Category: Aoife Connors
New Hampshire Delegation Reacts to Obama’s Budget
Photos by Caroline Bridges
BudgetNH
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors and Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 26, 2009
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire lawmakers divided sharply Thursday over President Barack Obama’s budget proposals for next year and for the long term.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, led the Republican assault on the budget at a press conference with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee.
“I have some severe reservations about where this budget is taking us, and the issue really comes down to this: where’s the restraint in spending?” Gregg asked.
“This budget doubles the debt of the federal government in five years, triples the debt of the federal government in 10 years, builds up obviously massive deficits over this period, and never really gets us back to a point where we’re on a glide path toward getting control over the costs that we’re passing on to the next generation,” he said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., on the other hand, praised Obama’s announced goal of cutting in half the $1.75 trillion deficit by 2013. “I think we’ve got to work very hard to address the debt and the deficit,” she said, because “it’s not in the country’s interest to continue to carry the kind of debt and deficits that we’ve inherited from the last administration.”
“I think it’s positive that the president has made a commitment to try and reduce the deficit in half by 2013,” Shaheen said.
But Gregg slammed Obama’s promise to cut the deficit in half, saying a $500 billion deficit would still be left. If the budget kept to the current spending baseline, he said, the deficit would drop to about $150 billion in the same time.
“It’s like you take four steps back and then only take two steps forward,” he said. “We’re taking four steps back in the deficit fight and then we’re only taking two steps forward in the deficit fight, when if you were just to stay on the basic course you’re on, you could take three steps forward.”
Gregg expressed concern that tax increases would put a heavy burden on small-business owners.
But Shaheen, who visited 30 New Hampshire small businesses last week, said: “I’m not sure what context Sen. Gregg was talking about taxing small businesses. I certainly am going to work to address their tax rates and do everything I can to make sure small businesses get the support they need.”
While Republicans slammed Obama for proposing to raise taxes in a recession, U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., said middle-class families would not see a tax hike.
“He’s keeping a commitment and a promise for the middle class; there is no tax increase for them,” she said. “This country needs revenue. I think it’s perfectly fair to expect those who earn the most to pay their fair share. There is no tax increase for about 95 percent of this country.”
She added,. “No matter what people in Washington say– Republican leaders in Washington– President Obama went around this country, spoke to millions of Americans, spoke about his plans that are reflected in this budget, and Americans said ‘yes’ and voted for him.”
Gregg said the budget was a missed opportunity to make Social Security fiscally solvent for the next 50 years and achieve Medicare reform.
“If we did those two things jointly in a bipartisan way, we would create a massive amount of confidence in the American people,” he said.
“I would have liked to see a pathway to get Social Security reform along the lines of Conrad-Gregg,” a plan he and Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., have developed calling for a commission to study entitlement spending, Gregg said after the news conference.
Gregg said he saw promise in the budget’s plan to apply income standards for premium payments to the Medicare drug subsidy program and its proposal to cut subsidies for some large farms.
The president’s proposed “down payment” on health care reform is described in the budget as costing $634 billion, but Gregg estimated that it would truly cost more than $1 trillion.
But Shaheen insisted that “we’ve got to address our health care system if we’re going to get this economy going right again in the long term.”
While Americans pay more for health care than do citizens of most industrialized nations, Shaheen said, “we’re getting poorer outcomes on many things,” a sentiment Gregg also expressed.
Gregg said it was possible to reform health care without additional costs.
“When you’re spending 17.5 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] on health care … you’ve got a lot of money in the system, and that money should just be allocated in a more efficient way,” he said.
Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H, said in a statement that he looked forward to working with the president and other members of Congress to make “critical decisions to create more jobs; reinvest in health care, alternative energy and education; and work to cut the deficit.”
The budget requires scrutiny, Hodes said, “to make sure we are not spending billions on wasteful government programs that won’t create jobs, rebuild our economy and improve America’s stature throughout the globe.”
