Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) brought his father’s Works Progress Administration card during his final speech Friday on the Senate floor.
During the speech Harkin said that government “must not be just an observant bystander to life. It must be a force for good, for lifting people up, for giving hope to the hopeless.” He then went on to describe how one of the items he’s had on his wall next to the door he went through to go out to vote or attend a committee meeting: his father’s Works Progress Administration card.
“This: It’s my father’s WPA card,” Harkin said. “It says notice to report for work on a project, WPA form 402. It is to Patrick F. Harkin, Cuming, Iowa. You’re asked to report for work as a laborer for $40.30 per month. The date is four months to the day before I was born.”
Harkin said the card was important to him “for a lot of reasons.”
“Not only for the money and the dignity of work, but it gave my father hope, the hope that tomorrow would be better than today, that our family would stay together. We had five kids and a sixth one on the way, me. And it gave him hope that his kids would have a better future.”
.@SenatorHarkin’s father’s WPA card. pic.twitter.com/3M9LosFWMF
— Jeremy Art (@cspanJeremy) December 12, 2014
Harkin has pulled out his father’s WPA card before. A recent story about Harkin’s time on the Senate started out with an anecdote of Harkin showing the card, which Roll Call described as “a prized possession.”
And Iowans replace him with Ernst…
Fucking idiots.
Joni Ernst will be quick to show us her What Pigs Are card.
And being replaced by a member of the Party that has no respect for workers.
What a way to end a career - He voted to cut Pell Grants and give the money to loan servicers under the ignorant assumption that giving a criminal a reward will get then to do the right thing. Like he knows what that card actually represented. At least with Ernst people will know she will do what she says and screw them.
Should have stayed in the Senate and resigned so his replacement could run in a special election in 2016.
Not that it would have made a huge difference, since the GOP won seats to spare. But I still wish Harkin would have gone less on the rhetoric, and more on the practical strategy.
Quibbles aside, Iowa is losing a great man representing them in Congress. And replacing him with a psychotic twerp.