Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of a globally-engaged and welcoming United States. Historically, hosting international students and scholars at our colleges and universities has been one of the most important ways America reinforces those values. I urge my colleagues and the administration to recognize the vital contribution international students, scholars, and their families make to the United States.

The cross-cultural partnerships formed through international education and exchanges offer widespread benefits for the United States. Students and their families supported 400,000 jobs in the 2015- 2016 year, contributing nearly $33 billion to our national economy. Their financial and academic contributions allow universities to offer more advanced courses--often in STEM subjects--to American students. These students, the vast majority of whom do not study abroad, gain invaluable knowledge towards succeeding as global citizens through cooperation and interaction with their international peers.

As co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on International Exchange and Study and as a student who studied abroad, I recognize the enormous benefits offered by a cross-cultural education. May is a critical month on the college calendar, a time when college seniors graduate and enter the global world while high school seniors finalize their choice on where to study in the fall. The new administration's immigration policies, specifically the Travel Ban Executive Order, harvest uncertainty for students making these decisions.

Our nation's security must remain our top priority, but we must balance that with the need to remain open, welcoming and committed to driving future economic growth and opportunity. We must reassure international scholars who may be unsure about coming that their contributions are valued and that they are welcome here

Mr. Speaker, April 23rd marked the thirtieth anniversary of one of the gravest tragedies in the history of the State of Connecticut: the collapse of L'Ambiance Plaza, a 16-story tower under construction in Bridgeport.

I rise today to extend my condolences and pay tribute to the 28 workers who lost their lives in the collapse, the 22 survivors whose lives were forever changed, and the countless first responders and volunteers who spent ten days searching the debris for their friends and neighbors. The victims were family in the House of Labor--a collection of carpenters, ironworkers, and pipefitters--whose tragic and preventable deaths remind us that we must never give up the fight for safer workplaces.

Today, 30 years on since this tragedy at L'Ambiance Plaza, I give my sincere thanks to the Fairfield County Labor Council, the Fairfield County Building Trades, the Connecticut State Building Trades and the Connecticut AFL-CIO--all of whom have advocated for safer construction sites and workplaces. We owe it to the victims of this disaster to advocate for measures that make Connecticut's workplaces safer and protect the good men and women of Connecticut's workforce.

Mr. Speaker, on March 28, 2017, I was unable to be present to cast my vote on H. Res. 229, the rule providing for consideration of the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017 (H.R. 1430). Had I been present for roll call No. 198, I would have voted ``NAY.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise to extend my sincere congratulations to Tom McCarthy for being awarded the title of Grand Marshal of the 34th Annual Greater Bridgeport St. Patrick's Day Parade. In his fifteen years as City Councilman, nine of which he has served as President, Tom McCarthy has dedicated himself to serving Bridgeport and representing its citizens with thoughtfulness, competence and ability. Tom McCarthy's hard work and dedication to the City of Bridgeport is much appreciated, and this honor is well deserved.

Madam Speaker, this Sunday I was out on the road amongst my constituents when at about midday, I started to get panicked emails from the doctors of Yale New Haven Hospital because one of their own, Tarek Alasil, an ophthalmologist of Syrian dissent, an ophthalmologist who has made his home here in the United States, who has U.S. citizen children, who has his family in New Haven, had been detained in the Caribbean in the Bahamas.

He had been in the Caribbean doing cataract surgery for people who might otherwise not have access to the surgery that might allow them to see again; stepping forward, as all that we think is best about a country that was founded and strengthened by immigrants abroad, doing God's work as an ambassador--informal, though, he may have been--that America is a good and decent place.

But he was detained and sat there in the Bahamas detained by the customs and border patrol, wondering if he would ever see his family again, wondering if he might ever become the United States citizen that he hoped to be, wondering if he was going to get sent back to his native city of Aleppo, which now is a smoking ruin.

