Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Mr. Oscar Gumucio a profoundly respected friend, leader and advocate of the Greater Cleveland Community, and in recognition of his dedication to civic engagement, education and health care.

As the educational specialist for the MetroHealth Pediatric Hispanic Clinic, Mr. Gumucio is the advocate for Hispanic children when they need help with medical, psychosocial or even school issues. Many times, language and cultural barriers make it hard for Hispanic immigrants to stay healthy or excel in school; Mr. Gumucio does everything he can to remove those barriers or help children overcome them.

Mr. Gumucio developed his sincerity and devotion to the betterment of others when he was a Jesuit priest in the Catholic Church. His compassion for the less fortunate, profound knowledge of human behavior and love for everyone he meets have made him a highly respected person in Cleveland's educational, health and religious communities.

Born in Bolivia, Mr. Gumucio received his Doctorate in Philosophy and Master of Divinity in Argentina, and his master's degree in Spanish literature in Columbia. He taught philosophy at the University of Havana in Cuba and Spanish Literature in Puerto Rico.

Upon leaving the priesthood, Mr. Gumucio eventually moved to Cleveland, where he worked in the Cleveland Municipal School District for 33 years. He is a co-founder of the district's bilingual program, the Mental Health Suicide Prevention Center and the Urban Community School.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, please join me in honoring the leadership and outstanding achievements of Mr. Gumucio for his work in the Greater Cleveland Community and commitment to MetroHealth and the Hispanic community.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Mr. Fred Ziwich, who is one of the country's prominent polka musicians.

Mr. Ziwich began playing the accordion at the young age of five. In 1977, at the age of 14, he began studying the clarinet and formed his band, the International Sound Machine. Mr. Ziwich also began playing the button box in high school. Later, he would earn a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Indiana University.

As a child, Mr. Ziwich was heavily influenced by Slovenian polka artists, Johnny Pecon and Eddie Stampfl. He transformed that influence into a polka style that is unique and well-received throughout the world. Mr. Ziwich is best known for his Viennese Waltzes and Slovenian Polkas. He is an accomplished musician who is proficient at playing the accordion, button box, saxophone, clarinet, flute and drums among others. Throughout his career in the music industry he has collaborated with artists such as Hank Haller, Don Lipovac and Adam Barthalt.

A full-time musician, Mr. Ziwich has continued to play the accordion with the International Sound Machine for more than thirty years. In 2007, the band was nominated for a Grammy Award. In addition to being an international Grammy nominee, Mr. Ziwich has been honored on numerous occasions by the National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of accolades which include being named the Musician of the Year, Button Box Musician of the Year and producing the Recording of the Year.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, please join me in honoring Mr. Fred Ziwich, a polka legend from Northeast Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in honor of Steve H. Taylor, the Director of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Steve, who is also a constituent and resident of Rocky River in Ohio's 10th Congressional District, is retiring on December 4, 2012.

Steve became Director of the Zoo in January, 1989. Immediately, he worked on and completed the popular RainForest in November 1992. Since then, the Zoo has opened several major new exhibits, including Wolf Wilderness and Australian Adventure. In addition, the Zoo renovated all its food and gift facilities, built the Reinberger Education Center, and opened the $10 million Sarah Allison Steffee Center for Zoological Medicine and the adjacent Rising Waters Safari Camp.

Steve has a passion for zoos and their conservation mission. He is active professionally and was on the Board of the Association of Zoo and Aquarium (AZA) between 1987 and 1993. He is an active member of the World Zoo and Aquarium Association. He has visited more than 210 of the 223 AZA accredited zoos and aquariums in North America, many of which were as chair of their accreditation visiting team. A California native, Steve was Director of the Sacramento Zoo, Children's Zoo Manager for the San Francisco Zoological Society, and Animal Keeper and Associate Curator at the Los Angeles Zoo before coming to Cleveland.

Since coming to Cleveland, Steve became a member of the Board of Directors of Positively Cleveland (formerly the Convention and Visitors Bureau) and is a graduate of Leadership Cleveland. Steve strongly believes in ecotourism as a way to help wildlife and wild places. Together with his wife Sarah, who is the Controller for the Cleveland Indians, he has led numerous ecotourism trips to Africa, Costa Rica, and Australia.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, please join me in wishing Steve much success in his retirement and the next phases of his life and career.

Nearly 50 million Americans--over 10 million children-- live in poverty and 46 million Americans on food stamps. According to the Census Bureau, without Social Security over 50 percent of people 65 and older would live and die in poverty. Why do we accept poverty? Why do we accept massive unemployment? Over 20 million Americans are without work. You cannot escape poverty without a job. Americans want jobs, not unemployment checks. If you don't have a source of income, you can't own a home.

