Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Ilir Zherka's service as Executive Director of the Alliance for International Exchange. For nearly seven years, Ilir has devoted himself to advancing person-to-person exchanges and fostering greater global connectivity. During that time, the Alliance has forged deeper relationships between its members and federal officials, and federal funding for educational and cultural exchange programs has reached record levels.

Ilir's tenure coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which derailed countless exchange opportunities and threatened the short-term viability of any international linkages. Under Ilir's steady hand, however, the Alliance helped expand on line programming and worked to ease barriers to participation.

Ilir also recognizes the role that exchanges play in strengthening global democratic networks. I commend the Alliance's work to promote freedom and American values within the international exchange community as a means for reversing the global decline of democracy.

While the exchange community will feel his absence, Ilir's legacy will endure through new and fortified international relationships. I join the Alliance in thanking Ilir for his years of steadfast service, and I wish him the best in his future endeavors.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to salute and offer my gratitude to my departing Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director, Patrick Malone, as he departs government service for other opportunities.

Patrick has faithfully served as a staffer in the House of Representatives for more than a decade, acting to preserve the values enshrined in the Constitution and striving to expand rights for all Americans.

During his tenure, Patrick has helped give voice to those who are too often left out of the conversation: victims of gun violence, domestic abuse, and hate crimes. I know that as his career advances he will find ways to advocate for these causes and many others in whatever way he can. Most especially, he has done all of this with care, good humor and with a commitment to mentoring others committed to public service.

As he leaves, I wish the best for Patrick, his wife, Cindy, and sons, Ronan and Seamus. I am proud to convey my thanks for his service.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a resident of Connecticut's 4th Congressional District and my good friend, David Gioiello.

For over 45 years David has worked as an industrial health and safety consultant. An active member of his community, he served on the Shelton Board of Education for two terms where he was a fierce advocate for students and teachers.

David spent 17 years as the Chairman of the Shelton Democratic Town Committee, and is a longstanding, committed volunteer at Sterling House Community Center food pantry in Stratford, the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, and is an active member of the Huntington Congregational Church.

David's service to his community and to the 4th Congressional District is commendable and an inspiration to all of us. He understands the importance of serving one's community and the positive impact it can make on the lives of friends, neighbors, and residents. It has been a pleasure to work with David and I know his service to the town of Shelton and the State of Connecticut will continue in his next chapter.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a resident of Connecticut's 4th Congressional District and a friend, David Bayne.

David is an attorney and the President of the Board of Directors of Connecticut CASA, a great organization dedicated to fostering a statewide network of Court Appointed Special Advocates to serve the best interests of children who have dealt with abuse or neglect, and he's been a committed public servant to the town of Darien for nearly 20 years.

During his career, David has been a Selectman, a member of the Representative Town Meeting in Darien, a transportation specialist for the Connecticut League of Women Voters, and a member of the Weed Beach Building Committee. He also spent 17 years on Darien's Democratic Town Committee and served in various roles including Chairman.

David has always understood the importance of service and activism, and the capacity of those seeking to get involved and positively impact the lives of Connecticut residents. It has been a pleasure to work with David and I look forward to seeing the next phase of David's career of service to Darien, and the State of Connecticut.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize and congratulate Lorenzo Flores of Bridgeport, Connecticut on his victory in the MLB Junior Home Run Derby on November 1, 2021. The MLB Junior Home Run Derby is a free homerun hitting contest that allows young athletes from all over the world to practice skill and sportsmanship while competing for a chance to play in the MLB Little League World Series (LLWS). Over 40,000 players entered the competition last year, only 16 of whom qualified for the LLWS--Lorenzo Flores was one of those 16. He advanced through three levels of rigorous competition to clinch the title of 12U New England region champion and earn himself a trip to the Little League World Series.

Lorenzo's victory is well earned: he began playing baseball at the age of four and has excelled in both school and sport for the past eight years with the love and support of his family and community. A student at John Winthrop Elementary School in Bridgeport, Lorenzo plays for Bridgeport North End Little League and is a big fan of the New York Yankees. He possesses a strong work ethic and unshakeable passion that children and adults alike can aspire to. I am proud to represent a young man like Lorenzo.

Madam Speaker, I ask that you and my colleagues join me in congratulating Lorenzo on this immense accomplishment.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Takano for moving this very important legislation.

