Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.J. Res 59, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution of 2014. With only ten days left until funding for the government expires, it shocks me that we are considering legislation that will do nothing to solve our problems. This is yet another political stunt by my friends on the other side of the aisle who clearly want the government to be shut down, and it should be rejected.

Our economy is recovering, but much more work needs to be done. A government shutdown would destroy all that progress and would cause much damage to middle class families across our nation. Social Security beneficiaries would not get their checks, veterans services would be cut, and every American would feel the impact. Furthermore, this resolution continues the misguided policy of sequestration. If this continues it will cost our economy 1.6 million jobs in 2014 and will prohibit our nation from making critical investments in education and life saving medical research. Democrats have an alternative that ends the sequester in a responsible manner and keeps the government running for the next year. My friends on the other side of the aisle do nothing but slow our nation's recovery with these futile efforts. Government funding remains in jeopardy. These stunts provide only further uncertainty for our businesses, left unable to hire workers, expand facilities, or make any of the necessary decisions to prosper in this economic environment. Madam Speaker, I plead with you to work with us in a bipartisan manner rather than wasting precious floor time on a bill that is going nowhere.

We all know my friends on the other side of the aisle oppose Obamacare. They have already voted 41 times in this House to repeal or undermine the law, and this bill increases this number to 42 by defunding Obamacare entirely. The American people spoke just last year in the elections, and the Supreme Court has spoken as well: Obamacare is the law of the land, and this effort is not going anywhere. In less than 2 weeks time, people who have never had access to health insurance for their entire lives will be able to purchase an affordable plan that gives them the health coverage they deserve. Even if you oppose the President, you should agree that this is a reasonable goal to have. And this bill goes beyond just defunding the parts of the law they don't like. It would let insurance companies deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, they could drop coverage when people get sick, and would prevent young Americans from staying on their parents plan until age 26. We should not turn back the clock when we are so close to making real, measurable progress. I look forward to full implementation of the law in the coming weeks so the American people can receive the full benefits of Obamacare.

In closing, this is a waste of our time. With such little time left to avoid a government shutdown, I would expect the Majority in this body to work with us in a bipartisan manner rather than continuing to play political games. I know we can come together to prevent a government shutdown and prevent miserable harm from being inflicted on the American people. But today, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against this misguided bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dr. Lawrence J. Schweinhart, president of the HighScope Educational Research Foundation, who retires next month after nearly 40 years of exceptional service to the organization and a career of commitment to early childhood education.

Dr. Schweinhart has made the economic and social benefits of high quality preschool programs well known to educators, researchers, legislators, philanthropic organizations, parents, and the general public worldwide while demonstrating extraordinary leadership through his service on local, state, national, and international boards and policymaking committees

He has provided an example of ethics and integrity the public seeks in those who serve as role models for young children and the people who care for them and has brought the highest standards of research and practice to the field of early childhood education. Dr. Schweinhart has simultaneously earned the esteem and affection of long-time colleagues and inspired a new generation of early childhood educators.

After a professional lifetime of securing active participatory learning for children throughout the country and around the world, he is retiring on October 31, 2013. I honor Lawrence for all he has done for the education community and for children. Please join me in thanking Lawrence for his unparalleled leadership. We wish him well in his retirement.

Madam Speaker, here we go again. Time in the House is being wasted. The business of the Nation is being obfuscated. The Republicans have got more nonsense to put on the floor.

We're told that this is important. That's baloney. This is the 41st time that the Republicans have tried to gut the Affordable Care Act. They don't understand that you're supposed to respect the will of the people and to carry forward the business of the Nation. What a shame that we have such behavior on that side of the aisle.

All Members agree that we have to verify the incomes of those getting subsidies through the marketplaces, and that is exactly what will take place starting on October 1. This is obfuscation and deceit. All income data will be submitted through the marketplaces and will be checked against data from both the IRS and the Social Security Administration under existing practices. This is a lot of witchcraft and baloney. If there is an inconsistency, then additional documentation is going to be required. Furthermore, all the subsidies are reconciled by the IRS when an individual files their tax returns.

This is just spinning by people who don't want the legislation to come to be, and again, this is the 41st time we've engaged in this silly exercise.

The practical impact of this bill is to deny millions of Americans from getting subsidies for purchasing health insurance. Its purpose is to delay and obfuscate the implementation of the legislation that it is supposed to be helping. To pass this bill is simply going to prove to be a malicious assault on the most vulnerable people in our country and those most in need of the Affordable Care Act.

We've seen this song and dance before. As I mentioned, this is the 41st time we've engaged in this nonsense, wasting about $1.5 million each hour we're doing this. I urge all of my colleagues to join me in opposing H.R. 2775. This is political gimmickry. It is going to have harmful effects, and it is intended to do so.

