Will Pakistan Caucus in U.S. Congress Stand for Democracy? Tom Suozzi with Moeed Pirzada
Date of Interview: 24th March, 2025
Dr. Moeed Pirzada:Assalam alaikum, Congressman Tom Suozzi, and a very warm welcome.
Congressman Tom Suozzi :Walaikum As Salam!
Dr Pirzada: Thank you. Thank you. Congressman, I understand you were very busy today. You know, I mean, we have been scheduling and rescheduling this discussion. So I would come straight to the point. Many of your constituents are of Pakistani origin. You’re now the chairman of the Pakistan caucus. Tell us something about what the Pakistan caucus is doing, can do. How do you look at it?
Congressman: Well, the Pakistani caucus is Democrats and Republicans. I’m the Democratic co-chair of a Republican co-chairman who’s a former general from Michigan, Jack Bergman. And our job is really to try and convene people together to try and figure out what we can do to strengthen the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. And so I’ll be traveling to Pakistan in the next couple of months. I was there in 2022, right after the floods. I was the first member of Congress to go there, along with Sheila Jackson Lee.
And I am holding a conference on April 30th here in Washington, D.C. to discuss the history of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, the current U.S.-Pakistani relationship, and the future U.S.-Pakistani relationship. And I’m going to be bringing in people from the State Department here in the U.S. I’m working with the Pakistani ambassador to America. I’m working with think tanks and trying to bring experts in who will all contribute to this conversation.
Everything I hear from the Pakistani diaspora, my constituents, people throughout the country, all the time, people from the Pakistani government, is that they want to see more U.S. investment in Pakistan. And what I make clear is that people would love to invest in Pakistan. There’s a tremendous opportunity there. It’s a large country. It’s got tremendous natural resources. It has such a young population. But people are afraid to invest in Pakistan because they feel if they get into a dispute, have to know somebody. You have to know somebody in the military or in the ISI or something like that in order to get it resolved.
I’m suggesting to the Pakistani government that they should set up an independent arbitration board, similar to what I saw in Kazakhstan, where if you get into a contract with somebody, both parties sign on to this agreement that if there’s a dispute, it’ll go to this independent arbitration board. And you’ll get Pakistani lawyers, you get British lawyers, you get U.S. lawyers, former judges who will adjudicate the cases. And then, you know, hopefully we’ll see more investment in Pakistan. We see, you know, India is moving ahead economically. Bangladesh is moving ahead economically.
We want to see Pakistan move ahead economically. And it’s in both of our countries’ interests, both from an economic point of view, but from a human point of view as well, and from a strategic point of view, because we see Pakistan, you know, the Chinese are constantly trying to enhance their relationship with the Pakistanis. We don’t want that to happen. Pakistan is very important to us. as far as the size, as far as its geographic location, as far as its potential. So we want them to be a nuclear power. We want to have a strategic relationship with them.
Dr Pirzada: You mentioned China, which is a very sensitive word in the US-Pakistan relationship now. Is there a possibility, Congressman, conceptually speaking, that the United States and the West can also become part of the China-Pakistan economic corridor in terms of investment? China has already exposed something like more than $60 billion of investment into energy products, roads, and infrastructure. Can the United States be part of that?
Congressman: I don’t see the U.S at this point being partners with the Chinese as part of the same agreements. I think it would be something that would be independent, and it’s different. In the U.S., it’s not the U.S. government that’s going to invest. USAID has put money in over the years. We see the challenges with USAID in America right now. But we don’t want the government to invest per se. I’d like to see the U.S. government help with things like after the flooding, I hope to bring money there. But you want private investment. The Chinese government controls a lot of the investment. The government says, You go do this, you go do that. That doesn’t happen in America. The US government can’t tell this company or that company or this individual, that individual, to go invest in Pakistan. You want private investment from the private sector. And people want to invest in Pakistan, but they don’t feel safe doing so. If there’s a dispute, they’re going to lose their money. People do these things to make money. They don’t do it because they’re being nice.
