Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 29 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, January 10, 2019, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, when I learned of the death of my very close friend, Dr. James Billington, the 13th Librarian of Congress, it hit me pretty hard. That was about 3 weeks ago. Dr. Billington's passion for the institution that he led for 28 years, his scholarly nature, and his gentlemanly demeanor were a tremendous inspiration to me and to so many Members of this body. I so admired him.

First, I want to extend my heartfelt condolences to Marjorie and the entire family. May God grant him peace.

During his 28 years at the Library of Congress, from 1987 to 2015, Dr. James Billington led the institution in a remarkable period of accomplishment. He once referred to the Library of Congress--I like to call it America's Library--as the largest, most wide-ranging collection of world-recorded knowledge ever assembled on our planet. He strove mightily to preserve the Nation's cultural patrimony and open the Library's collections to the American people and to people around the world.

Dr. Billington doubled the size of the Library's holdings to more than 160 million items, including books, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, music and film recordings, and prints and photographs.

Simultaneously, he also created a massive online library, digitizing materials so that the historic and cultural resources of the Library-- being historic and cultural resources of the world, I might add--which were once only available to persons visiting the Library now would be instantaneously accessible to anyone anywhere in the world.

Mr. Speaker, Dr. Billington also looked to the future, but he never lost sight of our connectedness and the treasures of the past. During his tenure, he acquired the only copy of the 1507 Waldseemuller world map, which is known as America's birth certificate. He reconstructed Thomas Jefferson's original library for permanent display, and he obtained the papers of hundreds of great Americans ranging from jurist Thurgood Marshall to the songwriter Irving Berlin.

Mr. Speaker, I can't emphasize enough that he was a remarkable man--a Russian scholar with a brilliant mind. He accompanied 10 congressional delegations to Russia and the former Soviet Union. In 1988, he was invited to join President Reagan in traveling to the Soviet Summit in Moscow.

Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the House Appropriations Committee's Legislative Branch Subcommittee, and now I am its chairman. I got to know Dr. Billington from his regular appearances before the Appropriations Committee to talk about the budget.

I often enjoyed the many events he held at the Library, the dialogues, the displays, and the exhibits he organized to engage Members of Congress in their Library.

Dr. Billington went out of his way to accommodate our needs. He once graciously hosted a small British delegation on my behalf that included a member of the royal family and a member of the House of Lords, both with an interest in Charles Carroll, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the government shutdown at that moment a little while back, which forced us to move the forum into this building, the Capitol, Dr. Billington ensured that the Library's prized displays were in place and were on time, and that he was present to deliver welcoming remarks.

With his retirement, leaving the great institution he served faithfully for nearly three decades, Dr. Billington left an indelible imprint, having created programs and services that continue to benefit Congress and the American public.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, before he retired, in a conversation with his wife, Marjorie--and I knew his retirement was imminent--I told him: Dr. Billington, now it is time to write two books, the book that you want to write that is in your mind, and the book for the rest of us to read to make accessible your life story and your brilliant insights.

Long live his memory.

Again, Mr. Speaker, let me say, may God comfort Dr. Billington's wife, Marjorie, their four children, and their 12 grandchildren in their moment of grief.

I extend to them, as well as the entire Library of Congress community, my heartfelt condolences.

Jim Billington, well done, my friend. Well done, good and faithful public servant.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 12 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, December 13, 2018, at 10:30 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize and pay tribute to the Honorable Stephen T. Ayers, the 11th Architect of the Capitol, on his retirement after 21 years of service to the United States Congress.

Stephen started his career as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. In 1997, Mr. Ayers joined the Architect of the Capitol as an Assistant Superintendent for the Senate Office Buildings. He served in several capacities over the next decade before his appointment as Architect of the Capitol in May 2010.

As Architect of the Capitol, Mr. Ayers is responsible for overseeing the well-being of the buildings and structures that Americans understand as icons of American history including: the House and Senate Congressional Office Buildings, the Capitol Visitor Center, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building and the crown jewel of the portfolio the United States Capitol. Additionally, the care and improvement of more than 570 acres of grounds are under the supervision of the Architect of the Capitol.

During his tenure, Mr. Ayers oversaw the restoration of the U.S. Capitol Dome, a major undertaking that repaired and restored the most recognizable symbol of liberty and democracy in the world. The dome was completed under budget and ahead of schedule. Other notable projects under Mr. Ayer's tenure include the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial project, as well as the launch of the Cannon House Office Building renewal.

The Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee has come to depend on Stephen and his team for their hard work and professionalism. As Mr. Ayers departs his post; the leadership, dedication, and bright smile he brought to work day in and day out will be missed.

I wish Stephen and his wife Jennifer, all the best in this next phase of their lives.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me thank Chairman Frelinghuysen for all of his dedicated, hard work on this bill and his leadership through many years of service. We are really grateful for the gentleman's mentorship and all of his exhaustive efforts to make America truly a much better place.

In that regard, Mr. Speaker, while I was on my way over here, I was reflecting on something. The dome of the Capitol that connects our two bodies here continued to be constructed during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was encouraged to stop it, given all the other demands of the crises all around him. He refused. He said that, one day, that dome will unify our Nation once again.

Here we are with the legislative branch bill. Even though it is the smallest of the appropriations bills, I believe it does capture the richness of the American experience and captures the heart of the narrative of our Nation.

In that regard, we have worked very closely, of course, with the former chairman, Kevin Yoder, as well Ranking Member Tim Ryan, as well as the United States Senate to develop a very good bill here. The final product, I believe, is solid and reasonable.

The legislative branch division provides about $4.8 billion in funding, and that is a 2.8 percent increase over last year. But the priorities, Mr. Speaker, were placed on security, transparency, and maintaining fiscal responsibility.

The bill provides about $1.2 billion for the House of Representatives, which is a 2.7 percent increase. However, it needs to be noted that this is still below funding levels from the year 2010. As the chairman mentioned, this includes $8.8 million for a new account for the compensation of interns, which is a widely agreed upon new initiative, allowing each Member to spend up to $20,000 a year.

In the areas of security, about $30 million is going to our Capitol Police to enhance the safety and security of this campus, as well as to protect Members when they are offsite.

About $733 million is going to the Architect of the Capitol to ensure safety and security improvements to our historic buildings and to address a growing deferred maintenance list that we have. A particularly new initiative is that we are directing the Architect to design plans for a more welcoming arrival area around the Capitol South Metro Station.

Regarding the issue of transparency, there is about $589 million for the Government Accountability Office, which

will enable them to hire 130 new persons to assist with GAO's critical oversight work that provides us in Congress accurate, nonpartisan reporting of how taxpayer dollars are being appropriately used. The Congressional Budget Office will also receive a slight increase to be better responsive to Members of Congress.

