Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor my friend, treasured playwright and author, Ms. Susan Nussbaum, on her 60th birthday. Susan has been a groundbreaking voice for persons with disabilities. Through her advocacy with disability groups, Susan has written plays and recently a remarkable book that has helped to change the perception of disabled people throughout Chicago and well beyond.

Susan acquired her disability in 1977 at the age of 24 in a car accident. She refused to allow her newfound disability to define her after this tragic accident. In the 1970's, Susan became involved in the disability rights movement and helped to win key fights concerning wheelchair-accessible public transportation and the remodeling of sidewalks, schools, stores, and theaters. The strength and character she built through those wins continues to shine today.

Susan worked at Access Living, a wonderful organization in Chicago dedicated to inclusion, independent living and empowerment for people with disabilities. While working at Access Living Susan founded of the Empowered Fe Fes, a peer support and advocacy group of young women with disabilities. Susan knew that first and foremost, a girl with a disability is a girl, with the same feelings, emotions, wants, and desires of any other girl. The group gave young women with disabilities an opportunity to speak freely in a safe and private space and express the challenges and experiences they encounter on a daily basis. The Empowered Fe Fes challenges traditional stereotypes about disability and gender. My wonderful Constituent Advocate Taina Rodriguez, who has been helping residents in my district office for over 12 years, was Susan's assistant in the Empowered Fe Fe's and since she was in high school has had a special mother-daughter relationship with Susan.

Challenging stereotypes has defined much of Susan's work. On stage, Susan has written and directed plays that reframe disability through the lens of someone with an authentic disability experience. Her work has been showcased at Second City, Live Bait, Steppenwolf, and more. She has written such plays as No One As Nasty and Mishuganismo. ``No One as Nasty'' appears in a collection titled Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights. Susan refuses to write her characters in a certain stereotypical light. Instead, she portrays them in a realistic manner, which has helped to change the stereotype of disabled characters. Susan's work has given voice to a disability experience that transcends the historical portrayal as someone who needs to be pitied, cured or worshipped. Too often, on television, in the movies, in literature, and on stage, people with disabilities are presented as bitter, depressed and pitiable, or as unnaturally heroic and inspirational. Rarely do you see a character with a disability defined as a full participant in our society who just happens to have a disability. I say rarely, because there are people like Susan Nussbaum.

Recently, her achievements as a writer have gone beyond the stage and expanded into literature. Her novel, Good Kings, Bad Kings, earned the 2012 Barbara Kingsolver PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. The novel follows the lives of young people with disabilities as they tell their stories about abuse, neglect and love while living in a state institution. Barbara Kingsolver presented Susan the award and said, ``The characters in Good Kings Bad Kings made me laugh, over and over again, and cry and cheer. This is fiction at its best . . . A stunning accomplishment.''

Susan's body of work has transformed the way we think about disability. I encourage everyone, including my colleagues, to read Good Kings Bad Kings.

Among friends she's been called ``Disability Culture Queen'' and by her family she's known as ``Comrade Auntie Sue,'' ``Mami'' and just plain ``Sue.'' Congratulations to Susan Nussbaum on your many amazing accomplishments, and a very happy 60th birthday!

Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 982.

The average adult takes about 20,000 breaths a day. Most of us don't think much about those breaths. But for those living with asbestosis or mesothelioma, they think about every one of them. They struggle to breathe, they struggle to get medical treatments that are often painful, and they struggle financially. And they have struggled for decades for justice and some have died before receiving it.

Asbestos victims and their families have a right to believe that the House of Representatives--the people's House--would not put further barriers in their way. And that is why H.R. 982 is so disturbing.

This bill would threaten asbestos victims' privacy by putting their personal information on a public website. Exposed to asbestos, they would now be exposed to identity theft and fraud.

The Rand Institute estimates that the median payment to asbestos victims is just 25 cents on the dollars--with some as low as 1.1 percent. Yet, H.R. 982 would divert dollars away from compensation to burdensome paperwork requirements that go far beyond current law and bypass long-established rules of discovery. Asbestos companies face no similar ``transparency'' requirements.