I urge that the legislation be rejected and that we stop this nonsense and we get going forward to try to see to it that we do implement, in a proper way, the Affordable Care Act.

I thank my good friend New Jersey for yielding this time to me, and I urge my colleagues to reject this nonsense.

I thank my beloved friend for yielding me this time, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to ask: Aren't you embarrassed to go a 40th time in a fruitless, hopeless act? This is the 40th time we've tried to kill the legislation. It costs us $1.5 million every time, none of which have been successful.

My Republican colleagues have never come forward with a proposal which they have presented to this House, but they sit over there railing and complaining about what is going on. They're going to take the rights of the American people for protection against pre-existing condition, bans on their insurance. They're going to take away from the American people all kinds of protections which we have in the Affordable Care Act.

The Speaker the other day said the Republicans were the party of repeal. I think he's right. I suspect we don't want to call them the Republicans anymore, but I think we ought to call them the ``Repealicans'' or perhaps the ``Repealican'ts,'' because they've never been able to repeal anything, and they can't enact legislation.

There have been 12 bills, I think, that this Congress has sent to the White House, and there is small prospect of anything more coming from here. It's interesting to note they can't move a budget; they can't do legislation on jobs; they're incapable of seeing to it that we do the other things that are necessary to help the middle class. Yet we keep coming over here with nonsense like this.

The Republican Party is like the Bourbons of France: they forget nothing because they never learned anything.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Detective Scott A. Galeski of Wyandotte, Michigan, who was awarded the 2013 Presidential Volunteer Service Award for more than 4,000 hours of volunteer service over his lifetime.

Detective Galeski has tirelessly and selflessly dedicated himself to teaching, training, and mentoring the community's youth, as well as exhibiting a great love for his public service as a member of the police force.

Detective Galeski's biggest impact has been through his direct efforts guiding and shaping several generations of youth throughout the downriver communities. He has been a steadfast and selfless advocate of shaping and mentoring youth into what he calls ``just good, solid kids'' on occasions and hours too countless to measure accurately.

Detective Galeski elevated and added to his efforts with youth by founding the Downriver/Detroit Police Cadet Program in 2008 while at the same time coaching high school athletics. The Cadet Program was established for youth interested in careers in law enforcement, and thanks to Detective Galeski's efforts, it became the largest program in the state, boasting a roster of over 73 cadets and having the highest ranking cadet (Major) in the nation. To date the program as produced seven sworn law enforcement officers in various agencies.

Detective Galeski, aside from his countless hours of service to his community and youth, also is known for counseling youth with difficult life circumstances and problems. Detective Galeski is a tremendous asset to the community, and I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Detective Galeski on receiving the Presidential Volunteer Service Award, and for all of his efforts to make his community a better place.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Jaclyn Schultz of Wyandotte, Michigan, who was crowned Miss Michigan USA in September 2012 and represented the great state of Michigan at the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas, Nevada on June 16, 2013.

Miss Schultz is a graduate of Wyandotte Roosevelt High School and Central Michigan University. Not only is Jaclyn recognized as a successful competitor in the pageant community, but she has also established a successful career in public relations. She is currently exhibiting her great determination in her quest to obtain her Master's degree while continuing to compete in pageants, be an advocate for women's health issues, and work full time. Her hard work, determination, and drive for success have allowed her to be a role model for young girls and bring a voice to women's health issues that are not well known to many people.

Jaclyn has done a tremendous job in her work with the Beautiful You MKRH Foundation to raise awareness of an infertility syndrome which affects 1 in 4,000 women who are born without a uterus. This is a personal issue for Jaclyn as she was diagnosed with this syndrome at the age of 15. It is with great courage that Jaclyn has stepped forward to tell her story and be a voice for the scores of women around the world who are diagnosed with MKRH.

Jaclyn has proven herself as a role model to young girls and women across our country and I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Jaclyn Schultz for all of her efforts and wish her great success on all of her future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to both H.R. 2667, the Authority for Mandate Delay Act, and H.R. 2668, the Fairness for American Families Act. Here we are once again taking another cheap shot at the Affordable Care Act (ACA), rather than working to continue providing its benefits to the American people. Both pieces of legislation are political stunts which will not help Americans get access to quality, affordable health care.

There is no need for passage of H.R. 2667 since the President has already acted to delay by one year the employer responsibility requirements under ACA. Given the fact that this type of change has long been sought by my friends on the other side of the aisle and their allies, you would think they would be praising the President for taking this action. Instead, they have done nothing but used this as another opportunity to score cheap political points, which is very telling.