As for where the budget that Republicans plan to introduce would get its money, Gregg cited entitlement cuts.
“Let me quote a sage, [bank robber] Willie Sutton: you go where the money is,” Gregg said. “The money is in entitlements. Almost all the cost of the growth of the federal government is driven by entitlement spending.”
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Bernanke Says 2010 Will be Year of Recovery; Hodes Agrees
Hodes Finance
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb. 25, 2009
WASHINGTON - Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, declared Wednesday that “2010 will be a year of recovery,” while testifying at House Committee on Financial Services hearing on monetary policy and the state of the economy.
The outlook for economic activity is subject to considerable uncertainty, Bernanke said, “but there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009.”
Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H, a member of the committee, agreed. “I believe we are heading towards that point at which the downward curve flattens out, and I do think that we will begin to feel that in 2009 so that in 2010 we will begin a period of slow and hopefully steady recovery,” Hodes said in an interview after the hearing.
Hodes said Bernanke “didn’t lay out anything startlingly new.”
Bernanke presented a dismal outlook by stating that the national unemployment rate has already risen to 7.6 percent and that the Fed expects the rate to increase to 8.5 percent by the fourth quarter of the year.
Consumer price inflation’s drop to almost zero, Bernanke said, was caused by “the substantial declines in the price of energy and other commodities last year.”
Hodes said he expects inflation will remain at almost zero “with the downward pressure on prices and spending projected.”
Keeping a close eye on the inflation rate when recovery begins will be necessary, Hodes said, so that inflation “does not rob struggling families of the benefits of the recovery to come.”
Hodes agreed with Bernanke’s view “that investment by the federal government in the economic and jobs program, as well as the actions taken to stabilize the financial system, are necessary in the current climate.”
The Federal Reserve is taking significant steps to address the credit crunch, Hodes said, “that should help middle-class families struggling in New Hampshire, particularly the new programs aimed at freeing up credit for education loans, student loans and programs aimed at freeing up the mortgage market.”
The deteriorating job market, losses of equity and housing wealth and tight lending conditions are the key sources of the rapid decline, Bernanke said. These “have weighed down consumer sentiment and spending.”
Bernanke told the committee “the principal cause of the economic slowdown was the collapse of the global credit boom” and the “ensuing financial crisis.”
The difficulty in obtaining credit is as a result of a significant drop in domestic spending and slumping exports “as our major trading partners fell into recession,” Bernanke said.
One of the risks to recovery, he said, arises from the global nature of the slowdown. “Global growth turned negative for the first time in 25 years.” This, he said, directly affects U.S. exports and financial stability.
Rep. Hodes said “the chairman of the Federal Reserve presented a sober and realistic assessment of where we are and where he sees us going.”
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President Speaks to Joint-Session of Congress
NH REACT
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
February 24, 2009
WASHINGTON—President Obama expressed confidence Tuesday night that the nation will weather the current crisis and end up economically healthier than before.
Speaking to a joint session of Congress, Obama said, “I want every American to know this: we will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
The President promised that “the weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation.” He said the answers to our problems lie “in our laboratories and universities, in our fields and our factories, in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on earth.”
He added that “what is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face and take responsibility for our future once more.”
Obama’s speech came only hours after Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that the recession could end this year, with 2010 being “a year of recovery.
Earlier in the day, Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H) invited Capt. Daniel McCarroll from Jaffery to attend the President’s address from the visitors’ gallery of the House of Representatives.
“I am honored to invite Capt. McCarroll to represent the New Hampshire National Guard at this important address before Congress,” Hodes said.
McCarroll, he said, led “the youngest group of soldiers the New Hampshire National Guard has ever deployed into a challenging area of southeast Baghdad.”
“This is a serious time in our nation’s history,” Hodes said. He added that he expected the President to address “how we will face down this economic crisis by making wise investments for the future but doing it in a fiscally responsible way.”