The proponents of this bill say it is necessary to put victims' privacy at risk; delay and lower the payments they need to live because of fraud in company trusts--but there is no evidence of fraud.

This is an unjustifiable bill--and it is a dangerous bill. I urge my colleagues to reject it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to call my colleagues' attention to a recent op-ed written by Steven Nasatir, president of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. ``Anti-Christian Terror is Everyone's Concern,'' (The Washington Post, October 24, 2013) is a call to end religious persecution, and I join Mr. Nasatir in his demand for that action.

All of us who believe in the need for tolerance should be concerned about the attacks on Christian minorities around the world. Passage of H.R. 301, bipartisan legislation to create a Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia, is one important step we can take.

I want to thank Steve Nasatir for his leadership in the fight for religious and human rights and for this article, which reminds us that we each have a responsibility to speak out when we see persecution and work to end it.

Anti-Christian Terror Is Everyone's Concern

An Egyptian woman mourns during the funeral of several Copt

Christians who were killed in Warraq's Virgin Mary church in

Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Egypt's Christians were

stunned Monday by a drive-by shooting in which masked gunmen

sprayed a wedding party outside a Cairo church with automatic

weapons fire, killing several, including two young girls, in

an attack that raised fears of a nascent insurgency by

extremists after the military's ouster of the president and a

crackdown on Islamists.

The persecution of any religious minority anywhere by

anyone is an evil injustice. It requires all persons of

conscience to speak out and, when possible, take action.

The upcoming 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht makes this

an auspicious time to raise awareness about the contemporary

violence targeting religious minorities and their places of

worship. Of particular concern are attacks against Christian

minorities that have occurred with alarming frequency from

Syria to Egypt, from Iraq to Pakistan, and from Kenya to

Sudan.

November 9 marks 75 years since the pogrom against Jews

committed by mobs throughout the Nazi Reich. Often called

Kristallnacht, or the ``Night of Broken Glass,'' when rioters

killed or injured hundreds of Jews; burned over 1,000

synagogues; destroyed 7,000 Jewish-owned shops and

businesses; vandalized cemeteries and schools, and; sent

30,000 Jews to German concentration camps. It marked a

turning point in the escalating campaign of persecution

culminating in the Holocaust.

These events, seared into Jewish collective memory, make us

doubly aware--and duty bound--to raise our voices when the

deadly brew of religious bigotry and wanton violence are

mixed.

Today in Syria, a once thriving Christian population--a

community nearly as ancient as that country's once great

Jewish community--has been depopulated by 25 percent,

according an estimate the Patriarch Melkite Greek Catholic

Patriarch Gregorios III Laham shared with the BBC.

In September, The Associated Press reported that Syrian

Christians in Maaloula--a community dating to the birth of

Christianity and that still speaks Aramaic--were driven out

or forcibly converted to Islam by rebels aligned with al-

Qaeda.

``It is chaos, it is violence, it is blood, it is death.

Life has been paralyzed. We have lost everything,'' said

Archbishop Theophile Georges Kassab of Homs.

In Egypt, some supporters of ousted President Mohammed

Morsi last summer unleashed their rage against that nation's

Christians, a historic community constituting 20 percent of

the country's population. Mobs burned dozens of Christian

schools, convents, monasteries, institutions, and churches of

any, and all Christian denominations. And just days ago,

gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire outside a Coptic Christian

church during a wedding, murdering four, including an 8-year-

old girl.

``It never happened before in history that such a big

number of churches were attacked on one day,'' Bishop Thomas,

a Coptic Orthodox bishop in Assiut told Al Jazeera. ``We

normally used to have attacks once a month or so.''

As Kristallnacht teaches, the burning of houses of worship

can be a red alert that worse is yet to come. September saw

the horrific Taliban bombing of Anglican worshippers in

Pakistan, which took 85 lives, and, according to accounts

shared by witnesses, the targeting for murder of Kenyan

Christians--deliberately separated from others in a chilling

reminder of Nazi ``selections''--by al Shabaab terrorists in

a Nairobi shopping mall.

