Freshman Democrats Celebrate Completing 100-Hour Agenda
FRESHMEN DEMOCRATS CELEBRATE COMPLETING 100-HOUR AGENDA
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. COURTNEY. I want to follow-up on your opening comments on the heels of the prior group that was here that seemed to suggest that freshmen were being suppressed in the opening 100 hours of the 110th Congress. As we all know, nothing would be further from the truth.
Our level of participation in the floor debate and in the design of this agenda could not have been more robust and full from the beginning of the process to the end.
Where we, I think, learned our information about the content of that agenda was on the campaign trail talking to the people in our district. These are ideas that have been out there for a long time. If anything has been suppressed or held back, in fact, it was the 100 hours agenda, not the process or the new Members of Congress that are again beginning our time here in the House.
As an undergraduate in Boston, I used to walk by Powder House Square in Cambridge past the home of Tip O'Neill who at that time was Speaker of this body, the predecessor of the gentleman in the chair. He was a wonderful man. He is certainly not maybe the typical blow-dried politician of the 21st century but he had a street wisdom that I think still resonates to this day. Of course, he coined the most famous phrase, which is that all politics is local. I was asked by a local reporter about where does this 100 hours agenda fit into the district. When are you guys going to start dealing with the Second Congressional District where I come from, eastern Connecticut.
The fact of the matter is if you go down this list of the 100 hours agenda, you can find exactly where in eastern Connecticut it matters, starting with homeland security. In my district, we have the Port of New London. We have more of Long Island Sound than any other congressional district in Connecticut. There are thousands of container cargo ships that every month pass up and down the Race in Long Island Sound. Today we have a situation where only a tiny fraction of those containers have been screened before they have reached that point. This is a large population center in our country. Yet despite the fact that the 9/11 Commission recommendations were out there telling us that we need to go a safer direction in terms of screening that cargo, it wasn't done by the prior Congress.
Secondly, the commission recommended that we would have funding based on need, not politics. It was one of the recommendations that the Chairs of the commission in their fifth year anniversary of 9/11 pointed to as the biggest failing of the prior Congress. Yet in the State of the Connecticut where we received almost $60 million funding in homeland security funding 3 years ago, it had dropped to $15 million last year, leaving first responders high and dry in terms of the investment that they were trying to make in communications equipment and systems that would actually protect the people of our area. New York and the World Trade Center is not very far from my district. We lost people in the Second Congressional District on 9/11 and H.R. 1 right out of the box did everything in the world for my local community, my district, in terms of making us safer and stronger as a district and as a State.
In terms of student loans, my district is the home of the University of Connecticut, Eastern Connecticut State University, three community colleges, Mitchell College, Conn College. As Mr. Wilson indicated, this bill will literally make a difference between whether or not students go to college and stay in college or not. It is as simple as that. There was probably no other decision of the 109th Congress that was more out of touch than the decision to cut by $12 billion aid for student loans. What we did a couple of days ago was take a big step in terms of reversing that damage to the system.
On the Education and Labor Committee on which I sit with Congresswoman Hirono from Hawaii, we are going to follow up on that down payment to address Pell Grants, to revise the reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act to make sure that we build a system that will create a workforce for the 21st century.
Those are just two small examples where we kept faith with the voters. And with Speaker O'Neill's famous words about all politics is local, I think our class was a big part of that process over the last week. It has been terrific working with all of you and I think it is going to be a great time ahead of us in the 110th Congress.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov