D.C.-Part 2

I just returned from a weekend in Philadelphia, but I am unfortunately still trying to catch up on my last trip to Philly. Maybe next month you will see the pictures from this weekend!

Part 2 of our trip was our visit to Capitol Hill. We were there to campaign for nuclear power and met with an energy representative from the staff of 2 state Representatives from Michigan and 1 Senator.

This was our group, all the people attending the conference from Michigan:

The most exciting part of the day was that (by coincidence) the House and the Senate were both marking up the proposed energy bill. For all you non-political experts (I had no idea what this was), this is when the Senators and Representatives sit and debate about the policies going into the bills. This session in the Senate was especially exciting because the discussion was on nuclear power, nuclear waste, and Yucca Mountain.

It got especially exciting when this guy walked in to put in his two cents:

Yes, its John McCain! I was pretty excited to see him, especially when he discussed his ideas for nuclear power. It was funny because you could tell he knew his proposed ammendments to the bill were going to be voted down anyway and he was just there for protocol. He also got in a couple Obama cracks while he was speaking which was pretty awesome.

All in all it was a great day. I had no idea the offices were so accessible and its our right as citizens of the state we live in to go into our Reps/Senators offices to speak our mind on how we would like them to represent our State. I also had no idea you could walk into live sessions of Congress and observe what was going on. It was a real learning experience and I'm so glad I have a better (less cynical) understanding of how government works.

All in all, the conference group as a whole met with 93 offices and we received a lot of feedback from people on the Hill that we were noticed and it was clear there was a lot of support that day for nuclear power on the Hill. I have a better perspective for government processes out of this, and the hope that lobbying by individual citizens can actually make a difference.

Unfortunately, cap and trade did pass in the House this week. Lets hope it doesn't make it past the Senate.