As a former Super Bowl-winning NFL safety, Rep. Burgess Owens (R., Utah) knows about playing on a winning team. And as a congressman who’s served in the House majority and minority, he knows that Republicans are most effective when they win.
After careers in media and professional sports, Owens is now running to chair the Education and Workforce Committee next Congress. In an interview with the Washington Reporter, he described his future vision for the committee.
If elected chairman, continuing current chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.)’s work to hold colleges accountable for anti-patriotism and anti-Semitism is at the top of Owens’s agenda. Owens will “hold all Ivy League colleges accountable right now that have failed us,” he said.
Following the coronavirus pandemic and the rampant displays of anti-Semitism on college campuses after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, Owens said, “this is the first time that the Republican Party has had education as a priority. It is now China, the budget, and education.”
One of Owens’s top priorities oversight, he said. Republicans need the trifecta of the House, Senate, and White House in order to successfully clean up America’s education system.
“We can defund, and when we start talking about defunding that’s a big deal. That’s what [Democrats have] done to those colleges, the education system, anybody they don’t like, the career, the technical, those types of institutions, they’ve been able to hurt them by defunding them. Well, we’re going to do this. We’re just going to defund only those who are not doing a good job for our kids. If they’re coming out hating our country, that’s a problem,” he said.
Until this Congress, during which the Education and Workforce Committee grilled college presidents over their institutional failures to combat anti-Semitism in the most-viewed congressional hearing ever, the committee used to be “kind of a pass through,” Owens said. “Really good talent would pass through Education until they can find a good spot someplace else…now, we have people who are on really demanding committees waiving on to Education.” Owens is also focused on countering the myriad threats posed by China, including espionage, and illegal vapes that are flooding K-12 schools.
Owens learned a series of lessons from his time on the Oakland Raiders’ 1980 Super Bowl-winning team that apply to his time in Congress. “Everybody who stepped on the field wanted to make sure they were not the weak link, that we were not letting the rest of the team down.” To Owens, while winning is about individual talent to a degree, “it’s more of a team, a unified effort.”
Should President Donald Trump win, Owens hopes to have Betsy DeVos reprise her role as Secretary of Education. Should Harris win, Owens is concerned that his work would be akin to “plug[ging] a hole up in the Titanic. I’m trying to make the point that there’s nothing we can do with Harris as president. There’s nothing we can do with the Democratic Party having oversight over the Department of Education.”
The Biden-Harris administration’s “Department of Labor is like the Department Education, unfortunately. It is very anti-business, it is anti-small business, it is anti-innovation,” Owens said. He’d like to see America look more like his adopted home state of Utah, with its pro-business culture and regulations that have allowed it to slash unemployment to one of the lowest in the country.
The Biden administration’s Department of Labor has posed a series of problems to workers across America, he said. “If it’s a right to work state, that’s because the people there decided that’s what they want,” he said. “There should be no underhand way of trying to sneak in to undermine the business owners.” When it comes to independent contractors, he also wants to ensure that we “never have that title or that niche of independent contractors be changed by a by dictate from the federal government, from D.C., which is again, is something else they are trying to get done.”
When Owens hangs up his cleats after a career in politics, he made it clear that he has no desire to succeed Roger Goodell as NFL Commissioner. But, he is already thinking about his legacy.
“When I think of the things that I want to be remembered for, it will not be the NFL, it will not be being a congressman, it’ll be being part of a team that disrupted our educational system for good, intergenerationally, he said. “So I’m kind of in a place, I would say, unlike any other time since I played in the NFL, that I know why I’m here. I know it’s a position that I can be an impact player in.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Burgess Owens (R., Utah), lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
You’re running to chair the Ed and Workforce Committee next Congress. What’s been your bumper sticker slogan?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
The way I’m approaching it is that education should be looked at as a national security issue. I think for the first time, we have a conference that’s prioritized it the way it should be, along with China, the budget, and education. And now it’s time, particularly because of what we’ve seen in the last four years, the American people are finally waking up. The American people are finally asking the question themselves: what can we do better? Because the educational system is failing us, and because they now are with us, and all we have to do is get the trifecta, get the House, the Senate, and President Trump, we can start focusing on our children instead of on institutions. My big thing is this: I was fortunate to have been raised in the shadows of academia. My dad was a professors at Florida A&M University. I know the benefits of having a good education, high expectations, the ability to dream big, you can think through issues and any obstacles, and also seeing the last six years what happens when that’s taken away. So for me, it’s personal. I grew up at a time watching and seeing where education was our gateway. In the days of segregation, 1960s, it was a place where we led the country because of black men. When we came out of high schools, our black high schools, we were planning on going to black colleges that taught us how to compete and how to think and how to gain respect. So I watched it firsthand when it’s working, and now I see that we’re in a position, Matthew, where there’s a study came out in 2017 that found that 75 percent of the Black boys in the state of California could not pass standard reading and writing tests. Now that, in itself, is a tragedy, a travesty, but what really takes it to another level is that nobody seems to think something’s wrong with that. We have that many Americans who cannot read and write, cannot dream big. And then you go to Washington, D.C., we have 0 percent in some of these districts, zero proficiency of math. What we’re seeing is a dumbing down educational system, a failure to grow or innovate. So I know it’s a long answer to a short question. But at the end of the day it comes down to this: we need to debate. We need to be thinking about this as a national security issue, and we’ll go from there. We can continue to grow from there. I’ll say this, and I want to thank you, Matthew, and anyone right now who’s part of this process. We need to educate the American people, and we all have different positions to do that. Right now, I’m a congressman. You happen to be a person who wants to take information, spread it out. There are folks who will be teaching. There are folks who will be innovating how to get more and more opportunities. Whatever we’re doing as a team is going to help us to grow. So I’m just glad that we’re at this time and place where we’re really looking and talking about this in the way that we are now.