Dr Pirzada: You said something very interesting, I mean, just a few moments ago. And I also read, you said several weeks ago, you said the same thing that Pakistan needs a rule of law system for investments. You mentioned Kazakhstan and the arbitration system, and you also mentioned Sheila Jackson. Historically, the Pakistan caucus had been seen as a forum within the Congress to help Pakistan in international relationships, to help improve the relationship from an international point, international relations lens, also to somehow the other defend or ward off Pakistan against the criticism from the Indian lobbies in the United States. But now there is a change of climate within the United States that many, many of your constituents and Pakistani Americans are also concerned about democracy in Pakistan, the rule of law, freedom of expression, Twitter is banned, crackdown, and other things. Do you think this Pakistan Caucus Forum, of which you’re the co-chair from the Democratic side, can help Pakistani decision makers move in that direction, persuade them that, look, you have to have freedom of expression, you have to have democracy, you have to have the rule of law?
Congressman: Well, certainly I want to see all those things happen. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in freedom of expression. I believe in democracy. Those are all very important values to me, to members of my constituents, including my Pakistani diaspora that lives in my district. But my intention is not to get involved in the internal politics of Pakistan. That’s not my goal. My goal is to try and enhance the relationship between the US government and the Pakistani government, and the U.S. population and the Pakistani population. That’s my goal. And to do that, I’m trying to address specific concerns that I have regarding what I think are the obstacles to seeing U.S. investment happen in Pakistan.
Dr Pirzada: But Congressman, one principal issue, you know, United States supreme belief, the first functioning democracy of the world, that the rule of law and democracy are integral components to each other. This is also the debate within the United States. So when you say that you don’t want to get into the issues within Pakistan, it’s understandable. I mean, as an American congressman, you don’t want to get into the internal political conflict with one or the other side. But yet behind the scenes, maybe by engagement with the top decision makers, with the military, the foreign office, the government, you can actually put the idea that, you know, look, you have to make progress on democracy, which several US administrations have been quietly doing ever since.
Congressman: Yeah, I’m going to encourage freedom of expression and democracy and the rule of law everywhere in the world. That’s what I believe in. And I will always try and promote that in any conversation I have with anybody from any place in the world. But again, my goal is not to get involved in the internal politics of the Pakistani government, the same as I wouldn’t want the Pakistani government to get involved in the US. internal politics.
I guess it’s a matter of semantics and diplomacy and how it’s handled, but I believe in what I believe in, and people know what I believe in. I’ll say the same thing no matter who I’m speaking to, whether I’m speaking to my constituents or the Pakistani constituents or non-Pakistani constituents, whether I’m speaking to the U.S. government, whether I’m speaking to the Pakistani government, I’ll say the same things because I’ll say what I believe in. And what I believe in is that the U.S.-Pakistani relationship is a very important relationship for the long-term future, and we need to encourage a way to strengthen that relationship. I think economically is a way to do that, but there are some obstacles that we need to overcome in order to get there.
Dr Pirzada: And what do you think are the obstacles when you refer to investment?
Congressman: I think it’s this concern that you have to know somebody in order to get a fair shake.
Dr Pirzada: So basically, it’s nepotism and personal relationships, and not the rule of law, not the transparency of the American style of rule of law. Like in this country, you don’t have to know someone to do business.
Congressman: Well, even here in the United States of America, people perceive that that’s a problem here as well, but it’s not as bad as it is in other parts of the world. And so I believe that we have a very strong rule of law here in the United States of America. As a matter of fact, we’re concerned when we hear our president and members of Congress talking about impeaching judges and things like that, that’s disconcerting. So that’s something you have to constantly fight to preserve. in any democracy in any country. That’s something we’re doing right now. Now, I feel very confident that the American Constitution, the American people, Democrats and Republicans will ultimately stand up for the basic fundamental beliefs we have in our country, which are the three branches of government, which are the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch, all equal branches of government.
Dr Pirzada: And I think- It’s interesting, Congressman, because you mentioned yourself, but in January, in the first week of January, you wrote a very interesting and very provocative opinion piece in New York Times, in which the title of the opinion piece was, let’s try something different in how we deal with Trump. New York Times, your op-ed piece. in which you actually asked and you tried persuading the Democratic Party that we shouldn’t be confronting Donald Trump. We should see what are the common grounds.
Congressman: Well, I didn’t say that. I said we shouldn’t confront them on everything. You know, there are certain things we’re going to confront no matter what, but let’s not confront everything and let’s try and find common ground wherever possible.
Dr Pirzada: Yes, and you were looking for common grounds in immigration and border security, also in low inflation, in economic stability, and also the culture wars. Several weeks have passed since your op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times. At that time, Donald Trump wasn’t the president. He was president-elect. Now, between 20th January and 20th March, in less than 60 days, President Donald Trump has passed close to 100 executive orders and literally every branch of the federal government and society is in sort of disturbed. You know, he’s shaking up the whole system. How are you looking at that?
