Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, here is what my constituent Laurel wrote me from Wilmette, Illinois:

Thank you. I am tired of all this bellyaching about health

care, so I want to share our story. We are small business

owners and have a very expensive policy for our two

employees, but we have been stuck with that approach because

my husband and one of our kids has asthma and are therefore

uninsurable.

Our health care broker just sent us all the health care

information for the next year, and our yearly costs will go

down if we switch to one of the ObamaCare options in

Illinois. Although we don't qualify for subsidies, it is

cheaper in all scenarios. In fact, if our usage is similar to

what it was the last 3 years, our costs go down 20 percent.

The policy is better. Everyone in our family is now

insurable. My kids who are still under 21 may be able to get

dental insurance, and the out-of-pocket maximum is lowered if

someone really gets sick. Wow.

She says:

These savings don't include the benefit of the no-

deductible checkups and preventive drug benefits, which have

already saved us $1800 this year. Our health care broker and

his partner are signing up for ObamaCare options themselves.

She says:

I would like to know what all those Republican

grandstanders who have blocked action at every turn and are

now wringing their hands have done for me lately.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the extraordinary life and accomplishments of Ernie Banks--known by Chicagoans as ``Mr. Cub.''

Chicago lost a true hero and friend when Ernie Banks passed away on Friday, January 23. His baseball accomplishments are legendary. During his playing days, cheers would always erupt at Wrigley Field when Banks would make a clutch hit or a spectacular diving catch. His greatness was well acknowledged: Banks was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977--the very first year he was eligible.

While Banks excelled on the field, he also blazed a trail off of it. As the first African-American player for the Chicago Cubs, he was a pioneer in our community and across the country. Banks treated people well, got along with most everyone and stood for justice even as he faced discrimination. During road trips, hotels and restaurants open to his white teammates were often closed to him and other African- Americans. I am happy to see how far we have come as a country throughout the course of his career and his lifetime.

Banks founded the Ernie Banks Live Above and Beyond Foundation, which helps promote social welfare and assist youth and seniors who may need assistance. I know he was very proud of the young players on Chicago's own Jackie Robinson West team who won the Little League championship last year.

According to Fox Chicago, Jackie Robinson West player Lawrence Noble said, `I met [Ernie Banks] during the summer and he was such an inspirational person to me, it was just very sad hearing that he passed away.'

It's clear that the next generation appreciates the impact of Mr. Cub. We can honor the legacy of Mr. Cub by doing our own part to break down barriers and build a better community. We will miss you, Ernie.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Ms. Abha Pandya, who is retiring at the end of this month from the position of Chief Executive Officer of Asian Human Services, Inc. (AHS) after 20 years in leadership at the organization. AHS is Chicago's largest social service agency serving the needs of the pan-Asian and other immigrant and underserved communities residing in metropolitan Chicago. Ms. Pandya joined AHS in June 1994 as the Executive Director, and in 2004 she became the Chief Executive Officer. In 1994, AHS had a staff of six employees and a budget of $294,000. Under Ms. Pandya's leadership, AHS has grown nearly 40 fold--having a budget of approximately $15 million in fiscal year 2015, and a staff of 115 full-time employees.

Ms. Pandya is a truly remarkable leader. She always completed what she set out to do, including big projects that are important to the community, such as opening several Federally Qualified Health Care Clinics, providing dental services to the community, and opening education and job training centers. I attended many wonderful ribbon cuttings of AHS projects under Ms. Pandya's leadership.

AHS is a multilingual, functionally diverse, not-for-profit social service agency that provides direct services to over 27,000 clients a year. Its excellent staff speaks 24 languages and includes people of different ages, genders, ethnicities and races.

Under Ms. Pandya's leadership, AHS opened Illinois' first federally- funded primary care and dental clinic to provide linguistically and culturally appropriate clinical services to Asian immigrants and others; a comprehensive mental health program, the only state-funded program for the Asian community in Illinois; a large community health education and prevention program; an extensive family literacy program; and a job training and placement program. In 2011, AHS received $2.8 million in capital funds from the state and federal governments to start an expanded primary care and dental clinic, and the new clinic became fully operational on September 3, 2013. In 2014 AHS received federal funding to establish an additional primary care clinic in my district, in Skokie, Illinois.