Washington Reporter:
How are you going about campaigning for chairman, compared to how you’ve campaigned for Congress?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
What a good question. Well, first of all, I’m one of those guys who never thought politics would be part of my my journey. I never, never did, up until about two or three months before I decided to run. So coming into this I had an idea of having a hope that it would be a way for me to impact kids, because at that time, I was running, running a non for profit for kids. And it’s always been my mission. It’s been my mission since I left the NFL, to impact at risk kids, but I got into my first campaign with a lot of questions, not understanding just how it was going to make it happen or or how I was going to fit. I’m now in a position where I’ve served enough time, I’ve had a chance to be mentored and to now know what my mission is. When I think of the things that I want to be remembered for, it will not be the NFL, it will not be being a congressman, it’ll be being part of a team that disrupted our educational system for good, intergenerationally. So I’m kind of in a place, I would say, unlike any other time since I played in the NFL, that I know why I’m here. I know it’s position that I can be an impact player in. I know that we have a team now that we have the same end game, which is to educate our kids, and it’s a very important for us to not only have the legislative body, the House, the Senate, but also the presidency. Now, for the first time, we have American people demanding a difference, a change. So we put that equation together, and we have a chance to make a change in the next two to four years that I’ve been hoping to be a part of for the last four years. And so I would say, of all the things that’s changed for me is I now understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, what my mission is. And anybody who watches me in my hearings or talks to me about education can can feel my passion for this process. I would say the difference is, I now know why I am here.
Washington Reporter:
How does being a Super Bowl-winning NFL player factor into how you approach teamwork and working with your colleagues?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Another good question. The one thing that I recognized in that one year, that we went to Super Bowl in, was because I played for a lot of seasons, all on losing teams to finally get to the one where we won the Super Bowl, in which I had a chance to experience what winning really was all about. And winning is not about, obviously, it’s individual talent, but it’s more of a team, a unified effort. It’s when the team understands why are we here, and the culture that I became part of with the Raiders was simple. It didn’t matter how old we were, how many teams we played for before, but when you stepped on the field with Al Davis, it was about winning. It was just win, baby. That was his focus, and so everybody who stepped on the field wanted to make sure they were not the weak link, that we were not letting the rest of the team down. So I would say where we are right now is very similar to that. We’ve had last four years to realize that our kids have been under attack for a long time. We’re losing our culture when our kids have no empathy for those in which evil is being being done to. When we don’t have kids that come out proud of who we are as a country and and willing to go through the process of meritocracy to compete. When we lose that, we’re losing our culture. If we get set up with the House, the Senate, and President Trump, we can finally have this conversation that no matter where we are in this process, what part of the team we play, we don’t want to do the weak link. I see a sense of unity, a sense of focus, of why we’re doing this. Think about this, Matthew, this is the first time that the Republican Party has had education as a priority. It is now China, the budget, and education. That says everything about how we see this as an issue that we should all be a part of. So I would say it’s the culture of wanting to win, and we wanted to win by making sure kids have a remarkable future moving forward intergenerationally.
Washington Reporter:
How did growing up in the Jim Crow South inform your desire to be on the Ed and Workforce Committee?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Here now, I would say the biggest blessing I’ve had, when I think about my life, my journey, the biggest blessing is where I was raised, and during the time I was raised, and by my parents who raised me, and my community. I was raised in Deep South. My first exposure to white Americans wasn’t until I was 16 years old. So everything that I grew up with, my core, was based on what I learned in my family and my community. My dad was a World War Two vet, so I grew up loving our country, proud of our flag, making sure it never touched the ground. That’s what I was taught as a kid. I also had a chance, growing up, seeing what success looked like. In every facet in our segregated community, we were self-sufficient, so everything we did was within my community, whether it be bakers, pharmacies, we had across the board. So it was also a place and a time when our community, our race, understood that you could not beg or ask for respect. You had to command it. So commanding it was very simple. You work. You work hard, you study harder. When people don’t think you can do the task, you prove them wrong. And because of that pride in commanding respect, I knew what it was when people say ‘you couldn’t do something’ to move through it. So that was the community I grew up, and because it was, I now understand it’s not hypothetical to see what can happen when you put things in the right order. It’s also not hypothetical what happens when you pull all that away, when you look at a community now that’s at the very bottom of every success metric, whether it be education, whether it be raising a family, whether it be business ownership, all the things that were very successful with me back 60 years ago is now no longer there. One last thing, Matthew. Keep this in mind. It’s important to realize what a successful community looked like back in the 60s. And this is something that most Americans have no idea about. In the 40s, 50s and 60s, because the Black community was segregated, we believed in faith, family, the free market, education. We were looking at commanding respect by everybody weighing in, when the kids left the community, the goal for those parents was that they’re gonna put a good name for that community so people respected it. So here’s the result of that. The Black community in the 40s, 50s and 60s, led the country in the growth of the middle class. The men committed to marriage and were a large percentage of entrepreneurs. So you put that together. I saw success everywhere. So I left Tallahassee to go to the University of Miami, where I was the third black athlete to get a scholarship. I went there not to not to be an NFL player. I went there because I wanted to be marine biologist. Understand that the community I grew up in had in me the confidence to be prepared, being tenacious. And when I left Tallahassee to go to this all-white college, I took everything with me, and the things I had goals for is exactly what I was able to achieve.
