Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Louisville's Fairness Campaign--Kentucky's oldest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization. This month the Fairness Campaign is celebrating 20 years of fighting against discrimination, inspiring hope, and protecting our citizens.

Thanks to Fairness, in 1999 Louisville became one of the first cities to prohibit housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Now Fairness is working tirelessly to secure these protections for all Kentuckians. Because of Fairness, more Kentuckians are seeing that the lines once drawn between us because of sexual orientation and gender identity are only imaginary, and they're realizing that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.

That's a message that needs to be heard not just from Pikeville to Paducah, but from coast to coast. I urge my colleagues to join me in congratulating the Fairness Campaign on two decades of service. It's truly thrilling how much progress they have made.

I would also like to individually honor the 10 brave Louisvillians who co-founded the Fairness Campaign in 1991 to seek equal protections for all citizens under the law: Jim Adams, Eric Graninger, Lisa Gunterman, Ken Herndon, Jane Hope, Pam McMichael, Susan Remmers, Jeff Rodgers, Thom Snyder, and Carla Wallace.

Mr. Speaker, on October 3, eight Democrats and eight Republicans met in an epic competition here at Columbia Country Club in Washington to contest, for the 10th time, the battle for the Roll Call Ryder Cup. This is a competition which is intense but with great sportsmanship, and, of course, the ultimate beneficiary is The First Tee of Washington for whom this competition has now raised more than $1 million over the last 10 years.

Despite an average age of 58.6 years, which means that all but one of our players was eligible for the seniors tour, we were able to parlay our experience and caginess into a great victory--our sixth conservative victory on the Democratic side. I want to congratulate our team of Baca, Clyburn, Courtney, Sires, Cooper, Doyle, Richmond and myself. We look forward to an even tougher competition next year.

But I do want to say that the principles that The First Tee espouses, things like honest, integrity, sportsmanship and responsibility, were all on great display during this competition, even to the extent that Trey Gowdy and Mick Mulvaney called a penalty on themselves during one of the team matches. So, I think the competition lived up to the principles of The First Tee, and we look forward to next year's match.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Florida, the captain of the Republican side.

I thank the gentleman.

It was an incredible competition. As Trey Gowdy said just this morning, if you were there during this event and during the event preceding, the night before, you could not have told who was a Republican and who was a Democrat, because the comradery was so nice.

Once again, congratulations to The First Tee.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we talk a lot about our different concerns for the future of our Nation, but there is one gravely serious threat that exists in every single congressional district and could cripple future generations and the long-term strength of our Nation.

More than 12 million American citizens, children, 17 percent, are currently obese. In my home State of Kentucky, the number is even worse, with obesity affecting 37 percent of Kentucky kids. That's millions of children who are at a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, millions at risk of having their dreams cut short and millions who may not get the chance to contribute all their potential to our Nation's growth.

I am proud to applaud the work of Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, one of dozens of children's hospitals around the U.S. taking new steps to educate kids about the importance of eating healthy and getting active. Children's hospitals are essential allies in the battle to stop childhood obesity.

I urge my colleagues to support these initiatives and every effort to get our kids focusing on a fitter future.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to cast the recorded votes for rollcall 721, 722, 723, and 724. During this time, I was with President Obama. We were discussing the closure of the Sherman Minton Bridge, which has severely impacted transportation and commerce in my district.

Had I been present I would have voted no for these measures.

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Bill Rollcall # Vote ------------------------------------------------------------------------ H. Res. 409: On Ordering the Previous Question................. 721 No H. Res. 409: On Agreeing to the Resolution..................... 722 No H. Res. 406: On Ordering the Previous Question................. 723 No H. Res. 406: On Agreeing to the Resolution..................... 724 No ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Speaker, the American Jobs Act has been presented to the American people, but in this House it doesn't sound like it's going to get much of a hearing. Republican leadership has called it dead and has called it a partisan piece of legislation.

Well, I've got some evidence that shows that it's not really that partisan. As a matter of fact, we sent out a survey to over 4,000 Louisvilleans asking them for their opinion on all provisions of the American Jobs Act. The percentage of support was astounding. Almost 80 percent want to spend $50 billion to improve our infrastructure; 76 percent want to cut payroll taxes for every worker, 77 percent to cut the payroll tax for businesses, 73 percent allowing businesses to write off 100 percent of new investments, a Republican proposal; 79 percent want to provide a tax credit for hiring American veterans.

