[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 20 (Monday, February 2, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E173-E174]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               ``ON THE RECORD INAUGURAL SPEECH CONTEST''

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN P. SARBANES

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, February 2, 2009

  Mr. SARBANES. Madam Speaker, I rise today to share the award winning 
entry from the Meritalk ``On the Record Inaugural Speech Contest.'' 
Meritalk is an online community that seeks to promote civic discussion 
and serve as the crossroads for IT and public policy. This contest 
challenged American authors to write a speech highlighting what they 
would like to hear from the President-elect on Inauguration day. This a 
wonderful example of how the Internet can help Americans become more 
aware of and involved in government. I would like to congratulate the 
winner, Ms. Katherine Grayson, on writing a very eloquent speech and I 
hope she remains engaged in the important issues facing our country. 
I'd also like to share her contest entry with you today.
  ``My fellow citizens of the world. I cannot greet you today using the 
phrase ``My fellow Americans,'' for though, assuredly, America is 
facing its greatest challenges in half a century, we now are part of a 
much vaster order with challenges that put even our own, here at home, 
into proper perspective.
  We stand at the precipice of a New Age; an age in which we 
clearheadedly acknowledge that the world has become a network as 
intricately intertwined as a web. In ways too numerous to count, we now 
are connected to one another across this land, across the seas, across 
the airwaves, across cyberspace. The era of rattling sabers at one 
another or constructing foreign policy as though we dwell inside 
fortresses, is long over. Our world today is indeed a complex and 
inexorably interwoven network of threads, and to survive and flourish 
within it, no successful international policy will ever again be 
identified as ``foreign.'' Once we only dreamt of such connectedness 
with the world; now we truly are a global network of nations, states, 
citizens, and the children everywhere who are our hope for the future.
  Yet by clinging to attitudes of the past, we have been slashing away 
at this fragile new mesh of mankind and weakening it, the world at 
large, and our own position in that world. Shall we continue to allow 
this planet to become a more and more dangerous place, with aggression, 
resentment, and even silence between countries expanding as rapidly as 
their arsenals do? Or shall we at last--and with the determination of 
what has long been the greatest nation on this Earth--seek to 
strengthen the ties between the world's nations, and help to construct, 
finally, a lasting fabric of world peace and understanding?
  All of you who hear me today, wherever you may be, must be partners 
in this quest to make the world a refuge for all. We are now 
inextricably tied to one another, wherever we are, and rather than 
curse the condition of our connectedness, we must protect that 
connectedness at all cost.
  Now we are partners in the mission to end the scourge of terrorism 
and the outrageous inequities of life that feed it: poverty, 
powerlessness, the daily struggle to survive. It is just too easy for 
us to think of ourselves as separate ``constituencies'' of the world, 
nameless people lost in faceless masses hoping to be served by their 
leadership. From today, henceforth, we are partners in the mandate to 
make the world a much less dangerous place; to bring a New Age of peace 
and understanding to our fellow men and women, wherever they may reside 
on our planet. We are partners in the challenge to bring the peoples of 
the world together, rather than shut them out through our fear and our 
ignorance.
  These are no small challenges. But neither are they dreams.
  How shall we set about to change the world as it must change, if we 
are to endure in the decades and centuries to come?
  First, by re-forging and strengthening the fabric of our lives here 
at home. To put it plainly, right now we are no example for the other 
nations of the world. Through a long series of misjudgments and 
missteps, wrongheaded international decisions and self-interested 
actions here at home, our nation has come to forfeit that position and 
that privilege. We must face the fact that we have lost our way; that 
in the cycles of history, we have suffered a downward turn.
  Clearly, our economy--once the envy of the world--is in trouble. We 
must confront this truth head-on. And while quick fixes and mammoth 
infusions of capital are bandaids designed to temporarily stabilize 
floundering financial vessels like Fannie Mae and AIG, as in most 
critical financial downturns we need to look to the core of these very 
serious problems and re-examine, re-tool, and rebuild the fundamentals 
of our economic structure, if necessary. And I strongly believe it is 
necessary.
  Yet what are the fundamentals of that system? They are capitalistic, 
to be sure. But that term, capitalism--which once had the sweet ring of 
democracy to it--has come to take on a sour taste indeed.
  Since when do the tenets of capitalism dictate that company CEOs can 
become robber barons? Where is it written that employees can lose their 
pensions to the senior management of the corporations they have 
dutifully served for decades? Which principles decreed that 
hardworking, law-abiding folks should lose their homes and life savings 
because the mortgages they took out were based upon Wall Street hocus-
pocus of which they could have no knowledge or understanding 
whatsoever? Why does capitalism preclude a government's ability to 
ensure that all citizens are provided adequate health care and social 
security so that they neither succumb to illness nor die homeless on 
the street? And which founding father (who had himself fled from the 
tyranny of taxation without representation) declared that the best way 
to build a financially able and resilient society was to tax the 
working backbone of the nation until it collapsed