Although I wish the employer responsibility provision would be implemented on time, the fact of the matter is that this delay will have very little practical impact. Over ninety six percent of large employers already offer health coverage to their employees. It is important that we take our time in getting these new reporting requirements right, which is exactly what the President is doing. Since the President has already acted in this manner, H.R. 2667 is duplicative and unnecessary.

H.R. 2668 also should be rejected by this body. The individual mandate is the cornerstone of the ACA, and the Supreme Court has affirmed its constitutionality. Simply put, delaying the implementation of the individual mandate is just a back door attempt to undermine the entire law. The Affordable Care Act has already brought many benefits to the American people. Thanks to the law, 206,000 people in my district have access to preventative services without a co-pay, and 8,500 young adults have health insurance through their parents' plan. Adopting this bill today would jeopardize this progress we have made in recent years.

Today we received news that health insurance premiums will fall by an average of 50 percent in New York once their exchanges are up and running in 2014. The individual mandate is a key reason for this. For years, New York had a prohibition on discriminating against individuals with a pre-existing condition. However, the state did not require all individuals to purchase insurance, which caused rates to skyrocket. The individual mandate, combined with the new health insurance marketplaces, are in large part responsible for this precipitous decline in insurance rates in New York. We should ensure that these results are replicated in my home state of Michigan and across the rest of the country. Repealing the individual mandate will increase Americans' health care costs, not decrease them.

I hope we can come together and work in a bipartisan manner to improve our health care system and provide real benefits to the American people. Until that day comes, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against these two pieces of legislation, as they are nothing more than political stunts which do nothing to address the problems we face as a nation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for the time; and I rise in strong opposition to the seriously misnamed H.R. 2668, Fairness for American Families Act. It's a lot of baloney. This is nothing more than a sorry political stunt that would undermine the critical portions of the Affordable Care Act, which is already bringing enormous benefits to the American people.

Delaying the individual mandate by 1 year will simply undercut ACA when it is the time that we must be focusing on fully implementing the law. Just today, we found that the health insurance premiums in New York are going to fall by an average of 50 percent when the exchanges are up and running. Other States can do the same thing, and that is the experience which we're finding across the country. This is happening elsewhere.

I would point out that repealing the individual mandate is going to cost Americans additional health care costs, not decrease them.

Let us move forward with the implementation. I ask my Republicans colleagues to cooperate with us in that goal. I ask them to work with us to better the welfare of the American people by seeing to it that this comes into law. The Congress has spoken and the American people approve. I say that it is time for us to provide real benefits to the American people rather than continue playing these sorry and tired political games.

I say shame on those of us who are wasting the time of this body. Let us address the problems of the economy. Let us deal with jobs, employment. Let us deal with student loans, where the interest rate is doubling. Let us see to it that we implement this law which will do away with things that are so hurtful to the American people, such as having Americans unable to get insurance because they have a preexisting condition or where insurance companies can cancel a policy because people are getting sick. It is time for us to deal with the real problems.

Einstein observed that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with the full expectation that the results are going to be different, but getting the same result. I say this country needs better leadership, better understanding, and a Congress that will work on behalf of the American people. As I look around, I do not see that on this floor today.

Again, I say shame. This is a terrible, terrible waste of the people's money and the people's time. It costs a lot for us to make this Congress meet and to conduct its business, and we are wasting that time now with this kind of nonsensical legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to both H.R. 2667, the Authority for Mandate Delay Act, and H.R. 2668, the Fairness for American Families Act. Here we are once again taking another cheap shot at the Affordable Care Act (ACA), rather than working to continue providing its benefits to the American people. Both pieces of legislation are political stunts which will not help Americans get access to quality, affordable health care

There is no need for passage of H.R. 2667 since the President has already acted to delay by one year the employer responsibility requirements under ACA. Given the fact that this type of change has long been sought by my friends on the other side of the aisle and their allies, you would think they would be praising the President for taking this action. Instead, they have done nothing but used this as another opportunity to score cheap political points, which is very telling.

Although I wish the employer responsibility provision would be implemented on time, the fact of the matter is that this delay will have very little practical impact. Over ninety six percent of large employers already offer health coverage to their employees. It is important that we take our time in getting these new reporting requirements right, which is exactly what the President is doing. Since the President has already acted in this manner, H.R. 2667 is duplicative and unnecessary.

H.R. 2668 also should be rejected by this body. The individual mandate is the cornerstone of the ACA, and the Supreme Court has affirmed its constitutionality. Simply put, delaying the implementation of the individual mandate is just a back door attempt to undermine the entire law. The Affordable Care Act has already brought many benefits to the American people. Thanks to the law, 206,000 people in my district have access to preventative services without a co-pay, and 8,500 young adults have health insurance through their parents' plan. Adopting this bill today would jeopardize this progress we have made in recent years.

