[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 126 (Wednesday, July 23, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4599-S4601]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Maiden Speech

  Ms. SLOTKIN. Mr. President, I rise today to deliver my maiden speech. 
This is a proud and personal moment for me to represent my home State 
of Michigan as a junior Senator, alongside Gary Peters, and to follow 
in the footsteps of legendary Senators like Debbie Stabenow and Carl 
Levin.
  This maiden speech has been a longstanding tradition in the Senate. 
Every junior Member gets to deliver in their freshman year their vision 
for their States and what they plan to do in their time in office.
  Thank you to my colleagues from both sides of the aisle who have 
joined me and to my great staff and my interns, even my niece who came 
in. If you remember nothing else, I want you to remember two things: 
First, nothing is more important to me than the State of Michigan. I am 
a third generation Michigander. For me, Michigan is where it all 
started. Everything I have done in my life, everywhere I have gone, 
everything I have done, everyone I have met, it all started in 
Michigan.
  It is where I learned the values that still shape me today: 
community, putting your head down and working hard, taking care of your 
neighbors when they are in need.
  Nothing matters more than my home State, so this speech is my love 
letter to the State of Michigan. To stand here and represent the State 
that I love on the floor of the U.S. Senate is the greatest privilege 
of my life.
  Second, my goal for my time in office is to address what I believe to 
be the existential threat of our time to my State and to all Americans: 
the threat of a shrinking middle class.
  Now, I am a national security person by training. I am what is called 
a 9/11 baby. I happened to be in New York City on my second day of 
graduate school when 9/11 happened.
  I was recruited into the CIA right out of grad school, and I served 
three tours in Iraq, alongside our military, before serving at the 
Pentagon.
  I served proudly under Presidents both Democrat and Republican. I 
have come face-to-face with some of the greatest threats facing our 
country, but I believe, in my bones, that the single greatest threat 
today to our national security is not coming from abroad but coming 
from the very real threats that come from that shrinking middle class.
  So my goal as a Senator is to deliver for Michigan's middle class, to 
expand it, to secure it. That mission is personal. Michigan is where my 
family achieved that very American dream. My great-grandfather, at 13 
years old, came through Ellis Island not speaking English. He ended up 
starting a meat company, moved to Michigan, and built an iconic hot dog 
that Michiganders have enjoyed for 60 years.
  Michigan has been the place where hard work means something. It was 
where the middle class was literally invented, it was where you could 
work at an auto plant and afford the car that you were building. That 
was a revolutionary idea at the time; it shouldn't be revolutionary 
now.
  So as a U.S. Senator, my highest priority is to help make Michigan a 
place where that American dream is achievable again. Today, too many 
Michiganders are falling out of that middle class; too many families 
can't get in at all. I lived on my family farm in Holly, MI. Growing 
up, I was surrounded by families whose path to the middle class ran 
through Michigan's factories, our farms, our small businesses.
  We are people who build things and grow things; people proud of their 
role in manufacturing America's future, our cars, our tanks, our food; 
people who, like my great-grandfather, were prepared to work hard for 
success and often achieved it.
  But over the years, I have watched younger generations of those same 
families live a very different story. Parents can't provide for their 
kids what was provided to them. That fishing cabin up north that dad 
had, the son can't have. A trip to Disneyland, can't do it.
  Across Michigan, there are so many families who feel like hard work 
doesn't seem to be enough anymore. No matter what your political views 
are, it is just a fact that the middle class has shrunk over the last 
40 years. And I have seen firsthand what happens next.
  When people feel like they can't get ahead, when they can't provide 
for their kids what was provided for them, they feel anger, they feel 
shame. They lose their dignity, and they look for something or someone 
to blame.
  In a multiracial, multi-ethnic experiment in democracy, people end up 
blaming people who don't look like them or speak like them or pray like 
them. I have seen this up close and personal how that kind of anger and 
suspicion can tear communities apart.
  If you want to understand how we got to this moment in our politics--
this angry, vitriolic, polarized moment in

