[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 81 (Wednesday, May 15, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2848-S2850]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Maiden Speech

  Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, it is an honor to rise today to speak in 
this Chamber on behalf of the people of Missouri. When I think of those 
who have served my State here before me, I am humbled. When I think of 
the true and strong Missourians who have sent me here, I am sobered, 
because to represent them will be a great responsibility indeed. I 
pledge to my fellow Missourians that I will work at this task with all 
the strength that God can give me, and I will serve without fear and 
without favor to any man.
  We Missourians are known for our frankness, and today I will be frank 
because this is a moment of great need for my State and for our Nation. 
This Nation was born in a revolution by ``We the People'' and premised 
on a revolutionary faith that it is the people--the common man and 
woman who make democracy work--and it is the calling of every 
generation to renew that revolution for their day. In our time, our 
revolutionary faith is faltering, and in the heartland of this country, 
the great challenge of our age is unfolding.
  I come from a town called Lexington, MO. It is a small place, but a 
proud one. It is a place where people wake early and work late to make 
a life for themselves and their children. It is a place where people 
value honesty and gumption and life's simple pleasures: a fine morning 
in a deer stand, reading

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to the kids before bed, and Sunday dinner at Mom's. Although it is 
humble, it is a place that reflects the dignity and quiet greatness of 
the working men and women.
  These are the people who explored a continent, who built the 
railroads, and who opened the West. These are the workers whose labor 
launched the Industrial Revolution and whose ingenuity made the 
American economy the marvel of the world. These are the families who 
have rallied to this country's flag at every hour of danger and who 
bear the burden of defending our Nation even now. These are the 
patriots who man the fire department and coach the Little League. These 
are the generous who give $25 a month out of their gas money to assist 
people halfway around the globe whom they will never meet just because 
they believe in helping others. They don't ask for much, and they live 
by a simple creed: Give the best of yourself to your family, your 
community, and your fellow man. America is a place of promise, because 
in these hearts, honor lives.
  These working men and women are confronting crises today, and, as 
they do, so does our democracy. After years of sacrifice, the great 
American middle is being pushed aside by a new arrogant aristocracy. 
The new aristocrats seek to remake society in their own image, to 
engineer an economy that works for the elite but few else, and to 
fashion a culture that is dominated by their own preferences. When they 
think of helping their fellow citizens, they think of making everyone 
else more like themselves.
  And Washington has just gone along. This town has embraced the 
politics of elite values and elite ambition rather than building 
opportunities to thrive in the great and broad American middle. This 
has left middle America--the great American middle class--under siege, 
battling the loss of respect and work, the decline of home and family, 
and an epidemic of loneliness and despair. This is the crisis of our 
time.
  I am afraid you wouldn't know it to listen to the talk of this town 
much of the time. As the crisis deepens, the political establishment 
looks the other way, rehearsing and rehashing the political debates of 
30 or 40 years ago. There is no time for that any longer. The 21st 
century is upon us, and the great struggle of this century can no 
longer wait. The crisis that we face goes to the heart of our 
revolution.
  The United States is unique in history as a republic governed not by 
a select elite but by the working man and woman, because we believe it 
is through the working man and woman that God chooses to change the 
world. That change comes not through spectacular feats of daring or 
glory but through everyday work and everyday sacrifice and everyday 
acts of courage and love. It has been the proud working people, our 
farmers and mechanics, and teachers and tradesmen who have defined the 
character of this country.
  For too long now, neither our economy nor our culture has lent them 
much support. Instead, our policymakers have entrenched the new elites 
and undermined the way of life that once bound this country together. 
It is time to face the facts.
  Over the last 40 years, our economy has worked best for those at the 
top--the wealthy and the well-educated. If you have a job in Silicon 
Valley or an expensive and prestigious degree, this economy has worked 
for you, and Washington has focused on how to get more people to join 
this elite. But if you want a life built around the place where you 
grew up, if your ambition is not to start a tech business but to join 
the family business, to serve in the PTA or in your local church, well, 
you are told that you are not a success, and you are told that you are 
on your own.
  This is no accident. The people who make the rules now, who run our 
large corporations, and who set the tone for our popular culture all 
belong to the same class. This economy has been their economy. They 
made it for themselves.
  But in places like the one where I grew up in middle Missouri, good-
paying jobs that you can raise a family on are going away. The jobs go 
overseas or south of the border or to cities on the coasts. Once 
vibrant towns decline, taking with them the network of schools and 
neighborhoods and churches that make up middle-class life.
  Rural America has been particularly hard hit. Rural Americans' life 
expectancy has not just leveled off. It has actually dropped, and for 
women without a high school degree, that drop has been staggering. In 
some rural places, residents struggle with outright deprivation. My 
home State contains some of the poorest counties in America, all in 
rural places that once boasted thriving small towns. As those 
communities struggle, want sets in.
  The crisis reaches well beyond economics. The message that Washington 
has sent our whole society is loud and clear: Our elites are the people 
who matter and those who aspire to join them. Everyone else is 
unimportant or backward.
  Millions of Americans are left with a sense that the people who run 
this country view them with nothing but contempt and value them as 
nothing but consumers. These trends tear at our country's social 
fabric, and they undermine our common ethic of citizenship because 
being a free person and being an American isn't just about what you can 
buy. It is about the pride that comes in supporting a family. It is 
about contributing something of worth to your community. It is about 
being able to look a neighbor in the eye and know that you are his 
equal. It is about respect, and too many Americans haven't been getting 
it.
  They are certainly not getting it from our cultural elite. The media, 
Hollywood, and academia relentlessly press their values and their 
priorities on the rest of us. They advocate liberation from the duties 
of family and tradition. They look down on the plain virtues of 
patriotism, self-giving, and faith. They idealize fame and preach self-
realization through consuming more stuff, and as they do, they assault 
the foundations of the great American middle.
  Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, then, at the epidemic of 
loneliness and despair that is spreading across working communities. 
Fewer young people are getting married and starting families. Drug 
addiction is surging. The opioid menace has ravaged every sector, every 
age group, and every geography of working people.
  It is not only pills. It is heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, meth, and, of 
course, marijuana that have flooded our streets and our homes. 
Everywhere, deaths of despair are mounting among farmers and among the 
young. Most shockingly, the young are the hope of our society, but in 
America today, they are taking their lives in numbers we have never 
seen in our history.
  The well-off frequently note that our Nation has never been richer, 
but the tragedy of youth suicide betrays a profound poverty of hope. 
And is that really so surprising? Today's youth must make their way in 
a society increasingly defined not by the genuine and personal love of 
family and church but by the cold and judgmental world of social media.
  A typical young person is bombarded by video games and violence and 
the relentless status-seeking imposed and modeled by our cultural 
elite. There is no more shocking illustration of our cultural poverty 
and no more damning indictment of our cultural leaders than these lost 
lives.
  The sum of it all is that too many Americans are losing their 
standing as citizens. They are losing their voice in the life of this 
Nation, and with that, they are losing their liberty. To be free is to 
have a voice. It is to have a say, and it is to have the power of self-
government.
  The chattering class often tells us that all of this--the jobs, the 
despair, and the loss of standing--is a result of forces beyond 
anyone's control, as if that is an excuse to do nothing, but in fact, 
it is not true. Today's society benefits those who shaped it, and it 
has been shaped not by working men and women but by the new 
aristocratic elite. Big banks, big tech, and big multinational 
corporations, along with their allies in the academy and the media--
these are the aristocrats of our age. They live in the United States, 
but they consider themselves citizens of the world. They operate 
businesses or run universities here, but their primary loyalty is to 
their own agenda for a more unified, progressive, and profitable global 
order.
  These modern aristocrats often claim to be a meritocracy, and many of 
them truly believe they are. What they don't see or will not 
acknowledge is that the

