If the GOP is serious about wanting to find solutions, if they insist that Democrats compromise, we must hold the GOP to the same standard and insist they also compromise. Renew the ACA credits and reverse their draconian regulations on SNAP benefits.

I will continue to use the power I have as a leader in this party to push our elected officials to do better and I will be lobbying my GOP congressman to do better.

So if you’re wondering what the next step is; I encourage you if you live in a district represented by a Republican; keep called and demand the ACA subsidies are renewed. Demand they restore full programs like SNAP. It’s up to us who live in GOP districts to pressure them to serve us.

We had an opportunity to use the momentum for last week’s election results to deliver for people and we failed and for what? A vote that we know we we are going to lose? When we could have provided real solutions to help people? When we could have run on our success rather than GOP failure?

I hope that my one voice as a member of the DNC will be one that helps people by helping our electeds have the courage to do the right thing. This shutdown was a hostage negotiation. People will be paying more for their insurance than their mortgage. People will still go hungry.

So many people need us to stand against the greed that says people must choose between healthcare and food. We failed. We had momentum, despite the harm to and struggle of the least powerful; to deliver some help and we failed. We need elected officials willing to sacrifice their jobs to help people

I know I can never pay back all those people whose names and stories I will never know; all those people who invested in me throughout my life. I can only pay it forward so someone else whose name and story I will never know can also have the opportunities I had.

They didn’t know that by doing their job, they literally and figuratively held the door to America open that night for two little orphans to come in from the storm and home to their family. My life is possible because so many people did their small part to make life easier for someone else.

Hundreds of workers did their job even though they probably wanted to just get out of the storm and go home to their families. They kept the runway clear and the airport running.

1/18/1980 brought a snowstorm to Minneapolis and the airport authority wanted to shut down the airport. My parents; a public school teacher and a farmer begged the authority to keep the airport open for one last flight to land.

My coming to America story is the story of an America I believe in and that I believe still exists.

I’m an immigrant, adopted in 1980. I know that being born a girl child to a poor family in Asia in the 1970s; my life could have been very different.

Also, who’s President now? Exactly who does he think should do something now?