In this polarized and angry time, one of the lights of this institution is that we have always come together to better serve our veterans, to better serve those men and women who took the ultimate risk and were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of all of us and the system that this room embodies.

And this is a real problem. As I go around my district and I talk to young veterans, they face any number of transitional issues; with housing, with healthcare. And let's face it, the change from being on active duty to being a veteran is a challenging one, one that all too often results in the kind of tragedy that we have acknowledged here in this Chamber today.

And so I rise in strong support of the EVEST Act. It is consistent with something that I am very proud to have accomplished many years ago when we passed the SERVE Act, which made it easier for veterans to show that they had an income so that they could get the housing which they were entitled to. It was a small thing, but it just eased the passage for those young men and women who have so well served this country.

This is important, and it is not a big deal, but it is going to affect tens of thousands of veterans. My Republican friends know that I respect and value their input and their objections to our ideas. It makes us better when you pose objections to our ideas. But I am a little puzzled by the objections that I am hearing today.

I have heard sitting here that this is not paid for. Okay. It is $3 billion that I think is well spent on perhaps the most valuable population that we have. But the notion that it is not paid for, let's remember it was just a couple years ago that my friends on the Republican side passed $2 trillion in tax cuts, 83 percent of which benefited the top 1 percent of this country's citizens. I have to believe that if we can do $2 trillion in tax cuts that largely benefits the richest Americans, that we can find $3 billion to ease the passage for our veterans.

I have heard the ranking member say that the VA maybe can't handle it. Let's remember that the VA supports this idea and that we are just asking them to do a little bit more of what they already do. This is not some new and fanciful program. No, it is making a program that is well-established available to more.

Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. I am particularly proud of my friend and neighbor-- Joe Courtney will talk about this shortly--that my neighbor, Jahana Hayes, is proposing an amendment that will increase the notification that goes to veterans about what is available to them.

This bill needs to pass because, at the end of the day, we are answering the question: Do we want more veterans to have access to what we have promised them, or do we want fewer veterans to have access to what we have promised them? That is what is at stake here.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member and urge him to rethink his objections to this bill because this will be a proud moment when this bill passes.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor not just a resident of Connecticut's 4th Congressional District, but my friend, Barrett Burns.

Barrett is the founding President & CEO of VantageScore Solutions. Under Barrett's guidance, VantageScore went from being a startup housed in the basement of Barrett's home to a well-recognized national brand.

Prior to joining VantageScore Solutions, Barrett served as executive vice president at U.S. Trust, where he was head of the National Private Banking Group and a member of U.S. Trust's Executive Committee, as well as a member of the Senior Management Team of U.S. Trust's parent company, The Charles Schwab Corporation.

During his career, Barrett served as a board member and advisor for numerous groups. Barrett not only served on the Federal Reserve Board's Community Advisory Council and its predecessor, the Consumer Advisory Council; he also served as a director of the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, as a member of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition's Mortgage Finance Collaborative Council, and on the National Fair Housing Alliance's Fair Housing Act 50th Anniversary Advisory Council.

As Barrett's career and trajectory indicate, he has always understood the capacity of the private sector to improve lives, provide opportunity, and open doors. It has been a pleasure to work with Barrett and I look forward to seeing the next stage of his remarkable journey.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order.

Madam Speaker, I am delighted as chairman of the Select Committee on Economic Disparity to welcome the ranking member and the Republican appointees to this very important committee for this Special Order where I think the members of our committee are going to try to highlight some of the early and initial thoughts that we have on how we might address this issue of economic disparity.

I will note that in our first hearing one of our witnesses called this committee ``a committee of historic potential.'' It is based on the National Economic Committee of 1938, and that committee operated in a moment of economic crisis worse than any of us have seen in our lifetimes really since the Great Depression.

The Great Depression showed America that far too many citizens of the richest and most powerful country in the world could be impoverished by unpredictable forces beyond their control.

It showed that free market capitalism was both an unparalleled engine of economic growth, and if left unregulated, subject to manipulation, indifferent to fairness, and prone to collapse as it did in the early 1930s.

