Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 88.

Mr. Speaker, a hallmark of America is that we have opened our arms and have been a just and generous nation to people who are fleeing political violence elsewhere, who have been persecuted in their native lands, and who are coming here to seek a better way of life. But here is the problem, Mr. Speaker: chaos and disorder at our border undermine the ability of our country to extend that generosity.

A little-known fact about all of this is that for many years we have been working to get this question off of the one-yard line. But here we are again, seeing the trauma of unaccompanied children at our border and people receiving the wrong message that they can simply come here.

We spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to try to rebuild the conditions for the rule of law, to stop crime, and to give people economic opportunity. That is the right policy, and we had cooperative agreements with those countries to begin to halt the messaging that it is proper or appropriate to come here illegally. Of course, this feeds human trafficking and children being left alone.

It is unjust. We need to return to the previous policy in which we are cooperating with those countries.

Madam Speaker, in his speech and subsequent hesitation to swiftly react to the violence, the President wrongly amplified an emotionally charged environment--emboldening persons predetermined to do violence, adding to a mob frenzy, and overshadowing the important policy work of four years and those who peacefully stood by him.

Our objective should be this: Restore peace in our country. Restore confidence in our government. Restore decency and decorum.

In just seven days, Joe Biden will be President. I voted to certify his election. In order to begin the process of healing our nation after this traumatic moment, we must choose wisely. If we use the blunt instrument of impeachment, we will punish the President but deepen the trauma of an America already wracked by political violence. The call for accountability ought now to be found in the hard slog to rebuild.

I will vote against impeachment.

Mr. Chair, I want to thank Congressman Thornberry for the time as well as his leadership, as well as the chair of the Armed Services Committee, because this is very important.

Recently, I was looking at the photos of the young men and women who hang on the wall of my office. They died in Iraq--some of them I knew; some of the families I knew, some I didn't know; some I still stay in touch with.

At this point, we have lost so much, we have given so much, it is hard to understand why further engagement is necessary. And yet, of the many injustices that remain, one, particularly, stands out.

The dark twisted idealogy of ISIS decimated the religious minority communities, primarily of northern Iraq, almost 4 million persons. ISIS attempted to exterminate, to kill off Yazidis, Christians, and other minority populations.

Now, since then, the Iraqi Army, with our support and with the support of an international coalition, has fought hard and fought ISIS off. They are gone but not yet exterminated.

We have shifted substantial economic aid, but there is one more thing we should do: provide security in northern Iraq through the integration of the religious minorities into the Iraqi Government security forces, as well as the Kurdish forces.

I thank both the chair and the ranking member for their support.

Madam Chair, I rise in support of the en bloc amendment as well.

I want to thank the Agriculture Subcommittee chairman, Mr. Bishop, for working with our side to include many amendments that are important to our Members. The chairman has been a great partner and has been very fair throughout this process.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, as it reflects the will of many Members and also makes appropriate changes to the bill.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis).

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Steil), a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Riggleman).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Puerto Rico (Miss Gonzalez-Colon).

Madam Chair, there are no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment primarily to engage in a discussion with the gentleman from Arizona.

Madam Chair, first let me say, I do understand the concerns of the gentleman from Arizona.

Here is the issue: The Food and Drug Administration is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that persons seeking to be healed have both the right to try innovative products as well as the right to be protected from harm or any false claims.

So let me say to my friend, Mr. Biggs, we would like to offer this: Chairman Bishop and I would seek the opportunity to have the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, meet with us to dialogue on the very important issues that you are raising and to relay your concerns. I will commit to you that your objections will be conveyed to their leadership before they move forward on this guidance.

So, in light of that consideration, I kindly, respectfully request that the gentleman consider withdrawing the amendment.

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

Madam Chair, I thank Chairman Bishop for yielding the time and for his eloquent remarks.

I just want to rise, even though we are under the guise of opposition, to actually thank the gentleman for offering this amendment. We have had substantive, thoughtful, lengthy discussions about broadband and its importance to rural revitalization, as the gentleman well put, and it is more than just wires laid. It is about creating an ecosystem of livability.

In his words, the gentleman touched on those very points. I think the gentleman would be proud to see the underlying work here in that regard, but he has made it better.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the gentlewoman's amendment.

Madam Chair, trying to control what words USDA officials use to describe changing weather conditions should not really be our focus.

For one, this amendment is a solution in search of a problem. USDA has plenty of materials on their website or elsewhere with the term ``climate change'' embedded in them. If the USDA were going to completely wipe away this terminology for political purposes, which was implied, they would have done so over the past 2\1/2\ years.

Secondly, the amendment attempts to politicize an issue that does not need further politicization. For example, Chairman Bishop and I were able to have a civil discussion on changing climate in a subcommittee hearing this year without dragging controversy into it. In addition to outside witnesses, USDA actually sent up a subject matter expert on the very topic. We had a hearing where we talked about how to deal with changing weather and how our farmers and ranchers could adjust to such changes.

Instead of spending time on this type of messaging, let's spend our time on actually helping our farmers and ranchers and building a more secure and sustainable energy future that benefits all of America.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, first of all, let me say how much I appreciate the counsel, guidance, and partnership of Chairman Bishop of the Agriculture Committee, as well as Chair Lowey and Ranking Member Granger, as well as the entire staff for crafting what is substantially a very important and good bill for all of America.

Agriculture is essential to America's well-being, and I want to commend, again, Chairman Bishop not only for his earlier generous comments, but for his willingness to work hard to find a reasonable path forward to accommodate as many bipartisan requests as were feasible. Chairman Bishop and I had a number of very lengthy and considered conversations in crafting this bill, and I am grateful for his leadership.

Before I delve into the substantial pluses and a few minuses of this bill,

Madam Chair, I want to provide a little bit of additional context of the bigger agricultural picture across America.

Where I live in Nebraska--and I am sure it is safe to say where Chairman Bishop lives in Georgia--agriculture is essential to our way of life and essential to our culture. It really does define who we are as a people, and production agriculture--corn, soybeans, and livestock--cover much of our landscape. These products are an important driver of America's export prowess.

The efficiency, quality, and ingenuity shown by America's farmers provide food security for hundreds of millions of people across our own country and across the entire globe, many of whom are in very vulnerable circumstances. A notable point, Madam Chair, Americans also enjoy the lowest grocery prices in the world.

Agriculture, though, is more than bulk production. From the use of advanced robotics to run dairy operations to enzyme extraction from ethanol production, from the enhancement of critical wetlands, as well as improving crop yields and conservation stewardship practices, our farmers are contributing to human flourishing across our Nation. Many of the technological investments that we see today have been made possible by the types of investments that are very much a part of this agriculture bill.

I want to highlight three areas in particular. First, the bill's $3.4 billion reflects a commitment to rural development in housing, utilities, and businesses. Of particular note, as the chairman mentioned, is broadband. Working with Chairman Bishop, we included language to encourage the USDA to consider the broader social benefits when the department seeks applications for the $680 million of broadband resources in this bill. It is also important that we measure the impact of broadband and how it affects the ecosystem of livability.

What do we mean by that?

It is not just more wires, but livability from enhanced telehealth, telecommuting, precision agriculture, and a multitude of other imaginative possibilities from these applications. This is what will make broadband an effective investment in our Nation's infrastructure.

Second, I am pleased to see an increase of $185 million for the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, with a particular emphasis on lowering the price of drugs in the generic drug program. Between investments in the year 2019 and investments in this bill, the agency will have an increase of $27 million to help expedite the approval of safe and effective generic drugs, increased competition, and lower prices. Chairman Bishop has also made marked investments in food safety by lessening the burden on our State health departments, and I think that is important.

Lastly, when I met the chairman in his office a couple of weeks ago, we found common ground--as we often do--on how to grow the agricultural family.

What do we mean?

Well, this is a good example. There is $5.4 million in this bill for farmers markets and local food promotion programs which allow smaller local producers to provide fresh products, gain a source of revenue, and connect the rural to the urban and the farmer to the family.

In addition to this program, the bill includes investments for a Tribal demonstration project, a pilot project for the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, and, importantly, we have a new urban agricultural office.

Madam Chair, at its core, this bill is about food security. Our diverse and plentiful food supply is made possible through the hard work of our farmers and ranchers and the public policies that assist them.

We support research and development to the tune of $3.3 billion. We support oversight of commodity markets. And, for those in vulnerable circumstances, this bill provides important funding for all USDA nutrition programs at levels that ensure all eligible participants will receive the assistance they need.

Unfortunately, as our ranking member has consistently mentioned at every opportunity, we need a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on budget caps. With a deal like that, we could quickly get into open field running.

Madam Speaker, as we Nebraskans continue to recover as a State from the massive flooding, so many communities hit so hard, so many examples of neighbor helping neighbor, leadership capacity and qualities coming forward, people

pulling together around the ideal of ensuring that the communities have integrity, not of just response, but of recovery, one particular story of heroism has emerged that I would like to share.

Mr. James Wilke, and he is pictured right here, was a farmer. He was a farmer from Columbus, Nebraska, near Columbus in Platte County. Mr. Wilke gave his life during the flood.

What happened is he got a call from volunteer rescuers about someone who was stranded in a car fairly near his farm by a nearby creek. He jumped in his tractor without hesitation--and here he is pictured--and he sought to help the stranded motorists and the volunteers who were there assisting.

When he got to the bridge that was over the creek, water had started to rush over it. The volunteers actually were helping guide him across the creek, and the bridge collapsed. Because he was in an enclosed cab, he couldn't escape.

Frantically, the family and others helped search for him, and it wasn't until hours later that he was found a long way back up the creek, but actually near his home, near his farm. It was as though he was saying, ``It's okay. I am back.''

I wrote a letter to President Trump recently asking the President to present Mr. James Wilke the Presidential Citizen's Medal, and, Madam Speaker, I would just like to read the letter that I wrote to the President:

``Dear Mr. President,

``It is my honor to nominate Mr. James Wilke of Columbus, Nebraska, for the Presidential Citizen's Medal. The Nation's second highest civilian award recognizes persons who have performed exemplary deeds or services for their country or fellow citizens.

``A 50-year-old Platte County farmer, Mr. Wilke is rightly being heralded as a hero by family, friends, and citizens across the Cornhusker State and the Nation. A husband, father, grandfather, and community leader, James lived to help others. He died attempting to rescue those in need during the catastrophic floods that hit Nebraska in mid-March.

``It surprised no one when, on March 14, James immediately responded to a call from volunteer first responders to help rescue a motorist stranded in the rising floodwaters of Knox Creek near his home. He didn't hesitate. After receiving the call, Wilke jumped into his John Deere 8100 tractor and headed north on Monastery Road, a route he had taken thousands of times before.

``As James approached the scene of the stranded motorist, he was confronted by raging water over the bridge that he needed to cross. Emergency responders already on the site tried to guide James and the tractor over the bridge, when it suddenly collapsed. The tractor plunged into the water with James inside.

``James perished in the accident. After a desperate search by neighbors, family, and friends, Wilke's body was recovered downstream 9 hours later on a creek bed near his own farm.

`` `He was generous with his time and giving,' said a friend. `. . . the kind of person that people don't think exist anymore. He would help anybody.'

``A friend of Mr. Wilke posted this tribute on social media. `James was not only a great all-around guy; he was a great family man and he was amazingly strong in his faith. . . . A true hero who wore a T- shirt, blue jeans, work boots, and drove a John Deere tractor.'