Of course, we hear story after story like that. The worst I heard was an elderly lady in her eighties, Hamidyah Al Saeedi. Hamidyah Al Saeedi has a son who is a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne. She hadn't seen Sergeant Al Saeedi for 5 years, and she was on her way to the United States to see her son, a sergeant in the United States Army, for the first time in 5 years.

She spent 33 hours in detention; some of those hours handcuffed--this mother of an 82nd Airborne soldier--because of the actions of Donald Trump.

She thought she was going to be deported. She was told she would be deported. Thank God she wasn't, this mother of an 82nd Airborne soldier.

Madam Speaker, I serve on the Intelligence Committee and have for some 4 years. I know a little something about national security, and the executive order signed by President Trump on Saturday is not only about national security, it is profoundly dangerous to the security of this country because it gives our enemies a logic to say the United States is bigoted; it is anti-Muslim; and it does not stand for its principles.

What is this executive order?

It is a travesty. It is dangerous security theater. It is a knife in the heart of the values that founded this country. What it is most assuredly not is a mechanism to keep us safer.

It opens with a preamble on 9/11--a devastating day for all of us. Yet, not one of the countries that produced the 9/11 hijackers is on the list of countries affected by this order.

How do you explain that?

All over the world right now radical Muslims are saying: We told you so.

And we are hearing this from our generals. We are hearing this from our national security experts; not one of whom has stood up and said that this is a good idea which will keep us safer.

It comes at a huge cost to our country. The costs to our values that we are a decent country are incalculable and we will be bearing them for a long time.

We are the Congress of the United States. We are the House of Representatives. We are the people's House. Article I of the Constitution--now is the time to stand up against this madness. I plead with my Republican colleagues: Now is the time to stand up for national security, for safety, and for the values enshrined by the Constitution to which we all pledged an oath.

I understand I am a Democrat, so maybe I don't have that much credibility with my Republican colleagues. Let me quote to you what Eliot Cohen, noted conservative, national security strategist, former State Department official said: ``Either you stand up for your principles and for what you know is decent behavior, or you go down, if not now, then years from now, as a coward or opportunist. Your reputation will never recover, nor should it.''

History is staring us in the face right now. It doesn't happen very often, but it is staring us in the face right now. And when history stares you in the face, that is not a gaze that wavers. It stays for generations. And how you respond to that gaze and how you behave will be the stuff of the stories of your children and your grandchildren.

So now is the time for the Congress of the United States to stand up to the bigotry, to the national security theater, to the destruction of our values, with legislation that reverses this travesty of a decision that we saw this weekend.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, with all that we should be doing to help address middle class anxiety, to help the economy along, to help with student debt, to help with the challenges that all of our constituents face, what will we be doing this week? We will be repealing the Affordable Care Act for the 56th time--56.

I get it. The first couple of times, Mr. Speaker, I get it. The first couple of times, the Republicans believed that this was a government takeover of health care, that there were death panels, that it was unconstitutional, that it would raise costs in the health care section, that it would be a job killer. None of that turned out to be true.

In fact, the opposite turned out to be true. The Supreme Court said it was constitutional, it actually helped lower costs in the overall health care system, and we are now adding jobs in the private sector faster than we have added them in 10 years.

None of that was true.

What is true is that the Affordable Care Act has given 10 million or more Americans the security for the first time of having health insurance. It has cut the uninsured rate in my State of Connecticut in half.

Do you know what that means? It means that Ann Christman--51 years old, a single mother, could never afford health care insurance--now, she has it. She went to a doctor, and her breast cancer was diagnosed early. She said:

The cancer has been detected at a very early stage, which,

with a 98 percent survival rate, has saved my life.

Respectfully, let's leave it alone.

Madam Speaker, now that you have yielded me time, I can say anything I want. I can offer any

idea and I can criticize anything. No police force, not the greatest military in the world can stop me from speaking my mind.

This is true not because I am a particularly regular source of good ideas or because we are particularly gracious to one another around here; it is true because we are humble about what we know for sure.

