Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, at the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on March 5, 2007 at Walter Reed Army Hospital, I asked the top brass who testified whether designating Walter Reed for closing in the midst of a war had contributed to any instability of personnel at the Walter Reed Hospital Garrison. Each of them responded unequivocally that the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) closing for Walter Reed had had a destabilizing effect on the hospital. Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody testified, ``You're trying to get the best people to come here to work, and they know in three years that this place will close down and they're not sure whether they will be afforded the opportunity to move to the new Walter Reed National Military Center . . . that causes some issues.'' This and other testimony, as well as recent Washington Post revelations, have contributed directly to my introduction today of the ``Preserve Walter Reed Army Medical Center Act of 2007.'' Several senior leaders of the relevant committees have since agreed that Walter Reed should be taken off the BRAC list and should remain open.

There have been no complaints about the hospital's world-class treatment or the hospital itself, which was built only in 1977, but the hearing laid bare a broken military health care outpatient system and bureaucracy in need of both long term and short term remedies. The epicenter of this system is its ``crown jewel,'' Walter Reed Hospital, whose physical and administrative outpatient care have rapidly become a potent symbol of a national breakdown that will require systemic remedies for military and veteran hospitals across the country. However, because the problems are both deep and wide, we must find immediate solutions at each facility while the military outpatient systems are freed from knotted bureaucratic tangles.

A first step to take to stop the proverbial bleeding of staff and talent is to reverse the madness of closing the nation's best and most vital military hospital in the middle of a shooting war and the war on terrorism. This bill to reverse the closing of the Walter Reed base will help stabilize personnel who, as the generals testified, scatter once they believe a base will close. At a time when Walter Reed is receiving large numbers of injured soldiers and a military surge may mean many more, closing the Nation's premier military hospital should be unthinkable.

Moreover, leaving Walter Reed on the BRAC list has become increasingly untenable because closing the hospital carries with it a promise and an intention to build a new hospital by 2011. In the foreseeable future, no one expects the administration or Congress to come forward with the required $2 billion to construct the proposed new Walter Reed in Bethesda, Maryland, and much more for moving costs and new equipment, given a huge and mounting deficit, and certainly not in the middle of a war, when funds must be committed to soldiers, their families, veterans and the war itself. Nevertheless, a repeal bill is necessary because, if Walter Reed continues to be listed for closing, Congress will continue to send a signal to personnel to make their career decisions accordingly. As is already occurring, Walter Reed will find it increasingly difficult to retain and hire personnel, including vital civilian clinical and medical personnel, particularly the very best; who the Nation expects will work at Walter Reed to attend to the most seriously injured military men and women.

Further, Walter Reed is an essential and integral component of the Emergency Preparedness Plan for the Nation's Capital. The hospital is located just 5\1/2\ miles from the White House, 6\1/2\ miles from the Capitol and 6 miles from the Washington Convention Center. Its location in the city is strategically important. If moved to Bethesda, traffic and distance would place Walter Reed outside of the homeland security system here that has been developed specifically to take account of the location of the top-tier Federal presence, officials and employees. Because of the location here Walter Reed is essential to treat mass casualties in the case of a terrorist attack. The hospital is part of the Emergency Preparedness Plan for the District, a system for treatment of acute illness or trauma of people requiring hospitalization from a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosive incident. The specialized needs are above the District's hospital capacity. Thus, the District needs Walter Reed's available resources in order to comply with this Department of Homeland Security mandate.

I fully recognize that reversing a BRAC decision is and should be rare. However, particularly after what we have learned about unmet needs for injured members of the military returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, this step is minimally necessary to stabilize operations at the Nation's most important hospital base for caring for our most seriously injured members of the military. Far from establishing a precedent, no other military facility stands on the same footing or has so central a mission. The question should not be can we take Walter Reed off the closing list but, why was this hospital scheduled to close in the first place, as our soldiers were engaged in a shooting

war with no end in sight? Another question should be do we truly intend to spend billions of dollars on bricks and mortar for a new hospital instead of on our soldiers and their facilities?

Walter Reed, like other military hospitals, will not be what it should be immediately. However, we can immediately demonstrate that Congress means business by moving to stabilize the Nation's premier military medical hospital and then getting on with the rest of the job.

I thank you, Representative Green. I particularly thank you for opening up this special hour in a way that offers perspective, historical perspective about why the treatment of our solders and veterans mean so much to us.

What you have done is to take us through the highlights of their history, which is our history, so that I think we come to grips with why the urgency that has been revealed at Walter Reed and now increasingly at other veterans hospitals and military hospitals must be addressed right away.

Mr. Green, to my left there is a rendition of remarks among hundreds of thousands now sent to the Washington Post and to Members of Congress once the Walter Reed revelations came forward in the Washington Post. And what is important about the remarks to my left is the way that they summarize the systemic nature of this problem.

Yes, we are focusing on Walter Reed. It happens to be in my district. Would that we could fix the problems that have come to light by dealing with this one great hospital; and this is far and away the greatest military hospital in the United States, most would say in the country. It is where we send our most injured soldiers. If you have been very seriously injured, you go to Walter Reed. It is considered the crown jewel of military hospitals.

Why, then, are we hearing from Fort Campbell, Kentucky? In a moment I want to know about your district, Mr. Green, but why are we hearing from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, words that also put us to shame? And the words are right there for you to say. We are quoting the words that have come forward, this time to the Washington Post. There were yellow signs on the door stating, ``Our barracks had asbestos.'' How would you feel if you came home from Iraq or Afghanistan to find that kind of sign on the barracks to which you had been committed after leaving the hospital?

Mr. Green made a point about in-hospital care. So far as we have been able to tell, at least in the military hospitals, a standard. You will have to speak to the veterans hospitals. But nobody doubts that there is no better place for our soldiers to be, particularly if you are seriously wounded, than Walter Reed Hospital.

But you get out of Walter Reed and you find the functional equivalent of what we learned about Fort Campbell, Kentucky. There may not be a sign on the door, but the signs were everywhere to see. They were there in the now notorious building 18 where the whole roof now has to be changed, the mold and the rats and the roaches. What those are signs are, are of neglect of these soldiers once they left the hospital.

But in a real sense, I think my good colleagues and brother will agree with me that it is when you get out of the hospital that you may be most depressed. You may have lost an arm or a leg or an eye, or you have lost part of your mental capacity. Now you have to come to grips with the real world. It is in those barracks, barracks like those described at Fort Campbell that soldiers have lost their way because we have lost ours.

Or let's take Fort Irwin in California. Here I am quoting again the Washington Post, March 5 of this year:

``Most of us,'' writes this soldier, ``have had to sign waivers where we understand that the housing we were in failed to meet government standards.''

My colleague will, I think, agree with me that our soldiers expected to be in substandard tents in Iraq and Afghanistan but not in the United States of America after being wounded and being sent back home.

Even though we had hearings in the Government Reform Committee 2 years ago speaking to the outpatient care and were assured by some of the same brass that appeared before us at the Walter Reed Hospital hearing just a couple of days ago, we find, courtesy of the Washington Post no less, not a hearing, but a real expose that things are as bad or worse than we expected.

I would be pleased to yield to the gentleman.

This is the outpatient housing, normally. Unless that says it's a hospital.

I do want to make that distinction. Walter Reed Hospital, the Washington Post, I believe, did not find conditions to be substandard and drew the contrast between the hospital and building 18. I don't think the hospital has been the source of the problem. But they have put these soldiers in aftercare kind of apartments, in facilities like building 18. Unnamed, by the

way. It could have been named after somebody. They said they are going to name it, give it some honorific name.