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society they have built works mainly for themselves. They have 
effectively run this country for decades, and their legacy is national 
division and national decline.
  It is time to reclaim our revolutionary heritage and reassert the 
democracy of ``We the People.'' To those who despair at the task ahead, 
I say the hour is not too late and the crisis is not too deep for the 
determined effort of a great people, and to those who feel forgotten 
and unheard, I say this is your time. Now we must stand together to 
renew the promise of our enduring revolution. We must put aside the 
tired orthodoxies of years past and forge a new politics of national 
renewal.
  We must begin by acknowledging that GDP growth alone cannot be the 
measure of this Nation's greatness, and so it cannot be the only aim of 
this Nation's policy because our purpose is not to make a few people 
wealthy but to sustain a great democracy. We need not just a bigger 
economy but a better society. We need a society that offers rewarding 
work for every worker who wants it, wherever she is from, whatever 
degree he might have, whether their ambition is to start a business or 
to start a family. We need a society that will allow towns and 
neighborhoods to flourish across the great heartland of this country 
and not just in the megacities of the coasts. We need a society that 
puts American workers first, that prioritizes them over cheap goods 
from abroad and offers them the chance to better their station. All 
this we must fight for and more.
  We need to repair the torn fabric of our common life. We need a 
politics that prioritizes strong marriages and encourages strong 
families, where children can know their parents and be nurtured by 
their love. We need strong schools and churches and co-ops because 
these are the things that make liberty possible, for liberty is more 
than selling or buying or the right to be left alone. Liberty is the 
ability to master our own fate and, as a free people, to set our own 
course. That is the promise of the American Revolution, and we will 
renew it for our day.
  Washington has ignored the need for this renewal for too long. It has 
rested easy with the priorities of an earlier age. Now it must wake up 
and face the facts of this day. Now we must ask new questions, force 
new debates, articulate new priorities, and find new solutions to make 
the great American middle thrive again.
  This is not the work of a day or a season. It is the work of a 
generation. We will make it the work of this generation and so do our 
part to see the success of liberty in our time.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.