``An online petition has been launched to get James Wilke the prestigious Presidential Citizen's Medal. One online commentator wrote: `While I don't know this man personally, he represents what Nebraska is all about: hard work and willingness to help, no matter the cost. To be a Nebraskan means, within your own hardships, you still give your all to help a complete stranger in need. It means coming together to help our neighbors two to three towns over because they have lost everything. James represents a Nebraskan, doing all that and more, by going above and beyond the call of civilian duty and paying the ultimate sacrifice. He shows the Nation that we can put aside our selfishness and our pride to help someone else.'

``Mr. President, I second these sentiments. I strongly support granting the Presidential Citizen's Medal to James Wilke, a good man, simply doing his duty, moved by courage, and motivated by love to help another.

``Thank you for your consideration.

``Sincerely, Jeff Fortenberry.''

Something that is not mentioned in this letter is that the online petition to the President for James has reached tens of thousands of people, ordinary people hearing about it and simply wanting to do something to commend this finest example out of what has really been an attribute of the character of our State, neighbor helping neighbor, and this neighbor giving the ultimate sacrifice.

In Honor of Chief Standing Bear

Madam Speaker, I would like to turn my attention to an opportunity I had this morning before the Natural Resources Committee to actually talk about another Nebraskan who lived long ago, a Nebraskan who will soon adorn the Halls here. His statue will be placed in Statuary Hall right outside of these Halls. He was Ponca Chief Standing Bear.

I was pleased to welcome Ms. Judi Gaiashkibos, the director of the Nebraska Indian Commission, who, with me, petitioned the Natural Resources Committee to begin a process by which we study the feasibility of a trail in Standing Bear's honor and in honor of the Ponca people and the hardships which they endured

I began before the committee this morning with these words:

No be-t e wiuga-the eo kigo zhi: Our hands are not the same color.

These were the words of Chief Standing Bear as he was on trial in 1879.

And what was he accused of in that courtroom in Omaha? He was accused of leaving his reservation to bury his dead son on the Ponca homeland near Niobrara, Nebraska.

Even though there were treaties with this Tribe, the Ponca had been forcefully relocated from Nebraska to Oklahoma. Along the way, his young daughter died. His son, suffering from the ill effects of this, later was very ill, and Chief Standing Bear promised him on his deathbed that he would bury him back in his homeland.

So, leading a group of Ponca in a very tough winter of 1878, they began the trek back to Nebraska, and he was arrested. And through a series of things, ended up in court, and this is what he had to say:

No be-t e wiuga-the eo kigo zhi: Our hands are not the same color. If I pierce mine, I will feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you will feel pain. When the blood flows, it will be the same color.

Nu bthi. Wako da-ak a ekigo waxa: I am a man. God made us the same.

These immortal words of the Ponca chief so deeply impacted the proceedings that the Court ruled in his favor and perhaps began a sea course of change of the history of our country.

Because what did Chief Standing Bear do? He expressed the inherent dignity and rights of all people, regardless of color or ethnicity. He convinced U.S. District Court Judge Elmer Dundy in such a convicting way, he convinced the judge in an unprecedented move--now, remember, Madam Speaker, this is 1879, and this had been unprecedented. The judge ruled that ``an Indian is a person.'' An Indian is a person within the meaning of habeas corpus.

And so Standing Bear had won his right and the right of all Native Americans to be recognized as persons under the law.

Such a glaring injustice is almost unimaginable to us today in our time. The Ponca chief had prevailed in one of the most important civil rights court cases in the history of our Nation.

And so, in Congress, we continue to recognize Standing Bear's remarkable life and achievement on behalf of his people; and, as I mentioned, Madam Speaker, in a few short months, we anticipate a ceremony here in Statuary Hall where one statue of one Nebraskan will be replaced by another Nebraskan.

Each State legislature has the right to determine who is going to be in the Nation's Capitol. Currently, we are represented by William Jennings Bryan, a Member of Congress who held this congressional seat long before me, a three-time Presidential candidate who, again, is right at the entryway of Statuary Hall there.

He has held that revered spot for many, many years; and yet, as we think creatively and imaginatively, as history moves forward, we think about other Nebraskans and other Americans whom we can appropriately honor. So

the legislature has determined that Chief Standing Bear ought to now stand in the place of honor for Nebraskans and for all Americans, with a particularly special focal point for honoring the first Americans, the indigenous people, the Native Americans. So we look forward to that ceremony coming soon.

But I reintroduced a bill, as well, Madam Speaker, that directs the Secretary of the Interior to begin a feasibility study for the Chief Standing Bear National Historic Trail, which would basically trace the footsteps of the Ponca Tribe along their forced relocation.

Again, Madam Speaker, the enshrinement of this trial into law with a new statue in the United States Capitol will set down a new marker for the remembrance of this great civil rights leader, a reminder of the ongoing need for the protection of human dignity and a celebration of the possibility brought out by one man's courage.

Madam Speaker, as you are aware, shortly, we will celebrate Memorial Day, and in doing so, we honor those who gave their last full measure in service to our country. We appropriately stop the busyness and pause to observe, to reflect, to remember.

The formal remembrance of our Nation's war dead is more than a nostalgic tradition. That a person would lay down his life for his friends, for another, demands that we turn our thoughts to the noblest of human ideals. When we gather together in community, when we gather together to simply say ``thank you'' and ``remember,'' we affirm our common bonds as a people.

Now, it is not uncommon for any Member of this body to reflect publicly on the divisiveness, the anger, the resentment, the seeming inability to resolve conflicts and problems in a constructive, reasoned fashion that is fought out in this body, and, unfortunately, is exploited by the media, which profits off of this drama daily.

This is why Memorial Day and other reflective holidays are so important to us as a people: of course, to remember our war dead, but also to affirm the common bonds that unite.

Before an international gathering of public officials that I attended, someone posed a question. It is a probing question. They simply asked this: Where would you like to live, where people lie, steal, and kill, or where people are good, trustworthy, and free?

And when we consider the full arc of human history, it is often marked by fighting and dying and war. Each generation must face the agonizing and harsh prospect that twisted ideology, egomaniacal ambition, or the hunt for glory will compel small minds to rape and kill and pillage and crush the innocent. Try as we might to create the conditions for good will and mutual support, sometimes good Americans must step forward; they must volunteer to bravely protect the ideals that we hold dear.

We are coming up on the 75th anniversary of D-day, June 6, 1944. There will be a bilateral, two-country commemoration by both America and France at Omaha Beach in France at the cemetery there where near approximately 10,000 Americans lay at rest.

The night before D-day, the day before this famous photo of the Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower was taken--I happen to know President Eisenhower's granddaughter Susan, and we were chatting one day about this famous photo which occupies such an extraordinary place in our history, our folklore, our memory as a nation, and she said: Jeff, do you know what the President, the General, was speaking about in that photo?

I had always made an assumption that, again, these young men who are getting ready to paratroop behind enemy lines the day before D-day were being given a last talk by the General about the need for courage and persistence, the need to think of what it means to be in the face of a barbaric aggressor, the need to fight hard and solemnly, to obey orders and to take care of their friends, the need to win the day. That is what I would have thought. That is what I would have guessed.

Susan Eisenhower said: No. Do you know what the General was speaking about? Fly fishing and football.

Now, why would he do that at this critical moment, this moment of tension and fear and adrenaline? Why would he do that?

I think the better question is: Why wouldn't he do that? What more American thing could he do to remind these young men, many of whom may have given their life, of why they were doing this? To remind them of what they were tethered to: to home and hearth and things like fishing and football that represent the activities of community, the liberties we enjoy, the memories from childhood, the peace and tranquility that this country offers. Fight for that.

I think that is what he was doing. So I was very amazed and corrected, mentally, in my impression of this pivotal moment, key moment in America's history.

A group of Members of Congress will attend the 75th anniversary, and, of course, the veterans who will be there in attendance are quite old and will be few in number. France will have some awards for a few veterans as well.

And it is amazing in that part of the world, the American flag flies over the French municipal buildings there because the French in that part of Europe, they do not forget. They celebrate what America gave.

In fact, in August of 1944, Captain Luther Sexton Fortenberry, my grandfather, left his wife and two children, and he entered the war theater originally attached to a field hospital or to a hospital unit in England.

He moved into the theater of war and was killed in November of 1944 by an explosion. He was killed near the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, where some of these paratroopers potentially landed. There, the paratroopers landed in the midst of a German column and had to fight it out right in the town square.

To this day, a replica of one of our paratroopers hangs on the church steeple, demonstrating what happened to him. He was actually caught on the church steeple as he came down. He survived the battle. The French there very much commemorate and honor what we gave.

My grandfather was initially buried in the cemetery there at Sainte- Mere-Eglise, but was later reinterred in Arlington Cemetery here in Washington, D.C., in 1948. This is how Omaha Cemetery came to be.

All of the small cemeteries that were set up during the course of the war as things were moving so fast were consolidated in the various large cemeteries--again, Omaha Beach being one of our more notable--and families were given a choice: Do you want to leave your loved one in Europe or would you like to bring them home?

Because my own father died when I was young, the direct memories of what happened to my own grandfather are a bit lost in the family tradition, so I have had to do a lot of record searching. I found out, though, that it was interesting. In 1948, when my grandfather was reinterred from this area of France, Sainte-Mere-Eglise, his remains were transported through the Port of Cherbourg.

When I visited Omaha Beach Cemetery, the French civilians who work for us tending to the cemetery remembering our war dead, telling the stories of who they are, one young woman told me that it was her grandfather who started to work for the Americans in burying our war dead and that he used to work in the Port of Cherbourg preparing the remains of our war dead to come home. I thought to myself, what an amazing confluence of history, that maybe it was this young French woman's grandfather who prepared my grandfather to be returned home.

So on the 75th anniversary, we will again remember that great battle, that turning point in the war in which so many lives were lost and so many young Americans came forward to say, ``I will serve.''

Memorial Day is a beautiful time of remembrance, and communities all across America will recognize this special day. They will memorialize the fallen heroes of battle who gave us the chance to remain good, trustworthy, and free. It is a precious moment where we unite, where we are unified, where we hold things in common in gratitude for those who gave their life in service to these ideals.

Beyond this special day, perhaps the greatest memorial we can offer is to do

exactly what they did: to think in sacrificial terms about what is nobler and higher, even in the midst of this body, where we have to debate with intensity the philosophical differences in order to find, to construct, a reasoned way forward for good public policy and the good of all Americans.

Sometimes young people ask me: How do you make a decision? It is a great question. It is a beautiful question, because they are wrestling with how do you reconcile, as a representative of the people, what you may believe to be right with what the people are saying.

Madam Speaker, I tell young people that I walk through a threefold process:

The first is let's look at the evidence here. What is the analysis, the statistics, and what does other evidence say about what might be the right pathway here;

Second, let's listen to the experts, or those who are affected, potentially, by this policy; and

Third is you must consult your conscience, what you believe in your heart of hearts.

Sometimes it is hard for young people to reconcile this because sometimes we have a misappropriation of the nature of representative government. The Representative, of course, is a reflection of the people who sent him there.

And what does he or she owe those people? Right judgment, which means hard work and intellectual discipline around looking at the objective analysis of what can be determined as the outcome of a particular policy.

Care, compassion, and fairness demands that we listen to people who are affected or who have expertise in the policy.