Today we received news that health insurance premiums will fall by an average of 50 percent in New York once their exchanges are up and running in 2014. The individual mandate is a key reason for this. For years, New York had a prohibition on discriminating against individuals with a pre-existing condition. However, the State did not require all individuals to purchase insurance, which caused rates to skyrocket. The individual mandate, combined with the new health insurance marketplaces, are in large part responsible for this precipitous decline in insurance rates in New York. We should ensure that these results are replicated in my home State of Michigan and across the rest of the country. Repealing the individual mandate will increase Americans' health care costs, not decrease them.

I hope we can come together and work in a bipartisan manner to improve our health care system and provide real benefits to the American people. Until that day comes, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against these two pieces of legislation, as they are nothing more than political stunts which do nothing to address the problems we face as a Nation.

Madam Chairwoman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Madam Chairwoman, if you like confusion, keep the status quo and oppose the amendment.

If you want to get clarity and you want to understand and you want to get investment and progress and if you want to have people understand what the law is, support the amendment.

The proposal that has been put forward by the Corps of Engineers is clarity itself. It does not change the decision wrongly made by the Supreme Court, no matter how much I might dislike that decision. What it does is it allows people to know what the law is as set forth by the Supreme Court. Foreclosing the Corps of Engineers from carrying out its proper responsibilities under the law going back before 1899 is an act of extraordinary unwisdom and stupidity. My colleagues on the other side do not understand the issue. The simple fact of the matter is all this does is to allow the Corps of Engineers to tell the people of the United States what the law is with regard to what is navigable waters that may be affected by pollution, ditching, draining, and doing other things.

So when you vote to strike this section, you are not changing the law; you are allowing the Corps of Engineers to set forth what the rules happen to be, and you're allowing the Supreme Court to bring clarity to the decisionmaking of the United States and seeing to it that people may then go forward and invest and do the other things that are necessary in the light of the decision of the Supreme Court, which again, I repeat, is not changed, not by the amendment which is offered by my friend from Virginia.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment offered by Mr. Moran of Virginia because it brings clarity to a confused situation, and it makes plain and apparent what the law is.

So if you want to get progress so that people will know how they're going to invest in doing things that affect their property and the waters of the United States, supporting the amendment is the way to do it; and failing to support the amendment is to ensure that confusion will continue to exist and that businesses, industry, and the communities of the United States that need to act upon the waters to see to it that they are protected and that they are preserved, you're seeing to it by opposing the amendment that that cannot be done.

The Supreme Court was wrong in the decision which they made. I was here on the floor when we agreed that the navigable waters are all of the waters of the United States. The Supreme Court was either too ignorant or too lazy to bother reading that particular debate, but the legislative history of the law is clear. And I repeat, this does not move us back to the old way, and it does not change the unfortunate decision of the Supreme Court. What it does is it ensures that for the first time since this kind of amendment was offered on the floor, that we are able to finally begin to move forward to deal with the law as it affects navigability, the Clean Water Act, and the other things which are so important both to protecting our waters and to ensuring that business and industry may invest with a clear understanding of what the law is.

To oppose this amendment is to ensure that there will be more litigation, which will cause more obfuscation and delay and more difficulty in terms of achieving our purpose of having American citizens be able to enjoy the water in accordance with the law as the Corps of Engineers will set it out so that everyone will know what the law is rather than the Congress stultifying the law and seeing to it that we're incapable of having a clear pronouncement of what the law is as made by the agency which has the responsibility to do so under the law.

I urge you to support the amendment. I urge you to strike section 107, and I urge you to get this country going forward on a very important matter which is being thoroughly obfuscated by a lot of people who know nothing about the matter. I urge adoption of the amendment and the striking of the section.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I rise in support of the Moran-Dingell amendment which will protect not only the Clean Water Act but also the power and integrity of the United States Congress.

When the Clean Water Act was passed, I stood on the floor of this House and explained the intent of the Conference Report on the Clean Water Act. I said, ``the conference bill defines the term `navigable waters' broadly for water quality purposes. It means all `the waters of the United States' in a geographical sense. It does not mean the `navigable waters of the United States' in the narrow technical sense we sometimes see in some laws.''

In 2006, the Supreme Court wrongly restricted the original Congressional intent of the Federal government's authority under the Clean Water Act. The Supreme Court completely ignored Congress' intent to provide a broader definition of ``U.S. waters'' and instead upended 35 years of precedence simply because they refused to review the facts.