In most respects, the American economy is more stable and the safety net is more robust than it was 80 years ago, but today our economy demonstrates more income and wealth disparity and less mobility than it ever has. And, Madam Speaker, that is not a red problem or a blue problem. It is not a northern or a western or an eastern problem. It affects every single one of our communities, every single one of our districts.

It is not a trivial problem. Market economies don't work if they are perceived as fundamentally unfair. Our Democratic political system rests now uneasily on the premise that every American counts equally. Economic mobility, the idea that hard work and playing by the rules allows one to climb the ladder has always been essential to our understanding of ourselves. It defines the American Dream, and yet, when my parents were born, more than 90 percent of American children could expect to make more money than their parents. Today, fewer than half the children will outearn their parents.

Madam Speaker, I see this every day at home. Some of the towns I represent in Connecticut's so-called ``Gold Coast'' include some of the wealthiest people on the planet, but a 15-minute drive from their neighborhoods will take them into cities with horrendous poverty and neighborhoods where opportunity is scarce at best.

Addressing that issue in a thoughtful way, in a bipartisan way is the remit of this committee.

Having made that point, before we enter into a colloquy, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Steil), my friend and the ranking member of the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth to make any comments he wishes to make.

Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member. We will be engaging in a colloquy, just so all the Members know. We will be having an informal chat without having recognition from the Chair.

I know that we are both anxious to get to our members and their affirmative but early ideas on what we might do here, but the ranking member and I were in Lorain, Ohio, last week, courtesy of the gentlewoman from Ohio, who we will hear from later. I think we were both struck by a couple of things.

I came away from that visit impressed by the optimism of people in a town that had suffered badly, associated with the closing of a steel mill. I came away remarkably impressed by the potential role for education. One of the best things I heard there was the amazing work that the community college of Lorain was doing, training people who had both lost jobs but also training young people.

I personally hope--and I know there is a conversation to be had about this--that training and education won't start at the community college level but will start as early as possible. I would hope that maybe education and training might be one of those areas in which we might find bipartisan agreement.

Madam Speaker, that is right, I say to my friend from Wisconsin. I was startled by that sign as well. Here we are in a depressed, if optimistic, town, with a big, closed steel mill with ``Help Wanted'' signs on the outside of that steel mill.

Now, there are probably lots of reasons for the current disconnect. Nationally, I think it is in the millions of jobs that are going begging, even as some people are having a hard time getting those good- paying jobs. But I was really impressed by the fact that you had in a town where there were certainly surplus workers a steel plant looking for more employees.

Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member and look forward to working with him and his members. I know both of us feel strongly about making sure that the members of the committee have an opportunity to offer up their ideas, so I will begin. Again, the Chair won't be yielding. I will just give a wave when I think maybe time is running low.

Let me begin by inviting the gentlewoman from California, who really has already made a dramatic contribution to the committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Jacobs).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California. I take real pleasure in welcoming the gentlewoman from Oklahoma to the committee and invite her to make any remarks she would like to make.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Oklahoma (Mrs. Bice).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Oklahoma.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Craig).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota.

Madam Speaker, I am just going to note to the ranking member, I have four members, a good, enthusiastic turnout, so we are going to need to be a little disciplined with time, about roughly 2 minutes each.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for his generous comments.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore of Wisconsin), another one of our stalwart midwesterners, who was with us in Lorain, Ohio.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Cammack) for her remarks this evening.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida. We may not totally agree on the role of government, but I am grateful to her for really highlighting the importance of education which has been the theme that we have heard a lot here tonight.

Batting cleanup, our last Member to hear from is our hostess from Lorain, Ohio.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

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

Madam Speaker, on October 20, 2021, I was unable to be present for the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and pass, as amended, H.R. 3919. Had I been present for rollcall No. 323, I would have voted ``yea.''

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Baird (Walorski)

Cooper (Clark (MA))

DeFazio (Brown)

Garcia (TX) (Escobar)

Green (TX) (Cleaver)

Hice (GA) (Greene (GA))

Huffman (Stanton)

Kirkpatrick (Stanton)

Lawson (FL) (Evans)

McHenry (Budd)

Meng (Jeffries)

Moore (WI) (Beyer)

Moulton (Norcross)

Napolitano (Correa)

Ocasio-Cortez (Pressley)

Payne (Pallone)

Rodgers (WA) (Joyce (PA))

Rush (Underwood)

Sires (Pallone)

Wasserman Schultz (Soto)

Wilson (FL) (Hayes)

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize J.D. Grom, the Executive Director of the New Democrat Coalition, who recently left us to serve his country in a new capacity at the Department of Commerce.

