WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) spoke to the National Association of Counties’ annual Legislative Conference on Tuesday morning at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Before his election to the Senate in 2010, Senator Coons served as New Castle County Executive for six years after serving as New Castle County Council President for four years.

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When I was sworn in four months ago, someone told me that I was the first person to go straight from county government to the United States Senate since Joe Biden was elected in 1972.  I thought, wow, that’s interesting, but then we did a little research and it turns out there are at least two other county officials elected straight to the Senate since then.  One is my friend and colleague, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who had been serving as the Hennepin County Attorney.

Do you know who the other one is?  It is none other than Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican Leader.  He was the County Judge/Executive for Jefferson County.  I never realized how much Senator McConnell and I had in common!

We may now be on opposite sides of the aisle, but it wouldn’t have been inconceivable for he and I to have sat at the same table at a NACo conference years back to share ideas and best practices we’ve discovered back at home, just as so many of you have done this week.

Interestingly, I used to serve as President of the Delaware Association of Counties.  For those who are unfamiliar with our state, counties play a large role, and it only has three counties.  We used to hold meetings in my car. 

The issues facing our county leaders are not solely the concern of one party.  Republicans have to plow roads and Democrats have to keep the public safe. Both parties have a stake in making sure counties serve their residents. 

When I came to Washington, I was struck not only by the number of former county officials in the Senate, but by the number who served in local government.  Mark Begich, a Democrat, was the mayor of Anchorage, and Dick Lugar, a Republican, was the mayor of Indianapolis.  Michael Bennet was chief of staff to Denver’s mayor, and Scott Brown served on the Board of Selectmen from his hometown of Wrentham, Massachusetts. 

All of us who served in local government bring to the Senate, I think, a very practical, insider’s view of the challenges facing our country today. 

Before I go any further, I want to thank NACo President, Glen Whitley, Executive Director Larry Naake, and everyone at NACo for their hard work organizing these annual gatherings.  I am thrilled to endorse my friend, Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston, for the office of Second Vice President.  I hear she’s got a pretty good shot of winning this year.  These conferences are so important because they bring county officials together from all across the country to exchange ideas, share best practices, and hear from policy experts. 

I attended last year’s legislative conference as New Castle County Executive.  It’s been quite a year since then.  Today, I am here as the junior Senator from Delaware to share my perspective on the challenges we face as a nation and how my ten years in county government are now influencing my work in the Senate. 

I’ve seen a lot of my friends here this morning and a couple of them have asked me: “What’s it like to be a Senator?”  Well, for one thing, the offices in the Russell building are fancier than what we had in New Castle County.  The Senate chamber is definitely more ornate than the chamber over which I presided as County Council President.  But perhaps the most palpable difference for me was giving up being an executive to become a legislator again.

One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is a focus on budgeting. Much of my six years as County Executive was focused on growing the local economy and balancing the county’s $230 million budget. The federal budget last year was nearly three and a half trillion dollars. 

Despite the difference in size, the challenge we face is the same: how do we grow the economy and tackle the deficit?  A tough part of this is figuring out how to do more with less.

It’s interesting how frequently the domestic issues we debate in the Senate are issues with which county governments have been struggling for years.

Here in Washington, we need a balanced approach to cutting the deficit, just as so many of us have done in our counties.  Difficult, probably painful cuts are coming and will be necessary to get our fiscal house in order.  Each one poses a tough decision, and most will have a serious effect on county governments across the nation. 

One example of those cuts is the Community Development Block Grants.  I know many of you are concerned about the President’s 2012 budget proposal, which cuts these grants by seven and half percent.  I am concerned too.  But the House Republicans would cut it sixty-two and a half percent.  Cutting these grants would leave counties and local governments with less funding to support safe, affordable housing.  It would mean fewer local non-profits could help families that are struggling to keep food on the table and a roof overhead.  It would mean having to move resources away from other important county programs to make up for the loss. 

We’re seeing similar choices in infrastructure programs, economic development initiatives, and even our courts. Cuts to grant programs will mean less money to support community policing and community health services. 