He added tjhat Obama was likely “to strike a serious tone to match the times but also a hopeful assessment of how America will get through this economic crisis.” This and the previous graph should be replaced with post-speech quotes.
Reps. Hodes and Shea-Porter Call for Additional Home-Energy Assistance
Photos by Caroline Bridges
LIHEAP
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb 11, 2009
WASHINGTON—New Hampshire Democratic Reps. Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter joined other members of Congress Wednesday in a last-minute push to include $1 billion in the economic stimulus legislation for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
The $820 billion House version of the stimulus package included $1 billion for the program The Senate $838 billion version excluded funds for the energy aid program, widely known by its acronym, LIHEAP.
Hodes said that the $1 billion he and his colleagues were seeking included an additional $8 million for New Hampshire.
“Given the financial burdens of the terrible situation in our economy, this money is especially important for New Hampshire and the residents of the Northeast who are battling with a cold and snowy winter,” Hodes said.
Speaking after the Wednesday briefing, Hodes said “we are hopeful” that the House and Senate conferees on the package would restore the money that the Senate bill did not include.
“Carol Shea-Porter and I have been so outspoken about LIHEAP for I think so long now that they call us Mr. and Mrs. LIHEAP. When [House Majority Leader] Steny Hoyer sees us coming, he goes, ‘Oh no! Here come Mr. and Mrs. LIHEAP!’” Hodes said
“It is unimaginable to me that the Senate did not include $1 billion for LIHEAP in this recovery package,” he said. Calling on the conferees to include the $1 billion in the final bill, Hodes said, “It has to be in there, and we’re going to keep fighting to make sure its there.”
Shea-Porter said, “I’m astounded that it is not included because all of the senators obviously have constituents that cannot afford to pay for their heating bills and their cooling bills.”
If the LIHEAP funds are not included, she said, “there’ll be another fight and we’ll put it in the appropriations bill and the fight will go on. But it’s an argument that we shouldn’t have to have, and I don’t understand why this is a political issue; this is a necessity.”
In December, ice storms left almost 60 percent of New Hampshire homes without power. Hodes said this “caused terrible permanent damage,” and the $6 billion in repair costs, he said, are going to be passed onto the consumers.
He added that the LIHEAP money is absolutely critical for New Hampshire and low- income families everywhere.
“I have every faith that we will come to the conclusion that this is something that every American public think is worthy to spend on, to ensure that people are warm or properly cool,” Shea-Porter said.
Last year 35,000 families benefited from LIHEAP funds in New Hampshire. “Those are the families who came forward and asked for the assistance,” Shea-Porter said. Many families had to make difficult choices, Shea-Porter said, “for example not paying for prescriptions because they had to pay for their heat or letting themselves fall behind in rent or mortgage because they had to pay for heat.”
If the stimulus bill omits LIHEAP funds, Hodes said, “we’re going to keep fighting this fight every day, even when it is warm, we’re going to remind people that’s the time we need to be thinking about the winter that’s coming.”
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Hodes Supports Federal Reserve Actions
HODES FSC
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb 10, 2009
WASHINGTON—Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) said Tuesday that the collapse of the housing market and the increasing foreclosure crisis were the triggers of the country’s financial problems and that he was pleased to see that Treasury and the Federal Reserve were moving to handle the problem.
“I have long been extremely concerned that issues around the housing market, especially the foreclosure crisis, were not only the triggers for our problems but have not had the attention devoted to them that is needed,” Hodes said after listening to testimony by Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, before the House Financial Services Committee.
The Fed’s efforts to help the housing market, together with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s new plan to rescue the banking system will, “hopefully combine in a coordinated way to begin to effectively deal with the foreclosure crisis, which I think is very important” Hodes added.
Bernanke announced that the Fed and Treasury have developed a facility “that will lend against AAA-rated asset-backed securities” derived from “student loans, auto loans, credit card loans and loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.”