The base, yes.

I thank the gentleman for those observations, indeed. Your notion that they have got to change and they have got to change now is where we ought to be focused. You spoke about the heart- wrenching testimony, by the way, testimonies under oath. Just like the brass was under oath, so was the wife. She left her home, gave up her job to come be with her husband, has been there for months, lost in the Never Never Land of, is he going to go out on disability? Will he be returned to his company? The man had been in the National Guard for 16 years, for goodness sake.

If you are not going to tell him one way or the other what he is going to do, you're disrupting his life, you're disrupting his entire family's life, and time after time, that was the story we heard.

I want the gentleman to know, we had all the brass before us as well. You have never seen so much brass, the Secretary of the Army. We had the former commander at Walter Reed, Kevin Kiley, who has been now kicked upstairs. He is the U.S. Army surgeon general. It actually was on his watch that most of these problems emerged. We had the major general, George Weightman, who was recently fired. He had only been there 6 months, so he was the fall guy it looks like. We had the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. They all came. And, by the way, when they heard the testimony you just spoke of, they harbored their apologies to the families sitting in back of them. That's the least they could have done.

I do want you to know, I say to my good friend, that when it came time for me to ask questions, I focused on something I happened to know well, that Walter Reed in the middle of a war was put on the base realignment closing list. Think about this: Walter Reed is on the list of military installations to be closed in the middle of the war on terrorism and the Iraq war. We tried to keep that from happening.

Something very important has happened as a result of the testimony. I asked the generals, on second thought, don't you think it would have been best to postpone any notion that Walter Reed would be closed, because that sends a signal to staff, clinical staff, staff of all kinds, that if you value your careers, this is not the place to come?

And yet this is where you need the best personnel in the world. And to the man, each said, that should be rethought. And I want to say this evening to my good colleague and friend that I will be introducing tomorrow a quite unusual bill to repeal the decision to close Walter Reed in order to stabilize staff there, as a first step to say to Walter Reed: We hear you. At least we are not going to send the message to your best personnel, leave this place as soon as you can.

If the gentleman will yield. The Army, of course, said what it was going to do was to rebuild this massive new hospital in Bethesda. The problem with that is that it is going to take $3 billion. The gentleman and I, who serve in this House, know good and well that this House is not going to put $3 billion into bricks and mortar at a time when we have come to the floor to talk about neglect of soldiers and veterans.

So why leave it on the base closing list? Maybe it was a pipe dream that somebody had as long as they were doing BRAC last year. Now has come the time to revisit that decision, and I am very pleased to say to the gentleman that I have noted, reported in the press that Members in a position to turn around that decision, our good friend who is chair of the Defense Appropriation Committee, Mr. Murtha; his ranking member, Mr. Young; Mr. Waxman, chair of Government Reform, where these hearings were held; his ranking member, Mr. Davis; had all said, had all said in a bipartisan matter, it is not the time to close Walter Reed.

So here we are coming together at least with something to do now to stop the bleeding. Then, there are a number of other things we have to do, but that it seems to me is the minimum we can do. And there is a developing consensus; we hear the same things in the Senate today at their hearings: At least let's put, as we say in the law, an injunction on closing this hospital.

Would the gentleman yield on that point, to reinforce that point? At the hearing earlier this week, the generals testified that this was not for want of funds. The fact is that we have given and will give more. If you come here and you look at our Defense budget, I don't think you will see that the Congress has been stingy in coming forward with the funds to do what is necessary, at least to keep these kind of shameful conditions from taking place. And the fact that you see top flight medical care at Walter Reed itself says that, when the doctors are in charge, when the nurses are in charge, things are fine.

The leadership that you speak of, the leadership to deploy the funds correctly, the leadership to make sure that our soldiers have a seamless recovery so that, when they are in aftercare, they know they are recovering because they are treated in exactly the same way they were treated in the hospital.

Yes, you are right, I say to my good friend and colleague who knows firsthand that whatever the doctor is able to do for you in the hospital can virtually evaporate if the kind of care that is necessary is not given after release from the hospital.

I would be glad to yield to the gentleman.

I appreciate that the gentleman has yielded, and the contrast he is drawing between the bureaucracy and the in-hospital care. Because when you see conditions like this, here are some more direct communications.

Now, to be fair, I want to stress, and the difference between the Washington Post and these communications is we have not verified these. We don't want to say in any way that we doubt them, but we do want to say what the difference is.

Nevertheless, people have felt they had to tell us what they felt and what they knew. And here you see, again, another part of the country, the other end of the country, Fort Irwin in California. ``The room was swarming with fruit flies, trash overflowing and a syringe on the table.''

Please remember, all that we are hearing about physical conditions is emblematic of an invisible bureaucracy that is much worse.

Or Fort Knox, again, in Kentucky. ``The living conditions were the worst I had ever seen for soldiers, paint peeling, mold, windows that didn't work. I went to the hospital chaplain to get them to issue blankets and linens. There were no nurses.''

Again, this one, however, these are from the Washington Post. But these they haven't verified, but they haven't gone out there.

I do want to say that when you talk to the soldiers, as I did, and here I will quote one of them. He said, ``Congresswoman, these people need help.'' They

did not even criticize the workers in the bureaucracy. Their sense was that they were overwhelmed.

We are talking about an invisible bureaucracy, a bureaucracy, for example, that when you have lost an arm and a leg, maybe both of them, will keep you waiting months before you can find out whether you are going out on disability or whether you are going back in some form or fashion to the Army.

And the gentleman has talked about lost paperwork, computers that don't talk to one another. The life of one soldier can be on 27 different computers. The computers don't talk to one another. Therefore, nobody can talk to the soldier.

I have suggested that we have to go with this in long-term, short- term as well as long-term ways. One short-term way would be every soldier needs his own advocate, so that, while we are fixing it, you never feel you are lost. There is somebody you can always go to.

I would be glad to yield to the gentleman.

I appreciate the gentleman's yielding. And I also appreciate hearing the Wounded Soldiers Act. That looks like the thinking on that even predates some of what has been revealed here.

You will notice that the President has appointed a commission. It is a bipartisan commission. It has two chairs that I think everybody would respect, Donna Shalala and former leader Dole. We often have tried to get commissions, and I would applaud the appointment of a commission largely because a commission, as I understand its charge, will look throughout the country and not focus simply on the crown jewel and will look at the bureaucracy and not simply at the peeling walls.

But I want to stress again, these soldiers need relief now, people. If you go into Walter Reed and say, ``Don't you worry, this bureaucracy, we are going to fix,'' I can tell you if you are going to fix a bureaucracy where the computers don't talk to one another, you are going to be fixing that for years to come.

We have got to be able to say, it seems to me, before we go on April 2 to spring break, this we have done. I anticipate you will see some of it in the Defense supplemental. Some of it will be money. Some of it will be language. I say that without even knowing, but I know how concerned the Congress is.

And I really want to bring the ultimate analogy here, and that is to say, remember Vietnam and the Vietnam veteran. How many Vietnam veterans are homeless today, feel the terrible neglect of that war? They were draftees, but the price they have paid. And, of course, these are volunteers, which, by the way, in a real sense means we really owe them because they have stepped forward on their own. But increasingly the Vietnam analogy is used, and that analogy has some validity. The part of it that we must see does not obtain is the part that relates to how the Vietnam veterans were treated. That must be the end of that. We must show with this war that there will never be a Vietnam when it comes to treatment of the wounded and treatment of veterans. And that day begins now. And we don't have a lot of time.