Attacks like these have contributed to a decline in the

Christian population in the Middle East and North Africa from

9.5 percent to 3.8 percent of the total population from 1910

to 2010, according to a Pew Forum report on Global

Christianity.

Tellingly, Israel is the only Middle East country where the

Christian population has grown in the last half century, from

34,000 to 158,000, in large measure, according to many

observers, because of the religious freedoms enjoyed there.

As a Jew, I'm proud of the status of religious minorities

in the Jewish state. As an American, I'm especially proud to

live in a society where people of different faiths (and no

faith) share the values of tolerance and coexistence. Despite

isolated though sometimes deadly instances of religiously-

inspired terror during the past few decades, ours is a nation

where no Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, or

person of any other faith must live in fear because of who

they are.

It is time to sound the alarm about the religious

persecutions of Christians and others. Let us raise our

voices, and call on our elected representatives to take

action. People of all faiths should support passage of H.R.

301, legislation that would direct our President to appoint a

State Department Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom

of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central

Asia.

The bill will facilitate U.S. government responses to human

rights violations, combat acts of religious intolerance and

incitement targeting religious minorities, and help address

the needs of religious minorities.

Further, we must demand that international institutions

designed to protect human rights, especially the United

Nations, must actually do so without prejudice.

For people of conscience, for people of all faiths, now is

not the time to be silent.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the nation's healthcare quality and patient safety professionals who work every day to ensure that our health system delivers high quality, cost-effective and safe care. During National Healthcare Quality Week, October 20 through 26, healthcare facilities nationwide celebrate the efforts of those professionals to improve health care. Healthcare quality and patient safety professionals make a positive contribution to our care by monitoring clinical processes and outcomes, analyzing data to improve systems, and helping to integrate new, evidence-based practices.

I am proud to note that their professional organization, the National Association for Healthcare Quality, NAHQ, is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and is in my district. Its 5,400 individual members and 100 institutional members bring expertise to healthcare quality in all settings and specialty areas. They are the on-the-ground professionals who are helping healthcare facilities meet Obamacare's focus on improving quality care while reducing costs.

Quality professionals address many issues in the healthcare workplace, including ensuring that a patient's medications are reconciled, healthcare-associated infections are prevented, and the quality of care is continually improved. They strive to assure that the progress their facility makes on these and many other issues are reported in an accurate and transparent manner.

I applaud our health professionals whose job is to ensure that patients receive safe and quality health care and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor my friend and hero, Mrs. Jean Cleland, who passed away on September 9th, 2013. Jean Cleland was the happiest, most gallant and giving hands-on social justice advocate I have encountered. Jean was committed to all aspects of her life from advocating for social justice, to her family, and her faith.

She was a devoted and loving wife, mother and grandmother to her 6 children and 3 grandchildren. The Cleland home was open to all the neighborhood children where they enjoyed playing on a zip line 30 years ago and had frequent backyard barbeques. She and her husband Robert refused to get a television in their home until the mid-60's because they felt time was better spend reading, playing and enjoying family time together. Jean and Bob were happily married for 65 years at the time of his death in 2010.

A role model and friend, Jean worked at the North Shore Senior Center as a Case Manager and Director of Community Education for 35 years, until early 2013. In the '50's and '60's Jean became one of the founders of the Wilmette Human Relations Committee and the North Shore Summer Project. Those programs were essential for ending north suburban housing discrimination. The North Shore Summer Project organized Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1965 speech on the Winnetka Village Green, and Jean had the honor of pinning an ``Equal Housing'' button on Dr. King's lapel the day he gave that famous speech to more than 8,000 people. Jean often said it was the highlight of her life.

As a strong and independent family, Jean and Robert belonged to Wilmette's First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, for 54 years. They were leaders in opposing the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, and persistent voices for peace and nuclear disarmament. Jean was a firm believer in justice and the notion that justice is intentional; she once said that ``Justice doesn't happen accidentally, it takes hard work and strong beliefs.''

