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Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to address the Senate today as Vermont's new Senator, and I hope to express how I will serve Vermont and our country, and I will outline the challenges we face as a governing body and as a nation.

Most importantly, I will state why I believe that the U.S. Senate can be an institution that renews the strength and vitality of the democracy that all of us--whomever we represent and whatever views we advocate--depend on for our mutual benefit.

But before I begin, I would like to say that my heart, today, is with the people of Vermont. They are grappling with the brutal flooding that hit us last week. And when I came to the floor last week after touring the damage in Vermont, I pledged that, along with Senator Sanders and Congresswoman Balint, we will do everything in our power to get the people of Vermont the resources that they need to build back from this. And I make that pledge again today, and I appreciate the leadership of our senior Senator, Senator Sanders, in advocating for Vermont as we recover from this real crisis.

I also appreciate the offers of help from so many of my colleagues here in the Senate. One of the first Members who approached me was Senator Kennedy from Louisiana, a State that has had to deal with more than its share of natural calamities.

Vermonters, Madam President, have always supported emergency aid when disaster struck others. Senator Sanders and I are very grateful for so many assurances of support now that Vermonters face their own huge recovery challenge.

I recently heard our colleague, Senator Eric Schmitt, from Missouri, give his first speech. He spoke with real respect and reverence for the people of Missouri--hardworking, honest, family- and community- oriented, and very generous. And I felt Senator Schmitt's deep connection to the people who sent him here. In that respect, Senator Schmitt spoke for me. In fact, he spoke for all of us. And Senator Schmitt and I--and all of us--share something else: The citizens that we represent, despite many differences on many issues, share common needs; all the things that families and communities need--affordable housing, safe schools, good healthcare, a secure environment for our kids, and good jobs where you can pay your monthly bills and have a little left at the end of the month. We share that in common.

So the question I have is this: If we share so much respect for the citizens who sent us here in our commitment to their shared aspiration, why can't we make more progress? Why are we so divided?

I believe there are two reasons: First, our democracy is more imperiled at this time than at any time since our Civil War; and, second, working middle-class Americans have been treading water economically for the past 40 years. Top-down economic policies having failed them. So the towns many of us grew up in with diverse economies and vibrant downtowns, farms, and factories that support our communities are vanishing. And many Americans, no matter how hard they work, still struggle to pay their bills.

Our challenge is strengthening our democracy and improving the living standards for everyday Americans. And we must do both, or we won't do either. Democracy depends on trust. It also depends on results.

If conditions stagnate for working Americans and they fall further behind, their trust in democracy will begin to erode. And we need democracy to ensure that working families have a seat at the table when their aspirations are at stake.

As a young person, I was the beneficiary of the fruits of democracy. I grew up in the 1960s, one of six kids in an Irish-Catholic family in Springfield, MA. It was stable and secure.

When I was asked where I was from, I answered by giving the name of my Catholic parish, Holy Name, not the city of my birth. The sense of community was paramount. Helping a neighbor is what you did, reflectively and always.

When I was a boy, my mother did something that only later did I realize what profound impact it had on me. She taught me what small ``d'' democracy meant in practice. When I was in grammar school, I didn't know what abortion was. I did know my parents were churchgoing Catholics who were against it. It was also illegal in Massachusetts at that time. And a neighbor across the street actually went to jail for performing abortions. My mother made dinner every night for our family of eight. And every week, she sent me across the street with another hot dinner for our neighbors while their parent was away for a while.

When I think about what my mother did, I really hope I can follow her example. Instead of vilifying a neighbor with whom she disagreed on something that was really important to her, she made that family dinner and helped a neighbor and their family through a very difficult time.

Wouldn't democracy be stronger, wouldn't our communities be stronger, if we made dinner or gave a ride to the post office or helped out with childcare for someone who needed a hand, even if we disagreed with them?

Later, I attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA, like my father and my three brothers. In those college years, two great issues captured my attention: the word ``Vietnam'' and civil rights. And as I was finishing up my second year at Holy Cross, I learned of a community organizing project in the Lawndale neighborhood of the West Side of Chicago. It was led by a Jesuit seminarian that was affiliated with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I was really interested. And I hitchhiked 900 miles from Springfield, MA, to Chicago, IL. It really changed my life.

Lawndale was poor, ignored by city hall. We students went door-to- door asking about concerns. And when the lack of sanitation services emerged as an issue, we got together with neighborhood folks and we trucked trash from Lawndale to city hall. If they say you wouldn't pick up the trash in Lawndale, we would bring it to city hall. It caught the mayor's attention.

