WASHINGTON, D.C. – In his first major address on the floor of the United States Senate, Senator Angus S. King, Jr. today looked back across the storied history of America in appealing to his colleagues to rise above the partisan divide to find solutions to the nation’s most pressing problems.
The first Independent from Maine elected to the United States Senate, Senator King called on his colleagues to abandon the gridlock and ideological entrenchment that has pervaded Congress in recent years: “Our failure to act is a disservice to those who built what we have inherited,” Senator King said. “We have to understand that each generation must meet its own challenges and redefine this question with our eyes open to practical effects, without blinders of absolutism or ideology. As I look back on history, the great accomplishments of this body, the great accomplishments of this government, have rarely, if ever, been victories for one side or the other. Instead, they’ve been based upon hard-fought battles and grudging compromise; recognition of national needs, along with local interests, and a willingness to honor our most basic charge: to form a more perfect union. I hope, in a small way, to contribute to this search for solutions that are practical and effective.”
Senator King also underscored the importance of moderation in problem solving, saying: “There's no right answer. It can't be all one or the other; neither side has exactly the right response. We shouldn't be an uncontrolled central government, and we shouldn't be a government that's so dispersed that we can't do anything. The tension is hard-wired into our system, but I think it helps us to find balanced policy.”
In closing, Senator King summoned the words and wisdom of President Lincoln to urge his colleagues to think in new terms as the 113thCongress wrestles with significant challenges: “We live in a time of accelerating change, and Mr. President, almost exactly one hundred and fifty years ago, our greatest President sent a message to Congress in the midst of the greatest crisis this country has ever faced. His message was about change and about how to deal with change – and was [meant] to try to shake Congress out of the lethargy of politics as usual, because we were in the midst of the Civil War. …Here's what Abraham Lincoln said: ‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and therefore we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.’ And here's the key line: ‘We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.’ We must disenthrall ourselves; think in new and different ways – and then, we shall save our country.”
To watch Senator King’s speech, click here.
The speech, which was delivered from notes rather than prepared text, is as follows:
“Mr. President, I rise today with some humility because I rise in the footsteps of one of Maine’s greatest Senators, Olympia Snowe. I’m fortunate enough to succeed her in this seat. In the midst of the campaign a year or so ago, I also realized I was not only succeeding Olympia Snowe, but George Mitchell and Ed Muskie – two of the greatest legislators of the 20thcentury. So it’s with some trepidation to be standing on the shoulders of those great members of this body.
“Now, most speeches that we hear in this hall are on a topic of the day: taxation, gun control, fairness of the marketplace, but I think that in order to under the issues that we’re debating – the issues that are coming before us on a continuous basis – we have to have some context. We have to look back to the history of this body and the history of the country.
“My favorite quote from Mark Twain, and there are lots of them, but my favorite is, ‘History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.’ And in this case, I believe that’s true.
“Let’s start with the very basic question: Why do we have government at all? Why are we here? Why do we have this grand edifice? Why do we have the rules and laws and all of the panoply of the Constitution? Well, it’s all about human nature.
“Unfortunately, a part of human nature is conflict and often, this conflict is resolved by violence. Hobbes, the British philosopher, said life is nasty, brutish, and short. A few years ago, Bill Moyers, who I believe is one of the wisest living Americans, spoke at one of my son’s college graduations. (I was at the graduation because I wanted to see what $100,000 looked like all in one place at one time. Now it would be $200,000.)
“But Moyers had a very profound observation, as he talked about the propensity of people to be mean to each other, to resolve disputes by violence, and he used a term that he has stayed with me – and I think it’s very profound. ‘Civilization,’ Moyers said, ‘is an unnatural act.’ Civilization is an unnatural act. It takes work to maintain civilization from one generation to the next. The world around us today gives us evidence of this. All you have to do is open the paper: North Korea, the Middle East, and Lord help us, the Boston Marathon – or two little boys in a sandbox with one truck. Conflict is part of our human nature so the basic function – the basic necessity – that brings forth any government throughout history is to provide security to our citizens, internal and external.
“And of course the Constitution says this in the preamble: ‘To ensure domestic tranquility’ – that’s Al Capone – and ‘To Provide for the Common Defense’ – that’s Hitler or Al Qaeda. But the paradox is once you create a government, you are handing over power to other people, and there is always the danger that government itself will become abusive, and that has been true throughout human history.
