Thank you, Madam President.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, staff, and members of the press:
Thank you all for being here today, on the first day of the 2025 legislative session, as we gather to renew the pledge each of us made to serve the people of Iowa.
What does that pledge mean to us?
I spent the second half of 2024 crisscrossing our state, listening to Iowans.
What did I hear?
People just want a fair shot.
They want a fair paycheck for an honest day’s work.
They want to feed their families.
They want to be able to buy a house or afford their rent.
They want their children to have the best education possible.
They want support for our world-class institutions of higher education.
They want the freedom to make decisions about their lives – including their healthcare.
They want their elderly friends and relatives to be safe and well cared for in their nursing homes.
They want their kids to want to stay in Iowa.
They want clean water.
In other words, they don’t want to just get by – they want, and they deserve, an opportunity to get ahead.
I was raised by two public servants who came to Iowa to work at the then-new Veterans Administration hospital.
They taught me that our primary responsibility as elected officials is to be of service to our constituents; to work on their behalf.
My parents lived those values in our community at home – helping our neighbors, our friends, and those we didn’t know.
My dad was an amateur radio operator – there wasn’t a ham radio friend he wouldn’t help – whether in town or on a farm – I tagged along and learned.
And I still remember when he and his ham radio friends drove to Charles City to set up communications after a horrendous tornado, long before cell phones. He set an example that I’ve never forgotten.
Like my parents, we, too, are here to serve all Iowans because they are our friends and our neighbors.
As we look back on the work this chamber has done in the past eight years, can we really say it’s been done with ALL Iowans in mind? Considering each and every one as our neighbor?
If I learned anything from my 26 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, it’s that no one person and no single party has all the answers. From East Berlin to Ankara,
from Warsaw to Mexico City, in each posting, in each new country, my job was to listen and learn – to get to know people across the political spectrum and around the country to understand what the people cared about and why.
It’s no different here in Iowa.
For Senate Democrats, serving on behalf of ALL Iowans means ensuring that every Iowan can work a good job; find affordable housing; educate their kids;
and have a seat at the bargaining table – in other words, ensuring opportunity for ALL Iowa families, children, and workers.
We need to do a better job for Iowa’s workers.
They deserve a chance to earn a paycheck that supports their family and respects their hard work.
But you can’t go anywhere in this state without hearing stories about hardworking Iowans doing their best – and barely making ends meet.
Our job is to ensure they can get ahead.
Childcare remains a massive barrier to the workforce.
By making childcare more accessible and affordable, we can allow parents to enter the workforce with one less worry. Recognizing and paying childcare workers as the professionals they are will help ease that shortage as well.
We must also put an added focus on keeping our best and brightest here by treating hardworking Iowans with the dignity and respect they deserve. Wage theft and illegal employee misclassification cost thousands of Iowans millions of dollars each year. In the construction industry alone, according to a recent report from Common Good Iowa, the cost to Iowa workers is over $100 million.
That’s an astonishing lack of respect for the men and women we entrust to build our communities, and it is money that’s not being spent right here at Iowa businesses to bolster local economies.
We also need to create a better system to assist with job loss and career transition. It seems like every other day we hear about more layoffs or plant closings. We can make life better for Iowans by revisiting the 2022 changes made to Iowa’s unemployment system, making the process less bureaucratic, and providing a safety net that will give them sufficient time to find a new job and get back on their feet – as all our neighboring states do.
Iowans just want to earn a living. They just want to provide for their families.
Providing opportunity for ALL Iowans means adequately funding our public schools, which educate over 90% of our children and making our smaller and rural communities whole so all Iowa kids and education professionals can benefit from the services our Area Education Agencies provide. Our AEAs provide essential services and resources to children, families, and school districts. By restricting their funding, Gov. Reynolds has created a system that straps our smaller and rural districts and leaves them – and Iowa’s kids and families – with fewer options.
That’s not an Iowa value – it’s not helping all our neighbors.
A lack of affordable housing options is also holding Iowans back. Predatory, out-of-state private equity firms and hedge funds are gobbling up housing options and pricing Iowans out to turn a quick profit. Both our urban centers and rural towns
now lack the robust supply of affordable, middle-class housing necessary to support growing communities and workforces.
We can and we must do better.
Iowans also deserve transparent and accountable state government. That starts right here with a transparent budget process that gives all Iowans input into how their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent. Let’s return to the joint subcommittee process that existed before the pandemic. The Reynolds Administration and our state agencies must be held accountable to the taxpayers.
As more and more of our tax dollars are funneled to non-public schools, we will continue to demand they play by the same rules as our public schools, allowing for transparency and public oversight so we know where our tax dollars are going.
We can start this session with bipartisan cooperation that helps all Iowans. We can finally get our opioid settlement funds out the door with an accountable, transparent system that can save Iowans’ lives and help make families whole again.
We can tackle our state’s rising cancer rate – we have the second highest rate in the nation and the only growing rate. We all have family members, friends and colleagues who are impacted. It’s past time to tackle this problem. We have the heartwarming tradition of the wave at Hawkeye football games – but let’s do more than wave – let’s help kids and adults alike tackle cancer.
And while we’re at it – let’s clean up our water. Iowans asked for it way back in 2012 when they voted to fund IWILL. Clean water is a birthright of all Iowans, regardless of where we live. And we are charged, I believe, with leaving this state better than we found it.
My mom used to refer to the legislators who work in this building as “our employees in Des Moines.”
So, as Iowans’ employees in Des Moines, as citizen legislators who return home every week to talk with our neighbors, let’s ask ourselves the tough questions:
Are we helping Iowans feed their kids?
Are we helping to lower costs for hardworking Iowans?
Are we helping create more affordable housing options, and are we expanding the unemployment safety net?
Are we ensuring that our kids’ public schools are well funded and top notch?
Are we truly helping ALL Iowans?
It’s time to be of real service to our constituents and neighbors. As public servants, it is our job to ensure that essential rights and freedoms are guaranteed to ALL Iowans; and to create a state government that is open, transparent, and accountable to all.
Our job is to do all the good we can for as many as we can – for as long as we have the honor to be elected to serve.
Let’s get to work.
Thank you, Madam President.
