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15 minutes with Spencer Swalm
  
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By Peter Jones
Being a state legislator has its advantages — but so does being a card-carrying member of the USS Nebraska’s fan club.
Last month, state Rep. Spencer Swalm, R-Centennial, spent six hours on the nuclear submarine as it cruised the surface of Puget Sound near Seattle.
It was a particularly special way for Swalm to mark the end of his third session as a state lawmaker. Swalm’s son Byron, 24, is a Navy nuclear technician serving on the Nebraska.
Swalm, a onetime fellow with the conservative Independence Institute, was first elected to the legislature in 2006. He was re-elected last year.
The Centennial Citizen recently asked Swalm to recount his time on the submarine and to reflect on his third session in the Colorado House of Representatives.
Citizen: How did your visit aboard the submarine come about?
Swalm: The USS Nebraska actually has a fan club and it’s called the Big Red Sub Club. The State of Nebraska has adopted its namesake submarine. I don’t remember how I found out about it, but I ended up joining. They charge a membership to join at the admiral or captain level or something like that.
About once or twice a year, they have an opportunity to do one of these excursions. It’s not just members of the Sub Club who get to go. The fact that I have a son on the sub certainly helped me. There were at least two other legislators who went on this trip. There was an astronaut who’s been up on the space shuttle and is going up again next spring.
Citizen: How was your time on the submarine?
Swalm: The submarine was finishing about a two-month patrol out in the Pacific somewhere in the waters off Hawaii. The morning of the ride-along, we got on a small Navy cruiser about twice the size of a speedboat. After about an hour, the boat that we were on pulled up next to the sub. We were on the sub for about six hours, but we never submerged.
Citizen: Why not?
Swalm: Since 9/11, they’re very cautious about these things. This thing is armed with 24 missiles that have multiple nuclear warheads on them. They say when you set foot on that submarine, you’re setting foot on a submarine that is alone the fourth powerful navy in the world — after the U.S., the Russians and the Chinese. That one submarine is more powerful than all the rest of the navies.
The thing that was the most exciting to me was to see my son operating so competently in an environment that I was so completely clueless about. He works back in the engineering room. That was the only part of the submarine that was off limits to us. He acted as my own personal tour guide.
Their bunk room is a wedge between two of the nuclear missiles. There’s nine guys bunking in there. There’s 24 of these nuclear silos on the submarine. That area of the submarine is called Sherwood Forest. You get to one end of it, and it’s just this long row of silos.
Citizen: Pretty cramped quarters?
Swalm: You had to watch yourself. Of course, I’m not as nimble as I used to be so I had to crouch down and get through these things. I never felt claustrophobic, but you had to kind of watch your head and watch what you were doing. You were going up and down steep narrow stairways.
Citizen: What’s it been like for you to have a son serving on a nuclear submarine in these times? The United States is involved in two wars and the military has been stretched thin.
Swalm: The Navy takes pretty good care of its nuclear submarines. We’ve never worried too much about his personal safety, although last summer, one of the crew members was killed in an accident on the submarine.
We’re very proud of Byron. I think it’s been a good thing for him, but it’s not an easy life. I asked him, “How did this patrol go?” He said, “At one point, we were working 30 hours straight.” I said, “Why would you do that?” He said, “Well, it’s the Navy” and kind of rolled his eyes.
Sometimes the military doesn’t make perfect sense.
Citizen: Kind of like state government, eh?
Swalm: Sort of like that, exactly.
Citizen: How would you compare your third legislative session to your first and second?
Swalm: I would say this was my most successful because the bill that I got through authorized HMO plans to market a limited-benefit affordable health-insurance product to low-income working people who can’t afford conventional insurance. Despite pretty intense opposition, the bill actually got through. It was signed by the governor and it’s going into effect any day now.
These are plans that might have an annual cap of $50,000. If you have a serious problem, you can blow through $50,000 pretty quick. But my argument in favor of the bill is that some health insurance is better than none at all.