We used to know for sure in this Chamber that women should not vote and that racial discrimination was okay. Opposing those ideas used to be offensive and provocative.

In Paris yesterday, several courageous journalists were murdered because their ideas were provocative to some. They were murdered by cowards who know that their ideas and visions would and will be rejected by civilized humans everywhere. There is no courage in killing the unarmed.

To those who committed these atrocities yesterday: bring your ideas to a forum like this one or to forums like this one all over the democratic world, bring your ideas to be examined and debated--that is the path of courage and honor.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Jewish Community Center of Stamford, Connecticut, for being named the 2014 S.T.R.I.V.E. (Sports Teach Respect Initiative Values and Excellence) Organization of the Year. The S.T.R.I.V.E. award is provided by the National Council of Youth Sports to organizations that implement youth sport practices that promote health and safety.

Since opening its doors in 1916, the Stamford JCC has been a valuable community resource, particularly well-known for its continuum of safe, supportive, and inclusive health and fitness programs for children and youth of all abilities, backgrounds, and financial circumstances. This year, more than 1,500 kids, ages three to sixteen, have taken part in ``kids-first'' recreational activities, created to promote important attributes including teamwork, community engagement, sportsmanship, self-esteem and self-discipline.

I commend the Stamford JCC for this wonderful achievement, and for their work in helping promote healthy and safe recreational activities for children in Stamford.

Mr. Speaker, like so many of us, I was home last week, listening to my constituents talk and be concerned about dysfunction, and I discovered that there is a great deal of confusion about what dysfunction is.

My friend from the other side of the aisle just said they have sent all kinds of bills over to the Senate where they are held up--held up in the Senate. This is not dysfunction.

It may not be happy for my friends on the other side of the aisle, but the Senate is held by the Democrats. If you send them legislation that is inspired by the Tea Party, they are not going to pass that. That is not dysfunction. That is a refusal to govern.

Meanwhile, Mr. Speaker, over here, there are five bills, and if they were brought to the floor today, they would pass with significant majorities. Each and every one of them would help the economy and create jobs.

The reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank, comprehensive immigration reform, topping up the highway trust fund, extending unemployment insurance, and terrorism risk insurance are five bills that we could pass today.

The American people need to understand, as they think about dysfunction, that those bills will not be brought up. This House will not work its will. It will not be allowed to work its will.

Mr. Speaker, let this House work its will.

Madam Speaker, over 60 years ago, the United States President sent advisers to a nation in Asia. He did so because a regime that was perceived as friendly to U.S. interests, but which was, in fact, deeply corrupt and rotten, was threatened.

He promised that those advisers would not engage in combat, that they were there to protect American military equipment. Years later, with 60,000 dead Americans and billions and billions of dollars expended, the helicopters lifted off from Saigon, and the Vietnamese regime fell.

Today, another U.S. President is sending advisers to a nation in Asia and contemplating air strikes in a three-way civil war in Iraq. This President is doing it purportedly to preserve a nation which was the creation, as Secretary Albright says, of British and French diplomats lying to each other almost a hundred years ago.

It is a Nation which, while we have paid gravely in blood and treasure to preserve, may not have the support of its own people.

As usual, politics are intruding. The architects of the Iraq war under George W. Bush see the possibility of redemption for their mistakes, so unbelievably, they are accusing this President of losing Iraq.

Let's be very clear: Iraq cannot be lost or won. A brutal dictator or the United States military can sit on top of conflicts between Sunni and Shiite and Saxon tribes that have roiled that society for centuries, but remove that dictator or remove the U.S. military, and those conflicts will reemerge.

At the end of the day, it is Iraqis and Iraqis alone who have to decide whether their Nation will be preserved, whether there will be multiple countries reflecting multiple fates, or whether there will be one pluralistic nation. Whether they will live in the 21st century, the 7th century, a caliphate, what kind of nation they will have is up for them to determine.

There is an argument, of course, that ISIS--the terrorists who have made such astounding gains in regions of Iraq--are bad and brutal people. This is true. I sit on the Intelligence Committee and see, every day, the outrages that they perpetrate.

