Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained yesterday and missed rollcall Nos. 612 through 614. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall Nos. 612 and 613. I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 614.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and thank him for organizing this tribute to Barry and, I think, to his family, because we know the time he takes away from them on our behalf for his service here.

I am one of the few people who can say that I was here before you were, Barry, but I thought everybody here was from Boston or something like that when I first got here from the west coast.

I want to join my colleagues here. I think we all have very strong and deep feelings about the service you have rendered to us. Sometimes when we were pleasant, and sometimes when we weren't so pleasant, sometimes when we were harried, and sometimes when we were relaxed, you always seemed to be very stable in terms of the answers that you could provide us, even when you couldn't possibly know the answer to the question, ``When are we getting out?'' You would just kind of look and say, Well, and you would give your best guesstimate because you didn't have a clue what was going to take place on the floor, given the turmoil that happens from time to time. But it was more than just about getting out; I think it was also an assessment, your sense of what was really taking place on the floor. Yes, there were 50 amendments filed, but you had a handicap system. You figured 30 were going to go by the wayside by noon. Another five would drop out later. You heard somebody else might have been leaving. So now we are down to a handful of manageable amendments. So don't give up your early reservation. That kind of handicapping was worth a lot when you come from the west coast and you have got to do it every week. So thank you for that.

Your service here overall to us, the dignity with which you have treated the Members of Congress--as I say, sometimes we can be rather demanding because we are harried. It has just been a wonderful, wonderful relationship to have you on our side in our cloakroom, taking care of us and answering questions from our families when they call and want to know what might they expect in terms of our service and our time here.

I think Joe Moakley picked a good guy. He did right by you, and you did right by us. And I just want to thank you.

I want to join Mr. Welch also. I was a big fan of the experience that the pages were able to garner here, and all of us have met people who were pages who now live in our districts and remember that experience, or it was key to their actions, and it was unfortunate that we weren't able to hold onto that program. But your management, your care, and your kind remarks to them sometimes when they were being youthful and exuberant about something that may be taking place, to remind them what was going on in the House, I think, was one of the lessons of their lives that they will never forget. So thank you very much for that management and oversight of those young people who have gone on in so many instances to make major, major contributions in our communities and in our country. Thank you so much for your service.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained due to official business in California today and missed roll Nos. 583 through 587. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on roll No. 586. I would have voted ``nay'' on roll Nos. 583, 584, 585, and 587.

I thank the ranking member for all of her work on this legislation and for her yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2374. This bill is very bad news for working families. It protects the loophole in the law that allows conflicted brokers and advisers to rip off ordinary Americans who are trying to save for their retirements.

The 2008 financial crisis wiped out trillions of dollars of Americans' retirement accounts. Working families now need help in rebuilding those nest eggs, and they need better protection for their savings. The SEC and the Labor Department have moved to provide these protections, proposing to close the harmful loophole, but this bill would scuttle those efforts. Here is what is at stake.

Millions of Americans are putting money aside every day in their 401(k)s and in their IRAs to save for retirement. They have to make these investment choices, and Wall Street is more than happy to advise, but some of those advisers and brokers have conflicts of interest, often undisclosed conflicts of interest. The brokers know about their conflicts of interest, and the brokerage houses know about their conflicts of interest, but the person who is handing over his hard- earned retirement funds doesn't know about the conflicts of interest. The workers think they can trust this investment advice.

But what they don't know is that their advisers may get paid more for, in fact, in actual cases, steering them into high-cost funds with the worst performing of the family of funds. It is very good for the family of funds, but it is very bad for that individual worker who is now handing over his retirement nest egg. That product might have higher fees than other products. It might underperform compared to other products. In other words, the product is not in the worker's best interest, but it certainly is in the broker's best interest.

The SEC and the Labor Department are trying to close this loophole that allows this rip-off to continue to happen, and it is, indeed, a rip-off of ordinary Americans. I know my friend from New Jersey doesn't like the term ``rip-off,'' but that is what is happening to these hardworking American families. Multiple studies--not conjecture--have found that these conflicts of interest cost these retirees, these workers, very real money.

In 2009, the GAO found that, when a pension consultant has conflicts of interest, a defined benefit retirement plan underperforms by 130 basis points. If a conflicted broker in the defined contribution world recommends funds at a similar rate of underperformance, a 40-year-old worker who rolls over his $20,000 401(k) balance into an IRA will see his retirement savings cut by a third over 30 years. If he normally earns 6 percent returns, he would now only be making a 4.7 percent return. The bottom line is he is $35,000 poorer by the time he reaches 70. Thank you for that conflicted advice.

This year, researchers found that the funds recommended by conflicted brokers in 401(k) plans underperformed by an average of 3.6 percent. That translates into workers losing $1 billion every month from their retirement funds because of these conflicts of interest. As a result, consumers are getting bad advice and are putting their retirement savings at stake.

