, be impressedpeople being with political attitude throughout their life. i was in the eisenhower generation. the thought of dwight eisenhower waking up every morning and hopping on air force one and giving a speech in order to be part of that day's news cycle and to give back, you would never think of that. he was never in a debate or ever on any on the tv new shows. he just was a very great leader that wanted to be president. he was not skilled as a manipulator and things like that.

it is just a whole different approach. but now we are building a memorial to him because he was a great president. certainly isach not what is going on now. >> so we are talking to you early in october. there is an ethics investigation and whichasked for a the committee has asked for. years who have served on the ethics committee, etc.. believehave a reason to -- etc.. did you have a reason to believe it would be adjudicated? andt is a two-tiered system they don't always agree. the reason i asked for the

ethics investigation and a review of my actions is because i had gone to the ethics committee to ask for approval or to give me guidance whether i was acted on behalf of a constituent company. i have done it before i was in congress and when i was in congress, and the oshkosh corporation and several other corporations were in my district, so they wanted to know if i was doing it for my district or to lie my own pockets. so if we try to help them in dealing with congressional things, we first of all had to prove by the ethics committee, certainly in the case of oshkosh, and i am sad to say the stocks are not as down, or not as up as when i sold. but we wanted them to investigate a because questions were raised about it. it all happened about eight years ago. the legal question is whether

one congress can review the behaviors of another congress. a supreme court case where a person was thrown out of congress and reelected. the supreme court said, no, the voters are the people who decide. this was all in the newspapers for years in my district as well. to raisee did not want any procedural questions. we wanted to stand by their advice that they had given me. we wanted to follow them and hope to do. >> in view of the ethics committee's's purview, how does it work when you won't be here any longer? >> i asked them back in february to review it and they still haven't really appointed a committee to do it. their sole purpose is to send it to the ethics committee, and if they think there is anything then they willt,

take it for advisement prayed that they have not indicated that there are signaling to do anything since last i heard. could -- so to clear hear two from now- so you could so hear about this? >> no, they don't have any jurisdiction over private citizens. i wanted to go back to the wasker however, because it the first time a sitting speaker resigned and gave back, and his speech doing that on the floor was very dramatic. people can watch and see the sense of history.

i am wondering through the lens of time how the whole speaker ight investigation seems to you and its impact on congress. i always thought that the ethics committee had two jobs. one was obviously if someone did something wrong and there was a violation of the rules of the house or they would bring discredit upon the house, they would deal appropriately with that. it also to protect the members of the house against scurrilous and unfounded accusations. would sendwin people things to the ethics committee, usually a month or two before the election, we would say, if you feel strongly about this it was just ation

political amount of stuff going on, at least that's what it looks like. that thethink it shows speaker of the house is the leader and regarded as the most powerful person in the house. the ethics committee is made up of equal members of both political parties only. are about the only committee in congress like that. purpose is to make sure it is not used for political vendettas but is in fact an instrument of the institution to act on the merits and not on the politics of different things. i think we did that as effectively as we could, in that case. we never did reach a conclusion because the speaker chose to resign. >> there are some congressional historians or analysts who look at that as one of the seminal partisanshiphyper truly began.

to the republican revolution, ultimately, and things have been pretty intense between the two parties since. do you have any sense that that was a watershed moment? >> may have been the perception. the chairman of the committee, democratas a stalwart from los angeles. some of the books that were written said that he saying,with wright don't worry, we will take care of you. nothing could be done by the committee. but as the investigations went on and the ethics commission continued, the intelligence committee information came out and let his members of his own party to make him realize there is something there. >> if not that, what are it some

of the guest contributors to the state of partisanship in the house today. ? >> a little bit of media chatter maybe. byust saw something put out the senior member on the transportation committee on the democratic side. he was praising the work of bill shuster, who is the chairman of the committee, and he was praising his bipartisan work. i think that is the case in most committees. in thetill the case armed services committee. i believe they don't have a republican or a democratic staff . i believe they have a bipartisan staff. the thing that has been carried on since then is the drift from

a more autonomous and powerful committee chairman to decision-making and leadership and theting of bills majority and the minority of the leadership offices. beir job is obviously to party leader. they are to build the team and keep the team together. and that is fine. that is part of the deal. the chairman's job is traditionally to get something done in their area of jurisdiction. whether it is the means and ways committee, or the transportation committee, whether it is the investment of transportation, or a good tax law and all of the rest. , and it we have seen trips away from the committees operating from that premise and working on their own system, following the beck and call of

the leadership bills. it is part of this new cycle business just like the president. it is reacting or trying to get on top of things, and it is very short-term stuff. the quality of bills that come out has been abysmal. you look at what is called obamacare, half of the problems are that it was never intended to be a bill. it was how the politics of it were, and something that had senatethe summit -- the with a lot of patches to get what they needed to get in the senate, and then suddenly they lost the super majority that they needed. senator brown's election in massachusetts, that cause that. there was a lot of problems in it. everyone would tell you who is involved in the process.

