One of the nice things about America is how the mightiest of our hard-working elected officials make themselves available at events like Fourth of July parades to hear the concerns of ordinary citizens like me. That's what happened on Wednesday at the parade in Wheaton, Illinois.
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The Wheaton Fourth of July parade is the biggest in DuPage County, which is located twenty-five miles due west of Chicago. Henry Hyde is from DuPage County and he is a leading member of the United States House of Representatives. I met with Congressman Hyde for about five minutes in the VIP staging area before the start of the parade. He and I have had a friendly relationship for many years. No, we're not buddies or personal friends, but we know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis. He's always very polite, kind and cordial, which is half of why he has been successful in getting re-elected for many years. The other half of why he gets re-elected is that the majority of his constituents agree with his position on the issues.
During my meeting with Congressman Hyde, I told him about my concern regarding seat belts on busses, particularly school busses, and about my new organization, We Need Seat Belts. I also told him that there had been two more catastrophic crashes in just the previous four days, in Colorado and Nevada, and described those. I asked Henry if he would please consider intervening in regards to my efforts to get national legislation enacted to require 3-point seat belts on busses. Henry's first response was to suggest that this sounded like an issue for the fifty states to address individually. I replied that, in my conversations with school district, municipal and state officials, they all said that they only require busses to meet federal standards, so if I wanted to see seat belts on busses, getting federal legislation enacted was really the best way to go.
Congressman Hyde concurred that the issue merited looking into. I gave him my business card from We Need Seat Belts, and Henry promised to have someone from Washington get back to me soon on this.
Congressman Hyde did not endorse a position on whether three-point seat belts should be mandated for all busses. Rather, he indicated that he would have somebody in Washington contact me about the issue to begin the process of determining if a change of national policy should be considered.
On a related matter, Senator Peter Fitzgerarld (R-IL) proposed legislation, yesterday, to require booster seats for children between the ages of 4 and 8. Peter and I have a similar first-name-basis relationship. I spoke with Peter at that same parade on Wednesday to invite him to be a guest on my radio show. He expressed positive interest in doing the show. When he does appear on the show, I'll ask him to be the leader on the Senate side for getting 3-point seat belts on busses.
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