But, ultimately, each one of us has to consult their conscience, always, hopefully, rightfully formed, to make a judgment about what is right, what is good, what is just.

The beautiful gift of where I come from is, even if people may disagree and you give them an answer based upon those three dynamics, they will tell you they respect that. And that is the core of our system. That is what men and women continue to fight and die for, this gift of America, this gift of these ideals that somehow, with distinct differences and different backgrounds, we find a way to harmonize that which we ought to do--not just what we can do, but what we ought to do.

Systems are not perfect. They can be messy and difficult. They can be ugly. But I always believe that public service is an honorable and high calling, and it is only made possible by sacrifice, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice by those who have been willing to give their all.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the gentleman for conducting this Special Order. I appreciate the gentleman inviting me to come down here.

Just a few observations, if you will.

As I have watched the speeches tonight, there has been a litany of concerns about China's aggression, China's positioning, China's covert activities, China's willingness to engage in intellectual theft, China's pervasive influence all around the world.

I have been to China once. I found it to be highly engaging. I found the people that we were with to be very welcoming and warm. I am very grateful and try to be attentive to China's long-suffering and rich cultural history. And as China tells us, there is room enough in the Pacific for two superpowers, and I want to return to that point.

When I looked out of the window of the place where I was staying in Beijing, it looked as though fog had set in. But it wasn't fog; it was pollution. The air was so thick, you could hardly see maybe 20 feet. If you live in Beijing, it takes 5 years off your life because of the pollution.

In fact, I had one Chinese person whisper to me: ``What is the point of all this economic development if it kills you?'' And I really wanted to tell him: ``Please, don't say that too loudly.''

The point is that China has engaged in a series of unfair subsidies that create an unlevel playing field for trade. China's very system, a capitalistic-communist hybrid system is very different than ours. They are state players that receive direct subsidies that we don't have. The indirect cost of not having environmental regulation is a form of subsidy to industry. Low labor standards, the exploitation of persons, is another, and on and on.

So we can walk through the financial balance sheet as to who has what tariff and who doesn't, and who subsidized this and who doesn't, but, fundamentally, there are things in that equation that we, perhaps, haven't counted.

Another reality here is China has as their reason for being, it seems now, an economic nationalism. Now, we do, too, in America. Economics is important to us, but it stands alongside a spectrum of values of personal liberty, the exercise of opportunity, and the ability to engage in communal activity, free associations. We don't even think about these things.

These are very, very different propositions in China. One places himself at the service of the larger idea of the state. The person is subservient to the larger idea of the state.

And the person can operate within a certain band of liberties.

I saw it. People can move around. People can visit things.

But it is a certain band of liberties that, if you violate that, step beyond it, you contradict the nature of the system and could pay a very heavy price.

We see this in human rights violations, the lack of certain freedoms that we enjoy that we think are consistent with human dignity. And this is how it manifests itself.

I know you, Mr. Yoho, are very attentive to the issue of development, sustainable economic development, particularly for the world's poor, to conserve our resources, to use the best of the market systems for empowerment of space, for the flourishing of the individual. That then creates the opportunity for just governance and a healthy nationalism, and that is our ideal.

So, before the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, recently, Secretary Pompeo appeared, and I asked him a question. I said: Mr. Secretary, how much does China give in foreign assistance?

He had one of those moments where he didn't exactly know how to answer. I wasn't asking a question in order for him to give an answer, because we all know the answer: It is pretty minimal.

The United States gives away about $25 billion a year, and that is in non-security assistance alone: trying to help the poor, to feed the poor, trying to create a space for food security, sustainable agriculture, conservation, medical care for the sickest around the world.

We do this because it is our impulse, our humanitarian impulse. We just don't sit around while other people die. We also do it because it facilitates relationships, economical and cultural. And, finally, when you have the factors that lead to stable societies, it is in our own security interest and the security of the world. So, for these reasons, we do these things.

So I asked the Secretary: How much does China give? It might be a sprinkling here or there. I don't exactly know the number. But for a country with this size of an economy, with this amount of power, with this amount of growth, with this amount of pervasive activity all around the world, particularly in the developing nations, there comes a set of responsibilities along with that.

I think that is really part of the attention here, underlying this current trade dispute. What are we both vying for?

I agree with the Chinese that there should be room enough for two superpowers in the Pacific, but you have got to come to some alignment about what it means to be in a fair, reciprocal relationship.

We have to do a better job of respecting the space of other people's history and tradition in the way they want to organize themselves around governance while, at the same time, upholding this fundamental principle of human dignity, without which things just collapse into transactional relations that can come and go, or worse, when they are gone, lead to potential conflict.

We need a healthy relationship with China. We have gone through a litany of complaints about China tonight, but there are a couple other complaints I want to have, and it is looking inward at ourselves.

I think it is time for American businesses to do business in America.

There is a small manufacturing facility in my district. They make a fairly generic, standardized product. I was a little surprised that they didn't have a relationship with the Chinese, and they said: ``Oh, no. That R&D is rip-off and duplicate.''

``That is why we won't deal with them.''

That is a sad reality, because we ought to be able to deal, using a fair set of rules, with people who may be doing something better than we are and we do something better than they do, and we can benefit in reciprocal fashion.

But it has gotten so disordered because we shifted manufacturing there, and a lot of big businesses around this country make a lot of money off of poor environmental standards and poor labor standards imposed on other people.

Sure.

So ask ourselves why. What are the incentives around here to change this?

Well, why do we allow this to continue?

Well, could it be that there are a lot of big-time transactions going on in our system itself that benefit a few big multinationals that have taken their manufacturing and planted it over there? They make the stuff, and we buy the stuff.

And this is the third point I want to make to you, which is, again, a little bit of self-reflection on our own role in this.

They make the stuff; we buy the stuff. We run up debt; they have the cash; they buy the debt.

So here we find ourselves in this very dysfunctional marriage of having shifted vast amounts of productive resources there because, supposedly, we can't make this more efficiently--supposedly. Really?

So we run up the debt, and they hold the debt.

And what is debt? Well, none of us around here really wants to face it--on our side of the aisle either, Republicans. It is a form of taxation.

It is just hidden from everyone. And the manifestation of it is a wealth shift of our country's assets into the hands of other people.

So we are talking about the military buildup. We are talking about the exploitation of resources, particularly in Africa, with no consideration of the environmental impact and no attacking of the subsequent problem of structural poverty that existed in a lot of places.

It is just taking things out and leaving not much behind, and that is not fair to the world's poor. The problem, again, is one of self- reflection that we have to have both in terms of the responsibility that America's business has because we have provided the infrastructure and the systems, through very large public subsidies, so they can thrive. It is incumbent upon them to take responsibility. Maybe it is time for American businesses to do business in America.

Secondly, is this issue of debt. Now, if this tension prolongs and the reality that China has a stick, and they start to refuse or dump treasuries, what is that going to do? Interest rates will go up.

Mr. Speaker, that is an impact on us, but it is one we are going to have to live with because we have done it to ourselves. There are a couple of lessons here: fair trade, mutual respect, smart trade, both people benefit.

Secondly, America's businesses will not get this public subsidy from us any longer through unfair trade practices that we allow.

The third lesson is: an honest confrontation about what debt really is. It is a hidden form of taxes, shifting the wealth assets of this country elsewhere into places like China, which we are complaining about are not using those assets in a way that we would like to see in a productive manner.

There is lots of blame to go around here, but I want to thank the gentleman for the opportunity to at least start to unpack this in an honest way.

Mr. Speaker, the reckoning is here.

It has been hidden, but the consequences have been real. It is now on the surface. The day of reckoning is here.

Mr. Speaker, to elaborate on a concept that I talked about earlier is this idea of human dignity, and where does culture, ideals, learning, and the pursuit of truth come from?

It comes from this sacred space, if you will. And when that is subsumed to the larger interest of the state where you are compelled to act only within certain parameters, where you have to submit yourself to this bigger idea of economic nationalism, it can't define itself because it doesn't know where it is going, so it just churns and churns. It has to be more and more and more with environmental effects, effects on culture, and effects on relationships around the world.

One final point before I leave you. The head of the United States Agency for International Development, Mark Green, a former Member of Congress, former Ambassador to Tanzania, had this to say before us recently: China, they are predatory lenders.

They are acting, again, with their superpower status around the world, basically convicting leaders in tougher places around the world that are desperate for the right types of build-out and infrastructure to attack structural poverty and to help stop the types of injustice that are there when people simply do not have a system that allows them to reach their full potentiality.

They are being forced to mortgage off various assets they have, rather than being in a robust partnership and alignment with a superpower who is interested in perhaps the right type of development, sustainability and conservation, and to build out a just governance.

So countries are having to mortgage off ports and other pieces of infrastructure in order to get Chinese money. Again, there is a resource movement out of these places into the Chinese hands in order to feed, just continue to feed this economic nationalism which has no broader purpose.

And that is the issue. So China, maybe they will see this. Our charge here is to try to do some self-reflection ourselves about the nature of our system and what we have done.

But also, with the hand of friendship extended, say to the Chinese: A transactional relationship is not an architecture for the 21st century, for the thriving of civilization as the world gets smaller and smaller and more and more integrated.

This predatory lending in the world's toughest places is a disastrous policy and completely inconsistent and contradictory to what a leader in the world, because of superpower status and economic power status, ought to be pursuing.

Madam Chair, first, let me thank Chairman Visclosky for the time and for his efforts here, as well as the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Cunningham), for offering this very important amendment to the bill.

Madam Chair, it is pretty jarring when you stand in your district at a major piece of America's military infrastructure, Offutt Air Force Base, and it is a third underwater.

Offutt Air Force Base is also home to Strategic Command, which is the command that is in charge of our nuclear enterprise here and around the world.

In March of this year, a furious slurry of soil and water and ice rushed down the Platte and Elkhorn Rivers. It crossed over the Missouri, hit the Iowa levee, blew it out, dug a 62-foot hole, and then water began to come back up the Missouri River.

Offutt Air Force Base sits at the confluence of the Platte and Missouri Rivers, and this is what forced the flooding.

I am very grateful, again, to my colleagues for recognizing that this is a disaster that needs national attention, along with the other natural disasters that have hit our country, particularly Tyndall Air Force Base, as well.

This amendment provides the funds to the Air Force operations and maintenance accounts to rebuild essential military infrastructure in my district and around the country. It will help us rebuild hangars and other buildings at Offutt, and this is in dire need.

I am pleased that my colleagues have recognized that this package, $120 million of which could potentially go to Offutt, is also essential for helping our Nation rebound from the various natural disasters that have hit us.

Madam Chair, I would like to first recognize and thank my good friend, the chair of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, my leader, Mr. Bishop from Georgia, for yielding me time. I also want to thank my colleague, Representative Axne from Iowa, for working in partnership together on this important amendment.

Madam Chair, this is tough stuff. This was one of the most destructive weather events in our lifetimes. It was a perfect storm of factors that enabled and caused the dislocation and distress across many States and multiple communities where I live.

In Nebraska and in Iowa, lands that were soaked by autumn rains were frozen solid, and then they were covered in snow. Then this bomb cyclone hit us with a lethal mix of blizzard, rain, and an enormous quantity of water, ice, and collected topsoil. It all sped down our rivers, creeks, and reservoirs, bursting through dams, levees, and other structures designed to hold the torrent back.

As I said in our previous debate, it is pretty jarring to stand on a ridge and look at an Air Force base one-third under water which, again, sits at the confluence of the Missouri and Platte Rivers overlooking Iowa and Nebraska. The Corps of Engineers said to me that our levee system looks like Swiss cheese.

