Kennedy issues call to action
April 3rd, 2006
U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy answered audience questions following his April 3 talk at U of L.
We need to respond as a nation to “powerful forces reshaping our planet,” U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) told an audience of about 300 at the University of Louisville Monday.
Kennedy spoke as a guest of the McConnell Center, a bipartisan center at U of L that prepares students for effective leadership. Elected in 1962 to finish the final two years of the Senate term of his brother, John F. Kennedy, who was elected president in 1960, Kennedy has served seven full Senate terms and is the second most senior senator.
In a talk invoking the memory of his brother’s inaugural statement “Ask not what this country can do for you; ask what you can do for this country,” Kennedy issued a call to action for U.S. citizens to help the country meet the challenges it faces.
“You don’t have to be a senator to hear and heed the call of service,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy likened the challenges facing the United States today to the past challenges of establishing the government, holding the Union together, overcoming the effects of the Great Depression and helping rebuild the world after World War II.
He also compared them to his early years in the Senate in the 1960s and early 1970s when Congress passed legislation to provide social justice, economic opportunity and fairness to minorities, women and senior citizens.
“None of these (acts) were easy,” he said. “Each required sustained support of private citizens.”
These times, he said, are similarly difficult.
“One challenge is our response to Sept. 11. No one has all the answers to meet this unprecedented danger,” he said. “We all have to be part of the response to this threat.”
Kennedy called for working more aggressively to help Iraq establish a broad-base government, disband private militias and meet the needs of its people.
“Another challenge we face is to make globalization work for the American people,” he said, adding that America’s 50-year domination of the world economy is slipping as other countries want their turn in the limelight.
The United States, he said, must decide if it is going to take the steps needed to succeed in the global economy, such as removing economic barriers to higher education, providing more science and math teachers, training older workers with new skills.
Part of the answer to this challenge, he said, is to make good health care available to all Americans. Not doing so is a moral failure and an economic drain.
Kennedy noted that the United States ranks 22nd in life expectancy and 25th in infant mortality. In the last five years, he said, spending on health care has increased from $1.3 to $1.9 trillion and the number of people with insurance coverage has decreased as the cost of health care has increased.
One cost-cutting method that has earned bipartisan support is using information technology to process health claims and information, he said.
How the country will address the 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the United States is another challenge, Kennedy said. Noting the positive historical impact that immigrants have had on the country, he said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 directly challenged the country’s openness.
The senator outlined the basic differences the House and Senate are taking on the current Congressional debate on immigration law and called the House approach “punitive, inhumane and unworkable.”
He characterized the Senate’s approach as a reasonableness plan, acknowledging that most of the undocumented immigrants are hard-working individuals.
Kennedy is one of more than 20 prominent leaders who have come to U of L through the McConnell Center’s speaker series. Other speakers have included Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Byrd.
