Sadly, one of America’s great legislators has left us.
RIP Elijah Cummings.
His profile at Roll Call epitomizes the nature and grace of Cummings:
“I don’t have to be in top leadership to feed my soul,” the 63-year-old lawmaker said.
“I’ve never necessarily aspired to any leadership position,” he said. "But one thing I do know is that I did not want to be on the back bench. And the reason I didn’t want to be on the back bench is, I think, the more visible I am, the more effective I can be.”
Cummings is obsessive about making sure his actions yield maximum effective and efficient results. That’s something else he wants people to know about him: Those two adjectives — "effective" and "efficient" — underscore everything he does.
His top priority, he said, is to help the community where he was born and raised.
Some of Cummings recently enacted legislation via GovTrack