Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to rise today to recognize a hardworking, dedicated member of my staff, Ms. Shirley Thomas as she prepares to retire from a long and distinguished career of public service. Shirley has committed herself to this great institution for over 20 years, serving the U.S. Senate for 13 years and the U.S. House of Representatives for 9 years. She has been an essential part of my own staff since almost my first day as the Representative for the 13th District of Georgia.

Shirley was born on February 27, 1953 in Western Kentucky as the eldest of four children. She remains, to this day, a deeply religious woman, devoted to her family and friends. After attaining her certificate in Business Administration from the University of Illinois Business and Clerical Training School, Shirley stayed on to work for the University for almost 8 years. She then relocated to Houston, Texas to work for Dresser Industries, where she primarily worked in the accounting department.

Unfortunately, in 1988, Shirley suffered tremendous injuries after being hit by a car. To recover from her injuries, Shirley came to live in Atlanta, Georgia, where she began her career in public service. Shirley first worked for former Senator Sam Nunn for 8 years until his retirement, and for his successor, Senator Max Cleland for 5 years.

I will remain forever grateful that Shirley then chose to help me serve my own constituents. As a Constituent Services Representative and my Senior Social Security and Medicare Advisor, she worked tirelessly with those citizens most in need of my support. As my district expanded, she began serving as my Office Manger as well as providing administrative support. I am especially thankful for her work in organizing several of my annual district events, including our annual Health Fair and Jobs Fair. Her experience in working with state, federal, and private officials has had an incredible impact on the success of these events. This same experience was crucial when my district was redistricted in 2005. She has been with me for the past nine years, through the historic changes in Medicare and our healthcare delivery system, and in that time has helped countless residents access benefits that are so vital to their well being.

I am extremely proud and thankful for all her hard work. It is with great sadness that I, along with the rest of my staff, wish her a fond farewell as she retires from my office. Shirley, please accept my prayers and best wishes for your future. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support and dedication thorough our many years together.

May God bless you.

In my 1 minute, I want to make a special appeal that we pay close attention to what I consider the most devastating, damaging part of this bill, and that is what we are doing and what the Republicans are doing to Social Security, to Medicare, and to Medicaid.

In this bill, it requires that we set up a joint select committee. There are no protections in here. And it says in order for us to give the raise to the debt ceiling, we must concur and cut $1.6 trillion from the budget from discretionary funding. The Center for Policy and Budget Priorities has said that since 80 percent of the discretionary areas come from Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, it doesn't take a genius to know that we're talking about drastic cuts in this area, and they will come out to a tune of about a thousand dollars for each recipient.

Now, I don't know about you all, but we have some people in this country who are hanging on by their fingernails. We have widows, we have seniors, we have youngsters who are depending upon Social Security, depending upon Medicare; and to say that in this measure that we will make these drastic cuts in Social Security and Medicare is totally irresponsible, and for that reason let us vote this measure down.

America, we really need to pay close attention here.

First of all, this is a terrible bill at the wrong time. Here we are, the number one issue facing the American people is jobs, and this bill is a major job-killer of the highest magnitude. It will average a loss of 40,000 public service jobs in the public sector each month. All we have to do is look at the record from the month of June. In the month of June, the private sector created 58,000 jobs; but because of massive cuts in the public sector, there was a loss of 40,000 jobs each month.

In addition to that, this bill will drastically end Medicare. It will reduce Medicaid payments to the States, and it will severely cut back the checks to our Social Security recipients by an average of $1,000 each month.

Well, since you've yielded 30 seconds, which you actually have already taken my last 30 seconds.

You know perfectly well, Mr. Dreier, that the announced cuts in this bill and the setting up with this commission, and, also, your party has already set your record on a road. Your number one target has been to end Medicare.

But let me go back, and I just wanted to answer your question.

It's very important, Mr. Speaker, that we also understand that the other dangerous part about this bill is that in 6 months we will be right back here again which will add greater instability to the markets and further undermine our credibility ratings.

Mr. Speaker, I must respond.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to stand before you today to celebrate the 100th birthday of one of my constituents, Miss Sadie Thomas.

