I’m running because I want to work for universal health care and for prescription drug regulation. I want to protect social security. I want a paid family leave benefit that real working people can use because it offers help with wage replacement. I want Vermonters, and all Americans, to earn a livable wage for a hard day's work. I want good schools, I want to support good and inexpensive community colleges and technical training, and I want the federal government to finally pay its share of special education costs. I want campaign finance reform and sensible gun control. I want reproductive freedom protected for women. I want an end to the death penalty. I want these things and I believe you want them too and I’ll work for them with passion and tenacity.

I’m running for the US Senate because I want our national government to work for real people and to include them. I want someone to represent me in Washington who knows what’s on my mind – who’s lived an ordinary life with its hopes and its troubles – who understands that political decisions made far away in Washington in the pomp of the Capitol have an impact on our real lives.

I’m running because of my own real life, my family’s and the real lives of the Vermonters I’ve grown up with and worked with for 10 years as a state senator.

My parents are getting older. Will Medicare still be there when they need more help? It was hard enough for my mother to set up home-care for my grandmother, now it is almost impossible. It took one Vermonter 80 calls this last weekend to set up home nursing care for one 24-hour period. Will there be a meaningful prescription drug program, a real patient's bill of rights, and a viable long-term care system? Why is there still no mental health parity at the national level? I talked a lot about health care this morning at the senior center, but the short version is this: we need a universal heath care system, cradle to grave for all Americans. We need it now.

Will social security still be intact when its time to retire? My next-door neighbor (some of you know him) has worked hard all his life as a small contractor. He lives alone now and keeps himself to himself but he has a beautiful vegetable garden and a new red pickup that he washes every weekend its not raining. . He’s getting older and he deserves to know his social security is safe and can be relied on. He’s worked hard for it.

Will my daughter be able to manage two children, two sets of day-care fees and steep rent on what she and her husband earn at their two jobs? Or will they have to give up more family time and work more hours, pay for more day care? They worry about day-care and about schools. They’re doing okay but it’s pretty precarious. If something happened – if one of them got sick or another baby came along it would be hard. They need decent pay, good day care, and they need paid family leave to be available if they need it.

Real issues that matter to real people. Government is not abstract theory. Government is about people, real people and their daily lives. Government includes us all.

We are here in the Winooski Heritage museum that honors the mill workers who built Winooski. Peter Clavelle’s grandmother is in a photograph here. She worked in the mills. The boys in this photograph probably were about twelve or fourteen years old and worked 12-hour days and a six-day week. Working conditions were hard. But the mills gradually got better – wages went up, working conditions improved, labor unions organized and their efforts brought help to all the work force. Government passed safety laws, minimum wage laws, workers’ comp and unemployment insurance. Eventually, a person working here could earn a decent wage, get some decent benefits and raise a family here in Winooski.

The mills have closed, we’re entering the 21^st century, but we’re slipping backwards. Real wages have declined for non-college educated workers and a pay gap remains for women. Benefits are becoming unaffordable for small local businesses. Union organizing has become more and more difficult under the antiquated National Labor Relations Act and delays in getting a decision from the regional Board in Boston make appeals virtually useless. Pension rights are being eviscerated by management; social security is in flux.

But our government does nothing. The federal minimum wage bill has languished in committee all session. Tax cuts are proposed for the rich each year but the Earned Income Tax credit for working people hasn’t changed since 1993 (and Jeffords voted against improving it even then). The price of fuel goes up as oil companies write campaign contributions to incumbents; the price of prescriptions goes up as drug companies invest in political campaigns, and HMOs make generous contributions as they watch the strong Patients Bill of Rights defeated on party lines.

Just this week Republicans (Jeffords included) blocked adoption by OSHA of new ergonomic standards for workers that would help to prevent injuries and stress. The bad old days here in the mill are not so far removed.

I work a pretty long day myself these days. Vermont is a beautiful state but the towns are far apart; it’s sometimes a long drive home to Winooski. One night coming home from Bennington quite late I stopped in Middlebury at the late-night gas station just south of town. If you drive at night in Vermont you know exactly where all the late-night stations are and you know how safe and reassured you feel when you see the lights of one of them. I went in to get some coffee. The woman working the register was about my age, she had on a blue uniform jacket with her name embroidered on the pocket – we’ll call her Diane - and we fell into conversation. Yes, it was getting colder out. Yes it was late and I was tired – how about you? "Yes," she said. "I’ve been working since 5:30 this morning." She had worked three jobs that day – 18 hours - the first one at a restaurant for the breakfast shift, next at a motel cleaning and making beds, then the late shift at the gas station. None of her jobs paid any benefits. None paid more than $9.00 an hour. None had a future. "That’s too much work," I said. "I don’t mind hard work," she answered. "But I do get tired."

Something is wrong with our country if Diane can’t make a decent living. And what if she got sick? Wages, taxes, benefits, health care – these things matter to real people.

Our country is rich but Diane is left out. There is danger that my daughter and my neighbor and my parents will be too. There is a danger that there won’t be family leave, social security, or health care. That with 1.9 trillion dollars of surplus projected over the next ten years we will squander our opportunity in the inaction of incumbency and the stagnation of special interests and fail to effect real change, fail to build a decent universal health care system, fail to make sure that everyone in this great rich country is included in its prosperity.

Too many Americans are left out. People working not one, not two, but sometimes three jobs at minimum wage and still not able to pay the bills. Children growing up in neighborhoods where schools are crumbling and teachers can’t be found. Old people freezing in winter because they can’t afford both heat and their medicines.

Our country is rich, but our government is poor in its vision.

We have a job to do. We have to include all Americans in the country’s prosperity, all citizens with decent health care, all people, all ages, all races, all genders, all sexual orientations. You’re included. This country is for you.

We have to make sure that the Supreme Court is not destroyed by politicized appointments, or the environment by legitimatised plunder by special interests, or the education system by subsidies to private schools, or Social Security by Wall Street bankers pushing for privatization.

We have a lot of work to do.

But it will be worth it. The two great social achievements of the 20^th century – Social Security in the thirties and Medicare/Medicaid in the sixties came only when we had a Democratic Congress working together with a Democratic President. That time can come again next November as we start the 21^st century. We can create a health care system that works for all, a school system for other countries to emulate, an economy that pays hard-working citizens enough to put an end to poverty. We can choose. We can include. One vote at a time, one seat at a time and the time will come. I’m ready to get to work.

Thank you.