EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: 4-5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept.19, 2013

EVENT: “What’s gone wrong in Washington and why it doesn’t have to be this way”

In a free public event, former U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe will discuss the impending debt ceiling debate and lack of permanency and predictability on key issues.

Snowe, respected internationally as a voice of reason, made a stunning announcement that she would not run for a fourth term in the Senate. Her statement that she no longer believed that government could be changed from the inside affirmed the feeling of millions of Americans that the system has gone seriously awry and is at a tipping point for the very future of our country.

Snowe said she was not leaving the Senate because she stopped believing in its power or because she no longer loved the institution. She gives a message, delivered now as an outsider with insider knowledge, that centers on how we reached this point and why we don’t have to accept polarized partisanship as the “new norm” by offering concrete ideas on how we can return Congress to its past ability to reach consensus.

PLACE: Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor. See campus map at http://campusinfo.umich.edu/files/campusinfo/field/image/central-campus-map.png

SPONSOR: Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

INFORMATION: Laura Lee, (734) 764-8593 or lklee@umich.edu

WEBSTREAM: Visit http://fordschool.umich.edu/events/calendar/1580 on the day of the event for live web streaming information.