Sadie Thomas was born on July 27, 1911 in Jeffersonville, Georgia. Aunt Sadie to her family, Sadie spent most of her life on her family farm with her brother John. Sadie and John began their lives as sharecroppers, eventually moving on to their own plot of land. As a small farmer, she worked hard all her life, picking cotton and growing tomatoes, corn, squash and other crops.

From the very beginning, Sadie has remained a deeply religious woman, devoted to her family. When her sister passed away, leaving two children behind, Sadie helped raise both children on her farm with her mother.

To this day she remains a lifelong member of the Lizzie Harrell Baptist Church in Jeffersonville. She now resides near her family in a nursing home in my district.

As her friends and family celebrate her 100th birthday, we are all thankful that she is of sound mind and body. Mr. Speaker, my fellow colleagues, I hope you will join me today in wishing Miss Sadie Thomas a very happy birthday. May God continue to bless her with a long life.

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

As my distinguished colleague from Georgia, Congressman Westmoreland, pointed out, whom I am very pleased to serve as a cosponsor with on this bill, he very aptly described the very dire situation facing our State of Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, as I stand here, Georgia, since the 2008 financial difficulties started in this country, 67 banks have failed, which makes us the leader in the Nation in this area in our State. We have some very capable business people in Georgia and in Atlanta, very sterling leaders of the financial services industry worldwide based out of Atlanta. We're grappling with the recovery.

But there is no more important sector of our economy than our banking system. It is, indeed, the heart of our economic system. It pumps out the credit. It pumps out the capital that makes our economy go around. So it is very important that we really deal with an area and with information and with an effective study so that we can grasp the full meaning of what caused this to happen, what were the characteristics in Atlanta or in Georgia that caused this disproportionate number of bank failures. And, indeed, we could learn so much so that we can prevent this type of a collapse in our bank financial system from happening again and make a very valuable contribution.

So with that, Mr. Speaker, I want to take just a moment to explain what we are doing with this important bill, H.R. 2056, that we feel will make a very valuable contribution to preventing these kinds of collapses from happening again to the detriment of our economic system.

The purpose of this bill is, one, to determine the extent to which certain FDIC practices precipitated the bank failures. We need to find out if there's something that the FDIC was doing, that regulators were doing that we need to improve upon.

Two, we need to determine whether various FDIC policies and practices for resolving failed banks are appropriate. That's very important to know. If what we're doing is not appropriate, we can fix that.

And, three, we need to determine the extent to which the FDIC employees, themselves, in the field, the investigators, the bank examiners take actions that were consistent with FDIC policies and procedures that we developed here in Washington. In other words, Mr. Speaker, we need to take the time to look at this peculiar situation of this rash of bank failures in one basic geographic area of this country to see what really went wrong and if there were some things that we were doing here in Washington that we need to correct.

And, finally, we need to determine the extent to which the FDIC policies and procedures are applied consistently across all banks. This information will be very important.

The bill requires that the FDIC Inspector General, within 1 year of enactment of this bill, will conduct a study

on the impact of the failure of banks and report the results and any associated recommendations back to Congress.

This study would address, one, the effect of the FDIC's use of loss sharing agreements on relevant stakeholders, including banks that survive and borrowers of the failed IDI. Two, the significance that paper losses, including the extent to which they trigger IDI receiverships and the impact they have on raising more capital. Three, the success of field examiners in implementing the FDIC policies and procedures on commercial real estate workouts.

One of the things we find in our State of Georgia, one of the common characteristics that sort of held these banks separate was the overleverage, we shall say, of the portfolios in real estate and the housing bubble burst on us.

Four, the application and impact of consent orders and cease and desist orders, including whether such orders are used consistently across all types of banks, and also the application and impact of FDIC policies, particularly as they relate to a bank's ability to attract private capital. And then the FDIC's handling of potential investments by private equity companies in banks.

In H.R. 2056, as introduced, we received great bipartisan support and reception at a hearing that we recently had that my colleague from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) mentioned and the FDIC and the OCC are working with us on this bill. And the OCC has suggested that the FDIC Inspector General should consult with the OCC Inspectors General with respect to studied topics that pertain to banks that the OCC, which is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, directly supervisors and, of course, that same logic would argue for consultation with the Fed.

