Chris Van Hollen: “I also come to the floor today to talk about the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. And thanks to modern…”

“I also come to the floor today to talk about the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. And thanks to modern technology, as I was driving in, I got to listen to the remarks of my friend and colleague, the senior Senator from Maryland Ben Cardin. I want to start by thanking him for his leadership in the Federal delegation. And I am going to cover some of the same points he made in his remarks, and I think it bears repeating, both because of the magnitude of this crisis, the national scale of this crisis, but also because it showed Baltimore and Maryland and America at its best in coming together in the aftermath of a tragedy to help those we lost and to begin the rebuilding process. For 47 years, the Francis Scott Key Bridge has been the backdrop of millions of Marylanders' lives. They get up in the morning. They go to work. It is an indelible part of the Baltimore City skyline, and it is part of the daily commute for over 34,000 people. Six weeks ago, when the Key Bridge collapsed in the early morning hours of March 26, everyone immediately recognized the magnitude of this disaster. In Baltimore, in Maryland, across the country, across the world, people witnessed those images of the ship hitting one of the piers on the bridge and the bridge coming down. Six hard-working Marylanders lost their lives in that bridge collapse. There were eight of them on the bridge at the time, construction workers working late hours--hard jobs.…”