Jean was the Chair of the Wilmette Housing Commission and effectively advocated for three low-income senior buildings in the village. Jean concentrated her volunteer efforts around open housing for more than 60 years. Jean was also a founding board member of the North Shore Interfaith Council, now called Open Communities and served on its board for over 30 years.

A committed and hard working citizen, Jean not only gave back to her community, she served as a powerful and compassionate advocate beyond its borders. I am honored to call her a dear friend and to be among the legions of people, young and old, who relied on her as a role model and example for living a meaningful and giving life. Her work has made this world a better place for countless people, and her name will live on in the hearts and minds of those she helped. May she Rest in Peace.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the House bring up the Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, the clean CR, and go to conference on a budget so that we can end this Republican government shutdown.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Nicholas Senn High School, an excellent Chicago Public High School in my district that is celebrating its centennial year.

With its mission to develop life-long learners who value diversity and social awareness, Nicholas Senn High School is teaching its students critical-thinking skills that allow them to be active, responsible, and productive citizens. For the past 100 years, Senn has been promoting and supporting education for local students, adapting to an ever changing, ever vibrant community. Today there are over 55 nationalities represented and 35 languages spoken at Senn High School.

Senn High School recently became the first school in Chicago to offer a wall-to-wall International Baccalaureate (IB) program, aided by a unique partnership with Loyola University, which provides a robust academic curriculum throughout the school. Senn students can also participate in Senn Arts, a Fine and Performing Arts Magnet Program where creative Chicago students pursue artistic and academic excellence. The school ensures they are helping all members of the diverse community by offering additional programs in Special Education, ELL and Smaller Learning Community Programs.

Over the past several years, Senn High School has seen major improvements under the leadership of Principal Susan Lofton. Senn was recently named among the city's top high schools and is a Level 1 school, the highest designation possible. Superior leadership, excellent teachers, the partnership with Loyola and strong community support all helped to make Senn the school it is today.

Nicholas Senn High School is celebrating these achievements with a centennial celebration and a fundraiser to aid them in accomplishing their future goals on Saturday, October 5th, 2013. I want to congratulate Nicholas Senn High School on its success over the last 100 years and its lasting impact on the students of the City of Chicago.

I am proud to have Nicholas Senn High School in my district and wish for its continued growth and success.

Mr. Speaker, well, today is a historic day in our country. Despite a Republican-led government shutdown that was completely unnecessary, we are celebrating the opening of the Affordable Care Act or, as I affectionately call it, ObamaCare.

You know, after almost 100 years of fighting to expand universal access to health insurance coverage in the United States of America, in 2010, Congress finally passed, the President signed, and the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare as the law of the land. And starting today, Americans will be able to learn about the health plan choices and the financial assistance that is going to be available to them. An army of in-person assisters have been trained and stand ready to help Americans understand their options and enroll in coverage that best meets their needs.

Americans can go to healthcare.gov, or in Illinois, where I'm from, getcoveredillinois.gov is up and running.

Now I have heard from colleagues on the other side, all these scare things about how terrible ObamaCare is going to be for the country and for individuals. Let me read to you some constituent letters that I have received.

This is from Gayle Weiss. She says:

I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1997 and have

consistently been denied affordable insurance since that

time.

I am so excited that our President has taken steps to help

all Americans with access to health care. It's so fitting

that tomorrow is my 59th birthday, and what a fantastic

birthday gift. Finally, I won't have to worry about losing

everything I've worked so hard for if, God forbid, I suffer a

catastrophic health issue. No one should have to risk their

future for something they have no control over, like illness.

I heard from David Zoltan. He is 34 years old. This is what he writes:

One week before Lehman Brothers went under, I was laid off

from my job at the time and spent the next 2 years without

health insurance. As a diabetic, the scariest thing in the

world is to go without health insurance. Insulin averages

around $100 to $120 per bottle, and I need approximately

three bottles each of two kinds of insulin every month to

live. I had to rely on my doctors to help me apply for any

charity care program we could find or beg for the very

medicines I needed to survive on a daily basis. Even so, I

had to visit the hospital emergency room several times just

to get insulin when my doctors couldn't get me free

medication.