This is March. We have a few weeks before we go out. I think we can do it. We may not pass the supplemental before then, but it does seem to me that we are going to come forward when I hear all of the concern with short-term solutions so that the soldiers at Fort Irwin, at Fort Knox, at Walter Reed and in your respective districts can know that help is not only on the way, it is coming, it is galloping their way.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and let me thank him for his leadership on what I think has been a very informative special hour about our veterans.

Just to pick up on what my two colleagues have said, the chairman stresses that we are talking about veterans as well as military matters. The

best example at the hearings was the decision that the poor soldier has to make about whether to take his veterans benefits or his DOD benefits and how difficult that decision is, and how some of them are just driven crazy about how you arrive at that decision, since the amounts can be very different, the kind of decision where you need somebody holding your hand all the time.

My colleague talked about poor judgment from the beginning when we went to the invasion and now when we see soldiers coming back home. I indicated earlier that a colossal example of poor judgment was closing the premier military hospital in the middle of a war.

If I could just quote in closing from Vice Chair Cody, who testified before us at the Oversight and Reform Committee hearing: ``You are trying to get the best people to come here to work, and they know in 3 years that this place will close down and they are not sure whether they will be afforded the opportunity to move to the new Walter Reed National Military Center. That causes some issues.''

Well, as I have said, we are not going to give $3 billion for bricks and mortar in the middle of a war anyway, so that is why I am introducing a bill tomorrow just to send the signal that we are not going to close this hospital.

Madam Speaker, at yesterday's hearing on Walter Reed, I asked the brass whether putting Walter Reed on the BRAC closure list had affected the hospital's staffing and stability. All responded that it had. Army Vice Chief of Staff Cody said, ``We're trying to get the best people. Who would want to sign up to work at a hospital that might be closing?''

You don't close your premium military hospital in the middle of a shooting war and the war on terrorism. I can't imagine that Congress would spend $3 billion on bricks and mortar that could go to wounded soldiers and to veterans. Yet as long as BRAC mandates closure, vital staff who value their careers get the closure signal.

This week I intend to file a bill to keep Walter Reed open. Too much harm has been done already. Let's not compound Walter Reed's problems by keeping a costly closure threat on the books.

Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend from California for yielding to me and my good friend as well from Illinois for coming forward with this bill.

To tell you the truth, I had often looked at bills which celebrate groups in two ways, because I noticed that only insurgent groups have such days named for them or groups most in need, and so they become days of celebration. I have warmed to them only because I have recognized why such groups have their own day, International Women's Day for example.

It is because having such a day provides an opportunity for a call to action. I wish I could come to the floor to celebrate women internationally. It is hard for me to do that when I see the progress in the global economy and look at what has happened and is happening internationally to women who are still chattel in most places in the world, who essentially would qualify as an oppressed group, not as a group seeking equality. So I think we ought to use International Women's Day to speak out for women who cannot speak for themselves.

What is to me perhaps most tragic is that the experience that most women in this country welcome is one that women across the world, particularly in developing countries, may dread, and that is the experience of pregnancy. Where pregnancy cannot be controlled by a woman, it is not the extraordinarily wonderful and welcome state that it is in our country. There will never be equality for women until women can control their own fertility.

As long as women are subject to men, as long as they have no control over their own fertility, then you will see women with as much HIV and AIDS as men. Where saying ``no'' to a man isn't something you do as a woman, but something you can't do as a woman, you are not equal.

So today I call attention to the world that our country has done very little to help women across the world control their fertility and understand what equality means. We would not have women marching for equality and toward equality today if each and every woman who chose was not able to control her fertility. May we help obtain the same for our good sisters around the world.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 584) to designate the headquarters building of the Department of Education in Washington, DC, as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Federal Building, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 584.

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

I commend Congressman Gene Green of Texas for his steadfast advocacy to this bill. In the 109th Congress, he introduced H.R. 4252, a bill to designate the Department of Education headquarters building. Lyndon Baines Johnson, ``the teacher who became President,'' was one of the leading political figures of the 20th century, I think, on both sides of the aisle, it would be agreed.

He served the country in ways too numerous to mention, including lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

A Member of both Houses of Congress, Vice President of the United States and, of course, the 36th President of the United States, we are all aware of President Johnson's humble beginnings in Stonewall, Texas. In 1927, he enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers College at San Marcos, Texas, now the Texas State University at San Marcos.

He graduated with a bachelor of science degree in August 1930. After graduation, he taught at Pearsall High School in Pearsall, Texas, and taught public speaking at Sam Houston High School in Houston, Texas. In a special election in 1937, President Johnson won the U.S. House of Representatives seat representing the 10th Congressional District of Texas, defeating nine other candidates. In the next election he was elected to a full term in the 76th Congress and to each succeeding Congress until 1948.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, President Johnson became the first Member of Congress to volunteer for active duty in the Armed Forces, enlisting in the U.S. Navy, reporting for active duty on December 9, 1941.

President Johnson received the Silver Star for gallantry from General Douglas MacArthur.

In 1948, he campaigned for and was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was elected minority leader of the Senate in 1953 and majority leader in 1955, where he served until January 1961, when he resigned to become Vice President of the United States.

Lyndon Johnson became the 36th President of the United States on November 22, 1963, after the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

During his administration, education was one of the many areas where Johnson blazed new ground. He pursued numerous education initiatives and signed many landmark education bills into law.

In 1963, President Johnson approved the Higher Education Facilities Act, which authorized a 5-year program of Federal grants and loans for construction for improvement of public and private higher education facilities in 1964. President Johnson signed the Library Services Act in order to make high-quality public libraries more accessible to both urban and rural residents.

Later that year, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which, among its provisions, authorized the Federal authorities to sue for the segregation of schools and to withhold Federal funds from education institutions that practiced segregation, if I may say so. The bill also authorized title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the equal employment part of the act it was my great privilege to enforce as Chair of the EEOC.

In 1965, President Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Act. This was the first general aid-to-education program ever adopted, and it provided programs to help educate disadvantaged children in urban and rural areas.

Later that year, he also signed the Higher Education Act, which was the first U.S. congressional approval for scholarships to undergraduate students.

In 1965 as well, President Johnson launched Project Head Start as an 8-week summer program to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs.

In 1966, President Johnson signed the International Education Act, which promoted international studies at United States colleges and universities.

In 1968, he signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act amendments of 1967, establishing bilingual education programs for non- English speaking children and providing more funds for special education for handicapped education.

Later that year, he also signed the Handicapped Children's Early Education Assistance Act, which authorized experimental programs for handicapped children of preschool age. After leaving office, President Johnson continued his involvement in education and taught students while he wrote his memoirs and pursued other academic endeavors. President Johnson died January 22, 1973.

Lyndon Baines Johnson will be remembered not only as a great President and Member of the House and of the Senate, but also as a champion of education. Thus, the Department of Education, located at 400 Maryland Avenue, Southwest, Washington, D.C., most appropriately should bear the name of and be designated as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the gentleman from South Carolina for such time as he may consume.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green, the author of the bill, such time as he may require.

Madam Speaker, may I ask how much time remains on both sides?

Does the gentleman have any further speakers?

Madam Speaker, I appreciate very much the courtesy of the gentleman in yielding additional time, and I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to another gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson).

Madam Speaker, may I ask Mr. Graves, the gentleman from Missouri, whether he has any more speakers and if he is prepared to yield back his time?

