Why retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow still believes in the 'win-win'

WASHINGTON — Washington is full of people who obsess about the daily news cycle and who is “winning” it. But looking back on her 24 years in the Senate and nearly half a century in politics, Sen. Debbie Stabenow said it doesn’t have to be that way.

“It’s not about making sure the other side loses, and that’s just too much of what I see right now,” the Michigan Democrat said in an interview earlier this month, as she wrapped up her final term.

She didn’t get to take one last five-year farm bill over the finish line, but she points to other bipartisan efforts with lasting impact, especially on mental health, a topic that hits close to home after her dad’s experience with bipolar disorder.

“This experience fueled my passion to reduce the stigma on mental health and mental illness, and as I’ve often said, we need to treat health care above the neck the same as health care below the neck,” she said in a farewell speech on the Senate floor.

This interview has been edited and condensed

Q: What will you miss about the Senate?

A: I have wonderful friendships on both sides of the aisle, people I’ve really gotten to know well. And I’m grateful I had the chance to lead negotiations on a number of really complicated issues that ended up actually making change happen.

Q: And what will you not miss?

A: I won’t miss the divisions that are making it more and more difficult to get things done. I won’t miss seeing the Trump nominees come through, and just the lack of seriousness in so many of these nominees. I know there are colleagues [in the Senate] who have deep concerns about many of them, but whether or not they will feel they want to stand up to the bullying of Donald Trump, we’ll see.

You can’t lay all of it at Donald Trump’s feet, but I do think he gave permission for people to be much meaner and nastier and feel that they could get rewarded for it. It’s not enough to accomplish what you want, but you gotta make sure the other side loses. I’ve taken a different approach my whole life, not just in the Senate, but as a county commissioner, in the state House and Senate, and as a U.S. House member. For me, it’s always about creating a win-win situation — listening to all sides and finding common ground.

Q: What are you most proud of from your time here?

A: I’ve been involved in so many things. Probably what has the biggest impact on people is my effort to transform the way mental health and addiction services are funded, structurally changing it so they’re funded like health care, and not from grants that stop and start.

This is an effort that Roy Blunt and I did together that started at the end of the Obama administration, setting up quality standards for community and behavioral health services and saying, if a clinic meets that, then we’ll fully fund it, like we do for health care.

We started that quest with an eight-state demonstration project to prove that this actually would keep people out of jail and out of the emergency room and off the streets in terms of being homeless. And when we got to the gun bill debate, the Safer Communities Act [in 2022], folks were saying, we want to do something on mental health. We had a model that had been proven, so we got it in there.

I also led the effort to do the auto rescue back in 2009 to make sure we maintained our American automobile industry, and I have authored many of the tax provisions for clean energy and batteries and clean energy loan programs.

And then, of course, agriculture. I’m chair of the committee. I’ve been involved in several farm bills, and this is the third one I’ve led. Unfortunately, my biggest disappointment is that we could not get the bipartisan support to sit down, negotiate and get this farm bill done. So that will be left for the next Congress.

Q: Beyond that, any other regrets?

A: I feel blessed that I gave it my all every day, and I’ve worked very hard with an incredibly talented staff. I served the caucus as No. 3 on leadership, chairing the Policy and Communications Committee. I approach things from a common sense standpoint. I’m not an ideologue, and I’ll work with anybody to get things done. In fact, the latest [push to reauthorize] the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which is my signature bill that funds Great Lakes protections, JD Vance is my main cosponsor on that.

Q: What’s one thing you would change about Congress?

A: People use the filibuster to just stop everything. The capacity for one member to be able to stop something that 80 or 90 percent of the Senate supports really is perverting the traditions of the Senate, and needs to be changed. And I wish it had been changed sooner, because there’s just a lot of really important work, and much of it bipartisan. It still has to be bipartisan, even if there weren’t the filibuster.

Q: What’s next for you?

A: Well, first of all, I’m going to live full time in Michigan. I actually have always gone home every weekend. I have viewed this as a long-distance commute to work.

I’m not going to work full time, but I can see myself being engaged in a few key issues that I’m passionate about. What I want is more flexibility. I’ve spent most of my life with a legislative calendar controlling my time.

The problem is, I have too many things I’m interested in, so I have to pare it down. I certainly will stay engaged in advocacy around mental health, where I’ve been involved for my whole career, but what’s happening around climate and food security is also extremely important. So we’ll see.