ObamaCare gave me the preexisting condition plan pools as a

lifeline until better solutions were available.

ObamaCare has done so much for me, and I'm proud today to

see the beginning of the largest expansion of health care in

my lifetime. There will be problems to fix, but we are

America. We will fix these problems. We will give the

precious necessity of health security to our citizens. We

will prevail.

And then I also heard from Eva Strobeck. She said:

I used to get insurance from my husband, who retires in

January. I am one of those people for whom it is impossible

to get insurance independently. I have three illnesses.

ObamaCare makes it possible to get insurance at an affordable

rate, which I cannot do without. My psychological medications

alone cost about $5,000 per month. I can't survive without

ObamaCare. It must be funded by Congress.

So I want to say that this effort to defund something that will bring lifesaving health care to millions of Americans, about 30 million Americans who either have to go bankrupt, who have to pay exorbitant prices, or simply have to do without health insurance, who would be against that? Are there going to be glitches in the program? Of course there are.

Medicare part D had news article after news article talking about the problems of this health benefit for the elderly. Let's get on with it and provide health care for all Americans starting today.

Mr. Speaker, we are just 2 days away from a Republican government shutdown. Now, you can try to deny it, but you're going to have to wear the jacket.

The Fiscal Times says that it's going to cost $150 million a day to shut down the government.

The Chicago Tribune says that the National Park Service would close all 401 national parks, and approximately half the government's civilian workforce--about 1.2 million employees--is expected to have furloughs.

The Washington Post said that the Department of Veterans Affairs told congressional officials last Friday that all benefit checks it issues, including disability claims and pension payments, will be disrupted if a government shutdown lasts for a while.

ABC News talks about the suspension of approval of applications for small business loans and about medical research being interrupted.

The Wall Street Journal has a warning, too. It says that some Republicans think they are sure to hold seats in the House in 2014--no matter what happens--because of gerrymandering, but even those levees won't hold if there is a wave of revulsion against the GOP. Marginal seats still matter for controlling Congress. The kamikazes could end up ensuring the return of all-Democratic rule.

Mr. Speaker, we stand here today on the brink of a threatened shutdown of the Federal Government--bad enough--and worse, a refusal to pay the bills of the United States of America. These are completely unnecessary, Republican-manufactured crises.

Hal Rogers, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said:

A government shutdown is a political game in which everyone

loses.

Karl Rove said:

A shutdown now would have much worse fallout than in 1995.

It is an ill-conceived tactic, and Republicans should reject

it.

In a moment of clarity, Senator Mike Lee, one of the Senators holding up the bill in the Senate, said:

Shutdowns are bad; shutdowns are not worth it. This law,

ObamaCare, is not worth causing a shutdown over.

This is former-Senator Judd Gregg:

A default would lead to some level of chaos in the debt

markets, which would lead to a significant contraction in

economic activity, which would lead to job losses, which

would

lead to higher spending by the Federal Government and lower

tax revenues, which would lead to more debt.

Perhaps most important to my Republican colleagues, this is from The Wall Street Journal:

Some Republicans think they are sure to hold the House in

2014. The Kamikazes could end up ensuring the return of an

all-Democratic rule.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 462, had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor my friend and hero, Dr. Quentin Young, and to wish him a very happy 90th birthday. Quentin Young is the most cheerful, indefatigable, self-confident, unrelenting and optimistic warrior for justice that I have ever known. He is a tireless activist for health care justice, social justice, and equality.

My physician (until he retired without my permission) and friend, Quentin has been the nationally recognized, erudite and silver-tongued spokesperson and irrepressible cheerleader for a single-payer national health care system for the last many decades. He coined the phrase'' Everybody in, Nobody out.''

Literally ``walking the walk'', Quentin Young walked the state of Illinois advocating for universal health care with now Governor Pat Quinn. He was doctor, friend and advisor to Mayor Harold Washington, and personal physician to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his

visits to Chicago. Quentin never missed a chance to weigh in on what is now known as Obamacare.