But the issue before us today is not whether or not you agree with the Clean Water Act. The question is, simply: Is the Corps of Engineers going to be able to tell people what the law is and how it is to be interpreted by the Corps and how citizens will then have to behave?

Under the law, our amendment simply says the Corps may inform people of what the law, as set forth in the Supreme Court's rulings, means. I think that is something which is important in terms of seeing to it that people may go forward with their planning, with economic development and everything of that sort.

In light of the Supreme Court's misguided decision, the Army Corps of Engineers is working on updated guidelines that will take into account the decision of the Court and define what their new jurisdiction will be under the Clean Water Act. This is not a massive expansion of power by the Corps as some would have you believe. This is simply attempting to comply with the Supreme Court's decision.

By preventing the Corps from spending any funds to implement these new guidelines, this House would be casting a pall of uncertainty over the country. If someone wants to build a home or new business near a wetland or other body of water, do they need to consult with the Army Corps of Engineers before doing so? The language in this bill would not answer that question and would likely lead to more costs on that homeowner or businessperson in legal and court fees. The language in this bill would certainly lead to more court battles and create a wonderful mess that would lead to lawyers making plenty of money.

To say anything else about this legislation is either to be misled or to mislead. I would beg my colleagues to vote in favor of the intelligent approach of seeing to it that we are going to allow people to know what the law is and allow the Corps of Engineers to set out what the law is for the benefit of business, industry, and people.

I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Madam Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment offered by my good friend from Virginia. I urge them to strike section 112.

There's no one in this Chamber that owns this world. We borrow it from those who come behind us in the future, and we owe them a duty to see to it that we return it in proper form.

The bill, as drafted, forbids the Federal Government from seeing to it that all manner of defilement is not dumped into the navigable waters of the United States. This is having an appalling consequence, destroying waters, killing fish, polluting the water sources of our communities and cities. But beyond that, it's doing something else.

A race of unscrupulous people are sawing the tops off our mountains in the Appalachians and other places, and they're taking that spoil and dropping it in river valleys and filling them up, the result of which is that the water flowing through that valley becomes highly acidic, and it produces severe danger, not just to fish and wildlife, but to human beings. These are the waters of the United States that are being defiled.

The amendment would at least afford a moderate level of authority to the Federal Government, which has always been that authority of the Federal Government, to protect one of the greatest treasures this Nation has: its flowing waters.

My colleagues on the other side think that that is a question of jobs. We're going to mine, and we should, but we should do it carefully and wisely and well, with due attention to the future and to our trusteeship of the world that we love.

We do not have the right to defile our waters. We have a duty to protect this land and to see to it that it is returned to future generations of Americans in as good a shape as we have found it, and perhaps, if we can, in a better shape.

What they have done is to change the situation, where now almost anything goes, and the result is a calamity for the future of the United States.

Water is one of the next coming great shortages of this Nation. It's something that is going to be very much missed by our future generations because we have, by adopting this bill without this amendment, defiled those waters, made them unsafe to drink and to recreate in, made them unsafe for all kinds of purposes, including even industrial use of those waters.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment offered by my good friend from Virginia. I urge you, my dear friends and colleagues, to look to the future of the country whose custodians and trustees we are, to see to it that we return this beautiful Nation of ours to the future generations in the condition in which we found it and which is suitable and fitting to the greatest Nation in the world.

We can have mining, we can have all of the other things we need, but all we have to do, under the law, as it has been, is to do it wisely, carefully, prudently and well, with due regard for the future.

This language in the bill stricken by the amendment offered by my colleague from Virginia would defile those waters and defile the future of this Nation.

I beg you, support the amendment. I beg you, strike the section. I beg you, be good trustees of the future and of the great gifts that God has given this Nation, and to strike section 112 so that we can properly protect one of the great blessings that this Nation has, an abundance of water, which the language of the bill, as now drawn, will defile and destroy.

And people in the Appalachians will curse us for what we have done to them by filling stream valleys with muck and corruption, by defiling the waters and the rivers and the streams and the lakes of the United States.

This is not good custodianship. This is a disregard of the greatest opportunity that we have, and that is to return to our future generations this Nation in the shape in which they will want it to be and we want it to be.

Madam Chairman, I rise in support of the Moran-Dingell amendment that gives this and future administrations the flexibility they need should they decide to address the issue of ``fill material.''

While the Clean Water Act has been a success, we still have a long way to go to fulfill the promise of the Act. According to the EPA, for the first time in many years, the Nation's waters have actually started to get dirtier. The response to this disturbing news should be a renewal of the Nation's commitment to clean water. Unfortunately, the previous administration charted a different course and worked to dismantle the very tools that make the Clean Water Act work.

