U.S. Congressman Pete Olson has served Texas District 22 since 2009.

On July 25, Rep. Olson-R, announced that he will not be running for re-election in 2020. Katy Times managing editor Claire Goodman spoke with Olson as he reflected on his career and what the future holds.

Q: I’ve seen you around so many times at so many events. You're very actively involved in this district. To tell you the truth, I’ve never met anyone else in the U.S. Congress out and about with their constituents. That’s obviously a priority for you. Tell me what it means to you to be involved in your district and why you are so present.

A: I ran for Congress in August of 2007, and I had a personal reason. I wanted to make people feel like people in Congress are actually servants- public servants.

They see all the time that Congress passes laws. They think we care only about raising money and having power.

We're great talkers but terrible listeners. We’re out of touch with the people.

That really bugs me, so one of the main reasons I ran for Congress is just to show the people that you can be a true public servant.

I just have a job that puts me in the public eye. There's nothing more special about what I do than what anyone else does.

Q: What are some of the other ways you engage with your constituents?

A: We have the most diverse district in the entire world. We're on track to be 25, 25, 25, 25 percent divided equally between Caucasians, Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans by the census that comes out in 2022.

And so this is such a special place to be. I participate in as many cultural events as I can- whether it’s Diwali or Cinco de Mayo or lighting a candle at the Sugar Land Town Center for the victims of the terrorist attack in Sri Lanka.

It’s such a diverse place, and there’s so much strength in that.

Q: How was that, being elected by such a diverse group of people? You obviously don't have one type of person here, and you don’t have one type of voter. What was your approach to reaching all those people in such diverse backgrounds?

A: It's just about being inclusive and listening to people and going out to where they are. You go to their churches, the places they worship, their synagogues, their mosques and their temples.

You just show up and engage and have fun. It's not work, it's fun. People see that, and it doesn’t matter what their background, they appreciate it.

They know they’ve got a voice in D.C. who cares about them. I may not do what they want me to do all the time, but I listen.

Q: People in Congress who don't have the same approach to their constituents- what do you think are some of their reasons for that, and maybe even some of the ramifications in their districts of not being present for the people?

A: D.C. is a very heady place. You fly first-class enough or walk past security metal detectors enough, and you start to think you’re beyond what you really are.

It’s all tilted.I know my job is to work for these people. I'm their voice when I go to D.C. It's easy to get a so-called “big head”, but I promised myself I would never get the big head.

I want people to know we're real human beings. We laugh. We cry. We have fun.

We're not just these guys who care about money and power and about privilege. That shouldn't be Congress, but some people forget that.

Q: Talking about some of the legislation that you've worked on or supported or not supported- does anything stand out in your memory about a piece of legislation that you were proud to see pushed through? And then conversely, was there something that just broke your heart to see it passed?

A: The one that I was most proud of was the third tranche of money for Hurricane Harvey. You may recall that we had three tranches of money from Harvey.

The first one was just over $30 billion, and it was just for Texas. The second one was $38 billion, but for Texas and the storms that hit Puerto Rico and hit Florida. We got the lion's share of that. The last one was the most insulting: it was just over $40 billion, so basically the same as the tranches for wildfires in California on the West Coast, and no one said anything about the hurricane.

So I went to war, and the Texas delegation got behind me.

I jumped up and went to the microphone and called out Mr. Trump and Paul Ryan, our Speaker.

Paul must have seen my body language because he jumped up quickly and said, “Pete, I want you to know, you guys get $81 billion”.

That’s twice what the administration offered. So I said, “Paul thank you, I'll retract my claws. No more war from Texas.”

My biggest disappointment was getting no reform on Obamacare through the Senate. We got it through the House. We ran with a promise to make healthcare better, but we didn't get that done.

Q: Did you find that happened frequently- seeing legislation that you were really excited about get shot down in the Senate?

A: Yes it does. The Senate has a filibuster, but the House doesn’t. The Senate is wide open. It’s crazy. There's no limit. They can go on forever.

In fact, a member of the Senate read “Green Eggs and Ham” for 17 hours. I’m talking about Ted Cruz, obviously.

And that bugs us in the House. We’ve passed some good bills. We passed a bill to address climate change that died. We passed a bill to strengthen our military that died. It's tough, but that's our democracy.

The filibuster is a power that they should have, but it's a powerful weapon. It should be rarely, rarely done, but it's become commonplace.

Any time a bill comes up, it’s filibustered. That's not what they're supposed to do. It’s supposed to be used when there's something really big. We've lost that.

Q: Tell me about your decision to retire. What was at the forefront of the decision?

This is a very hard job for families. You're gone most of the year. The things I missed out on are a big big loss, but I knew that’s how it would be.

My wife is such a trooper; she’s followed me all over the world. She's done so much for me, and now the time has come for me to be there for her.

Her mom has some health issues and her step-mom has pancreatic cancer. There’s lots of burdens on her. She said, “I’m at my limit. I have to have someone here so I can take care of my parents and do what a good daughter should do.”

So after 25 years of marriage, when she asked me that, I said, “Yes, ma'am, I'm coming home.”

Q: Do you think you're going to miss politics? That you're going to see some kind of legislation that comes across the docket, and you're going to want to jump in and be involved?

A: I won't miss the process, but I'll miss the people, especially the delegation from Texas.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from in the state, if something happens in Texas, Texans rally around Texans- Democrats and Republicans.

We saw it with Hurricane Harvey and the wildfires in the hill country. If it’s good for the state, it doesn’t matter where it happened, Texans stand strong. And that’s how it should be.

Q: The first time I met you, you were participating in a symposium for the Texas Humane Legislation Network. As you know, anti-cruelty legislation is something that doesn’t follow a party line. Tell me about working on legislation that you personally really believe in, knowing there’s going to be people in your own party that aren’t going to like it, and there’s going to be people in the other party that do.

A:If I believe it's good for the people as a whole, I'm going to support it, regardless of how my party feels about it. For example, I asked President Trump to apologize to the people of Texas- 22 for saying that comment about people should go back to their homes.

I said, “Mr. Trump, two-thirds of the people who live in Texas 22 are either first generation or second generation Americans, and you just told those people that they should go home. This is their home.

So I put out a Tweet that said, “You should apologize for those comments. That's not our values.”

A lot of people didn't like that. Some people thought I shouldn’t have pushed back on President Trump and got mad at me, but I said, “Sorry guys, I don't work for Donald Trump. I work for the people of Texas-22, and those comments were just not right.”

So I spoke up.

Q: When you think about how people will remember your career, does anything in particular stand out?

I see these people in Congress first-hand. All these legislators from Texas in Congress- they’re good people.

And yeah, we've done stupid things to become the source of scorn and ridicule. We've earned it in many ways. But my goal was to be there for the people.

I think I made some progress. I could have done a lot more, and I wish I’d done a lot more, but hopefully people say, “He was a decent man, he was a good human being, he was funny, I liked him, and he worked his tail off for us in D.C.”