Where do those figures come from?

They come from the founders of the Vanguard funds, who worked out the differences between these funds, conflicted funds, and other funds. That is why the Dodd-Frank law directs the SEC to transition brokers to a fiduciary standard, and, separately, the Department of Labor is trying to align the protections as well.

Brokers need to either act solely in the best interests of investors or otherwise disclose who they work for and how they are paid, but some on Wall Street have cried out, claiming that they will not be able to offer investment advice, especially to working people, if they cannot offer conflicted advice. They can't tell you how to invest your money unless they can offer you conflicted advice wherein they are getting paid more to offer you a substandard product. With the knowledge of that and the higher fees, they somehow can't make money. Let's remember that 75 percent of the brokers can't beat the S&P 500 that is on automatic pilot.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, is that what they are really saying? Is that what American workers want to know--if I don't give you money, for which you can keep secret conflicts of interests that you have with the investment of my money, I have to give you my money anyway if I am looking for this investment? That is absolutely wrong.

The American worker deserves better than that. These people work hard to make the decisions to try to save, to add to their 401(k)s, and you want to talk about, oh, we should educate them about the value of a 401(k) and about the value of an IRA. You can educate them until the cows come home, but if they know that somebody is stealing their money because someone can conceal a conflict of interest, all of that education won't make a damned bit of difference because the fact of the matter is they've worked too hard to hand over their money to those conflicted advisers.

That is what this bill is about. This bill would continue those conflicts, make every effort to delay and stop this rulemaking--or we change the law, we go forward, we protect working families, we protect the retirees, and we make sure that the financial marketplace is free of these conflicts of interest.

Again, I thank the gentlewoman for all of her effort on this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the amendment that I am offering along with Mr. Conyers is the way H.R. 2374 should have been drafted. Instead of short- circuiting the regulatory process on behalf of Wall Street profits, this represents the appropriate and balanced way forward to advise the Department of Labor in their current rulemaking on investment advice.

First, Congress should not be in the business of shutting down any and all efforts by the Department of Labor to make rules for fiduciaries. The fiduciary rule is the cornerstone of pension law. It is what makes sure that, when you hand your money over to someone else to invest it for you, they are going to act in your best interest. Stopping any and all regulatory action to ensure that people's retirement nest eggs are protected is irresponsible. My amendment would allow the Department to proceed.

At the same time, it addresses concerns that have been raised with the Department of Labor's proposed rules. Under my amendment, Congress would send a message to the Department of Labor that we want investors protected, not Wall Street brokers or advisers trying to protect their gravy train.

This amendment makes it clear that the Department may proceed with better protections for retirement investors in a way that provides for unbiased investment education, ensures that underserved communities are not unduly harmed by basic financial protections for investors, ensures reasonable competition to advisers, and protects employee stock ownership plan appraisals.

We want investment advice to be provided in consumers' best interests, not in whatever way makes advisers and brokers the most money.

Studies show that most Americans who save think their investment advisers are acting in their best interests. In fact, AARP found that overwhelming majorities of consumers thought all advisers were required to act in their best interests. But, in fact, they are not, under the current law. They are not required to disclose that they have a conflict of interest.

With poll after poll showing that most Americans are worried about their retirement, they should have the confidence that their investment adviser is working in their best interest, and not conflicted in the advice he gives that person because he may receive additional fees or higher commissions because of recommending a product that is not in their best interest.

This amendment is a no-brainer. It supports consumers and their retirement savings. It supports unbiased investment education. It supports reasonable compensation for advisers for

the important duties they perform. This is a proper and balanced way forward. I urge my colleagues to support the Miller-Conyers amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.

I just want to say that it is an interesting concept that the only way the investment community can continue to survive and offer advice is if they can have the right to have conflicted advice--conflicted advice--be protected by the law, as opposed to representing the person that they are taking the money from to invest.

I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), coauthor of the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Will the gentleman yield?

Do I believe that advisers have a fiduciary relationship to the people that they are taking money from to invest? I do. I think the law should reflect that, absolutely.

Will the gentleman yield?

That is what the amendment addresses.

Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman from Texas have additional speakers?

Mr. Speaker, let me get this straight. You can talk about the advisers having a fiduciary responsibility and obligation under the law, but then you can have the broker-dealers come in and close the deal, and they can provide conflicted advice and, in fact, conflicted products--in the best interest of this retired individual who is trying to invest their funds? Very clever.

But this comes from an industry where we saw the banks sell a tranche of mortgages to their best friends and customers and then immediately bid against the success of that tranche of mortgages. So conflicted advice can be very profitable. They worked it to a fare-thee-well among the big players.

Now you come in with your $100,000, your $80,000, your retirement funds, and you want to make an investment and you want some advice and you want to talk to a broker, and the broker says, Oh, yes, we have exactly the product for you. In fact, he or she has been told to sell this product, even though it is not the best-performing product, it may not be a match for this couple, but it has the highest commissions for the firm and for the broker. That is what they do.