Washington Reporter:
There’s a belief that some on the more radical left have, to take the American Jim Crow experience and foist that onto the Middle East, and say Israel are white southerners and that Palestinians are the black Americans. Having lived through that, I think you have a great perspective that college students should hear about.
Rep. Burgess Owens:
It’s simple. That’s what happens when Marxists take over the college system. You understand what DEI is all about. CRT too is divisive, it’s doing everything against what I grew up in. I grew up in a time when we were judging each other outside in, not inside out. I was one of four black Americans to go to my high school and the third to go to the University of Miami. Our country, the Judeo-Christian values that we have based our country on, the idea of becoming a more perfect union, has always been that we look at each other from the inside out not outside in, and look through my meritocracy. If you look at what Marxists do, and then this is a problem, we have to really make sure we get out of our school system. Marxism is against everything we believe that in. It is against faith, families, free market, education, and it takes that divisiveness, that racism, that anger, that it projects, and it takes it everywhere. So the fact is, if you ever go to Israel and we have to have more of our kids go there. It’s probably the most diverse places you’ll ever see in the world. You have African Israelis, you have Arab Israelis, across the board. So to use the DEI and put that on to the Israeli, the Jewish state is exactly what first of all, they have done to our country. That’s why we have so much divisiveness now, and we’re going to make sure that we start educating our kids to what our country truly is. Karl Marx said the first battleground is the rewriting of history. Why do the Marxists want to steal our history, about what it was that we brought us together, all the different backgrounds and races and religions that brought us to where we are? If you steal that history, then they can project their own, and they can not have us not appreciate our past. So at the end of the day, it’s what we’re now seeing on our college campuses, and our thoughts about any other free society outside of our country is because we have Marxism that’s been going like a cancer for quite a few decades now.
Washington Reporter:
As chairman, how do you want to continue to build on the momentum that Chairwoman Foxx had this Congress?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
The first thing is to take the example of how she built this remarkable committee. Dr. Foxx was the only chairperson who reached out to me when I was when I was elected. I had not met her, I had not talked with her. She gave me a call and and we started having a good conversation. My question was, does education have anything to do with juvenile correction oversight? So what we have is a leader who knew what it was to go out and find good talent. The way that this committee used to be was it was kind of a pass through. Really good talent would pass through Education until they can find a good spot someplace else. We don’t have that anymore because of the leadership of Dr. Foxx, the remarkable team she’s put together, and the impact we’re having. We now have people who are on really demanding committees waiving on to Education. So it says that we’re able to now hold onto the great talent and those who begin to understand what our priorities are. So my goal is simply is to do the same thing, to take that example, and part of what I’m doing now is I’m traveling across the country and helping a lot of our new colleagues to come on board and help us build a big majority. Part of that is getting a chance to know some of my colleagues and see which ones might have interest in being part of this remarkable committee. So it’s highlighting the importance, the good things we’ve done, but also looking for the talent, hoping to hold onto those talents who have been part of this committee so far as we move into the next couple terms here.
Washington Reporter:
What do you think the Department of Education’s role should be?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
I’ve been fortunate to see what it is to be in the Congress where we don’t have control, which was my first Congress. To make the difference we need to make in education, the American people need to give us a trifecta. We need to have a bigger House majority. We need to have the Senate, and President Trump also understands the damage the Department of Education has done to our kids. We need to take a look at our government, particularly Education, like every other thing that we’ve done in our country. I’m going to make an example of analogy of what I mean by that. Horace Mann was the father of education. Horace Mann passed away 20 years before Alexander Graham Bell said, ‘hello, Watson.’ Where has that ‘hello, Watson’ gone for us? I’m now talking on a handheld computer, that no matter where I go, my number’s with me. It is amazing, the things we can do, the work we can do because of this smartphone. Where are we right now with education? Well, 75 percent of Black black boys can’t read and write. We’re now in the middle of the end worldwide in education, which we should never be. America should never, ever be satisfied by not being number one in anything we do. At the end of the day, what it really comes down to is we have to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to win this process so we can win our kids back, as long as we have this conflict with the Democratic Party, in which we’re not looking at meritocracy, we’re not looking at how we get the most of our kids educated, not just a small minority, not a small niche. We have two different visions of education, and all we have to do is look up what the Democrats have done with the labor unions. For them, it’s all about the institution, all about ideology. On our side, we think about the kids. We want to leave a legacy, so that our kids are running circles around others, having a much better lifestyle, having much better, bigger middle class. And the only way to do that is we need to have the freedom to go out and legislate and be bold about education. And the only way to do that is have control of the House, the Senate and President Trump in the executive branch.
