Chris's Speech at the 2008 5th District Nominating Convention

May 19, 2008

Below is a copy of the speech that Chris delivered on Monday, May 12 at the 2008 5th district nominating convention at Crosby High School in Waterbury:

“Delegates, friends, family, colleagues, I humbly and enthusiastically accept your nomination for the United States House of Representatives.

Let me thank Joe, Ruth, and Gwen for nominating me tonight. And thank you to Sam Beamon, for leading the pledge on behalf of the thousands of veterans in the 5th district and the thousands more Connecticut residents serving our country as we speak.

Before I begin, I would like to introduce a few very special people to you. First, my parents. In a newspaper story that appeared a few days after the 2006 election, a reporter quoted my father as saying that he was sure that his son’s drive came from a recessive gene. And I remember reading that and thinking, has my father ever met my mother? Listen, if I was able to inherit half of my mother’s fight, and a quarter of my father’s integrity, any objective observer would consider me a lucky man. Mom and Dad, as always, thanks for being here.

And my wife, Cathy. So many of you have gotten the opportunity to know Cathy over the past three years, and so you know how unreasonably lucky I was to have caught her at a particularly weak moment when she agreed to marry me two years ago. It’s really simple for me – I just couldn’t imagine doing this without her. Public service was Cathy’s defining passion before she ever met me. And her unrelenting work on behalf of children’s legal rights, is an inspiration to me – every day. Thank you, Cathy.

To my friends from the state legislature and local government who are here today, thank you for your service. Given the fact that I am now a full time public servant, I can’t tell you how disturbing it is – to me – that when I come home from a 16 hour day in Connecticut, I still turn on CTN to see what you guys are up to. It’s a problem.

And finally, to the members of my staff who are here today. Being a boss, for the first time in my life, is one of the hardest things about this new job. And I know that my chief failing in that role is that I don’t say thank you enough. But I know that you would run through brick walls for the people of the 5th District, and judging by the growing volume of calls and letters into the office, they’re figuring that out too. So, thank you.

My friends, it was two years ago that we all stood here together, in this same auditorium, and dreamed up what most thought to be impossible. We dared to suggest that we could unseat a supposedly unbeatable 24 year incumbent, we could be part of a national movement to change the priorities of the United States Congress, and we could do it all in a way that raised people’s expectations of political discourse. We set our sight high – some said too high – that night.

But as I said on Election Night, as I stood on a podium in a room just down the street, sometimes the impossible is possible.

Two years ago, we didn’t shy away from challenging the status quo on the big issues. We railed against an unjust and indefensible war. We didn’t yield one inch in calling for a commitment to national universal health care. And we refused to settle for a Congress that didn’t live up to the highest moral and ethical standards. We asked for it all. And a year and a half later, we certainly haven’t traveled the full length of the required road, but we’re getting there. Day by day. Step by step.

But we also chose, two years ago, to run a campaign that refused to bend to the twin political games of mudslinging and bar lowering. Believe me, there was temptation. If I had a nickel for every call we got at the campaign telling us we had to hit back harder, some from the people sitting right here in the front row I might add, I’d be a rich man.

But instead, we ran to higher ground, and I’m proud that amidst the after the fact analysis of the 2006 election emerged a consensus that our campaign was rewarded for refusing to get down into the mud being tossed by the other side. We proved that the high road, can be, and should be, the winning road.

We have only one group to thank for that resounding mandate for positive politics – the great people of the 5th Congressional District. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think to myself how lucky I am to have been entrusted with this job by the people of the 5th District. No matter how long I get to serve in this capacity, I will never be able to repay the people of this great District for the chance to be their voice in Congress.

To understand where we are today – in other words, to understand what we achieved in November of 2006 – we need to understand where we came from.

So let me bring you back to 10 a.m., April 4, 2001, in the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney. That April, the Vice President, the former head of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest energy companies, was deep into his secret effort to rewrite the nation’s energy laws – more specifically, to rewrite the nation’s energy laws in order to further pad the pockets of his friends and the President’s friends in the oil industry.

On that day, Cheney invited several representatives of the environmental movement to his office to discuss the draft legislation – which would eventually turn into the 2005 Energy Bill. The meeting, it turned out, was simply a public relations event. Reports are that more than half the meeting time was taken up by introductions. It was the first and last time any environmental or renewable energy groups would participate in this process.