Dr. Young is Chairman of Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a group that he founded in 1980 to promote social justice and challenge inequities in health and health care. He is also the national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program. He served as chairman for the Department of Internal Medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago during the 1970's and early 1980's, where he established the Department of Occupational Medicine. In 1998, Dr. Young served as President of the American Public Health Association, and in 1997 he was inducted as a Master of the American College of Physicians. In 2010, Dr. Young was appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn as the Illinois' Public Health Advocate.

A renaissance man, Quentin Young is a great supporter of the arts and hosted his own radio show on WBEZ--Chicago area's PBS station. I am honored to call him a treasured friend and to be among the legions of people, young and old, who have relied on him as a mentor and for whom he is a leader and example of how to live a meaningful and spirited life. His work is making the world a healthier and better place. Happy Birthday, Dr. Quentin Young.

Mr. Speaker, I think each one of us 435 has to ask ourselves, Is this really what we were sent here to do, to take food out of the mouths of hungry people, nearly half of them children? That's what's at stake this week when we are asked to vote on legislation that would cut $39 billion from one of our Nation's most successful and important programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP. It used to be called food stamps.

As a Jew, we just came through the Jewish holidays, and we talked about what it means to be a human being in this world, in this country. Every major religion in this world and represented in this House teaches that you feed the hungry. Not as charity, but as a mandate, because that's what it is to be a human being in our world. All the religions have written letters and implored us not to do this.

I participated three times in the congressional food stamp challenge in which we eat on $31.50 for an entire week. I'm not complaining about it because I knew it was just a week and it would end, but that's the average SNAP benefit. You know what? You can get the calories. That's pretty easy if you're lucky enough to live near a grocery store and not in a food desert. The reality for 48 million people is that you can get the calories, but it's really hard to get the nutrition. By the time you get to the fruits and vegetables, which are quite expensive, it's hard to do it. It's not comfortable to rely on SNAP benefits, and many people line up at the end of the month at food pantries that are everywhere in this country, including some of the richest districts. But the SNAP program, which has a bipartisan history, is the last line of defense between 48 million Americans and chronic hunger.

The House already voted down a farm bill that included $20 billion in SNAP cuts, and it would have taken benefits away from up to a million children and would have prevented 200,000 hungry children from getting the school lunches that they rely on so much. Now this bill is back but on steroids. In addition to all of the devastating cuts that have been proposed, those that were rejected earlier, the new bill would prevent any able-bodied adult from getting more than 3 months of SNAP benefits during a 3-year period, even if they're unable to find work. Up to 170,000 of those who are veterans who served our country would be denied. This is at a time when unemployment among low-income Americans is over 20 percent and the average time of unemployment is about 9 months. Those numbers don't add up. It means that passage of this bill could nearly starve those looking for work, and no one can deny that fact.

I know how SNAP benefits my constituents, and I know what would happen if those benefits were lost. I've attended several events at food pantries and community centers, and each time I've heard resounding support for SNAP. In just one day, I received 242 postcards from my constituents urging me to oppose these dangerous cuts to the SNAP program. They have my vote, and I'm imploring my colleagues that it should have the vote of every Member of this body to reject those cuts.

A constituent who previously wrote to my office summed up her thoughts about the importance of funding the SNAP program this way. Here's what she said:

Hungry thoughts every waking day are my constant companion

here in the supposedly wealthiest country on Earth. Please

have compassion for your low-income and fixed-income

constituents who are loyal, patriotic Americans and who are

in dire need of nutritious and affordable food.

A former SNAP beneficiary, a woman named Dresden Shumaker, described the program as a trampoline rather than a safety net. Because of SNAP, she was able to make ends meet for her young family during a period of time of great need. Her story is similar to most SNAP beneficiaries who no longer need food assistance within one year of receiving benefits.

I'm begging my colleagues, please, don't support these cuts. Let's be the value-driven country that we are and vote ``no'' to the $40 billion cut to SNAP.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 301, legislation to provide for the establishment of the Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia. I want to thank my colleagues Congressman Wolf and Congresswoman Eshoo for introducing this important legislation, which I am proud to cosponsor.