Washington Reporter:
Do you have any recommendations on who would be good to run the Department of Education if Trump wins in November?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Well, I have my number one pick, and I’m hoping it’s not too late to ask her: Betsy DeVos. Oh my goodness. First of all, I have so much respect for people who have been successful in life and for the rest of their lives they want to give back. For Betsy DeVos, her passion is education. That’s what she and her husband do, whether it be with the government or not, that’s what they do. President Trump, he’s a disruptor. He wants to find a way to make sure winning is the end result, that we get the best return of our investment, best return of our time. If we can put President Trump now, who has a focus on education, with a Betsy DeVos, who has the experience of now going through what it was like the first time, and then coming back for the next four years on how to make it work, that would be my top pick. I haven’t really thought past that one, and I don’t know if it’s too late to make that work, but I would hope that that would be a good combination there.
Washington Reporter:
Is there anyone on the left that you think the Senate needs to absolutely not consider who Kamala Harris could be potentially putting in to run the Department of Education if she wins?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
You’re asking how can we plug a hole up in the Titanic. I’m trying to make the point that there’s nothing we can do with Harris as president. There’s nothing we can do with the Democratic Party having oversight over the Department of Education. There’s nothing. The Democratic Party is owned by the left, it’s owned by those who got us our system in the place it is right now where we don’t have the innovation in our workforce that we need. A good example is President Trump had put together a team. That team was pretty impressive. There’s a bunch of this network of organizations trying to put together what’s called Learning and Employment Records, to digitize the way that we do workforce, to have it so as you go through schooling or go through your work experience, that there is interoperability. There is a skill learning language that was shared no matter what platform it might be. It was owned by the individual, so that when I come into a place, I can take all my experience, all my certification, and it means something to the industry, and either I can find out what I need to do to continue that process, or that employer can find me because I have everything that they require and they need and that would automatically go into a job and not having to upskill. I’m saying that because this is the innovation you need to look at. Guess what happened? As soon as Biden came in, they got rid of that. They got rid of the whole concept. Think about that. Think about how we’re about to go to a smartphone technology and innovation in workforce. And the first thing that the Biden administration did was get rid of it because they’re owned by the hard left, those who do not want to innovate, those who do not want to have business grow. So my answer to that, for those who read this, if you’re in the middle, let’s give the free market, let’s give innovators, let’s give those who truly want to bring meritocracy, let’s give us a chance to see what it looks like if we had a trifecta. And I’ll tell you, the next two to four years, everyone would be very happy, particularly those who truly care about their kids, their grandchildren, having having a great future.
Washington Reporter:
Your committee had the highest-watched hearing in congressional history. How do you want to keep that momentum going as chair?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Well, I think the first part is, why are we there? What is my passion? When you find out what your mission is, it’s very easy to find innovative ways to make sure that mission succeeds. If that’s your mission, if that’s where your focus is, you think about it 24/7, you try to bring the best minds around you. You invite innovators to sit down with you, to show you, to tell you what innovative legislation looks like. I’m gonna go back to an example of something happened years ago that we need to start looking at our place in terms of the way the federal government can really help a lot. Back when we started looking at a lot of school shootings, one of my colleagues in Florida put together a bill that would actually allow the federal government to actually have a database of best practices. How can we best protect our kids, from the soft infrastructure, hard infrastructure, law enforcement and that database will be there for any district across the country to plug into, to see what might work for them, and then they can replicate that. We should be doing the same thing when it comes down to education, to the best practices across the country. I just spent yesterday with five separate presidents of colleges here in Utah, and they talked about how they’re collaborating, how because they’re talking, hey’re not enemies, they’re friends, and their focuses are the kids. So instead of the institution as the focus, the kids are the focus. So they’ll be allowed to be able to have the classes in the degrees all in place with each other, so that you can go to one college and solve the process, take that and take it to another institution, and just continue the process. So it’s cheaper, it’s faster to get through, and the student can decide what they want to do as they continue to grow and understand their goals more. So my point is, what can we do in the federal place, as opposed to dictating to everybody education should be run? How about we just collect the very best of the best practices in every facet of this, and allow that to be a part of how we can grow and innovate through the process. So that’ll be one of the things that I’ll take a look at. Field hearings are gonna be very, very important. What we did with with Dr. Foxx, when we had people coming into the hearings that Dr. Foxx put together, it was not really to change the minds of the folks sitting in front of us. It was just to expose the American people to what the people in front of us were doing, good or bad, so we can actually respond. That’s why we have so much of a buy-in, because parents, stakeholders, are finally seeing what’s going on in these industries. So I want to be able to do the same thing, to go across the country, find the best practices so that we’re just working out so that America can see that we have options and things are moving in the right direction.