They have made two mistakes: one, their brutality will ultimately be their undoing with their own people; and, second, they are now occupying territory--this means that they have addresses.

Just as there are terrorists in Nigeria, in Somalia, in Libya, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Iran, in Egypt, and Morocco--the list goes on--there are terrorists in the Sunni areas of Iraq, but the answer cannot be that the United States military will be there to prevent them from doing what they would wish to do.

Our interests--let's be clear about what our interests are--it must first and foremost be up to the citizens of those nations that I just listed to determine what sort of society they will live in. We cannot do it for them, and when we try, it does not end well.

We must say to these nations that: if you work to craft an inclusive society respecting your minorities, respecting the rights of the individual and of women in particular, if you abide by international norms, we will be at your side. We did this 240 years ago, and we know a little something about how one might do it, and if not, we will not be at your side.

Number two, our interest is to say to them that: if, in the birthing pains of your new societies, you nurture or support or in any way assist those terrorists that would target us or that would target our ally Israel or would target other civilized nations, we will find them, we will fix them, and we will take them off the battlefield, as we are doing around the world today.

Those are our national interests. Those goals are worth our time, our treasure, and our talent. Coaching a team in a three-way civil war is not.

Colleagues, let us not expend one more dollar or one more life on military activity that is not in the clear service of our essential national interests.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to join happily in the amendment offered by my neighbor and close friend from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) and the gentlewoman from California, Ranking Member Waters.

One of the crucial achievements of the Dodd-Frank bill, of course, was to drag a massive and, in some cases, very dangerous derivatives market into the light of day by giving CFTC authority to look at the instruments which brought down AIG, which were involved in the London Whale, which when used incorrectly can create a systemic risk to the system, and this is a market that has been growing very, very rapidly.

In 2010, the total derivatives market was about $124 trillion. That is trillion with a t. That is a multiple of the size of the U.S. economy. Today, it has almost doubled that, $223 trillion. Now, these are securities that can cause all sorts of havoc if not adequately regulated.

This amendment, as Ms. DeLauro pointed out, in no way expands bureaucracy. We are not saying spend more money, though there is a very powerful argument for spending more money on an agency that has been tasked to take on a massive new market. It is simply providing flexibility.

The question before this House on this amendment comes down to a very simple question: We are either going to provide discretion to the CFTC to run to where they think the danger is--and if they think that their IT is insufficient, they can spend this money on the IT--they are either going to run to where the danger is or we, as a House, are going to decide that we are such crack IT professionals that we should tell the CFTC that they must spend this money on their system. Folks, that doesn't make any sense.

Therefore, I urge support for this amendment to provide the CFTC the flexibility that they need in regulating this market.

Mr. Speaker, I am moved to rise today because this House, starting yesterday and continuing into today, is considering a complicated bill called the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Mr. Speaker, that is a complicated set of words. This is the bill, of course, in which we fund the Nation's transportation infrastructure.

I rise today, Mr. Speaker, because this bill is not just bad policy, but it is a danger to the safety and economic health of my constituents and to all Americans.

What is it that we are talking about here? We are talking about the money that the Congress appropriates to build and improve our highways, our bridges, and our railways. I wonder who in this House doesn't have bridges or highways or railways in their district? This is the bone, it is the arteries on which we build our economic growth and on which the jobs that we spend so much time talking about are created. Without good highways, without the ability to move people, goods, and services around this country, we are nothing. We will not be serious about creating jobs.

Now, let's take a little tour on how we are doing on our highways, our bridges, and our railways. Just last Friday, I got caught on a Metro-North train in my district because a 100-year-old bridge in Norwalk got stuck in the open position. Thousands of my constituents sitting on trains and in train stations at Grand Central, at Norwalk, and at Stanford were unable to get home.

There have been derailments on this rail line, including some that have been fatal. I live about a mile upstream of a bridge on Interstate 95, the single biggest artery in the Northeast of the United States, that just shy of 20 years ago fell down, killing a bunch of people and creating huge economic havoc.