Regarding fiscal responsibility and new initiatives, we have included language supporting the Library of Congress' visitor experience project, which has the potential to transform how our Library, the Library of America, welcomes the millions of visitors that it receives each year. We expect that this will become a model of public-private partnership in the years to come.

Finally, I would like to draw attention to the expansion of the popular House Wounded Warrior Program that will now offer 110 2-year fellowships for those who have already sacrificed so much for our country and wish to pursue public service here among us.

Mr. Speaker, a lot goes on in our Capitol, from the dedicated Capitol Police officers who stand guard around the clock, to the employees of the Architect of the Capitol who work to preserve and maintain this important physical infrastructure, to the IT professionals who have successfully defended our networks from 4.5 billion attempted cyber attacks last year alone, and to the committed staff that is a part of this legislative process. We owe them all.

We also, again, are thankful to Chairman Frelinghuysen for his dedicated leadership. I would personally like to wish the gentleman all the best in his future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, this is very good timing. I want to thank the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin) for his thoughtful and important words because I wanted to speak to the same topic.

This week, a dedicated group of Nebraskans with disabilities visited my office. And what was their mission? To remind us all here in Washington of the importance of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the importance of continuing to work toward progress in its implementation.

Where did this come from? It was fueled by a chorus of voices many years ago who refused to accept a second-class status in our country. And it was driven by a moment in our country when we recognized that we are stronger and more vibrant when we draw on the talents of all people.

The ADA enshrined into law the notion that Americans living with disabilities deserve to participate in our society free from discrimination, and have access to integrated, community-based services.

Mr. Speaker, the ADA helped open up schools and workplaces, stadiums, parks, trolleys, and buses regardless of a person's disability. It also ensured that healthcare providers offer reasonable accommodations and effective communication for their patients with disabilities.

Mr. Speaker, there is still more work to do.

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks, let me thank Chairman Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, for his extraordinary leadership, not only on this bill, but on a whole array of conservation and security initiatives. I thank the gentleman for his chairmanship and for his long service in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank Ranking Member Engel for his support of this legislation and Congressman Sherman for his kind and generous remarks. They are very much appreciated.

Mr. Speaker, the greater Okavango River Basin is the largest freshwater wetland in southern Africa. Not only is it the main source of water and livelihood for more than 1 million people, as we have heard, it is home to the largest remaining elephant population in the entire world.

The pathway for habitat along the three-country waterway is essential for sustaining this majestic animal and other species. As a creative approach to conservation, to foster an ecosystem of well-being for communities and for the purpose of international stability and security, as so well stated by Chairman Royce, given the scourge of wildlife trafficking and the nexus that it creates to terrorist network financing, we introduced this bipartisan bill, a transnational conservation initiative linking the natural habitat of the three nations, Angola, Namibia, and Botswana, to ensure the survival of this pristine ecosystem that is essential for the future of conservation, species, as well as the communities and people who live there.

When we consider past conflicts that existed in parts of this region, it is truly heartwarming to work with the leaders of these countries to support their vision for the flourishing of animals and people, for the sake of the environment, and for the sake of their economies.

This is imaginative foreign policy. It moves us from a singular, traditional type of solution to addressing challenges in a comprehensive, multinational, multisectoral strategy that mirrors the complexity of nature itself, beyond human-defined borders. This bill is a unique opportunity to help save and enhance one of the most beautiful and delicate ecosystems in the entire world before other international actors ruin it.

As a co-chair of the International Conservation Caucus with Chairman Royce and with my good friends Congressman Cuellar from Texas and Congresswoman McCollum from Minnesota, I am very grateful for their hard work to help ensure the proper stewardship of natural resources in our own great country, as well as around the world.

This bill offers the opportunity to continue to build authentic relations with the countries of Angola, Botswana, and Namibia, as well as local communities and the private sector, to develop effective strategies to promote sustainable resource management, combat wildlife trafficking, and stimulate economic regeneration in this part of the world.

Mr. Speaker, again, I greatly appreciate Chairman Royce's cosponsorship, active support, and leadership in moving the DELTA Act through the committee, and I urge my colleagues to support this innovative, imaginative, and important initiative.

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

Mr. Chairman, first, let me thank my good friend Chairman Conaway for working with us on this very important amendment.

Mr. Chair, I would like to share a story with you. I just got off the phone with Archie Devoor from Lincoln, Nebraska. Archie grew up as a dairy farmer. He started milking cows at 12 and, up at 12 a.m., got slapped in the face quite a lot with a wet tail. He put himself through college doing that and went on and earned a Ph.D. in dairy science.

He did agricultural extension work for 20 years and became involved with a very important United States Government program called Farmer- to-Farmer.

One of Archie's experiences was in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has as many dairy cows as we do in the United States, and we have 12 times the production capacity as they do.

Through Archie's work, through the techniques that he has provided them, particularly nutrition guidance, he has helped solve one of those problems that exists around the world with structural poverty and not enough to eat.

In fact, the Bangladeshis wanted to name him ``Father of modern dairy.'' He is a humble man, my constituent, and I am proud of his work. And, of course, he refuses that title.

Nonetheless, Mr. Chairman, the amendment before us today addresses this very important program. This program has connected volunteer American farmers, agriculture extension experts, and others with deep knowledge of agriculture production with farmers abroad as well as agricultural experts from American universities to other countries around the globe.

The sharing of America's agricultural expertise dramatically enhances the capacity of people elsewhere to grow their own food.

Really, Mr. Chairman, this initiative is about three things. It is about the richness of America's farm experience. It is about an engine of economic regeneration in the fight against structural global poverty. And it also, I believe, will enhance our 21st century architecture of emerging diplomatic relations.

This program was initially authorized in 1985, and it has been in subsequent farm bills and, again, has promoted sustainable economic growth, food security, and agricultural development worldwide.

All 50 States have been represented in volunteer trips overseas to assist farmers, and specialists from a variety of agricultural disciplines have taught host-country farmers in over 100 nations through coordination with 12,000 different local host organizations.

The growth of the program has fostered community ecosystems of sustainable agriculture. It has enhanced the ability to access new markets and conserved environmental and natural resources. The work of our American farmers has borne great fruit overseas, and, with some innovative rethinking, I think we can help fully realize this program's potential.

This amendment serves three critical objectives.

First, it elevates the role of the United States Department of Agriculture in coordinating sequencing and prioritizing farmer visits to host countries.

Second, it establishes geographically defined crop yield metrics, a system to assess whether improvements in crop yields in countries receiving our assistance are actually occurring.

Third, the data generated through this new metric will be available publicly.

It is important to note that the amendment enhances outreach to identify and prioritize new implementing partners, increases the diversity of program participants, and serves to expand recruitment of new volunteers from diverse agricultural knowledge and skill backgrounds.