AHS will be naming one of their clinics the ``Abha Pandya's Family Health Center'' to honor her contributions. It is an extremely well- deserved honor.

Ms. Pandya has advocated extensively at the federal, state and city levels on behalf of Asian and other immigrant and refugee communities in Chicago for a more equitable distribution of resources, greater access, and linguistically appropriate services. She has served on the Governor's Multicultural Services Committee, and on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Council on Urban Affairs, the Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly, the metropolitan Board of the United Way of Chicago and the Chicago Council of the United Way.

Ms. Pandya received a B.A. with honors from Elphinstone College, University of Bombay, and a master's degree with distinction from the University of Delhi, and an M.S. in journalism from Boston University. She will be spending time with her family, including her grandchildren, in California. I thank Ms. Pandya for her leadership and service. I will miss working with her in her leadership role at AHS, but I know she will continue to look for ways to serve our community.

Mr. Speaker, if you thought the 114th Congress would be different, think again. If you thought Republicans were ready to put partisan politics behind them, think again. If you thought they had finally ended their war on women, think again.

Last night, thanks to Republican women and their supporters, the Republicans abandoned their effort to pass a 20-week abortion ban even for women who were victims of rape or incest.

But instead of respecting women this morning, the Republicans are coming back to the floor again, this time attempting to deny women access to their constitutionally protected right to safe and legal abortions by restricting coverage to abortions--including in private plans purchased with women's private dollars.

This is harmful to women and continues to ignore the American people, who believe that women and their doctors should make important medical decisions, not politicians.

Roe v. Wade wasn't the beginning of women having abortions. It was the end of women dying from abortions.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert my statement in the Record that the House should vote for bigger paychecks and better infrastructure instead of attacking women's access to health care.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Colonel David Arthur Lerps, USMC (RET), who died on October 21, 2014 after a long and valiant struggle with Parkinson's disease, and his career of service to our nation.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on June 28, 1931, he spent his early years in Eastchester, New York and was an honors graduate of Duke University where he was Commandant of the Naval Battalion and participated in every sport, winning distinction as quarterback of the 1954 Blue Demons Football Team. His flight training at NAS Pensacola prepared him for many years in the Marine Air Wing. During his 30-year military career, he served three tours in Japan and flew 312 missions in Vietnam in 1968, where he was awarded 23 Air Medals and nominated for a Distinguished Flying Cross for valor in an especially dangerous mission to the DMZ.

He later served in strategic planning at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, DC; was both student and teacher at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College; and attended the Industrial College of the Armed Forces while gaining his MBA at George Washington University. He concluded his active duty as Chief of Staff, LFTC Pacific Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado.

Upon retiring from active duty in 1984, he was appointed Chief of Staff at the Academy of the Pacific, a post he held for 18 years. After retiring from AOP, he became a student once again, studying Shakespeare and music at the University of Hawaii.

Col. Lerps was a board member of Hawaii Opera Theater and member of the Hawaii Wagner Society. He was an ardent ocean canoe paddler, a board member of the Lanikai Canoe Club and coordinator of the Duke Kahanamoku Long Distance Canoe Race for four years.

Even with the decline in mobility and speech and the loss of the ability to swallow, he never lost his deep love for opera, sports, for his family, Catholic faith and Marine Corps. As life-long friend John Schwarz wrote, ``Dave never really left the Corps . . . `once a Marine always a Marine.' He was `SEMPER Fl,' a Marine to his final breath!''

Dave is survived by Mary, his wife of 55 years, his children Kathy Lerps, Karen Pittman, Robert Lerps, six grandchildren: Vito and Dylan Higgins, Ashley Snow, Amber Lerps, Kylie and Kassidy Barker; and a sister Ann Falkenberg and brother Kurt Lerps. I learned of Col. Lerps' life of service from his brother-in-law and my good friend Father Robert Oldershaw.

Mr. Speaker, Americans watching this debate must be shaking their heads in astonishment. The question on everyone's mind at this moment is: Are we doing everything we can to prevent a Paris-like terrorist attack in the United States?

Americans would be right to suppose the Republican majority is rushing to finally adequately fund the Department of Homeland Security after they already delayed funding by making it a political football on immigration; but, no, it seems the Republicans can't help themselves, even when it comes to national security.