No, the only thing that's partisan about the American Jobs Act is the Republicans' attitude about it. And it is time to pass this act to create a new future for the American people and a better American economy.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to cast the recorded votes for rollcall 700 and 701. Had I been present I would have voted ``yes'' and ``yes'' for these measures.

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Rollcall

Bill No. Vote ------------------------------------------------------------------------ H.R. 2633--On Motion to Suspend the Rules and 700 Yes Pass, as Amended............................... H.R. 1059--On Motion to Suspend the Rules and 701 Yes Pass........................................... ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to cast the recorded vote for rollcall 706. During this time, I was on a conference call with FHWA Administrator Victor Mendez. We were discussing the closure of the Sherman Minton Bridge, which has severely impacted transportation and commerce in my district.

Had I been present I would have voted ``no'' for this measure.

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Rollcall

Bill No. Vote ------------------------------------------------------------------------ H.J. Res. 77--On Passage........................ 706 No ------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thank my friend from New York.

It's a great pleasure to talk about the subject that's on every American's mind, and that is, how do we rebuild America, how do we put Americans back to work, and how do we recreate the kind of America that we all once admired and will admire again?

You've talked about a very incredibly important element of the job creation agenda, and that is research and development. It's clear that the jobs that we look forward to in the next generation, and the generation after that, are jobs that probably don't exist today. We're going to find them. We're going to discover them. And if we don't do it, they will be invented somewhere else, and that's why the initiatives that you have been talking about in the energy field are so critical.

But I would like to talk today about a job opportunity that exists right now. The President referenced this in his speech last Thursday night, and I thought he was incredibly powerful and articulate in doing that. Because what he did was connect the dots. And when he talks about infrastructure and jobs, that's something that most Americans can understand.

When we built the interstate highway system, that created an awful lot of jobs, and it also established an infrastructure that has enhanced our commercial activity throughout this country for more than a half a century. And now today we have a gap in that interstate highway system, and it happens to be in my community.

Just last Friday, the bridge called the Sherman Minton Bridge which spans the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky, and New Albany, Indiana, was shut down because of structural deficiencies. So when the President speaks of infrastructure deterioration throughout the country and the thousands and thousands of bridges that need to be repaired, he didn't know at that time, the next day, one would become more than an abstract theory; it would become a reality.

We saw this, unfortunately, in Minnesota. We hopefully have averted a similar disaster in my community. But in the meantime, this bridge which was built 50 years ago which was examined just 2 years ago and judged to be structurally fine, because of advances in analysis of certain steel products, they did a different kind of analysis this year and found cracks in the support system and had to shut the bridge down.

What has this done? I-64, which begins in Virginia and runs through Lexington, Kentucky, and Louisville and on to St. Louis, it's a major, major east-west artery of this country, and for this country's both civilian and commercial traffic. About 90,000 vehicles every day go across this bridge. Most of them in the morning come into Louisville; most of them in the afternoon go out of Louisville into Indiana.

Right now, all of that traffic is being diverted onto I-65. We have a great, centrally located community in Louisville. Three interstates converge there--I-71, I-65 and I-64--and they all converge in a pretty similar spot except now all that traffic that can no longer go on I-64 across the Sherman-Minton has to go across the I-65 bridge. That bridge is already taxed to its extreme. It is operating at 25 percent more than it was envisioned to hold. Now 90,000 more vehicles are going to be coming across that bridge every day.

So we don't know yet what's going to transpire with that Sherman- Minton bridge, whether it can be repaired, whether it is going to have to be condemned and rebuilt; but we do know if we had been making the kinds of investments in keeping our infrastructure current and modern and in making those investments over time, we would have had many, many thousands more people at work, and we probably would have avoided this situation.

So now this is both a very serious commercial and personal inconvenience, and I don't want to go quite so far as saying it's a disaster, but it is a very serious problem in my community. But it also could be something where we put many Americans back to work as we either fix it or replace it.