Mr. Chairman, I believe this amendment will also better support our work in global food security programs that already exist and have wide congressional backing. We have an important moment here to renew, innovate, and modernize a very good program.

Mr. Chair, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).

Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman for his comments, and I yield back the balance of my time

Mr. Speaker, I recently had the opportunity to join the Lincoln Vietnamese community in the celebration of the Vietnamese New Year, the Year of the Dog. I celebrated this special occasion at St. Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions Catholic Church in Lincoln, where I live, and I participated in the Catholic mass, followed by a community festival complete with traditional dragon dancers. I would like to thank Father Joseph Nguyen and the parish community for their generosity and hospitality.

Mr. Speaker, there are nearly 2 million persons of Vietnamese descent living in America. My hometown of Lincoln has become home for nearly 10,000 Vietnamese Americans, some of whom faced the trauma of persecution, escape, open seas, refugee camps, and, finally, resettlement in a new home.

Our vibrant, well-respected Vietnamese community has become an integral part of Lincoln's cultural traditions and adds to our capital city's vibrant tapestry. Vietnamese is the third most commonly spoken language in the Cornhusker State, and I have actively encouraged the youth to keep the great tradition alive.

Mr. Speaker, it is not advisable to try a language that you don't speak, but to my Vietnamese friends, I would like to try: ``thank you,'' ``cam o'n ban.''

Mr. Speaker, you may remember this around the holidays. It was a television commercial that played quite frequently. It may still be on. But it shows a shelter for the poor and homeless around Christmastime, and men and women are entering from the cold wintry streets, and they are gathering under bright lights and sharing good cheer, and they are clearly benefitting from the holiday outpouring of charity and compassion and fellowship.

But then the commercial shifts and the environment changes. It is a dreary downtrodden affair at this point. The new year has begun and the shelter is left darker and less full than its former ambient light, and laughter has dimmed into somber tones. All the while, a man is sitting at the piano in this emptying place singing, ``Don't You Forget About Me.'' The scene concludes with the adage: ``The season of giving ends, but the need remains.''

Mr. Speaker, as our economy begins to recharge, giving more and more hope with more and more Americans gaining jobs, it is important, though, to continue to reflect on this still early stage of the new year. After some important budget battles here and a major tax reform piece of legislation, it is important to reflect on the proper balance between responsibility and charity, as well as those who continue to be left behind or forgotten.

Americans are the most generous people in the world, and they also deeply value responsibility, and they know that a fulfilled life requires rewarding work. Unfortunately, unemployment and underemployment continue to hinder a faster economic recovery, causing much anxiety for persons and their families.

According to a new survey from CareerBuilder, nearly eight out of ten Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck, and our improving economic indices should not obscure this difficult reality.

So to better help persons support themselves and one another in the full dignity of work, our next phase of economic regeneration must be an attempt to find the proper balance between right-sized government, responsibility to one another, and reasonable expectations that everyone can contribute something according to their means and their capacity. Everyone has something to give.

As this recognition and economic regeneration kindles a new policy discussion, several guideposts should be kept in mind, such as ensuring enhanced opportunity and the erasure of what I call entrepreneurial impediments, along with efforts to address and mend a deep societal sense of brokenness.

When persons are unemployed or underemployed, they can enter a downward spiral in their lives. Mr. Speaker, as we well know, Washington alone cannot create a humane economy that works for the many. Americans living together in community form the cornerstone of a vibrant market.

A fuller answer to unemployment, underemployment, and this widespread lack of financial assets, along with the resulting loss of social capital, might be found in the idea that government and society should join in a movement for national solidarity, seeing work as a common endeavor for us all. After all, economics, in its essence, is not just a transaction; it is profoundly relational.

A rightful discussion about the profound meaning of work also requires the right words. The overreliance in this body, particularly, on depersonalizing economic language, I think, is one reason that Washington can seem so disconnected and aloof from real communities and real people.

At the end of the month, if a person can't pay their gas or a grocery bill, they are unlikely to care about GDP growth or arguments for the efficiency of globalized trade. In a similar way, recent news cycles are tracking the skyrocketing stock market valuations with some ups and downs of late. And this is all exceeding most expectations, particularly from the beginning of the year, but glowing green numbers and signals provide little reassurance to millions of Americans who are priced out of owning stock.

Ultimately, Mr. Speaker, a lack of work, as well as a lack of assurance in the security of government guardrails and earned benefits, can take a life-diminishing toll.

Mr. Speaker, I have many seniors who write to me and suggest to us in pretty clear terms that they aren't entitled to their own money. We throw the language around of entitlements, referring to programs where people set aside money into government savings programs or were given guarantee of healthcare. That is not an entitlement. That is something people worked for.

Many persons with difficult jobs deserving of both dignity and earned benefits sometimes are those who are forgotten. I approached my door recently, Mr. Speaker, here in D.C. at my office, and there was a large crowd of men who had gathered, and they were all in camouflaged T- shirts waiting outside.

All of us here experience a number of visitors from our home States. Sometimes, in my office, people have to stack up outside in the hallway, as we are trying to accommodate people.

But as I got closer, I noticed that the front of these T-shirts that these men had on read, ``United Mine Workers.'' I thought, that is unusual to see Nebraskans wearing United Mine Workers T-shirts. But it turns out they were actually waiting for my neighbor, who is from the State of Kentucky. Nevertheless, I greeted these men, and we began a meaningful conversation about work and security and fairness.

These men had spent their lives in hard jobs. I am sure they toiled, very proudly, to make a reasonable living for their families, but they all now showed real signs of physical fatigue. They were in Washington making a

plea for their pensions, which are facing dramatic reductions. A similar situation does exist in Nebraska for another group of workers.

These people worked for a guarantee: that they would be provided for--when they could work no more. But, given a confluence of factors, their pensions face a dramatic shortfall, and, frankly, it is not fair.

I lived for several years as a younger man in the area where these gentlemen had come from, in a town that had lost half of its population in 20 years, in what is called the old industrial Rust Belt, where the post-World War II economic boom built a thriving, stable community, but now where globalized supply-side theory has had its most dramatic degenerating economic effect. I said to one of these men, ``You know, I know where you come from,'' and one of the men and I hugged.

Mr. Speaker, our country is in pain. Epic hurricanes and floods; escalating urban violence; an opioid epidemic among those self- medicating their own mental, physical, and financial anguish; combine this with a broken healthcare construct, and the lingering after- effects of a bitterly fought last electoral season have torn America's heart.

In a vibrantly healthy society, though, there should be space for what I call marketplace fluidity and creativity and innovation. A person who has an idea and the drive should be able to pursue it. The benefits accrue, of course, to this person as the inventor, but also the buyer of those services, the community, and those who gave the effort in the building of this product or service.