“The ancient Latin quote is, ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ ‘Who will guard the guardians?’ Governments are about power – power that we give up in order for governments to serve us, but then again, human nature raises its head. A 19thBritish philosopher again had a very profound observation: ‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ That’s true of all people in all time and all places. Power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely.
“So these two questions: why have a government and how you control the government once you create it encompasses all you need to know about political science.
“Our Constitution is the best answer ever provided to these two questions. It’s the best answer, and the Framers knew exactly what they were doing. Madison, in the 51stFederalist – and I have to apologize to my female Senator friends because Madison only talked in terms of men, but when you hear ‘men’ think of men and women; he meant that but he didn’t say it. In the 51stFederalist, he said, ‘If men were angels, no government would be necessary.’ (We wouldn’t need it.) Then he said, ‘And if angels were to govern men, neither external, nor internal controls on the government would be necessary either. In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, however, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it control itself.’
“That’s the whole deal. That’s what the Constitution is all about. How did it do it? I think the best analogy for the United States Constitution is the homely Vegematic. Remember Billy Mays? It slices, it dices, it purees. The Constitution is the Vegematic of power. It slices and dices. It divides between the people and the government, between the federal government and the states and the localities, within the Federal government, and within the branches of the Federal government. Power is separated and that was the theory of the Framers – that this division of power, ambition combating ambition – was a structural solution to the danger of the government abusing its own people.
“And then finally they weren’t satisfied – and during the ratification of the Constitution was adopted a Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights is nothing more than a sphere of protection around each of us as individuals that says even if the government follows all of these arcane rules, and all of these Rube Goldberg procedures, and a law comes out the other end, if it violates free speech it’s no good; if it violates the right to bear arms it isn’t valid; if it violates people’s right to be secure in their persons and possessions, it’s off-limits. So the Bill of Rights is the last sword, shield, and buckler that protects us from an abusive government.
“So the tension between effective government and abusive government has never been resolved in this society. Many of the arguments we’re having now about gun control, the Federal budget, financial regulation, health care, climate change, environmental policy – they are all manifestations of this age old debate we keep having. And what I think is amazing is that the arguments, and even the rhetoric, the words themselves, always seem to be about the same.
“On the Federalist side, we always hear about the necessity of national solutions to national problems, universal principles, appeals to fairness – and on the other side, we hear allegations of tyranny, nullification, references to Jefferson’s famous quote that ‘the tree of liberty must be watered occasionally with the blood of tyrants and patriots,’ the tenth amendment, states’ rights and hints of secession. The rhetoric is the same. In fact, the current divisions in the Congress between traditional Democrats and a Republican party largely driven by the antifederalist sentiments of the Tea Party is at least the tenth time this issue, this same issue, has arisen in American history.
“The American Revolution itself, number one, was a populist revolt against concentrated power far away. Second, the drafting of the Constitution arose out of the weaknesses of the Articles of the Confederation. Many of us sort of feel this government has been what it is forever, but for seven or eight years between the end of the Revolution and the drafting of the Constitution, we were governed by something called the Articles of the Confederation which was too weak. It didn’t concentrate power enough, and that gave rise to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
“Then the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was itself a manifestation of this argument, the argument that the terms, the wonderful terms, ‘Federalists’ and ‘Antifederalists’ described the division in the country which we are fighting over to this day.
“I think of Harry Reid and Dick Durbin as Hamilton and Adams, and McConnell and Cornyn are the pre-1803 Jefferson and Madison. I say pre-1803 because Jefferson was the apostle of states’ rights but he became President and somewhere found in the Constitution the here-to-fore- unknown right to buy Louisiana. We’re glad that he did.
“The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1800 which was the Patriot Act of the day passed by President John Adams to get at what they thought were seditious activities in the country. Jefferson, when he was Vice President, secretly wrote a resolution for the Kentucky Legislature saying that the Alien and Sedition Acts were null and void in Kentucky and were a violation of the Constitutional principles.
“The Tariff of 1828, known as the Tariff of Abominations, was a tariff that protected northern manufacturers, but it prejudiced the South, and lo and behold South Carolina wanted to nullify it, and in fact, in 1832 voted to do so. The nullification crisis of 1832 was only averted by the election of Andrew Jackson and a compromise that was passed in 1834. That’s five times already.
