Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in calling for action--action to protect the hard-earned benefits of pensioners, hard-working people all across my State. I thank my colleague Senator Brown for organizing these speeches and my neighbor to the east, Senator Baldwin from Wisconsin, for her eloquent words on behalf of the workers in her State. I know how important benefits are to workers firsthand. My grandpa was one of many children, growing up in the Iron Range of Minnesota. He loved school, but he had to quit at age 15 to help support his family. First, he got a job as a teamster, pulling a cart, and then at a very young age, he went to work in the iron ore mines in Ely, MN. He had wanted to be in the Navy. He had wanted to sail the world. Instead, he spent his entire life to support his eight brothers and sisters and then, later, my dad and my uncle. He spent his entire life working 1,500 feet underground, and he would go down the mine shaft every single day with his black lunch bucket, and I often thought: What did he think of when he went down that mine shaft? Did he think of that life at sea, of school, of other things? He felt he had an obligation, and that obligation was not only important to our family, which somehow ended up with me in the U.S.…”