So a healthy economy is two things at once: it is individualistic and it is community-oriented at the same time. Innovation and competition can be disruptive, but they must be set within a fair set of rules.

When a system stacks to the wealthiest, or is outsourced by faceless corporations in the name of advancing quarterly profits, exploiting the poor elsewhere and damaging the environment elsewhere, where there is a lax legal foundation and, therefore, an indirect subsidy to the means of production, and the externality costs are borne by persons elsewhere in the forms of shorter lives and the effects of pollution, it sets in motion not only difficulties in other places, but here--a loss of jobs, lost community cohesion, and a breakdown of life's stability. Tie this to the loss of the formative institutions of family life, faith life, and civic life, and we drift. We drift without a national narrative. It makes it much more difficult to respond holistically in the midst of tragedy to our greater challenges and problems.

For a moment, I want to speak about a person who participated in one of my telephone townhalls. She told me she is an architect, her husband is an architect, and they were very interested in starting an architectural firm on their own, but they can't. Why can't they? They have the education, they have the drive, they want to be innovative and disruptive, they want to do creative work with their own two hands and take the risk necessary to provide something new and novel in the marketplace.

They have a sick child. So by the time they go onto the individual insurance market and try to obtain insurance for themselves, knowing that they are going to have to pay the full deductibles and copays, that bill--and this was a little while back, I suspect it is higher now--the bill was going to be close to $30,000. So before they even open their door, they have an upfront cost of $30,000, just for a little bit of personal protection.

So what happens? They stay put. They are tethered to institutions that may not be as gratifying to them. Society loses from their inability to take that risk and provide that product out in the market, because they are tethered, they are handcuffed, to a benefit called healthcare that a large institution can provide, but the small entrepreneur can't. This makes no sense.

We have some specific ideas on this, and we are working to grow a bipartisan working group to make proper changes potentially in that individual insurance market, whereby people can pool together more easily, where there is a better type of major medical product out there that would be a lot less expensive, and, perhaps, using an idea that was embedded in the healthcare debate earlier this year, where the government provides a stabilizing reinsurance model so that the market can actually work within a certain bandwidth where the sickest person pays the same rate, but is protected from excess expense by a more direct government subsidy.

This makes sense. Think about the entrepreneurial potential that then would be released, creating opportunity, more jobs, better products. We are constraining ourselves for no reason here.

I hope that this chapter can unfold in the coming weeks, as some people of goodwill are trying to work through this, and there is significant interest, I feel, on both sides of the aisle. You just have to break through it.

Mr. Speaker, we are also, from my perspective, living in a paradoxical age where we are more and more dependent upon big business for information flow and consumer goods, and, at the same time, we are more and more skeptical of this model.

I was trained in an era where economic language was cast in terms of efficiency and optimization, economies of scale, production capacity, inputs, the free flow of capital and labor, and on and on, all the vocabulary of economic academic theory. These are analytical and mechanical terms necessary for understanding market function, but they lack a connection to any deeper purpose.

Ultimately, a properly functioning market is a connector of community, a delivery mechanism for material well-being, and an opportunity enhancer for individual initiative and rewarding work. These classical economic expressions lack a deeper understanding of the ultimate purpose of production.

I once asked a professor when I was young: Who does a normative analysis? Who asked the question, ``What ought to be?'' What institution is doing that?

He said: No one.

Mr. Speaker, you are a fairly young man. You know this as well. We are long past the age when working one's entire career in the same large corporation guaranteed security and well-being is finished. The current corporate construct is desperately driven and hopelessly fragmented by quarterly profit mandates.

Short-term decisions overrule long-term strategy. While this is occasionally brought to heel by scandal and malfeasance, most multinationals are no longer tethered to a face or a place, so they pitch us on TV and print with caring images, and kindly deem us worthy to help with their chosen causes, and then major cities with major airports become the hub, and the rest of us have to just buy it.

Now, lest I sound too critical, large businesses certainly retain a necessary space in producing certain types of goods and large-scale industrial products, and can provide exciting opportunity. That is all true and necessary.

But I also think we are on the front end of something, Mr. Speaker. There is a hunger for the next economic trend to reorient around the revitalization of Main Street, including local foods, sustainable energy production, smarter services, and smaller scale manufacturing, recreating that long lost sense of place in our communities.

Imagine a new urbanism of an economic ecosystem with friendly neighborhoods, nearby centers of smaller scale, microbusinesses, contextually appropriate architecture, and a burgeoning supply of easily accessible public space. We see this trend developing, and, frankly, it is very exciting.

Now, we had a bill recently in which we took an important vote here on tax reform, and I believe this is going to help. I believe that tax reform legislation will help rebalance a number of business inequities, particularly for small business where most jobs come from.

It is estimated that the average Nebraska family of four will receive more than a $2,000 extra benefit in their pocket from the immediate impact of the tax bill and the relief that they will get. And then over time, due to increased wages, that will translate into about a $4,000 benefit.

I think this is important because Americans need a break, especially working men and women trying to get a bit ahead and trying to provide for their family well. But for many, it is also harder and harder. As we said,

many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That is not fully a Tax Code problem. It is the harsh reality of social fragmentation, downward mobility, the rising cost of living, and skyrocketing income disparity driven by inequitable globalization and concentrations of economic power. These forces have not fundamentally benefited us fully, and they have left millions of people behind.

I think this tax reform measure is important because it particularly rebalances the perverse incentive to offshore.

In addition to putting more money in the pockets of hardworking Americans, it does support the revitalization of Main Street and the return of the ``Made in America'' label.

This legislation also provided a reasoned progress in an attempt to make the Tax Code simpler and fairer and to resolve this convoluted set of problems that overburdened people, families, and small businesses across the Nation. I think this is important because we are living in an age where we can't keep pushing the same policies over and over and expect them to fit into a 21st century architecture of well-being and successful living.

Moving forward, I believe the source and the strength of the American economy will be in this new urbanism of small business in which entrepreneurs from village to city add value through small-scale manufacturing, innovative new products, or brokering in repair services.

Now, we do anticipate a spike in the initial deficit from the tax bill, but we are already seeing a surge of revitalization and possibility of economic opportunity. Given this reorientation of the tax policy around the family, hopefully, with the entrepreneurial momentum, we will generate more jobs, earnings, and reverse this downward trend in small business formation. Less tax, more taxpayers, more revenue over time, that is the calculation.

As more opportunity appears, more persons should also be able to transition from important support mechanisms and systems into meaningful work.