So subsequently, an amendment was adopted by voice vote in the full committee in the markup, requiring that the FDIC Inspector General consult with the Inspectors General of the Treasury, within which the OIC is housed, and the Fed. This amendment was passed by voice vote with strong bipartisan support to supplement the study factors regarding the loss sharing agreements. It added new study factors regarding appraisals and capital. It required the FDIC's Inspectors General to coordinate with the Treasury and the Fed's internal Inspectors General. And four, it added a new separate GAO study on bank failures to the report due 1 year after enactment. And I might add that both the FDIC as well as the OCC are supportive of this measure.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, this bill is very important for us not only in Georgia but across this country where we've had this rash of bank failures. It's important for us to learn and to know about the causes of the bank failures in the States that have been hardest hit, especially the issue of application and effect of consent orders and cease and desist orders, particularly where these orders have been enforced uniformly and fairly across all banks. This has been a concern from our banking community in Georgia.

While I know this bill alone will not solve our current banking crisis, I am confident it will provide Congress and regulators with valuable information that may prevent failures in the future and provide us with ways that the FDIC, that the OCC and the Fed, our banking regulators and examiners, can help our banks avoid bank failures.

If we're ever going to climb out of this terrible economic malaise that we're in and spark growth in our communities, it is the banks that must be stable. It is the banks that must be well-capitalized and able to lend to consumers and small businesses. And in particular, our small and community banks are the ones that will lead the way to our economic recovery, but only if they're able to work, hand-in-hand, with our Federal regulators and examiners to remain viable.

This bill is a small step, but it is a big step in the right direction in that respect, and I encourage all of my colleagues to support it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Let me commend Ms. Waters and Mrs. Biggert for their extraordinarily important work on this legislation that is very much needed. People all across this country are very grateful that we are finally bringing some help here.

Madam Chair, nothing is more devastating to a family, to a community, than to lose, almost in the flick of an eye, to lose your home to a flood--I mean, totally underwater--to lose businesses. This happened in my State in a devastating manner in 2009. It was the worst flood in modern history of the State of Georgia. We lost over 20,000 homes throughout the State, but no area was more impacted than my own congressional district. Ten people statewide lost their lives. There was a cost of over $500 million to lost businesses and homes. And of those 10 people who lost their lives, seven of them were from my congressional district.

To even make this more pointed, seven of them were from one county in my district. Douglas County and Cobb County were just devastated by this flood. The communities of Austell and Powder Springs and Douglasville and Lithia Springs and College Park had to all virtually start over. Imagine yourself as a child with your whole school under water. It was an extraordinarily unfortunate situation. To make matters worse, Madam Chair, most of these individuals had no flood insurance. The reason they didn't have any flood insurance was the cost of flood insurance and the requirement that you had to pay for your flood insurance in one lump sum.

Thanks to this committee, thanks to this bill, thanks to the work of Ms. Waters, Mrs. Biggert, Chairman Bachus, and Ranking Member Frank, we have galvanized this. Thanks to the Federal Government and FEMA and now thanks to this bill and the amendment that you all were kind enough to adopt, which was mine, individuals can now purchase their flood insurance in monthly installments.

What a relief. What a great measure. This is what the American people expect of us--to come up here and immediately respond to a pressing need. This is a great day. It is a great bill. I want to thank all of you for working with us on this.

Madam Chairman, again, I want to thank Mrs. Biggert and Ms. Waters for their excellent work, for a job well done. The people of this country thank us, too, as they can pay for their flood insurance in installments.

Mr. Speaker, what we have here are two essential arguments; one is more of an intramural argument between Congress and the White House, but it is a misplaced argument because there is no President that has come to this Congress for a declaration of war since World War II--and granted, we've been in seven or eight major conflicts. So this is much greater than this conflict between the White House and this Congress.

Unfortunately, I believe that this measure is just an attempt to, rather in a strong way, get the attention of the President. It may be to chastise the President a bit. I think if you look at the Record there were communications here, but there is a larger profound message here. It's not a message that this is to send to the President. This is a bad-timed piece of legislation because it sends the wrong message to the world.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, we are the leaders of the free world. America is a great country, and our standing is at stake. And this move, this bill will pull the rug out from under NATO at precisely the time when we need to be sending a strong message of encouragement. The United States is in a support role here. So it is very important that we defeat this amendment and make sure that we send the right message to our allies, that we will not pull the rug out from under them.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Reed). The gentleman is recognized for 5 minutes.