other bills were that has been done more for the politics of it and by the party leadership, whether it is republican or democrat on the committee. it is not just the members. the member of the committee on trent rotation more on transportation bills and represented policy and new more than john boehner or people who were on the staff of either party. the time ofd past press releases, and that works in the short run, that it causes more and more frustrations and problems with people trying to operate under the law or trying to implement the law. it is basically just a crummy way to do business. how has the republican

conference changed in the last couple of years? >> not a whole lot. you describe yourself as a pragmatic conservative. people look at you as a moderate. the moderate voices seem to be diminishing in the conference. >> i don't know. almost everyone thinks they are a moderate and everyone else is an extremist. [laughter] who inre a lot of people both parties have this kind of thing, my democratic colleagues are always complaining because aree are people there who in their party or district who are calling them dinos, and then you have rhinos. i don't know what it amounts to, really. >> i found a quote about you from a long-ago challenger. >> her mother was my eighth

grade science teacher and her dad was the high school gym teacher and basketball coach, so i knew the family since i was a little kid. >> bow she said nice things about you. i want to read a quote. well, she said nice things about you. i want to read a quote. [laughter] a person your recognizes in the long term that getting together makes the government work better. -- ithink that is white think that is how you do your job. it'll we have become so partisan. some of thehat to people involved in congress back 1830's to 1860's. -- 1860's period with

clay. people try to avoid it from splitting up on issues like abolition and tariffs. compromising and compromising and people got more and more angry. people said you cannot compromise on principles. i think there was a representative who was, i think it may be was the south, maybe it was vice versa, anyway, a representative from one of the southern states went to a club of one of the other states, and i think the psychology of it pretty well was you just don't want compromise anymore, you want confrontation. well, what happened? more people were killed then

ever before in american history. we did end up abolishing slavery. but they abolished in brazil without a civil war. and they did that just a few years later. there was a big international movement going back to wilberforce in london, and it became a symbol of the thing. obviously it was a terrible thing. near -- wenowhere have been through much worse times in our country. for what it is worth, to even to in the political process report this, and put everything on the ideological spectrum between moderate, conservative, and liberal, many people do not fit in that spectrum. a lot of politicians in our country who are probably more n ideological decisions.

war, itfought the civil was not left versus right ideology, it was regional disagreements. differencese big like that. over ind to get papered the left right fight. for example, carbon taxes. it affects the midwest much more severely than it does the coasts , because the electrical generation on the coast has not to be coal base, but the midwest tend to be much more coal-based. but that is not just economic but environmental issues in the midwest, whereas the other regions tend to ally with the environmental issues. you know more on this situation than if you represent southern illinois, for example. but anyway. live talk about major

historical occurrences during your tenure. the first one is 9/11. what was your reflection of that. period? >> i was sitting here in the office happily reading the morning mail and that sort of thing. and debbie's office, the chief of staff, should she -- she would keep her door open. she had her tv on. and suddenly, she said, oh my gosh. there has been a terrible thing in new york. because the clouds and everyone said, well how could this have happened? something must've happened to the pilot, maybe he lost control? a few minutes later, my god, it is happened again! the second plane. .hen everyone said, uh oh >> did you have to evacuate?

>> i think the pentagon was a little bit later. my reaction was a little bit different than a lot of people. the people here said they wanted to evacuate. was, if this is not a war were they are going to be bombing every building, people running out into the street will create chaos. you can run up to the street if you want, but you won't get paid if you do. a few minutes later we were ordered to evacuate, and there was chaos of the street. the poor pentagon, the fire trucks could not get over from d.c. to help them. so all of the infrastructure tom the virginia side had hell. and they close the schools and my daughter was in school at the car and i managed to get my

out of the garage here. but it took about three hours to to the labor here building which is about six blocks away, it would take about five minutes to walk. i got up to school quicker than i could, and what could you do? we went to an out of arrest and that's people running around. it shows you the irrational panic which something. have this sort of thing. certain bureaucratic and other interest, but it is not an appropriate response, in my opinion, is not a reagan did not aring crisis -- is paying to -- it is not the thing to do during a crisis. the idea