[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1757-1758]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           FRESHMEN 100 HOURS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Sutton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SUTTON. Mr. Speaker, there are times when the people of this 
great Nation need and demand things of their government that politics 
make it impossible to accomplish. This has been the case far too often 
throughout the last 12 years. Through the last election, the people of 
this Nation have demanded that this government reexamine and change our 
priorities and our direction.
  The people have asked us to respond to their hopes and their dreams 
and their needs. They have asked us to realize that there are good 
citizens of this Nation, honest people who work hard and play by the 
rules and who nonetheless struggle and live in poverty and toil in 
obscurity through no fault of their own.
  The people have called us to recognize the equality of opportunity, 
the basis upon which this Nation was founded, the means of equal access 
to education, equal chances to go to college. The people have demanded 
that we never squash the hope of science with the politics of partisan 
personal gain, that we never play games with the opportunity to save 
lives. They know that the minute that this great Nation stops being a 
beacon of hope and a champion of forward progress for the world, that 
we become something less than what we are.
  The people have demanded that we never allow the concerns of special 
interests to collide with the public good, that there will come a day 
when the quality of our time will be judged not only on our ability to 
pioneer lifesaving drugs but our ability to make them available to all 
of our citizens.
  The people have demanded that when you gather a group of our Nation's 
leading experts and ask them to take a hard look at what we need to do 
to keep our people safe and make our Nation stronger, that they take on 
that charge and honor their commitment, that you do everything 
necessary to implement their recommendations handed down to you; and 
the people have demanded that the conduct of our public officials be 
beyond reproach, that the great balancing act of our democracy rests 
upon a fulcrum of public trust that is fragile as it is vital.
  But for the past 12 years, politics has demanded something different. 
Between the 104th and 109th Congress, 6,900 rollcall votes were taken, 
and politics prevailed almost every time.
  In the very first few hours of the 110th Congress, the people have 
had their day. The people compelled us to raise the minimum wage, not 
politics. The people asked us to work to cut student loan rates in 
half, not politics. The people led us to expand stem cell research, not 
politics. Concern for those people made it imperative that we implement 
the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and that we take away the 
tax breaks for oil companies that have made their profits on the backs 
of recent American suffering, that we start a process for real 
meaningful negotiation for prescription drugs, not politics.
  The people move us to make immediate changes in the ethical rules 
that govern this Chamber. Their commitment to a new day in America, and 
a new day in Congress made it vital that we restore the public trust. 
We saw the faces and heard the needs of the people we were elected to 
serve; and in this first 100 hours, we have acted. We have brought in 
new leadership that recognizes that this was a Nation disconnected with 
its government, and they have taken immediate and bold steps to 
reconnect it.
  I would be remiss not to commend the leadership's admirable example 
for the past 2 weeks.
  The people were at the heart of what we have done here so far, and 
the people will be at the heart of the legislative agenda we champion 
in the days to come.

                              {time}  1230

  Mr. Speaker, these past 2 weeks have been times of great change, 
historic times that herald an era of American politics unique in its 
tone and compelling in its vision. You can be sure that this was only 
the start, and that the people will regain their rightful role in this 
democracy in the days and years to come.

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