What you are suggesting is that should be written into the law, that conflict of interest, and you talk about all the terrible things that happen. But when the adviser fiduciary study was done in 2013, 68 percent said the fiduciary--this is of the investment industry--68 percent said the fiduciary standard will not reduce products or services; 79 percent said it does not cost more to work as a fiduciary; and 65 percent said the fiduciary standard will not price investors out of the market. So the industry says that, but you have a whole theory how this is doomsday for the small investor. It is just not so.

What you are doing is protecting the right of brokers to give you conflicted advice about the investment of your money, and they knowingly do it. You are saying that the industry cannot continue unless they are allowed to continue to give conflicted advice. That is why we have conflict of interest laws, because we don't allow people to do this when they have a responsibility.

We should vote for this amendment and vote against the bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of H.R. 3080, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, a bipartisan bill that is an important step toward creating good jobs here at home and growing our economy while improving our waterways infrastructure and addressing significant risks to public safety.

The House WRRDA bill makes crucial investments in ports and waterways and is an important vehicle to improve our nation's flood protection systems. Maintaining and investing in these resources is essential to economic prosperity and public safety both because there are a substantial number of jobs linked to waterways and ports and because flood damage poses a serious risk to the livelihoods and economies of communities across the country.

Although I am voting in favor of this bill and believe that passage of it is critical, I am deeply concerned by misguided environmental streamlining provisions in the bill that ultimately will weaken the National Environmental Protection Act. Although the major reason for the Army Corps of Engineers' project delay is a backlog in projects and a lack of funding for those projects, the troublesome provisions in this bill instead purport to address that issue by unwisely undermining the effectiveness of NEPA reviews through unreasonable time restrictions and limitations on the quality of information available to both reviewing agencies and the public. In addition, the bill undermines the integrity of several other foundational environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. Ultimately, these provisions will weaken environmental protections and undermine other elements in the bill that are designed to improve efficiency. It is critical that concerns over these provisions be addressed in the conference committee on this bill so that we can ensure final

passage of a bill that create jobs, improves our waterways infrastructures, and protects the environment.

Once again, I urge support for WRRDA and look forward to working with my colleagues to improve the bill further to secure final passage of a bill that helps create jobs across the country in an environmentally responsible way.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican government shutdown is over, and the threat of the default has been averted for now; but no one is relieved.

The crisis should never have happened. The shutdown really hurt our economy. Standard & Poor's estimated that it cost the country $24 billion, and there is something even worse: each threat of shutdown and default slows economic growth by sowing uncertainty, dampens consumer confidence, and cuts jobs and income.

The Wall Street Journal today ran an article this morning titled, ``A Confidence Shutdown.'' Reporter Gerald Seib wrote:

Washington's misadventures have extracted a historically

high toll on America's confidence.

``A historically high toll,'' he wrote.

How high? At no other time did consumer confidence plummet as far as it did in the Republican shutdown except for prior to the 2003 war in Iraq and the 1990 Persian Gulf war.

The American people don't want a government that is shut down; they want a government that is on their side.

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

I want to thank Mr. Rokita for presenting the bill and Mr. Fitzpatrick for his work on the legislation. I appreciate their assistance.

Mr. Speaker, when parents send their children to school each morning, they expect them to come home safe from harm. Day in and day out, millions of teachers, staff, and administrators do their utmost-- sometimes in downright heroic ways--to put their students' safety first. But despite these efforts, there remains a steady stream of stories from across the country involving students who have been abused by someone in a position of trust in their schools.

Just this past summer, a music teacher in a Silver Spring, Maryland, elementary school was found to have sexually abused 15 minors over an 8-year period.

In my home State of California, a teacher was convicted of throwing a 5-year-old boy with a disability onto a classroom floor and kicking him and was transferred to another school for the following year, but was not fired due to legal limitations. The superintendent of the school district acknowledged that police were not informed after that horrible incident. To make matters worse, even after her conviction, this person was allowed to keep a desk job through the rest of the school year, still had her credentials, and could simply move to a new school to teach, putting more children at risk.

We should be doing everything we can to prevent these abuses. A very fundamental place to start is to not employ predators in our schools in the first place.

After I requested an investigation in 2010, the Government Accountability Office uncovered a wide range of cases in numerous States of convicted sex offenders who had previously targeted children, working in schools side by

side with children. In some cases, these schools had unknowingly hired sex offenders. This happened because State laws are inconsistent in how they require schools to conduct background checks of their employees and what types of crimes are covered.

In other cases, the Government Accountability Office found that districts knowingly passed on a potential predator and abuser to another school or school district, allowing the offender to resign instead of reporting him. Although every State requires some background checks, the checks are not always thorough. GAO found that some States only require checks for licensed teachers, but not other employees. And some States don't require criminal history checks for contractors at public schools.