The middle class is disappearing. An unfair tax system is causing wealth to accelerate upwards, which is why I oppose the Bush tax cuts. But more tax increases and no massive jobs program are a prescription for disaster. We need more taxpayers, not more tax increases. You can't rebuild America by retaxing America. Poverty and joblessness constitute a national emergency. The private sector is not creating sufficient jobs. Congress has a constitutional obligation and power to coin or create money. We can use our power to put millions back to work rebuilding our infrastructure.

H.R. 2990, the National Employment Emergency Act, can accomplish this. It's our choice: increase taxes, cut spending, put the economy in a stall, or put millions back to work.

Before Congress adjourns, this House will vote on my resolution of inquiry about the U.S.' use of drones.

The vote will not be about the thousands of deaths of innocent civilians caused by drones, though that's important. It won't be about whether the drones are creating more terrorism. It won't be a vote to stop the killing of American citizens without due process guaranteed by the Constitution. It won't be about whether our ongoing use of drones constitutes violations of the Constitution and violations of international law.

The vote will, however, be about something fundamental.

We will determine whether or not Congress has the power to require the administration to release their still secret legal justification to use drones. In matters of the Constitution, in matters of war, ``trust us'' is neither sufficient legally, constitutionally, nor is it morally acceptable.

I urge Members of the House to reclaim Congress' constitutional imperative by supporting H. Res. 819, the resolution of inquiry demanding the White House produce its legal justification for drone strikes.

Over 12 million Americans are unemployed while our infrastructure is falling apart. But at least the U.S. is creating some jobs--for spies.

The Washington Post says the Pentagon will dramatically expand the role and size of its own personal spy agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA. It's like the CIA, but they get their mission assignments from the Pentagon. The report says the plan includes sending 1,600 ``collectors''--that's what they call their spies--all over the world. This is what the CIA does, except they're called ``agents.'' The DIA doesn't have to report to Congress like the CIA does, so we would know even less than we know about situations like Benghazi.

Why the Pentagon needs its own spy agency is anyone's guess--maybe to keep an eye on its own generals when the CIA and FBI do not. Meanwhile, the CIA has been taking over Pentagon functions, conducting military strikes with drones all around the world. We have the CIA bombing people and the Pentagon spying on people. Who knows what the other dozen spy agencies are up to.

Big government leads to a big national security state which leads to Big Brother getting fat on tax dollars while we have less freedom.

You think cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid should be part of a budget deal?

America's economic collapse was fed by Wall Street greed in the form of a $6 trillion housing bubble. This brought large budget deficits. Some who were at the center of the housing crash are pushing for deep cuts to social programs in order to cure the budget deficit. The CEO of Goldman Sachs, which received a $10 billion direct bailout and tens of billions of loans at below-market interest rates, has preached about cutting Social Security benefits and increasing the retirement age.

While Wall Street was bailed out with tax dollars from Main Street, Main Street Americans have lost more than 40 percent of their wealth from 2007 to 2010. Nearly one in six U.S. residents is officially poor--the highest rate in 50 years. Twenty-two percent of American children live in poverty. We are facing an economic situation that resembles the years leading up to the Great Depression.

Now this prevailing budget plan calls for deep cuts in spending on education,

environmental protection, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid while corporations and the top 1 percent would get tax cuts of nearly $3 trillion over the next decade. This is not how to protect a democracy.

The same geniuses who involved the U.S. in a war against Libya, who knocked off the pro-U.S. Libyan Government, who created in Benghazi an extremist shooting gallery which has claimed four American lives including our Ambassador, who have not been held accountable or responsible for those events, who have opened the door for radical fundamentalists to run roughshod over Libya, these same experts are working out of the same playbook for Syria.

Assad was no angel, but he was not a significant threat to the U.S. Apparently, flush from success in Libya, the administration is preparing to ratchet up the war in Syria.

Why would Qatar, our partner in Libya, be supplying surface-to-air missiles to rebels in Syria without the support of this administration? NATO--meaning the U.S.--discusses putting missiles in Turkey, which would create a de facto no-fly zone over northwest Syria, expanding the war.

Is this why we need a tax increase? More money for more war? Really?

Highly paid CEOs are in town to tell America how to avoid the fiscal cliff. The top priority of the ``fix the debt'' CEOs is to cut the essential commitments of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. No skin off their noses.

Sorry, you 50 million Americans who are in poverty. Too bad, you millions of children, elderly, and poor who rely on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Unemployed? You're out of luck if you lose unemployment benefits.