Ethno-religious minorities face serious threats in many countries in the Middle East, and it is critical that U.S. policy is sensitive to the needs and concerns of those endangered communities. Years of warfare, as well as specific persecution and targeting minority groups, has taken a serious toll on once-vibrant communities. While there were once over 1.5 million Christians in Iraq, today there are less than 400,000.

In October 2010, an attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Assyrian Catholic Church in Baghdad left more than 50 clergy, worshipers and police dead. This brutal massacre, just one of many in recent years, drew international outrage and condemnation. We need a clear strategy for the protection of targeted minority communities.

My district in the Chicagoland area has a large and vibrant Assyrian population. In recent years, they have been extremely active in calling for greater attention to the ongoing persecution and targeting of their brothers and sisters in the Middle East, including a large march in Chicago in the wake of the 2010 Baghdad massacre. I am proud to work with them on this issue and to push to see H.R. 301 enacted into law.

Today's legislation will ensure that this serious issue is given the high-level attention it deserves within the State Department. A Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia will be a voice for persecuted communities, ensuring that U.S. policy is responsive to their needs. It is a critical step toward protecting these ancient and vibrant communities, and toward ensuring a peaceful and secure future for all residents of the region.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important bill.

Thank you, Representative Pocan, for leading us in this Special Order that really talks about so many Americans who are paid poverty wages, people who simply cannot afford to support themselves or their families on the kinds of wages that they are paid, and the role of the Progressive Caucus in helping them to highlight that.

So, on August 29, I was proud at 7 in the morning to arrive at the Rock-n-Roll McDonald's in downtown Chicago. It's one of the most profitable McDonald's, certainly, in our area. I saw a growing crowd of people wearing T-shirts, saying, Strike for 15, and signs that said, We are worth more. In Illinois, the minimum wage is $8.25, so some of them were chanting, We can't survive on $8.25, and they were engaged in this 1-day strike, the demand being $15 an hour and the right to join a union, to form a union.

$15 an hour to work at McDonald's?

If you were to work at McDonald's for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year--and of course the average employee there works about 24 hours a week--you would at minimum wage make the lavish salary of $31,000 a year, which starts heading you toward the middle class, but it's certainly not a huge salary. Compare that with the CEO of McDonald's, a man named Donald Thompson, whose pay package last year in 2012 was $13.7 million for the year. If you divide that out, he makes an hourly wage of $6,611, and he earns more in the first 2 hours of work on the first day of the year than the workers I was standing with make all year long. Now, these weren't kids. I was out there with some people who have worked at McDonald's for 10 years, 15 years. One gentleman was still making $8.50 an hour. He had climbed up from the minimum wage to $8.50 an hour.

Unless you think that McDonald's isn't thinking about its workers, they actually put out a book, a little book, in conjunction with Visa, called ``Practical Money Skills,'' which is going to help their workers figure out how to budget. They have a budget that lists income from a worker's first job and his second job, admitting that you certainly can't plan to work at McDonald's and live on that, so you have to have a second job--so the first job and second job--all totaling $2,060 for the month.

Then they have recommended monthly expenses to help their workers budget, including $600 a month for housing. Now, I don't know about Madison, Wisconsin, or anywhere else, but in Chicago, unless you live with somebody--or with maybe a couple of somebodies--$600 a month for two jobs and budgeting that way is not going to get you a decent place to live. Remarkably, they budget $20 per month for health insurance, and that exists only in some sort of fantasy world.

These are workers who often turn to government assistance just to make ends meet. These are the people who have often been demonized by our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle for going for SNAP programs, maybe for housing assistance, for Medicaid. Lots of wealthy Americans and even some of our colleagues suggest we ought to test them for drug use or accuse them of being lazy; but I posit today that the real welfare kings are those fast-food giants and all those poverty- wage employers who refuse to pay a livable wage, a living wage. We, the taxpayers--all the rest of the taxpayers--subsidize them because they don't pay a living wage, so their employees, who are often working their tails off, often have to come to the government for help. I would argue that it's the Walmarts and the McDonald's that really depend on these welfare programs and that, if you want to divide the world into takers and makers, those companies and those CEOs are the real takers.