“This is an interesting one. The Fugitive Slave Laws of 1850 were passed by the central government, and they said that if a slave escaped into your state, even if it was a free state, your legal enforcement community had to cooperate and return the slave to his master. The Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin in 1854 declared that law unconstitutional, void, and of null effect in the State of Wisconsin. Again, it was tension between the power of the federal government to remedy national problems and the rights of states and people to make their own decisions.
“And of course, tragically, the most dramatic manifestation of this was the Civil War. But the Civil War itself was about this very question wrapped up in states’ rights and slavery. It was a question of what are the powers of the federal government and what are the powers reserved to the states and to the people. We all know the tragedy of that event and what happened.
“I think one of the most interesting results of the Civil War is a change in English usage of the term ‘United States’. Prior to the Civil War people in the United States referred to the United States as a plural noun: the United States are. In other words they referred to themselves as a collective, as a group of states. After the Civil War, the usage which we have to this today is that the ‘United States’ is a singular noun: one country. It is. They are. That's, I think, an amazing development. There was no law passed, but that showed how the people's view of what their country was about had changed.
“In the early part of the last century, the New Deal responded to the two crises of the depression and war – particularly the depression. The issue then was fought out in the Supreme Court, and the United States Supreme Court at first said the New Deal laws were unconstitutional. They went too far. The Commerce Clause wouldn't stretch that far.
“And of course there was a lot of politics and discussion. The case went back. I believe it was the Sick Chicken Case, and the Supreme Court said, ‘Well, maybe the Commerce Clause does stretch that far.’ Historians refer to that as ‘the switch in time that saved nine.’
“The civil rights movement: As I was growing up the rhetoric was again about what are the powers that we have here in this city, versus the communities and the states. And here we are at number 10, the Tea Party and the urge to shrink government.
“The resistance to the Affordable Care Act; I always was surprised that summer that people were getting red in the face about a health care bill. It wasn't the healthcare bill; it was the perception that Washington was somehow taking over something that should've been left to them. Gun control is a classic example, which we were debating last week – and the irony and the difficulty of gun control is: the problem is largely local, and particularly in urban areas, but the solution is national because the guns that are being misused in urban areas. And that's why, in my opinion, we need national legislation – at a minimum background checks and trafficking regulation.
“Regulation itself is an expression of governmental power, and it's resisted in many parts of the country. Budgets, finally, briefly, budgets. (I shouldn't say ‘finally’. My wife says I say ‘finally’ too much, and it gets people’s hopes up, Mr. President.)
“Budgets: a budget fundamentally reflects policy. It fundamentally reflects what we believe about ourselves and about our government, and the budget that's been passed by the House, the so-called Ryan budget, is a classic political document. And I don't mean that in a negative sense – it espouses a philosophy of what this government should be. It's one more step in this discussion.
“I don't believe that the Ryan budget is really about debts and deficits. It's about shrinking government. That's really what the policy is: to reduce the size of the government to a place where it's much, much smaller.
“Federal spending isn't out of control. Nondefense federal discretionary spending today is the lowest it's been in 50 years. Defense is about the same. What's out of control is all of our spending on health care. That's what's driving the federal debts. It's not about debts and deficits, it's about shrinking government. So where does this leave us?
“An interesting history lesson, but I hope something more: first, I think it provides us with a way of understanding what separates us. If we understand what's going on here in this chamber, I think it helps us. Second, I think it's important for me anyway to understand that there is no right answer to this question of governmental power.
“There's no right answer. It can't be all one or the other, neither side has exactly the right response. We shouldn't be an uncontrolled central government, and we shouldn't be a government that's so dispersed that we can't do anything. The tension is hard-wired into our system, but I think it helps us find balanced policy.
“We need a national government. We need a strong national government for the same reasons as in 1789: to solve national problems, problems that can't be solved at the local level, either because of the scope of the problem itself – global terrorism (I'm sorry the Brunswick Police Department can't deal with global terrorism) – or because piecemeal solutions just won't work. Environmental protection has to be done locally, but it also has to be done nationally: air moves, polluted water moves. Or immigration has to be a national solution.
“I'm sorry but strangling it in the bathtub is even less feasible today than it was in 1789.
