Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise with a heavy heart to pay tribute to our friend and colleague, Tom Lantos, this good and decent man, an American by choice, but a citizen of the world. He was a warrior for human rights, a warrior for justice and fairness. He spoke up and he spoke out for people around the world.

Madam Speaker, the world community has lost a powerful voice for human rights and for human dignity.

How do you honor a man? How do you pay tribute to a man like Tom Lantos? We could name buildings, streets, schools, post offices, but the best way for us to honor Tom Lantos is to pick up where he left off, continue to fight for human rights, continue to fight for peace, continue to build a world community at peace with itself.

Tom, thank you for all you did to make us all free. We will miss you my friend, my colleague, my brother.

Madam Speaker, today I rise to introduce the Civil Rights Act of 2008. This legislation will keep the promise of equality that this Congress has made in passing our civil rights laws and ensure that discriminators are held accountable for their actions. Over the years, Congress has addressed some of our most pressing civil rights concerns by passing bipartisan legislation, legislation that protects American workers from discrimination on the basis of color, race, religion, age, disability, and sex. Our civil rights laws have strengthened our country, providing opportunity to those who had been denied opportunity and affording the Nation the benefit of abilities that would have otherwise been wasted. They have brought us closer to the beloved community where all people are able to succeed based on their abilities.

Unfortunately, over the years, the Supreme Court has weakened some of these basic protections in ways that Congress never intended. They have undermined the protections for workers, for older Americans, for the disabled, for racial and ethnic minorities, for women, and for those in the military. So today, I join Senator Edward Kennedy in introducing the Civil Rights Act of 2008 to restore workers' rights and strengthens and reaffirms our commitment to the promise of equal opportunity. The bill corrects the misinterpretations of our civil rights laws that have left too many American workers without a remedy when they have suffered discrimination.

The relationship between workers and civil rights in America runs wide and deep. It was the laborers--the sharecroppers, the sanitation workers, the teachers, the students, the construction workers, and the street sweepers--who tore down the walls of racial segregation in the South. It is these ordinary men and women with extraordinary vision who have sacrificed their lives in confrontations throughout American history to help build this democracy. We cannot stand by and let their hard-earned victories be erased.

This bill better protects workers from discrimination in agencies that receive Federal money, defends students against harassment, fortifies civil rights for State employees, and prevents employers from forcing workers to give up their right to a day in court. It also ensures remedies for undocumented workers who are victims of unfair labor practices. It restores the individual right to challenge practices that have an unjustified discriminatory effect based on race, color, national origin, disability, age, or gender. It ensures that members of the Armed Forces who work for State governments are protected from discrimination.

If you work for a State government, you should have the same protections from discrimination as a person working in private industry--but the courts didn't see it that way. Students who are victims of sexual harassment shouldn't have to meet a higher standard of proof than their teachers--but the courts didn't see it that way. Members of the uniformed services should be able to get relief if they are discriminated against while they are on active military duty, whether they are employees of State governments or the private industry--but the courts didn't see it that way.

The struggle for civil rights is beyond one bill, one vote, or one judicial decision. It's beyond one Presidential term or act of Congress. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, and each generation, each citizen, each president and each member of Congress must do his or her part. Together all of our efforts comprise the struggle of a nation to build the beloved community, a nation at peace with itself and its own ideals. This bill is just another step in that struggle to ensure the freedoms of all Americans to pursue their dreams.

Madam Speaker, today, almost last, but certainly not least, Congress takes action on a bill to authorize a major medical facility project that will create modern inpatient wards at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Atlanta, Georgia. This is an investment of $20.5 million to provide a standard of care our Nation guarantees for veterans across America. This is a relatively small bill but it is part of keeping a very big promise. We should always keep that promise.

This project will renovate 3 inpatient floors to meet ADA accessibility requirements. Our handicapped veterans should have bathrooms, showers and toilet facilities they can actually use. This project will also meet needs of a growing group of women veterans. It will provide patient privacy where it has been inadequate. And it will make the staff work more efficiently by simply making the layout of the building better for work. In addition, an enclosed connecting bridge will be built between the Medical Center and VA Regional Office buildings so there will be more fluid access between what goes on at the hospital and what goes on at the benefits administration.

