House Journal: Page 1915: Thursday, May 1, 2003
we will see if I can keep you here with me for another year. To my fellow Republican
leaders; Gene, Rod, Libby, Carmen, thank you for helping to carry the burden. Danny
and Ralph, thank you for being there when I needed you. To my former roommate of
nine years, and it was nine years Chuck, I know...I always knew it would be like this
by the way. You know, polka dot ties were never really my style, might be yours, got it
if you need it.
You know in every session, there is a turning point for each member. Something
that turns your session around. For all of you it's different. I can imagine what it was
for Representative Kurtenbach, probably when he came in and found Gipp and I and
we told him, he was crazy… to go away, and he didn't anyway. That might have been
his turning point. I want to tell you about mine. My turning point was relatively early
on, I am new in the job and I think I know what I'm doing, not really sure though, with
a lot at stake. Chuck and I are sitting around in my office one night, it was probably
about 7:00, still dark out and everybody is gone. In walks a guy by the name of Jan
Schuiteman. He wanted to talk to us about crazy ideas. Got these genetically altered
cows, growing something called human serum albumen in the cows milk that you can
use for medical purposes. Replacing the cows antibody system with human antibody
system... why is that important? Because you can create vaccines. They are doing that
with a cow. That was a turning point for me in this session. Because that opened my
eyes about the potential that we have in this state. I am not an Ag guy, I'm a city kid.
I actually got to go up and pet those cows. It's like a poem… "I petted a cow." But to
me, that crystallized the possibilities that we have in Iowa. You know we are a state
that's dependent upon low price commodities. We try to add value to them and we are
doing a good job. We are running them through livestock. But here is a whole new
kind of potential, real value added agriculture. Bio-technology, something I read
about. I figured bio-tech was something they could do at UC Berkley or MIT. We can
do that here in Iowa. That should be our future. And that became clear to me that
night in those discussions and in the weeks that followed. Iowa has hope. We have
reason to give our children in this state hope for their future. It is going to take some
risks, and we took some of that risk last night, but we don't have to be satisfied in this
state with having more deaths than births in some of our counties or continuing to
export our best product, which is our children. We can give our young people some
hope. We can change the future of this state. We can chart a better course. We can do
business differently. It's about taking risks and we haven't been afraid to do that. It
took a lot of work Representative Hoffman, thank you for sticking with me all session
long, keeping me from sliding off when I was getting a little concerned. But that was a
turning point for me this session. And I think, I hope, because of the actions we took
last night, and I got dedicated to those actions, because of what I saw occurring at a
place called Trans Ova, in place called Hull, Iowa. I think that can be a turning point
for this state because of the actions that we took, this chamber took. I hope you had an
equally good turning point this session.
You know my favorite Roosevelt once said, "It is through labor and painful effort by
grim energy and resolute courage that we move into better things." Ladies and
gentlemen of the House, with that as our standard we had a "bully" of a year. Thank
you for the opportunity to be your Speaker. God bless and have a good summer.
ADOPTION OF SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 21
Gipp of Winneshiek asked and received unanimous consent for
© 2003 Cornell College and
League of Women Voters of Iowa
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