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American history--all you have to do is understand that shrinking 
middle class. So even among today's chaos, especially now, there are 
things we have to do, simple things, to bring back that middle class 
and make it thrive.
  This is my North Star. It will guide my work in the Senate. OK, so 
how do we do that? Our government certainly needs to change. I don't 
think it is hard to understand that our government is not working for a 
majority of Americans--not just Republicans, Democrats as well. We have 
to hear that loud and clear.
  Fundamentally, I believe that government needs to get back to the 
basics. No one cares about your trick plays if you don't have your 
fundamentals right. Government needs to set the conditions for success, 
and Michiganders and Americans need to work hard to achieve that 
success.
  These basics are jobs that pay you enough to save every month, 
healthcare you can actually afford, a home you can call your own, 
schools that prepare our kids for the workforce, energy to power our 
lives, an environment we can pass on to our kids, and safety and 
security from fear. That is it.
  First, on jobs, we need job creation for Michigan's middle class to 
create the jobs of the future. Imagine that the middle class is 
basically a ship at sea. For the better part of 40 years, it has been 
taking on water, and now we are about to hit a category 5 hurricane in 
the form of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has the 
potential to change our economy more than the internet did. Think about 
that.
  Productivity will go up, jobs will be gained, but jobs will also be 
lost. Maybe not Michigan jobs at first. Entry-level college jobs like 
paralegals or accountants are probably first on the list, but change is 
coming, and we need to be ready.
  Job creation in the era of artificial intelligence means supporting 
our small businesses. Small businesses employ half of all Americans. 
They are intrinsic to the American dream. It is about betting on 
yourself. And we need to own the fact that it is hard to start and 
succeed as a small business. We need to make life easier for Michigan's 
small businesses.

  Second, we need to bring critical industries and critical supply 
chains back home to the United States. Michiganders understand this 
better than most because of what we do, our manufacturing, no foreign 
country should ever have a veto on our economic security. We should 
always make critical items here in the United States, and I want to 
bring as many of those jobs and industries back to Michigan.
  And, finally, let us say it very clearly: We need an immigration 
system that actually works and is key to our economy. Immigrants are 
critical for our labor shortages in our factories, in our hospitals, in 
our firms. More than that, we are a nation of immigrants. I am standing 
here today because my great-grandfather left fear, persecution, and 
death at 13 years old and found a place in America.
  So we need an immigration plan that brings legal, vetted immigrants 
into our countries, key to our economy, sometimes more, sometimes less; 
and we need to have border security that literally makes sense. Without 
immigrants, there is no America, and without immigrants, our economy 
will not thrive.
  Second, on healthcare, is there anyone in America who thinks 
healthcare is working? Is there anyone in America who thinks we are 
paying too little for healthcare? Is there anyone in America who is 
missing the ground swell of anger because we cannot provide the 
healthcare we need to our parents and to our children?
  Few things are as fundamental. There are just, in my mind, few 
systems as broken as healthcare in America in 2025. And we all know it.
  This is, again, extremely personal to me. It is why I ran for office 
in the first place. Of all my time spent in war zones, in dangerous 
places, nothing was harder than my mom being diagnosed with stage IV 
ovarian cancer when she did not have insurance.
  There is nothing worse than that desperate feeling when your parent, 
that first parent to get sick, needs emergency tests and emergency 
surgery, and the same moment that you are fighting to get those things, 
you are struggling just to fill out the paperwork so she won't go 
bankrupt.
  We are at a breaking point. We must change our healthcare, and this 
is as good a time as any. Every American deserves access to healthcare 
they can afford, regardless of your job, regardless of your income or 
your age. So I support a nationwide public insurance plan at a 
reasonable price for every American.
  Second, we have got to be able to afford the medicines that we are 
prescribed. Is there anyone who thinks that we are paying too little 
for our drug prices? We need, in every part of our healthcare system, 
to be able to negotiate the price of our drugs. It is like Costco; you 
buy in bulk, you get a lower per unit price, and we are prohibited from 
doing that across the country.
  Why? Because I have never seen an issue in Washington more polluted 
by lobbyists and corporate PAC donations than this issue. I have never 
seen an industry with more control over elected leaders than on the 
issue of healthcare.
  Right now, I am one of six Senators who doesn't take corporate PAC 
money, 6 out of 100. It should be 100 out of 100. The middle class does 
not have a lobbyist, but they sure have the leaders that they elected.
  On housing, there is nothing more foundational to the American dream 
than having a home of your own. It is as fundamental to us as Americans 
as apple pie.
  Right now, the average age of a first-time homeowner in America is 40 
years old, completely different than in generations before us. This is 
not a good story. Today we could declare, in this body, a housing state 
of emergency. We need 4 million units of housing built in our country. 
That is a national strategy, yes, but I want Michigan to be ground zero 
for responding to the urgency of that need.
  On education, we need schools that actually prepare our kids for the 
future. So much of what we were able to do as a middle class was 
because people could afford the education in front of them. If you 
wanted to go to college, you could, but in Michigan, if you wanted to 
work with your hands, succeed, go on, become rich, only if you had a 
high school diploma, you could do that. There were job options for you.
  We need an obsessive focus and reorganization of our job training 
Federal programs. We have 17 different organizations doing job 
training. It is broken. We need to focus on trade schools and 
apprenticeships and an education system that prepares us for what is 
coming.
  On energy, we all know we are using more energy. Every single one of 
us in this room right now are using more energy than we did 10 years 
ago. Modern life is demanding it, but supply isn't meeting demand. And 
Michiganders are seeing that hitting their wallets every single day. If 
you don't plan now, it is going to get worse, rolling blackouts and 
brownouts in a decade.
  And what I am asking for is not a renewable energy plan or a fossil 
fuel plan, it is an ``all of the above'' energy plan. Natural gas, you 
can't do it without it. Nuclear, batteries, renewables, solar, 
hydropower, new stuff that is in creation right now, we need all of it. 
And we can't be willing to scrap certain energy because it is woke. 
Anyone who disagrees with that is just scoring political points and 
doesn't give a damn about people's electricity bills.
  On the environment, I am committed to protecting the environment, 
especially our water. In Michigan, clean water and the Great Lakes are 
not partisan, it is our heritage. It is in our blood. No single 
Michigander lives more than 6 miles away from a lake or 82 miles from a 
Great Lake.
  We all know the sound of water hitting the beach or how the light 
looks up north. Our water is why people raise their kids in Michigan. 
And sharing that legacy with our kids is the dream that every 
Michigander has. We have the responsibility of being the stewards of 
the Great Lakes.
  So when our water is threatened, when our kids are poisoned, when 
they can't swim in contaminated lakes, it is not just a health issue, 
it is a security issue: Lead, PFAS, invasive species in our Great 
Lakes, these are threats to us as Michiganders, and it is my job to 
fight these threats.
  And last, can we just say climate change is upon us? Twenty years ago 
it

