Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5448) to amend the John F. Kennedy Center Act to authorize appropriations for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Mr.…
Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5448) to amend the John F. Kennedy Center Act to authorize appropriations for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
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 materials on H.R. 5448.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I bring up a bill which is a simple reauthorization bill, and I am very pleased to be here actually on behalf of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Barletta), and we wish him well. He has had some medical issues. He chairs the Subcommittee on Transportation.
He actually has a cosponsorship with the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Carson), who you will be hearing from in a
minute, but this is a bill to reauthorize the capital repair and maintenance programs at the Kennedy Center.
In 2012, I helped introduce and Congress passed the last reauthorization for the Kennedy Center, and I want to thank again the current leader of the Transportation Committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), for his leadership on this issue and for also moving this legislation forward, and as I said, Mr. Barletta and Mr. Carson from Indiana have also taken the lead on this measure.
The building, of course, is a national monument. It is our national cultural center. In fact, it is owned and maintained by the Federal Government, and it is a memorial to the late John F. Kennedy.
Now, I want to cite in the Record, to let folks know this because most people don't know this, that the idea that came forth for the Kennedy Center was not so much by President Kennedy, but it was the foresight and vision of President Eisenhower. President Eisenhower actually proposed a national cultural center when he was President.
When they renovated the Eisenhower Theater several years ago, some of the Eisenhower family was there, and they actually showed clips of President Eisenhower proposing a national cultural center, so it was his idea and his vision.
It was named for our slain and great President Kennedy, but the vision for the national cultural center again came from Dwight David Eisenhower, our President. I actually saw an old film of him describing his vision for what we have.
The other thing I wanted to say is, since we built the Kennedy Center--and this is a reauthorization. Some several years ago, I had the opportunity to introduce legislation for the first real expansion, which I understand is now underway, the plans and some of the preliminary design.
When they built the Kennedy Center, it was a performing arts center, but it never had an educational component. It never had the space that they need. So of all the legislation I have participated in, I couldn't be more proud than helping to author the first expansion since we constructed that building.
This measure, however, is a reauthorization for some of their operations and their capital repairs which is part of our responsibility as the Federal Government, so capital programs are critical.
I might say that in the expansion there is no Federal public money, that it is all money that is raised privately. It is also important that we pass this legislation because it provides effective and efficient building operations for the next 5 years.
The amounts authorized in the legislation will help address building inefficiencies that we currently have. It will assure that the building can continue to operate cost-effectively and will also reduce costs for the taxpayers, so those are some of the points that I would like to make.
I reserve the balance of my time.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I ask for my colleagues to join us in the approval of a bipartisan piece of legislation that again authorizes the capital repair costs and maintenance for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.
