Gabby by Gabrielle Giffords & Mark Kelly

Author:Gabrielle Giffords & Mark Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

When it came to the biggest and toughest policy issues, I watched how carefully and thoughtfully Gabby made up her mind. TARP and the stimulus package were particularly difficult votes for her. In 2008, TARP—the Troubled Asset Relief Program—was designed to strengthen the financial sector by allowing the government to buy assets and equities from financial institutions. Given her concern that the government often does a poor job spending taxpayers’ money, and that the bill didn’t have sufficient accountability measures, Gabby initially voted no. The bill failed. Then the stock market plummeted and President Bush couldn’t get enough Republican support for a new version of the bill.

Gabby knew it was a politically unpopular thing to do, but given how critical that moment was, she felt the right decision was to support the president and the house leadership in both parties. She also felt the changes in the bill had made it a better piece of legislation. If the new bill had failed, our banking system and the entire economy may have failed, too.

As a fiscal conservative, Gabby wasn’t one to vote for new spending unless the situation was dire. That’s why President Obama’s economic stimulus package in 2009 was such a difficult vote for her. It gave her sleepless nights. She collected input, pro and con, from her constituents. Then, worried about a recession or even a depression, she voted for the plan.

Like all of us, she wanted to be liked, but she wasn’t afraid to be unpopular as long as she was given a chance to make her case. And she liked the challenge of changing people’s minds.

She was repeatedly invited to speak before the Tucson Chamber of Commerce, and even though the chamber always endorsed her Republican opponents, she appreciated the opportunity to be heard by these conservative business leaders.

At one speech, near the end of her first term, she began by covering all her bases: “I am honored to be here today as a third-generation Tucsonan, a product of our public schools, a former local small-business owner, and now as your member of the United States Congress.

“Since I was elected, people keep asking me if I’m having fun yet and I never know quite what to say. The 110th Congress’s schedule is grueling, traveling home on the weekends exhausting, and my D.C. apartment is worse than my freshman dorm room in college.”

But then she talked of racing from meeting to meeting, passing reminders—a statue, a painting—of legendary Arizona lawmakers from the past. “I aspire to live up to the legacy of those who came before me,” she said, “and to set a new standard for those who will come along in the future.”

As the Chamber of Commerce audience listened, she took them on a “tour” of her district by describing people who were doing important work at places such as the VA Medical Center and Hendricks Elementary School. Gabby always had a performer’s sense of theater, and she arranged to have special people in the audience—heroes from her district she wanted to introduce.

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