It seems that if I'm the American people watching this on C-SPAN tonight, I think we have a very clear picture of the difference between what the Republicans want and what the Democrats want.

Now, as my good friend from North Carolina very eloquently laid out the scenario of how we got to where we are, the question becomes: How do we solve this problem? The Democrats are saying we got into this problem because we did not have the proper oversight to abusive practices, to manipulation, to the use of derivatives, and allowing them to use a leveraging position that brought great havoc to our economic system in a way that brought about a havoc to our economic system not seen since the 1930s and the Depression.

The American people, under the leadership of President George Bush and his Treasury Secretary Paulson, came to our Financial Services Committee with just one little piece of paper, but on that piece of paper it said, We need to be able to bring some oversight and regulation to this new area of derivatives and credit default swaps. It is tearing a hole in our economy. We moved. We moved and we passed the Dodd-Frank bill.

Now, what we have before us now is a continuation of a very misguided policy by the Republicans. Let me remind you, this same scenario was carried out to cut Medicare. It's all been cutting programs, cutting efforts to respond to the basic needs of the American people.

Now, my issue is this: If my Republican friends were very sincere about what they were doing--and let me qualify that because I don't want my words taken down. But ``sincerity'' is a very important word here. And my sincerity point is this:

If they were sincere, why would they advocate cutting the very programs

that the American people need at the time and, at the same time, saying we're in such dire budget consequences but yet we can give billionaires and millionaires $2.5 trillion, but we cannot adequately fund the CFTC to go in and have the power to put forward the very controls needed so that we will never have the kind of meltdown that we had before?

That is the hypocrisy here, Mr. Chairman. That's what the American people are watching tonight on C-SPAN in this debate, and I hope they see a very clear message of who it is that's standing up for the American people at their time of need.

And there's no greater need than to rein in these speculators who have been a primary cause to the high rise in gasoline. That's what they want us to do, and that's what we're doing. But the Republicans want to cut the budget so that we will not be able to have the staffing, so that we could go into the dark corners and the crevices and be able to shine the light and pull out these speculators that are driving up these gasoline prices to $5 a gallon.

So I hope that tonight, after this debate, the American people will clearly see who's on the side of the American people. Without any question, without any doubt, it is the Democrats who are standing in the way to make sure that we do all we can to make sure the CFTC, our primary regulator, will be able to put in place those entities, those regulations that will prevent this meltdown from happening before and will rein in these speculators and give the American people the day that they deserve, a better day in the sun.

I want to commend you, Congresswoman Christensen, for your leadership and for what you're doing.

Ladies and gentlemen of America and this Congress, our economy is struggling, and nowhere is it struggling more than in the area of unemployment and joblessness, and, correspondingly, with home foreclosures and the value of our housing stock going down. Those are the two very serious points on the compass that we have got to declare an emergency situation on because they are both so very related. If a man does not have a job or a young lady does not have a job, how can they stay in their home?

And so I want to just talk for a few minutes about, one, you really can't figure how to get out of a situation unless you stop and you think of how you got into it. The one thing I've noticed about people who have lost their sight, they may need a little help as they come to get into a room, but I will tell you, that person without his sight feels his way of how he got into that room; and how he gets out of that room, he can feel his way back out. So it might do well for us just to pause for a moment.

We go back to our economic downturn. There were some failures that we made. We rushed--rightfully so, in many respects--to bail out Wall Street, to bail out America's big business structure. We did that. We had to unfreeze the credit markets on Wall Street in order to keep it moving. But if there is one thing we learned from our previous, very challenging economic difficulties--and the most recent one being the Depression. We got out of that Depression by not only making sure that our big companies, making sure that Wall Street and our bankers and our investors and our multinational corporations were able to survive. Our failure was that we did nothing to help Main Street at the same time.

The one thing we learned in the Depression is, yes, you have to do both: You've got to put money up at the top, you've got to put it in the middle of the economic stream and at the lower end of the economic stream, because you have to get people spending money. Jobs are created when people spend money.

