Elfreth's Reflections on Celebrating Our Nation's 250th Anniversary in Philadelphia, Our Community, and Across the Nation

"Yesterday I had one of the most profound experiences in 18 months as your Representative in Congress: traveling to Philadelphia with a bipartisan group of colleagues to be in the "room where it happened" 250 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A day of reflection later, and I still struggle to put into words what it means to have stood in the very room in Independence Hall where the Continental Congress gathered and officially declared independence from Great Britain. But here is my most earnest attempt:

While we celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, the document pledging "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" of the 56 signers - the very members of the body that was the precursor to the Congress I now serve in - was signed on July 2nd. We should all be struck by the courage that act required. We should all reflect on the values of liberty, freedom, and opportunity that were outlined on that day in a radical and profound document that changed the course of world history. I hope we all, including and especially my colleagues in Congress, can be inspired by that courage and those values today.

The signing of the Declaration of Independence was just the beginning of the experiment. The inception of the idea. The foundation of the promise that is our American republic.

Tomorrow in communities across the nation, we'll hold parades, throw barbeques, and set off fireworks in celebration of 250 years of this promise. In between, I hope you will join me in taking ten minutes to read the Declaration. I've spent a significant amount of time this Congress reflecting on the most famous of sentences "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" AND what came after: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

From the 14th Amendment to the 19th Amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the experiment we are all a part of has expanded, slowly and sometimes painfully, what "consent of the governed" means. The very fact that I stood in "the room where it happened" in Independence Hall yesterday as a Congresswoman - when I would not have even been allowed in the same room 250 years ago - is a profound testament to this radical experiment in self-determination.

But like any good experiment, idea, and promise…there is yet more to do. So I will leave you with President Gerald Ford's address at Independence Hall on the Bicentennial:

"It is fitting that we ask ourselves hard questions even on a glorious day like today. Are the institutions under which we live working the way they should? Are the foundations laid in 1776 and 1789 still strong enough and sound enough to resist the tremors of our times? Are our God-given rights secure, our hard-won liberties protected?"

These questions are just as relevant 50 years later. I am determined to ask them of my colleagues in Congress when we return to Washington after the holiday. But I think even Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin would agree: these questions are not for Congress alone to answer. What the Declaration began and later our Constitution further avowed, our Founders intentionally built a system of self-governance where all of us have a part to play in determining the future of our nation.

This Independence Day, I hope you are able to beat the heat and celebrate with your loved ones and neighbors - but I hope you also take some time to reflect on the fact that the last 250 years have been built by people like you. Continue to lean in. Continue to show up. And continue to participate in this great experiment so that it can continue for the next 250 years."