SOUTHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy chatted with middle-schoolers and manufacturers Friday as he paid visits to DePaolo Middle School and Smiths Medical products manufacturer.

About 250 eighth-grade students came to the auditorium at DePaolo to hear Murphy talk about his career in politics and government.

A former Southington resident, Murphy once served on the local Planning & Zoning Commission before going on to the state House of Representatives, the state Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, where he now serves.

“I was a part of a river cleanup crew back when the environmental movement was really starting back up again,” the senator recalled. “One day I thought to myself ‘Why are we doing this? Shouldn’t someone from the government be doing something about it?’ Then I started paying attention to who was running for office and me, along with a group of 15- and 16- year-old friends, started knocking on doors for those candidates who cared about what we cared about.”

“I was 21 when I ran for the state legislature,” Murphy continued. “I was up against someone who had been there for 14 years. My advantage was that he assumed I wasn’t a threat until it was already too late. I knocked on every door in town twice and won over voters while he was doing nothing. People paid attention to me because I was young. Young people have a tremendous ability to make change in ways that people twice or three times your age don’t. No change has ever occurred in this country without the youth fighting for it.”

Murphy then shared his concerns over global warming and encouraged the assembled youth to help combat it.
“The world is warming at an extraordinary rate,” he said. “People are saying that if we don’t fix it now, it can’t be stopped.”

One student asked Murphy how he felt about insurance companies cutting off coverage for people’s hearing aids once they reached 14 years old.

Murphy said he would research the issue and put it on his agenda because it “didn’t make sense.” This earned wild applause and cheers from the crowd.

“I’m constantly battling with insurance companies to encourage them to cover more things,” he said. “They are necessary, but they are in the business to make money. They spend as little on healthcare as they can get away with, denying care to make a profit.”

Another student named McKenzie asked what sort of characteristics a senator should have.

Murphy said a senator should have a lot of energy, love people and be thick-skinned.

Another asked Murphy about bipartisanship.

“I love working with Republicans, I really do,” Murphy said. “If you want to get anything done in Washington today, you need Republican and Democratic support. I co-sponsored a mental health bill with Bill Cassidy, a tea party conservative from Louisiana, and I’m a progressive Democrat from the Northeast. The idea was to show that while the two of us don’t agree on a lot of issues, we can agree on this. Some people think that compromise is weakness, but I think that while you have to fight for what you believe in, you also have to recognize when it’s the right time to compromise.”

Murphy concluded the presentation by encouraging students to reach out to him on social media and to fight for the change they wanted to see in the world. Murphy later complimented the students on their “fantastic” questions.

Chris Palmieri, Town Councilor and assistant principal at the school, thanked Murphy for coming.

“Our kids asked phenomenal questions and it’s great to know that he will follow up on them,” he said.

Later, Murphy stopped in to Smiths Medical at 201 West Queen St. Company representatives discussed with him the impact of the Affordable Care Act on their medical product manufacturing business.

“The Medical Device Tax put a halt on some of our plans when it took $2 million off of our bottom line,” said Jeff Bowen, site coordinator. “We had just saved ourselves $1 million with a vertical integration project but this took it all away.”

Bowen added that while his goal is to remain in Connecticut, a move to Mexico would cut costs in half.
“While it would be a big initial investment, it remains an attractive jump,” he said. “Still, I would rather that we are able to succeed here and my No. 1 priority is to keep jobs here. I enjoy being here and being a charitable member of the community, but eventually the costs of operation might make that impossible.”

Matthew Rousseau, materials manager with Smiths Medical, said the facility manufactures 2-million to 2.2-million catheters each week, which are sold “mostly in the U.S.”