Through regulatory changes, the previous administration eliminated a 25-year-old ban on dumping mining and other industrial wastes into streams and wetlands, and adopted policies abandoning the long-standing national ``no net loss of wetlands'' goal. That administration also proposed weakening the Clean Water Act's program that guides the cleanup of polluted waters.

Congress made it clear that the Clean Water Act covers all of these waters. I know this because I was there. In 1972, I spoke on the floor of the House about Clean Water Act and stated for the legislative history that that the bill covers all the waters of the United States. What we in Congress said when the law was passed remains true today: in order for the goal of clean water to be met, all waters must be protected for water pollution to be eliminated at its sources.

We in the Congress knew in 1972, as we know now, that the purposes of the Act--to restore and maintain the integrity of the country's waters--could not be achieved if any of the nation's vital waters are removed from the law's scope.

As a conservationist, hunter and avid sportsman, I see a pressing need to protect and restore our Nation's waterways and wetlands. These valuable systems support a diverse array of migratory birds, as well as many other species of wildlife. These waters are also an integral part of the landscape that serves mankind. Wetlands help prevent floods and are natural filters, removing pollutants from drinking water.

I was proud to play a part in enacting the Clean Water Act. Prior to that landmark legislation, rivers were catching on fire and fishermen dubbed Lake Erie the Dead Sea. We have come too far to allow a roll- back. I ask my colleagues to support both Moran-Dingell amendments.

Mr. Speaker, as co-chair of the Great Lakes Task Force, I rise today to honor Dr. Chris Goddard, executive secretary of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, who retires this month after nearly 20 years of exceptional service to the organization and a career of commitment to the health of our treasured Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes Fishery Commission is a U.S./Canadian institution established by the 1954 Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries, a treaty between the two nations. Under the treaty, the commission advances science; helps the States, the province of Ontario, and the U.S. tribes work together to manage the Great Lakes fishery; and carries out the essential sea lamprey control program, an effort upon which the very existence of the $7 billion Great Lakes fishery depends.

Because the commission stands alone in the Great Lakes basin as the locus for multilateral fishery management, its executive secretary must be a savvy leader and must motivate cooperation. Chris is enthusiastic, passionate, dedicated to the institution, committed to science, and driven by a deep-seated motivation to simply do what is right for the Great Lakes.

During his tenure, Chris led the commission into the new millennium with a positive vision for the future of the fishery and a plan to create a commission capable of responding to the basin's biggest challenges. He made it a priority to acquire the funds necessary to increase the control of sea lamprey--a destructive, invasive fish that changed the way of life in the basin but is now suppressed by 90 percent. In doing so, he helped create the conditions necessary for a thriving and healthy fishery. Perhaps most notably, he helped the commission make prominent and essential contributions to the President's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative by focusing commission projects on native species recovery and invasive species control.

Chris' time at the commission is the culmination of a long and productive career. A native of Canada, he grew up in Virginia Beach (his father was stationed there while serving NATO), was educated in Toronto, and managed Ontario's fishery assessment, fishery research, client services, and remote sensing programs. He was the district manager of Algonquin Provincial Park and was responsible for Canada's freshwater fishery program. I am proud to note that he lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan, part of my district.

Mr. Speaker, Dr. Chris Goddard is largely responsible for the active, vibrant, and respected Great Lakes Fishery Commission that we see today. I honor Chris for all he has done for the commission, for the two nations, and for the Great Lakes. Please join me in thanking Chris for his unparalleled leadership. We wish him well in his retirement.

I don't know whether to rebut or to agree.

I want to begin by thanking Mr. Hoyer, our leader and our whip, and my dear friend Mr. Barrow, a wonderful, courageous gentleman from Georgia, who has to fight very hard to remain here.

I am proud that you are my friend. Thank you.

You, Dan Kildee, bear a great family name. Your uncle was my dear friend.

I am satisfied that he is going to be very, very proud of you, and I am grateful for your friendship.

I want to thank my old friend Gene Green from Texas for his kind words about me. He is a wonderful man. He has a wonderful wife. He is concerned with and cares about people.

And I want to say how much the remarks of my colleague from Maryland, Donna Edwards, meant to me.

Donna, you are a wonderful lady.

There is a story about her. I worked awfully hard to see to it that her predecessor was able to stay here, but, by golly, she was so good that he never stood a chance despite everything I could do to save him. She has made me proud that she is here. She is a great lady and full of goodness. The story she told about the kids was just a story about her goodness, because she saw to it that these wonderful young people had a place to stay here during the President's inauguration when they were going to play and march in the parade.