Congressman: Well, he’s not making it any easier to cooperate, but I’m still committed. I’m still committed to trying to find common ground. I believe that right now the Republicans and the President and the Republican Party are looking at everything as being my way or the highway. We’re going to do it ourselves. We’re going to ram it through. We’re going to get it done. That’s not going to last. I know politics. I know the government. I know how close the margins are. The time is going to come in the next few months when the Republicans need the Democrats’ help. And we need to be ready with where we are willing to work together to get things done to make our country better. So I have great faith in our system. I have great faith in the country. Like I said, the president’s not making it easier because human instinct is, you know, you punch me, I’m going to punch you back. And it gets worse and worse. So I think it was, you know, an eye for an eye. If we continue this eye-for-an-eye mentality, sooner or later, we’re all going to be blind.
Dr Pirzada: Yes, but you said something interesting. You said politics. I know my politics. I was looking at your profile. It’s a very impressive profile. You have been the mayor of Glencove four times for eight years. But not only this, I mean, your father, who was an immigrant from Italy, he had been the mayor of Glencove. And one of your uncles has also been the mayor of Glencove.
Congressman: And my cousin…
Dr Pirzada: One of your cousins, right? I think Joseph Joseph Suozzi…
Congressman: Joseph is my father..yeah
Dr Pirzada: Yeah, Joseph is your father.
Congressman: Then one of your fact, there’s a picture of my father right there. See my up there, that picture right there, it’s my picture of my father with John f Kennedy in 1960.
Dr Pirzada: Oh, impressive! Interesting. And then Vincent Suozzi was your uncle. Right? Okay.
Congressman: Yeah. So, and then I had a cousin I had a cousin Ralph was also the mayor.
Dr Pirzada: So politics is definitely in your blood, and you have been fighting your political battles. What is the meaning of politics to you? Why are you in politics?
Congressman: Well, some people look at the word politics, and they say poly is a Greek word which means of the many, and ticks are blood sucking insects. So maybe not translate in Pakistan. I don’t know if they know about ticks, but that’s a thing for them. No.
Dr Pirzada: Well, they understand you….
Congressman: For me, politics is how we can take a bunch of disparate groups of people and disparate interests and try and find common ground together. To try and advance the agenda to make people’s lives better, that’s what politics is for me. How do you persuade this large group of diverse people with different backgrounds and different beliefs? How do we find some common ground and try and move forward together to try and make things better? And you know to change things, you need three elements. One, you need the answer what you want to change it to; that’s not the hardest part. You can get a lot of smart and you can come up with an agenda and a platform. What do you wanna change it to? The second thing you need is the courage to stand up to the status quo. Because when you wanna change things, the reason the status quo often stays the same is because somebody’s benefiting from the status quo.
They don’t want you to change it, right? You know, you want to try and do something about global warming or climate change, you know, the oil companies don’t like that. You want to do something about high prescription drug costs or health insurance costs. Well, the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies don’t like that you want to do something about guns, and the gun manufacturers don’t like that you want to change something. You have to be willing to have the courage right to stand up to the status quo but the third thing you need is the most important, you can have all the great ideas you can have all the guts but if you don’t have the ability to win you’re not going to get anything done.
You have to know how the press works, how politics work, how money works, and how the legislation works. How do you get something done? You need all three of those elements to get something done.
Dr Pirzada: But Congressman if I be if I if you if you permit me to be a little cheesy, you said you’re challenging the status quo. In the case of Pakistan, you don’t want to challenge the status quo. You don’t want to interfere with the internal politics.
Congressman: I got enough status quo here in America to interfere with i don’t. I’m not going to interfere with your status quo. You take care of your status quo I’ll take care of my status quo.
Dr Pirzada: As co-chair of the Pakistan Caucus, you can help us, you know, you can actually put some pressure there.
Congressman: Yeah, my goal is to try and build the US-Pakistani relationship.
Dr Pirzada: Okay, so let’s move forward. You, in politics you have been elected uh mayor of Glen Cove almost four times, and you’ve been, I think, chief executive of Nassau County. You’ve been elected to the Congress of United States for four times. You fought in the governor’s election in New York. What has been the most important political victory to you, and what has been the most important political defeat to you?
