Thank you, and it is truly an honor and a privilege to be here today on this important Veterans Day.

Just last month I was fortunate to participate in the Civic Leadership Initiative with Keene State College. As part of the initiative, we traveled to Washington DC where we toured the Holocaust Museum and spoke with the Museum staff.

I don’t know if any you here ever toured the Holocaust Museum, but for me, what I witnessed at the Museum, I will never forget. It was an incredibly humbling and disturbing experience.

I was forced to confront acts of unspeakable horror and hatefulness.  I was forced to confront the reality of how atrocious one human being can treat another human being.  It is hard to understand or even believe that such a hateful ideology could take hold of people. But it did and millions of people suffered and died as a result.

On my way home, as I was waiting for my flight at the DC airport, a group of about 30 World War II veterans arrived at the same airport preparing to board their plane.

After what I had just seen at the museum, I was overwhelmed by emotion and respect for each one of those veterans and for their service. Their willingness to put their own lives on the line changed history, saved many innocent lives and ended a devastating war.

It is impossible to imagine what this world would be like today if these veterans had not accepted the challenge.
Where would we be today if they had not acted and stopped the genocide? Where would we be if they had not acted and stopped nations from attacking and invading their neighbors?

It is that spirit of action that we honor today. We  know that all of our veterans who served for us deserve our thank you. Today as a nation, we gather together and say “Thank You”.

I would argue though that a ‘thank you’ alone is not enough. That a commitment of action to support our soldiers is necessary – not only when they accept the challenge to serve but also when they come home.

I am proud to say that in our community we now have the Monadnock region’s first veterans’ health services facility that offers full time primary healthcare and part time mental health care. It took a tremendous amount of work and commitment from many people to bring this clinic to Keene and I would like to offer my special thank you to our US Senator Jeanne Shaheen for making the Keene Outreach Clinic possible.

We must also address the need for good jobs for our distinguished Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. As President Obama said, “We ask our American Veterans to leave their careers, leave their families, and risk their lives to fight for our country. The last thing they should have to do is fight for a job when they come home.”

I believe that it is absolutely unacceptable that those who serve our country are not given the opportunity to support themselves and their families with dignity and respect when they come home.

It is not enough to just say thank you and move on.

Real respect and honor for our veterans grows out of understanding the service they have provided for us.  I believe that it is essential that you, the veterans here today, tell us your stories.  It is also essential that we listen to you. Then your stories will become our stories and maybe, just maybe, our ability to prevent future wars will come from what we learn.

As a young girl, I often listened to my father, a WW II veteran when he told us his stories. I remember him telling us and with emotion in his voice about the Holocaust and I asked him, “Dad, how could people treat each other in such terrible ways?”  He said he did not have an answer, but he did say that “we must work every day of our lives to make sure that it never happens again.”

If we really truly care about the men and women who serve our country in the military, then Veterans Day will not end when the speeches are over.

Wherever there is a veteran – for as long as each veteran lives — that day must remain Veterans Day.

That responsibility rests with all of us.

Current law already allows for the use of deadly force in self-defense in your own home and is also justified in other situations unless an individual “knows” that he/she can escape with “complete safety”.  No individual has ever been criminally prosecuted in New Hampshire for defending themselves under such situations.

The law enforcement community in New Hampshire has lined up uniformly in opposition to SB 88.  Due to the concerns of our state’s police chiefs, troopers, sheriffs and county attorneys and my concern for the safety of our citizens, I sided with the Governor and voted to support the veto of SB 88.  However, a majority in the Senate disagreed and voted to override the veto – a measure that I feel compromises our public safety.  New Hampshire is now the safest state in the nation and I would think that we would want to remain that way.

In a more successful effort, I supported the Governor’s veto of SB 129 commonly referred to at the “Voter ID” bill.  The bill would require an individual to obtain a state-issued identification card before they could cast a ballot.  If a person did not have such an identification they could be issued a provisional ballot with the understanding that they would need to return within three days with the appropriate ID or their vote would not count.  This legislation was severely flawed.   We run the best elections in the country in NH and there is no history of voter fraud.   In fact, the town clerks association – comprised of the very individuals that carry out our elections – opposed the bill.

“We need Congress to act on the proposal put forth by President Obama tonight as quickly as possible.  While this recession didn’t start on Main Street, that has not stopped it from hurting the people who live there.

The American Jobs Act isn’t only about creating jobs today, but also about making sure that Americans are prepared for the jobs of the future. This bill contains key investments in education and training so that the students and workers of today can better compete in the global economy of tomorrow.

It is my hope that we can work in a bipartisan manner to support the President in his initiatives to grow the economy. This bill, the American Jobs Act, embraces bipartisan ideas, will not add to the deficit, and needs to be acted on quickly.”

But the House of Representatives and Senate budget as recently passed do not represent what is most valued by the people of New Hampshire: providing equal opportunity, creating new jobs and growing the economy.