[[Page E174]]

under the weight of those taxes--all the while giving tax cuts and 
breaks to the wealthiest citizens, corporations, and conglomerates?
  No nation on Earth has ever flourished for any length of time by 
bleeding the lifeforce of its own inception. We should know this; our 
nation was born out of rebellion against such tyranny; we have 
supported other nations of the world in their quests for similar 
freedoms; we have railed against such injustices thrust upon other 
peoples of the world.
  We must return--with haste and urgency--to those principles we have 
fought and died for, and which we know to be just, fair, and right. We 
must return--without a moment's hesitation--to those principles, which 
we know from centuries of proof, build a strong nation of happy, 
prosperous, contributing citizens; that backbone that is the framework 
upon which any free and thriving nation must be built.
  I have not been brought to this moment today, here at this podium 
before you, to tell you this because I believe it is what you want to 
hear. I am here today, telling you this, because on November 4th, you 
knew in your hearts that a swift, decisive return to the principles of 
America for all its citizens--not an America for only the wealthiest 
citizens--is the way to rebuild our nation, and to begin to rebuild our 
relationships with the other nations of the world.
  Let this be the moment in history when the phrase, ``The Rich and 
Powerful'' is relegated to its proper, smaller place in the world 
scheme, and the phrase ``Power to the People'' returns to its rightful 
position, above all else. For it was not until the people took back 
their power through a fair and just democratic process--as you did this 
past November--that ``power'' in this country could regain perspective 
at last. In the world today, ``power'' simply cannot denote the right 
of some to profit at the expense of others. ``Power'' must stand for 
the ability to make change happen for the long-term health and survival 
of our nation, and as a model for making change happen for the health 
and survival of our planet and the nations of our world.
  We know that it was the driving need for change that brought us here 
today. I did not spend these past two years chanting ``Change!'' 
because I thought it was the best way to get elected. I have fought for 
that change and will continue to fight for it because only through 
fearless, courageous, unmitigated change can we right our foundering 
ship quickly, decisively, with long-lasting results that must not be 
delayed. There is not one moment to waste. The need is critical, 
pervasive, and non-partisan, and we cannot tolerate time spent for 
political parties to bicker or equivocate.
  You are the partners in this change. This is not Congress's change; 
it is yours, and your voices must be heard. My question to you is: How 
quickly do you need this change?
  How quickly--and most importantly, how effectively, for lasting 
benefit--do you want your jobs, homes, livelihoods restored? How 
quickly and solidly do you want the United States of America to be 
respected in the world theater once more? How soon do you want your 
sons and daughters to return from wars which should never have been 
waged? How rapidly do you want the fear between nations to de-escalate, 
and fear of terrorism and nuclear arms buildups to dissipate? How soon 
do you want to fling wide the doors of misunderstanding between 
cultures that fear each other, and let in the fresh clean air of 
tolerance and acceptance? In what timeframe do you want to see the 
nations of the world cooperate with each other for mutual benefit, and 
thus remove the very need for state-driven or state-supported 
terrorism? And when is it that you would you like to see our planet's 
environment begin to recover from the ravages and ills which now place 
it in peril of ecological collapse?
  I ask you now: Which day do you want to be a safer day for your 
children? The tomorrow after tomorrow?
  Well, I have children too, and I need that day to be today.
  So, today is the day that--together--we will set about to change our 
world. And though we will begin here at home at once, we will 
aggressively and immediately pursue our new international initiatives 
simultaneously. These next 100 days may be dizzying for Congress here 
on Capitol Hill, but we will expect nothing less from its members than 
their full and intensive attention to every new idea, every new plan, 
every new proposal put before them. I promise you that I will compel 
democrats and republicans to work together with me, hand in hand, with 
blind eyes to red or blue, and eyes only on the target ahead. I promise 
you that we will use our new connectedness with each other and the 
world, in ways that have never been seen before, to make change happen. 
And we will not rest until we make serious, impactful, and lasting 
headway.
  I call upon you--not just the people of America, but the peoples of 
the world--to make your voices heard; to see these needs are met; to 
convey your sense of urgency for the triumph of our country, our world, 
this beloved planet. This time, broad, bold, far-reaching measures are 
needed, and we will not be held at bay by the petty prevarication or 
self-interest of the few, or by the endless squabbling over minutiae--
not when there is so much, and the lives of so very many, at stake. 
Tomorrow I lead the charge, full-throttle toward our next decade in 
this Brave New Age. But it is together that we will make it reality. 
Let no man or woman on Earth stand up before us and say it cannot be 
done. Yes, it can.''

                          ____________________