Now, this tax reform attempts to be sensitive to the needs of all Americans as it begins to push for a modernized revenue construct that no longer enables the complex, lawyered-up, quarterly-driven multinationals to unjustly benefit from low taxes abroad while taking advantage of tax loopholes here. It rebalances the perverse incentives to offshore. At the same time, it uses the carrot of lower corporate rates to bring foreign profits back to America, and we are already seeing the effect.

So, on balance, this was a massive, historic, and necessary overhaul of our antiquated, harsh, and complicated tax system so that families cannot only get by, but maybe they can start getting ahead. And if we can combine this with a small business ecosystem of revived entrepreneurial momentum--and a part of that is the next set of policies, hopefully, that will be empowering with a new type of healthcare product that is stable for persons who do want to enter into the formation of their own small business now but are not empowered to do so--this will only strengthen this entrepreneurial revitalization.

There is no way to calculate the held, pent-up benefit of unleashing this potential. Again, because we have tethered people to a benefit package based upon institutions that are able to afford it, we have drained ourselves, made ourselves weary from being able to unleash the fullness of the potential to create things with your own hands or your own intellect that are good for you, good for your family, and good for others. That is what we mean by a new small business ecosystem that has revived entrepreneurial momentum.

Mr. Speaker, in the Middle East, the Jordan River flows into both the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. There is a difference between the two bodies of seas. One of them is devoid of life. Water flows in but nothing flows out. It is dead.

Abundant life requires both giving and receiving, both charity and responsibility. An economy that is founded upon these strengths which we have discussed tonight, supported by a right-sized government and a dedicated, hardworking people, can only keep growing stronger. Then, maybe--maybe--we can say, don't you forget about me and that we will never forget about you.

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

Mr. Speaker, on August 16, 2017, Reverend Larry Dunham, O.F.M., observed his 50th anniversary of the profession as a member of the Order of Friars Minor commonly known as the Roman Catholic Order of the Franciscans. Since 2013, Father Dunham has served the people of Washington, D.C. as Guardian and Commissary of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America with devotion and dignity.

In this capacity, he has provided for the spiritual, pastoral and temporal assistance of residents of the city, including the development of a volunteer-run city farm that provided over 13,000 pounds of fresh produce for the city's low-income residents. Prior to his current role, Father Dunham served his nation selflessly as a chaplain in the United States Navy during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, as Provincial Minister of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Province from 2000 to 2009 and as President of the English Speaking Conference of the Order from 2003 to 2005.

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate and applaud Reverend Larry Dunham, O.F.M. for his 50 years of dedicated, spiritual service.

Madam Speaker, I recently toured the newly renovated United States Capitol dome right nearby and, of course, was well aware it contains a striking fresco at the top. The title of that fresco is The Apotheosis of Washington, a bit of a peculiar image for our time, because it shows a stern, purple-clad George Washington exalted in the heavens.

Now, on his right is the Goddess of Liberty symbolizing emancipation; and on his left, the Goddess Victoria, symbolizing victory. He is surrounded by 13 maidens representing the Thirteen Original Colonies; however, there is a twist. The backs of several of the maidens are turned to Washington, and those represent the colonies of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia as they had seceded from the Union prior to the work beginning the fresco in 1863.

Now, Madam Speaker, the imagery continues, and around the rest of the dome are six allegorical scenes that do really project the defining ideas of America at that time. They are: war, science, marine life, commerce, mechanics, and agriculture. Now, these are perhaps old- fashioned categories to the modern mind, but then they did convey an optimism about the frontier, economic progress, and the potential of what our new Nation might be able to achieve.

Although, Madam Speaker, I had seen these frescos before, something struck me differently this time. These scenes really do grasp an incomplete ideal. The Apotheosis of Washington shows a reflective and confident America, but what is missing is a fuller understanding of the nature of community, individual dignity, and freedom.

The idea of progress is narrowly defined, and that narrow definition is actually still with us today, many times as it informs our debate here. We only tend to value things that we can actually measure--things like production, technology, and military victory--and they still rally us, and they are important.

But, as important as these things are, there is more to life; the more we have grown economically, the more we have grown technologically, the more our Nation groans. We have to be honest, and we have to ask ourselves: Why?

America is a far more complicated country than it was in Washington's time. It is not only due to our size and wealth and amazingly diverse population, but it is also due to rapidly advancing technology, a 24/7 news media cycle, and a highly competitive global marketplace that has made life more frenetic, more difficult, and, in some cases, much more alienating.

Today, there is widespread anxiety in our Nation over economic inequality, declining opportunity, and the concentration of both wealth and power, as well as a new force that is expressing a loss of unity and community, and then combine that with this deep search for a sense of solidarity.

Madam Speaker, while Congress spends much of its time debating numbers, financing, and budgets, a vision for America in its fullest sense goes beyond just material dimensions. Our economic vitality must not only be measured in terms of efficiency and growth, but also in how well we advance the cause of human flourishing.

In spite of all of these reflective comments, this Friday, our Nation will actually pause, and we will pause for a very important reason: it is Veterans Day, and we will celebrate that tradition. So if you are starting to feel overwhelmed by our Nation's struggles, just talk to a veteran.

If you see these policy battles here as impossible to resolve, talk to a vet.

If you really do want to reconnect with the ties that bind us, speak to a veteran.

Madam Speaker, as we are painfully aware, it is not easy to make progress in Congress. Nevertheless, there are times when both parties and the administration come together for great good, and actions for veterans represent a unique and proper American opportunity to support the men and women who have served our country. So as we approach Veterans Day and consider how to celebrate this gift of being an American, if we need a reminder, just ask a vet.

Now, back to history for a moment, Madam Speaker.

We rightly mark our independence from the British as the beginning of a new nation, a new experiment in government based in the ideals of freedom. However, freedom most properly expressed is the freedom to do what we ought.

Unlinked to responsibility, to one another, and to higher ideals, freedom can become a meaningless wandering and a search for purpose; and progress, no matter how grand it is, is never an end in itself. Persons who are disconnected from one another, an economy that is uncaring, technology ever accelerating, these are dynamics that can actually be both beneficial, but also leave people behind. Independence from tyranny also means interdependence within community.

Now, Madam Speaker, the Capitol dome is over 150 years old. Until recently, chunks of iron--in fact, I saw one; it was nearly this big-- were just falling off, and water was seeping through cracks. But now it is made whole again. The seams are repaired, and there is new, original-like glass and a fresh layer of protective coating. Why? Because we chose to do it. We didn't let it fall into ruin. We didn't lament its potential collapse. We chose to act.

So, Madam Speaker, if we cling to her ideals, this gift of America allows

us the freedom to preserve unity and to make genuine progress, which is the freedom to be whole.

