To designate a segment of Interstate Route 35 in the State of Minnesota as the "James L. Oberstar Memorial Highway".

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding, and I thank my good friend, Mr. Petri, whom I deeply regret seeing leave the Congress, as well, because he has contributed so very much to this Congress,

particularly in the field of which we speak today.

Of very few Members can it be said that they grew up in the Congress. One could almost say that about Jim Oberstar who came here as a legislative assistant to the Public Works Committee, then ultimately became its chief of staff, and then decided that he could do the whole thing and become a Member of Congress from the Eighth District of Minnesota.

By the time Jim came to the Congress, he had such an early start that he already knew probably all anyone would expect any Member to know. This early start led to what can only be called breathtaking knowledge and, ultimately, achievements in the transportation and infrastructure field.

He became not only my mentor but, literally, the personal mentor of every Member on each side of the aisle and, ultimately, a mentor to any Member of Congress who wanted to know anything about the Nation's transportation and infrastructure.

At the bottom, Mr. Speaker, transportation and infrastructure is a very technical and specialized field. It takes hard work and brilliance to become a master of the roads, bridges, infrastructure, and bike and running trails of this country, let alone the complexities of intermodalism. It was a marvel to see Jim go at intermodalism. I had the opportunity to see him offer visionary leadership on intermodalism here with Union Station in Washington, D.C., and around the country.

Mr. Speaker, Jim came to subcommittee hearings almost all the time and participated in these hearings with the same depth as the chair of the subcommittee. He never let his encyclopedic knowledge wither.

Mr. Speaker, I have been on the committee ever since I came to Congress in 1991. I can say without any compunction that, if you were around Jim, no matter where you sat in the committee room, you could not avoid his kindness, his warmth, and his depth. Sometimes Jim may have told you more than you wanted to know about transportation and infrastructure, but at the end of the day, you were glad that you listened because you heard him speak, sometimes playfully, in French-- he always understood you had better keep using what you once had--but always offering the benefits of his knowledge, and using his great intellectual and personal gifts to bring us all in to the field he had mastered. No wonder Minnesota elected him to serve so long that he became the longest serving Member from the State.

As we struggle still for a highway bill, I hope we will not forget this great Member who began as an ironworker, worked himself through college as an ironworker, organized unions, and never forgot the roots from which he came, and yet came to this Congress and made himself a friend of anyone who would listen.

I am pleased to be associated with this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of Representatives to join me in honoring former Congressman James Louis ``Jim'' Oberstar, my friend and mentor, and mentor to thousands. Jim represented the 8th district of Minnesota for 18 terms, from 1975 until 2011, but his breathtaking knowledge and achievements on transportation and infrastructure made him the nation's mentor on these issues.

Born in Chisholm, Minnesota in 1934, Jim was the son of an iron miner and shirt factory worker. He learned at an early age the power of organizing workers to fight for fair wages and safe workplaces, and never forgot his roots in the working class and in the organizations they asked to represent them at the bargaining table. Jim worked in the Minnesota mines to fund his college education, graduating from the College at St. Thomas in St. Paul with degrees in French and political science.

In 1963, Jim started his career on the Capitol Hill. He worked as legislative assistant and chief of staff for former Congressman John Blatnik, who represented Minnesota's 8th district at the time. He also served as chief of staff of the House Committee on Transportation and Public Works for many years. In 1974, Jim was elected to the House, where he was fully prepared to use his already well-developed knowledge of transportation and infrastructure as a member on the House Committee on Transportation and Public Works.

Jim contributed to the work of building and rebuilding the nation's transportation systems--its road and bridge networks, and, as a cyclist himself, its bike and running trails. Jim's encyclopedic knowledge of the field led him to master the complexities associated with intermodalism, the transportation wave of the future. His work, for example, to make the District of Columbia's Union Station truly intermodal, still in progress, will always be emblematic of his visionary leadership.