The GAO also found that at least half of the States lack any rules to ensure that child abuse allegations are not suppressed by school officials, and only a few States require schools to conduct recurring background checks on employees.

The significant differences in the ways schools screen prospective employees lead to gaps in student protection, but a child's safety shouldn't depend on the State in which they reside. A patchwork of State laws fails to protect all children, and that simply is not good enough. We need minimum national standards to keep children safe from sexual predators and other violent adults.

That is why I am proud to be the author of the Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act, along with my cosponsors.

This bill closes the loopholes. It would create consistency across States in background-check policy, requiring public schools to conduct comprehensive background checks for any employee or applicant for employment with unsupervised access to children, using State criminal and child abuse registries and the FBI's fingerprint database, as well as to periodically update these checks.

Contractors in public schools with unsupervised access to students are also subject to these same background checks under this bill. It would prohibit school districts from hiring or retaining anyone who has been convicted of certain violent crimes, including crimes against children, crimes involving rape or sexual assault, or child pornography.

Schools must be places where faculty and students can focus on teaching and learning, without fear of emotional or physical harm. Keeping students safe requires a coordinated effort from teachers, principals, superintendents, community partners, and parents. The vast majority of school staff is trustworthy and works hard every day to support students' learning needs. I honor and respect their work, which is so central to the success of this Nation.

The criminal background checks required in H.R. 2083 are essential to ensuring that schools and school districts are doing everything they can to protect children.

Mr. Speaker, keeping children safe isn't a partisan issue; it is a moral obligation. And that is why I am pleased to see the strong bipartisan support from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for this legislation. I want to thank the cosponsors in particular: Mr. Fitzpatrick, Mr. Stivers, Mrs. McCarthy, Ms. Slaughter, Ms. Wilson, Mr. Rangel, Mr. Holt, and Mr. Cohen.

Working with Chairman Kline's and Mr. Rokita's staff, we clarified several provisions from the original bill that I introduced in May, including that States must periodically repeat or update background checks on employees, based on State and local policy that is publicly transparent; school districts may share background check results with each other for the same employee; and school employees could appeal the results of a background check if it is inaccurate or incomplete and establish their employment eligibility if the check was corrected.

This bill is only as good as the quality of the background checks, and I will work with my colleagues to address issues related to ensuring that the checks are complete and accurate. Congressman Ellison and Congressman Bobby Scott have introduced legislation that seeks to support this goal, and I will work with them and others on these important worker protections if the bill moves forward in the Senate.

I want to thank again Chairman Kline for working with us on sensible solutions that will protect children across the country. I also want to thank the respective staffs for their diligence and thoughtfulness in helping us to develop and move this legislation. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick) for his comments and for his support of this legislation.

I had a couple more speakers who were supposedly coming to the floor, but at this time, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Will the gentleman yield?

I would say that I spoke to you this morning, and we will obviously continue to work with you. We have tried to draw the line at serious felony violent crimes that people have participated in with respect to the ban. In terms of drug arrests or whatever, there is a 5-year window that we have started, and we will be glad to continue that conversation.

If the gentleman will continue to yield, that is why an appeals process is included in this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a dear friend who spent his life trying to educate people about America's role in the world in an effort to make that world a better place.

Saul Landau passed away last month at the age of 77 after battling cancer for almost 2 years.

Saul was not only a very close friend of mine and my wife Cynthia's. He was a constant mentor, educator, and agitator. He was one of the smartest and hardest working people I have had the pleasure of knowing, and he was one of the funniest.

Saul will be remembered as an award winning documentary filmmaker, an author, an investigator and a columnist. Upon his death, his friends and colleagues and family were treated to a collection of obituaries across the country that paid tribute to his exhaustive body of work, his infectious personality, and his deep caring and passion for his country and the world around it.

I am including here for my colleagues' benefit just two of those remarkable pieces so that others may benefit from reading about this one man's extraordinary life.

To Saul's family, I extend my sincere condolences for their loss. But I offer to them as well a deep appreciation from the halls of Congress of the work and thought that Saul Landau contributed to our public debate.

One of the obituaries carries this quote from Saul. ``You want to do what you can while you're on this earth.'' Saul should rest easy knowing that he did that and more.

I will miss my friend.

Following are obituaries that appeared in the New York Times on September 11, 2013 and in the Los Angeles Times on September 13, 2013.

[From the New York Times, Sept. 11, 2013]

Saul Landau, Maker of Films With Leftist Edge, Dies at 77

(By Douglas Martin)

Saul Landau, a determinedly leftist documentary filmmaker

and writer whose passion for asking what he called ``the most

intrusive questions'' yielded penetrating cinematic profiles

of leaders like Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende, died on

Monday at his home in Alameda, Calif. He was 77.

The cause was bladder cancer, his daughter Julia Landau

said.