They can't simply vote for the necessary funding to keep the American people safe; instead, the Republicans view this potentially dangerous moment as an opportunity to undermine the President's executive actions on immigration going all the way back to 2011, putting 600,000 young people in jeopardy of deportation and refusing to let the government prioritize for deportation felons over families.

Shame on them. We should stop playing games with our national security by defeating these amendments and passing a clean Homeland Security funding bill.

Section 3:

``No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a Member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, . . .''

Madam Speaker, today the House is scheduled to consider H.R. 30, which is really more properly called the ``Sabotage American Workers Act,'' a bill to provide a major change in ACA's requirement that larger employers offer health coverage to employees who work 30 or more hours a week or face a penalty, raising the threshold to 40 hours instead.

The GOP claims the 30-hour threshold is a destructive barrier to more hours for workers. However, in reality, this GOP bill would lead to fewer hours and more part-time workers, the exact opposite of what the Republican rhetoric about restoring the 40-hour workweek implies.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Urban Institute have found no compelling evidence that part-time employment has increased as a result of ObamaCare. H.R. 30 would lead to more part- time work, since large employers could avoid providing health care coverage by reducing employees' work schedules by even just an hour.

Even conservative analysts agree. Yuval Levin recently wrote in the National Review that changing the definition to 40 hours ``would likely put far, far more people at risk of having their hours cut'' and ``would make for a worse effect on workers.''

Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans remain unmoved by the facts, choosing instead to launch yet another attack on working families.

According to the CBO, this bill would increase the Federal deficit by $53 billion over the next decade. So I would urge all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and then ``no'' on H.R. 30.

Mr. Speaker, earlier today, I was unavoidably detained during the vote on the Motion on Ordering the Previous Question on the Rule providing for consideration of H.R. 30, the Save American Workers Act of 2015 and H.R. 3, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

(By unanimous consent, Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ was allowed to speak out of order.)

Moment of Silence on Tucson Shootings'

4-Year Anniversary

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, at the end of last year, over my strenuous objections, we wrapped up a big present for Wall Street. We put taxpayers back on the hook for losses that are connected to certain derivatives trading, among the riskiest bets that banks make.

Well, Christmas is over, and Hanukkah is over, but the gifts keep on coming for Wall Street. Within this bill is another provision that cuts at the heart of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation. It delays a portion of the Volcker rule, which bans federally insured banks from making those risky bets or investing in risky funds, including packages known as collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs.

Mortgage-backed securities brought our economy almost crumbling to the ground in 2008, and we are still recovering. Taxpayers bailed out the big banks; yet for millions of homeowners who were forced from their homes and millions of others who are still under water, there hasn't been any assistance. People are right to be angry about this, and they are right to object to this new giveaway to Wall Street interests.

CLOs are similar to toxic mortgage-backed securities. The only difference is that instead of bad mortgages, these packages involve junk-rated corporate loans and a mix of other risky assets.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said last month that the corporate debt market is overheating and becoming increasingly dangerous, and CLOs are the big reason why. This has all the markings of another economy-crushing disaster.

Who gets the upside if Wall Street is able to continue packaging and selling CLOs with taxpayer backing? Wall Street. Who loses if and when those bets go wrong? The rest of us. It is heads, Wall Street wins; tails, everybody else loses.

Mr. Speaker, as Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets said, ``The attack on the Volcker rule has been nonstop.''

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that the American people deserve better, and we are tired of really bad Wall Street giveaways being tacked on to other legislation. This looks like a Republican strategy to put Wall Street over Main Street.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Frances ``Fran'' Roehm, a librarian extraordinaire at the Skokie Public Library in my district who is retiring after 18 years of remarkable service to our community.

Fran graduated from the University of Illinois and received a Bachelor's degree in History. As a single mom, she was awarded a scholarship from the then Secretary of State Jim Edgar. This scholarship allowed Fran to return to school and earn her Master's Degree in Library of Sciences, also from the University of Illinois.

Fran Roehm has worked as the Skokie Net Librarian and Community Liaison with distinction and has guided consumers to resources in the community. Fran is a leader in the library community who works hard to bring the best resources to patrons at the Skokie Public Library. She shines a bright light on our community and the rich resources available at the Skokie Library. Her compassion and leadership inspire the people around her to advocate for others.

She was nominated by State Senate President John Cullerton to serve on the ``Eliminate the Digital Divide Committee'' and has proudly served on that committee, which distributed $4,000,000 in grants to organizations that serve low-income populations. This important grant program seeks to provide access to computers, telecommunications technologies and related training to disadvantaged communities--a major interest of Fran.