The Atlanta VA Medical Center has an active affiliation with the University of Emory Medical School. This project will keep this relationship on sound footing. Hundreds of medical doctors and students with Emory make contributions at the hospital and see firsthand the result of sacrifices made from generation to generation. Unfortunately, with the number of our boys and girls coming home from war growing as we speak, these physicians are going to be caring for so many more people with so many more health problems.

I want to applaud the efforts of my colleague from Georgia, Senator Johnny Isakson, for working to pass this bill through the Senate. I know on this issue, the issue of caring for our veterans, all of us from Georgia and on a bipartisan basis in the House and Senate can agree that no expense should be spared in order to ensure the best care modem medicine can provide.

We have more work to do on this and so many other issues. It is my hope we can come together on more bills in the coming year, much larger bills, which benefit those who wear the uniform, as well as kids and seniors who need better health care.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Obey, my good friend, for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, I know there are a lot of good things in this bill, but there is one bad thing. Billions of dollars, more billions of dollars to fund the war in Iraq.

The best present, the best gift we could give to our young men and women in the military during this season of peace and goodwill would be to bring this madness to an end and bring our young people home, and bring them home now. This war was ill-conceived from the beginning. It is a war of choice and not a war of necessity. The time is long overdue. Now is the time to bring this madness to an end.

I said it before and I will say it again. In good conscience, I will not vote for one dollar or one dime to continue this war. The American people are sick and tired of this war and I am tired and sick of this war. It is time to give peace a chance.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take just a moment to pay tribute to our friend, our colleague, our beloved sister, Julia Carson. It is my belief that when the Almighty created this beautiful, charming woman, he threw away the mold.

Long before Julia Carson came here, she was a fighter, someone who stood up and spoke out for those that have been left out and left behind. She was a champion of ordinary people, a champion for justice, for civil rights, for human dignity. I want to thank her friend and our former colleague, Andy Jacob, whom I served with, for doing all he could do to have Julia Carson come to this place.

In this body, we are like a family, one family. We become like sisters and brothers. And I feel with the loss and passing of Julia Carson, we have lost a member of our family. The chain, the circle, has been broken.

I will never forget when I was much younger, on April, 4, 1968, almost 40 years ago, I was in her district. She was not representing the district then, but we were in the City of Indianapolis with Robert Kennedy when he announced to the crowd that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated. When Julia came here, she always said to me, John, you must come back to Indianapolis and visit. And I have gone back there.

We will miss her. She has gone on to a better place. And we will never, ever see her likeness again.

Madam Speaker, I'd like to take a moment to honor the life of Mrs. Julia Washington Bond, a gracious daughter of the South who contributed significantly to the cultural and academic life of metropolitan Atlanta. Mrs. Bond is perhaps best known today as the mother of Julian Bond, the Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), my former colleague in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and a stalwart advocate for civil rights and social justice in America.

For decades, Mrs. Bond helped form the center of cultural life in Atlanta. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee on June 20, 1908, and attended Fisk University, like her parents before her. There she met and eventually married a young instructor who would become one of the foremost educators of his time, Horace Mann Bond. Dr. Bond led several prominent institutions of higher education as their president--Fort Valley State College in Georgia and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and served as the first dean at Dillard University. In 1957, he was named the Dean of the School of Education of Atlanta University, and he and his wife became pillars of the Atlanta community.

In the 1950's and 60's, African Americans, regardless of their prominence, could not stay in hotels or motels in the South. So, when they traveled to Atlanta, they had to stay in homes around the city. As the first lady of many universities and the wife of a leading educator, Mrs. Bond hosted some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance--W.E.B. DuBois, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, W.C. Handy, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Duke Ellington and a host of others. Her elegant style and manner offered a unique, intimate atmosphere for students and educators to engage these celebrities and help knit their bond to Atlanta society. She was kind almost to a fault, in the most genteel Southern tradition, and her beauty inspired an iconic painting by a principal artist of that period, Aaron Douglass.

In 1964, she returned to college and received a degree in library science from Atlanta University. During her tenure, she assisted hundreds and thousands of students. She worked in the university library system there until she retired in 2000. The people of the 5th District mourn the passing of Mrs. Julia Bond. She died at the age of 99 on November 2d. She raised three successful children--Jane Bond Moore, Horace Julian Bond, and James Bond. She also had eight grandchildren. She will be deeply missed.