Again, we are at a time now where we have example after example, thousands of these around the country. We are at a juncture where we can borrow money to do this at historically low levels, and we can put tens of thousands of Americans back to work.

So as a theory as espoused in the President's speech Thursday night has become the reality in my community, it can become a reality of rebuilding America for all of us.

I thank the gentleman from Colorado.

Madam Speaker, yesterday our Republican colleagues said that their party was using the leverage of the default crisis to get what they want, their ideological agenda passed. The problem is it's not what the American people want. Our constituents have made it very clear that when we're trying to solve our deficit crisis, they want a real compromise, shared sacrifice, where millionaires, billionaires, and oil companies are asked to contribute. They also want their Social Security and Medicare benefits protected. Now with the clock ticking on the entire economy, they definitely don't want us wasting time on this hoax of a bill that has no chance of passing in the Senate.

The Republicans took a bad bill and made it worse and less likely to pass, putting in the requirement for sending a constitutional amendment to the States, which requires a two-thirds vote in each body. If that doesn't happen, 6 months from now, what happens? The country defaults again. That may help the Republicans. It may help the Republican leadership save face with the Tea Party and their party, but it does nothing to help the American people or save us from a pending economic chaos.

This isn't leadership. It's the worst type of failure. It's a failure to stand up for what we know is right, a failure to stand up for the American people, and a failure to protect and preserve the United States of America.

I thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, Congress' approval rating is now down around 10 percent, and given the debate on this politically induced default crisis, I have to ask myself: Who are these crazy 10 percent? The American people are looking at this institution right now, and they're asking: What on Earth are you thinking?

They're sick of these games and they're sick of us. They want this default crisis resolved now, and they definitely don't want to repeat it 6 months from now. They understand that a real solution means a real compromise. Our constituents have made it clear that they want shared sacrifice where millionaires, billionaires and oil companies contribute their fair share. They want their Social Security and Medicare benefits to be protected.

Yet this bill, the Republican default agenda, does none of that. In fact, this reckless bill is actually a stealth attack on Medicare and Social Security because it requires large cuts next year that can only come from those programs. The Boehner plan would increase borrowing costs across the entire spectrum of American society, including local and State governments, businesses, and our citizens--producing, essentially, a backdoor tax hike on the American people. It does all this damage to seniors and middle class families while sparing the wealthy from even the slightest inconvenience.

We weren't elected to Congress to run our economy and our country into the ground--to fail to respond to a crisis of our own creation, but here we are. The American people deserve better and are demanding better. We need to defeat this bill so we can move on to a real solution.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, when we, in this House, decide how the taxpayers' money is going to be spent, it represents a statement of our values, a statement of our priorities. And the question of whether we should adequately fund the National Endowment for the Arts is one of those that speaks loudly to our values. It speaks loudly to our respect for the creative genius of human beings. It speaks loudly about our understanding of what the human soul is about.

We've heard much documentation of the economic impact of the arts throughout our country, $165 billion annually in economic activity. I certainly can attest to the fact that in my community of Louisville, Kentucky, more than 20,000 of my constituents are involved actively, professionally in the arts. We are one of the only communities that has resident theater, resident opera, ballet, children's theater, a vibrant visual arts community. It is one of the things that significantly enhances the quality of life in my community. It's one of those things that brings people to my community. So the economic importance of the arts is undeniable.

But I ask again about our priorities. The amount of money that we're talking about now, roughly $10 million over a period of years, we spent in the first few minutes of our activity in Libya. The first few Tomahawk missiles we launched there, that was $10 million. We spend $10 million in less than 1 hour in Afghanistan, less than 1 hour. So here we're talking about millions of jobs supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, $165 billion in economic activity, against all of the other things we do where there is so little payback for where we spend the taxpayers' money.

There are two things I would like to mention in addition to kind of the value-added aspects of arts funding.

If you think back over the history of mankind, what has survived of the great civilizations of this world? The only thing that has survived has been the creative product of the minds of men and women throughout history. Literature, music, architecture, paintings, sculpture, these are the only things that have survived.

If you look around this glorious room that we have the privilege of serving in--famous painting of George Washington, Lafayette, the architecture that's represented here--this is all the creative product of the men and women of generations. This is what our soul speaks to the world, to generations to come, and this is what we're talking about funding.