As I approached my office here recently, there was a large crowd of men who had gathered outside my door. I assumed they were waiting to see me, and they were wearing camouflage shirts. There was some language on the front of the shirt. As I got closer, I could read it, and it said ``United Mine Workers.'' I thought, well, this is a bit peculiar to see United Mine Workers from Nebraska. Nonetheless, I engaged them in a conversation outside the door thinking I would escort them inside.

But they weren't there to see me. They were there to see my neighbor, who represents the State of Kentucky, and that made a little more sense. Nevertheless, I greeted these men, and we had a very meaningful conversation about work, about security, and about fairness.

These men had spent their lives in very hard jobs. I am sure they proudly toiled to create reasonable livings for their families. They all now showed real signs of physical fatigue. They were in Washington to make a plea, a plea for their pensions, which are facing dramatic reductions.

A similar situation does exist in Nebraska for another group of workers. These men worked for a guarantee that they would be provided for when they could work no more. But given a confluence of factors, their pensions face a dramatic shortfall, and it is not fair.

I lived, Madam Speaker, for 2 years in the area where these men come from, in a town that had lost half its population in 20 years, in the old industrial Rust Belt where the post-World War II economic boom built a thriving, stable community, but now where globalized supply- side theory has had its most dramatic degenerating economic effect.

I said to these men: ``You know that I know where you come from.'' One of them hugged me.

Madam Speaker, our country is in pain. Epic hurricanes and floods, escalating urban violence and an opioid epidemic among those who are self-medicating their own mental or physical or financial anguish, a broken healthcare construct, the aftereffects of bitterly fought elections, and now another mass shooting have torn America's heart apart.

In a vibrantly healthy society, there is space in a good, functional marketplace for fluidity, creativity, and innovation, and a person with an idea and the drive should be able to pursue it. The benefits accrue to the innovator as well as the buyer of the product, to the community as well, and those who give the effort. The point is this: a healthy economy is both individualistic and community-oriented at the same time.

Innovation and competition can be disruptive, but they must be set within a fair set of rules. When the system stacks to the wealthiest or is outsourced by faceless corporations in the name of advancing quarterly profits, exploiting the poor elsewhere and damaging the environment, it sets in motion a series of things: lost jobs, lost community cohesion, and a breakdown of life's stability.

Tie this to a loss of the formative institutions in our society of family life, faith life, and civic life, and we drift. We drift without a national narrative that can hold, and it makes it much more difficult to respond holistically, especially when we have tragedies such as the senseless horror in Las Vegas and now with the unthinkable at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

But, again, Madam Speaker, I just have to pause and remind myself that, in spite of these difficulties, in spite of sometimes the darkness which can seem overwhelming due to a lack of unity, we will pause on Friday as a nation, and we will remember our veterans. If it is just too much and too overwhelming, if the debates in Congress are so bothersome and annoying, go talk to a vet about that deeper sense of who we are and what we still can be.

Madam Speaker, in the entryway of the municipal building in a little town of France called Sainte-Mere-Eglise, there hangs an American flag. It is the first thing you see when you walk into the mayor's municipal building.

Sainte-Mere-Eglise was the site where our paratroopers landed prior to the D-day invasion. They landed in the midst of German troop formations and had to fight as they were coming down. One paratrooper got hung up on the church steeple and survived the battle. A replica of him still hangs there today.

The American flag in the mayor's building, in the municipal building, is said to be the first American flag planted on the European continent during the war. It is displayed there in France in a government building proudly as a memorial in thanksgiving to America for what we did to save France and to save Europe from tyranny.

Now, Madam Speaker, most of us today think of war in the traditional construct. We fought with tanks, aircraft, ships, and infantry. But, again, we are in a rapidly advancing technological new age. Even in this age of drones and asymmetrical terror threats such as improvised explosive devices, most of us still see our defense through a conventional lens.

But warfare is changing fast and will continue to change. With the miniaturization of nuclear weapons, drones, and other technologies, we could see the potential for widespread destruction accelerate. We are entering an era that is unprecedented and unpredictable, born from the very technologies that heretofore ensured our own survival. What has emerged, Madam Speaker, is a tripolar world, simultaneously increasing both danger and, interestingly, opportunity.

On one pole stands China. As this country ascends to economic dominance, China is trying to pair its military clout with military projection in key lanes of commerce. The Communist Party leader, President Xi, projects himself as both a man of virtue and a man of dominance. In fact, The Economist magazine recently called him the world's most powerful man.

At another pole stands Russia. Though they face demographic problems, Russia has, in many ways, raced ahead of us in weapons technology superiority. It could be argued that the Soviet era was an aberration, an actual aberration, of Russia's long tradition of czarist rule. Seen in that light, Putin is a new czar type who has moved past Marxist ideology--Marxist theology, perhaps we should say--to recover Russian nationalistic poetry, purpose, and expansionistic power.

The third pole is less of a geographic or ideological proposition. It is an expression of higher ideals. Now, in traditional terms, Madam Speaker, we call this the Transatlantic Alliance, but, in broader terms, it is people from around the world who are guided by a reasoned intuitive sense that all persons have dignity and rights and that the systems of governance and economics ought to be ordered around that very proposition. When a person can exercise excellence for themselves in partnership with others in community, a community of possibility exists.

Because, in America, we believe these values are universal, we also believe that they are more potent than any ideology or accident of geography. That is the long arc of history--born in former ages and translated over time to our present day.

Now, given our vulnerabilities, we understandably and purposefully commit to technological superiority in weaponry. But, as a singular proposition, this is illogical because it cannot hold. The technological gap is closing. There must be more, and it is found in two pathways:

First, back to this idea of our own internal reflection as a country. Recently, we saw a Hollywood elite named Harvey Weinstein brought to shame for his manipulative perversions. Interestingly, this country had a flash of collective conscience. The curtain was raised on Hollywood's dark hypocrisy. Almost all Americans were aghast, which, importantly, showed our capacity to value human dignity.

Second, Madam Speaker, a healthy national conscience gives us the credibility to reinvigorate and rebuild authentic relationships worldwide. By incentivizing good economic models and promoting government models that are fair, we can create the conditions for our own safety, the world's stability, and the world's security.

Madam Speaker, a couple weeks ago, I was on my way home from Washington to Nebraska. Driving from the airport, I saw a big, red pickup truck.

Now, that is not a very uncommon site in our State, except that on each side of the truck was a pole, and attached to each pole was an American flag blowing fiercely in the wind. Now, these flags were a bit tattered on the edges, but, nevertheless, they were proudly displayed just like at that little French town, Sainte-Mere-Eglise. It is my hope that this is the third pole that can truly hold for our good and the good of others across the world.

Now, Madam Speaker, we have talked a lot about the struggles, but closer to home and made in realtime policy, the House of Representatives has undertaken a sincere deliberation at the moment to assist in a structural change to our current economic construct--a new tax deal.