I want to say to my old friend Sander Levin how grateful I am to him. Our families have been friends and have a history that's interwoven with affection and friendship going back into the 1920s when I was just a glint in my dad's eye.

I want to also say to Mr. Markey, our colleague who is going to be leaving us, how much we have cherished his friendship and his valuable service on the Commerce Committee and how proud I am of his service. He and I have had the opportunity of engaging in some fights over the jurisdiction of the committee when they were trying to raid the Commerce Committee, and we found--guess what?--when the fight was over, every time that he and I were involved in it, we had more jurisdiction than we'd had when we went into the fight.

To you, my wonderful friend Carol Shea-Porter, what a wonderful lady you are, and how proud we are that we have a friend like you here who cares about people and who works so hard for them, and I am proud of the words that you have said.

To my Polish colleague, Paul Tonko from New York, we Polacks--and I am very proud to be a Pole--are very, very concerned about loyalty and friendship and about homes, and he certainly exemplifies that and the goodness.

I am proud of the little things I've been able to do while I've been here. I am prouder even still more of the people I've been able to serve and help, and I am very grateful for the friendship of the people of southeast Michigan. The legislature has redistricted me so many times that they can't find a place now that they can put me that I haven't served before. So I have a great deal to be grateful for.

My father was a wonderful public servant, and he taught me that we here are public servants. We are not masters of the people--we are their servants. This is reason for us to be particularly proud because that is the highest calling of all.

So to you, my colleagues, who have so graciously and kindly made this rather embarrassing evening possible for me, I express to you my thanks and my gratitude for your friendship and for reminding me that there still is the wonderful warmth of friendship and goodness in this institution. The lovely Deborah, my wife, and I thank you for your friendship and kindness.

To all of the other colleagues whom we are serving with now and those with whom we have served before who are no longer with us, we are grateful to them, and we are proud.

This is the greatest Nation in the world. We are part of the greatest experience and the greatest experiment in the history of mankind--an experiment in government, which gives equality and opportunity to all of us. We are reminded that serving and saving and protecting those people whom we serve and the values that they hold dear is a tremendously important concern, one which we are going to have to go to bat about again to see to it that the Voting Rights Act is extended because the protections of the rights of our people--the greatest of all in the right to vote--are not yet fully assured.

So, to all of my colleagues tonight who have been so gracious and kind to me, I express to you my thanks and gratitude. It's a privilege to serve with you. It's even a greater privilege to have you for friends and to have you be people up to whom I can look for your goodness and decency and concern and for the service which you so gladly and generously give to the people of the United States and to the people you represent in your different districts.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back with great gratitude to my dear friend from Georgia and with my thanks to all of my colleagues who have spoken excessively kindly about me tonight.

Mr. Speaker, today, Wednesday, June 24, 2013, I, along with my good friend Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, would like to honor the contributions of Carla R. Hultberg on the occasion of her retirement from the House of Representatives after more than 24 years of exemplary service to Congress and the nation.

Carla began her career in the House of Representatives in 1989 as Assistant Clerk for the Committee on Energy and Commerce, helping to implement a demanding legislative agenda set by then-Chairman John Dingell.

In 1995, after receiving recognition for her exceptional work, Carla was asked to begin

serving in two roles, conducting the Committee's exacting clerking responsibilities while also incorporating new online technologies that had never been used before on Capitol Hill.

In 2007, Carla was promoted to Deputy Clerk of Technology and Administration and supervised a team of staffers managing and maintaining the office's networks and equipment and representing the Committee's administrative interests before the full House.

In 2009, Carla took on perhaps her most significant challenge when she was promoted to Chief Clerk of the Oversight Committee under then- Chairman Edolphus Towns, where she helped build a new majority office from the ground up and took the lead on all Committee operations.

For the past three years, Carla has served as Chief Clerk for the minority staff of the Oversight Committee under Ranking Member Elijah E. Cummings, managing all legislative and investigative records, all clerking responsibilities, and all administrative and personnel operations.

Throughout her career, Carla has been an anchor for Committee operations, and she has never sought credit or attention, although it is most certainly due.

Carla is defined by her dedication, work ethic, and selflessness. She is the type of staffer that every Member of Congress seeks--and desperately wants to keep.

Carla has touched the lives of countless Members of Congress who rely on her, congressional staffers who look up to her, and members of the American public whom she has served for more than two decades.

Author Marianne Williamson said: ``Nothing liberates our greatness like the desire to help, the desire to serve.''

