By Roman INGUANZO

Judy Chu is a prominent American politician. She currently represents California’s 28^th Congressional District, which includes Pasadena and the West San Gabriel Valley. She serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees legislation related to taxes, Social Security and Medicare. Additionally, she is a member of the House Small Business Committee and the House Budget Committee.

Prior to her role in Congress, Chu served in a variety of public positions, including on the Garvey School District Board of Education, the Monterey Park City Council (where she served as mayor three times), and the California State Assembly. Chu made history in 2009 when she became the first Chinese American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress. Throughout her career, Chu has championed civil rights, healthcare access, environmental policies, small businesses and economic development, and arts education, among other issues.

Throughout her career, Chu has championed civil rights, healthcare access, environmental policies, small businesses, economic development and arts education. She has introduced and passed numerous pieces of legislation, including a resolution of regret for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, requiring the Department of Defense to address military hazing, and establishing new Small Business Development Centers in the San Gabriel Valley. Chu lives with her husband in Monterey Park, where they have been residents for over 30 years. 

The CV Weekly met with Congresswoman Chu on March 21 to introduce her to constituents in the Foothills community who want to know more about their representative. 

Below are edited excerpts from the interview:

Question: What issues are the most important in the Foothill communities? How will you address these issues?

Well one thing I’ve been working on for a very long time is the San Gabriel Mountains. Actually, I have worked on this even before I was in Congress for 20 years to make sure that the San Gabriel Mountains got the resources that it needed. So when I got to Congress I felt that the best first step would be to get President Obama to declare it a national monument. Now, national monuments can be declared only on federal land, so I didn’t really cover all of the San Gabriel Mountains; nonetheless it was just an incredible step forward and finally the San Gabriel Mountains got the resources that it needed. Now, I am embarking on an expansion of the area with the San Gabriel Mountains and Rivers National Recreation Area that would include the areas that are north of Crescenta Valley and La Crescenta. It will help possibly in such things as travel management and getting the resources there to clean up the area and it would declare Yerba Buena and Condor Peak areas a wilderness area and so it would help to preserve it.

Question: What principles will guide you as you represent the 28^th District?

One thing I want to do is to make sure that the residents of the 28^th Congressional District know that we are a resource for them. There are many that do not know they can get a lot of help with all federal agencies such as the IRS, Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, USCIS, and visas and passports. These are areas that affect their everyday lives. So we have incredible staff that work on these case management issues. For instance, there was a woman who was a widower of a Korean War veteran and she should have been able to get her death benefits from her husband when he died, but she was stuck. So we intervened for her and she was actually able to get $30,000 plus the ongoing monthly benefit. Then there was a man who had trouble with Social Security; he should have been getting this monthly payment but the IRS was taking $879 out of it because of some liability he had. However, at one point the IRS lifted that liability so that he shouldn’t have had $879 taken away. He didn’t know what to do, so he called us and we were able to make sure that he did not have to pay that $879. In fact, he was able to get $879 a month more because we intervened.

Question: Is there anything else you would like to say to the Foothill communities?

Wildfires are something that people in the Crescenta Valley and La Crescenta area worry about and so I’m very proud that in the last infrastructure bill there was $6 billion for wildfire management and mitigation. We have to have a better way of managing the areas that are around these wildfires and we must have constant maintenance in order to make sure that communities are safe. This is very very important. I’m also the co-sponsor of the bill for an early warning system for wildfires.

Question: How will you support small business in your district?

This is my favorite topic! In fact, I am a member of the House Small Business Committee. I have made it my mission to be on that committee all the years I’ve been in Congress and that’s despite the fact that I am on what they call an “exclusive” committee: Ways and Means, which is considered a very powerful committee. I insisted that I stay on the Small Business Committee because I know how important small businesses are to this area. So I have been able to work on numerous issues: one was getting small business development centers into our area. What are these? These are what we call SBDCs for short. Basically you can walk into any SBDC and get help with a business plan, with financing, with resources and with market research. You get all these things and guess what the price is? It’s free! So you know you can’t beat that.

