Minnesota senator calls for bipartisan effort
Perhaps the most memorable moment of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar’s talk was the chilling story she told in response to a question about gun control.
Senator Klobuchar was the first woman elected to represent the State of Minnesota in the U.S. Senate when she took office in 2007. She was interviewed by Walter Issacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, in one of the first events of the 2015 Aspen Ideas Festival.
“What I will never, ever forget was this one mother who said they were all in the firehouse after the shooting,” [at Sandy Hook] said Klobuchar. “And one by one, the kids would come in from the school. After about a few hours had passed, the parents that were left knew that their kids were never coming back into that firehouse.”
Her story left the entire room quiet, the silence only being punctured by sniffling and crying.
“So when you sit there with those parents and think of the courage that they have and think that the Senate did not have the courage to pass a simple background check bill, it was really the lowest,” said Klobuchar, adding that the possibility that the Senate could do something about gun control would be a step forward.
Famous for her bipartisan efforts in Congress, Klobuchar reveals she looks for common ground and the best in people.
“Sometimes their policies are evil,” said Klobuchar. “But usually, you can find something good in those people and you can find something that you can work with.”
As to how to address the polarization in Congress, Klobuchar said for everyone to push their own representative to do things that are for compromised focus, and to give those representatives a break when they do, even if they do not agree.
According to the senator, the two most frustrating areas in terms of just failing to get that bipartisan bill passed are guns and immigration.
Along with trying to re-pass a gun control bill, Klobuchar said she hoped a lot of people in the room were for immigration reform. They were, as her comment was met with applause.
“Ninety of our Fortune 500 companies were formed by immigrants,” said Klobuchar, as she examined the situation through an economic lens. “Two-hundred of our Fortune 500 companies were formed by immigrants or kids of immigrants. Thirty percent of our U.S. Nobel Laureates were born in other countries.”
She looks at the immigration issue as an economic driver and budget issue.
“These are the kinds of things we’re looking at that just make no sense for our economy,” said Klobuchar.
On a lighter note, at Issacson’s prodding, she divulged that the 20 women in Senate do share a special kind of bond.
“We, first of all, are friends,” said Klobuchar. “We work together, we trust each other, we have dinner together about every other month.”
Of course, they do not always agree on everything.
While there has been an increase in women in Congress, she even referenced her tweet about a newfound complication of a traffic jam in the women’s bathroom, she hopes to see more in the future.