Now, Madam Chair, while our Midwest constituents are known for their hardiness, individuals in our communities can't solve the problem alone through just State or local resources. We need a partner with the Federal Government to repair badly damaged watersheds so vital to our Nation's environmental security.

The amendment adds $310 million to the $125 million in the bill. Approximately 60 percent of the funds will go to the damage caused in the Midwest floods as well as communities impacted by Hurricanes Florence, Harvey, and Michael.

On the ground, Madam Chair, in both of our States this program will help restore the scarred lands. This important relief will repair and reshape eroded stream banks, repair water control structures, repair levees, and restore conservation priorities.

Our communities are getting back on their feet, but we need this program quickly to address serious and long-term damages to the infrastructure and our land.

Madam Chair, I thank my colleagues for their consideration.

Madam Speaker, I thank Dr. Dunn for hosting this very important discussion. As we have visited on several different occasions, I want to publicly commend the gentleman for his dedication for fighting for the right thing to do, for his deep compassion for the people he represents and the tireless effort that he is making to explain the consequences of Hurricane Michael as it hit him, the floods that have hit us, and the wildfires that have hit others. I thank the gentleman so much for the time and for his leadership.

Madam Speaker, when spring approaches in Nebraska, we expect our rivers and streams to peacefully rise as snow from the nearby Rockies gently melts. We are the Cornhusker State, but we actually could be called the River State. Here is why: We have more miles of rivers than any other State in the Union. The Missouri, the Platte, the Republican, the Elkhorn, and the Niobrara are our most famous rivers, but we really don't think of them as threatening--until they are.

So as General Bacon just said, this was the most destructive storm in most Nebraskans' lifetimes. A perfect storm of factors caused the pain and destruction now all around us. Lands that were soaked from earlier autumn rains were frozen solid and then covered in snow. When the bomb cyclone's lethal mix of blizzard and rain did hit our State, an enormous quantity of water, ice, and collected topsoil sped down the hard land like a furious slurry, into rivers, creeks, and reservoirs bursting through dams, levees, and other structures that normally would hold this back.

Madam Speaker, it is pretty hard to get the mind around what a 500- year event actually means. But as I was standing at the ridge on Offutt Air Force Base, which is located right south of Omaha near the confluence of the Platte and Missouri Rivers, I could see how the unprecedented force of water covered one-third of that entire base and many communities in eastern Nebraska. As the rushing water hit the bank on the other side of the river, on the Iowa side, it blew it out and created a 62-foot deep hole.

As a member of the Appropriations Committee here in Congress, I turned to the commander of the Corps of Engineers who was with me.

I looked at him, and I said: What is the number?

He immediately shot back without hesitation and said: It is going to be a lot.

Now, a little bit down the road to the west is the town of Fremont. Mayor Scotty Getzschman is a dedicated local public servant who is in the heating and air-conditioning business as his main job. He brought out a 1940 map of the old river channel of the Platte River. The problem for this town of Fremont began when the river got a bit nostalgic and sought to go back to its old ways. In a place now named ground zero near the Rod and Gun Club west of town, massive chunks of ice and the pressure of the Platte blew the levee. Water began to find its own channels in multiple breaches, and the southern part of the town of Fremont endured serious flooding.

We surveyed the damage from a freshly patched hole made from remnants of an old hog confinement lot and riprap from the old Scribner Air Base.

An initial call for help in the community brought 250 people out. Shortly thereafter, 1,000 people showed up to sandbag. One man moved his car to higher ground because he could see what was coming, but then it was later swept away by the raging river, and he spent the next few days at the intersection directing traffic as a volunteer.

Madam Speaker, a bit west of the town of Fremont is the small town of North Bend, and that is where a ditch dike could not contain itself and made its own channel, creating fingers of water flowing throughout the city, and the vast majority of homes in this small community were hit. The paved streets looked like mud streets by the time I got there, but even with 6 inches of water inside of it, the North Bend Eagle, the local newspaper, figured out a way to get that edition out.

Realizing that he was in a critical spot, the North Bend school superintendent transformed the entire school, really one of the newer buildings, into a center of gravity for emergency operations. Though school was canceled, it didn't mean the kids weren't busy. Initially they sandbagged, then they began to volunteer for days on end with the cleanup effort.

The people of North Bend organized themselves, and word spread. Goods poured in from all over the country. And as the superintendent told me, he said that what was happening there could make a good country song, they would have so much more appreciation for Nebraska.

Areas south of the town of Columbus, a little bit further to the west also were particularly hard hit with very large and mounting ag losses, the most visible sign of which were dead cattle. In fact, this past Saturday I went to a high school fundraiser in Columbus, and along Highway 81 the speed signs were still bent over with grass attached to them showing the magnitude and the volume of water that rushed over that area.

There is a truck stop there named T-Bone, Madam Speaker. It greets passersby with two enormous cowboy boots on poles embedded in concrete. One was found 300 yards away at Matulka's garage. The other one was across the highway about a half mile away. They will probably be put back up to greet passersby once again. By the time I got there, the 4 feet of mud and water had receded, and a lot had been cleaned up.

I looked at Fred, and I said: How did this happen?

He said:

At T-Bone's, we don't mess around. We are Nebraskans. We

get it done.

On a more positive note, Madam Speaker, a Federal project initiated after the last flood of 2011 saved the little town of Schuyler, Nebraska, and a couple of other things positively have happened. Nebraska's congressional delegation asked for expedited federal disaster assistance, and the President granted it.

Even in the midst of this trauma, Nebraskans found a way to get a few laughs. Along the fence across from that truck stop of T-Bone's, there was a hand-painted sign that said, ``Mud Wrestling Tomorrow.''

Back at Offutt Air Force Base, it is a pretty jarring scene when you see a large fuel tank lifted up and turned on its side. It shows you the powerful force of this water.

As many of the Members of Congress who have experienced this have had the same outpouring of support from family and friends around the country, I want to tell you just a quick few things that happened to me.

A nun from Rome wrote to me and offered her prayers. A Congressman from another area of the country texted me and said: ``I'll send my staff. Whatever you need.'' The Jordanian Ambassador to the United States contacted me with her concerns.

Madam Speaker, as you and I have seen firsthand, a natural disaster can create certain blessings in disguise. It is a time when we can come together and put aside any political differences and lend a helping hand to our fellow citizens.

I think that is exactly what America wants Congress to do right now: put our differences aside, find consensus, quickly pass a supplemental to simply help my constituents and the others who have been so devastated by these unpredictable, unforeseen events. Many have waited and waited, and I think this is the time.

Madam Speaker, before I begin my remarks, let me thank my colleagues, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx and Congressman David Price, for their beautiful, moving tributes to our colleague, Walter Jones.

I wasn't an intimate friend of Walter's, but we did have a friendship. Each encounter that I had with him was special because he always had an eye toward that which was higher, noble, and good.

I heard some of the sentiments Members expressed, heartfelt sentiments of loss, but also a great tribute and honor to this extraordinary man who did try to rise above the difficulties and the tensions here. I think both his life and his death taught us invaluable lessons, and frankly, I think it is what the American people are longing for from this body as well. So I thank the gentlewoman very much for doing this.

Madam Speaker, tonight, I would like to talk about two women, two women from very different places, two women from very different cultures and different religions, two women with very different stories. Together, these two women, differently and separately, are reinterpreting in light of what was so that they can imagine what will be.

The first woman's name is Nadia Murad. Nadia won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. I know Nadia. She is a Yazidi from northern Iraq. The Yazidis are a people bound by an ancient faith tradition, and they have sought to live in peace in very harsh surroundings through the centuries. Along with the Christians of the area, they have endured many persecutions for a very long time. But nothing could have prepared Nadia for what happened on August 15, 2014.

Nadia lived in a little village called Kawju in an area called Sinjar, again, in northern Iraq. The town's residents were mostly farmers and shepherds. At 21 years old, Nadia dreamed of owning her own hair salon and becoming a history teacher. But then the unthinkable happened.

The Islamic State, ISIS, invaded her village. ISIS rounded up everyone and forced them into the schoolyard. The men were then separated from women. As Nadia told us, she said that she never realized how small her village was until she saw all of them in that schoolyard.

They stood huddled on the dry grass. Some whispered to one another, wondering what was going on. Others were silent, in shock. No one understood what was happening, as Nadia said to us.

Nadia was then forced to watch as six of her brothers were massacred. Her mother was executed along with 80 other older women. The bodies of the men and women were then thrown into mass graves.

The rest of the women, including Nadia, were taken to Mosul, the largest city held by ISIS at that time, and they were sold. They were sold as sex slaves.

The depravity of ISIS further unfolded as they sought to carry out a genocide, a complete extermination of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minority traditions in that area. The Yazidis were singled out for persecution by ISIS because they were part of a Kurdish- speaking religion without a holy book.

Using that background as justification, what was called the ISIS Research and Fatwa Department targeted women for sexual slavery in an effort to lure young men into joining their cause. ISIS' twisted bureaucracy of barbarity even prepared a document on this, and it was called ``Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves.''

True to the dictates of the ISIS document, Nadia was bought and sold several times, with Facebook used as one of the prime ISIS marketing tools. She was repeatedly raped, burned with cigarettes, and beaten. At one point, she attempted to escape, but she was caught. The vicious gang rape that then ensued left her unconscious. She decided not to try to escape again.

After months of unspeakable agony, one day, Nadia discovered that a door had been left unlocked, and she fled. She found refuge with a Muslim family who willingly helped her. In fact, the eldest son, at great personal risk, took her in his car and got her to the Kurdish lines where she was safe.

I was first introduced to Nadia by some friends in Lincoln's Yazidi community. Through an interesting convergence of things, Lincoln, Nebraska, which is my home, has the largest Yazidi population in America. Many of the young men had served as our translators during the height of the Iraq war.

Interestingly, one of the first pieces of legislation that I worked on was to give special visas accommodating people to come to America who had risked their lives alongside our troops, some of whom died, and they were given special status to come here. Many have made their home in Nebraska, and I am very proud of that.

When Nadia came to see me, I could sense the trauma in her face and the wounds in her soul, so I tried to gently ask Nadia if she would be willing to share her full story with those of us there in my office. I told her that I thought it was important that we hear, in order to try to understand, but only if she wanted to. She again gently answered back that, yes, she would share her story.

She walked us through her nightmare. At one point, I looked over at her Yazidi translator. Tears streamed down his face. My own chief of staff sobbed. It was just too much to bear.

But in a real moment of pride for me, Madam Speaker, 1 month ago today, Nadia Murad was my guest right here in the House Chamber for the State of the Union. I was happy to see her again, and she gave me a copy of her book called ``The Last Girl.'' Her fiance was with her, Abid Shamdeen. What a gentle young man. He had served as well as a translator at the height of the Iraq war and had earned his citizenship to America.

Before the State of the Union event, Nadia and I spent about an hour with a reporter from The Washington Post. The beautiful gift of watching her interact with this reporter was this: She answered the questions clearly, with great grace and purposeful resolve, as Abid lovingly stood by her and translated her words and the full meaning of them.

She was in Washington to raise awareness of the Yazidi genocide and join us in the call for a new type of security settlement in northern Iraq that would protect the ancient mosaic, the ancient tapestry of religious pluralism that once existed there, including Christians and Yazidis, as well as certain Islamic minority traditions.

