Illinois
COMMENTARY

Visits from real folks invaluable to policymakers

My work is in Washington; my home and my heart are in Illinois, in Yorkville. I go there as often as I can because that's where most of my friends are. Friends often come to visit me in Washington.

Nearly 3,000 rural electric folks came to Washington recently to talk politics and legislation ... and about what's going on back home.

Rep J. Dennis Hastert

We always spend a little bit of time talking about what's happening back home, about crops, about weather, about highways and high schools.

And, invariably, my friends from Illinois have some other things to talk about: politics and legislation, rural America and rural electric co-ops, and how they all interrelate.

This is an important dialogue that we need to foster and maintain. And, I know with absolute confidence that I speak on behalf of all members of the House and Senate.

Politics is the process of arriving at consensus. Consensus in our form of government requires the participation of people with ideas and commitment to a cause. Coming to consensus is never an easy or clear-cut process. One has to constantly balance the good of the whole against the good of the few, the benefit to the nation against the benefit to the West, or the East, or the Midwest.

And that's why I like — why members of the House of Representatives like — our friends to come calling.

These are real folks. These are the men and women who work in the fields, whatever and wherever those fields might be — farms, dot.coms, schools, stores, factories, or rural electric co-ops. They know and understand what's going on. They know from firsthand experience how the economy is doing without having to rely on the Dow-Jones or S-P Index to tell them.

When Earl Struck, president and CEO of the Association of Illinois Electric Co-ops, and his Illinois co-op directors come to visit, I know I'm going to get the straight, unvarnished picture. When Glenn English of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association comes to visit, I expect, and get, the same. I respect these individuals, and I appreciate what they tell me.

These are valuable and valued interchanges we have when the rural electric people come to Washington. This is what the Fathers of our democracy envisioned: a citizenry willing and able to articulate concerns with those elected to tend to some of the business of government.

The annual visit of electric cooperative leaders to Washington marks two very important, converging events: spring, and the promise that spring brings every year—regeneration, not only of the nature around us, but also of the vital political energy that makes us, and that makes America, who we are and what we can be.

Rep. J. Dennis Hastert is Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and represents Illinois' 14th District. Rep. Dennis Hastert rose to his position as Speaker of the House from the cornfields of Illinois. Born in Aurora, he grew up in Oswego and earned degrees from Wheaton College and Northern Illinois University. After 16 years of teaching and coaching at Yorkville High School, he served in the Illinois House of Representatives for six years before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986. In 1999, Hastert's colleagues honored him by electing him Speaker of the House, the third highest elected official in the U.S. government.

Speaker Hastert is now serving his second term as Speaker and his eighth term as the Republican Congressman for Illinois 14th Congressional District. dh.astert@mail.liouse.gov, www.house.gov/haset.

The opinions and views of guest commentators are their own and may not represent those of the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives or the electric co-ops of Illinois.

4 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING AUGUST 2001