Chris Murphy: “What we were charged with doing was really taking back this House and this place for people who are struggling every day…”

“What we were charged with doing was really taking back this House and this place for people who are struggling every day to make ends meet. The cost of tuition since 2001 has gone up 41 percent, while we know wages have essentially remained stagnant, the minimum wage staying exactly where it has been for the last 2 years, while the cost of everything from food to school to gas goes up exponentially. What we are doing here, piece by piece, is really restoring that American dream, that idea your kids might be able to do better than you, that your grandkids are going to live in a world with a greater quality of life than you were able to live in. The first 100 hours were about doing that, and, as I know you both have remarked, doing it in a bipartisan way, doing it in a way in which the votes that came before in the first 2 weeks drew an average of 60 Republican votes.”