Washington Reporter:
And do you have any specific colleges you would either praise or hold accountable?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
I want to hold all Ivy League colleges accountable right now that have failed us. They are having kids leave with debt they’ll never pay off, with degrees will never mean anything in their lifetime. At the same time, students leave these colleges hating our country. The ones that I think should be competing, and this should be a level playing field, are the technical college, the pure career colleges, those institutions where those who are first generation, those who don’t have the money, those who just want to go out and get a job, and they can have a short term Pell where you come in a couple years, and are able to go out and actually work and save and start building a home. We have to make sure that education is looked at not as one size fit all. It should be one that’s competing to show best results, so that as our youngsters and our parents are looking at where to go next, they can look across the board, and based on the personality of that individual and their passion, they can go ahead and go into that arena. To answer how we’re going to do that, how about a level playing field? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander? You have things like the 90-10 rule, you have gainful-employment that only applies to a certain industry. Well, if it applies to one industry, it should apply to all industries. I think what happens when we put in a place where every institution is judged by the same accountability factors, then they will work together to make sure it’s fair. Right now there’s a very deep unfairness for anything that’s not traditional four year college, and we need to get rid of that. We need to get we need to change that, and we’re going to make sure that there’s a fair process along along the way.
Washington Reporter:
Are you seeing colleges defy the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Well, we have a lot of things going on. You see what they trying to do with Title IX, mandating things from from above. What we have to recognize is industry, and normally in a free market, accountability is taken care of automatically, it’s the consumer who decides in a free market, what is working, what’s not, rewarding good behavior and firing bad. Here, we are dealing with a system with education, where it’s a bubble that has no accountability. It’s a bubble in which the product is not the focus. So we have kids coming out without being able to get jobs, without having any critical thinking skills, and there’s nobody being held accountable. So to your point, that’s why the trifecta will be so important, because the first thing that’s gonna happen is those who are doing bad jobs are going to get fired, period. And I don’t know how that’s gonna happen yet, because they have a big security blanket around them, but leave it to President Trump who understands how to run a business and how to make sure that the very best of being rewarded, and the very worst are getting fired. So it’s gonna come down to us, and it’s why it’s gonna be so important to have the majority, because what we’re gonna do is we are going to bring these colleges in front of us. We can hold them accountable. We do have oversight. We can defund, and when we start talking about defunding that’s a big deal. That’s what they’ve done to those colleges, the education system, anybody they don’t like, the career, the technical, those types of institutions, they’ve been able to hurt them by defunding them. Well, we’re going to do this. We’re just going to defund only those who are not doing a good job for our kids. If they’re coming out hating our country, that’s a problem. If we have the foreign influence which we already have codified, we should be getting records. We should get updates in terms of what percentage of foreign funds is coming into these colleges because it does have an influence, and if they’re not giving us that, then we’ll stop giving American tax dollars. So it comes down to accountability. It comes down to being consistent, being fair. And if we do that, everybody gets in line, because all sudden everybody’s working with the same rules. And that’s the bottom line. That’s what it comes down to. I think about how we look at stoplights. We all respect stoplights because everybody deals and respects what it tells us to do, stop when you’re supposed to stop, go when it says it go. Well, we have to do the same thing when it comes to college, our educational system, bring the accountability back into it.
Washington Reporter:
One of the things that your committee focused on was with FAFSA. What do you think should be done on student loan reform to prevent these experiences for students in the future?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
The only way to stop that is by looking at the Department of Education. So you have to keep in mind things like that are a result of what’s happening in the Department of Education. They had a different focus. We gave them the opportunity to get their act together, we gave them an extra year. But because they’re so focused on going after for-profits and career and technical institutions, they’re so focused on getting this loan forgiveness, they took their eyes off of what their true mission wise, and nobody got fired. When we talk about where this all begins, it has to begin at the Department of Education. Now, what does that look like? We like to have that discussion. We have to figure out what’s working what’s not. I think $68 billion per year we’re paying into that system that has been failing us for decades. So there are a lot of things we need to address with the Department of Education, and part of it is do we decentralize it the way that BLM was when Trump came in? Do we look at those areas that are not working and get rid of those areas not working and put it in play where it can really help the states do their jobs better? We have to figure out a way that the Department of Education, whatever that might look like, is helping the kids, the districts, the states, do what they do best. The states and the districts know those kids best, and how to help those kids, not by pushing additional rules all over, but by giving the funding and the flexibility to be innovative and supporting them, and then bring the very best practices across the country. That’s what we can do. Allow everybody to see what that looks like so that we don’t have to go back and reinvent the wheel.