We are a mass consumption society, which means our economy moves not on the wealthy being able to go buy a car; our economy moves on thousands and millions of people being able to buy the car, to buy the clothes, to buy the food in the restaurants. Our failure to do that. And so we had a top-down economic recovery instead of a top, middle, and bottom at the same time.

So here we are. And that's why right now our multi-corporations are having staggering profits.

Our CEOs are making huge salaries and bonuses, all that we helped. And I don't begrudge them. I am a believer in capitalism. I graduated from the citadel of capitalism, the Wharton School of Finance. I am a businessman. So I don't begrudge that, but what I do begrudge is our failure to help the little fellow. Now we're beginning to do that.

But what we must do is realize that all of this time, we're in this recovery now for almost 3 years, and we have 13 million Americans without work. We have a national unemployment of 8.7 percent. It's coming down. Some of our policies are working. In my own State of Georgia, our unemployment rate is a staggering 9.9 percent--563 Georgians are without work.

And so that means that we're not doing enough. There are certain areas we can work in. For example, we need to evaluate the programs that we say we have put out there to help with the unemployment level.

Now, we know we have put a program together which will give corporations a 6 percent reduction or a reduction of their part of the payroll tax if they hire an unemployed person. Well, where is the report card on that? How is that doing? That's one of the things that we need to get; we need measurement to see how successful it really is.

We need to also look to the future and look at what policies we can put together with corporations, because what we're doing is not enough. I would submit that wouldn't it be interesting and wouldn't it be worthy of consideration.

We know, for example, that we have just about the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Clearly our multinational, our largest corporations, our largest employers want to see that corporate tax rate come down. Many are wanting it to come down to 25 percent. I am on the side of taking a look at that, because we don't want to have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. It hurts our marketplace. It hurts everything. We know that. That is an issue.

But if we know these multinational corporations are having a record now of outsourcing jobs, should we not have a conversation with them at the table? Okay, you want your corporate tax rate reduced? Let's talk about how you can stop sending jobs out of this country. We need Americans who are working at American jobs in America.

I think that these large employers and corporations with these international markets will be willing to sit down and say, you know what, in exchange for us getting our corporate tax rate down, here's what we can do to start bringing in our manufacturing and bring it back to America so that we can make things in America. One of the reasons we've got such a high jobless rate is because we don't make anything here anymore. Manufacturing is the main source of jobs. We lost that.

Well, we can use this as an incentive to these companies. Say, okay, we can bring that corporate tax rate down; but we want you to bring those jobs back here, and we want you to start making things in this country. Let's look out for America, look out for us. That is something that we can do.

And so, Madam Congresslady from the Virgin Islands, you're doing a wonderful job with this.

This is the number one issue facing this country. I can't tell you how desperate people become when they can't find work. I can't tell you how depressed people become when people are used to working and they wake up every morning with no place to go. Or they have to make certain decisions and some can't find food or buy the food to feed their families. That is the situation we're in with these 13 million American people.

We can do better. We've got to evaluate what we're doing, and we've got to put more creative things on the table, such as the corporate tax rate. Let us tie that to corporations bringing these jobs back and doing what they can to help turn our country back into a manufacturing base.

When you lose your capacity--when this country lost its capacity to be the leader of the world in making things, we lost a lot. And by George, we need to get it back. And that's the way America will survive, and that's the way we'll bring this unemployment rate down.

Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to honor the Clayton State University Women's Basketball Team for winning the 2011 NCAA Division II National Championship. The Lady Lakers defeated the Michigan Tech Huskies 69-50 in a game that gave Clayton State its first national championship. Clayton State ended the season with a 53-1 record and the number one ranking in the USA Today/ESPN Division II Coaches' Poll.

These young women have demonstrated a tremendous amount of hard work, perseverance and sportsmanship. There is no doubt that this team will serve as excellent role models for young women and future athletes everywhere.

Coach Dennis Cox also deserves to be recognized for his critical role in leading Clayton State to victory. He was recently named the 2011 Schelde North America/Division II Bulletin Coach of the Year and the Women's Basketball Coaches Association Coach of the Year.

My fellow colleagues please join me in honoring Coach Cox and the Clayton State Lady Lakers for an outstanding year.