While that was her primary motive before that reporter and us, again, she gently and profoundly articulated the need to respect human dignity. She used that pain in her soul to project healing on our broken world.

Madam Speaker, when I first came to Congress, an older Member warned me about something. He called it the tyranny of the urgent. He said to be careful of the tyranny of the urgent, because what that will do is subsume you into emergency after emergency without leaving any time for reflection, for thought, for dialogue, for relationship.

We see that played out day after day, and, of course, the media begs this as issues switch and controversies arise, and we are all summoned to give various opinions on whatever negative thing just happened. The tyranny of the urgent, we have to be careful of that because it robs us of the chance to sit with a heroic woman like Nadia and listen carefully to what she has to say.

This hour-by-hour D.C. and 911 fire alarm is distracting us from this essential work of reflection and authentic governance. It is true now more than ever.

A lot of what goes on here is outside the glare of television. Recently, I had the chance to engage the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development who had come before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. I talked to him about a number of issues that were important to me: the country of Haiti, the prospects for reforestation around the world, conservation, the story of Nadia and so many Yazidis, and this need for the new security settlement in northern Iraq.

The American people are generously helping with economic aid, under the leadership of the Agency for International Development, to help potentially create the conditions in which Yazidis and Christians could return and once again flourish.

This was foremost in my mind as I spoke with the administrator in the committee hearing. But I told the administrator this, that the name-- the name itself, the United States Agency for International Development--really does not capture the fullness of the mission of what we are trying to do.

Ultimately, this mission and our disposition, as reflected in policy, ought to be about one thing expressed in two words: human dignity-- protecting human dignity and, in doing so, attacking the root causes of poverty and attempting to create for the 21st century an imaginative architecture for diplomatic relations, again, rooted in authentic service to America's humanitarian impulse, creating the conditions for international stability which are inextricably intertwined with our own national security.

This is a properly oriented foreign policy trajectory of our Nation, and, again, it is based on the idea that America's impulse is to be charitable, America's impulse is to help--yes, to demand responsibility but, also, to help create the conditions in which human life can flourish.

This has profound meaning, Madam Speaker, where I live, particularly in Nebraska, because one of the ways in which we express, in practical terms, that humanitarian impulse is through agricultural policy. We feed ourselves, and we feed the world.

Nebraska has a big role in doing just that, and this is true now more than ever in our modern age. The land has been the source of our vitality in America.

Particularly where I live but, really, across the country, agriculture is so essential to our economic well-being, our life, our way of life, our culture, to who we are as a people.

And again, where I live, production agriculture is so essential, in corn and soybeans and livestock that cover much of our landscape. They are an important part of America's export prowess.

The farm communities' and the ranch communities' efficiency, their quality, their ingenuity allows us to provide food security for tens of millions of vulnerable people in America and abroad, while ensuring that Americans enjoy the lowest per capita grocery bills in all the world.

Now, the challenge and the opportunity is to grow America's farm family. And to look to the future, we should look to the past to see, again, in this new century, a new connection starting to occur between the urban and the rural.

This diversification of our farm family is happening rapidly, and so we, importantly, are no longer talking in the language of producers and consumers but, rather, in terms of connecting the farmer to the family.

You can now meet your farmer at the local farmers market. That is a level of intimacy not seen since the early days of agriculture in America.

What is at stake here, Madam Speaker, is this desire to bring people closer to their food and into an authentic relationship with those who grow that food.

Agriculture is creating an exciting new entrepreneurial space, and we have seen a real uptick in young people entering the ag field. Young people are being drawn to agriculture through exciting new niches, including artisanal foods and crops, organics, and the farm-to-fork movement.

Agricultural studies no longer sit off on the side in their own silo. They are inextricably intertwined, an intimate relationship with environmental science and conservation, as well as international development.

Restaurants that focus on locally sourced foods are also growing in popularity, and with that trend comes an increased interest in the food of indigenous peoples--all exciting new spaces.

Still, at the heart of Nebraska and at the heart of America is the traditional, large-scale American farm.

At the beginning of this, Madam Speaker, I talked about two women. And we have heard about Nadia Murad, who is living with a deep wound yet seeking ways to rebuild what once was a thriving tradition.

I want to talk about another woman I recently met now, though, a fascinating young woman who has merged the millennial sense of authentic connection with a traditional production ag operation.

Hannah Esch is an agricultural student at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and a Nebraska beef ambassador.

Hannah was surprised when she recently visited some young children in a classroom in one of our counties and, when asked a basic question about where food comes from, a third grader answered that eggs come from cows since they are next to the milk in the grocery store. This alarmed Hannah a bit, but it reinforced Hannah's desire to go deeper into ag education and outreach.

Hannah is a specialty livestock producer with a fascinating background as an agriculture pioneer. She is a part of a growing movement of young agricultural entrepreneurs. She is a passionate advocate for production agriculture, while also seeking emerging niche opportunities.

In Nebraska, the average age of the farmer is 58 years old. I don't know exactly what it is across the country, Madam Speaker, but I assume it is somewhat similar.

What we have on our hands is, on the horizon, a generational transfer. But there is also an interesting convergence of amazing new opportunity on that same horizon.

Two dynamics are on the verge of breaking out: small-scale farm production and the nimble, innovative use of technology in agriculture.

I met Hannah at an ag pioneers event organized by the Agribusiness Entrepreneurship program at the University of Nebraska.

The businesses of these cutting-edge ag leaders range from organic popcorn production to ag tech in the Internet of Things. Others were leaders in the farm-to-table movement, boutique vegetable growers, and specialty livestock sellers. Some were large grain producers experimenting with cover crops that would enhance the soil and also advance their own innovation in the precision agriculture space.

Not everybody in this room was young. Not everybody came from farm families, interestingly. But what they shared was a passionate desire to add value to traditional production agriculture and create the space for a new food movement that is showing tremendous potential.

Of course, at that meeting, given this body recently passed a new farm bill, an important piece of legislation that does basically one thing--provides food security in two ways: The risk management policies that protect agriculture producers from the vagaries, the ups and downs, of weather, the supply problems as well as other difficulties that arise in ensuring that a timely, good harvest is delivered, that is the purpose of the farm bill, combined with its other purpose, to help those who are in food-vulnerable circumstances through our nutrition programs. We discussed the policies embedded in the farm bill, including the value-added grants section and the assistance that we give to beginning farmers and ranchers.

Another of the participants were the Brugger brothers. They were engaging young people who could honestly, Madam Speaker, star in a reality TV show.

They are adding enormous value to the farm commodities they produce. These twins not only distill corn and raise cattle; they create a sequence of value across multiple agricultural products, from hops to whiskey to finished meats. Their vertical integration puts the value in the value chain--in their pocket. That is an exciting entrepreneurial place to be.

These brothers, however, are about more than food. They also want to lure

members of their younger generation back to the small town. They want to build community around artisanal agriculture.

This connectivity around food is one of the value propositions that I wanted to highlight here that Hannah holds so dear. She has grown her own premium brand of beef through the power of story.

Using Instagram and photos and video, Hannah sells her livestock product directly via the Internet to a diverse range of customers from around the country who yearn to know the provenance of their food.

Hannah draws interest in her beef by showing the life cycle of her cattle, and, through compelling use of social media, she invites customers into the intimate process of livestock production. Her market, again, is to a world hungry for the authentic story behind what is for dinner.

Madam Speaker, with Hannah and other ag pioneers, we are experiencing a bit--or the front end, should I say?--of an emerging set of ideas that will help shape our social and economic well-being for this century. It is the entrepreneurial drive that these young people possess to be stewards of the land, to grow the ag family, and to create the space for genuine food relationship.

This millennial-driven movement signifies an embrace of the traditional human-scaled model of agriculture for which our society is yearning, while remaining firmly within and adding to the mainstream of production agriculture that feeds America and feeds the world.

So what do Hannah and Nadia hold in common? I think they are connected. They are from very different lands. They speak different languages. They have different cultural mores.

What they are driving for is meaning around human dignity. Whether it is Nadia, who has suffered the horrible loss of her family and her extraordinary tradition--she is being driven by a purpose to pull out of that tragedy deep meaning and projecting that on the world, speaking to our hearts clearly through her suffering about the need for human dignity.

It is our only way out, to express and rebuild our systems of governance, our foreign relations, and our economics around this idea of interconnectedness with respect for human dignity. It is a very important driver, even in the life of an entrepreneur like Hannah, who seeks, again, the authenticity of food relationship. I think there is an intimate connection here between two women from two very different, faraway places.

Madam Speaker, my wife was telling me recently--and I venture out here a little bit because I don't know the name of this art form. It is my understanding there is a type of porcelain that is very, very delicate and fragile; and, if it should break, it is actually repaired by gold so that, as beautiful as the original piece was, it becomes more vibrant, more offering. Its brokenness shows more beauty.

In listening to Nadia and her deep woundedness and watching her young fiance lovingly escort her through the storytelling of her wounds to the world, it is that porcelain being repaired by gold, and it shines all the more beautifully.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member, Ms. Granger, for her indulgence in letting me speak today. Let me thank our chair, Mrs. Lowey, as well for at least the ability today to have a discussion.

Mr. Speaker, no one wins in a government shutdown. No one wins if the border is not secure. That is where we are.

On my way here yesterday, as I was scrambling to get to the airport-- and I live in Nebraska, a relatively small State, so we all kind of know one another or at least kind of recognize one another. As I checked in with my boarding pass and showed the TSA agent my ID, he looked at me and he said: Can you vote for the bill?

Now, given it is the Senate bill that is dominating the headlines, because it is a reasoned attempt to reach some type of consensus here, I looked at the TSA agent and I said: Yes, I can. I know this has been tough. How long can you hold out?

He said: It is tough. I don't want to miss another paycheck, but I can hold out about 30 days.

He said please. I thanked him for his service. Right now, I would like to thank all of the people who have come back to work without pay, who have done their duty, many under some hardship, because they know it is the right thing to do.

Yet, what is also the right thing to do is to get past this logjam, this impasse, and to leverage this moment and to actually get an outcome, a bipartisan outcome, that secures our border.

This weekend, the President, I thought, laid out a reasoned proposal that included a spectrum of immigration issues, most of which enjoy robust bipartisan support, including border security. And what do we need there? Personnel. We need technology, and we need enhanced barriers.

Now, there is the possibility of some movement on these important questions of reopening the government and getting the right type of border security that now sits in the United States Senate. But I thought Senator Lankford made a good comment as well. He said this isn't a yes or a no proposition, on that particular bill. It is the starting point, again, for a reasoned debate about how we find some consensus.

Mr. Speaker, America is a just and generous Nation, and we have opened our arms to people who wish to come here and embrace the values, people who have fled political or economic persecution and want to rebuild their lives. That is the hallmark of who we are.

But charity cannot flow out of chaos. When you have disorder at the border, you have an inability to have a just and humanitarian system that is beneficial to America and to people in need all around the world.

And that, fundamentally, is what is at issue here today--not necessarily finding a compromise, but a consensus. A compromise implies that somebody may win and somebody may lose. Let's all win here. Let's get the government reopened with the right type of package that includes robust border security that can make America proud.

Madam Speaker, I thank Congressman Smith, not only for his tireless leadership, but his compassionate, passionate voice on behalf of women, saying loudly and clearly, consistently, over the time he has been in Congress, that women deserve better.

