The Blue Dog Coalition

Floor Speech

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. I thank the gentleman, and my friend, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, Members, I came down to the floor this afternoon to join my Blue Dog colleagues in calling for all of us in Congress to come together and do the work that we have been asked to do, the work that we have been sent to Washington, sent to Congress to do on behalf of the people that we represent. I came to Congress to get things done, to get things done for the people that I represent, and to get things done for the great country that we are all so privileged to live in and to participate in.

As Mr. Costa mentioned, he and I served together in the State legislature in California, and I am very proud of the work that we did there. We were able to get a lot of things done. In the time that I was there, the majority of the time, I chaired the Senate Budget Committee. That was one of the reasons why I was so proud to be a Blue Dog, although the common thread that holds all Blue Dogs together is the issue of fiscal responsibility.

In my time in Sacramento chairing the Budget Committee, we always had a balanced budget. Fiscal responsibility was important, and it is equally as important here in Congress. Nobody likes the fact that we have huge deficits or huge debts. We understand that some things are unavoidable, but there has to be an understanding of and an intentional effort on the part of all us to make sure that we are fiscally responsible and that we manage that debt, we manage that deficit, and we bring it down to a level that won't burden our children and our grandchildren in the years to come.

So I was stunned when I came to Congress and found out that it was very, very difficult to get anything done, to get people to work together. As Jim pointed out, I am one of the longer serving Members, so I was stunned a long time ago in what you can probably refer to today as ``the good old days,'' when we were actually able to work together and get things done, but we didn't have a high level of that cooperation even back then.

Last week, I was with the Aspen Institute on a trade conference. Anybody who is familiar with them knows that they are able to bring together a bipartisan and bicameral representation of Congress, Members from the Senate and Members from the House, Democrats and Republicans. They also bring together some of the most famous scholars to talk about whatever the issue of the conference is. I was struck, at this trade conference, when one of the new Members that we serve with, now starting his sophomore term, after the scholars spoke and he was recognized, said: I came to Congress to involve myself in this type of problem solving, when people came together, talked about issues, talked about problems, and talked about solutions. He said: And this is the first time since I have been here that we have been able to engage in that type of dialogue.

That is not right, Members, and we all know that. We are here to work on the problems that face our great country, and we need to get down and do that work.

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is correct. That is how the legislative process works. You don't just punt something over to the other Chamber and then say, ``We have done our job''; because you haven't done your job until the President, in the case of Congress, signs his name on the line making that bill or that job come to fruition, making it the law.

You are right. In the State capitol, we did that. We knew we had to work together because the same piece of legislation had to pass both houses and had to meet there for the Governor's signature in order to become law. The same thing happens here.

I know it can be done. One of the things that I did in some of my earlier years here, Mr. Speaker, is I was successful in getting a wilderness bill passed, a wilderness bill that protected into perpetuity 350,000 acres in my district in California. Wilderness bills have passed before, so that, in itself, was not the biggest thing that has ever happened here. But I am particularly proud because I was in the minority then.

The chair of Natural Resources was Richard Pombo from California, someone whom I consider a friend, although not a political ally. He was not someone who was favorable to approving wilderness legislation. But I worked with him and his committee. He had the bill up in for a markup. We had it on the floor. We passed it. I compromised; he compromised. That bill went through the House. The companion bill went through the Senate, as Mr. Costa was explaining has to be done, and it went to then-President George W. Bush, who signed it into law.

So it is incongruent with the way we work today. Today you would just start by saying: An unfriendly chairman, an unfriendly President, we can't get anything done. That is just absolutely not true.

If we come together and if we work together, we can find solutions to the problems that we face. There are any number of issues that need to come together and need to be put on this floor for a vote. You can look at immigration reform, tax reform, gun violence prevention, and certainly one that everyone can agree with is an infrastructure bill.

There is not a person that any one of us represents who doesn't know that we need to invest in America's infrastructure--in our roads, in our highways, in our broadband, in our overpasses, in our bridges. And now with the new Panama Canal coming on line and the bigger ships coming into this country, we have huge investments that need to be made in our ports and our harbors. These are investments that not only put Americans to work generating more revenue, but put better jobs and make our economy stronger than it has ever been before.

I submit, Members, that these are things that we can do. As has been said before, the things that bring us together, the things that bring us together as Americans, are far greater than the things that divide us. I will plead, let's get together, let's roll up our sleeves, let's work together on addressing the major issues that face America.

I thank you, Mr. Costa, for bringing us here today.

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