Washington Reporter:
Is there anything that you see from a congressional standpoint that you can push for in terms of consequences for criminal activity on campuses, such as the pro-Hamas encampments that sprung up following October 7?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
I think that would be more for the Judiciary Committee. What we can do, very simply, is defund. That’s what we do in education; we control the dollars for colleges and universities, and if they cannot figure it out, if they can’t keep their kids safe, that’s a problem. I used this example during the hearings, what would you do if you have the KKK, people with hoods on, coming in and abusing or intimidating? We would not stand for it. We should not stand for it when the same thing happens to Jewish kids. So it doesn’t matter what the background is, the college campus should be basically a place of learning, of safety, of dreams, of collaboration, of understanding our culture. If they cannot give us that, I don’t care what the name of the college is, I don’t care how long it’s been around, we will start pulling their funds back until they get it right. I’ll be honest with you, Matthew, once you start doing that, they will have their board meetings talking about how to get it right. They’ll make sure that they have professors who are racist, who are bigots, who are anti-Semites, who are Marxists, that they are not teaching their classes. Well, guess what? When the parents figure this out and the money’s being pulled back, then parents will start putting their kids in colleges that teach the right thing. So if we allow that free market to work, allow us to make sure that taxpayers are not paying for anti-Americanism, then everything begins to work out in time. This has been something that we’ve been under attack for quite a while on. We have to understand this. It’s not overnight. This is like little termites, Marxists, they’ve been going at this for a long time. So now what we’re seeing, unfortunately, is the result of what’s been happening in colleges for decades, we’re now seeing it in our corporations. We’re seeing it all across places we never have been seeing this before, like our military because those young people have grown up to now be leaders, and they brought this mentality with them, this ideology with them. So we have a long term process to get us back to teaching America’s basic background and history, our foundation, our values. As we start doing that, we will see the next the few generations begin to fight for those values again, because they’ll know what they’re fighting for.
Washington Reporter:
Your committee did lots of work on foreign funding of colleges and K-12. One of the interesting roles that we’ve seen China play in education has been how it’s flooding schools with illegal and potentially very dangerous vapes, and addicting kids to all of these products. A lot of your colleagues have wanted stronger action from the FDA and DOJ. Is there anything that, from an Ed and Workforce chair standpoint, is a priority for you in this regard?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Yes, the first thing is, we here buy America. We understand that. I think COVID showed us the downside of having a supply chain that is dependent on countries who hate us. Well, how about we build American from within with our kids? Everything we do is about merit. We look at the Olympics and we want to be number one at everything we do, that’s who we are. Why is it that we don’t have the resources here in our country to build some of the brightest minds possible instead of having to bring people from China? We don’t have to do that. So the first thing is to switch this mindset, like build America. We’re going to teach America. We’re going to teach our kids what it is to be the very best in the world and start from there. With that comes the ability to also have that patriotism that goes with it. We’ve lost an idea of what traitors look like, what the idea of treason looks like. We kind of don’t see it the way we did when I was growing up, when people turned against our country, for profit or for fame or whatever, and we just put up with it. Once you start teaching our kids how to be the very best, how to appreciate who we are, how to compete against each other and respect each other, then we will bring patriotism back with that ability to think and to compete across and around the world. So that’s long term. I’m sure we’re going to share this with another committee, I’m not sure who it will be with but we have to make sure that people who are coming here to get educated are not a threat. If they come from China, there should be a red flag right there. They are probably a threat, because nothing leaves China without the ‘okay.’ So that is where we start, and then we will look at what are the societies, the countries, that really share our vision? Israel would be a good one. I’ll tell you what, I would I would love to have Israelis come to our country and be part of our educational system, because they think the way we do. They’re very innovative. They have to be to survive. So we have to prioritize people coming here based on what they present to us. When we get to a point where we go to our college campuses and our own kids cannot go to school because we have folks that come in from other countries that hide their faces and call them names and threaten them, that is not a good system at all. So let’s figure out how to make sure our education system fits very well into moving our country forward and bring the very best here, and of course, enticing the best from within.
Washington Reporter:
The Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act has been a priority for a while now. Talk about the successes you see in Utah and how Utah has helped lead the country in slashing unemployment rates.
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Well, first of all, I just had this conversation with the five presidents that I was talking to yesterday down south. I feel very blessed to, first of all, have the passion I do, for the change I want to make, and be in a state that is leading in so many ways. This is a state that’s kind of unique, because of the culture we have. We have a culture that’s very entrepreneurial. We have thousands and thousands of kids who leave Utah every year to go around the world to serve as missionaries or to serve and help others. So we have this culture. We’re not only very innovative, we’re very service-oriented. Because when kids leave here and go to other countries, they learn how to be risk takers, and so therefore they have this idea to come back to build businesses and it’s a place that we want to keep our kids here. So we want to make sure that the lifestyle is such that we hold on to our culture. So that being said, we have this ability, because the product, the end result is, how well are our kids doing? How well is the product doing? So we have an education system that really collaborates extremely well. We have a legislative body that collaborates very well with the federal one. I think about how to make education work, staying in our own lane, but working with the state legislative body, that we’re on the same page and can make it all work out. It’s a blessing that we have this collaborative attitude, and we have the same end game, which is to make sure our kids are doing very well. So I’ll be doing a lot of things here. We have choice. Must be parochial. We have private school, we have homeschooling pods, and that’s because it’s set up that way by the legislative body that a certain amount of money can go toward the kids, no matter where they go, so the dollars follow the kids. We also are able to understand that we bring the very best teachers. So one of my goals, Matthew, will be, how can we make sure, just like in every other industry, that the very best are getting paid the very best, that we can actually draw to this industry some of the best. How do we bring those kind of folks into this industry? Innovators, business owners? So that’s a new conversation we can have, because it’s never happened in education. This has been a place that the free market has never really touched. My goal is to have conversations, bring people here, see how it is working, go to places like Florida, which is another place that has done a really good job of focusing on the kids and then making sure that the rest of the country can see it and replicate it. There’s something I did on workforce. It’s called the One Door Act. We did something here in which when somebody needed social services, when it came to that front door, they also are exposed to education and workforce opportunities. So because they needed help, they leave knowing that they are given the support and empowerment to go out and really make things happen on their own, because they can move forward with their dreams. We were grandfathered into that concept, and until we passed the law, the One Door Act, other states could not replicate that. We want to make sure that the things we do here, that other schools and states can see how it works out, and we take the best practices and go back and forth and make sure that our kids are being trained properly.
