Tom Allen
They don't have special rights because we have civil rights laws that protect them. The laws work both ways.
There were also good parts with the budget; mostly we restored funding for K-12 education and won an additional $1.2 billion for 100,000 new teachers in grades 1-3 around the country. So there were a lot of parts that were good, a lot of parts that made no sense, but with so much in there it's hard to decide what to do with it. So I voted for it.
The argument on the other side of special rights is completely bogus. It's bogus because you could make exactly the same claim about racial or ethnic or religious minorities.
Now, there are solutions to stop the cracking. For instance, down in Florida they pooled all the kids in a particular county and provided health insurance for them. The parents can buy private insurance for them if they wish, and if they need a bit of a subsidy they can get it. So it's a private insurance program covering all kids. And it's cheap.
Kids are cheap to insure, so they can go to the doctors, get the tests they need, and do what they should be doing to maintain their health. It's programs like these I think that we should give more consideration to in Congress.
If the parties get too close together they lose their identities, if they get too far apart you're not going to get a whole lot done because you almost always need to have some folks on the other side of the aisle to accomplish anything.
I was on two: the National Security Committee, and the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. First, the National Security Committee. If you know the first district in Maine, you know that we really have a district that is defense dependent. I asked to be on the National Security Committee because it related to the district.
I think the DLC did very important work getting the party moving again. If the Democrats want to retain their status as the majority party, they needed to refocus their agenda. They couldn't stay limited in Northeastern big cities and expect to survive.
I think that pulp and paper industry is still one of major industries in this state. You have to place some limits on as far as lumbering practices, and to make sure that there are some basic rules.
Hopefully in ten to twenty years our society will get to the point where sexual orientation is not as big of deal. I think passage of anti-discrimination laws is important step toward this goal. And I think we'll come back and we'll have another referendum in Maine again, at some point.