Ordinary and Profound

President Biden will give his State of the Union speech Tuesday night to a nationwide audience.

By chance last night, I channel surfed to C-Span and came upon the President’s remarks at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Tunnel last week.

As a Senator and as Vice President, his trip home to Delaware on Amtrak was delayed by this aging infrastructure,

This is what President Biden said about the people whose homes he saw from the train.

These are jobs for folks I used to think about as I took the train home at night going through the stretches of suburban Maryland, suburban Baltimore, and look out the window, see the flickering lights on people’s tables. Not a joke.

I used to look and them and just wonder what their conversations were at their kitchen tables, their dining room table, what were they thinking about before they put their — just before or after they put their kids to bed, asking questions that are ordinary and profound.

Repealing the death penalty is the most profound thing I will ever do.

Not just as a legislator but as a human being.

Yet it’s the ordinary things that my staff and I do – solving a neighborhood problem, helping someone receive government benefits, or helping a business owner get a fair shake, that more directly affect people’s lives.

The rules of the drama are the same wherever it’s staged.

The legislative drama regarding President Biden’s stimulus bill has been played out before – in Washington, Annapolis, and every legislative body.

Frustrated and believing Democrats were being strung along, Mr. Obama in September 2009 summoned Mr. Grassley to the White House along with Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana [to discuss the Affordable Care Act]…

Mr. Obama recounted the scene in his new memoir, writing that he had pressed Mr. Grassley on whether, “if Max took every one of your latest suggestions, could you support the bill?” Mr. Grassley was hesitant. “Are there any changes — any at all — that would get us your vote?” Mr. Obama asked, drawing what he described as an awkward silence from the Republican senator.

“I guess not, Mr. President,” Mr. Grassley eventually responded.

As they plunge forward this year, Democrats say they do not want to find themselves in a similar position, working with Republicans only to come up short with an insufficient response that does not draw bipartisan support.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/politics/democrats-agenda-coronavirus-economy.html

Former Delegate Paul Weisengoff put it to me this way: “If your amendments get on the bill, you have to vote for the bill as well.”

When you introduce legislation, you have to answer this question: “Why do we need this bill?”

Last week, I sent a colleague a newspaper article about an issue that directly related to a bill before his committee.

Today, he responded: “Would this be prevented under existing law?”

I’m working on a response – with the people who testified for my bill.

“Enough of us have come together.”

“Democracy has prevailed,” declared President Biden in his Inaugural Address.

He spoke of this “winter of peril and significant possibilities…We face an attack on democracy and truth.”

“In each of these moments” of peril during our history, the President continued, “enough of us have come together.”

There is great symbolism in the Inauguration taking place at the Capitol, instead of the White House.

This is where the President will return to ask that the Congress pass laws, provided “enough of us have come together.”

A majority on Capitol Hill for the Biden administration’s legislation will be fostered if there is a majority of the public as well.

Unlike the executive orders signed this afternoon, laws passed by the Congress cannot be undone by the signature of a new President.

The midnight judges appointed by President John Adams were the subject of the Supreme Court decision establishing judicial review of the constitutionality of actions taken by the executive and legislative branches.

Now there are the midnight pardons of President Trump.

 

 

  • My Key Issues:

  • Pimlico and The Preakness
  • Our Neighborhoods
  • Pre-Kindergarten
  • Lead Paint Poisoning