Thank you very much, Mr. Van Hollen. I appreciate it. Let me commend you for the excellent leadership that you are providing in this fight.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, this is America. This is the greatest country in the world. And we are great because we have certain values. Paramount among those values is the sense of fairness.

Now, let me tell you what the flaw is in the Republican budget. The flaw in the Republican budget is it is not fair. Whatever polls we read, wherever we look, the American people are beginning to see it. How can you justify cutting seniors, cutting young people, cutting the low-income, cutting the middle class while at the same time giving over a trillion dollars to billionaires and millionaires in this country? That is the disconnect, Mr. Speaker.

I don't care which side you're on or where you are in this country. The American people know that we, yes, must bring down our deficit and cut this debt. It has become a national security issue.

For 8 years since I've been in Congress I have been arguing for that, standing up for paying down our debt. During the years of the Bush administration, which, let's tell the truth, was a primary cause of us being in the position that we're in now to have three wars going at the same time.

And so ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion I'm just saying that the point we have to make is it is not fair to cut this budget on the backs of the poor, the elderly, and the young while at the same time giving billionaires over a trillion dollars.

Mr. Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise today to commemorate the life and service of one of my constituents, Mr. Robert C. Howell. A native Georgian, Mr. Howell passed away at the age of 93 on Tuesday March 8th, 2011. He was an honorable man, devoted to his country and his community.

Mr. Howell served our nation in the United States Army during World War II as an infantryman and an engineer. One of his most dangerous duties was to remove undetonated land mines to protect his fellow soldiers. His dedication to service did not end with his retirement from the armed forces. He continued to support his fellow servicemen and veterans by actively participating in Veterans of Foreign Wars and his local American Legion post. Each time a veteran would pass in his community, Mr. Howell would attend their funerals to honor their service and express his gratitude. He himself was honored by the Douglas County Board of Commissioners with an engraved brick in the Pathway of Service Walkway at the Douglas County Courthouse.

Mr. Robert Howell was devoted to the Lord. During his lifetime he was a member of the New Georgia Baptist Church, the First Presbyterian Church and the Lithia Springs First Baptist Church. A member of the Baptist faith, he attended a Men's Bible Study, served at a deacon and taught Sunday School.

Mr. Howell was preceded in death by his first wife, Henrietta Howell; his second wife, Martha McMichen Howell; stepdaughter, June Roland; stepson, Tony Pilgrim; and sister-in-law, Marie Howell. My deepest sympathies lie with the surviving members of this family: his sister and brother-in-law, Virgie and Ervin Chandler; his brother, Herman Howell; and his stepdaughters, sons-in-law, stepsons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Mr. Speaker, my fellow colleagues, I hope you will join me in honoring Mr. Robert C. Howell for his life of service to Georgia and to this country.

Thank you very much, Chairman Levin. I really appreciate it so very much.

I have listened for the last 2 days, and I have heard my friends from the other side refer to this as ObamaCare, so derisively, mean- spiritedly. But let me assure you what we're talking about that is the law of the land today is not ObamaCare. It is America's health care for all the American people. It is the health care for that senior citizen who is sitting down at her kitchen table thankful that she now has a 50 percent discount on all of her prescription drugs, and she does not want to see this repealed. It's for that youngster who can now be on his parents' insurance until he's 26 years old in these tough economic times. The American people want this and do not want to see it repealed.

And I want to say to the American people, have no fear, let not your heart be troubled. This law will not be repealed. Yes, they will vote for it today. But it's not going to be taken up in the Senate, and it's not going to be signed by the President. So what do the American people say about this? They want us to be concerned about jobs. And certainly if we have to deal with this health care, why should we not be dealing with some of the critical issues? The American people do not want this bill, this law, repealed. They want it fixed. They'd love to see Democrats and Republicans working together on the 1099s. Sure, there's too much paperwork for small businesses. Let us work on that. This medical liability issue, the number one reason why kids are not going into medicine, let us work on that. And the reimbursement rate for our physicians. The American people want us to fix it, not repeal it.

``The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall not have no vote, unless they be equally divided. The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States.''

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this bill as a big thank you from a very, very grateful Nation.