Carper's Corner
`Tis the Season
November 25, 2008Wilmington – This is my favorite time of year. As my wife Martha and I get ready for the traditional turkey and pumpkin pie, our my sons visiting us from college, the leaf-raking, the football games and Wilmington’s annual Thanksgiving Day 10K for multiple sclerosis, I am reminded of a great saying from Theodore Roosevelt:
“Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.”
This has not been an easy year for Americans. We have been through an intense and impassioned presidential campaign, and our country is in a deepening economic crisis.
In Delaware, we have lost more than 2,000 jobs and face the closing of our Newark Chrysler plant, a plant that has been part of our way of life for more than 60 years. And as in many other communities throughout the country, Delaware’s homeowners and businesses are coping with too many foreclosures.
But it is not in the American spirit to give up. And as President Roosevelt said, much has been given to us. We live in the greatest nation on Earth and our best days are still ahead. We are a country that put a man on the moon, won many wars and survived a Great Depression.
We are a country of innovation, of the Model-T Ford and the Chevrolet Volt, a car that uses zero gasoline and produces zero emissions for the first 40 miles.
We are a country of equality and opportunity, where a young man with a white mother and a black father could put himself through law school and be elected president.
We are a country of liberty and democracy, of heroes who answer the call to fight for freedom around the world, and heroes who wait for them at home.
This holiday season is a time to refocus our attention on vital national priorities and put our nation’s vast and extraordinary talents to work.
The challenges facing us may seem daunting, but they are not insurmountable. We face a shrinking economy; two wars; and a health care system that costs twice as much as those of other advanced nations but doesn’t deliver twice the value.
We face the largest budget deficit in the history of our country; and a dangerous and growing reliance on foreign oil, which threatens not only our national security but the health of our planet and of our children.
But we have much to be thankful for, too.
I stand ready and eager to face these challenges head-on in a lame duck session this December and right out of the gate in January. I look forward to working with our new U.S. senator from Delaware, Ted Kaufman, and with President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and their extremely talented team.
I look forward to the new 111th Congress and continue to urge our senators, old and new, to focus on building consensus and to leave partisan politics behind as we strive for commonsense, practical solutions to the many national problems at hand.
I believe in America’s ability to climb out of the darkness and to reclaim our mantle as the foremost nation on earth.
Now is a time to be thankful for family, old friends and new colleagues. It is the time to tighten our belts, save more, remember the neediest, and most of all, know that even in the hardest of days, our nation’s ingenuity, hard work and kind hearts will pull us through to better times ahead.
Happy Thanksgiving to All.