Mr. Landau aspired to marshal art and literature to

illuminate social and political problems, and his point of

view was almost always apparent. In the 1980s, he wrote

essays berating the administration of Ronald Reagan for

trying to depose the leftist government in Nicaragua, and

recently he urged the United States not to become involved in

Syria.

He said he saw no difference between documentary and

fictional films. In both, he said, a director manipulates

light and sound to put across a vision. ``One has to simulate

reality,'' he said in 2005 in an interview with The Capital

Times in Madison, Wis. ``The other one says, `Here's

reality,' whether it is or isn't.''

Mr. Landau emerged from the roiling New Left politics of

the 1960s to make more than 40 documentaries, including six

about Mr. Castro. One of them, ``Fidel,'' released in 1969,

was a rare intimate look at the Cuban leader. It shows him

arguing with a finger-wagging peasant woman, visiting his

nursery school and playing baseball and striking out.

``I found Fidel a sympathetic figure and a hell of a good

actor,'' Mr. Landau told The Washington Post in 1982.

His most acclaimed film was ``Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear

Gang,'' which he directed with Jack Willis in 1980. With

cinematography by Haskell Wexler, the documentary, broadcast

on PBS, told of the cover-up of health hazards from a 1957

nuclear-bomb test in Utah. The film won an Emmy Award and a

George Polk Award.

The title referred to Mr. Landau's friend Paul Jacobs, a

journalist who died of cancer--believed to have been caused

by radiation exposure--before the film was completed.

Other films by Mr. Landau portray poverty in big-city

slums, the destruction of indigenous Mexican culture, the

inner workings of the C.I.A., torture in Brazil and life

inside a San Francisco jail. Most have a leftist political

edge that some saw as propagandistic, but Mr. Landau

characterized the films as educational.

``All my films try to teach people without preaching too

hard,'' he said. ``I try not to be too tendentious.''

Mr. Landau released two films relating to Mr. Allende, the

Chilean who had become Latin America's first democratically

elected socialist president the year before. One was an

interview with Mr. Allende.

The other film, ``Que Hacer!'' (1970)--the title is a

translation of the title of Lenin's book ``What Is to Be

Done?''--is a fictional movie, a playful spy story with music

concerning a C.I.A. case officer in Chile. There are two

casts: a Chilean one directed by Raul Ruiz and an American

one directed by Mr. Landau and Nina Serrano, his wife at the

time. Country Joe McDonald performed and produced the music.

The film won awards at film festivals in Cannes, Venice and

Mannheim, Germany.

Orlando Letelier, Chile's ambassador to the United States,

invited Mr. Landau to screen it at the Chilean Embassy in

Washington, and they became friends. A few years later, Gen.

Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Allende government and

imprisoned Mr. Letelier.

Mr. Landau worked with other international supporters to

win Mr. Letelier's release and to arrange a job for him at

the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing research

organization in Washington Mr. Landau had joined in 1972. In

1976, Pinochet agents used a car bomb to kill Mr. Letelier

and another institute worker. In 1980, Mr. Landau and John

Dinges published a book about the case, ``Assassination on

Embassy Row,'' documenting the Pinochet government's ties to

the killings.

Mr. Landau was at least as prolific a writer as he was a

filmmaker. He wrote 14 books and thousands of newspaper and

magazine articles and reviews.

Saul Irwin Landau was born on Jan. 15, 1936, a few blocks

from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and grew up playing

stickball in the streets. His father was a pharmacist who had

fled pogroms in Ukraine to come to New York in 1920. His

mother was a teacher.

As a youth, Mr. Landau once abandoned school to hitchhike

across America. When he returned, his mother urged him to

take the test for the academically elite Stuyvesant High

School. He passed, and went on to perform brilliantly there.

The summer after he graduated, he met Ms. Serrano at a camp

in the Catskills, where he was the fry cook and she the drama

teacher. Ms. Serrano, who became a published poet, encouraged

his interest in leftist politics and a bohemian lifestyle,

according to their daughter Valerie Landau.

Ms. Serrano also accompanied Mr. Landau when he went to the

University of Wisconsin. When a dean found out that they were

living together, he threatened to expel Mr. Landau (Ms.

Serrano was not a student then) if they did not marry. They

did.

At Wisconsin, Mr. Landau got involved in a so-called Joe

Must Go club, which advocated the recall of Senator Joseph

McCarthy of Wisconsin over his demagogic attacks on people he

accused of being Communists.

After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in history at

Wisconsin, Mr. Landau became a researcher for C. Wright

Mills, the sociologist, traveling with him to Western Europe,

the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Moving to Northern California with Ms. Serrano, he worked

toward a doctorate at Stanford but did not complete the

studies. In San Francisco, they gravitated to the Beat poets

and the emerging New Left movement. Mr. Landau joined

Students for a Democratic Society and helped organize the

leftist magazines Ramparts and Mother Jones.