I want to thank my friend and colleague for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution. I would like to thank Chairman Rangel, Chairman Levin and the minority Members for all of their hard work on this effort. This is not a perfect bill, but it is a good bill. I have always believed that our trade policy must be a reflection of our values.

This legislation moves us a step forward in building a bipartisan trade policy. In this bill, we seek to protect the rights of workers to organize. We look out for the environment. When it comes to trade, we all live in the same House, call it the House of Peru, call it the House of America. What we do today with this resolution is in the best interests of all of us who live on this little planet, this little piece of real estate that we call Earth.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote for the passage of this bill.

Madam Speaker, last week I introduced legislation that will help people who worked long hours, went to work everyday to support their families, and thought they were earning a retirement package that would be there at the end of their careers. Unfortunately, many in this body know the crisis some workers have endured regarding their defined benefit pension plans. Many people have felt the sting of lost jobs, reduced benefits, and bankrupt employers. Their retirement savings were lost.

The Lost Retirement Savings Act will allow airline workers to recover some of their benefits that were erased when their employers went bankrupt. By creating a retirement savings option for airline workers whose defined benefit plans were terminated or frozen in bankruptcy proceedings we can offer help to workers. This legislation creates an opportunity for airline workers to rollover specified bankruptcy payments into a traditional or Roth individual retirement account.

Airline workers have lost more than $5 billion in wages alone. They have lost an additional $5 billion in defined benefit pension benefits. Some have lost more than their paycheck. Too many people lost their jobs. In my district, which covers metro Atlanta, Delta Air Lines has been particularly hard hit over the past few years. On September 11, there were 10,500 active Delta pilots. Today, there are 6,700.

We need to keep our pension system strong in America. We need to keep it strong for American workers and their families. If the system breaks, we need to stand up for all workers and find a solution. This legislation will restore some lost earnings and some lost opportunities. I look forward to seeing this passed.

Madam Chairman, I want to thank my friend for yielding.

Madam Chairman, I for one fought too long and too hard to end discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. During the 1960s, we broke down those signs that said ``white'' and ``colored.''

Call it what you may, to discriminate against someone because they are gay is wrong. It is wrong; it is not right. There is not any room in our society for discrimination. Today, we must take this important step after more than 30 long years and pass the Employment Non- Discrimination Act. It is the right thing to do. It is the moral thing to do.

Let us do it, not just for this generation, but for generations yet unborn.

Today, we have an opportunity to bring down those signs. Now is the time to do what is right, what is fair, what is just. The time is always right to do right. Let us pass this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3920, the Trade and Globalization Assistance Act of 2007.

Under this administration, we have adopted a record eight free trade agreements. In trade and globalization, there are winners and there are losers.

Mr. Speaker, increasing the funding and efficiency of the trade assistance program is the very least we can do as a Congress.

In my home State of Georgia, we have used more than 125 percent of our allotment. Why? Because agriculture and textile jobs are disappearing. They're leaving the State of Georgia.

These families are struggling just to make ends meet. They want to work. They need to work. How can we oppose, how can we be against investing in our greatest asset, the American workforce?

We can spend hundreds, thousands, millions and billions of dollars on war. Can we spend just a few dollars on the workers of America?

To oppose this bill is heartless, it makes no sense, and it is irresponsible.

So I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' for this important bill.

Modification to Amendment No. 1 Offered by Mr. McCrery

Mr. Speaker, I am a proud cosponsor of this resolution, and I applaud the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for her leadership on this important issue.

Every day in Darfur men are tortured and massacred as women and little girls seeking solace and refuge are raped, abused, and murdered. This is a systematic effort to destroy an entire race of people.

Where is the humanity, Mr. Speaker? Where are our souls? How can we stand by when hundreds and thousands are suffering every day at the hands of their own government?

Today, on the front page of the Washington Post there is an article entitled ``U.S. Promises on Darfur Don't Match Actions''. It highlights our Government's inaction during one of the most horrific human rights disasters of our generation.

Every single one of us has a duty to pressure our Government, the United Nations, the world--to act.

Mr. Speaker, this bipartisan resolution is not about politics. It is not about pushing an agenda forward.

We have a moral obligation to stand up for the women and children in Darfur against systematic and unchecked abuse.

They have no voice, no government, nobody to stand with them, nobody to stand for them.

Every day that we wait for a solution to magically appear, is another day that a woman, a child, is stripped of her home, her family, her dignity, her health, and her humanity.

