Exactly one year after he was first sworn in as a U.S. Senator, Andy Kim gave his maiden speech on the Senate floor today.
The speech, technically Kim’s first official Senate address (though he’s spoken plenty of times on the floor before today), revolved around caregiving: Kim’s father was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and the senator said he’s now confronting the task of caring for the man who raised him while also serving New Jersey in the Senate.
“I remember dropping him off at the appointment and sitting in the car, alone, left to grapple with our new future – realizing for the first time that to my list of core identities as a son, as a brother, a husband, a father, an American, a public servant, I now add ‘caregiver,’” Kim said.
Both of Kim’s parents immigrated to America from Korea following the Korean War – Kim is the nation’s first Korean American senator – and his father worked as a geneticist and medical researcher. But Kim, tearing up, said that after his father spent his life trying to cure diseases, Alzheimer’s has robbed him of his ability to remember his own research or life story.
The senator connected his duty to his father to the duty every U.S. senator has to the nation: to be a caregiver.
“Just as caregivers have a responsibility to those in their care, we as senators, as Americans, have a responsibility to one another – as community members, as people,” Kim said.
Sometime in the future, Kim said, he’ll be giving his farewell address on the Senate floor, and he hopes he’ll be able to say he fulfilled that duty of care as best as he could.
“I hope, in my future farewell speech, I can say that I was part of the Senate that finally delivered universal health care for our nation; a Senate that found the way to provide child care to every family, and long-term care for every senior in need; a Senate that catalyzed innovation, that led to prevent and cure Alzheimer’s and other wretched diseases; a Senate that finally gave care to our caregivers, who for so long have felt invisible and taken for granted; a Senate that stood up against corruption and restored the trust of the American people back into our democracy and governance; a Senate that helped restore American global leadership, which shaped a world where peace and prosperity fosters freedom and innovation for everyone; a Senate that created the kind of America where I can ease my anxiety as a parent, as I watch my boys become men,” Kim said.
“Colleagues, I ask for your help here, because I cannot do this alone,” he continued. “None of us have this power alone.”