Madam Speaker, we live in an age of contradiction. We say that we want peace. We say that we want joy. We say that we want happiness, that we ought to be living in a good and authentic, committed community, and that we ought to uphold the noble ideal of human dignity. But we have to ask some difficult questions. We have to ask why.

Why, in this age of material plenty, is life expectancy in America declining?

Why, in this age of vast and accelerating scientific discovery and technological innovation, is the world still screaming for meaning? Why?

Could it be that we have to be brave enough, that we have to be bold enough, to look and confront our own contradictions?

We say we want community, but do we really care?

We say we want justice, but with certain exceptions.

We say we want liberty for all but, really, only for our own perspective.

Madam Speaker, the reality is, life is hard. Life can be brutal. Life can sometimes be very unfair.

The reality is we have to face this together.

This is why the demands of community, the demands of justice, the demands of compassion, the demands of liberty say to the woman, no matter how hard the circumstances, what a gift you are and what a gift the unborn

life is within you. What a gift. What a gift.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chair, first, I thank Mrs. Lowey--this is, I think, the first time that we have had a chance to dialog publicly--for her leadership and congratulate her as the new Appropriations chair. I congratulate the gentlewoman, and we look forward to working with Mrs. Lowey.

I also want to thank the Republican leader, our ranking member of the committee, Ms. Granger, for her steadfast leadership and help in navigating so many essential issues that are before us today.

Madam Chair, I want you to know that I support the underlying bill without the complicating amendments and urge its passage.

I believe that this is a good bipartisan piece of legislation to help those negatively affected by serious and devastating weather events that have occurred throughout the previous year, and we should be working together to provide the needed disaster assistance and unite to rebuild communities damaged by these hurricanes, typhoons, and earthquakes, as well as volcanoes.

But let us be honest. This bill would sail through the Congress--it would sail through this body--if we could get past the paralysis of this moment that is dividing Democrats from Republicans, the Speaker from the President, the House from the Senate, and on and on.

Let's put all of those considerations aside for just a moment and provide the needed support to our agricultural communities who are hurting and those who are in need.

As the new ranking member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, I want to speak briefly to an important number of provisions in the underlying bill.

It provides financial support to farmers and producers from the Pacific Islands to California and to the Southeast States who have lost crops, trees, and livestock, and so much more. It provides funds for essential conservation efforts in our rural communities to rebuild the watersheds and funds to restore the land in order to prevent future flooding that is so devastating.

The bill provides financial support to forestlands for their restoration, some of which have been wiped out by the strongest storms recorded in several parts of the United States.

The bill also provides nutritional assistance to those who are vulnerable among us.

These are all reasons that we need to put momentary difficulties aside and pass the underlying piece of legislation. I suggest that we move this bill as quickly as possible and keep it separate from the amendments that will delay its implementation.

Madam Speaker, there is a twofold goal being sought by many of us right now, and it is this: to keep the government fully open and to secure our border.

No one wins in a government shutdown. No one wins if the border is not safe. We ought to be able to rise above the momentary difficulty, whether it is a negotiation between the Senate and the House, the President and the House, the President and the Senate, and get to those mutually compatible goals of fully funding an operational government, as well as ensuring that Americans are safe and that we have the right type of assistance to our border personnel, the right type of barriers, the right type of technology, the right type of preventative measures to protect us all, and create the conditions in which America can have a truly just and humanitarian response to those in need. That is what is at issue this moment.

With that said, Madam Speaker, though, I think it is important that, as we are at the beginning of a new Congress, as we were all sworn in last week, as this Chamber was filled with Members' children and Members' families coming from such extraordinarily diverse backgrounds, it was a celebratory atmosphere. It always tends to be that way, and then we get into the hard, hard work of governing.

As President Kennedy once said, to govern is to choose wisely, and in a society divided by deep cultural and philosophical difficulties, that actually manifests itself here in the people's House.

It is incumbent upon those of us who have been given this awesome responsibility to govern to undertake the awesome responsibility of deciding to govern well, to carry forth that spirit of the swearing in day with our families here, and that oath of office, where there is a common narrative around who we are as a people and where we should go as a Nation, reaching back to our most honored-in-time traditions and projecting them forward so America can have confidence that we have

set up the guardrails for a successful culture, a successful economy, a successful society.

That is our job. It is going to take difficult moments of prudential wrestling. It is my hope it will be done in a civil manner and that people will make their firm case and fight for those principles, but do so with an eye toward building consensus.

We in Nebraska, I believe, invented the phrase ``get `er done.'' Just get `er done. Fight for what you believe and seek that which is possible. They are not mutually incompatible goals. That is our responsibility as legislators for the good, the well-being of the entire American public.

With that said, Madam Speaker, I would like to do something a little bit unique. I would actually like to look back for a moment at the year in review and some important things that were accomplished.

We tend to be caught in what I call the tyranny of the urgent, where what is right in front of us completely occupies us. Of course, we have a 24/7, 911 media that heightens all of this intensity. It is what it is. But the reality is, we did some pretty good things last year, last term, and I want to review a few of them.

In December, the House and Senate passed a new farm bill with very strong bipartisan support. For a lot of Americans, it is very easy to overlook this accomplishment. Our grocery bills are some of the lowest in the world, our food is readily available, and our safety net for those who are vulnerable is well considered.

It comes down to this: it is the vastness of our land and the quality of our soil and the gritty ingenuity of our farmers and ranchers who lay the foundation for America's prosperity, stability, and economic vitality. We tend to forget this because our food comes somewhat easy to us.

The farm bill provides risk management tools to maximize this natural gift, allowing farmers and ranchers to provide food security for our country, our nutrition programs, as well as food assistance to millions of others around the world and protect those who are in very vulnerable circumstances.

This bill also fosters conservation practices that enhance the protection of our soil and our wildlife habitat. I am pleased by the increase in the number of acres in the Conservation Reserve Program.

The farm bill ensures that America continues to lead the world in agricultural innovation, food safety, and renewable fuels. In Nebraska, agriculture is central to our well-being, our way of life, and our culture. Our land-grant universities help ensure that we maintain our tremendous productivity.

The farm bill is a once-in-every-5-year piece of legislation. The birth of such legislation is neither smooth nor easy, but we got it done. It is a good lesson for what we are facing now with new challenges ahead of us. We got it done in a very strong, bipartisan vote.

For Nebraskans, and many people throughout rural America, the farm bill is not just another Washington accomplishment. Like the rhythms of planting and harvesting, it is an expected rite of legislative passage essential to who we are as a people, as Americans, and to our well- being.

One of the things that I am excited about, Madam Speaker, is that beginning farmers and local food producers are big winners in our farm bill. I am very encouraged by the growing interest of young people in seeking agricultural opportunity.

We are witnessing a food culture awakening, with local chefs, farmers markets, and a keen interest in eating local. The farm bill helps these next generation farmers and food entrepreneurs through new resources and training, such as the Local Agriculture Market Program, called LAMP, which accelerates the farm-to-fork movement across America, connecting local farmers with families, consumers, and restaurants. This offers a big, big opportunity for us all.

I am also happy, Madam Speaker, that the farm bill includes my provisions to enhance the Farmer-to-Farmer Program. For over 30 years, the Farmer-to-Farmer Program has connected volunteer American farmers, agriculture extension experts, and others with deep knowledge of the agriculture industry with the world's farmers abroad. From dairy production to seed selection to entomology, irrigation, and crop yield determination improvement, as well as farm credit, this sharing of America's agricultural expertise dramatically enhances the capacity of people elsewhere to grow their own food, contributing to worldwide food security, community well-being, and human flourishing. Food security is the key.

This year, we also passed the Global Food Security Reauthorization Act. I had worked on this important piece of legislation when it first passed. It amends the Global Security Act of 2016 to enable programs that support sustainable agriculture around the world and it extends assistance for international disaster relief and rehabilitation, especially for emergency food programs.

Switching topics a bit, Madam Speaker, the fundamental duty that we all have here is to keep America safe. This requires a modern and properly equipped military.

In recent years, our force structure has significantly deteriorated. Planes could not fly in certain circumstances and other equipment was not available.

This past year in Congress, we passed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act and the defense appropriations bill. Again, most of the government is open and functioning. We are working toward the rest. This helps rebuild our military after years of budget cuts. Our Active Duty, National Guard, and reserve force personnel will receive a 2.6 percent pay raise, the largest in 9 years. We are going to purchase new aircraft, tanks, ships, and other military hardware to replace and upgrade worn out equipment. These bills also increase across-the-board funding for additional personnel, training, maintenance, and operations to ensure that our military is always ready to defend our Nation.

Madam Speaker, while a strong military is vital, America's safety and prosperity also depends upon a skillful mix of diplomacy and development. Building authentic relationships around the world and attacking the root causes of structural poverty are equally important goals that need to work in tandem with a properly sized and prepared military.

A race toward technological superiority through ever-larger weapons systems will not unilaterally resolve our most difficult security challenges. The tech gap that we enjoy is closing, and will continue to close rapidly.

Then, we have to ask ourselves: Then what?

I often use the phrase ``foreign policy realism'' to guide how I believe the United States should engage in global affairs. It is this: strong defense, smart diplomacy, and sustainable development. These are the three pillars.

Thanks to the dedication and courage of our troops and our diplomats and the exhaustive work of many others who serve from their heart in faraway places, we ought to be very grateful that our country has been kept safe from attack. There is always a however. However, real risks remain.

Northern Iraq and Syria are places where ISIS and other dark forces could regenerate. Iran meddles and frustrates peace throughout the region. The United States' relationship with Saudi Arabia is under severe scrutiny in light of our intelligence findings that implicated the Saudi Crown Prince in the murder of an American-based Saudi journalist. We also face risks from various actors to increasingly powerful, yet more nimble and mobile nuclear capabilities.

Madam Speaker, I lead the Nuclear Security Working Group in Congress. We had a very important dialogue with the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration as we closed out the last Congress to discuss our coordination of nuclear nonproliferation activities.

There are two core elements in preventing an attack. The first, of course, is deterrence. The second is threat reduction. Again, the dual work of our military and other government efforts in nuclear threat reduction has been successful in preventing nuclear and radiological terrorism.

The challenge is to constantly reassess the changing threat environment. A single failure can lead to catastrophic consequences. These efforts must be matched with an equal effort to halt and reverse nuclear proliferation throughout the world.

In a September conference, we gathered with national and nuclear security

experts and former government officials across four administrations with the singular goal to improve U.S. Government oversight and coordination of nuclear counter and nonproliferation efforts. As a result, I am going to propose the creation of a nuclear nonproliferation council to enable a unified U.S. Government strategy on nuclear nonproliferation.

In the National Defense Authorization Act, which we passed, there is a section also that perhaps has been overlooked, but it is important. It will speed the elimination of cesium chloride that can be used to make dirty bombs. This policy change that we were pleased to work on reduces the risk of a catastrophic radiological attack inside our borders.

In the face of expanding Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals, our defense bill modernizes our nuclear deterrence capability even as we hope to reestablish a more stable and peaceful world. Only through a combination of strength and an openness to dialogue can we avert a nuclear arms race.

Back in June, the first-ever meeting between leaders of the United States and North Korea took place. President Trump met face to face with Kim Jong-un in a preliminary step towards reconciliation and denuclearization.

The summit that was held in Singapore was a first step to shift an escalating trajectory of missile launches and hostile rhetoric, reducing anxiety for the region, America, and the world.