Congressman: Well I think that uh you know the tvictory for me is when I get things done when I actually make people’s lives better, and you know I have a lot of long list of accomplishments as far as helping my hometown, as far as saving my county as far as cleaning up pollution, as helping people in some of the most desperate times in their lives uh, right. Now my biggest agenda is to work on this immigration issue and to try and get that done, which would be, I think, a crowning achievement for me if I could get that done.
Dr Pirzada: What are your goals on the immigration agenda?
Congressman: I want to try and get a bipartisan deal together to secure the border to fix the broken asylum system in our country and to treat people like human beings. For me immigration is a very personal issue for me i defined my whole life through my father and grandparents experience immigrating to the United States of America the American success story I see. It all the time in my constituents. Immigration is central to what America is about, and it’s painful for me that see this negativity associated with immigration right now in our country.
So, we have to secure the border, we have to fix the broken asylum system, but we also have to figure out how to modernize the legal immigration system so that people can live their lives fully, especially these young kids who were brought here when they were little. And now it’s 20 30 years later and they’re still living here, and they have no permanent status. People invited to America after an earthquake or a flood, or a revolution, we said Come to America, where it’s safe. They still have no permanent status we have all these farm workers and healthcare workers, and other workers who should get status that don’t have it. So I want to try and resolve that, and that’s not going to be easy to do, but I’m very confident we can get it done.
Dr Pirzada: But the Trump administration has raised some very difficult uh issues, I mean, they’re even talking of deporting the legal residents, you know, the green card holders, you know. What’s your Democratic Party’s perspective on that?
Congressman: Well, I’m not going to speak on behalf of my whole party, but I want to stick with our values as far as the US Constitution and the rule of law in the United States of America. And there are some you know very thorny legal questions that are being brought up right now, that’s why these attacks.
My biggest concern about Trump administration is that they’re trying to knock everything i don’t understand what their objective is because they’re saying you know they’re knocking the judiciary system they’re knocking the FBI, they’re knocking the CIA, they’re knocking the electoral system, they’re knocking social security, they’re knocking I mean every the USA. They’re knocking everything, so what you know you have to if you believe America is a great country, you got to believe in something, so how can you knock everything so um you know we just got to keep on moving forward, keep on fighting, keep on moving ahead.
Dr Pirzada: So Congressman, I spoke to someone who was with the Republican party i said “What is president doing?” And he said “President knows that he has limited time uh before a few moments and he wants to shake up the whole system he wants to make a news system that is why he’s shaking FBI CIA US aid and everything.” Um I mean how do you how do you comment on that?
Congressman: Well, there’s no question that they’re trying to disrupt things right, and you know I can’t defend the status quo, uh, you know. I think the government is too unwieldy, it’s too ineffective. I think there’s a lot of inefficiency, and I think there’s a lot of waste uh I just don’t like the way that they’re going about it i don’t like. When I was Nassau County executive, it was 1.4 million people in population $2.8 8 billion budget, bigger than 11 states in the United States of America. I reduced the workforce by about 15%, maybe more than that, maybe 18%, but I didn’t do it by firing the lowest-level people. I did it by normal attrition normal resigning, and not replacing those positions, and I did it by offering early retirement packages to the most senior people.
And then, when those positions were empty, we used technology and changes in procedures and processes, and consolidation to make things more efficient. Right now, there’s a very random, reckless way that they’re going about cutting these jobs. You know, they cut people who were responsible for overseeing the nuclear stockpile. Well, that doesn’t make sense. They cut people who were responsible for overseeing the avian flu, you know the this bird flu. They cut people responsible for monitoring the measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico. So I think there’s got to be a plan, and much of what Musk is doing and Doge is doing is reckless, I believe.
Dr Pirzada: In your op-ed piece, you also expressed the desire that you want to work with Elon Musk and Doge?
Congressman: When he first came to the capital, I said I wanted to go to that meeting, and I was told I couldn’t come, it was just for Republicans, I was like. Well, that doesn’t make sense so there’s been very little outreach by the administration or by the Republicans to try and join hands together, but you know that’s politics. I’m the co-chair of a group called the Problemsolvers Caucus it’s 50. It’s 50 members of Congress evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. We meet every week, we try to figure. We have working groups on different issues, including immigration, the budget, permitting reform, the environment, mental health, the national security. We have working groups; we’re trying to develop bipartisan agendas on a whole bunch of different issues, so when the time comes that we’re starting to see some reaching out to work we we’ll be ready with plans to try and get things done.