I thank the gentleman again for his courtesy in allowing a number of Members to speak with the time he provided.

Madam Speaker, before I yield back the remainder of our time, I must say that it would be hard to find a greater domestic policy President than Lyndon Baines Johnson. The only one I could think of would be FDR himself, and of course, President Johnson updated the Roosevelt New Deal. In fact, we are naming the education building, the Department of Education building after President Johnson. We could as soon have named the HHS building. This is the Medicare President. This is the Medicaid President.

On both sides of the aisle, the historic accomplishments of this great President have been embraced. And I must tell you, they have certainly been embraced by our constituents. He updated the New Deal. And as we consider what domestic legislation lies ahead for us, I think we would do well to remember that history gets made in one era; and the New Deal era with Social Security, unemployment insurance and the like, and then in another era, new issues come forward. President Johnson found those issues. None could have been more important than education and health care, and I appreciate the bipartisan nature of this bill.

No building should be named in Washington that is not embraced on both sides of the aisle, and there is no more appropriate person to name this building after than President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 399) to designate the United States Courthouse to be constructed in Jackson, Mississippi, as the ``R. Jess Brown United States Courthouse''.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material concerning H.R. 399.

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

I rise to support H.R. 399, a bill to designate the courthouse to be constructed in Jackson, Mississippi, as the R. Jess Brown United States Courthouse.

R. Jess Brown was born in Coffeyville, Kansas on September 2, 1912. He was educated in the Muskogee, Oklahoma, public schools and received a bachelor of education degree from the Illinois State Normal University in 1935 and a master of education degree from the University of Indiana in 1943. He attended Texas Southern Law School.

In 1953, he was admitted to the bar for the State of Mississippi and admitted to practice before the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. In 1955, he cofounded the Magnolia Bar Association, and he later served on the board of the National Bar Association for nearly 15 years. In 1958, he was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.

As associate counsel for the NAACP Defense and Educational Fund, Mr. Brown filed the first civil rights suit in Mississippi in the 1950s in Jefferson Davis County, seeking the enforcement of the right of black citizens to become registered voters. In 1961, Mr. Brown represented James H. Meredith in a suit to enter the University of Mississippi. This victory in this case opened the doors to that university to all Mississippi citizens. While an associate with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he played a major role in fighting discrimination in transportation and other public accommodations, working together with Thurgood Marshall, who would later become Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Brown also served as counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was successful in obtaining reversals of convictions of black defendants because of discrimination in jury selection. He also represented numerous black defendants in cases where the State sought the death penalty. As a result of these appeals, none of these defendants were ever executed.

R. Jess Brown died in Jackson, Mississippi, on January 2, 1990. He is remembered as a brave American, brilliant attorney, civil rights leader, and devoted family man. It is both fitting and appropriate that the United States courthouse, soon to be constructed in Jackson, Mississippi, would be designated the R. Jess Brown United States Courthouse.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the author of the bill, who represents the district in Jackson, Mississippi, where this courthouse will be located.

Mr. Speaker, I think this bill deserves the unanimous vote of Members on both sides of the aisle. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 544) to designate the United States courthouse at South Federal Place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as the ``Santiago E. Campos United States Courthouse''.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material concerning H.R. 544.

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

Mr. Speaker, in the 107th, 108th and 109th Congresses, Congressman Tom Udall introduced legislation to designate the Federal courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as the Santiago E. Campos United States Courthouse. No action was taken during the past Congress. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that the 110th Congress finally moves forward with this bill to honor an outstanding American.

Judge Campos was a life-long resident of the United States and graduated first in his class from the University of New Mexico. He served the people of New Mexico and his country with honor and great distinction. He was a World War II veteran, serving the United States Navy as a seamen first class from 1944 to 1946. After leaving the Navy, Judge Campos attended the Central College in Fayette, Missouri, and received his law degree from the University of New Mexico in 1953, graduating first in his class again. From 1954 to 1957, he worked as an assistant attorney general and subsequently as first assistant attorney general for the State of New Mexico. After 14 years in private practice, Judge Campos was elected district judge for the First Judicial District of New Mexico in 1971 and served in that capacity until 1978.

President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the Federal bench in 1978. Judge Campos was the first Hispanic appointed to the Federal bench in New Mexico. He served as chief judge from 1987 until 1989. Known for his compassion, quick wit and inquisitive mind, Judge Campos was a role model for students, fellow jurists and professional colleagues. He was well liked among peers and judicial staff as well.

I strongly support Congressman Udall and his efforts on behalf of this bill, and I urge my colleagues to join in support of H.R. 544.

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

I thank the gentleman. And I concur and strongly support this legislation as well.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, today I introduce the District of Columbia District Attorney Establishment Act of 2007, continuing a series of bills that I will introduce this session to ensure a continuation of the process of transition to full democracy and self- government for the residents of the District of Columbia. This bill is the ninth in our ``Free and Equal DC'' series of bills to eliminate anti-Home Rule legislation and to remedy obsolete or inappropriate congressional intervention into the local affairs of the District of Columbia or denials of federal benefits or recognition routinely granted to other jurisdictions.

This bill will establish an Office of District Attorney for the District of Columbia, to be headed by a District Attorney elected by DC residents. This bill effectuates a November 2002 referendum where DC voters overwhelmingly (82 percent) approved a locally elected D.A.

This important legislation is designed to put the District of Columbia on par with every other local jurisdiction in the country by allowing DC residents to elect an independent District Attorney to prosecute local criminal and civil matters now handled by the U.S. Attorney, a federal official. Instead the new District Attorney would become the city's chief legal officer. As presently constituted, the U.S. Attorney's office in the District is the largest in the country only because it serves mainly as the local city prosecutor. That office needs to be freed up to do security and other federal work particularly in the post 9-11 Nation's capital.

There is no issue of greater importance to our citizens and no issue on which residents have less say here than the prosecution of local crimes. A U.S. Attorney has no business in the local criminal affairs of local jurisdictions. No other citizens in the United States are treated so unfairly on an issue of such major importance. This bill would simply make the D.A. accountable to the people who elect him or her as elsewhere in the country.

In addition to issues of democracy and self government, such as congressional voting rights and legislative and budget autonomy that District residents are entitled to as American citizens, residents are determined to achieve each and every other element of home rule. Amending the Home Rule Act with a local D.A. provision would be an important development toward our goal of achieving true self- government. I urge my colleagues to support this important measure.

Madam Speaker, today, I am introducing the District of Columbia Legislative Autonomy Act of 2007, to end discriminatory and unnecessary congressional review of District of Columbia legislation. Basic to the meaning of self government in the United

States is the right to enact a local budget and civil and criminal laws free from Federal interference. I have already introduced this bill's fraternal twin, the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act of 2007, cosponsored by Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Tom Davis.

Because the period of congressional review involves only legislative days, when Congress is in session, not ordinary calendar days, D.C. laws typically do not become law for months, not days. A required hold on all D.C. bills forces the D.C. City Council to pass most legislation using a cumbersome and complicated process in which bills are passed concurrently on an emergency, temporary, and permanent basis to ensure that the operations of the large and rapidly changing city continue uninterrupted, and because of the complications and time frames involved, some bills do not become law at all. The Legislative Autonomy Act would eliminate the need for the City Council to engage in this Byzantine process that often requires a two-thirds super majority even for ordinary legislation.

