jack foley. [applause] [inaudible] >> thank you, justin. it's an honor for me to accept this. jerome is traveling, those of you who know him, know how much he travels and this is part of unfortunately his inability to be here today. i know how excite he was to receive this award because throughout his life, his entire project has been to be multiple. it is one of the great extraordinary things about this organization. i think you can tell from the just diversity of voices, opinions, all of that, that we heard today, which you can find even more as you explore more about the other authors that before columbus foundation has already honored. roth 'berg's entire project -- rothenberg's project begins with the impulse not to be the same as everyone else, and in his attempt not be the same as everyone else, what he discovers is all kinds of people that are in his head. all kinds of multiple positions, understandings, et cetera. he is one of the great reclaimers of native american poetry, and one of the things he did was to find people who could redo that poetry. he found experiment

foley, the chairman were much powerful. you had dan, no term limits. he had been chairman of the ways for a longommittee time. jack brooks. so it was a different role for than as it is now. i think speaker pelosi was a as wellerful speaker and is a very powerful leader. so that has sort of changed over sort of power from the committee has moved to some extent to leadership. i think speaker boehner has work.nly let us do our you obviously try to work with leadership because you need bills.elp passing i'm not the whip. i don't schedule bills. so clearly in today's to makeent, you want sure you're in close touch with your leadership. but i feel very fortunate that they have not really sort of directed me in great detail what to do. were -- i'll use the phrase king of the hill, for a short period of time and could wayge anything about the this place functions to make it work better than it has, what be?d it >> boy, that's a tall order. i think we really do need to make sure that the members are involved in issues, you know. i think that's one thing that i of thetook out experience i had on tax reform, is there's this thirst f