Hodes, who is a member of the committee, said he supported this new credit facility and hoped “it will help to unfreeze credit for mainstream, something that we have not seen happen despite the application of billions of dollars of TARP [Troubled Assets Relief Program] money so far.”
But Bernanke cautioned the committee that “providing liquidity to financial institutions does not directly address instability or declining credit availability.”
He said the Fed also plans to buy $100 billion of the debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other government-sponsored enterprises.
Speaking after the hearing, Hodes said “the efforts by the Federal Reserve to set up a credit facility that will deal with buying debt of government-sponsored agencies will help to keep mortgage rates lower and support housing activity and the broader economy.”
Bernanke told the committee the Federal Reserve has employed three additional tools to improve the functioning of credit markets and to support economic activity: auctioning of short-term credit, reducing the cost of capital to banks and lowering some interest rates on adjustable-rate mortgages.
Hodes said he was heartened to hear that the Fed is actively continuing to develop innovative credit facilities to try to ease credit, including facilities that help stabilize the liquidity and, hopefully, the solvency of banks.
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New Hampshire Would Benefit From Obama’s Stimulus Plan
Summers
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Feb 4, 2009
WASHINGTON – New Hampshire families will do well under President Obama’s stimulus bill, National Economic Council director Lawrence H. Summers said Wednesday.
Some 590,000 workers and their families in the state are set to benefit from a new tax cut; worth $1,000, Summers said in a press briefing for northeastern reporters.
On the education front, he said, affordable college for 9,000 families in New Hampshire is to become a reality with the new tax credit.
In addition, National Economic Council officials said, the stimulus bill includes sufficient funds to modernize 28 schools in New Hampshire.
Summers said “the tax cut will be a credit that will be given against payroll taxes.”
He said it “will basically be given at a 12 percent rate up to the first $8,000 of family income; so if a family makes even $10,000, they will get the full $1,000 credit and the credit will also be refundable.”
This stimulus program will include the largest investment in the backbone of the American economy, Summers said, particularly “in our basic infrastructure: roads, transit, broadband, schools.”
Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) said in an interview Wednesday, “I don’t like everything about it; some of it is well-intentioned but it’s not stimulus.”
She added that she was “concerned about the price tag,” and contended that that “our goal with the stimulus is to reduce unemployment rates.”
Shea-Porter said “this will happen because the stimulus money will be used for building infrastructure, and this will create jobs in New Hampshire.”
The President’s plan projects that over the next two years 16,700 jobs are to be created in New Hampshire, with the majority in the private sector, particularly in the clean energy and health care industries.
But Shea-Porter said, “We are actually hoping for 22,800 jobs.”
She added that “the stimulus is targeted at the average American; it will give people a little more money that can be spent in the community and support small businesses.”
Summers, at a press briefing Tuesday, said, “I believe this bill is imperative for our economic security and I expect the bill to be signed into law.”
He added that “the stimulus will meet the President’s promise of a tax cut for all working families; 95 percent of Americans, and represents one of the largest increases in history in support for higher education, both through an expansion in the Pell program [for college students] and in expansion in the tax credit,” Summers said.
Shea-Porter said “$38 million will be allocated to schools throughout New Hampshire.”
Nationally, Summers said, “10,000 schools will be modernized with the kind of laboratories that our kids need to compete, the kind of computer technology necessary if our young people are to grow up and succeed in the new economy.”
Affordable college for 9,000 families in New Hampshire is to become a reality with the new American Opportunity Tax Credit, Summers said. “You know I’ve been surprised by some of the criticisms. I look at increased Pell grants [which have been criticized]. And I see families that don’t have to sell their houses to send their kids to college and I see families that don’t have to cut back on other spending to send their kids to college.”
Rep. Shea-Porter said, “I am very happy about the tax credit to make college affordable; we have to protect the middle class, and it is essential that we help support these families to put their kids through college.”
Summers added that 75 percent of the bill’s funds would be spent in the next 18 months and that “a Web site will be available in which every project can be tracked.”