As Democrats, we all have fight in us. That's never been the hard part. We look at the world around us, see that things can be better, and know that smart people, working hard together can create a better future. But how do we best focus our efforts? It can seem easier, at times, to amplify our differences, drawing battle lines and characterizing our political opponents as existential threats. But that approach is rarely, if ever, in the best service of the nation.

The more constructive path--one that I truly believe will lead to a more equitable, sustainable, and better future--requires not only a deep understanding of the policy challenges we face but the willingness to make progress where we can with allies we recruit and convince along the way.

J.D. Grom spent his time as the Executive Director of the New Democrats committed to this important mission. He never allowed partisan politics to come before the essential work of helping the American people. Staying focused on this responsibility, while managing a large and diverse caucus of big personalities, is no easy task. But it is one that J.D. carried out with the utmost competence, humor, and success, all while being a caring and present husband to Stacy and father to Jack and Emma.

I wish him great professional success in the future, at Commerce and beyond. As he moves into this new phase, he should take pride in the fact that he has left the New Democrat Coalition in a stronger position than he found it, and has set an inspiring example of leadership for his successors.

Madam Speaker, I live in southwestern Connecticut, which is on an artery of this Nation's commerce and economy, and that artery is clogged. I spend hours when I am traveling around my district in traffic or worrying that the trains, which move more slowly than they moved 75 years ago, won't get me to where I need to go.

We have an opportunity in this Chamber, sometime in the next week or so, of passing a major infrastructure bill, which will alleviate those problems in my district and around the United States.

The problems in my district are hardly unique, and it is not just about growth, though every business leader in my district says that transportation infrastructure is their number one or number two problem. It is about quality of life.

This infrastructure bill is perhaps a once-in-a-career opportunity to address and make better the challenges that face each and every one of our constituents.

Madam Speaker, I urge a vote for the infrastructure bill. It is a jobs bill. It is a future economic bill. And, of course, it is going to repair and improve the quality of life for the constituents of everyone in the Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for his leadership and for the 2 minutes, which may be the most important 2 minutes I have had on the floor in a very, very long time, because what we debate here today is not an ideological disagreement. It is not a question of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, Mr. Speaker. It is a fundamental question of who we are as a country and will we abide by the values that not only make us successful in times of war, but which distinguish us as a people and allow us to say that we are an exceptional nation.

When our troops--troops like Jason Crow, the sponsor of this legislation--go to engage in combat in foreign lands, they are armed and equipped with the very best technology money can buy. But from the human standpoint, from the all-important humanitarian and cultural standpoint, they are blind and deaf. That is fixed by locals who risk everything, not necessarily for the money, but because they believe in who we are. This is the moment when we return the favor by saying: If you stood with us, we will stand with you.

It is far from a national security perspective, because God help those who go into a country if we don't take care of those who helped us in Afghanistan. But, more importantly, it is about our values.

Mr. Speaker, you know very well that our military has at its core the value that we leave no one behind. Now we decide whether we live by that value or whether we take the cheap, the easy, the quick, and ultimately, the dangerous way out. It is dangerous for the next conflict we find ourselves in and dangerous because of what that will tell the world about our commitment to loyalty and the values that make us exceptional.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Dudley Williams, a beloved public servant and my good friend.

Dudley committed so much of his distinguished career to the betterment of the City of Stamford. He first moved to Stamford in 1989, with his wife, Juanita James, and son, Dudley Williams III. He contributed greatly to the vibrancy of the Stamford community. Dudley served three terms on the Stamford Board of Education, two as President.

Dudley also served on the Stamford Planning Board and the Stamford Board of Finance. His involvement in Connecticut and the City of Stamford goes beyond these positions, as Dudley held leadership positions at a variety of nonprofits, including the Ferguson Library, Avon Theatre, the Children's Learning Center, and the Stamford YMCA. In these positions, he enriched the lives and livelihoods of families throughout southwestern Connecticut. He also served as President and CEO of the Mill River Park Collaborative, where he used his ability to bring people together to create a space to strengthen the community.