“Gridlock is total victory for the anti-Federalists. Gridlock is not the answer. The framers knew the government had to work. It may be slow and cumbersome, but ultimately it had to be functional. Madison recognized this, and so did the preamble: ‘to form a more perfect union.’ A more perfect union than that which had been formed by the Articles of Confederation.
“On the other hand, on the other side of this argument though, all federal solutions all the time aren't the answer either.
“There's a grave danger that we all face because our job here is making laws. And the problem is if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If the only tool we have is laws, then we are inclined to try to solve every problem with new laws. I believe states' rights are important. I think states have an important role to play in our system, and they are, I think, the best places to solve a lot of the issues that are facing our country.
“One of them is education. I remember sitting at home and watching the debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 and they were arguing about what size the classrooms should be, and how big the schools should be, and I turned to my wife, Mary, and said, ‘These guys think they're running for Superintendent of Schools.’ This isn't a federal issue. The federal government has a responsibility in education to fund, to do research, and to help – but not to guide.
“Overreaching regulation, in my view, is a problem. I believe in structural solutions. I wasn't a member of this body, but had I been I suspect I would have opposed Dodd-Frank and supported the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act. I think that's a structural solution because regulatory solutions always end up being burdensome.
“A friend of mine in Maine sent me a picture of him sitting next to a stack of regulations at a community bank as a result of Dodd-Frank that they're going to have to abide by. This is a community bank. Bangor Savings Bank did not cause the financial crisis of 2008. And yet they're having to bear the burden of these regulations, which are expensive, which are drying up credit for their customers, and which I don't believe are going to contribute to a solution.
“Another point on the anti-Federalist side is that deficits do matter. Deficits do matter. We cannot continue to burden our children with the costs of government. In a hypercompetitive world it seems to me that every tax dollar counts. Every regulation must be smart, and minimally intrusive. This is a new world we're in, we're competing not just with companies around the country, but with companies all over the world, and they want our jobs.
“Understanding these differences, this age-old argument, we have to understand it, we can't be in thrall to the divide; we can't be locked into it, for we do have national challenges which have to be met with national solutions. Challenges like cyber threats, research, infrastructure, gun crime, terrorism, and Boston, by the way, is an example of coordination between levels of government that I think worked very effectively.
“Our failure to act is a disservice to those who built what we have inherited. Calls to cut government are fine, but they must be matched with specifics. You can't just talk about government spending and not talk about FAA towers, or our intelligence community, or our defense capability. We have to understand that each generation must meet its own challenges, and redefine this question with our eyes open to practical effects, without blinders of absolutism or ideology.
“As I look back on history, the great accomplishments of this body, the great accomplishments of this government have rarely, if ever, been victories for one side or the other. Instead they've been based upon hard-fought battles and grudging compromise; recognition of national needs, along with local interests, and a willingness to honor our most basic charge: to form a more perfect union.
“I hope, in a small way, to contribute this – to contribute to the search for solutions that are practical and effective. I'm caucusing with the Democrats, but I agree with Enzi and Alexander on the Marketplace Fairness Act. I agree with Enzi and Alexander on the Marketplace Fairness act, but with Blumenthal and Kaine on guns. I agree with Blumenthal and Kaine on guns, but I agree with Coburn on duplication and regulation. I agree with Coburn on duplication and regulation, but I agree with Murray on the budget.
“We face serious challenges. Defense, budget, and constantly changing circumstances. Constantly changing circumstances. We live in a time of accelerating change, and Mr. President, almost exactly one hundred and fifty years ago, our greatest President sent a message to Congress in the midst of the greatest crisis this country has ever faced.
“His message was about change and about how to deal with change – and was to try to shake Congress out of the lethargy of politics as usual, because we were in the midst of the Civil War. Now I can't argue that the crises we face today collectively or individually equal the Civil War, but they are pretty serious.
“I've been in hearings in the last two weeks, in the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee, and every single one of the top professionals in both Defense and Intelligence have said this is the most dangerous and complicated period they have experienced in their 35, 40, or 50 years in this business – so we are facing some serious challenges.
“I want to share with you what I believe are the most profound observation about how we deal with change that I've ever encountered. December 2nd, 1862, President Lincoln sent the message, and here's how it ended. Here's what Abraham Lincoln said: ‘The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and therefore we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew.’
“And here's the key line: ‘We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.’ We must disenthrall ourselves, think in new and different ways, and then we shall save our country.
“Thank you Mr. President.”
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