The $100 a month in additional jobless benefits, Shea-Porter said, would “help families buy the baby formula or pay their heat; I wish we could give more because the worse thing that could happen to a family is losing employment.”
“We are facing what is almost certainly the most severe economic crisis since the great depression,” Summers said. “Last year 2.6 million jobs were lost, the most in American history. The pace of job loss is accelerating. We inherited for the first time in our country’s history a deficit in excess of a trillion dollars this year.”
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Gregg Calls for Stimulus to Focus on Increasing Real Estate Value
HOUSING
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 28, 2009
WASHINGTON—The economic stimulus package “should be about keeping the value in people’s home,” Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H) said Wednesday, complaining that the Obama administration’s bill falls short of that goal.
“I am disappointed that the stimulus initiatives which we’re seeing so far…do not address in a more aggressive and robust way the issue of real estate prices and how we keep people in their homes and how we reduce foreclosures,” Gregg said at a hearing on the federal response to the housing and financial crisis by the Senate Budget Committee, where he is the senior Republican.
Foreclosures allow lenders to repossess a property to cover the cost of the outstanding mortgage.
There was a 1.13 percent rate of foreclosures in New Hampshire in 2008, lower than the national rate of 1.84 percent. But the foreclosure rate rose significantly from the 2007 figure of 0.21 percent in New Hampshire and 1.03 percent nationally. In 2006, there was a 0.02 percent foreclosure rate in New Hampshire and 0.58 percent in the United States.
“The biggest thing that is causing the economic problem,” Gregg said in an interview after the hearing, “is the price of real estate; a lot of people can't afford their mortgages and so people have lost confidence because they can't afford to pay for their homes.”
He added that he supported a proposal by Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the committee, to give what Gregg called “significant” income tax credits to homebuyers.
“We need stimulus badly,” Gregg said, “but we need it in the right places…. The problem is to get some value in the real estate market so that we can give people confidence again.”
He added: “If we can stabilize real estate values it will result in two things: it will restabilize the financial industry and put confidence back in people in the value of their homes.”
Gregg said he agrees with Douglas Elmendorf, the new director of the Congressional Budget Office, who testified at the hearing. Elmendorf’s comment that “we should address the housing problem first in a stimulus … reinforces my own view,” Gregg said.
“There is another proposal under which the federal government, for 18 months to two years, would give many homeowners the opportunity to have a 30 year mortgage at a rate of around 4 percent. This would give people the opportunity to rewrite their mortgages to an affordable level and put value back into real estate” Gregg said.
He noted that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is pursuing a proposal” to help people meet and rewrite their mortgages.”
Gregg told the committee he was “concerned that so much of the stimulus package is really outside the next two years..., and that’s not good. We’d like to get this money out the door sooner.”
Gregg added: “We’re in crisis, people are sober, there’s a sense of community here that often doesn’t exist in the Congress. There’s a willingness to work across the aisle, so let’s move on that issue right now while the iron is hot and we can get things done and there’s a good will to do that.”
He expressed praise for President Obama “for stepping up and saying he intends to do that.”
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Ledbetter Bill: Gregg Votes No, Shaheen Votes Yes
LEDBETTER
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 27, 2009
WASHINGTON – The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, passed Tuesday by the House and last week by the Senate, is the first legislation to be sent by Congress to the White House since President Obama was inaugurated.
The act “recognizes that if people are doing the same job they should each be getting equal pay,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who voted for the bill when it passed the Senate last Thursday 61-36.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. voted against the bill. In a statement to the Union Leader on Tuesday, Gregg said while the act “is well-intentioned, it will be a boon for trial lawyers and will drive up litigation costs while driving out many small businesses from the marketplace.”
Gregg said, “The Ledbetter bill means a wage discrimination lawsuit can be filed regardless of how far in the past the original act of discrimination occurred or when the individual should have first discovered the discriminatory practice.”