In fact, by the morning of April 4, 2001, there had already been 40 meetings in Cheney’s office. And the groups represented were the heavyweights of the oil and gas industry. Exxon Mobil, Enron, Duke Energy, BP, the American Petroleum Institute – they were all there. And not just to lobby or listen. They were there to write the bill.

This was the world that Washington had become. Government had simply become a vehicle to make the rich even richer. The White House, and Congress, was open for business. And they had an endless list of takers – oil conglomerates, drug companies, student loan lenders, those intending to profit off of the war. We had lost control of our government.

And so, that is where the change began. You can critique this new Congress on many fronts. And I certainly join you in several of those critiques. But at the foundation, the most important change that occurred in January of 2007 was this one – we got our government back. It is now us – you and I, our neighbors, our co-workers – regular average, everyday folks – that run the United States Congress. And that’s how it’s supposed to be.

When the oil companies lose their control over the agenda, this happens: Congress passes into law the first increase in automobile fuel efficiency standards in 30 years. And the House passes a repeal of the $16 billion in tax giveaways to the oil industry, and converts that money to renewable energy tax credits for homeowners and small businesses.

When the drug companies lose their control over the agenda, this happens: the House passes legislation to allow for the federal government to negotiate directly with the drug companies to achieve lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries. And two freshman Congressmen from Connecticut submit legislation to go even further to allow Medicare to offer its own drug plan to compete with private for-profit insurers.

And when the national for profit student loan companies lose control over the agenda, this happens: Congress passed into law legislation forcing these lenders to cut the student loan interest rate in half, creating the largest investment in student loan funding since the G.I. bill.

In 2007, the people got their government back, and as we head toward this November’s elections – as those influence barons begin to amass their resources to regain control of Congress for their cronies – we’ve got some news for them: we’re not giving it back.

Personally, it has been a wonder to have a front row seat to witness and participate in this remarkable change. You gave me this noble opportunity, and I hope I have seized it.

When I got to Washington, sensing tough economic times ahead, I fought to get an appointment to the Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the nation’s housing and banking policy. On that committee, I’ve tried to be an advocate for jobs in Connecticut, but also for the rights of consumers in the increasingly volatile housing market. That’s why I introduced and passed legislation to require that mortgage brokers, those people on the front lines of the housing market, aren’t given incentives to put borrowers into higher interest rate loans than they qualify for.

As Ruth Epstein noted, I have quickly thrust myself to the forefront of the land conservation movement in Washington. Somehow, I finagled my way into the Chairmanship of the bipartisan Land Conservation Caucus. And with this leadership mantle, we’ve won some remarkable victories. Conservation programs are seeing historic funding increases. We are on the verge of reauthorizing tax incentives for the donation of land into conservation.
And right here in Connecticut, we’ve received two big grants to preserve land in Kent and Cornwall.

But the bulk of my time has been spent trying to reform not economic policy or environmental policy or health care policy – but government itself.

You see, Washington was, and to a large extent still is, broken, not just because the wrong people had the reins of power, but because the system itself allowed for perversions of justice to occur.

For instance, as certain legislators were carted off to federal courthouses, Congress sat idle. Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley – none of them were impeached, or even censured by their colleagues. Congress had stopped enforcing its own ethics rules – the “club” was protecting its own – and people had noticed.

So in May of last year, when ethics reform legislation looked stalled – I decided to do what I do best – organize. I brought 21 of my freshman colleagues to a press conference – the first time our class had spoken together publicly on any issue – to call for the establishment of a new independent citizen ethics board to investigate and punish Members of Congress for their misdeeds.
Now this effort didn’t exactly endear me to the old bulls of the institution. They were confident that they could use their old backroom tricks to stop change from happening. But in end, they could not. Led by the freshman class, this March the House established, for the first time in its history, a citizen board to root out corruption in Congress.

And more recently, another victory for reform. Last year, at a hearing of the Government Reform Committee, I listened to Erik Prince, the CEO of Blackwater, the infamous military contractor with a private army of thousands in Iraq, refuse to answer my question regarding how much profit his company was making off its military contracts. None of your business, he said. We’re a private company.