A lot has been made about this year’s state budget, specifically the harsh and unwise cuts to many essential services. In the House, pleas to restore funding fell on deaf ears; and in the Senate, they listened, restored some funding but did not fund at levels that protect our most vulnerable citizens during these tough times. Putting aside the many worthy programs that this budget cuts or eliminates, this budget is simply bad for business.

According to the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, the Senate budget cuts almost $114 million from the University System of New Hampshire and almost $30 million from our community college system. By reducing our commitment to our higher educational system, we are setting off a chain reaction that would drastically alter our work force and negatively affect our economy.

New Hampshire is blessed with a well-educated work force that has helped us to maintain an unemployment rate that is almost half that of the national average throughout the current economic downturn. As we continue our economic recovery, you would think the priority in any state budget would be to strengthen our local economy and to create an environment to attract businesses and create jobs.

But the budget passed by the Senate last week does the opposite.

Right now, our community colleges are educating and training our current workers to meet the demands of our changing economy. Through my work on the Governors’ Advanced Manufacturing Educational Advisory Council, I hear from New Hampshire manufacturers almost every day that they have job openings but not enough trained workers.

Our community college programs are helping train the workers needed for these jobs and are helping to ensure that we keep the employers we have in our state and attract new businesses.

Just as New Hampshire’s community colleges are training our current work force, our university system is educating our future employers and workers. Our universities attract the brightest minds who had the privilege of growing up in New Hampshire and those from out-of-state who come here to start their career and raise a family.

But, because of these cuts, tuition will rise dramatically and force our own young people to attend another school out of state or not attend college at all.

Similarly, tuition hikes will keep students from out of state from attending our great colleges and remaining here in our state to help strengthen our work force and our economy.

Either way, these cuts stop the progress we’ve made in educating and training the workers we need to get our economy back on track and to strengthen our economy in the future.

The opportunity for a great education has always been the great equalizer. With these dangerous cuts to our university system and our community colleges, we are creating a system of have and have-nots. By increasing the cost of an education, we are ensuring that the only people who will have access to an education are those who can afford the increases in tuition.
Our young people deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, and it is our responsibility to ensure that this opportunity continues to exist.

There is no doubt, particularly here in New Hampshire, that there is a strong link between a strong educational system and a strong economy. Investing in education is the smartest and wisest investment we as a state can make, and it gives us the greatest return on our investment: a strong and productive work force that helps attract employers to our state.

So, what will we be left with here in New Hampshire? A less-educated work force that will force employers to take their businesses out of New Hampshire and turning away other good-paying jobs.

We have a responsibility to the people of New Hampshire, young and old, to sustain and grow our economy. This budget takes our economy backward, both in the short term by putting up roadblocks to train our current workers for jobs that already exist, and in the long term by hindering our ability to maintain a strong and well-educated work force.

We can do better. Going forward, the people of New Hampshire deserve a more responsible budget. And our economy needs a more sustainable budget.

This is an opportunity for anyone to come and testify prior to the Senate Finance Committee’s recommendation to the full Senate.

The member’s of the Senate Finance Committee are:

• Senator Morse, Chair
• Senator Odell
• Senator Forrester
• Senator Gallas
• Senator Barnes
• Senator Bragdon
• Senator D”Allessandro

Emails and phones #’s can be accessed by going to www.nh.gov

House Bill 39 proposes eliminating arts education, world languages, health education, and technology education that includes information and communication technologies from the state’s core curriculum standards. Local school districts choosing to offer these subjects would have to do so at their own expense, which would certainly require an increase in local property taxes. Additionally, this bill diminishes the state’s responsibility to provide an equal opportunity for a quality education for all of our students.

Not only would this proposal downshift massive costs to our local school districts and create inequality within our education system, but it would be detrimental to the growth and sustainability of New Hampshire’s economy.

Advanced manufacturing is a rapidly growing industry in New Hampshire, but it relies on an educated and trained workforce. If we eliminate information and communication technologies from our core standards, we will slide backward and lose this growing industry to other states and countries that have invested in a better-educated workforce.

Furthermore, to compete in the 21st-century economy, we must prepare our students with skills to communicate in an increasingly global world. Eliminating languages severely inhibits their chances for success in their chosen careers. By the time our students graduate from high school, many of their counterparts across the world can speak at least one if not several languages besides their native tongue. The skill of learning another language is necessary for future success, and the vast majority of four-year universities and colleges require students to have studied a foreign language in order to matriculate.

Not only do we need to ensure that we can compete nationally and globally, we need to strengthen our local economy. A study conducted by Americans for the Arts in 2009 showed that for every $1 spent on the arts, $7 was returned to the local economy. We risk losing this economic stimulus that many of our communities depend on if we shortchange arts education.

By ensuring that our students receive the best education possible, we are not only preparing the future generation for success, but we are positioning ourselves for a bright future. By maintaining high educational standards, we are investing in and strengthening our state’s economy and can attract new jobs to the Granite State.

In tough economic times there are certainly difficult decisions to make about where we spend our money, but ensuring an equal opportunity for a quality education for all New Hampshire students is essential to our success as a state.