These 71 CEOs who come to Washington to preach fiscal austerity have average retirement assets of $9.1 million. That's about a $65,000 check each month for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, in contrast, the average Social Security check for retired workers is $1,237 a month.

Of all these debt-cutting CEOs, only two have sufficient assets in their companies' pension funds to meet their obligations to their own workers. The rest who pay any pension at all have underfunded their workers' pension funds by $103 billion. Those who have already shoved their own retiring workers off the fiscal cliff want to do it to the rest of the middle class and the poor in America. No way.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H. Res. 813, an unfortunately and unnecessarily one-sided resolution that was brought up on Friday, November 16, for consideration without any advance notice to Members of Congress and which was completed in about a minute without any discussion. The hasty nature in which this resolution of such significance was considered undermines the unspoken, but operationally essential understanding, that bills of great importance will not be quietly tiptoed through Congress. A loss of Members' confidence in Leadership results when House floor procedures are conducted in a manner frustrating to good faith. Such conduct can only add to the hyper-partisanship and the breakdown of comity in Congress that Americans find objectionable.

Members must be given the opportunity to debate U.S. support of a military operation that is likely to be of significant consequence in talks between Israel and the Palestinians. This impacts the region and the world.

Only one minute for consideration of a most consequential resolution in the House, when in the past week, the death toll in Gaza has climbed past 100, including 24 children. Over 800 people are reported to have been wounded. Rockets from groups in Gaza have landed in several Israeli towns. Three Israelis have been killed.

This latest military escalation began after Israel assassinated Ahmed Al-Jabari, the head of Hamas' military wing. According to Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin, who secured the release of Gilad Shalit, Mr. Jabari ``wasn't just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings. . . . On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance.'' Could anything be more destructive of peace than the assassination of a principal to ceasefire negotiations? And the House only has one minute to consider the ramifications of such action?

The root of this latest flare up in hostilities is deep. Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution have been virtually non-existent. Innocent people in Gaza continue to suffer under a blockade that has deprived them of everything from food and clean water to educational opportunities. Illegal settlements continue to be built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, further diminishing prospects for a negotiated two-state solution.

The hastily written, and even more hastily passed resolution, fails to mention any of that. In its deficiencies are writ the failures of our own Middle East policies. This latest outbreak in violence is deplorable and I am strongly supportive of Egyptian efforts to negotiate a ceasefire. Innocent people on both sides deserve to live without fear. Can the House Leadership spare a minute for that point to be made?

Entitlement reform 2012. Let's see. Wealthy Americans are entitled to tax breaks. Corporations are entitled to billions in giveaways. Arms manufacturers are entitled to bigger contracts. The poor and the middle class? Well, they're entitled to unemployment, underemployment, foreclosures, and cuts in both Social Security and Medicare.

Poor and middle class Americans know all about the fiscal cliff. They've been getting pushed off it for years with an unfair tax system, unconscionable trade deals, and the Fed's monetary policies.

Nearly 50 million people are in poverty in America, 12 million unemployed, millions more underemployed. On January 2, millions stand to lose unemployment benefits. Fourteen million Americans' mortgages are greater than the value of their homes.

On the horizon loom massive cuts to essential services. Will the American austerity replace the American Dream? We need to turn back from the fiscal cliff with wealth creation, education, job creation, infrastructure rebuilding, monetary reform, trade reform, and protection of Social Security and Medicare. We need a great economic revival, not another Great Depression.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Patrol Officer Daniel L. Baillis, the Cleveland Division of Police 2012 Police Officer of the Year.

Officer Baillis is a lifelong resident of Cleveland, Ohio who attended Cleveland Public Schools and graduated from Lincoln West High School. He studied Applied Sciences/Law Enforcement at Cuyahoga Community College where he earned an Associate's Degree. He also studied at Cleveland State University.

On July 23, 1979, Patrol Officer Daniel L. Baillis began his career as a Cleveland police officer in the 5th District, where he spent his entire 33-year career. Officer Baillis served on the Basic Patrol, Vice and Strike Force units and spent nearly 20 years as a detective in the Strike Force Unit. Officer Baillis retired from the Cleveland Police Department on August 2, 2012.

The Cleveland Division of Police's Police Officer of the Year award is bestowed upon an officer who demonstrates an outstanding devotion to duty, and consistently performs to the highest degree, beyond standards established by their peers. Police Officer of the Year is not Officer Baillis' first honor. He has previously been awarded the Medal of Honor, three Distinguished Service Medals, four special commendations, two Chief's Commendations and the Rotary Club Valor Award.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, please join me in congratulating Patrol Officer Daniel L. Baillis on being named the 2012 Cleveland Division of Police Officer of the Year.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Jane Sheats on the occasion of her 80th birthday.

Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Mrs. Sheats is a lifelong resident of the Glenville area. Upon graduating from John Hay High School, she immediately began working as a clerk with the Internal Revenue Service. Mrs. Sheats began her role with Cleveland's Democratic Party in 1965 when she began her ten-year tenure as a Precinct Committeeman for Cleveland's Ward 20.

In 1975, Mrs. Sheats was appointed as a Board Member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections by the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party. In 1976, she became the first African American woman in the U.S. to chair a county board of elections. Her public service continued in 1983, when she was appointed Regional Manager Cleveland Region of the Ohio Lottery Commission; she was later re-appointed in 1991 by Former Governor Voinovich. Ultimately, Mrs. Sheats served as Regional Manager for 12 years. In 1999, she came out of retirement to serve as a Deputy Clerk in the City of Cleveland's Clerk of Courts.

In addition to her long career in the public sector, Mrs. Sheats has been a selfless leader in her community. She was a longtime trustee and corporate board member of the Ohio Motorist Association, a Sunday School teacher at Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church and the first woman to chair the Glenville YMCA Board of Managers.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, please join me in recognizing the life of Jane Sheats and wishing her a joyous 80th birthday.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Mr. James C. Boland, who is being honored as the Mayo Society of Greater Cleveland's Mayo Person of the Year.

Founded in 2004, the Mayo Society of Greater Cleveland is a forum for information and activities of interest to individuals of Irish descent, particularly those with ancestral ties to County Mayo. Its members are dedicated to promoting cultural, charitable, scientific and/or literary exchanges between the United States and Ireland, with particular emphasis on County Mayo, including but not limited to research into the life and times of Irish immigration to America and the study of Irish and Irish-American history.

A native Clevelander, James Boland has a long and storied history in the Northeast Ohio community. He is a graduate of John Carroll University and later earned degrees with George Washington University and the Harvard Business School. He served with the U.S. Army before joining Ernest & Young in 1964 for 34 years, when he retired in 1998 as a partner with the firm. Following his retirement, Boland was named the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cavaliers/Gund Arena Company in 1998 and became the Vice Chairman in 2003; he retired in 2007. Boland has also served on the boards of Developers Diversified Realty Corporation, Invacare, the Sherwin-Williams Company and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

He is not only legendary in the business community, but has also been a philanthropic leader. He has played an integral role in the Leadership Cleveland program since it was established in 1977. He is involved with the United Way, Cleveland Tomorrow, The Ohio Business Roundtable, University Circle, The Cleveland Health and Education Museum, Hawken School, Bluecoats, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Harvard Business School Club. He has chaired the YMCA Corporate Challenge, the March of Dimes ``Walk-a-thon,'' the Olympic Torch Relay Committee and has played essential role in numerous other events that empower groups in Northeast Ohio.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, please join me in congratulating Mr. James C. Boland on being named the Mayo Society of Greater Cleveland's Mayo Person of the Year.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Mr. Fady Chamoun and Mr. George Cody, Ph.D, who are being honored by the Northern Ohio Lebanese American Association.

The Northern Ohio Lebanese American Association (NOLAA) was founded in 1931 as a social and charitable organization. NOLAA's original purpose was to promote an understanding and unity among its members, act as a resource to better the conditions of its members and to foster unity among Lebanese Americans and their families in Cleveland and neighboring cities. In 2005, the Lebanese American Christian Society (LACS) was established in conjunction with NOLAA. Today NOLAA and LACS are dedicated to preserving, enriching, and promoting Lebanese heritage and traditions through cultural, educational, humanitarian and social activities.

NOLAA annually honors those who have made significant contributions to the community. This year's celebration will honor Mr. Fady Chamoun and Mr. George Cody. Mr. Chamoun is the founder and CEO of Aladdin's Eatery and Jasmine's Bakery, a restaurant chain and bakery that specializes in Lebanese cuisine. Mr. Cody serves as the Executive Director of the American Task Force for Lebanon, an organization dedicated to expanding awareness of the economic and political conditions in Lebanon and encouraging U.S. government entities and the Lebanese-American community to provide much needed assistance to Lebanon. Additionally, NOLAA will be paying tribute to their special guest, Mr. Boutros Harb, a member of the Lebanese Parliament.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, please join me in recognizing the Northern Ohio Lebanese American Association, and Mr. Fady Chamoun and Mr. George Cody as they come together to celebrate at the Annual Lebanese Heritage Ball.