David Obey: “this is a funny place. We get elected. We get into our offices out here, and every day we have visitors from home. And…”

“this is a funny place. We get elected. We get into our offices out here, and every day we have visitors from home. And sure, some of them are on vacation and some of them are regular working people. But I would venture to say that at least 70 to 75 percent of them are people who are representatives of the business community. They walk into our offices. They wear suits. They are good people, but they have a distinct economic point of view. And we hear a lot of it when they come and visit us in our offices. They are the people who can afford to come out here and lobby us directly from home. Then we go home. Often Members go to the Rotary Clubs; they go to business lunches. They talk to people who are also wearing suits then, and they all generally see life from the upper side. I think we need to get beyond that and we need to think about how the world looks to people who work for a living, whether they wear blue collars or white collars or pink colors, just name it. I do not know what my colleagues do when they go home, but when I go home I often visit plants. I cannot begin to tell Members how many times I walk through a plant, and I have seen a woman wearing something on her wrist and I say, what happened? Carpel tunnel syndrome. I hear that time and time again. Talk to people who have suffered lower back problems. I happen to have an insurance company in my district that is very skilled in the problems of worker compensation.…”