Dean Heller makes first Senate speech, focuses on jobs and economy

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011 | 6:31 p.m.

The U.S. Senate is an institution that stands on many ceremonial formalities, but among the most strict is the maiden speech: Senators are only seen and not heard on the floor until they go through this rite of passage.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Dean Heller issued his — over four months after he took over the office.

“The Senate does things a little differently,” Heller told reporters after delivering his remarks. “As you know Thursday, the day Amodei was sworn in, he got to say a few sentences, anyway, on the floor.”

Heller used to be a U.S. congressman representing Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District; he moved over to the Senate after John Ensign resigned his seat. Rep. Mark Amodei won a special election last week to serve out the rest of Heller’s term.

“It’s done differently in the Senate, and you know I respect the rules,” Heller continued. “But this starts our ability to get down on the floor now and take the necessary actions to turn this economy around.”

Heller picked the economy and job creation as the subject of his speech: one that pivoted around anecdotes from Nevada.

Heller began by tying his legacy not just to the march of Nevada senators who have come before, but to the Silver State’s most famous son, Mark Twain.

As Heller told it, Twain came to Nevada because his brother was the first secretary of the territory, a position that would later become secretary of state, the job Heller had for a decade before coming to Washington.

Heller tied his vision of the relationship between the government and the economy to his family, which owned and ran an automotive shop across the street from the Nevada Legislature in Carson City when Heller was young.

“I think about what might have happened if he were still in business today,” Heller said. “During this time when so many people are hurting and our economy is so fragile, it is important to understand how government impacts our economy and businesses across the nation.”

“From all corners of Nevada and our nation, the message is clear: the status quo is not working. We can no longer afford to ignore the biggest problems facing our country: government spending and the national debt,” Heller said. “The choices are clear: we can continue down this path which leads to bigger government, higher taxes, less jobs and rationed health care for our seniors, or we can decrease government spending create jobs and fulfill our promises to future generations.”

Maiden speeches aren’t usually the place for unveiling untested policy, and Heller’s rhetoric wasn’t particularly new. Though the Senate floor was off-limits to his speech-making until today, Heller has found several other venues to express his views in recent weeks, including a letter to President Barack Obama and the GOP’s weekly national address.

The message he’s been repeating is not one that Democrats have warmed to.

“The reality? Heller’s first five months as an unelected Senator were spent pushing anti-senior and anti-middle class legislation that would make things worse in Nevada,” read a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee press release issued the morning of Heller’s speech. “Today, he’s taking to the Senate floor for the first time with the hopes that Nevadans haven’t been paying attention since he was appointed to the Senate.”

Heller said he made an effort to strike a conciliatory note, through lines like “job creation and economy recovery should be a bipartisan value,” to communicate to his colleagues that “I’m prepared at any given time to work out the problems we have ahead of us.”

His message may not have appealed to a bipartisan audience. But at least his audience was bipartisan.

There were four senators in attendance on the Senate floor for Heller’s speech: Republicans Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and party leader Mitch McConnell, and fellow Nevada statesman, Democrat Harry Reid.

Reid yawned more than a few times. But both he and McConnell roundly praised Heller’s efforts — McConnell more so on the content of Heller’s speech than Reid, not surprisingly.