The bill overturns the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that made it harder for U.S. citizens to bring a pay discrimination case to court. The decision restricted the time period in which victims of discrimination could sue employers for pay inequity to 180 days after the discrimination first took place, rejecting the argument that each paycheck was a violation of the law.
Lilly Ledbetter a supervisor for 19 years at Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Gadsden, Ala., sued the company after discovering a large gap in her salary and that of her male colleagues doing the same job.
The act will restore the legal guarantee that every discriminatory paycheck constitutes a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Employees will have 180 days to file their charges from the day they receive a discriminatory paycheck.
In the early ‘60s, fair pay legislation was passed in this country, Shaheen said. “As we saw in the Lilly Ledbetter Supreme Court case, it didn’t prevent some companies from treating women differently to men, when it comes to pay.”
She said when she chaired a women’s committee in New Hampshire in the ‘80s “for every dollar a man received a woman received 59 cents.” Today, she said, a woman earns 77 cents for every dollar a male employee receives.
“You should have an opportunity for redress if you are discriminated against,” Shaheen said.
Sen. Gregg said, “It is due to this unprecedented and open-ended approach, and not to my unwillingness to address the issue of discrimination, that I could not support the Ledbetter bill as it was written.”
The House passed the legislation 250-177 with Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., voting for it along with every House member of the New England delegation.
Last year the House passed similar legislation but it was blocked in the Senate by Republicans and the Bush White House threatened to veto the bill if it passed.
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New Hampshire and South Carolina celebrate at Grits and Granite Ball
Gritsandgranite
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen and Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 21, 2009
WASHINGTON – What do grits and granite have in common? An unofficial inaugural ball, it turns out.
The New Hampshire Democratic Party and the South Carolina Democratic Party partnered to throw the Grits and Granite Ball Tuesday night at the Officers' Club at Fort Myer, Va., celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
The ball, organized because the two state parties have bonded over their early presidential primaries, drew about 1,500 people from South Carolina, where grits are a breakfast food staple, and New Hampshire, the Granite State.
“I think as partners, as has been mentioned, we’ve really been able to set the tone for the way the presidential primary process should be,” said New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch. “Because of our partnership, not only do we help to make the candidates better candidates, but hopefully help to make them better presidents of the United States.”
The ball was not one of the official inaugural balls, sanctioned by the Presidential Inaugural Committee and attended by the Obamas. Guests spent the evening listening to an array of different musical performers and moving from room to room in the spacious Officers’ Club. Politicians and state residents also tasted a variety of hot and cold dishes, including a large wild salmon, and hand-made desserts.
U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the House majority whip, said Obama’s victory would allow “all of our children to believe with sincerity that they can grow up and be anything that they want to be.”
“I used to tell my students that when I taught school, and quite frankly, I didn’t really believe it when I was saying it. But I believe it now,” he said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., told the crowd about her own personal connection to South Carolina: her oldest grandson was born there while Shaheen’s daughter was studying law and her son-in-law was serving in the Air Force.
She also spoke about attending a dinner Monday night and sitting next to a member of the Nigerian parliament.
“We were talking about the election, and he said to us, ‘Only in America. This election reinforced for those of us around the world what we always believed about America.’ And for me, I felt exactly the same way,” she told the crowd.
The mood at the ball was jovial and victorious.
U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter said that while South Carolinians knew Clyburn as their hard-working member of Congress, she knew the majority whip best for his way of getting Democrats to the floor to vote.
“He’s the one who brings the good food in and bribes us to show up,” she said.
She ribbed Clyburn for his propensity to explain Southern food to other representatives, and added that she would not be taking any New Hampshire cuisine to the House of Representatives.
“Lobster costs a little bit more than grits,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., praised Obama’s inauguration speech.
“Our president is a philosopher and a poet who is able to speak in ways that inspire all the citizens of America and the world to action, to join together, to rise to the challenges that this century poses,” Hodes said.
