Mark Kirk: “I would say that we welcome Republicans, Democrats, everyone, to join this agenda, because while this is popular, while…”

“I would say that we welcome Republicans, Democrats, everyone, to join this agenda, because while this is popular, while people want this to happen, it hasn't happened yet. This is an incomplete agenda, where we have not set a national strategy to eliminate gangs; we have not established 401-kids programs; we have not interlinked the Federal databases on sexual predators; we have not taken sufficient action on social networking sites like myspace.com to protect kids. All of this, then, builds up to a set of unfinished work which the Congress should now finish in order to protect the lives of Americans. One of the other issues that we hear about very often from suburban families is that we need to take greater action for conservation, that we support the national park system, we want it to be healthy and we want it to grow, but we also want to protect green and open space right near home. Without action by the Federal and State governments, there might come a day when we would drive to work or school and see an unending series of strip malls and no green or open space taken to protect the environment in our local communities. The suburban agenda also contains two pieces of legislation, one by Jim Gerlach and the other by Mike Fitzpatrick, both of Pennsylvania, that encourages donations of open space for conservation purposes and also protects farmland from being gobbled up in suburban communities.…”