Washington Business Winter 2020 | Washington Business | Page 32

federal focus
Crossing the Divide:
Congressional Exchanges Build Bridges
Washington members of Congress find common
ground across party lines.
Richard S. Davis
Building relationships by matching members of Congress from different political
parties, geographic regions, and cultures helps bridge partisan divisions.
The exchanges create the conditions for lasting bipartisan legislation.
At A Glance
Washington lawmakers have been
quick to take advantage of this new
national exchange program.
Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Democrat, hosted
Republican Steve Womack and then
visited his district in Arkansas.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers,
a Republican, exchanged with
Maryland Democrat David Trone.
Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican,
showed California Democrat Pete Aguilar
around his eastern Washington district.
www.bipartisanpolicy.org/project/
american-congressional-exchange
Kilmer-Womack
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6DM_SkLdK8
TVW AWB (Johnson, Kilmer, Newhouse)
www.tvw.org/watch/?eventID=2019081038
32 association of washington business
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us

—Robert Burns
“It’s all about relationships.”
Jonathan Perman makes the statement as a truism, a commonplace. In
politics, as in business, things go better when there’s trust and understanding,
when people get to know each other. And in 2016, Perman, who began his
career in the 1980s as a Democratic staff member working for a Republican
chairman, saw that Congress had a relationship problem.
Drawing on his two decades of experience as a chamber of commerce
executive, he recognized an opportunity. He says, “The whole idea of