Fran also offered a wonderful form of outreach to my office. She realized that the library would be a perfect location for neighborhood office hours and from there, we began bringing our constituent services to the Skokie Library in the evenings, once a month, for constituents who cannot meet with our staff during the day for help. This service also allows the public to become more civically engaged. In addition, Fran helped make our annual Artistic Discovery high school art event, which we hold every year at the Skokie library, an extremely successful and welcoming event. Fran is masterful at putting resources and people together. She has been a great advocate and ally to our office.

Fran is the proud mother of son, Christopher, who lives in California and a proud grandmother to 5-year-old Twyla. Fran is a warm, kind, generous person who has touched and enriched countless lives.

I join others in the Skokie area and in Illinois in offering my deep gratitude and appreciation of Fran's decades of work and lifelong commitment to providing equal access to community resources. Although she is leaving the Skokie Library, she will remain a leader in our community advocating for the underserved. I wish her well and ask this body to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I am so proud to join with many of my colleagues in celebrating John Dingell and recognizing the many, many things that he has achieved for our country. It is not just that John Dingell has been the longest serving Member in history; it is what he did in his 30 terms in the House. Many today will honor him for his support of civil rights and voting rights, his lifelong support for working men and women and their unions, for the environment and much, much more. But for me, it is his passionate advocacy for national health care.

I came to Congress with the number one priority of winning affordable, quality, and comprehensive health care for all Americans. I worked to join the Energy and Commerce Committee so that I could learn from John Dingell, who has been called a legend in the fight for universal coverage. Following in the footsteps of his father, a key player in the passage of Social Security in 1935 and himself a strong fighter for national health care, Chairman Dingell introduced the U.S. National Health Insurance Act in his very first term, and he has been fighting to make health care a right ever since.

John Dingell sat in that chair when we passed Medicare and Medicaid and gaveled it into law. He pushed for the Patients' Bill of Rights. He led the way as we created the Children's Health Insurance Program, and he was a key reason we were able to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

Because of John Dingell, today more than 120 million Americans have access to health insurance in large part because of his leadership and vision. I am so grateful to have had the privilege of serving with and learning from John Dingell. I hope that we will follow his strong legacy and continue to make improvements in health care so that we can improve the lives and well-being of all Americans.

Thank you, John Dingell, for your unparalleled service to this country.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to join those celebrating the month of November as Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month and to thank the Pulmonary Hypertension Association for its work in furthering understanding of this life-changing disease.

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a chronic, complex, and life- threatening lung disease marked by elevated blood pressure in the lungs. The Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) is a nonprofit organization that seeks ways to prevent and cure pulmonary hypertension and to provide hope for the PH community through support, education, advocacy and awareness. I am particularly proud of the work that the PHA Midwest Chapter is doing to provide support for people living with pulmonary hypertension and those who care for them. Their efforts to raise awareness and push for research into improved treatments and, ultimately, a cure are critical.

PHA is a young organization that is changing the history of this illness. From simple beginnings--four women around a kitchen table in Florida in 1990--PHA has evolved in size and complexity. When the association was founded, there were no support groups to help individuals and caregivers cope with this disease. Today, PHA serves more than 13,000 members and supporters with over 245 support groups that provide knowledge, support, hope and empowerment for the PH community. PHA continues to work every day to find a cure for pulmonary hypertension and believes that no one should face this disease alone.

On November 22, PHA Midwest and the PH community will mark Pulmonary Hypertension Month by hosting the inaugural O2 breathe Hearts PHor Hope Gala. The gala is an opportunity both to focus attention and to recognize the accomplishments and advances made in the PH field, while honoring those who made these advances possible. This special evening will honor Stuart Rich, MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine with the 2014 Heart PHor Hope Legacy Award. A dedicated researcher, passionate physician and continuous supporter of PHA, Dr. Rich has been a groundbreaking leader in the pulmonary hypertension field for more than three decades and continues to show his dedication and support of the PH community.

The PHA Midwest Chapter is a valuable resource, and I am grateful for the job that it is doing to raise awareness through next week's gala and the annual marathon, to provide assistance, and to push for greater research and medical breakthroughs.