I know all of you face similar situations in your own budgets. 

This is something that my colleagues in Washington forget all too often – that when we cut spending, the costs don’t simply disappear, they are shifted to others. The cuts we make in Washington mean higher costs for states, cities, and counties. 

Governing at the local level leaves little room for partisanship.  Your constituents expect you to work hard to help better their lives and, in doing so, to set aside political priorities and partisan bickering. While this attitude is certainly not the norm in Washington, it is reassuring that a fair number of Senators – and even more members of the House – have had practical experience at the local level and share our unique appreciation for the difficulties faced by local governments. 

Sometimes it seems to those working at the local level that federal officials govern in the abstract, leaving local officials to deal with reality. I hope I can reassure you this isn’t always the case.

Don’t get me wrong – we don’t always agree, and there are certainly policy disagreements worth fighting over. But if we are going to move forward with economic recovery, we all need to work together as partners, not adversaries, just like we did with patent reform. 

That’s a message I intend to underscore with my new Senate colleagues at every opportunity. County governments get things done because they have a way of cutting through the politics and finding the true priorities of their constituents.

There should be no higher priority than getting our economy moving again and getting more of our neighbors back to work.  I’m not simply talking about recovery.  I mean really moving again and sustaining long-term, quality jobs – the kind of economic growth that provides budget relief for county governments.

Alongside the cuts we make to the budget, we need to make strategic, long-term investments in job growth and competitiveness.  A major part of this effort must be ways to help cities and counties invest in public infrastructure and other measures to attract business investment in our communities.  America has long been the place where new ideas are born and then commercialized.  We have to continue to be the world’s idea factory and the home of its greatest innovators and entrepreneurs. 

In my maiden speech to the Senate, I called for the long-term solution to our economic ailments to be a new focus on advanced manufacturing.  To achieve this, we need investments in education, so we can once again produce the highest percentage of college graduates per capita than any other nation.  We will need investments in public infrastructure so that multinational businesses will be attracted to the ease-of-access that will, in turn, lead them to site new facilities in our communities.

Both of these, while they constitute a federal agenda, will essentially happen at the county and local levels.  It is you who will be promoting your counties to attract business development. You will be the leaders balancing county budgets and having to make tough decisions about how best to allocate resources in your jurisdictions.  And no one understands infrastructure like a county official – I’ve done the sewer pump station tours that prove it.

They say all politics is local.  I believe that growth, too, is local.

New and expanding businesses are attracted to a set of conditions that all of you have been striving to create, and part of my mission in the Senate is to do what I can to help.  My very recent experience at the helm of New Castle County provides me with a unique perspective as the Senate looks at whether to cut, modify, or expand a wide-range of important programs. 

Programs like the Build America Bonds, which have been used by many of us to fund public infrastructure projects, deserve to be revived and extended.  I think I might be the only Senator to have hands-on experience putting this bond program to use, and I will bring that experience to the debate in Congress over its future. 

Then you’ve got programs in housing and community development, like the Community Development Block Grants and the HOME Investment Partnership Program.

I am honored to serve now on the Senate Budget Committee, giving me a chance to apply many of the lessons I learned balancing the New Castle County budget. It’s also an opportunity to share those lessons with my colleagues and make sure they know about the difficult cuts many of you now face. 

Though I am no longer County Executive, I’m glad that my work with NACO hasn’t ended.  I look forward to continuing the relationships I made over the past decade and to serving as a bridge between the community of county leaders and the Senate.  Two years ago, I sat around with several of the folks in this room as we talked about a project that became the “Restore the Partnership” initiative. As a Senator, my commitment to restoring and building that partnership remains.

The work you do is critically important. Whether we succeed in our economic recovery and are able to spur long-term growth depends so much on federal, state, and local governments working together. 

I remain confident in our ability to do so.  I remain confident in our counties and the central role they continue to play serving the American people, and I remain confident that NACO will continue to be a forceful advocate for key issues as we move forward.

Thank you.

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