No one embodies this quote better than Carla Hultberg. She has been a true servant of the American public, and she will be missed dearly in the halls of Congress.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1947, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act. I would very much like to support this legislation. I understand how important it is for Congress to pass a five-year Farm Bill to give certainty to farmers across the nation and to reauthorize and improve critical nutrition and conservation programs. I strongly support many of the reforms made to the farm safety net, including the elimination of direct payments and an increased focus on crop insurance, a risk management tool which actually works. However, the $20 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are unconscionable, and for this reason I cannot support this bill.

My Republican colleagues continue to claim that SNAP is growing out of control because participation in the program has grown in recent years. In fact, this is a sign that SNAP is working as intended. The recession left many people in dire financial straits and unable to put food on the table to feed their families. For many of my constituents, SNAP is an important stop-gap measure to help them during a time of need. These people are not asking for a handout. They are simply trying to get by. We should be thankful that we have a strong SNAP program as a part of our safety net. If the reforms proposed by the GOP were in place over the last five years, more Americans would have gone hungry. This is unacceptable and is not the direction in which our country should be headed.

I agree that we need to take reasonable steps to stabilize the national debt. However, we must not balance our nation's books on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans, as this legislation proposes to do. My dear friend Senator Debbie Stabenow has a strong, bipartisan farm bill which recently passed the Senate overwhelmingly. The Senate bill makes smart, targeted cuts to SNAP, and I strongly support this legislation. I hope that we can come together in a conference committee to pass a good, strong bipartisan farm bill which I can support.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1919, the Safeguarding America's Pharmaceuticals Act of 2013. The American people deserve peace of mind in knowing the pharmaceuticals they take every day are safe and have not been stolen, misbranded, or counterfeited. In last year's Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, we took important steps to secure the upstream supply chain by ensuring FDA has accurate information about who is manufacturing and importing drugs, as well as requiring manufacturers to notify FDA if their pharmaceuticals may cause injury or death or have been stolen or counterfeited. That was a good first step, but now Congress must act to secure our downstream drug supply chain.

A strong, national track-and-trace system for our pharmaceutical supply chain will help improve public health and protect the American people from harm. We have seen far too many examples of counterfeit or unsafe pharmaceuticals entering the supply chain and ultimately ending up in the hands of patients. Now is the time to act and implement a system to trace pharmaceuticals as they move through the supply chain to prevent this from ever happening again. This system must be fair, feasible, and provide certainty to industry as to what is required of it. If done properly, a strong track-and-trace system will protect our pharmaceuticals from tampering and ensure their safety for patient use.

I want to thank my friends, Mr. Matheson and Mr. Latta, for their hard work on this important issue. I am the first to admit that this is not a perfect bill, and we have more work ahead of us. I also want to acknowledge the concerns of my friend and colleague from Maine, Mr. Michaud, about e-labeling. I commit to working with him to address this issue of great importance and ask that my colleagues do the same.

The Senate has also made real, bipartisan progress on this issue and taken a slightly different approach. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation today to move the process forward on this matter. Congress has a clear opportunity to pass a bill with major benefits for the American people and must avail itself of the opportunity. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Capitol Hill to send a strong, bi- partisan bill to President Obama.

Mr. Speaker, once again House Republicans refuse to address the affordability of higher education head on and instead are using sleight of hand to make students think their interest rates will remain low. The awful truth is that H.R. 1911 will add even more to the already $1.1 billion of student debt in this country and further increase the cost of getting a college education.

As we continue to recover economically, we must ensure that students can afford a higher education. In 2007, as we were dealing with the worst of the recession, I voted in favor of legislation to reduce interest rates on Stafford loans from 6.8 to 3.4 percent. On July 1, interest rates will go back to 6.8 percent if Congress does not act.

An increase to 6.8 percent will add an additional $1000 in debt over the lifetime on a student's loans. However, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that under H.R. 1911 interest rates will rapidly increase to 7.7 percent by 2018. This bill does not guarantee lower interest rates. In fact, it does the opposite. The CBO does not project that interest rates will come down any time in the next 10 years. This is a hard truth students and their families cannot afford.

I am a proud cosponsor, along with 138 of my colleagues, of H.R. 1595, the Student Loan Relief Act by Representative Joe Courtney, which keeps the interest rate at 3.4 percent through 2015. That gives the Congress time enough to address comprehensive legislation to amend the Higher Education Act and develop long-term solutions to address student loans.

There are nearly 48,000 students attending a university or college in my district who have a Stafford subsidized student loan. Those loans total over $212 million. Increasing the interest rate will add an unnecessary burden on those students as they graduate and enter the workforce. We must do everything we can to help as they get started.

We should not have to choose how we are going to invest in our country's future. Republicans don't seem to realize that by not finding a compromise, they are playing politics with students, families, and the future of our country.