This is true nationally. The stats are out there. The amount of investment that we need to make in this country to be competitive with the Chinese, with the Europeans, who are spending far more on the bones and sinew of their economies, is huge numbers.

So, what are we doing about it? What are we doing about it right now in this House? Well, the bill I mentioned proposes to spend $70 billion on transportation. That sounds like a big number--a lot of zeros. But let's put that into context. A couple of weeks ago, this House decided to spend about $600 billion on our military, which is fine. It is an incredible military that we have. Add in security and intelligence, and you get a number of about $700 billion that this House chose to spend on our national security. That is 10 times what we are now choosing to spend on transportation. We are spending 10 times protecting this Nation than we are on actually building this Nation and providing the economic infrastructure that will create the economic growth and jobs that we all say we need--$70 billion. By the way, that is 1 percent less than we spent last year, and $20 billion less than the President's request.

Amtrak--now I understand that many of my colleagues don't rely on Amtrak. I rely on it every single week, and, by the way, an awful lot of my colleagues do. I see them on my way down here. Amtrak is proposed to be reduced in funding by 15 percent--half of what the President thinks is necessary in his budget. Who thinks that this is a good idea, Mr. Speaker? Who thinks that it is a good idea in a country where we are supposedly serious about creating jobs to underinvest in the artery, the bone, and the sinew that allows us to grow jobs in this country? That is not a good idea. And, yet, we are fending off amendments to cut investment even more in our transportation infrastructure.

Are there people in this country who don't sit in traffic wasting time that they could be spending with their family, taking away their focus on their businesses that they would like to grow? There aren't many of them, and yet this House chooses to reduce the investment in the country that we supposedly hold dear.

I am tired of it, Mr. Speaker. I am tired of my constituents having their

lives damaged, having their safety put at risk, and having their businesses jeopardized because we have not invested enough in our infrastructure. Is there a State out there, by the way, that has an extra billion or two dollars lying around? Because some of my colleagues think that maybe the States should be investing. But I am curious. Is there a State out there that has an extra $5 billion in their budget to step in where the Federal Government should be active? I don't think so. I don't hear that. And yet this House is about to reduce the spending on transportation.

Mr. Speaker, this cannot stand.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin by thanking my colleagues, Mr. Ross of Florida and Mr. Delaney of Maryland, for cosponsoring this amendment.

I would like to briefly outline the amendment by saying that this is an amendment that is a bipartisan proposal that has been included in the Senate T-HUD appropriations and the bipartisan Shaheen-Portman energy bill.

It was also included in the President's budget, and more than 24 separate groups support this amendment. It

presents no risk to the Federal Government, is budget neutral, and actually has the potential to reduce utility costs for HUD up to $7 billion annually.

In brief, HUD-assisted properties are generally older stock, with inefficient energy and water usage. There are lot of barriers to improving that situation and, therefore, realizing those savings.

Under the pilot program proposed by this amendment, an intermediary will contract with HUD or with property owners to produce energy and water savings in exchange for a share of those ongoing savings.

Relying on this contract, the intermediary will raise the capital to pay for energy and water conservation for the affected property. This private capital would be used to pay energy efficiency experts, such as NAESCO, to perform energy and water efficiency upgrades in HUD-assisted housing, such as housing for seniors and people with disabilities.

Multifamily building owners would not take on any risk and would not need to spend any capital. The bill leverages the private sector to more effectively direct government resources and to ensure the best outcomes for the taxpayer.

Mr. Chairman, we may not agree on some things in the underlying bill, but smart, innovative approaches to financing energy savings improvements are simply common sense.

I hope the chairman and the ranking member will work with me and my fellow bipartisan cosponsors to ensure that this measure is ultimately enacted into law.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Point of Order

Mr. Speaker, on May 7, 2014, I was unable to cast my vote for H.R. 863, rollcall vote 201. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''