The legislative autonomy bill would eliminate the congressional review period for civil and criminal District acts of 30 days and 60 days respectively. I have repeatedly introduced today's legislative autonomy bill because it has long been obsolete, demeaning, and cumbersome, but also because Congress no longer uses the statute. Congress has eliminated the review or layover period as a way to review Council legislation, yet the Council continues to be bound by Section 602 of the Home Rule Act, absurdly continuing to abide by its awkward and debilitating rules because the law requires it. Our bill would do no more than align D.C. City Council practices.

Although control of the Congress changed in 1994 for the first time in 40 years, no resolution of disapproval has been heard in committee or used on the floor of either house. Instead of the cumbersome formal filing of bills that requires processing in the House and the Senate, the Congress has preferred to use appropriations or attachments. The District strongly opposes all methods of overturning its legitimate local legislation, but it is particularly unfair to require the City Council to engage in the tortuous process prescribed by the Home Rule Act that Congress itself has discarded. My bill would eliminate the formal review system that has died of old age and disuse. Congress has walked away from layover review and should allow the city to do the same.

Today's bill, of course, does not prevent review of District laws by Congress. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the House and the Senate could scrutinize every piece of legislation passed by the City Council, if desired, and could change or strike legislation under the plenary constitutional authority over the District. However, since the Home Rule Act became effective in 1974, of more than 2000 legislative acts that have been passed by the Council and signed into law by the Mayor, only three resolutions to disapproval of a D.C. bill have been enacted, and two of these involved a distinct federal interest. Federal law to correct for a federal interest, of course, would be appropriate for any jurisdiction, but placing a hold on 2000 bills has not only proved unnecessary, but has meant untold costs in money, staff, and wasted time to the District and the Congress. Although 32 years of Home Rule Act history shows that congressional review is unnecessary, this bill merely eliminates the automatic hold placed on local legislation and the need for the City Council to use a phantom process passed for the convenience of Congress that Congress has eliminated in all but law.

Congress continually urges the District government to pursue efficiency and savings. It is time for Congress to do its part to promote greater efficiency both here and in the District by streamlining its own redundant and discarded review processes. Eliminating the hold on D.C. legislation would not only save scarce D.C. taxpayer revenue, but would benefit the city's bond rating, which is effected by the shadow of congressional review that delays the certainty of finality to District legislation. At the same time, Congress would give up none of its plenary power because the Congress may intervene into any District matter at any time under the constitutional provisions.

The limited legislative autonomy granted in this bill would allow the District to realize the greater measure of meaningful self-government and Home Rule it deserves and has more than earned in the 32 years since the Home Rule Act became effective. This goal can be achieved without prejudice to congressional authority. I urge my colleagues to pass this important measure.

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to call to my colleagues' attention this year's 100th anniversary of Hoya Basketball at Georgetown University here in the Nation's Capital. Over the last century, the Georgetown Hoyas have had great success on the basketball court, but I am proud to say there is much more to the Hoyas than their athletic prowess. The teams have had a strong record of academic success, community service and developing leaders that have served the Nation with distinction.

First, to their success on the basketball court: The Hoyas were the NCAA National Champions in 1984 and have made it to the Sweet Sixteen or beyond in nine NCAA tournaments since 1980. They have played in National Championship games in 1943, 1982, 1984 and 1985. Since the founding of the Big East Conference in 1980, the Hoyas have been six time Big East Champions. Having played in ten National Invitational Tournaments, in three years, the Georgetown team made it to the NIT Final Four. Former Georgetown head basketball coach John Thompson, Jr., was named Coach of the Year seven times during his career at Georgetown. In 1988, Coach John Thompson, Jr. coached the U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball team, and six of the last eight U.S. Men's Olympic teams have included Georgetown Hoya players or coaching. After completing their careers at Georgetown, many of their players have gone on to success in the NBA including Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, Allen Iverson and Patrick Ewing, to name just a few.

Georgetown athletics have also been committed to ensuring the academic success of their players. In fact, during the years when Coach John Thompson, Jr. led the team to win after win on the basketball court, he also focused on ensuring that his players succeeded in the classroom. Of 78 players who stayed at the University for four years during the years that John Thompson, Jr., led the team, 76 received their degrees for a 97% graduation rate. Since being under the coaching of Craig Esherick and John Thompson, III, the Hoyas have maintained that same commitment to ensuring the academic success of their players on the court.

In addition to the Georgetown Hoyas who have gone on to professional basketball careers of significant renown, two former Georgetown team members are names all of us in the Congress will recognize. First, our former colleague who just retired earlier this year after a long career in this chamber, the Honorable Henry Hyde of Illinois, played on the first Georgetown Hoyas team to play in a National Championship game in 1943. Here in the House, Congressman Hyde served with distinction both as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and of the House International Relations Committee. The other familiar name, Paul Tagliabue, served as Commissioner of the National Football League from 1989 through September, 2006. Mr. Tagliabue graduated from Georgetown in 1962 and subsequently earned a law degree from New York University School of Law. His record of rebounds remains in the top 20 through Georgetown Hoya history.

It is also heartening to know that this team has a long record of community service here in the District of Columbia as well as nationally and internationally. Since 1980 when the Hoyas began playing in arenas off campus with adequate space, it has been Georgetown basketball policy to donate at least 1,000 tickets per game to community groups here in the City. At present, some 80 organizations benefit from those donations in a typical season. Recognizing the importance of developing interactions between young people and law enforcement, the Hoyas partner with the DC Police Department and Coca- Cola each year to sponsor the ``Kids `n Cops'' program when about 1,500 young people from the District attend a Hoyas basketball game with members of the District police force. Also, as part of a broader Georgetown athletics mentoring program known as ``GAME,'' basketball team members tutor students at the SEED School here in the District.

The experience of engaging in community service has carried forward as Hoyas graduate and go on to their own careers. I will share just a few of many examples of this important legacy of Georgetown basketball. Alonzo Mourning who graduated in 1992, is deeply involved in community programs in South Florida where he now lives with a focus on development and education programs for at-risk children and their families. He has also supported kidney research and programming for foster children. Since leaving Georgetown in 1998, Allen Iverson has established the Crossover Foundation which is actively involved in mentoring young people, assisting with access to technology and providing scholarships. As we heard in this chamber last week during the President's State of the Union address, Dikembe Mutombo, who graduated from Georgetown in 1991, has funded a 300 bed teaching hospital in his home of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1996, he also funded the expenses of the Zairian women's Olympic basketball team. In addition, he has been engaged in the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program in Africa and elsewhere.

In closing, I would also note that, as part of the important effort to promote public diplomacy, three former Georgetown Hoyas, Courtland Freeman, Omari Faulkner, and RaMell Ross, have in recent years participated in the State Department's cultural envoys program. That work has taken them to South Africa and Botswana where they have focused on efforts to promote behaviors to prevent the spread of HIV- AIDS and to El Salvador and

Brazil where they have concentrated in part on anti-gang messages.

Indeed, as the Congresswoman representing Georgetown University and as a tenured member of the Universiy's Law Center faculty, I am proud to represent and to be associated with the accomplishments of the Georgetown Hoyas over the last century. I look forward to continuing successes under the leadership of their current coach, John Thompson

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I thank him for the disproportionate service of his own constituents in this war.

As the House prepares to consider a bill for the first full House vote in two centuries for the taxpaying American citizens who live in the Nation's Capital, that have fought in all our wars, I dedicate these words to the first D.C. resident to die in the Iraq war, 21-year- old National Guard Specialist Darryl Dent of the 54th Transportation Company, and to the other residents of the District of Columbia who have died in this war without a vote in this House.