Citizen: You are free-market advocate and an insurance broker. Has your perspective evolved at all in the last couple of years as the move toward health care reform has become seemingly inevitable?
Swalm: Basically, it really hasn’t changed. I’m a small-government Republican. I believe in private-sector leadership, if at all possible. It very much concerns me that the government is taking over the auto industry and the financial sector and so on and so forth. The idea of turning over another large sector of the economy to government, I don’t support that.
On the other hand, I think the State of Colorado is in a position where it really needs to focus its resources on helping those people that really cannot help themselves, at least in the area of social-services type things. The people who come to my mind first in that arena are people with profound disabilities.
Citizen: Are you opposed to a more general government option for health insurance?
Swalm: I am. I think it might start off looking fairly benign, but it’s going to look very much like Medicare or Medicaid. I think the public option is always going to be an inferior type of health insurance. That’s because the government has a long history of offering hospitals and other providers low reimbursement rates.
Citizen: Do you think the government needs to find a way to insure everyone?
Swalm: Maybe someday. But it just seems to me that as this discussion goes on and people learn more about this, I think they’re very concerned about the level of deficit spending they’re seeing already. I think everybody would like to see that, but the question is, are they willing to pay for it?
Citizen: From a philosophical standpoint, what is the difference between government-run health care and government-run law enforcement, highways and fire protection?
Swalm: In the very introductory clause of the U.S. Constitution, it says two of the fundamental roles of government are to provide for the common defense and maintain domestic tranquility. Those things have to be paid for in taxes because nobody’s willing to invest private money in an aircraft carrier or a submarine because you can’t make money on something like that.
Citizen: There are, though, government contractors that have made a lot of money working with the military.
Swalm: You’re not going to have the private sector building submarines and selling subscriptions to it or something. It’s a common good that is necessary.
If health care is a fundamental right, for every right, there is a corollary duty. Somebody has to pay for it — either other taxpayers or providers or a combination of the two.
I don’t believe there’s a fundamental right to health care anymore than there’s a fundamental right to having a house, clothes or food. I think people need to take care of themselves.
Last month, state Rep. Spencer Swalm, R-Centennial, spent six hours on the nuclear submarine as it cruised the surface of Puget Sound near Seattle.
It was a particularly special way for Swalm to mark the end of his third session as a state lawmaker. Swalm’s son Byron, 24, is a Navy nuclear technician serving on the Nebraska.
Swalm, a onetime fellow with the conservative Independence Institute, was first elected to the legislature in 2006. He was re-elected last year.
The Centennial Citizen recently asked Swalm to recount his time on the submarine and to reflect on his third session in the Colorado House of Representatives.
Citizen: How did your visit aboard the submarine come about?
Swalm: The USS Nebraska actually has a fan club and it’s called the Big Red Sub Club. The State of Nebraska has adopted its namesake submarine. I don’t remember how I found out about it, but I ended up joining. They charge a membership to join at the admiral or captain level or something like that.
About once or twice a year, they have an opportunity to do one of these excursions. It’s not just members of the Sub Club who get to go. The fact that I have a son on the sub certainly helped me. There were at least two other legislators who went on this trip. There was an astronaut who’s been up on the space shuttle and is going up again next spring.
Citizen: How was your time on the submarine?
Swalm: The submarine was finishing about a two-month patrol out in the Pacific somewhere in the waters off Hawaii. The morning of the ride-along, we got on a small Navy cruiser about twice the size of a speedboat. After about an hour, the boat that we were on pulled up next to the sub. We were on the sub for about six hours, but we never submerged.
Citizen: Why not?
Swalm: Since 9/11, they’re very cautious about these things. This thing is armed with 24 missiles that have multiple nuclear warheads on them. They say when you set foot on that submarine, you’re setting foot on a submarine that is alone the fourth powerful navy in the world — after the U.S., the Russians and the Chinese. That one submarine is more powerful than all the rest of the navies.