He also joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe, for which he

wrote, with R.G. Davis, a parody of a minstrel show, ``A

Minstrel Show, or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel.''

Performers in the show, which satirized racial perceptions,

appeared in blackface. The show traveled to New York and

elsewhere.

``Through the entire evening there is really nothing to

laugh at, no matter how funny it is,'' Richard F. Shepard

wrote in The New York Times. ``There is the ominous theme of

what hypocrisy and oppression breed.''

In 1966 Mr. Landau got a job as a reporter at KQED-TV, San

Francisco's public television station, and a year later went

to Cuba to make a news documentary. Mr. Castro liked it, and

invited Mr. Landau to return to do an in-depth documentary

about him. Mr. Landau's marriage to Ms. Serrano ended in

divorce. Besides his daughters Valerie and Julia, he is

survived by a son, Greg, and two other daughters, Carmen and

Marie; his second wife, Rebecca Switzer; a sister, Beryl

Landau; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

``You want to do what you can while you're on this earth,''

Mr. Landau said in 2006. ``Otherwise the alternative is to go

shopping.''

This article has been revised to reflect the following

correction:

Correction: September 17, 2013

An obituary on Thursday about the documentary filmmaker

Saul Landau omitted a survivor. Besides his wife, children,

grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Mr. Landau is survived

by a sister, Beryl Landau.

This article has been revised to reflect the following

correction:

Correction: September 19, 2013

An obituary on Sept. 12 about the documentary filmmaker

Saul Landau omitted a writing credit for the San Francisco

Mime Troupe production ``A Minstrel Show, or Civil Rights in

a Cracker Barrel.'' It was written by Mr. Landau and R. G.

Davis, not solely by Mr. Landau.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this is now the second week of the Republican shutdown of our government--shut down because they want to put insurance companies back in charge of America's health care.

Republicans in the House think they can get out of this horrible mess they created by partially opening one part of the government or another. Today, it's Head Start--a program I strongly support and one that used to be supported on a bipartisan basis to provide education, health and nutrition services to at-risk children.

When Republicans voted to shut down the government, they closed the doors on thousands of these children and their families. After several bad news articles about the Republicans shutting down Head Start, they now want to partially open it.

Keep in mind, restoring funding to Head Start only serves a small percentage of at-risk children who need preschool and are eligible for it. It is not enough to restore one set of early-learning services for at-risk children but to not fund the Child Care and Development Block Grant, special education services, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which provides early childhood services for children from low-income families as well.

If the Republicans are serious about supporting early childhood education, we should vote on the clean, Senate-passed budget to reopen the government so that services for those kids and their families can be fully restored.

We should have that vote today.

It's time to stop the Republican shutdown. I call on the Speaker to let us vote. Let us vote. Let us vote on a bill to open the whole government.

As of today, enough Republicans have publicly stated that they're ready to join all of the Democrats to vote to open the government. Republicans should allow the House to vote on the Senate bill--a bill that was negotiated by the Speaker of the House, Mr. Boehner, and the leader of the Senate, Mr. Reid, but was rejected by the Republican caucus.

Bring that bill to the floor. Let us vote, and let these children get these services.

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, this last week must have been quite a civics lesson for the members of the Tea Party who thought that they could shut down the government-- and, in fact, shut down the government--and nobody would miss it. But soon they discovered that there were serious problems with that.

Now we see one bill after another: to restore the NIH because they found they stranded cancer patients and other people in need of their health; to restore the WIC program because they found out that the newest born infants in this country would be without nutrition, the veterans programs because they found out our veterans would be stranded, the assistance to go to school would be cut off.

Our national parks, they never thought those communities would be impacted by the national parks. They didn't care about that. They shut them down. But they were here asking for relief.

They found they needed the weather service as the hurricane was approaching our Gulf States. They needed FEMA. They needed someone to organize the evacuation routes in case it became a full-blown hurricane.

The CIA, they discovered they laid off 70 percent of the assets within the CIA. This goes on and on and on and on.

Welcome to America, a big, diverse Nation where we all need one another at one time or another.

I thank the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, Congress should reopen the Federal Government in its entirety and not continue to hold the Federal Government and the American people hostage. The fact is, by closing the Federal Government, Republicans in the House are jeopardizing critical services for mothers and their children. They should have realized this when they shut down the entire Federal Government.

It is not enough just to restore one set of services for women, infants, and children, like the WIC program, but not to fund food stamps or income assistance or housing vouchers, for example, which the same mothers and children rely on to hold their families together. This is literally taking food out of the mouths of children.

Republicans are taking a lot of heat for closing down the government, so they want to open up one part or another to relieve the pressure under

them. But this doesn't help these families. This doesn't help these families because they're cutting other resources and services to these families.