Like the soldiers from every State and territory, Specialist Dent did not have the luxury of equivocation. He

acted, so must we. With uncommon bravery, loss of life, and unique injuries, our troops have acted. So must we.

The resolution before us asks quite simply: Whose side are we on? Do we support our troops best by committing another 20,000 to a war where only they must act and only they are accountable? Do we support our troops by sending more of them to another battle of Baghdad while the insurgents scatter to return as before, unless, of course, our troops are to be permanently deployed in the cross-hairs of a civil war?

Do we support our troops by sending 20,000 more whose lives will be in the hands of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the man we are asked to believe will help put down the militias responsible for civil war conditions, although their leaders are part of his government?

Madam Speaker, the vote this resolution seeks is about our troops more than about the war. Four years of worsening insurgency have rendered a verdict of its own on the war, that even great powers cannot alone win another country's civil war without its leadership and without diplomacy.

Yet another verdict on this war has been rendered by the migration of 2 million Iraqis; among them, the physicians and other professionals who will be desperately needed in postwar Iraq. The 50,000 monthly who flee for safety have created the largest refugee crisis in the Mideast since 1948.

No, Madam Speaker, dispatching 20,000 more American troops to Iraq is not about the war, it is about those troops and the troops that are already there. Most tragically, this war will be remembered for citizen soldiers like Specialist Darryl Dent, the largest number to be uprooted from family and job since World War II.

Recently more than 60 percent of the fatalities were National Guard soldiers who typify average Americans, computer operators, teachers, police officers, who joined to serve at home but were always ready and willing to serve anywhere.

By what right do we call on them again, some for the second or the third time? Devoted though they remain, declining enrollment has had to be bolstered by increasing incentives to preserve the volunteer, all- volunteer military. Here in the capital, the Guard's unique mission to protect the Federal presence is at risk, just as those called away from every State have weakened homeland protection and security.

As Mississippi and Louisiana Guards were serving in Iraq, Guard units from every State except Hawaii plus 7,500 active duty soldiers were necessary during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. By what right do we surge troops into Iraq? Are we about to throw more citizen soldiers and weekend warriors with truncated training into a war with results like those of 2005?

Reserve and Guard were 10 percent of the fatalities during major combat in March and April of 2003. By August of 2005, 57 percent of U.S. fatalities were reservists that year. How can we ask our troops to give yet again? They have given to the preemptive war against weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. They have given as the war morphed into a war for democracy that is not yet in sight.

The question before us, my friend, is not what will the President do or even what will we do. The question before us is what more can we ask our troops to do after 4 years of repetitive brave combat duties?

The question answers itself. Let the troops pass the baton to the Iraqis. Bring our troops home to their children, their families, their mortgages, and, yes, to all of us.

Madam Speaker, Senator Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts delegation, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Carolyn C. Kilpatrick, and I are proud to introduce the Edward William Brooke III Congressional Gold Medal Act. Senator Edward Brooke has been much honored as an outstanding two-term Senator (1967-1979) who is still remembered for his courage and independence on the difficult issues of his time--from the Vietnam War to his leading work in the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. President Bush awarded Senator Brooke the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004. At 87, his autobiography, Bridging the Divide: My Life tells the Senator's remarkable story. That story began here in the District of Columbia, where Senator Brooke was born and raised, and graduated from Dunbar High School and Howard University. Senator Brooke rose to the rank of captain in the segregated 366th Infantry Regiment in the U.S. Army, and won a Bronze Star Medal and the Distinguished Service Award. His autobiography reads like a personal and political adventure of a man born in the segregated capital, a city with no local elected officials or Members of Congress, who went on to become the first African American official elected statewide, when he won election as Attorney General, the second highest office in the state, and the only Republican to win statewide election that year. In 1966, Senator Brooke became the first African American elected by popular vote to the Senate of the United States. ``Trailblazer'' does not aptly describe the courage it took for an African American to run, much less win state-wide office as a Republican in a predominately Democratic state, where 2 percent of the population was African American.

I take special pride and pleasure in introducing this bill in the House, along with the Massachusetts delegation and the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. My Massachusetts colleagues justifiably claim Senator Brooke as a son of Massachusetts. We in the District concede that Massachusetts voters also deserve credit in refusing to allow racial barriers, that still remain formidable in most states, overwhelm Senator Brooke's qualifications for high office. However, I hope that Massachusetts citizens will forgive the residents of the Senator's hometown if we insist that Edward William Brooke III be counted the adopted son of Massachusetts. Senator Brooke's family, the District of Columbia Public Schools, Howard University, and the proud African American community both sheltered and prepared him for his remarkable life and service to the people of Massachusetts and the Nation.

We are especially grateful for the Senator's devotion to H.R. 328, the District of Columbia Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2007. Senator Brooke has worked devotedly for passage of the pending legislation. While in the Senate, he never forgot that his hometown had no Senator and needed him, too. Speaking on the Senate floor for passage of the Voting Rights Amendment in 1978, Senator Brooke made it clear, as he does today, that this matter also was personal for him. He said, in part, ``My enthusiastic endorsement of House Joint Resolution 554 is based primarily on fundamental concepts of liberty and justice, but my support and interest are also intensely personal, for my roots are in Washington, D.C. I was born and raised here. I attended and graduated from Shaw Junior High School, Dunbar High School, and Howard University. For as long as I can remember, I have fought, along with family and friends and colleagues, to attain the goal of providing for the citizens of the District of Columbia the same rights and privileges that other citizens throughout the Nation have enjoyed.'' Because the Congressional Gold Medal is the highest honor that Congress can bestow, it is necessary that at least 290 Representatives and 67 Senators sign on as cosponsors. I urge every Member of the House and Senate to become co-sponsors before the end of Black History Month on February 28th.

Raising the Bar: Pioneers in the Legal Profession

Born October 26, 1919, Edward Brooke was the first African

American elected to major statewide office in Massachusetts

(Attorney General, 1962) and the first African American

elected and re-elected to the U.S. Senate (1967-79) by

popular vote. His father, Edward Brooke, Jr. was a graduate

of Howard University School of Law (1918) and served as an

attorney for the Veterans Administration for 50 years--an

exceptional achievement for an African-American person at

that time.

Brooke attended public schools in Washington, DC, and

graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in 1936. When

he entered Howard University he originally planned to be a

pre-med. major, but he changed to Sociology because he found

the coursework more interesting. His professor of Political

Science at Howard was diplomat, statesman and Nobel Prize

winner, Ralph Bunche.

After graduating from Howard and the Reserve Officers

Training Corps in 1941, he was

drafted into the U.S. Army. He served with the all-Black

366th Combat Infantry Regiment. In charge of discipline and

recreation at Fort Devens, in Massachusetts, Brooke defended

enlisted men in military court cases.

For his leadership during 195 days in combat in Italy, he

was awarded the Bronze Star and promoted to captain. He also

received the Distinguished Service Award.

Motivated by his experience in the army, Brooke enrolled in

Boston University Law School in 1946, and became editor of

the Boston University Law Review. He earned an LLB in 1948

and an LLM in 1949 and began his private law practice in

Roxbury, after declining offers to join other firms,

including an offer from his father to begin a father and son

practice in Washington, DC. Friends encouraged Brooke to run

for political office. His first efforts to enter politics on

the Republican slate in 1950 and 1952 were promising, but

unsuccessful.

