On the recordFebruary 5, 2013
Thank you for allowing me to speak today. I have said it before, and I want to say it again: the job of a Member of Congress is to protect the rights of the people, not take them away. I want to explain what I mean by that. Those rights are outlined in our Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights were not given to us by a King or developed after extensive debate by a Congress. They come from God. They exist in the same way that gravity exists. They are natural. But too often what gets left out is why we must protect those rights and why those rights are still relevant today. The reason is simple, and it's as practical today as it was in 1776: we protect those rights because in America we know that freedom leads to prosperity. Our country was built by Forefathers who believed in, and defended, that idea. Every generation that came after them has followed their lead, rising to tackle whatever challenge came before them in order to protect the freedom of this Nation. Every American generation has left the country a little better off than they found it and handed it to their sons and daughters with the hope that they would do the same. Thinking both about those who came before us and those who will follow us long after we're gone is in the very DNA of our country. That's why our Constitution's preamble explicitly states that it doesn't secure liberty for just the founding generation but also for prosperity.…