Republicans should allow the House to vote on a bill to open up the whole Federal Government, and then we can sit down and talk about what the budget will look like for the rest of the year.

They should stop trying to kill the new health care law that will help some of these very same families that depend upon WIC. And they should stop picking winners and losers based upon the political realities out there that the American public is getting angrier and angrier at how they're treating the recipients of Federal assistance in this country today.

I urge people to vote against this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the House floor is starting to feel like a new episode of ``The Hunger Games.''

Every day, the Republican leadership tries to find a new way to pit one desperate group of Americans against another. Today, because of the shutdown, Republicans are pitting kids with cancer against kids who are hungry. This bill is designed to release funds for the NIH today so that they can reduce funding for programs for kids, programs that keep children with the nutrition that they need. For a little bit longer, they can go hungry while we take care of the kids with cancer.

I don't buy their newfound concern about NIH funding, and the American people aren't buying it either. What did they think was going to happen when they shut down the NIH? Did they have

any working knowledge of what takes place at the NIH?

The gentleman from Arkansas has just related the integral nature of the NIH to universities and research facilities all across this country, and yet they thought it was free to shut down the NIH? Now they've discovered that hundreds of children are receiving treatment at the NIH for cancer, and now they think the NIH ought to be open, but they're not sure that the Head Start reductions ought to be brought back? This means kids can't get their meals during the day--some 85,000 kids in Arkansas--and they'll go without nutritional assistance because of this shutdown. What about those? Are they next in the barrel here?

Will you come and rescue them? Will you come and rescue the Head Start children who are losing the opportunities to go to school?

What about the active servicemembers who are now facing 4-day school weeks in their classrooms? What about the elimination of important summer programs because of the shutdown? When are you going to take care of the military service's children? What is this going on here?

Every day, we pit one unfortunate victim of this shutdown against another helpless victim of this shutdown, and they think that they can cure it one bill at a time.

There are millions of people all across the country and millions of businesses and millions of unfortunate people who have nowhere else to go to get help because of diseases, because of the threats to their lives.

I thank the gentlewoman for bringing this opposition to the resolution to the floor.

I would hope that all Members of Congress would just do what they can do, which is, in the next couple of hours, simply have a clean CR to open up the government. Let the people get the services that they need, and let the public servants who provide them those services go back to work in the name of country.

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, the chairman of the committee says that we should think of the impact before we act; that we should think of the impact on the parks before we vote against this bill.

Did you think about the parks when you voted to shut down the government? Did you think about the impacts?

The gentleman from Montana yesterday came to the floor and said it's hurting the local economy. The gentleman from California came and said it's hurting the towns around Yosemite. Was he thinking about that when he voted originally to shut down the government? He was prepared to sacrifice the local economy. He was prepared to sacrifice the towns around Yosemite when he was on the jihad against American citizens getting access to health care. He was fully prepared to sacrifice the parks and the economy and fire recovery.

But you know what you found out in the last 24 hours? That millions of Americans went to find health care, to sign up for health care, to get access to health care. And millions of Americans decided that you're doing the wrong thing in shutting down their government.

So when you were on the jihad against Americans' access to health care, shutting down the parks wasn't a problem. Shutting down NIH wasn't a problem.

I was telling them, Mr. Speaker, that they thought it was okay to shut down----

* * *

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize and thank Edmund L. Regalia for his many years of service as Founding Director of the Kennedy-King Memorial Scholarship Fund.

Established in 1968 in memory of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy the Kennedy-King Memorial Scholarship Fund provides financial aid to graduating community college students from minority groups under-represented at California's four-year colleges and universities. Many award winning students have excelled academically but are faced with financial hardships.

Since its creation forty-five years ago, the Kennedy-King Memorial Scholarship Fund has raised well over $3.5 million to help send more than 600 community college students from Contra Costa to four-year universities. None of this would be possible without Ed Regalia's

dynamic leadership in the community and his unwavering commitment to students.

Recently Ed was named a ``Hometown Hero'' by our own Bay Area News Group-East Bay in partnership with Comcast Corporation specifically recognizing his work with Kennedy-King Memorial Scholarship Fund. For those of us who have known and worked with Ed these many years, the term Hometown Hero is certainly fitting. He and his wife, Gwen, have made a decided difference not only in the lives of the deserving students but through their community service and philanthropic work. Truly, they have touched the lives of all of us in Contra Costa County.

Please join me in congratulating Ed and Gwen Regalia for their dedication to our students and our community, and I commend my colleagues to read the following article recognizing their work:

[From the Contra Costa Times, Sept. 3, 2013]

Hometown Hero: Walnut Creek Attorney's 40 years of Handing Out Minority

College Scholarships

(By Matthias Gafni)

Shortly after Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968

and months after Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, a

young Ed Regalia met with his Democratic Club in a friend's

Walnut Creek backyard.