The summit took a new approach to a long standoff. For the first time, a U.S. President reached out directly to a North Korean leader. The meeting would not have happened, though--and this is very important, Madam Speaker--without a unified global community willing to support the preconditions needed to encourage Kim Jong-un to meet.

As an initial gesture of goodwill, North Korea returned the remains of U.S. service personnel and destroyed at least one nuclear testing facility.

Clearly, much more progress is needed, and a joint action plan will require North Korea to continue to earnestly engage in nonproliferation.

I believe that congressional leadership should play a role here in policy developments that can help the administration reduce the nuclear threats on the Korean Peninsula.

Now, Madam Speaker, where I live, Nebraska, plays a critical role in keeping America safe. Offutt Air Force Base and Strategic Command are essential to America's security, and the steady work of guiding budgets and building the necessary coalitions here in Congress resulted in dramatic improvements to both Strategic Command as well as Offutt.

The new USSTRATCOM headquarters building is nearing completion. Its increased capability, beginning this summer, will add to the combatant command's charge as one of the Nation's most vital missions, and that is nuclear deterrence.

A major repair of Offutt Air Force Base's runway will soon begin.

Again, I am very pleased, working with the Nebraska delegation and our colleagues, to continue to advance the completion of the Strategic Command as well as the enhancement of Offutt Air Force Base.

Offutt is home to the Air Force's 55th Wing. The wing conducts intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. This is very important, Madam Speaker, because, again, it is something that is overlooked in our tense times.

One of the 55th Wing's important aircraft is the OC-135B. It flies in support of the 34-international-member Treaty on Open Skies, one of the last remaining functional arms control regimes that is operational between the United States and the Russian Federation.

I am pleased that, working together, we were able to enhance funding for the OC-135B aircraft, again, vital to one of the last linkages of agreements with the Russians.

Madam Speaker, I want to turn to another topic that really ought to be at the forefront of our discussions, but rarely is; if we are going to create a 21st century architecture for international stability, I believe it revolves around two words: human dignity.

We traditionally think of diplomacy as between nation-states. Increasingly in our interconnected world, where people can reach people in faraway places in an instant or by travel in a very short period of time, it is this deeper transcendent idea that is still operational in our culture. It underlies our founding here in America. It is in our earliest documents. It is alluded to. This idea of human dignity, this sacred space of personhood from which the free exercise of conscience and right reason and other rights that we tend to take for granted, such as religious freedom, flow.

Human dignity, the two words that mark the 21st century architecture for how we ought to conduct international affairs, reaching toward authentic relationships and dialogue with people with whom we may have had tremendous misunderstandings in the past, tremendous tensions, or even the grave consequences of war.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, Madam Speaker, the tech gap is closing. We can beat anybody anywhere. We can do that and will continue to be able to do that. And, again, a strong military is absolutely essential to keeping the peace and creating the conditions for stability internationally, which protects us here at home.

But what happens when, again, the miniaturization of technology is such that any bad actor or any bad nation has ready access to it; we have to ask ourselves: And then what?

It is this idea of being in authentic dialogue around this fundamental principle that is operative in the way in which we conduct our affairs; human dignity, mutual respect for that sacred space of the person and their perspectives and their ability to use reason to think for what is good for themselves, their family, and their country.

Human dignity. This is manifesting itself very clearly in something that, again, is really overlooked in our dialogue because we are caught in the urgency of the moment.

Let me point this out, Madam Speaker. It is about the country of Iraq. America has given so much. We have lost so much in Iraq that it is hard to understand why engagement is ongoing and necessary. The thought of it is exhausting to the American people. It is exhausting to our process.

But I need to point this out. Much is at stake. Iraq once had a mosaic and an ancient tapestry of religious pluralism that existed there. Christians used to total 1.5 million; now only a few hundred thousand remain.

The Yazidi community, another ancient faith tradition that lived in peace, in persecution off and on; but, in attempting to live out their faith tradition in northern Iraq, right now there are about 400,000 people from the Yazidi faith tradition trapped in refugee camps. They are internally displaced persons living in tent structures, distant from their northern Iraq homes, and many are children.

As of this past summer, we had a statistic--and it is hard to know where this is now, given the dynamics--that about 3,500 Yazidi women remained as slaves of ISIS.

In fact, Madam Speaker, we are still working through the logistics, but I am very proud that I reached out to Nadia Murad, who is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was captured by someone named Salman, the Iraqi, and held in slavery.

She came to my office, and I spoke with her and I said: I would like to hear the fullness of your story, but I recognize that is selfish on my part and that the horror and the pain and the tragedy are very real to you. So if you do not wish to say anything, I completely understand, but I would like to know more if you are willing.

And she agreed. And she told us, moment by moment about what happened to her family, about how she was captured, sold, and how she eventually escaped, with the help of a Muslim family, by the way.

I reached out to Nadia recently, and I invited her to the State of the Union. And she is going to come. We are working through it, and I am hopeful that works out. Right now she is scheduled to come, and I am proud of that.

Because it is not about me giving a speech here about human dignity-- and I think Nadia would agree with me saying this--it is not even about the trauma that she went through and the need to heal. The reason that she is speaking so clearly and so courageously about the horror she went through, in

the midst of her great pain, is this singular concept right here: human dignity.

How can civilizations survive if we do not somehow rally ourselves around this fundamental principle of respecting the sacred space of personhood, of allowing people the liberty to live in peace and exercise their tradition as they see fit, to do good things for their family, to carry forward the wisdom of their tradition and ages, through their family life and the exercise of their faith.

If we give up on that principle, where do we go?

We can fight it out. We might even be able to win. But the deeper answer lies in the message that Nadia and so many others are telling us, crying out for justice and humanitarian relief and begging for a new way to think, a new way to order ourselves.

And because we have the philosophical foundation here in America, because we have been a just and generous society and we have welcomed people who have fled persecution, the world looks at us as this beautiful place of the residual, of the protection of that fundamental value that I believe every heart longs for: to be respected, to be in community, to be loved.

Now, here is what I think we ought to do. We have about 5,400 American troops in Iraq. And, with the help of international partners, we have been training Iraqi national forces and nurturing their capacity to lead and finish the work of defeating the dark, twisted horror of ISIS.

At the behest of the Vice President, I went to Iraq last summer, and the Iraqi forces that we have trained and the military told me directly they have fought and they have fought well. Again, the irony of the attack of ISIS and the genocide against Christians and Yazidis and other religious minorities and the killing of so many innocent Muslim people is that it has created a nationalism, if you will, among the Iraqi people. And they have fought hard and fought well and taken many, many casualties.

But here is the key: An additional security footprint is still required in the Nineveh Plain and Sinjar so that it is possible--these are the areas in northern Iraq proximate to Kurdistan. A new security settlement in that area would allow the return of Christians and allow the return of Yazidis to their traditional homes and to begin to rebuild.

Again, as I mentioned, in July, at the request of the Vice President, I joined Administrator Mark Green of the United States Agency for International Development and Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, former Governor of Kansas, and we went to Iraq together.

We were responding to reports that our initial efforts to help the religious minority communities were not having the intended effect.

When we stepped into the dusty alleyways and streets and villages and camps, we gained firsthand knowledge of the broken conditions there. Our trip included intense discussions with Iraqi religious leaders, international aid workers, displaced children, U.N. personnel, as well as our military leadership.

Despite the situation's fragility, there is certain progress being made, including courageous acts of ecumenical alliance and revitalization, often with international nongovernmental organizations and faith-based entities.

My firsthand observation was this: The situation in Iraq can be summarized in three words: possibility, urgency, and security.

Multiple levels of challenge remain. Security is weak, and the prospect of permanent refugee camps is real.

If Iraq loses its minority communities, the hope for a healthy pluralism in the region will die, and a severe chain of events will occur. Iran will expand its presence. ISIS could regenerate. Out- migration will ensue, and Iraq will forever lose this extraordinary ancient tapestry of multiple faith traditions that are so vital for human dignity, mutual respect, and peace.

So, working with the administration, our government, we are expanding and accelerating our humanitarian support for those who suffered genocide, and this is all good. However, the financial assistance must be combined with the proper security settlement that ensures a just return for these beleaguered minorities to the Nineveh Plain and Sinjar.

So, Madam Speaker, this is what I have done. I am recently getting ready to reintroduce a resolution in the House of Representatives to develop a multinational security mission to integrate local Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities into the security forces of the central government of Iraq.

Getting this right means justice for the oppressed, stability for Iraq, and the preservations of the principles necessary for civilization itself. By doing so, we will correct a fragile security situation. The religious minorities will have special autonomy for protection of their own areas, but, again, under Central Iraqi authority, under the Iraqi flag. The mission will be international in character under the Iraqi flag. I know, right now, many other nations are very willing to join this effort, to put down a new security footprint that would stabilize permanently that area and allow people to go home.

Madam Speaker, there is another issue related critically to human dignity, and while it is not something that we often talk and think about, we are starting to get our mind around how big tech is controlling our lives. We are starting to worry that the surveillance of our habits and our contacts by people who shouldn't be surveilling us, these big tech companies, are creating multiple levels of difficulty. This growing problem here in America is affecting the most vulnerable persons here: our children.

The CEO of Google, a few months ago, recently came before Congress, and he did receive an earful. Big tech is controlling our lives. Big tech is concentrated and dominating. Big tech is going to necessarily come under increased policy scrutiny to ensure that individual privacy is protected and competition is not stifled. But one overlooked area, problem, is protecting children online.

Now, Google's YouTube is the most popular online platform for children on Earth, and 8 out of 10 U.S. children from 6 to 12 use it daily. In April of this past year, 23 child and privacy advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission arguing that Google's YouTube online video and advertising network systematically collected data on the online habits of tens of millions of YouTube- watching children under the age of 13, and that data was sold to marketers.

Now, in support of this advocacy, Congressman David Cicilline, who is from Rhode Island, who sits on the other side of the aisle from me, he and I asked Google for answers on its policy regarding protection of children online. The response was weak.

So our goal is to continue to try to ensure that the internet's extraordinarily beneficial technological advances square with the time- honored values essential to a humane, decent, and dignified world. We want Google to thoroughly answer our questions. We want Google to be true to its original motto: ``Don't Be Evil.''

Now, Madam Speaker, let me turn to another topic, and touch on it briefly, to talk about what is germane in this moment, given the discussions of border security, some of the things we actually worked on last year that weren't successful but, nonetheless, may provide some answers for the current dilemma that we find ourselves in.

America is, again, a kind and generous nation, and we have opened our arms to persons who seek refuge and want to rebuild their own lives and accept and embrace the deeper values of our country. However, charity cannot flow from chaos. No one is entitled to enter America illegally. Law and order create the conditions for justice and compassion. Law and order create the conditions necessary for charity, for justice, and for compassion.

Now, the dynamics around immigration are complex and multilayered. A Yale study came out last year that said the number of persons illegally in the United States could be as high as 30 million, but at least 40 percent of those have overstayed a visa. And over the past 30 years-- and this is what we are wrestling with right now--over the past 30 years, incomplete border control, insufficient Federal enforcement, and the cynical exploitation of the poor for economic gain here in America

has created an attractiveness and led to a failing system.

So, in an attempt to meet multiple immigration challenges, to align the various perspectives that are here in Congress about a humane and compassionate response about the need for additional, necessary border resources, about the need to update our immigration laws, this year we voted on legislation that would stiffen internal enforcement, modernize our immigration laws, and significantly increase border resources.