But guess what? We didn’t have an SBDC here in this area – the closest one was in Long Beach. So I worked hard to get one here and I actually ended up with two. One is in the Pasadena [City] College and the other is at the University of La Verne. The PCC one is close to the folks from La Crescenta, and I hope that they can utilize that.

In addition, I’ve worked on numerous bills to increase access to capital for small businesses. For instance, I got a bill that took a very popular loan program, called the 504 Loan Program, which you can use to purchase real estate but you couldn’t use it to refinance. Yet there was the lowering of interest rates. So I was able to get the bill passed that allowed small businesses to use it (the 504 Loan Program) for lowering their interest rates.

I also have been able to get this bill passed out of the House just last month called the Investing in Main Street Act, and what it does is make the banks be able to contribute more to something called the SBIC, which is a small business investment company that is comprised of money that businesses pull together in banks that are guaranteed by the SBA. Small businesses and banks like it because with a guarantee of SBA they can rest assured that they won’t be on the line if a loan goes bad. It’s for high potential growth startups. In fact, Tesla and Apple started with this fund. So, my bill allows banks to put more of their capital into this fund.

Question: How do you balance the needs of small businesses with large corporations?

I am a big believer in small business. Two out of every three new jobs comes from a small business. So actually small business is the driver of the economy, and that’s why I would always want to make sure that small business always gets its fair share. This came to the fore, I must tell you, with the PPP loans – the Paycheck Protection Program. As you know, when COVID-19 happened so many businesses were forced to close their doors. So that’s why we knew we had to have some loan program that will keep afloat. And so if they were able to keep their workers on the payroll then the loans could be forgivable. Well there were many small businesses that were thinking: “This is what I really need!” but when they called on the phone lines they could not get through. In fact, the biggest banks were only giving those loans to their biggest customers at first; to the ones that they had given gigantic loans to. They didn’t even give it to those who had accounts in their own banks for years but maybe have not gotten a loan. So we stepped in and we did a $60 billion set-aside so that the community banks and the credit unions and the smaller mission-based entities could give loans to the smaller businesses because those are the ones who usually know which ones are the actual small businesses that are in need of help … and it worked! 

There were a couple of other programs that I am very proud of – one of which is the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. Restaurants really took a hit during COVID-19 so we did this gigantic grant to help keep the restaurants afloat. I can’t tell you how many restaurants told me that this is a thing that kept them alive. Then there was the Shuddered Venue Program. Theaters and museums could not keep their doors open, so entities like the Pasadena Playhouse were able to get a Shuttered Venue grant that kept them afloat. 

Another thing I’m very proud of – I’m founder and co-chair of the Congressional Creative Rights caucus. We make sure to help creative industries. The reason why I’m very invested in this is because the Los Angeles area is full of people who work in creative industries. A lot of them in our area (28^th District) aren’t necessarily the big movie stars and the big producers. People in our area are the ones who work jobs like the makeup artist and the sound technician. So, what I have been working to do is to make sure that we have copyright protections that keep the creative industries alive.

Question: Recent accusations have risen from representatives in the Republican Party regarding your loyalty to the United States, despite the fact that you are a U.S. citizen. The rhetoric inherent in these accusations is akin to the same anti-Asian sentiment inherent in the Chinese Exclusion Act. What do you think are the solutions to this persistent human rights issue?

Well of course I was outraged and disgusted by these accusations by this very extreme Republican congressman who is trying to make a name for himself by being very anti-China. What really makes me angry is that it’s based on the racist stereotype that Asian Americans have had to deal with since forever, which is that we’re always foreigners in our own land even if we’ve been here for generations and contributed a lot to society. In my case, I was born in Los Angeles, my father fought for the U.S. in World War II, I taught in the community college for 20 years in psychology, and I’ve been an elected official for 37 years. If you look at why this guy picked on me, it’s because of my ethnicity. That’s it. Plain and simple. 

I think it’s important for people to speak out against this sort of thing and I was very very gratified because immediately people spoke out. I mean national leaders spoke out against it and demanded an apology from him: the Congressional Black Caucus, the leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and of course the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus spoke out against it; the American Jewish committee, and the National Urban League spoke out against it. So it’s from that allyship from the different groups that really makes a difference because when people unite and work together to speak out against these really racist and terrible things, our country becomes stronger.