Washington Reporter:
What do you see as some of the biggest obstacles coming from the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Labor?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
The Department of Labor is like the Department of Education, unfortunately. It is very anti-business, it is anti-small business, it is anti-innovation. It is a centralized push down with rules that makes no sense. I’ll say this, Matthew, this is one of the most frustrating things I’ve seen. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve only been in two terms, but the first term was nothing like what this last term has been. Every industry has rules coming out of them that they have no idea where they’re coming from, why they’re even put in place, and all it does is just add cost, costs more time, and actually it actually takes away any time to innovate and become better. I would say across the board, the Biden-Harris administration they’re very consistent. It does not grow our workforce, it does not grow our educational system. It almost seems like it’s turning everything upside down. So those things that really make our country work, like small businesses that power our big middle class, are harmed. Our middle class is such a remarkable culture that this is where freedom lies. This is the culture of freedom. This is a culture of risk takers, of innovators. People want to have a good name. They want their kids to grow up and stay where they are. They want to expand. So to expand, you have to be good. You have to be nice to people. You have to have this attitude that anybody is my customer, I don’t care what their background is. That is what the middle class does. The bigger our middle class is, the freer our country is. We have an administration who wants to shut down the middle class. The only way to do that is they have to shut down small business ownership. They have to bring hopelessness into the picture, where people have no way out other than going to government. So that’s the fight we’re having, and that’s why I’m excited about a place like Utah, because it has a remarkable, robust middle class, because our state legislators understand this culture and continue to promote it in any way they can.
Washington Reporter:
Shifting over to some of your broader work in Congress. This touches on both Transportation and Infrastructure and Ed and Workforce: we saw this with the International Longshoreman’s Association potentially crippling, in their own words, the US supply chain, Boeing workers who are on strike, potentially delaying vehicles for the military. What is your perspective on increasingly aggressive labor unions, and the increasing support we’re seeing Republicans have from unions?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
It should be about choice. It’s all about choice, and we should never have a system in which any group bullies another group or takes away the options and freedoms. We have, unfortunately, a workforce in which we have certain unions that I am really pleased to see the actions of. The Teamsters, for instance, they just want to have opportunity to have have their industry come back to America, to go out and build it. And that’s why they’re leaning so hard into Trump. On other hand, you have the port workers, they’re demanding an 80 percent raise and no innovation. There are two different ways of looking at this, and the bottom line is, the only way our country moves forward is to have a system in which the workers have a choice of how they want to proceed, and where employers can grow their business without feeling that they are gonna be undermined or sidetracked by activists who don’t want them to survive. And that’s really what we need to do, is make sure we have in place a Department of Education that’s fair. If it’s a right to work state, that’s because the people there decided that’s what they want. There should be no underhand way of trying to sneak in to undermine the business owners. For many years, I was independent contractor. I did that while I was working in the corporate world. I did that because I want to have my own business and grow it one day. We should never have that title or that niche of independent contractors be changed by a by dictate from the federal government, from D.C., which is again, is something else they are trying to get done. So I think moving forward with the trifecta, we can balance this out so it’s fair, so that no matter what the choice might be, whether it be union or non-union, that we work for the same end game, which is to make sure America works better for all of us. We get to that point of pride in America, then we have a lot of options of how to get there. That’s what we need to get to as soon as we can.
Washington Reporter:
In a previous Congress, you were working on some bipartisan antitrust reform with Reps. Ken Buck and David Cicilline. Do you see this still as an issue that Republicans and Democrats can work together on going into the next Congress and beyond?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
I think it will be, as long as we get the trifecta. I keep coming back to this, because I now understand how this works. I was always tuned in with what was going on, but I never understood what went on behind the scenes and how it worked. The frustration for so many Americans is that we all know what America wants, but it doesn’t come out of Congress. It’s because of the way it’s set up. We cannot get anything through that’s pro-America, because we have a party that does not want it to happen. So to answer that, it comes down to this. Once we get the right party in place, there’s gonna be a Judiciary oversight process, but I can promise you, if we get the House, the Senate, and President Trump, the antitrust is something we have to approach and deal with, along with the monopolies that we have building around us, particularly in high tech. If people will give us the power to address these, I can promise you we will address it, if we have the opportunity and the numbers to do so.