Now, this is what Andy from Nebraska wrote me recently. He said that he is very encouraged because ``if it makes it into law, my back-of- the-napkin calculations show it could benefit my family by around $5,500. For a family of four making about $85,000 a year, that's a big deal.''

Madam Speaker, Americans do need a break, especially working men and women trying to get a bit ahead, trying to provide for their families. For many, it is harder and harder. Around 50 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That is not fully a Tax Code problem. It is also the harsh reality of social fragmentation, downward mobility, and the rising cost of living.

Many forces of globalization have not benefited America, leaving millions behind and all too often forgotten. But tax reform can help, as long as it is fair and as simple as possible for the benefit of all.

We are living in an age where we cannot push the same old policies over and over again and expect them to fit into our 21st century architect of living.

Moving forward, I believe that the source and strength of the American economy will be in the new urbanism of small business, in which entrepreneurs from village to city will add value through small- scale manufacturing, innovative new products, or brokering in repair services. The conditions for entrepreneurial revival may be right on the horizon.

Madam Speaker, though the corporate structure of the 1950s has been made temporarily beguiling by the modest show called ``Mad Men,'' but no young person I know yearns to work for a company for 25 years and celebrate at the end with a gold watch. That era is over and our Tax Code is based on old constructs of what it means to be in business.

So, hopefully, as we work ourselves through this important debate, this bill will be sensitive to the needs of all Americans as it begins to push for a modernized revenue construct that no longer enables complex, lawyered-up, quarterly profit-driven multinationals to unjustly benefit, for instance, from lower taxes abroad while taking advantage of tax loopholes here.

At the same time, it uses the carrot of lower rates to bring foreign profits back to America so that we can revive the Made in America label once again.

Madam Speaker, I have spoken tonight about our challenges both at home and abroad, but we know a truly just and good society can only be possible if we are both strong and safe.

One day, I was in the airport and something interesting happened. A number of troops were coming off an aircraft on the jetway. There was no announcement over the PA system. It just happened spontaneously. The terminal began to break out in applause. It just happened. People intuited that something was right here.

Of course, many people at this moment in our country's history intuit that something is broken, but they also can sense when things are right. We can see it, like when we see our troops or we see a veteran, then our instinct emerges to recognize the nobility of self-sacrifice for one another, our country, and its timeless ideals. Our veterans have done so and our people know so.

When it just gets a little too overwhelming, Madam Speaker, ask a vet. When we lose touch with the source of our strength and greatness, talk to those who have put even possibly their lives on the line for that true source of American strength. Ask a vet.

When it seems as though the problems before us are intractable--how we are going to revive an economy that is good and fair to all; how we are going create the stability necessary for the proper engagement and healthy engagement and exciting engagement with people from abroad; how will we create international stability--when it just seems too hard to get the mind around it, ask a vet who stood in the small village overseas, who may have had to fight their way in, but then offers a hand up to those who have been placed in harm's way.

This Friday is an important holiday. It is a gift to be able to say thank you to our veterans.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to the amount of time remaining?

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

Madam Speaker, Maddie Brinckerhoff was an early feminist author and lecturer from the Midwest, where I live, and she had this to say about abortion: ``It is evidence that either by education or circumstances that she''--the woman--``has been greatly wronged.''

In this spirit, Madam Speaker, I think there is an opportunity here to perhaps bring Congress together around a humane proposition that requires thoughtful but necessary reflection on the deepest meanings of pain.

We all know pain. But pain teaches us profound lessons about suffering, sacrifice, patience, and the redemptive healing possibilities of encountering one another in our vulnerability as humans living in the interdependency of community. Pain is something from which we naturally recoil, but it also enables us to build compassion toward those who are weak, or dependent, or alone.

Madam Speaker, in letting our natural impulse to respond to another who is in pain, we can grasp what it means to be truly ourselves, to be truly human, and to care deeply about everyone, and to really internalize what is at issue here.

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, July 27, 2017, I was unavoidably detained and thus missed roll call votes 430 through 435.

Had I been present, I would have voted NAY Roll Call No. 430, NAY Roll Call No. 431, NAY Roll Call No. 432, NAY Roll Call No. 433, NAY Roll Call No. 434, and YEA on Roll Call No. 435.

Madam Speaker, last week, as we are all too aware, a gunman opened fire on Members of Congress and staff assistants as they were practicing for the annual bipartisan baseball game to raise money for a Washington-based charity. Among those who were injured is my dear friend and colleague, Congressman Steve Scalise, the House majority whip.

As news of this event came in right before our weekly Nebraska breakfast, a 74-year tradition--by the way, a bipartisan tradition in which the entire Nebraska delegation gets together on a weekly basis and invites anyone from our home State to gather with us. As that was about to occur, I heard the news of the shootings. I felt bewildered, shocked, and numb.

As further reports came in from my colleagues throughout the morning, I heard that Steve was playing second base at the time of his shooting. He crawled from the infield, leaving a trail of blood.

Mr. Speaker, this isn't a movie. These are not distant figures. These are our friends and our colleagues, people who work right here in this institution. Representative Scalise and I frequently interact on the nuances of policy, and sometimes differences of policy. No matter what our disagreements--and believe me, there are hard differences even on one side of the political aisle. No matter what the differences might be, Steve always has worked with me in a cordial, professional, constructive, and, perhaps most importantly, gentlemanly manner. That is just who he is. So regardless of what anyone may think of his policies, of his political point of view, Congress, or the GOP, he did not deserve to be shot.

As noted by Senator Rand Paul, who was also at the practice, were it not for the courageous Capitol Hill Police officers who accompanied Representative Scalise to events, this would have been a massacre. Were it not for the first responders from the Alexandria Police Department and Fire and Rescue, many of those injured, for them it could have been much, much worse.

My heart goes out to Steve Scalise and the others who were injured in this tragic event.

However, my words cannot stop here. For years now, across multiple administrations and across party lines, we have seen accelerating political rancor in our country that goes way beyond normal partisan politics. It is hard to get your mind around some of the stuff that people write. It is awful. It goes beyond just pointed language. It is now so frequent, so violent, and so directly threatening that security personnel are working overtime to keep up with it.

Madam Speaker, you know this. Many good men and women of differing political perspectives work in the United States Congress. These are people who have accomplished important things in their own home communities and decided that their heart was calling them to serve in a broader capacity.

I fully recognize that Washington, D.C., can seem elitist and aloof, but as you know, Madam Speaker, Members of Congress are real people, with real families, from real places across our land. Sure, there may be a disproportionate share of lawyers in the institution, but there are also nurses, social workers, doctors, teachers, and small-business owners.