The House-led legislation moved more toward a merit-based immigration system, provided new funding for more humane shelters at the border. It accelerated the judicial review process, and it made accommodations to resolve the anxious ambiguity for those who are called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA kids, children who were brought here through no fault of their own.

I supported these initiatives, but, unfortunately, they failed in the House. And moving forward, I think we need to keep certain other priorities at the forefront of the immigration debate, which are, of course, an increase in border security, robust internal enforcement, and this additional priority which is now only coming to light. We have been doing this for a number of years. Of course, the policy needs to be revisited and evaluated in terms of success, but I do think it is an important one: moving the immigration debate off the 1-yard line and working with creative and imaginative foreign policy engagement with the countries in the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In that way, to help those countries build more just and humane systems both economically and politically, to create the conditions for stability, decreases the intensity of need for out- migration for either economic purposes or fleeing criminal activity.

Now, immigration can seem remote and abstract for many of us, but it is important to remember that it has a human face, and I am very proud that we are doing two things at once here. We are, of course, debating the importance of immigration policy and potential changes, but also assisting many people who have gotten tangled in immigration difficulties back home.

Madam Speaker, I think there are certain things in this House that transcend disagreement, and one of them is our veterans. Americans often sense what is right and good, and we instinctively recognize the nobility of self-sacrifice for another, for our country, and for our timeless ideals, and our veterans stand above the division and discord--beyond politics--to what is lasting and true.

But beyond our applause and admiration, we are also duty-bound in this body to keep our promise to care for them. So, this past year, we did some important things.

Back at home, we are in the process, after some long negotiations, of creating a new state-of-the-art VA facility in Lincoln, on the historic veterans' campus there. This is a victory. This is a significant victory for economic regeneration of a unique historic property, and it arrives on the heels of a very successful public-private partnership to expand and improve and innovate the Omaha VA Medical Center. I am so proud that Nebraska continues to inspire the Nation with creative partnerships to assist our veterans.

Now, here in Congress, we passed a law called the VA Maintaining Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks, the acronym is the MISSION Act. It was signed into law, and it brought the long-needed reforms in the last Congress to the VA system. It provides a replacement for the VA Choice program and consolidates community care programs for veterans who live far from a VA center or experience long wait times for care.

This is going to assist many of our veterans in rural communities and help them receive the quality of care that they deserve in a reasonable amount of time. This act also expanded the veteran caregiver program, making more pre-9/11 veterans and their families eligible for assistance.

Now, another bipartisan project that I hope we can pursue shortly, and we have been in dialogue in a bipartisan manner on this, is to work with the international community to create a historic center at the site of our D-day battles in Normandy. A new institute that is being envisioned by some European colleagues could reestablish, for the 21st century, a renewed understanding of the pivotal battle that happened on D-day, its consequences for the war, and the institutions that emerged afterward that have created the conditions for stability and prosperity, many of which are aging and need to be updated and challenged.

The United States cannot pull the world's weight alone. We need to be in authentic partnership and in authentic dialogue when we have differences, but in partnership with those who have been given the capacity by our sacrifice, both militarily and economically, to advance their own economies and build out systems of governance.

Again, the 21st century architecture of international diplomacy is going to revolve around that central idea: authentic partnerships based on the philosophical principle of human dignity that lead to burden sharing and vision sharing at the same time.

Madam Speaker, I had an interesting thing happen this summer. I wasn't at home, and I regret that I wasn't there to receive him, but he stopped in my office. World War II veteran Sidney Walton stopped by, and he has a really fascinating story.

You see, he told my staff and some of the young people there, the interns, he has a deep regret that when he was young, he never really took the time to visit with the last few remaining Civil War veterans. So he has taken it upon himself; he has embarked on a national No Regrets Tour, and his goal is to visit all 50 States and give young Americans a chance to meet a World War II veteran.

Again, his name is Sidney Walton. We were honored to have him in Nebraska, and he will finish his tour at the White House, as I understand it, this February, on his 100th birthday.

Thank you, Sidney. Great, great effort.

Madam Speaker, let me also touch upon another area that is so essential to our well-being, our sense of being able to fulfill these deepest longings that we have, our healthy sense of ambition for ourselves and for our family.

A lot of times around here we cite economic data, have a bunch of charts that show statistics. We do a lot of that around here. It doesn't really convey, I think, the deeper dynamics of what is happening. But let me go into it just for a bit and talk about the positive outcomes that have occurred.

This year, we have seen more jobs, increased wages, and reinvestment in equipment, plants, and research and development. Our gross domestic product, one of the measures of the economy, is climbing, and median household income is rising. Unemployment is at a 50-year low, and many people who have been marginalized or on the sidelines, thankfully, have found access to meaningful work.

And if we think about a holistic approach to helping our neighbor, work is dignity. When a person is able to use their gifts and talents, either their two hands or their intellect, to make things, they are not only providing for their own well-being, but they are in solidarity with the community. This benefit of exchange goes beyond just material. It creates the value of relationships. That is the beauty and dignity of work.

And when people are sidelined, when entire communities have been decimated through poor planning or poor policies or become overdependent upon one industry that decides it is going to pick up and leave--and we have seen that happen over and over in America--it is not fair to people; it is not fair to communities.

But when we can see a return of entrepreneurial momentum, especially in small business--and again, people who have had real difficulty, for whatever reason, finding access to meaningful work restores individuals' vitality, of course, helps them to help themselves and creates solidarity and community. That is what, when we go into all these charts and graphs and economic figures, we really ought to be talking about, what I just said: the dignity and beauty and meaning of work, the gift of work, the ability to create the conditions necessary for societal flourishing.

So last year, we passed an important, what was called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,

and we are seeing this enhanced economic growth and more take-home pay for families.

In addition to those important benefits, there is another little- known provision in here that I want to touch on for a moment, and it is called Opportunity Zones. It provides powerful tax incentives to encourage revitalization of some of the newest, most economically distressed areas of the country. It has been overlooked in terms of our understanding of that law.

This investment opportunity will foster job regeneration and make better use of taxpayer dollars already spent, and it forges stronger communities.

Madam Speaker, I used to be on our city council back home, and most of city council works is public works. When you see an area that is no longer functioning well, it is not just a blight on the community; it is not just that buildings are run down. We already made an investment there. We already paid for streets. We already paid for streetlights. We already paid for utilities, and they are being underutilized. That minimizes the return on an investment already made.

We also have to provide police and fire protection for these areas. Again, those are real costs to the taxpayer. They are not on an accounting balance sheet, but they are real costs. It is called opportunity cost and underutilized investment. It is already there.

So this idea of regenerating places across America that have the infrastructure already creates the conditions in which we get a better return on the tax dollar for money already spent. We are not chewing up additional land and resources. We are recycling, regenerating, rethinking possibility in some of the hardest hit areas of our country.

I am excited. In my own congressional district, there are 14 of these Opportunity Zones that have been designated.

Now, here are some hard realities, and I should point them out because they are real. Let's just be honest.

Our deficit is high, and it is stubbornly high, and there are real disparities between those at the top and those who struggle to make a living.

And while we hear policymakers tend to take too much credit for economic booms and too little blame for the crashes, most analysts do conclude that the actions taken by Congress over the last year have improved our economic outlook--again, a good accomplishment.

We got the farm bill done. We got the right type of tax reform done. We strengthened our military, and we are looking forward to the debates around where we go as a nation now.

Something that continues to be difficult for all of us, though, is the right type of healthcare reform. And I am going to venture out here and say that I would assume that everybody in this body holds to these same three principles. I don't mean to speak for anyone else, but this is what I believe. I think we ought to be striving for three things in the right type of healthcare reform: lower cost, improved well-being, and the protection of vulnerable persons.

So let's just start there. Let's not create another proxy fight over the Affordable Care Act. Let's just start there.

How do we get to lower cost, particularly for people in rural communities who are priced out of the individual market and have incomes that they don't get a subsidy?

Some of the farmers in my community are paying as high as $40,000 for healthcare. You can't do it unless you are very wealthy.

So what happens? A member of the family has to leave and go get a job in order to get the benefit. We don't even know how to calculate the economic lost potential of forcing somebody to go do a job they don't want to do simply to get health insurance. We don't even know how to calculate that.

So I proposed something in the farm bill. Unfortunately, the Senate didn't take it up, but it is the Rural Health Insurance Act, which would have subsidized the startup of new risk pools to provide for better health insurance options in areas of rural communities, primarily, where this market has been decimated, where people have had to change the way they reorder their economic lives in order to have some access to health insurance. I thought it was a good idea.

The startup costs for risk pool sharing, the sharing burden that is necessary to create an insurance product for smaller businesses, are high, so I wanted to provide, just like we do in markets that don't function efficiently, like crop insurance, a subsidy that would help the startup of these new risk pools in order to give more competition to the health insurance market in rural communities. That is one idea I had. We didn't get it all the way through, but I am glad it passed the House.

I look forward to working with colleagues on the other side of the aisle again who are looking toward those three goals. How do we think creatively and imaginatively about reducing costs, improving well- being?

We are right around the corner from amazing breakthroughs in innovation and technology in both managing and preventing and curing disease, and we have significantly increased our funding on a bipartisan basis for the National Institutes of Health for disease research.

So we have done a number of things that are important for the American people. Of course, it tends to get overshadowed by some of the more philosophical fights that have occurred, but I would ask my colleagues, let's embrace the concept that we might be able to find some policies that everybody could potentially agree on around three goals: reducing cost, improving well-being, and protecting vulnerable persons. I think that is pretty reasonable.

There is another idea out there that I will be introducing this year. I already have a cosponsor from the other side of the aisle. Here is the problem:

For 3 years in a row now, America's life expectancy has declined. We are consuming more healthcare and dying younger. Rates of asthma and diabetes have skyrocketed in some populations, and it is really hard to see whether or not we are making progress on certain preventable illnesses. We can do better than that. That is not a necessary condition that we have to settle on.

So, to start an effective new conversation, I am introducing the Community Health Improvement Leadership and Development Act. It is called the CHILD Act. My cosponsor is from a large urban area, and this allows communities across America to fully participate in improving their own health.

How does it work? When community members find an innovative way to improve health and save money in their State Medicaid program, the legislation allows the verified savings to be shared back to that very community and State. It is a virtual cycle of assuring access to care and more creative prevention. I like it. It is a win-win for taxpayers and people in communities and towns across Nebraska and America.

As we go on, I hope this is one of those ideas that fits into the three sets of principles as to how we are going to reduce cost, improve outcomes, and protect vulnerable persons.

Madam Speaker, I know our time is getting ready to run short, and can you give me an idea of how much time is left.

Madam Speaker, I want to introduce a new topic in the time that we have remaining, again speaking to that which might be able to unite us in a very divided time, that which is a fundamental principle that is operative in most of our hearts, that which, again, transcends these temporary and urgent moments of policy division. It is what I call natural security.

We talked about national security. We talked about economic security. We talked about human dignity, family security. Now I want to talk about natural security, and here is an example.

Nebraska is one of the only States where you can find three distinct subspecies of the turkey.

Madam Speaker, are you with me on this? It is really very fascinating.

In the southeast corner of Nebraska, you can find the Eastern turkey. In the southwest corner, you can see a Rio, and out west, you can find a Merriam. This unique trifecta exists right there in my home.

Now, why am I raising this? Why would you be raising this? Of course,