I urge all of my colleagues to support H. Res. 726.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend, my colleague, my chairman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in the spirit of bipartisanship to thank all of our colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, for working together to bring forth this important piece of legislation.

Now is the time, not tomorrow or next week, now is the time to reauthorize and expand SCHIP, because there's nothing, but nothing, more important than the health of our little children. All of our children, all of the poor children are in the same boat, whether black or white, Hispanic, Asian American or Native American. They need health care to grow strong and survive.

We, in Congress, have the best possible health care, and now is the time to deliver that same promise of health to our Nation's children. Suffer the little children. Suffer the little children, all of the children.

The time is always right to do right. We must pass the bill today for the children of America.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to a member of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentlewoman from the State of Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

(Mrs. JONES of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Mrs. Jones control the time until Mr. Rangel returns.

Madam Speaker, today we must override the President's veto because it is the right thing to do for our children.

We have a mission, an obligation, and a mandate to provide health insurance for all of the children and override the President's veto.

We can spend millions and billions of dollars on war, but we cannot take care of health care for our children? It would be a shame and a disgrace not to take care of the little children.

We must take care of the children. ``Suffer the little children.'' They need our help and they need it now. Override this veto.

Madam Speaker, it is an honor that I am able to help celebrate

the 160th Anniversary of Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal, AME, Church in Atlanta. For 160 years, Big Bethel AME Church has been a leader in the Atlanta area and a cornerstone of the community. Big Bethel AME Church stands as one of the oldest and most successful churches in Atlanta, and continues its strong community work today. Big Bethel's anniversary, on October 21, 2007, is truly a day for celebration.

Big Bethel AME Church has a rich and remarkable history. After the Civil War ended slavery, Bethel Church joined the African Methodist Episcopal connection in 1865. The AME Church was founded by Richard Allen, a former slave who had purchased his freedom and started the AME Church partly in response to discrimination. Out of the AME church emerged schools, social welfare programs, character building campaigns and national leaders. Big Bethel AME Church was at the cutting edge of these programs and served as a platform for opportunity in the South, especially for African Americans. For example, in 1879, the Gate City Colored School, the first public school for African Americans in the city, was founded in the basement of Big Bethel. Big Bethel AME Church also played a key role in the early development and growth of Morris Brown College, with the college's first classes being held at the church. Throughout its history the pews of Big Bethel AME Church have held such eminent dignitaries as: Booker T. Washington (early 1900s), President William H. Taft (1911), Mary McLeod Bethune (1937), former Georgia governor and former President Jimmy Carter (1970), Nelson Mandela (1990), and, as a successful presidential candidate, William J. Clinton (1992).

Over the many years, trials and tribulations, successes and honors, Big Bethel AME Church has withstood the test of time. Big Bethel AME Church has been well served throughout its history by dedicated leaders, and active congregations. This tradition continues today under Reverend Gregory V. Eason, Sr., who I would like to recognize for his leadership in the community.

In conclusion, it is my belief that we must all dedicate ourselves to the idea of creating what Dr. Martin Luther King used to call the ``Beloved Community.'' Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta has been building such a community for 160 years and I am excited for this community to grow and prosper for another 160 years and beyond.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3056, the Tax Collection Responsibility Act, a bill to eliminate the IRS's private debt collection program.

The private debt collection program is an insult to the American taxpayer and our Federal tax system. The collection of taxes is a core government function. It is the mission of the IRS.

The Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on this program, and we found that it has no business, no place in the collection of taxes. This program violates the public trust.

Taxpayers trust the IRS with their personal information. When taxpayers put information on their tax returns, they expect that the IRS will see that information, and only the IRS. Taxpayers do not expect their personal information could be given to private debt collectors. It should never ever happen.

Taxpayers have been harassed under this program. Thousands of innocent taxpayers are being called on the phone and asked for their Social Security numbers. They are afraid that their identity will be stolen. In some cases, the calls are never-ending. We found that one elderly couple was called 150 times over 30 days. That's not right. That's not fair.

This program targets low-income taxpayers, and these private debt collectors have even gone after nursing

home residents and military personnel serving in Iraq.

That is unbelievable. Use of private debt collectors erodes the Federal tax system, the public trust and the Treasury.

I say, Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. We must stand with the taxpayers, and we must stand up for the IRS employees. Pass this bill and end this program.