From the moment I joined the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, in 1991, I learned from Jim Oberstar and felt his warmth, kindness and depth. Jim not only led us, he nurtured us. Whether smiling as he playfully spoke French or offering the benefits of his commonsense knowledge, Jim's intellectual and personal gifts left us admiring him as a person and in awe of his knowledge and understanding of the field as a professional. Jim's outstanding work in the Congress led the people of Minnesota to make him the longest serving House member from their state, and Jim served the nation with special distinction at the same time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to join me in honoring Jim Oberstar for his many accomplishments for the 8th district of Minnesota and for his devotion to our nation's transportation and infrastructure.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4926) to designate the ``James L. Oberstar Memorial Highway'' and the ``James L. Oberstar National Scenic Byway'' in the State of Minnesota, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill before us, H.R. 4926.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4926. This bill designates the segment of Interstate Route 35 between mile post 133 at Forest Lake, Minnesota, and mile post 259 at Duluth, Minnesota, as the James L. Oberstar Memorial Highway.

This is a small but well-deserved and fitting tribute to a former colleague, a leader for many years, first on the staff of the Transportation Committee in the House of Representatives, where he was an aide, and then later succeeded his predecessor in the House of Representatives, the Honorable John Blatnik, who represented the Iron Range for many years, and I think who also has a bridge and some other important locations named after him, and then of course who served on the Transportation Committee as an active member, chairman of many of its subcommittees and, ultimately, chairman of the full committee for many, many years.

I got to know Jim Oberstar personally, and we were competitors on a lot of issues, but we were also very much friends. He was a person with strong family values and a great sense of obligation to the working people of the Iron Range in northern Minnesota.

His father had worked on the mines, one of many who came over from what is now Yugoslavia to work in northern Minnesota, creating enormous wealth for our country, helping to build the steel industry, and arm our Nation and also build the railroads, materials and all the rest, and who shared in that, but only modestly, compared with many, many others.

He was a very interesting man with many, many sterling qualities, a natural linguist. I have been at meetings with Jim Oberstar where the French Ambassador would say, ``Now, where did you learn French? You must have lived in France.'' ``It was at the University of Minnesota,'' that is where he learned French.

He also became a very good speaker of the dialect that people speak down in Haiti. He knew three or four other languages. He had a natural facility for languages.

Jim also had a great interest in transportation policy and in history, and I think, as someone said at his memorial service, he felt everyone that he talked with shared the great love he had for all the details and history and facts of different situations, but he was wrong, but if you were interested, it was fascinating to spend time with Jim Oberstar.

He loved the outdoors. He fought to make sure that the lakes and rivers of northern Minnesota and the Boundary Waters and so on were, to the extent possible, properly managed for the environment, but also available for the working people of that area for their recreation and all the rest, rather than just a few.

He was an example for many of us who served in this House of dedication and putting country and his citizens before self, and he liked to have fun. I had many opportunities to share his love for the outdoors on bicycle trips and other occasions. He was kind enough to come to my district on a number of occasions to help encourage support for different facilities in our area.

He was always a real gentleman, so far as I was concerned in dealing with him, and an example of people who serve in this House from varying backgrounds who have definite and strong feelings, but also who try to make sure that, at the end of the day, they work with people with whom they disagree in order to accomplish something good for our country, and so Jim is sorely missed.

This is a small but fitting memorial for him, and I am sure that he and his wife, Jean, appreciate the fact that the Congress is taking this action today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of stories we could tell about the Jim Oberstar, and I think it is probably not fully appropriate to do that at this time but just to say that he was a self- made person, he had great intellectual abilities, and he used them well on behalf of his constituents, his State, and our country.

He had an ability, I think, to work very well with people with whom he would disagree on some issues. He was a man of faith and believed that, at the end of the day, we are all sinners, we couldn't expect perfection. There is going to be a certain disagreement there, but, at the other hand, there are some redeeming qualities in us human beings too, and let's look for those and work with others.

Mr. Speaker, I, again, thank my colleagues for bringing this legislation forward. I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all Members to support this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking the gentleman from Wisconsin for his kind words on behalf of not just the Oberstar family, but all the citizens of Minnesota--very kind, very appropriate, and greatly appreciated.