[[Page S4601]]

was theoretical; now Michiganders understand that extreme weather is 
real, it is here, they feel it in their pocketbooks. We have to 
mitigate it. We have to accept it, and we have to be ready to prepare 
ourselves when we have these crazy ice storms, these crazy once-in-a-
generation tornadoes and move on and not exclude people because they 
don't want to talk about woke policies.
  Safety and security, finally. Every Michigander has the right to live 
free from fear, to feel safe in their own home, and in the country they 
love. That is what got me into public service in the very beginning 
right after 9/11. Shootings in our schools and our businesses are a 
threat to our lives. Our government and our computers, our personal 
data shouldn't be hacked--neither should our cars or our homes.
  And we should get to know and understand always who is coming across 
our border. We are a border State in Michigan. Every country in the 
world has a right to know who is coming inside its borders.
  So in the Senate, I am going to spend my time protecting American 
citizens, as I have always done. For that, we need the best military in 
the world, one that understands the threats that are coming around the 
corner, not just the threats of the past.
  We need to be able to control our own fate. That means not letting 
our national debt be controlled by countries like China.
  And we need to understand that, to make people safe in America, we 
need a strong leadership role in the world, because the next 100 years 
are either going to be dominated by the United States of America or by 
China.
  And while we make mistakes every single day, and I will own that--I 
served in Iraq, and I saw it close up--I will take American leadership 
over Chinese leadership any day of the week.
  So, in conclusion, let me just say that we all know--everyone here 
knows--that we are going through an extremely tough time in American 
politics. We know that, when people look back on this period in 
history, they are going to say: That was the moment that Americans were 
turned against each other, when neighbors turned against each other.
  But it is not the end, and it is not always going to be this way. As 
Michiganders, we understand how to survive bad times by rallying 
together, by helping one another, by living up to our Midwestern 
values, and getting back into the fight.
  As elected leaders, and certainly as a Senator, I have a 
responsibility to chart the path through the dark tunnel and into the 
light, not by just complaining and whinging that it is all bad but by 
charting a strategy from beginning to end on how we get through this 
moment.
  And we will. For God's sake, people, the Detroit Lions are going to 
win the National Championship and the Superbowl, and they were in the 
toilet for years.
  So it is my privilege to stand on behalf of my State here. It is the 
most important thing I have ever done. It is the most impactful thing I 
will ever do. It is my job, as that next generation of leader, to 
change the course of this place and this country, and I commit to you I 
will not let you down.
  Thank you very much.
  I yield the floor.
  (Applause.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ricketts). The Senator from Hawaii.