One of the greatest exports that we have from this country is our cultural product. We export music; we export film; we export drama, theater, all of these things, activities funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. So when we say to our taxpayers, our constituents, what are your values, we can say, you know, those Tomahawk missiles are wonderful.

And I certainly understand that we need to defend our country. But when we talk about our contributions to the history of mankind, humankind, it is undeniable that what we invest, the small amount we invest in supporting our creative genius, will be paid back many, many times over.

So I am proud to stand here and support funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, opposing the Walberg amendment, which would further cut the funding that has already been substantially reduced, and stand for the values of the millions and millions of men and women and children who not only participate in artistic activities, but also benefit immeasurably through an enhanced quality of life in our country.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I know my constituents and most Americans are trying to figure out exactly what this debt ceiling crisis is. It can't be about a desire to cut spending because both sides have already agreed to more cuts than are on the table in either the Senate or the House. No, this is a politically induced crisis that the Republicans have created in order to force votes on the debt ceiling next year during a Presidential campaign and weaken the President. But I hope they realize that if they weaken President Obama, they weaken the Presidency as well. And if they succeed in defeating him next year, their candidate, their President, will face reduced stature in the world, just as our political system will face a reduced stature in the world.

We are the foundation of economic and political stability around the world, and this crisis is threatening our stature in that position. We cannot let the Republican politically induced default crisis succeed.

Madam Speaker, nearly every economist in our country and leaders from both sides of the aisle agree: Defaulting on our debt would be disastrous to our economy, to middle class families, and to our most vulnerable citizens. Yet more than 60 of my Republicans colleagues have said they will not, under any circumstances, support a plan to raise the debt ceiling and prevent another economic crisis.

Since day one of this Congress, the Republican agenda has been driven by a reckless Tea Party ideology that ignores reality. Now, with the security of our economy and every American family on the line, they again choose ideology over reality.

But ideology doesn't pay the bills. Middle class families can't buy groceries with ideology. You can't pay for prescription drugs with it. Mortgage bankers don't accept ideology as payment, and neither do credit card companies. Ideology doesn't provide a safety net for our seniors who rely on Social Security and Medicare. And ideology won't pay our troops serving on the front lines.

No matter how many times they deny the consequences of default, the reality is not going to change. This blind adherence to an ideology is not leadership, and it's not what the American people want or desire.

Mr. Speaker, we've heard at rallies all across the country over the last couple of years: We want to take our country back. Well, today, when we're voting on the so-called Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, we now know where they want to take our country back to-- 1966. Those are the spending levels that would be required if we pass Cut, Cap, and Balance.

Now, there were a lot of cool things about 1966. Gas was 25 cents a gallon. The average car cost about $3,400, a new car. A home was $20,000, and eggs were 55 cents a dozen. It would be nice if we could pay those prices again. It would be nice if our seniors who are cared for by doctors and hospitals could rely on that kind of 1966 pricing. Unfortunately, they can't.

So what cut, cap, and balance would really mean is slash, shred, and punish. Slash the budget, shred the safety net, and punish the American citizens who can least afford it, all while protecting the wealthiest, most successful and the most specially treated people in this country-- our millionaires, billionaires, oil companies, and giant corporations.

I urge all of our colleagues to reject the reckless Republican agenda known as ``cut, cap, and balance.''

Madam Speaker, we have a lot of Americans who engage in very reckless behavior; but generally, that reckless behavior only affects them or maybe their friends or neighbors.

The Republican majority in this Congress is reckless enough that they want to endanger 310 million Americans; reckless enough that they will refuse to pay our debts no matter what kind of a deal is worked out; reckless enough to make us default on the full faith and credit of the United States; reckless enough to raise interest rates on not only our debt, thereby making the deficit worse, but on every American who has a credit card or an adjustable rate mortgage or is borrowing any money; and reckless enough, according to a bipartisan panel that came to this body last week, to take away 10 percent of GDP, costing this country hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs in the month of August alone.

We have a responsibility to the American people to perform for the interests of their lives and this country. And reckless behavior-- refusing to raise the debt limit of the United States is about as reckless as you can get. We need to act responsibly.