Well, not really. Blackwater, not unlike many other Iraq War contractors, makes over 90% of its money from U.S. taxpayer dollars. They’re not private – they wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for your tax dollars. So I introduced legislation requiring that Blackwater and other private firms who make almost all of their money from federal contracts disclose to the American public how much money they are skimming off of these contracts.

Three weeks ago, the House passed my bill, and we’re well on our way to making sure that the next time Blackwater shows up before a House committee, they’ll have to tell us how many millions they’re pocketing off the death and destruction they leave in their wake in Iraq.

Now, these are important changes. Changes that would never even have been contemplated under Republican control of the Congress. But they are incremental changes. Important, but incremental.

And so that brings us to this moment. The crackling thrill that runs through us all when we think about this November’s election is the recognition that the sweeping, revolutionary changes that we know are necessary to right our American ship of state, are for the first time in a very long time, within our reach.

Yes, I’m proud of what we have done. But the world doesn’t change in only a year and a half. We need both more time and more tools.

The most important tool is a Democratic President. With a true partner for change in the White House, the mountains we must climb together are no longer insurmountable.

We can end this War in Iraq. We can, and will, do it in a careful and responsible manner, designed to guard the safety of our troops as they leave, and the stability of the government we leave behind. But we must leave. So long as we remain, there is absolutely no reason for the Iraqis to quell the dysfunction that cripples and corrupts their government. And when we leave, we need to transform our national security conversations – turning away from the current defining question of “Who do we attack next?”, and moving toward a conversation about how we change our policies to diminish the both the ability and desire of many around the world to do us harm. We need to change minds, before we can change regimes.

And we can make meaningful, long term changes to our economic underpinnings, to restore to middle class Americans the belief that their hard work will lead to a better quality of life for their children. But it will take courageous change. We can make health care more affordable for families, but only by making a national commitment to universal care that cuts red tape, crisis care, and excessive profit. We can reduce energy costs for families, but only by making the investments today necessary to end our dependence on fuels that are produced and priced outside of this country.

We CAN do all this. Whether we will or not, is up to us. But let us not underestimate the obstacles that still stand in our way. Judging by the traffic jam outside Henry Kissinger’s house the other day, it seems the Republicans are still a little bit upset about what happened in this district two years ago. This is the only district in the country, so far, where the President has come to campaign against a freshman Member of Congress. We should take that as a badge of honor. I am perfectly happy to be President Bush’s number one target.

But it means we have our work cut out for us. I’m not naïve. I know the barriers that stand in the path of change. I see, everyday, the pitfalls that can make good men and women turn bad. Yes, everything has and can go wrong in Washington. But only in a place where everything can wrong, does there lay the possibility that on one day, under the right circumstances, everything can go right. I believe, in my heart, that this day is around the corner, because I am, if nothing else, an unapologetic idealist, an unrepentant optimist. And I don’t have to look very far to figure out why that is. Maybe it’s a little bit of my parents, a little bit of Cathy. But it’s really, a whole lot of – you. We did this together, and we’ll do it again together.

And finally, I’d like to note that this year, we’ll have one more recruit for our cause. This summer, God willing, Cathy and I will have our first child. And as all the parents in the audience know, that changes everything. I lie awake at night, thinking, have we saved enough, is our house big enough, does our stroller really have to be four wheel drive?

But mostly, I lie awake thinking about the kind of world I want leave to our child. And when I start imaging that world, incremental change just won’t do.

So I dream big. I imagine a world in which every child born as a citizen of the richest country in the world is guaranteed access to a doctor when they’re sick, no matter their family’s social or economic status.

I imagine a nation whose relations with the world are defined and dictated by relentless efforts to promote the commonness of humanity, rather than the divisions within.

I imagine a world in which the levers that run government are pressed by ideas, not money.

And as I lie in that bed, even at the end of my most frustrating days, I imagine a world to leave to our new child, where people once again, look with honor upon the institution in which his – or her – father has been elected to serve.

And it is through public service that those dreams can become real.

Two years ago, we sat here in this hall, and dreamed that the impossible could be possible. But 2006 was just the beginning. In 2008, we can complete the journey, to arrive at a moment in time, when all those things that I imagine for our unborn child, that you imagine for your children and grandchildren, can, for the first time in over a generation, rest at our fingertips.

It has been the honor of my short life to serve as your Representative in Congress. I look forward to getting the chance, to do it again.

God bless you, and God bless America.”

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