Mr. Speaker, I yield, to begin with, to the gentleman from Minnesota, Representative Collin Peterson, a senior member of the Minnesota congressional delegation and our distinguished colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield to Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

It is truly a great honor for me to present to the House this bill to name the stretch of Interstate Highway I-35 from Forest Lake, Minnesota, to Duluth, Minnesota, on behalf of the late former chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, James Oberstar.

I do so in the spirit of bipartisanship that Jim epitomized on behalf of the entire Minnesota delegation, all of whom have sponsored this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I will never forget the moment in January 2013 when Jim entered this Chamber for the first time as a former Member of the Congress. He walked quietly through the side door here, and one by one, his colleagues here in this Chamber, Democrats and Republicans alike, noticed him and began to spontaneously applaud Jim Oberstar in welcoming him back to the Congress.

I, quite frankly, have never seen anything quite like it, and this gesture of appreciation for the way Jim Oberstar brought us together through his bipartisan leadership and example was one of the more heartwarming and important experiences that I have seen take place here in this Chamber.

Jim was an idea guy. As Tom mentioned, it didn't matter to him if an idea came from a Republican or a Democrat. The only thing that mattered to him was whether or not it was a good idea. If you had an idea, Jim wanted to hear it, and he was ready to work with you to make it happen if he thought it was a good idea.

And that was particularly true with respect to the building and rebuilding and expanding our interstate highway system that he had worked on, as it was pointed out here, as a staff member to that committee earlier in his life for the sole purpose of connecting every corner of this great Nation together from border to border and from sea to sea.

Through recessions, through budget deficits, through gas shortages and challenges of every kind, Jim Oberstar never wavered in his support for the interstate highway system because he understood how vital it is to our ability to create good jobs, to literally drive our economy forward and create the atmosphere for successful business and job creation.

With that in mind, Mr. Speaker, I ask our colleagues to honor Jim Oberstar by naming the stretch of I-35 that serves as the gateway to the district he so ably represented for 36 years and designate it as the James L. Oberstar Memorial Highway.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4926 and to honor the life of a truly remarkable man that we lost this year, Jim Oberstar. This legislation would designate the ``James L. Oberstar Memorial Highway'' and the ``James L. Oberstar National Scenic Byway'' in the State of Minnesota, but more importantly, it would honor the legacy of one of our most beloved former colleagues.

Jim grew up appreciating the value of hard work and he innately understood the importance of cultivating strong relationships and tirelessly fighting for what was right.

He left the House of Representatives and the nation quite frankly, in a better place than when he found it. He was the consummate public servant and has an incredible lasting legacy.

In the 18 terms he served in Congress, he had a remarkable impact on the transportation industry in America and upon all of his colleagues. He was uniquely aware of the value of jobs, the economy, and the interconnectedness of goods and people throughout the country.

In a profession not always known for brevity of remarks, his speeches, as we can all attest, were amongst the most lengthy. However, when delivering remarks, he spoke passionately and with great intellect, never failing to effectively convey his point to a wide variety of audiences.

More importantly, he understood the value of bipartisanship in Washington and never let politics get in the way of good policy.

While we mourn the loss of our dear friend, we celebrate his life and service to this nation. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation and also want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his kind words on behalf of the family and the people of the State.

Jim Oberstar passed away this year, as we all know, and we lost a great advocate for transportation and infrastructure. He and I served together for many years in this Congress, and we worked closely together as representatives of rural districts in Minnesota. One thing that I really admired about Congressman Oberstar, he wasn't afraid to take tough positions and do what he thought was right.

As chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, he supported an increase in the gas tax, so that we could ensure long-term sustainable funding for our Nation's transportation needs. That is one thing he and I both agreed on, and I know he met strong resistance for expressing those views.

Beyond his work on the committee, Congressman Oberstar was passionate about his district and the people he represented. He was a tireless advocate, and he made sure that the Eighth District had a voice through his leadership and in the caucus.

Mr. Speaker, the legacy of Jim Oberstar will live on in Minnesota and across the country for decades to come, and I know that he would be proud to have this highway and national scenic byway in Minnesota named in his memory, and as has been indicated, we will all miss his tremendous expertise and advocacy for transportation in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this legislation.