As he closes out his last term in Congress, Indiana Republican Rep. Larry Bucshon says he’s taking the long view.
“Congress has always had its ups and downs, since the first one up until the 118th,” says the former heart surgeon, one of multiple members of the GOP Doctors Caucus who decided not to run for reelection.
“Somebody was asking me the other day, ‘What are we going to do without you guys?’ … And I said, ‘Well, the first Congress was in 1789, and we weren’t there.’”
He’s more worried about America’s fiscal fitness. “I absolutely believe we need a constitutional amendment to balance our budget,” he said.
While his lawmaking days may be over, the 62-year-old has no plans to fully retire, although he won’t be heading back to the operating theater. “Imagine if I came to you and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to do your heart surgery. It’s the first one I’ve done in 14 years.’ You’d be like, ‘I don’t think so.’”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q: Why are you leaving after seven terms?
A: I set a timeline when I first got elected with my wife and my family. I thought I’d do five or six terms, but because it looked like we were going to be in the House majority on my seventh term, I decided I was going to stay and finish out in the majority.
I honestly feel that people should come and serve and not spend the rest of their entire career in Congress. I am 62, so if I’m going to do something else, it was the right time for me to move on. I still love being a member of Congress, and it’s an honor and privilege to do it.
Q: What’s your next move?
A: I was a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon, so I really can’t go back to medicine. But I can try to continue to influence public policy from the outside in consulting and government relations, primarily in the health care space.
Q: What do you regret, and what are you proud of?
A: I don’t have any regrets, I really don’t. But I’m really proud of some of the things we’ve done in health care — like, in 2015, we reformed the way Medicare pays physicians. We repealed what’s called the SGR [sustainable growth rate] calculation and replaced it with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, or MACRA.
We passed legislation, which I was a big part of in Energy and Commerce, to eliminate the surprise medical bills that were hurting a lot of people. The implementation process has been a struggle, but I’m proud that no one is going to get a big bill for when they went to a hospital in good faith and didn’t realize the anesthesiologist wasn’t in their insurance network.
And then myself and Robin Kelly just recently got bipartisan legislation signed by President Biden that is going to reform the organ transplant system. There was one organization that really had a monopoly on organ allocation nationally, but now they’re going to open that up to competition and, I hope, ultimately improve it. We waste kidneys every year that could be transplanted, just because of logistics.
Q: What changes have you seen in your time here, good or bad?
A: Somebody was asking me the other day, “What are we going to do without you guys?” Because myself, Dr. [Michael] Burgess, Dr. [Brad] Wenstrup and others from the House Republican Doctors Caucus are leaving. And I said, “Well, the first Congress was in 1789, and we weren’t there.”
So I kind of take a philosophical approach. This form of self-government has been pretty resilient. There’s ups and downs, there’s times where the country struggled for a variety of reasons, but at the end of the day, it’s a system that’s sustaining.
That said, one thing that’s changed is social media in our national political discussion. It was there when I came, but it’s exploded since, and I don’t think for the better. Rather than having policy disputes, Congress has gotten more personal, with people saying, “You’re a bad person because you don’t agree with me.”
I don’t get into the “mainstream media” stuff. I mean, do we have polarization in our media, particularly on TV? Yes, but that’s not a new phenomenon. As long as there’s transparency and openness, people can make judgments for themselves. But on the social media side, the anonymity of it, that’s really what’s changed.
Q: If you had a magic wand, what’s one thing you would change about Congress?
A: Rank-and-file members of Congress frequently are frustrated by decisions that ultimately are made at the leadership level versus the ground up. One of the things I wish we could solve is the budget process. I think it needs to be massively reformed so it doesn’t come down to what we call the ‘four corners’ decision, where it’s the leaders on both sides of the Capitol coming up with, all of a sudden, a big bill at the end that we’re supposed to accept, and a year of committee work just gets thrown out the window.
I think we have to fix that, but without a balanced budget amendment, it ain’t gonna happen. It’s not because people don’t want to; it’s because politically, it’s difficult. On the Republican side, people are fearful we’ll have to raise taxes. On the Democrat side, they’re fearful we’ll have to address entitlement reform. That’s a broad brush, but in general, this is why.
Politicians need backup so they can say to their constituents, “Look, I’m with you, but I have a constitutional duty to balance the budget, and we have to have spending priorities here.” We’ve got to get our fiscal house in order.
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