In fact, one of the doctors, Representative Brad Wenstrup, a friend of mine, happened to be at the baseball practice. He is an Iraq veteran and surgeon. He attended to Steve Scalise's gunshot wound, thankfully.

Above all, all of these persons are Americans. Nevertheless, there is a limit to what the human person, even a paid public servant, can absorb. We can take the violent words, but when it spills into violent action, it is too much. This country cannot continue to rip itself apart like this.

Madam Speaker, there is one additional difficulty here that needs to be unpacked. There is a real risk and vulnerability in what I call regularizing this response, in making it like a ``new normal.''

In fact, within only a few hours of the shootings, certain national media had begun to routinize the tragedy, as they returned to obsessing on the latest crisis du jour in Washington, as if nothing fundamentally destructive to all that we hold dear as Americans had just occurred. And why not? As the media tells us, the assassin was a ``troubled man,'' a ``lone wolf,'' with a ``history of violence'' and ``easy access to guns,'' who was likely ``mentally ill.'' Nothing unique to see here.

Madam Speaker, these were not our thoughts after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan or the shooting of Democratic Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona. When President Kennedy was shot, I am told, it was as if the entire world came to a halt.

If we are now going to move beyond words and normalize the violent targeting of people just because they

choose public service, hold views that are different from our own, or speak in a style that is not to our liking, there is no country.

I find it particularly jarring that the widely praised theatrical assassination of President Trump at a rendition of Julius Caesar in New York City's Central Park--underwritten, by the way, by The New York Times--continues to go on.

Madam Speaker, violence is violence. When it is here and it is political, of course, it is particularly jarring.

Tragically, we also may be growing used to the idea of terror abroad. Although its root causes are different than those of domestic political attacks here on our own shores, the same thing is at stake: the very principles of civilization itself.

Madam Speaker, let me digress for a moment, because this is particularly notable.

After 9/11, crime all but vanished from the streets of New York City. In other words, the shock and the horror caused a community to rally together above any social discord in a spirit of true unity. We glimpsed that same spirit of solidarity as a nation when Obama bin Laden was finally confronted.

Just recently, a day after the terror attacks that rocked London a few weeks ago, Richard Angell, a patron in a restaurant that had been evacuated during the jihadist rampage, calmly returned to pay his bill. In explaining his generosity, Angell told a reporter, ``These people shouldn't win.''

The night before, several bartenders had risked their lives to defend patrons in that particular establishment with bottles, chairs, tables, anything they could find, as the terrorists tried to hack away their customers with large knives. More lives would have been lost were it not for their bravery.

Only a few weeks before that, at a concert attended mostly by young girls, a homeless man, Stephen Jones, who slept most nights near the stadium, helped several victims of that bombing to safety, even pulling nails from the faces of young children.

The resolve and courage in the face of barbaric violence harkens back to the passengers of United Flight 93 who sacrificed their own lives on 9/11 in order to take down a plane headed straight for Washington, D.C., probably for the White House.

While we appropriately recognize those who act with courage, the constant repetition of these scenes appear to be resulting, sadly, in what I call ``terror fatigue.'' We go about the same tired ritual: the requisite shock and horror; the 24-hour media coverage of victims, heroes, and families; and the inevitable autopsy of what went wrong. By this exercise, I am afraid we further enable what Hannah Arendt once famously wrote, ``the banality of evil.''

Against this backdrop, I think it is important and useful to pull back and contemplate the fundamental error in our analysis and approach. In the West, we have a blind spot. We want to believe that if we can only understand how a disordered person was raised, how his parents treated him, if he was an orphan or poor or misunderstood or abandoned or a victim of some real or imagined prejudice, then we can understand what makes him kill. Armed with this soft understanding, perhaps we can prevent further tragedy by ameliorating the conditions that we think gave rise to barbaric deeds.

In many discussions of unpredictable and random attacks on bystanders in Europe and America, we find a perverse unwillingness to accurately identify the true motivations of the perpetrators, lest we close the space to ``cure them'' of their zealotry.

In the current, highly polarized, oversensitized, and extremely volatile climate, it is risky to call a thing for what it is. Instead, again and again, we hear that these were just a few misguided individuals--another mental health problem, another aberration, another police problem; nothing to do with dark theology to notice here. Carry on. We must just accept this as a new normal.

What makes these particular vicious actors different? In a study, the Gallup organization basically finds that most people in the world want similar things. Most people in the world want a good job: to be able to take care of themselves; to be able to take care of their family; to be able to use the creative talents of their personhood, whether it be their intellect or their hands to make things for the benefit of others and, in turn, receive an income that they can support themselves with.

However, as one of my Muslim friends has noted, Petro-Islam has enabled and unleashed a narrow sect of men and women who often want for nothing. Several of the terrorists on 9/11 were young men of both wealth and privilege, with world-class educations. They weren't motivated by the allures of Western secular materialism. They used those values to hide in plain sight. Rather, they were in the grip of a dark, violent theology. They were willing to die for its inherent irrationality.

This cannot continue. Even the Saudis, who have lived for too long with the hyper hypocrisy of buying off Wahhabists while shopping in Paris, recognize this is an unsustainable trend.

Madam Speaker, when I was in college, I remember the day when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated. It was a hard day for me. Shortly before, I had lived in that country on an exchange program. I received the bountiful gift of hospitality and an invaluable source of deep and reach cultural understanding.

Sadat died. Sadat gave his life because he made a reasoned choice to reach across the divide to find peace. In another courageous move, just a few years ago, in a little-known speech, the current Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, said: ``Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants--that is, 7 billion--so that they themselves may live? Impossible.''

Quite a courageous statement.

At this moment, Madam Speaker, we are on the verge of wiping out ISIS militarily. But it is only the latest brand. We will only fully resolve the thinking that leads to the embrace of dark theology through a rebirth in reason, modeled through courageous leadership.

As we see in our battle against ISIS, when you call for evil to happen on social media, in Main Street media and in art, eventually someone in the real world takes it to heart. We must stop creating the rhetorical conditions and the media cover for this politically motivated violence or the grotesque twisting of mediums to encourage terror. There is no rationalization that can justify it. This is not about freedom of speech. It is about freedom from violence.

Ask yourself a question: Where would you like to live? Where people lie, steal, and kill? Or where people are good, trustworthy, and free?

Madam Speaker, I will close with this because it is a hint of good news.

Last week, the House of Representatives, in a private session, Democrats and Republicans, had a family meeting and, with due candor, spoke about the effect of escalating rhetoric and the responsibility each of us must take in owning our share of it.

Importantly, the bipartisan Congressional Baseball Game went on as planned last Thursday night. I took my younger staff. The game was energetic and patriotically bipartisan. Madam Speaker, as you are aware, my side lost, but I believe America won.

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