After those bids for office, he increased his involvement

with community affairs, and became active with various

groups, including the Boston branch of the NAACP and the

Greater Boston Urban League, the Boy Scouts of America and

the American Veterans of WW II. He also focused on his law

practice during that time. In 1960 he ran for Massachusetts'

Secretary of State and became the first African American to

be nominated by a major party for a statewide office in

Massachusetts--considered quite an accomplishment since there

were only 93,000 black residents in the state. He received

over one million votes, but did not win that election. In

1962, without the support of Republican party leaders who had

endorsed his candidacy for lower offices earlier, he won the

election to the office of Attorney General and became the

first African American to be elected as a state's attorney

general.

As Massachusetts' Attorney General, he battled corruption

in government and targeted organized crime. He proposed laws

that protected consumers, struck at housing discrimination

and reduced air pollution. Brooke worked closely with the

Massachusetts Crime Commission and successfully conducted the

massive investigation in the ``Boston Strangler Case.'' Due

to some of his seemingly conservative and unpopular stances

on issues such as a black student boycott of Boston's public

schools, he endured the wrath of civil rights leaders.

In 1965 he decided to seek election to the U. S. Senate. In

his book, The Challenge of Change: Crisis in Our Two-Party

System, published in 1966, he attempted to encourage his

Republican Party to become more responsive to social change,

and he identified discrimination against 10 percent of the

country's population, due to the color of their skin, as an

important issue. Edward Brooke won the election, with a

margin of almost a half million votes, and became the first

African American to serve since Reconstruction. (He was the

third black American in the U.S. Senate and the first to win

a seat in a popular election.) He served two terms--enjoying

an overwhelming re-election in 1972.

Appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the Commission on

Civil Disorders, Senator Brooke's work included making

recommendations for the protection of black people and civil

rights workers from harassment. Later, that work was expanded

to include protection against housing discrimination, which

led to the 1968 Civil Rights Act. He was a strong opponent of

the escalation of the Vietnam War and fought proposals that

would have expanded Cold War nuclear arsenals. He also worked

to improve relations with the People's Republic of China,

which led to the recognition of that country.

Although he had supported Richard Nixon's campaigns in 1968

and 1972, he clashed with Nixon on several issues, including

the nomination of two anti-civil rights judges to the Supreme

Court. He was the first senator to call for the President's

resignation during the Watergate scandal.

After Senator Brooke was defeated in the 1978 election, he

resumed his law practice and headed the National Low Income

Housing Coalition. Senator Brooke is the father of three and

currently lives with his wife in Warrenton, Virginia. He has

received over 30 honorary degrees and awards, including the

NAACP Springarn Medal and the National Conference of

Christians & Jews' Charles Evans Hughes Award.

Throughout his career, Senator Brooke has endeavored to

make America a better place for all Americans. His efforts

and service to the commonwealth of Massachusetts and the

United States were recognized recently, when a state

courthouse in Massachusetts was named the Edward W. Brooke

courthouse. He thus became the first black American to have a

state courthouse named in his honor.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and he will understand that Bob Drinan was also a politician; and by voting for you in Massachusetts, he at least had a vote. Whereas living in the District, I appreciate that you provided him with a way for him to express his views.

The gentleman knows well that he would have expected you to lead this Special Order and he would have wanted you to lead this Special Order, and he would have been right. He would have been right not only because you had the good fortune to inherit his district, but as he would have known, that the gentleman who inherited his district, the new chairman of the Financial Services Committee, would bring it all together for us.

I appreciate the way you have capsulized Bob Drinan's life, and I appreciate the words of his several colleagues, because each has, in his own way, told us something we did not know about this remarkable man.

Now, I have listened in patience to my Massachusetts colleagues who, with some reason, can claim Father Robert Drinan, son of Massachusetts after all, a man who represented the State, a man who after all was born and spent much of his life in the State; but you will forgive me if I come forward to speak for the residents of the District of Columbia and especially for my colleagues at Georgetown University where he lived and worked as a priest and scholar who also this evening and forever will lay claim on Father Bob Drinan.

For me this is a very sad occasion because I was and remain a tenured professor of law at Georgetown University and go every other week to teach a course there. How else could I retain

my tenure which is harder to get than to be selected, and he and I joked about that.

But the fact is that there has been an outpouring on the Web site of students, of faculty, because Bob died so suddenly. We got a faculty notice just last week saying Professor Drinan is ill, he is in the hospital, we fully expect his recovery, and telling us that we should leave notes for Bob in a faculty box, and they will see that they got there. This is a man who died on his feet, remarkably vital to the very end. He died the way we all want to die, just like that. No long illness, going to his last class, he died as he lived.

I must say, to the gentleman from Massachusetts, I can only imagine what the experience must have been when Bob Drinan was on this floor, because I did not know him as a Member of the House. He was gone for a long time by the time I got there.

He was 86 when he died, that is living a long life. I was tickled to read a quote of his in the Legal Times when he was asked about whether he thought about retiring from the faculty? And Bob Drinan said, ``Jesuits don't necessarily retire,'' they just did what you do, and he did keep doing what he did, and he did it through a fare thee well. Dean Aleinikoff said, well, when writing for the faculty and students, he said, ``his life was fully devoted to the service of others--in the church, in the classroom, and in Congress.''

Of course, Bob does not need more recognition. I am not sure there was a more recognized man. He loved being recognized. Not out of hubris, but out of the delight and joy that was just a part of his life. He was joyful every time you saw him. He was a man of ideas who always wanted to stop you to pluck one of those ideas out of his brain and see where it would go in yours.

Among the honors that are most delighted him was the faculty, the vote of the faculty at the law school to establish the Robert F. Drinan Chair in Human Rights. I suppose the only thing that might have delighted Father Drinan as much as what we did in just last year, an award, that is, seldom given to past Members of Congress. After all, all of them merit our love for their service, and he was one of three you heard Speaker Pelosi speak about how rare is that honor.

In 2004, the ABA awarded him its highest award, calling him a man of the stuff of which legends are made and legendary, and he was, even in his lifetime. He is really, and we have to face it, the first and the only priest to serve in the Congress. He will be the last probably.

I note that there was a nonvoting delegate who served before him, but you see it doesn't count in the Congress. That is why D.C. is trying to get the vote. So Rob Drinan is the only priest who served. When he first ran, he was asked by one of the Boston papers, well, why are you a priest running for Congress, and he answered, ``Why? Why not? Jesuit priests always have been avant-garde. Right?'' Right, Bob, but have no doubt about it. Bob was a priest first.

When he wore the collar on the floor, he was not trying to impress anybody. He was, I think, being entirely candid when he said it is the only suit I own. Of course, it startled those who have never seen a priest on this floor, much less as a Member.

When he was running for Congress in Boston, there were some who irreverently said ``Our father, who art in Congress,'' as an unofficial campaign slogan. Yet, when he bowed to the discipline of his church and was asked whether he had pain and regret, he answered it is just unthinkable that he would renounce the priesthood to hold office. Here I am quoting him, ``I am proud and honored to be a priest and a Jesuit. As a person of faith, I must believe that there is work for me to do which somehow will be more important than the work I am required to leave.'' I hope Members of Congress will hear those words, this man who had a life after Congress understood, that honor though it be to be elected to the House and the Senate, that may well not be the greatest honor you will ever receive.

For Bob Drinan, it was not what, of course, you, Mr. Chairman, have spoken of, what his colleagues from Massachusetts have spoken of, is the extent to which his deep religious beliefs did not stop at the altar, did not stop at the church door.

I think that Father Drinan would have been very much at home with the bishops, the bishops who are first to stand up against war, the bishops who are the first to speak out for the minimum wage, the bishops who are the first to decry the inattention to the poor. Bob Drinan was, indeed, a priest.