Washington Reporter:
I know you’re not the biggest fan of Roger Goodell; if you ever hang up your cleats in politics, would you ever be interested in running the NFL?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
No, that train passed a long time ago. I think with me, it comes down the fact that I retired when and how I did. I retired my tenth year after having a really good season, but I had this mission, because of my dad’s example, of truly making a difference, in particular for the black community. Growing up when I did, to see the positive things going on, by time I got out of late, I saw things were changing. So part of my mission was to get a business, to have the right revenue, the right network, and to truly make a change so that our black youth could come out and be as positive as I did. I had no idea that four years later, that doing what I’m doing is actually probably the best way to make that change. So I closed the door a long time ago to anything that had to do with entertainment. When it all comes to the end, I’d love to know that I made a difference in an area where we hold onto our country, our legacy, our freedoms, because our kids can fight for them for generations to come, so that’s what I’d love to see happen.
Washington Reporter:
You also have a relationship with Nick Saban; he’s got a lot of free time. Do you think there’s any chance you get him to fully become a Republican and get him to run for office?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Nick would be a great one. I’ll share this with you this conversation I’ve had with Nick Saban, not just me, but a bunch of us. He came in about two years ago to talk about the concerns he had about the changes in college. He made a statement that has forever been with me, and I use it now when I talk about workforce. What he said was we can identify a young man in the 7th grade. By the time he gets to 11th grade, we’ve offered him a scholarship. Now how does that happen? Well, in between, there’s this handshake. This young man knows enough about Alabama, that this is where his dream is, whether it be the colors, whether it be the past, whether it be parents who love him, whatever it might be, he’s chosen Alabama, so he does everything he can to qualify. He’s going to work hard to get his grades together. And so he has this initiative to do that. At the same time, because Alabama has identified him, they make sure they continue to stay in touch with him, make sure any questions about qualifications he has answered. So they have this partnership. By the time he gets to 11th grade, they’re all in, both of them. That’s the way our workforce should work. We should take a look at what it takes to go back further than just the 7th or 8th grade. What does it take for a 2nd or 3rd grader to learn social skills, to learn sharing skills, soft skills and teaching them that this is the best way to get into the workforce? That’s what we have to look at, this whole thing. How do we train our American kids into the smartest, the best, the most competitive in the entire world? We do that by having a very focused conversation about how to connect them to their dreams, whatever that educational process might look like, to their dreams, and then those who are looking for help, looking for support, the smart minds know how to reach down to encourage them to come in their direction. So they’re competing, and that’s why Learning and Employment Records are important. Once you digitize this concept, all of a sudden we’re not passing paper resumes or emailing. You can see in the changes of that education and that experience can always change and grow with it. So that they’re connecting to the employees they might want to and employees are encouraging them to do that, to be part of it. So that’s my Nick Saban story. Whenever I’m in a group and I say ‘have you guys heard of Nick Saban?’ and I tell them that I’ve had a chance to meet with him, it seems like my presence goes up a little, I sit a bit higher in my seat, because I know I met Nick Saban.
Washington Reporter:
They may still be needing him in Alabama this year. You’ve had an incredibly successful career as a best-selling author, in media, in professional sports, in Congress. What’s the equivalent of winning the Super Bowl for you as you think about your time in politics?
Rep. Burgess Owens:
Great question. I’m very pleased to have a team that I’ve been blessed to surround myself with that understands this legacy. Everything I’ve done so far has been transitional. You play NFL for a while, then you transition out, then you go into business ownership, you transition out. What I’m doing right now as a congressman will come to an end at some point. It’s just the way it works. The one thing that is everlasting is the legacy of having our country, our kids, understand how to think and to have critical thinking skills. We have the ability because we have confidence in our thinking abilities to have conversations with others who might not agree, who feel so confident that we can have those conversations with respect, because we realize that with respect, we might bring them over. That’s how we the people work with our conversations. The way it doesn’t work is when we are so insecure about our thinking, when we are so sensitive and sheltered that we can’t think so take a stick and hit somebody with it. That’s what’s going on right now, by the way, we want these safe spaces, and they have no idea what it is to be nice, to bring somebody over to the thing, because they don’t have the confidence themselves to do so. So my legacy when it’s all said and done, and I truly look at this, Matthew, and I think of the NFL, I think about where I was raised, my dad being a professor. Everything I’ve gone through, including coming to Utah, and being in an environment that is so innovative and forward thinking and collaborative, this is all for the legacy of making sure that this Congress, the next two to four years, allows us to have a resetting of what education looks like, like our forefathers, who said, ‘even free can never be.’ We have to have that as the mission of every educational system, to bring in the fact that if you’re not doing it right, you’re not going to stay around. I don’t care what what the title is, public, private or private, that doesn’t matter. If you’re not doing it right, do something else. Those who are doing it right, we welcome you. We’ll pay you as much as we can. You can know that this will be a good place to be, and we bring the best of the best to you if you’re doing it the right way.
Washington Reporter:
Congressman, your career has shown that even for the fans of the Raiders and the Jets, there can still be hope. And I think those teams need that message now amidst head coach drama and quarterback carousels, and I think that it couldn’t be more perfectly timed. Thanks so much for your time.