The New Democrat Coalition is made up of moderate, pro-growth House members trying to make government work better for Americans. The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board met with four coalition members this week to discuss DACA, health care, international trade and other issues.

Here is an edited transcript of the interview with Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Pete Aguilar of California, Kathleen Rice of New York and San Diego’s own Scott Peters.

Q: So New Dems, tell us why this group is necessary at this point in time?

KIND: We’re 61 strong right now, which is about one-third of the entire House Democratic Caucus. I’ve been there since the founding of the group, during Clinton’s second term. This is a group of pragmatic, innovative, fiscally responsible, think- out-of-the-box type of members who have a policy lunch every Wednesday and work really hard trying to develop good relations across the aisle too to get things done. It’s been a bit difficult in Washington lately with the hyperpartisan and polarized atmosphere, and that’s why a group like the New Dems is as relevant now as ever before. We try to bridge some gaps and form some coalitions to get things done and a few of the issue areas that we’ve been working on are the future of workforce given the change that’s taking place and the need for skilled labor to meet the growth demands of companies to early stage capital for startups to education reform. We lean in heavily on health care reform in the area of delivery system and payment reform figuring that’s really going to be the key to affording 21st-century health care system. This group has leaned in too when it comes to trade policy. I think when you see something happening in a bipartisan fashion, you’re typically going to see the New Dem Coalition right in the middle. We’ve also made a point to have frequent policy lunches with a group of more pragmatic House Republican members called the Tuesday Group just to get in the same room together, to talk to each other, get to know each other and by doing that, finding some areas of common ground that we can work on together and we’re planning on continuing that. I think it’s exactly what the institution needs to be doing right now, rather than all the finger pointing and back and forth.

Q: Health care is in the news. What do you guys think about this plan that’s percolating in the Senate?

KIND: I think they’re have difficulties because it wasn’t done through regular process … no committee hearings, no discussion with members. It’s something they concocted to try to figure out a way to get something passed and that makes for bad policy. None of this has been vetted in the House and there are some fairly strong-willed conservatives in the Republican Party who may not vote for a plan that does retain all the ACA revenue measures which is what the Senate plan currently calls for right now. They’re running out of time and making policy of this magnitude, major transformation of our health care system just to beat a reconciliation deadline by the end of the month … again a lousy way to make policy that could affect millions of lives. They’re talking about doing away with the subsidies and the exchanges. They’re talking about doing away with the Medicaid expansion. It’ll be interesting to see what the (CBO) score has to say about it and the number of uninsured that would go up under their proposal. There’s a reason why the federal government felt we need to help Medicaid funding and Medicare because the states couldn’t do it on their own and now this devolves everything back to the states and set block grants and expecting them to solve all these problems. I think they’re setting states up for failure with this proposal. I think John McCain is right and we have to figure out a way to depoliticize health care change. Start recognizing what works, let’s fix what isn’t working and let’s focus on health care costs. That’s where we ought to be focusing our energy rather than having this endless discussion about Obamacare and whether it’s evil or whether we need a whole new approach to it.

Q: Let’s talk about DACA. Where is your deal making in that coming down?

AGUILAR: I think it’s an opportunity. We need to find that path, but we shouldn’t be trading out buckets of other immigration pieces. This is a solution that needs to be developed, where we look at how ingrained these young people are in our society, in our schools, in our jobs, working side by side, living with us, in our military. This is an earned path to citizenship that should be offered. If they’re in the military for two years. If they’re working and going to school … those are the qualifications. This isn’t a broad-based amnesty piece as Breitbart and other publications would say. This is an earned path to citizenship for those individuals that meet this qualification. What I think we get a little bit of anxiety about as Democrats is when we start talking about border security, which none of us are opposed to. But the thought process that you have to have increased border security packages with a Dreamers fix implies, to me, that these Dreamers are some sort of national security threat which couldn’t be farther from the truth. On a stand-alone basis, are we going to support increased border security? It depends on what that looks like, no wall, increased technology. There are examples where that increased investment pays dividends. So people don’t have to wait three hours at the border to cross, whether it’s trade, whether it’s people and tourism. So there are solutions that can be addressed, but I think that these young people deserve a stand-alone shot. I think that having the Dream Act come to the floor I think it would have the votes. A lot of us have been having conversations with colleagues about it. This is a bill that added two Republican co-sponsors last week. It hopefully will become the baseline according to what has been discussed from the Schumer-Pelosi-Trump conversation. I’m the whip of the Hispanic Caucus as well and I’ve been involved in a bunch of meetings last week with Schumer, with Democratic leadership, with our House Republican colleagues. Based on press reports, the president and Pelosi and Schumer discussed where in the next two weeks they could end up in negotiations with staff. What would it look like? There was an agreement to have an agreement. There wasn’t a deal that was made.