He, when he went to teach at Georgetown, this was no favor to the law school. I had to go on a tenure track like everybody else, 7 years of writing. Bob Drinan did not, he had been a dean of a great law school, he had gotten his tenure, and he was welcomed with open arms at the law school. He was no first-time scholar. What was his discipline? In law school you have to teach what the law school needs, but if you have a specialty, it becomes yours. Can anybody doubt why Father Drinan focused on legal ethics and international human rights?

Mr. Chairman, you have said he virtually created the field. It is a field now that our students, Georgetown and throughout the country, study. It is one of the great and growing legal disciplines of our time. One of his last statements was made in a book called, ``Can God and Caesar Coexist,'' balancing religious freedom and international law? For Bob Drinan, father and priest, God and Caesar existed together, but the magic and marvel of the man, that when he spoke and acted for Caesar, for the State, he understood that he was subject to the discipline of the State, and that meant the first amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects, after all, the State and the church from each other.

They are dangerous for each other. They can impose their will on each other. It is the great first amendment that keeps that from happening, standing side by side, freedom of religion, but that is impossible in our country only when there is no action connoting the establishment of religion.

The President, Mr. Chairman, and you have already, I think, entered for the Record, the statements of those who spoke at the funeral, you and I, and many other Members who attended, President of Georgetown, John DiGioia, said in his statement something that reminds us the deep character of man for whom choices that many of us would find difficult were easy because he had assimilated who he was decades before, and our President DiGioia said, At the peak of his engagement Bob Drinan was told he could no longer serve as an elected Member. And we can all imagine how difficult that choice might have been for us. But for Bob, there was never any real choice. The true character of the man, the depth of his identity as a priest was revealed by his act of obedience.

Mr. Chairman, my appreciation is particularly great to you. I have waited my turn. I have waited my turn, not because of seniority, but because those of you who came from the Massachusetts delegation were, of course, those who spoke first and foremost for and about Father Drinan. But if I may say so it is with the greatest sorrow and the greatest respect that the residents of the District of Columbia, the faculty and students of Georgetown University join you in honoring a remarkable Member of Congress, a remarkable priest, a remarkable son of Massachusetts and, yes, a resident of the District of Columbia.

Madam Speaker, next to H.R. 328, the bill to give the District its first full vote in the House, the bill we introduce today is the most important bill to the District of Columbia that will come before Congress this session. The District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act that Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Tom Davis and I introduce would give the District the right to enact its local budget without annual congressional oversight. The original Senate version of the Home Rule Act provided for budget autonomy, and 32 years of unnecessary difficulties and delay occasioned by the extra layer of oversight offer ample evidence that the time is at hand for Congress to permit the city to enact its local budget and move forward immediately to operate and manage the city.

This is the most important of the bills to be introduced as part of the ``Free and Equal D.C.'' series of bills designed to accomplish two goals: (1) to give the city control over its core functions, such as budget, legislation and criminal justice; and (2) to transfer to the District the Home Rule Act provisions that prescribe the city's structure and others that make it necessary to come to Congress for changes, as well as many other provisions that have been included in the Act over the years. Budget Autonomy is most important because the ability to enact a budget and spend its own taxpayer funds as authorized is central to a jurisdiction's ability to operate and manage a functioning government. For that reason, the budget process is essential to the right to self government. By definition, Congress will retain jurisdiction over the District of Columbia under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Since, therefore, Congress could in any case affect changes in the District's budget and laws at will, it is unnecessary to require lengthy repetition of the District's budget process here. The redundancy of the congressional appropriations process is its most striking feature, considering that few if any changes in the budget itself are made.

I am gratified that Congress itself has moved toward the position embodied in this bill. The congressional experience with the District's budget has matured, and year after year, Congress has made no changes. At the same time, there has been increasing recognition of the hardship and delays that the annual appropriations process causes. As a result, Congress has already begun freeing the city from the congressional appropriations network. Last year, Congress approved the Mid-year Budget Autonomy bill, offering the first freedom from the federal appropriations process, the most important structural change for the city since passage of the Home Rule Act 32 years ago. The District can now spend its local funds annually without congressional approval, instead of returning mid-year to become a part of the federal supplemental appropriation in order to spend funds collected since the annual appropriations bill. Moreover during the past few years, appropriators have responded to our concern about the hardships resulting from delays in enacting the D.C. appropriation. I appreciate the agreement that has allowed the local D.C. budget to be in the first continuing resolution, permitting the city to spend its local funds at the next year's level. This approach has ended the lengthy processes that began years before I was elected, whereby the D.C. budget was delayed for floor fights about local policy and laws unrelated to the budget.

I have long argued that budget autonomy would benefit the city financially and operationally without withdrawing congressional jurisdiction. Only statehood would completely eliminate congressional power over the budget, but that option is not available at this time because the Mayor and City Council turned over the costs for some state functions carried by the city to the federal government in 1997. However, permitting the local budget to go into effect on time benefits the District and the Congress alike. For the city, a timely budget would: eliminate the uncertainty of the congressional process that in turn affects the city's bond rating and adds unnecessary interest for local taxpayers to pick up; significantly increase the District's ability to make accurate revenue forecasts; and reduce the countless operational problems, large and small, that result when the city cannot proceed on budget on time. Among the many examples, one particularly comes to mind that resulted when the D.C. budget was enacted five months late. Despite significant cuts in most functions, the city had increased the budget of the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS), but DCPS was forced to spend at the prior year's levels under a Continuing Resolution without the benefit of its urgently needed increase. As a result, for example, textbooks had to be returned to publishers under contract provisions; school supplies were returned; school buses under the bus lease contract were reduced, creating longer rides for disabled children; and tuition payments for special education students went unpaid.

Leaving its local budget to the District also would bring benefits to Congress. The D.C.

budget typically has had to come to the floor repeatedly before it passes because of attachments. Members then complain about the time and effort spent on the smallest appropriation affecting no other members. No budget autonomy bill can eliminate the possibility of attachments because there are countless ways to attach riders, but our bill reduces the likelihood that they will hold the city's local budget hostage and sometimes the appropriations process itself.

Members of Congress were sent here to do the business of the nation. They have no reason to be interested in or to become knowledgeable about the many complicated provisions of the local budget of a single city. In good times and in bad, the House and Senate pass the District's budget as is. Our bill takes the Congress in the direction it is moving based on its own experience and completes the process. Three decades of congressional interference into the vital right to self government should end this year and end first with budget autonomy for the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in honor of Robert Drinan, or Father Robert Drinan as he was always known, the only priest to serve in the House of Representatives. He was the colleague of many who are still in the House. He was my own colleague at Georgetown Law School where he served on the faculty after he left the Congress.

Father Drinan, while he was in Congress, wore his priestly garb because he always considered himself a priest, but when asked why he did not put on civilian clothes, he said, ``It's the only clothes I have.'' And they were.

He bowed to the discipline of his church when the ruling came down that priests should not serve in a legislative body. He took many of the concerns he had brought to this floor with him into books and studies, particularly in the field of international human rights.

I am beginning work on a resolution in honor of Father Drinan. He has already been honored by this House with the Congressional Distinguished Service Award.

We are going to be on a retreat on Thursday. I hope that we can make some arrangements so that many of us who would want to attend the funeral on Thursday may do that and then go to the retreat.

I will save further remarks for such time as a resolution or other fitting period of memorial for Father Drinan is offered here on the House floor.