Mr. Speaker, in 1982, in the State of Illinois, a 31- year-old man announced his candidacy for United States Congress from the 17th Congressional District. His name was Lane Evans. He was a Marine veteran and a young legal aid attorney helping poor people in his home community.

It was viewed initially as kind of a suicide mission that he was not going to be able to win, but some of us decided that we were going to get involved in that campaign even though we weren't necessarily from his district and, gathering with people who supported him from his area, ran a campaign that elected the first Democrat since the Civil War from that area, a young man who impressed the people of his district with his incredible modesty, but also clarity.

Lane Evans was so clear that his mission was to represent the ordinary people of that section of western Illinois, to represent unions and veterans and poor people, and to be their voice in the United States Congress. It turned out to be one of the most important elections in my view, in history, certainly in the history of the State of Illinois.

Lane served for 25 years in the Congress. Again, this was a district that was considered kind of a swing district, but year after year, election after election, Lane Evans would be elected with very wide margins.

Lane Evans was fearless. He would stand up for what was right even when some of us would say, ``Lane, are you sure? This may not go over so great in your district. What do you think?''

He would look at us and say, ``Absolutely. This is the right thing to do. I don't have any qualms about it.'' He would vote his conscience, and people respected that, whether they totally agreed with every vote or not.

Lane Evans was the first member--or maybe Danny Davis--the second--in our delegation to endorse for Senator a young Barack Obama. Lane proudly brought him to western Illinois and was always a great supporter.

When Barack Obama won his election for President in 2008, he sat next to Lane Evans, who was already somewhat debilitated by Parkinson's disease, a disease that finally took his life after two decades, holding his hand and telling him that, if it weren't for Lane Evans, that Barack Obama wouldn't be President of the United States of America.

He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease almost two decades ago. Lane Evans lived so modestly. I think some people have impressions of Members of Congress as having drivers and black limousines or something. Lane Evans lived exactly like the ordinary person in his district.

As his funeral procession led through the Quad Cities, we went down, in Rock Island, Lane Evans Way. It was a neighborhood of very modest, middle class--I would even say working class--homes. That is where Lane Evans grew up, and that is where his heart and his mind always were.

Lane Evans was honored by the Marines as he was leaving Congress with the tattoo that they do, an amazing performance and then an honor for Lane.

Lane, as a Vietnam era veteran, was the first really to talk about agent orange and the impact that it had on the long-term health of many of our Vietnam veterans and, finally, to get care for our veterans for agent orange.

He was one of the early people to understand the unseen injuries of PTSD and to call attention to that as ranking member on the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

He was such an inspiring person, such a fearless fighter for the middle class, for veterans; and it is apt that we now name the VA clinic in Galesburg, Illinois, in the 17th Congressional District, for Congressman Lane Evans. It is part of his legacy, but only part of his legacy.

For many of us, we will always believe that, because of Lane Evans, it is good politics as well as good policy to stand up for the principles that you believe in for a just society, for an equal society. And I am sure Danny Davis will talk about that.

Before I was elected to anything, we went to El Salvador, so Lane Evans' sense of justice extended beyond the borders of the United States of America to major conflicts in Central America.

Lane Evans will be sorely missed but ever remembered.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for so much, including his voice and his leadership on this issue.

There are three numbers that we all ought to know as we consider this bill approving the Keystone XL:

2 degrees Celsius--the amount the Earth can warm before climate change becomes truly catastrophic and irreversible;

565 gigatons--the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted before we reach irreversible global warming;

240 gigatons--the amount of carbon that would be emitted if the Alberta tar sands are fully developed, nearly half of all the carbon the world can burn.

Keystone XL is the fastest and perhaps the only way to fully develop the Alberta tar sands.

Keystone XL would move almost 1 million barrels per day of the dirtiest oil on Earth directly through the middle of our country. It would pass through some of our Nation's most important land and water sources, including the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies 30 percent of the United States' irrigation and drinking water to millions of Americans.

And those who claim there is no serious risk of a spill have a very short memory. There were 12 spills in the first year of operation of the original Keystone pipeline, and there have been 30 spills in just over 4 years.

So what I am saying today is that this is dangerous, and it is also not the best way to create jobs. Three times as many jobs are created for every dollar invested in renewable energies over the pipeline. And so if we want jobs, if we want clean energy, we want a good environment, we should vote down this legislation.