Dudley made many immeasurable contributions to the community throughout his life. We will forever be grateful for Dudley's spirit, compassion, generosity, and we will miss him dearly.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, Mr. Vargas and Chairwoman Waters, for leading on these important issues.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill and my amendment that we will be considering later today.

My colleague from Florida just accused us of being out of touch. I wonder if he remembers that 2 weeks ago the Nation was out of gas. We were out of gas because of a successful cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline. And it is a daily thing, JBS Foods, ferry services, metropolitan transit authority, and the list goes on and on and on and on. So we were out of gas, not out of touch.

And my amendment is simple, it just requires a straightforward, relatively moderate, disclosure of corporations. Do you have a board member that understands cybersecurity? And if you don't, tell us how you are thinking about it. Tell us what your plan is.

I am hearing a lot about pecuniary interest. Let's ask Colonial Pipeline whether there was a pecuniary interest in not having what happened to them happen. If you care about addressing this problem, we are giving companies a choice, either tell us where your expertise lies or how you are going to deal with it.

Mr. Speaker, if you care about it, vote in favor of this amendment and vote in favor of this legislation.

Madam Speaker, as I rise, gasoline is once again flowing through the Colonial Pipeline, and we are getting ready to undertake our routine briefs--those of us who sit on the Intelligence Committee and the Committee on Homeland Security--of this week's cyberattacks. Many of them will have come from Russia, from China, from North Korea, from Iran, or from some shadowy criminal group, which is often sheltered or at least tolerated by one of these countries. Many will have succeeded in stealing critical data or penetrating essential networks. Only a few, like the recent attacks on the Colonial Pipeline, will ever become publicly known.

There is a long list of things that we must do to stop these attacks. We should require private companies to tell the public, or at least the government, when these attacks occur. We should make sure that experts in places like the NSA and the FBI are working side-by-side with network operators to address these attacks, and we should have a clear policy on the payment of ransom to ransomware attacks.

But at the very top of the list is the need to fundamentally change the game by establishing a sure and swift deterrence.

Time and again, we do too little, too late.

Five years ago, President Obama responded to the Russian attack on our 2016 election, the very essence of our democracy, with the expulsion of 35 so-called Russian diplomats and the closing of a few secondary Russian facilities, and he told Putin to ``cut it out.'' Putin barely felt the slap on the wrist.

We know that, because fewer than 4 years later, a Russian intelligence agency used a supply chain attack on Microsoft and SolarWinds to penetrate thousands of networks, including those of the Federal Government. In response, the United States--you guessed it-- expelled some Russian diplomats.

For the bad guys, the cost of doing business is very low indeed.

It is time to strike back using our unparalleled offensive cyber capabilities with the ferocity and precision and, yes, the proportionality that these and many other cyberattacks would have provoked had they been undertaken kinetically.

Let's hurl the full weight of the American legal, diplomatic, and cyber capabilities against DarkSide and the organizations or countries that assisted it. There is no reason why our immense power, if applied, can't result in jailed hackers, businesses sanctioned into bankruptcy, emptied bank accounts, and melted computers.

The same goes for Putin, who draws no formal distinction between the Kremlin and the private groups who supply it with propaganda, mercenaries, and hacking services. Putin respects only the Machiavellian language of force and retribution. For him, all else is tactical. So let's demonstrate the cyber capabilities we have spent billions of dollars developing. Let's make sure that he and the oligarchs who support him feel the fear and anxiety felt by millions of Americans contemplating crashed email systems and gasoline lines down the street.

The objection to my arguments has always been consistent: that as a highly networked nation, we are particularly vulnerable to a cyber tit- for-tat. In a cyber exchange, the Russians, the Chinese, or the Iranians might choose to attack our critical infrastructure, like, say, a gasoline pipeline. Yes, there is risk, but that risk must be weighed against the fully unacceptable status quo.

Hitting back isn't the only answer. It is part of the answer. In this new world, a credible deterrent must be combined with clearly articulated international rules, norms, and an understanding of our national doctrines: all the things that helped keep the Cold War with the Soviets from becoming hot.

Above all else, however, it is time to change the game and impose the meaningful costs that will finally deter our adversaries. Until we do, we are all just waiting for the next Colonial Pipeline attack.