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Dr Pirzada: So, Congressman, you also supported the financing for the Ukraine war effort. Now, where things stand, how are you looking at it, I mean, the way Donald Trump and Zelensky things are going and Russia.
Congressman: I wholeheartedly support Ukraine. You know the president said something very, very inappropriate, he said that Putin Zelensky was a dictator. Well, that’s not true. Zelensky was elected by 74% of the Ukrainian people in an election that was deemed fair and free by the European Commission, which oversees elections. And it was
Russia, which invaded Ukraine. I believe that we have a responsibility to support Ukraine because they share the values that we share and because we have to stand up to the bullies. There are some Republicans, and even the Secretary of Defense Pete Hexiff has said, “Well, Ukraine is so small they can’t win this was, you know they can’t beat Russia.”
Well, if we didn’t support Ukraine because they’re not big enough and they can’t do what about Latvia an Lithuania, and Estonia, and these other small countries like Moldova that are worried about Russia breathing down their neck. So we are looking at history and looking at what happened during the leadup to World War II, you can’t appease an aggressor if you appease them, they will roll right over you.
Dr Pirzada: I know that you’re very busy, you have to go for a meeting, just one or two more questions. When we talk of Ukraine, we also see a rising level of distrust between the United States’ Trump administration and Europe. I mean United States wants to leave the supreme command of NATO, which is, I find it unbelievable that the United States can just, for financial reasons, leave something which was once owned to Eisenhower, I mean, President Eisenhower.
Congressman: It would be a terrible mistake, and it’s something similar to what you just said, you can’t make these decisions based solely on financial reasons, that’s not what America is about. You know that you have to have a guiding set of values and principles so that every decision you make is undergirded by those values and those principles, and the values should be based upon what America was founded on.
Dr Pirzada: How do you look at the rising tensions with the Germans, the French, and the British?
Congressman: I think it’s a terrible mistake, you know. I’ll say this the president was right when he first started in 2017 and even to today to say that we need Europe and our NATO allies to pick up more of their own burden i am all for that i agree that they should be doing more uh and we but I don’t like the way that we’re going about this you know you saw a tremendous increase by the European nations to contribute to their own defense under the Biden administration.
And he didn’t do it by beating up on them or you know, threatening them or putting our relationship that’s very special relationship at risk. So I think that President Trump is wrong with the way he’s going about this goal to have NATO and Europe continue to increase their investments to take on more responsibility. I’m all for that. These are successful, wealthy nations, they need to take on more responsibility, they can’t rely just on the United States, but we can’t fracture this very special relationship.
Dr Moeed Pirzada: One last question, you talk of culture wars. You thought that your party, the Democratic Party, had moved too much towards the left. What exactly do you mean by that?
Congressman: Well, you know, we saw a lot of voters, we saw a lot of African-Americans a lot of Latinos right a lot of uh Asians and South Asians Chinese Korean Indian Pakistani, that have always voted for the Democratic party mainly because they thought the Republicans were just you know had too many racist instincts. So they voted for the Democrats, and we saw people move away from the Democratic Party in this election towards Trump because they were more worried about the Democrats than they were about what Trump would do. And I think if you look in these groups, the African-Americans, the Latinos, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Koreans, etc, they’re very traditional people. They have family values, they often have religious values, they believe in entrepreneurialism, when they hear talk about uh the Democrats as being, you know, the main issues they stand for freedom of choice, for abortion, or for LGBT, and transgender rights, which are very important things.
I support those, but that can’t be the main thing you build the party on. The Democratic Party has got to be much more than that. And we did not do a very good job of talking about rebuilding the middle class and about economic opportunity and about reducing the cost of living and about building housing and about the border and law enforcement and quality of life. So there’s so much more we need to talk to the public about and I don’t think we did enough of a good job communicating the real values of the Democratic party. We have to get back to those basic values, looking at our history.
Dr Pirzada: Thank you so much, I understand there is pressure on your time. Thank you so much for finding time and wish you all the best for the conference on 30th April is this in DC or is this in some university it’s in DC it’s the capital?
Congressman: It’s in the capital city.
Dr Pirzada: Congressman, thank you so much. I look forward to talking to you at some point.
Congressman: Shukria Pakistan zindabad
Dr Pirzada: Thank you, Congressman Pakistan zindabad, thank you, thank you.