If I have time, I want to give a couple more facts.

This hasn't always been true in America, these poverty wages. Between 1948 and 1973, the productivity of U.S. workers rose 96.8 percent, and wages rose 93.7 percent. They went up together. Workers benefited from increases in productivity, and that's true of the wages of the managers and bosses and CEOs as well. Wages went up. Between 1973 and 2011, productivity rose 80.1 percent, but wages rose only 4.2 percent. So you saw that, even though productivity went up, wages stayed essentially flat. Median household income today, adjusted for inflation, is at 1989 levels, and it's not coincidental that during that same time union membership dropped from about one-third of the private sector workforce to about 6.5 percent today; nor is it coincidental that almost all the growth in income--and, yes, we are richer today per capita than ever before. We are at the richest point in our country, but that growth in income has gone, really, especially to the top .1 percent, to the very richest Americans. All of that growth in income has gone to the top.

So I think this is not just bad for the workers that we were out with this summer. This is really bad for our economy. If we want to have a robust middle class, where people can go out and buy things and create demand and, thus, create jobs, they would be the real makers. They would be the people who could revive our economy. I think that the essentials here are a living wage and the rights of workers to be able to collectively bargain so that they can defend themselves together, represent themselves together and get a decent middle class life in this richest country in the world, which is at its very richest stage right now.

It's like flossing and praying, and that's about it.

I'll tell you that I have three times now done the SNAP challenge, or the food stamp challenge. The average SNAP benefit is now $4.50 a day. Almost everyone on the SNAP program is on there for less than a year. It has been described to me by a former SNAP recipient as a trampoline. Nobody wants to do it, and they certainly don't want to line up at a food pantry, and those cupboards are really having a problem being filled.

It is hard to do. You can get the calories, but getting the nutrition and the health that you need from the food, that is really hard to do.

People are reluctant to apply for these benefits. I wish they weren't, but there's still some stigma attached to that. I want to encourage people, by the way, that if they are eligible, they should get that for the sake of their children and their own health.

States are struggling right now to meet their Medicaid budgets because there are so many people who are not getting health care through their employer or can't afford it on their own, so they are turning to State and local governments. We're finding that those governments are having to decide about fixing the roads, hiring teachers, or being able to provide these kinds of benefits.

The same kinds of decisions that individual poor people are having to make, governments are having to make right now. But if only they were paid a decent wage for all the hours that they're willing to put in to get up early and get on that bus.

Let me just tell you that I went into McDonald's with some of the workers. They had six things that they were asking for. Listen to the modest requests:

Stop requiring employees to pay out of pocket if their cash registers are short;

Two, show respect to your employees--less shouting and insulting language;

Three, air-conditioning in the kitchen;

Four, permit employees to drink water when the kitchen gets too hot. That one threw me for a big loop. They, said, ``No, they're saying, `Get back to work. You can't have a drink of water.' '' They put it on paper. It's not made up;

Five, give raises and provide living wages;

Listen to this one: stop requiring employees to pay out of pocket for food that is returned by customers.

The whole event was very peaceful. No one at McDonald's was there to accept it, so they left these demands on the counter.

There is one other little point I want to make. This was during the week that we were commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march for jobs and freedom, the March on Washington. The march sought to ``give all Americans a decent standard of living,'' and called for a minimum wage of $2 an hour. If you adjust that $2-an-hour request from 1963, that would equal $15.26 an hour, which is just about what the workers are asking for right now.

The least that we could do here in this Congress is raise the minimum wage in this country, which hasn't been raised for a long time. You probably have that number. I don't remember how long it's been. A $7.25-an-hour minimum wage in this country just doesn't make it.

I also believe we need to do more to guarantee workers the right to organize. I believe that organized labor helped to deliver us the middle class, and I think that workers organized will be able to rejuvenate our middle class and make these just and reasonable demands a reality.