The next week there was a caravan of Chicago sanitation trucks throughout Lawndale. It worked. But our fight didn't stop at trash pickups. Just before I was to return to Holy Cross for my junior year, we discovered that unscrupulous folks in real estate were brutally exploiting Black families who were moving into Lawndale through a practice what we now know as redline. And they were doing it with the active help of the Federal Housing Authority and with the downtown big banks. I was really shocked at the injustice. And what was most shocking to me then, as an idealistic and eager young person who was accustomed to being treated fairly, was that this immense infliction of suffering on those families was legal. It was legal for banks and the FHA to deny mortgages on the basis of the color of that person's skin.

So I had to make a decision at that point. It was time for me to return to Holy Cross for my junior year. But that would come with a cost: abandoning the neighborhood folks whose hopes we had helped raise that they could get relief from these oppressive contracts. But that felt wrong. Or I could drop out of Holy Cross and continue my community organizing work. That came with a risk then: losing my student deferment and being drafted--as many of my classmates from high school had been--to go to Vietnam, a war that so many of us opposed. But it felt right to stay and continue my work. And I stayed in Chicago.

During that next year, we created a successful neighborhood-led organization called a Contract Buyers League. We exposed the rip-off contracts, demonstrated in front of the big downtown banks, the Federal Housing Authority. We picketed in the serene North Shore neighborhoods of the contract sellers, exposing what they had done in exposure that was long overdue. In short, we really raised hell--or as John Lewis would say, ``good trouble.''

But we succeeded in getting then-Mayor Daley to help us renegotiate these contracts and substitute them with legitimate mortgages that folks should have had in the first place. It made a big difference in the lives of many residents of Lawndale. And it certainly made a difference in my life.

I saw the power of a community coming together. And I saw how democracy was effective when people cooperate when they did work together. And in seeing how much of that injustice was actually illegal is when I made a lifelong commitment to two things: the law--if I became a lawyer I could use the legal system to help people hurt by bad laws; and politics--if I ran for the legislature, I could work to change laws to address injustice and create opportunity and strengthen communities.

In my years of service as a community organizer in Chicago, as a State senator in Vermont, as a Member of the House of Representatives, has taught me that democracy is more--it is more than an ideal we strive for. It is the tool that we use to make meaningful differences in the lives of people we love and in the lives of people we may never meet.

We must preserve our democracy so that hard-working Americans can finally gain economic security--the ability to pay those bills and have a little left over and the ability to build stable communities. And, hopefully, these communities can grow and thrive so that, one day, if their kids decide to stay or they leave and return, they can do so with a decent job and promising opportunities.

And as U.S. Senators, each of us has a unique and urgent opportunity to revitalize our democracy and improve prospects for our constituents.

Let me acknowledge candidly, we have, within this body and within this country, very substantial differences on many ideological issues. But we also have many areas of agreement. You know, the folks in Katie Britt's Alabama, in John Fetterman's Pennsylvania, and the folks in my State of Vermont, they need and deserve the same things: affordable childcare so parents can work; they need affordable homes and apartments; they need the security that when they drop their child off at the bus stop or at school, that child is going to return home safely.

These are the building blocks of a strong community. These are among the issues that the U.S. Senate should debate. You know, it is said that the U.S. Senate is the greatest deliberative body. That is something we know that is very much now in dispute. But we do have the power to make it so. And in doing so, we can help restore democracy. We can debate those issues and others on the Senate floor.

You know, should social media companies enjoy legal immunity for anything their algorithms promote? Should we work for a sustainable budget but talk about spending and revenues? Is it acceptable that we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world that leaves so many people behind? How do we act immediately and effectively to stop climate change from burning up the planet?

The Senate can deliver, and it can and should debate. But deliberation should be in service of making a good decision. It should be in service of achieving an outcome. It should not be a device by which delay is endless and resolution nonexistent.

Every Senator I know is genuinely honored to be serving in this body. Every Senator takes her and his responsibility very seriously. But every Senator I know realizes that the honor of service is hollow unless we get good things done. That is our job.

And as a Senator, I will use the valuable lessons of democracy I have learned: from my parents, the importance of helping a neighbor you may disagree with; from my time in Chicago, the power of democracy in action; and from Vermont, struggling today with the onslaught of the flood, the strength of community that shows us, that even on the toughest of days, the ability to achieve when we work together.

We in this country and in this Senate may face significant challenges. We have opportunities to succeed if we face those challenges together.

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