The 2006 mid-term elections that swept Democratic majorities into both houses of Congress will usher in a new political agenda for America, one based on the needs and hopes of the middle class.

I am excited and honored that voters in the 1st Congressional District of Maine have given me the opportunity to participate in this transformation. The priorities of Maine are now national priorities. I will use my enhanced position to press for changes here at home that include enacting sensible economic and health care policies; implementing energy and environmental policies that protect the earth and lessen our dependence on oil; providing secure futures for our seniors; making college affordable; broadening opportunities for our children; and insisting on fiscal discipline. In the world, I will work to end the U.S. occupation in Iraq and promote homeland and foreign policies that improve our security.

The first order of business will be to change the way Congress does its work. Integrity, civility and fairness must be restored. The next Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has assured me that one of the first legislative proposals she will put to a vote is an ethics reform package that I co-sponsored with Representatives David Obey, Barney Frank and David Price. Our measure, H. Res. 659, will eliminate abusive tactics that the Republican House leadership used to promote its agenda at the expense of representative democracy and the common good. For example, when Medicare Part D was adopted, leaders kept the voting tally open for hours to allow them to strong-arm colleagues into supporting the bill. No more. Voting will have to be completed in 20 minutes unless leaders of both parties agree otherwise. Likewise, the days of putting complex, lengthy bills to a vote without sufficient time to read, let alone analyze, its provisions, will be over. Nor will lobbyists, including former members of Congress and staff, have special access to current Members of Congress that the public cannot get. Abuses of “earmarks” – legislative provisions that direct funding to specific projects in a congressional district – will be curbed. Other changes will rein in the fiscal irresponsibility that has run rampant for the last six years.

These rule changes will help enormously, but the most important change will be in attitude. Democrats have learned from the mistakes of those we replace. We are determined to remain servants of the people, not become slaves to special interests and power for its own sake; we intend to respect minority views, not exclude them from the legislative process; we want to forge bipartisan coalitions where our values and goals are compatible, not limit the agenda to what the “majority of the majority” wants to do.

My position on the influential Energy and Commerce Committee will give me a front row position from which to develop legislation for the House floor on health care, energy, the environment and telecommunications – all issues vitally important to Maine. I expect to see the House soon adopt a proposal based on the one I first introduced in 1998 that would lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients by using the bargaining power of the federal government. Current law, in an outrageous sop to the pharmaceutical industry, bans Medicare from negotiating prices on the billions of dollars of Part D drugs dispensed to our seniors.

Whether we are able to give the American people what they want and deserve depends upon many factors, including, most significantly, the strength of the President’s commitment “to find common ground” with the Democratic-controlled Congress. I can assure you that my colleagues and I will meet him at least halfway.

Nearly a century and a half ago, as the Civil War raged, President Abraham Lincoln warned Congress that “the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew… [A]nd then we shall save our country.”

So, too, the American people in 2006 decided that in these difficult times, we must think and act anew. That, I believe, is the verdict of the midterm elections.

Together, we can save our country.

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