By U.S. Sen. Susan Collins
(R-Maine)
The Constitution requires that, each year, the President of the United States report on the state of our union. It has become tradition for the President to deliver his message before a joint session of Congress. This tradition dates all the way back to our nation’s first President, George Washington. In January 1790, President Washington rode in a horse-drawn carriage from his home on Cherry Street to Federal Hall in New York City, our capital at the time, to deliver the first “message to Congress.”
You might be surprised to learn however, that Thomas Jefferson actually stopped the practice of delivering the address in person, opting instead to deliver it in writing. President Jefferson is said to have believed the speech before Congress was “too kingly for the new republic.” Instead, the message was printed in newspapers and distributed for the public to read. It was not until 112 years later, in 1913, that President Woodrow Wilson revived the tradition of giving the speech in person.
Recently, millions of Americans watched as President Obama continued the tradition of addressing a joint session of Congress. It is a privilege to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate and to sit in the historic House chamber during the President’s State of the Union address.
This address is the President’s opportunity to outline his Administration’s accomplishments over the past year and to lay out his national priorities and legislative agenda for the year to come. It is when the President provides Congress and the American people with a clear outline of his agenda to address many of the issues and challenges that are important to our country.
This year, President Obama delivered a strong message to the American people and discussed many of the critical challenges facing our country. I commend him for focusing on what matters to Americans — job creation, the exploding debt, and the economic recovery.
Wherever I go in Maine, I hear from people who are struggling. They are struggling to pay their bills. They are struggling with the high cost of health care premiums. In some cases, they are working two jobs to make ends meet. In some cases, they can’t find a job at all.
This isn’t a Republican problem. This isn’t a Democratic problem. It’s an American problem, and we must work together in a bipartisan manner to find solutions.
America’s out-of-control debt is a grave threat to our nation’s future prosperity. Just last month, the Senate voted to increase the debt limit to $12.4 trillion, and recently voted, once again, to increase in the debt limit – this time by $1.9 trillion, to $14.3 trillion. This is simply unsustainable and that is why I could not support it.
I was disappointed when the Senate recently rejected a bipartisan amendment that I cosponsored, authored by Sens. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Judd Gregg (R-NH), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, that would have created an independent, non-partisan, 18-member commission to develop a specific plan to correct the government’s long-term fiscal imbalances. The Commission’s legislative recommendations would have required expedited consideration by key Congressional committees, a super-majority vote in both chambers of Congress, and Presidential approval.
Congress must undertake serious fiscal reform. Given the failure of this legislation, I hope that the version of the commission to be proposed by the President will succeed.
As a former Maine financial regulator, I am convinced that financial regulatory reform is essential to restoring public confidence in our financial markets and to preventing a recurrence of the financial crisis which has cost so many Americans their retirement savings and so many workers their jobs. I have introduced the “Financial System Stabilization and Reform Act” that would fundamentally restructure our financial regulatory system. It would strengthen oversight and accountability in our financial markets. Among other provisions, my legislation would create an independent Financial Stability Council, composed of representatives from existing federal agencies that have responsibility for overseeing portions of the financial system. The FSC would serve as a “systemic-risk monitor,” maintaining comprehensive oversight of potential risks to the U.S. financial system. Had there been a systemic-risk monitor in place years ago, many of the causes of our current economic crisis could have been detected and action taken to prevent risk to the stability of the entire financial system. We might have been able to prevent many of the disastrous economic consequences that resulted.
In the year ahead, Congress and the President must focus like a laser on creating jobs during a very difficult time for our economy. As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I have worked to secure federal funding for projects throughout Maine, including shipbuilding and high-tech companies that contribute to our national security and provide good jobs. I have helped secure nearly $25 million in investment in offshore, deepwater wind energy research at the University of Maine. I believe that this has a potential to be a real game-changer for the State of Maine and position us now for the ‘green’ jobs of the future. I urge the President to continue federal investment in this area.
As ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, I believe that the President’s proposal to improve countermeasure and vaccine distribution in the event of a bio-weapon attack or a pandemic is a step in the right direction, but it falls far short of providing a comprehensive approach to biosecurity. The “Weapons of Mass Destruction Prevention and Preparedness Act” that Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and I introduced in September, and that was approved by the Homeland Security Committee in November, would establish a detailed plan for preventing and responding to a biological attack. With the President’s backing, Congress should move swiftly to pass this legislation.
It has become an annual tradition for the President to tell Congress, and the American people, that the “state of our union is strong.” I do believe that the state of our union is strong — but, many challenges lie ahead. I look forward to working with the President on these issues that are so important to the American people. Working together, in a bipartisan spirit, we can achieve progress.