Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who earlier this year called for a boycott of his home state over its new anti-immigration law and once closed his office over death threats to his staff, caught up with TPM reporter Christina Bellantoni at Netroots Nation. (Follow news from the convention in Las Vegas here.)
Bellantoni, in the video below, asked Grijalva on whose side he stood: that of MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, who slammed the White House and Congressional Democrats on Thursday over the lack of substantive change; or that of Van Jones, who on Friday exhorted the netroots not to despair and to work with the Obama administration and bring about change.
Citing health care reform, the lagging immigration and climate change debates and financial reform that wasn’t as strong as he would have liked, Grijalva said he understood the need to with the administration, but he felt a level of frustration similar to Schultz.
Grijalva said:
I think that this administration is our administration and we need to work with them, whether it’s Congress or organizations that are trying to influence where they’re taking us with policy or what they’re doing with their budget. Having said that, however, it’s also an administration and a Congressional leadership that has to have thier feet held to the fire. The susceptibility of Washington D.C. sometimes is to err on the side of caution over and over again. And I think we’ve been overly cautious.
Watch the entire interview below:
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