Ray Buckley, the chair of the state Democratic Party, noted throughout the night the prevalence of women in New Hampshire’s congressional delegation and state legislature.
“I think what’s important for New Hampshire is that everybody ran not as a woman, not talking about issues that affect women, but recognizing that issues that affect women are issues that affect everybody, and that we’re there to represent, to try and make a difference for the people of New Hampshire,” Shaheen said.
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Crowds Converge on Washington for Inauguration; Some With Tickets Turned Away
Tuesday Wrap
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors and Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 20, 2009
WASHINGTON – Among the almost 2 million people who packed the nation’s capital for the swearing-in of President Barack H. Obama, New Hampshire residents could be found in most corners of the city: they were on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, on the grass of the National Mall, and on the congested city streets.
“This transcends gender and race and culture. I can’t get over the experiences I’m having with people on the street,” said Ann McLane Kuster, 52, from Hopkinton. “Relating to people without artificial barriers about your race, or your gender, or your age, or your socioeconomic background.”
Kuster, an attorney and partner with Rath, Young and Pignatelli in Concord who volunteered on the Obama campaign and transition team, waited two and a half hours in a crowd outside a security gate that never opened, before turning around and finding another gate. But witnessing the swearing-in was worth the confusion, she said.
Kuster recalled escorting Obama through Concord two years ago on a campaign trip.
“I have been working my heart out for him since,” she said. “And it all seems so improbable, and there were so many highs and lows when I never thought it would happen or could happen, and here we are. It’s just so extremely emotional.”
Some people with inauguration tickets were turned away. David Reudig, 60, from Concord, waited in line for hours with a ticket to a seating area on the Capitol grounds.
Ruedig needed only one word to explain why he decided to brave the crowds and the cold for the inauguration: “Obama.”
“I’m ready to be done with Bush,” he added.
But with only minutes to go until the start of the inaugural ceremony, Reudig was still in line, behind thousands of others who had crowded in front of security screening gates.
“I wish I could get in there,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”
He decided, with moments to spare, to leave the line and find someplace else to watch the swearing-in.
New Hampshire state Rep. Phil Preston, 70, from Ashland, watched the speech from a spot on the National Mall, near the Washington Monument.
“My initial reaction to Obama’s speech was very positive, it was uplifting, he gave an optimistic appraisal of America’s ability to deal with adversity and problems,” Preston said. “I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and responsiveness of the crowd.”
Preston was interested in the way the crowd expressed their feelings about each politician in attendance.
“When ex-presidents Jimmy Carter and Clinton walked out there was warm enthusiasm, but when the first George Bush arrived the response was polite and neutral. The second George Bush got boos from the crowd, but when Obama arrived at the podium, the crowd went wild,” Preston said.
“The crowd was very pro-Obama and anti-Bush and they expressed that. Some people said after [Vice President Joe] Biden had been sworn in ‘one down, one to go.’ It’s too bad that those sentiments had to be expressed,” Preston added.
Other Democrats from New Hampshire were also on hand in Washington to witness the momentous occasion.
"I am humbled to have witnessed the swearing-in of our 44th president, surrounded by so many dedicated New Hampshire volunteers and elected officials,” New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley said in a statement. “President Obama represents the possibility of the American dream, and he will work every day to expand the availability of that dream until all Americans can lay claim to it. This is democracy at work, and at its best."
Roy Swain, 54, from Westmoreland, watched the inauguration from the packed National Mall. He said that after campaigning hard for Obama, “I thought I couldn’t miss it.”
“It’s just incredible just to be part a part of it,” he said. “It’s just a great feeling of finally turning the country around, putting us in the right direction.”
And some, like Roger Lessard, chairman of the Democratic Committee in Hillsborough County, watched the historic event from the comfort of their own homes in New Hampshire.
“The cat was curled up at my computer desk. When I applauded as Obama was sworn in, the cat jumped up startled! When she realized there was nothing to be alarmed about, she settled down and curled up again,” said Lessard.
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