The thing that was the most exciting to me was to see my son operating so competently in an environment that I was so completely clueless about. He works back in the engineering room. That was the only part of the submarine that was off limits to us. He acted as my own personal tour guide.
Their bunk room is a wedge between two of the nuclear missiles. There’s nine guys bunking in there. There’s 24 of these nuclear silos on the submarine. That area of the submarine is called Sherwood Forest. You get to one end of it, and it’s just this long row of silos.
Citizen: Pretty cramped quarters?
Swalm: You had to watch yourself. Of course, I’m not as nimble as I used to be so I had to crouch down and get through these things. I never felt claustrophobic, but you had to kind of watch your head and watch what you were doing. You were going up and down steep narrow stairways.
Citizen: What’s it been like for you to have a son serving on a nuclear submarine in these times? The United States is involved in two wars and the military has been stretched thin.
Swalm: The Navy takes pretty good care of its nuclear submarines. We’ve never worried too much about his personal safety, although last summer, one of the crew members was killed in an accident on the submarine.
We’re very proud of Byron. I think it’s been a good thing for him, but it’s not an easy life. I asked him, “How did this patrol go?” He said, “At one point, we were working 30 hours straight.” I said, “Why would you do that?” He said, “Well, it’s the Navy” and kind of rolled his eyes.
Sometimes the military doesn’t make perfect sense.
Citizen: Kind of like state government, eh?
Swalm: Sort of like that, exactly.
Citizen: How would you compare your third legislative session to your first and second?
Swalm: I would say this was my most successful because the bill that I got through authorized HMO plans to market a limited-benefit affordable health-insurance product to low-income working people who can’t afford conventional insurance. Despite pretty intense opposition, the bill actually got through. It was signed by the governor and it’s going into effect any day now.
These are plans that might have an annual cap of $50,000. If you have a serious problem, you can blow through $50,000 pretty quick. But my argument in favor of the bill is that some health insurance is better than none at all.
Citizen: You are free-market advocate and an insurance broker. Has your perspective evolved at all in the last couple of years as the move toward health care reform has become seemingly inevitable?
Swalm: Basically, it really hasn’t changed. I’m a small-government Republican. I believe in private-sector leadership, if at all possible. It very much concerns me that the government is taking over the auto industry and the financial sector and so on and so forth. The idea of turning over another large sector of the economy to government, I don’t support that.
On the other hand, I think the State of Colorado is in a position where it really needs to focus its resources on helping those people that really cannot help themselves, at least in the area of social-services type things. The people who come to my mind first in that arena are people with profound disabilities.
Citizen: Are you opposed to a more general government option for health insurance?
Swalm: I am. I think it might start off looking fairly benign, but it’s going to look very much like Medicare or Medicaid. I think the public option is always going to be an inferior type of health insurance. That’s because the government has a long history of offering hospitals and other providers low reimbursement rates.
Citizen: Do you think the government needs to find a way to insure everyone?
Swalm: Maybe someday. But it just seems to me that as this discussion goes on and people learn more about this, I think they’re very concerned about the level of deficit spending they’re seeing already. I think everybody would like to see that, but the question is, are they willing to pay for it?
Citizen: From a philosophical standpoint, what is the difference between government-run health care and government-run law enforcement, highways and fire protection?
Swalm: In the very introductory clause of the U.S. Constitution, it says two of the fundamental roles of government are to provide for the common defense and maintain domestic tranquility. Those things have to be paid for in taxes because nobody’s willing to invest private money in an aircraft carrier or a submarine because you can’t make money on something like that.
Citizen: There are, though, government contractors that have made a lot of money working with the military.
Swalm: You’re not going to have the private sector building submarines and selling subscriptions to it or something. It’s a common good that is necessary.
If health care is a fundamental right, for every right, there is a corollary duty. Somebody has to pay for it — either other taxpayers or providers or a combination of the two.
I don’t believe there’s a fundamental right to health care anymore than there’s a fundamental right to having a house, clothes or food. I think people need to take care of themselves.
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