The idealistic young attorney, along with wife Gwen and

others, thought of how they could honor the two men's

contributions to society. They decided to create a

scholarship fund for low-income, minority students in Contra

Costa County. They consulted a black professor at Diablo

Valley College, Regalia said.

``He set up a program that he recommended, and we followed

his rules,'' Regalia said in a recent interview from his

Walnut Creek home.

More than four decades later, the Kennedy-King Memorial

College Scholarship Fund has helped send more than 600 Contra

Costa community college students to four-year universities,

raising more than $3.5 million.

``We're very grateful,'' said Regalia, now 82, retired and

recovering from a stroke five years ago.

The well-known attorney, whose wife served as Walnut

Creek's mayor for many years, still sits on the fund's board.

His work with minority students began even earlier, when he

was a 16-year-old El Cerrito High student leading the Del Mar

Hi-Y club. A district official wrote a letter to the teenage

Regalia in 1948 about a recital, saying, ``The spirit of your

organization in being willing to agree to sponsor a colored

boy before the public was, to me, far more important.'' It

was a year after Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier

in baseball, his wife pointed out.

Regalia was born in El Cerrito; his father laid bricks for

a living. Regalia attended nearby UC Berkeley while earning a

scholarship from the Navy. He served three years during the

latter part of the Korean War, leaving the military as a

lieutenant before returning to Cal and graduating from Boalt

Law School.

By 1964, Regalia joined Boalt classmates Harry Miller and

Marvin Starr to form the Miller Starr Regalia law firm.

Dealing almost exclusively in civil litigation, Regalia led

the firm in real estate and business issues, representing

title companies, banks, savings and loans, and other

companies.

The father of four was involved in many major cases,

litigating once for a woman whose house was damaged from a

landslide. That case wound its way to the state Supreme Court

and led to requirements to provide disclosures for

homebuyers.

His work with the scholarship fund raised some eyebrows,

with most thinking it would quickly fizzle out.

At the inaugural dinner, held June 14, 1969, in Concord,

Regalia's group awarded $2,000 scholarships each to the first

two recipients. The organization spent months personally

collecting pledges from various politicians and Contra Costa

movers and shakers. U.S. Rep. George Miller's father, then a

state senator, pulled a $100 bill from his money clip when

the couple approached him, Gwen Regalia said. The younger

George Miller continues to raise $8,000 each year to fund a

scholarship, she added.

The fund has always reached across the political aisle. At

the first dinner, the speakers included former Democratic

U.S. Reps. Pete Stark and Jerome Waldie, and Republican State

Sen. John Nejedly.

Over the years, more and more of the fundraising came from

corporations, enabling more students to get help. The fund

requires low-income minority students to have spent two years

at one of Contra Costa's three community colleges, and the

scholarships help pay for their junior and senior years at

four-year universities. Graduate school scholarships also are

available.

Alameda County deputy district attorney Mark Jackson, who

is black, received an undergraduate scholarship in 1988 as a

Contra Costa College undergraduate, and it allowed him to

finish his degree at San Francisco State. He won the

scholarship again in 1991 as he tackled his law degree at

Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

As a college student, Jackson struggled to earn enough

money to attend college.

``The scholarship was very helpful in enabling me, in

conjunction with working two jobs and with my family's help,

in graduating college without any student loan debt,''

Jackson said. ``These students need every dollar they can get

from this program.''

Jackson, now 45, has since served on the scholarship's

board and started a pre-law program at Contra Costa College.

``Whenever they finished and got a job, they were expected

to devote their time in the community,'' said Gwen Regalia,

who has served on the scholarship fund board, as well as 21

years on the Walnut Creek City Council and nine years on the

Walnut Creek school district board.

In May, Ed Regalia's organization awarded scholarships to

another 20 students who will attend undergraduate and

graduate schools, including San Francisco State, UC Berkeley,

Mills College, University of Alaska, Cal Poly San Luis

Obispo, Cal State East Bay, Holy Names University and Samuel

Merritt University.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the majority and the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for bringing this legislation to the floor. This is bipartisan legislation which promotes initiative, achievement, and excellence among young people.

The Congressional Award Act empowers young people to take greater responsibility for their own lives, to discover new talents, to advocate on behalf of others, and to take positive action in the community.

The Congressional Award Program has helped thousands of young people, including some of the most disadvantaged youth, find ways to get involved in public service. It shows young Americans how to set goals and to achieve them. Through this program, these young people gain self-confidence, problem-solving skills, and the ability to work as part of a team, traits that are valued by employers and institutions of higher education.

Since its inception in 1979, this program has grown substantially. Today, total participation in the Congressional Award Program exceeds 35,000 participants. In my home State of California, 6,491 participants have enrolled since 1979, completing over 450,000 hours of community service.

As a nonprofit organization that operates almost exclusively through private donations, the Congressional Award Act is an excellent example of successful public-private partnerships, and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Again, I thank the committee for bringing it to the floor.

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