Political Quotes

“Thank you very much. First of all, thank you, Barbara, and to the former Members for honoring me. It is truly an incredible honor for me to receive this. I think it would be wise for me to share with all of you how I got here because it is sort of a fun story. When I came to Congress, it was 2021. COVID was rampant. Being a freshman and going through orientation was challenging for a lot of reasons. I had served in the State legislature prior, and I had done a sort of mentor program. As I did orientation here in Washington, there were some things that I thought should be different. The Speaker talked about coming on the House floor with the midshipmen last night. When I was a Member-elect, I walked onto this floor after about 3 days of orientation, and I thought to myself: Why did it take so long? When you have that first moment on this House floor, there is no greater moment. You have worked so hard to get here. You never forget it. I wanted that opportunity to be the first thing that happened on orientation. When you got to D.C., it should be at night. It should be quiet. You should get to come and sit in these chairs, where only a few thousand people before us have sat, and take this moment in. I decided to take it upon myself to make a suggestion to the Speaker, the leader at the time, on what should be different, should we be in the majority and be able to sort of decide how orientation goes. Fast-forward a year, I landed in D.C. from the Marshall Scholars trip.…”