Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, on April 15, 2021, I was unable to vote on the first three votes in the series because I had unavoidable conflict. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 104; H.R. 1215, the Fraud and Scam Reduction Act; YEA on Roll Call No. 105; H.R. 1460, the Nicholas and Zachary Burt Memorial Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Prevention Act of 2021; YEA on Roll Call No. 106; En Bloc No. 1.

members recorded pursuant to house resolution 8, 117th congress

Allred (Wexton)

Babin (Fallon)

Crdenas (Gonzalez, Vicente)

Crenshaw (Fallon)

Greene (GA) (Gosar)

Grijalva (Garcia (IL))

Jayapal (Raskin)

Johnson (TX) (Jeffries)

Keating (Clark (MA))

Lawson (FL) (Evans)

Lieu (Beyer)

Lowenthal (Beyer)

Meng (Clark (MA))

Mfume (Raskin)

Moore (WI) (Beyer)

Moulton (Underwood)

Napolitano (Correa)

Neal (Lynch)

Nehls (Fallon)

Norcross (Pallone)

Omar (Pressley)

Payne (Pallone)

Porter (Wexton)

Rush (Underwood)

Sewell (DelBene)

Slotkin (Stevens)

Stefanik (Tenney)

Steube (Timmons)

Trahan (Lynch)

Wasserman Schultz (Soto)

Watson Coleman (Pallone)

Wilson (FL) (Hayes)

Wilson (SC) (Timmons)

amendment no. 4 offered by mrs. miller-meeks

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

The PRO Act empowers workers to exercise their right to organize and holds employers accountable for violating workers' rights.

In my home State of Hawaii, unions successfully raised the standard of living for thousands of our residents. I am proud to say that Hawaii has the highest union membership rate in the Nation, at 23.7 percent.

We must pass the PRO Act to make sure all workers have a free and fair choice to join a union.

Mr. Speaker, organized labor has opened the doors of opportunity for millions of Americans, to help them buy homes, secure healthcare, educate their children, and enjoy leisure time with family and friends.

Mr. Speaker, as an 11-year card-carrying member of the Air Line Pilots Association, I know firsthand how unions can level the playing field. Unions give us a stronger voice to advocate for higher wages, better benefits, and improved workplace conditions. Unions put the power in the hands of the workers.

Mr. Speaker, this bill will lift up American workers and strengthen America's middle class. I urge my colleagues to support the PRO Act.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to honor Mahina `Olelo Hawaii, or Hawaiian Language Month.

Colleagues, I have the wonderful privilege of being native Hawaiian. My culture has served as a guiding light throughout my entire life, a light that has survived because of the many kupuna, our elders, who protected this

light and who protected our Native indigenous language.

For Native Hawaiians and so many other indigenous peoples, our language is essential for our people to live and thrive. In fact, we have an `Olelo No'eau, a proverb, that says: ``I ka `olelo no ke ola; I ka `olelo no ka make.'' ``In the language rests life; in the language rests death.''

Established in 1840, Hawaii's public education system is the oldest west of the Mississippi. In fact, in the 19th century, Hawaii was one of the most literate nations in the world, with over 90 percent of the population able to read and write.

January 17, 1893, is a date that is etched in the consciousness of almost every Hawaiian, the day the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown. At the time of the overthrow, our language was used in all sectors of society by all of the kingdom's citizens, from our homes and schools to businesses and government, and even the halls of justice.

In 1896, just 3 years after the overthrow, a law was enacted that stated: ``The English language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools.''

That one sentence dealt a smothering blow to our language. If you want to extinguish a people, you extinguish their language by taking it from the ears and mouths of future generations. You take it away from their children.

Piece by piece, action by action, the racist provisional and republic government and others with influence attempted to stem the flow of oxygen to our `olelo Hawaii. But they could not extinguish our fire.

While Hawaiian was relegated to use in isolated spaces, even perhaps to whispers in private, we spoke, and we spoke in Hawaiian. We kept the embers burning for nearly a century.

How do you revive a language? The same way they tried to extinguish it. We share it with our children. Fire-keepers started private preschool language nests, or Punana Leo, and in 1978, Hawaiian became an official language of the State. But it would take 100 years to change that 1896 law banning Hawaiian in schools when, in 1986, K-12 Hawaiian language immersion was reestablished in Hawaii's Department of Education.

These early language pioneers continued to rebuild the fire, step by step, action by action. By the 1980s, we graduated our first bachelor's degrees in Hawaiian language. From less than 50 Native speakers under the age of 18 to more than 25,000 now self-identifying as Hawaiian language speakers today, our fire still burns, and it is growing.

It is no longer novel to hear Hawaiian spoken in our local coffee shops and our grocery stores, and my family proudly joins along fellow fire-keepers to stoke the `olelo Hawaii flame, as my daughters attend Hawaiian language schools Punana Leo `O Hilo and Ke Kula `o Nawahiokalani'opu'u.

While I am filled with pride, Mr. Speaker, it comes with a mix of other emotions: disappointment at underfunding; frustration at the lack of equity in government use of Hawaiian as an official language; and trepidation, knowing how close we came to having our language snuffed out.

While I am encouraged by our progress, I know there is more work ahead. We must continue to raise up the languages of all of America's first peoples.

UNESCO states that a third of the world languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left. Language is essential to cultural diversity, and diversity is essential to our shared humanity.

While Mahina `Olelo Hawaii, or our month of celebrating Hawaiian language, is coming to a close, we will continue to stoke the flames of `olelo Hawaii month by month, year by year, generation to generation because, Mr. Speaker, ``I ka `olelo no ke ola; I ka `olelo no ka make.'' ``In the language rests life; in the language rests death,'' and our resolve is greater than ever to ensure that our languages will live on.

``E Ola Mau Ka `Olelo Hawaii a me na `Olelo `Oiwi A Pau Loa.'' ``The Hawaiian language, and all indigenous languages, shall live.'' Mahalo.

Mr. Speaker, my ohana is from the last native Hawaiian fishing village in Hawaii, Milolii. You have likely never heard of Milolii, and if you haven't heard of the small fishing village of Milolii, then you probably haven't heard of Kalapana.

Kalapana, like Milolii, is an ocean community, but Kalapana sits in the shadow of the volcano Kilauea. For decades, this area has been shaped by the various destructive lava flows that have flowed through; but no matter how many times this happened, the people of Kalapana remained resilient and proud of their community.

Mr. Speaker, I can think of no one who embodied the pride and resilience of being Kalapana born and raised than William Punapaia'alaikahala Kenoi, known to most as Hawaii Island Mayor Billy Kenoi. Billy Kenoi would proudly talk about the papaya fields of Kalapana and the mentors who helped him see the world outside of them. Their inspiration took him from the slopes of Kilauea to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

From there, the boy from Kalapana walked with reverence through these very Halls, which he regarded as a heiau, or spiritual center of democracy, as a congressional intern with the legendary Senator Daniel K. Inouye. He then went on to attend the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

As he moved through his career, he remained that same resilient and proud kid from Kalapana. He worked for justice as a public defender with indigent clients. He moved home to Hawaii Island as a public servant, dedicated to helping his island weather the crystal meth crisis that was ravaging our communities. His leadership in crisis, born of the lava flows and fields of Kalapana, eventually translated to leadership at the island level, when he was elected as Hawaii County mayor in 2008.

Nobody could deny Billy's charm, keen political drive, and charismatic leadership. And for all his high-level leadership and larger-than-life personality, he left his mark in the individual interactions he had with people, always kind and authentic. Some of us had the fortune of getting to know him as a friend. For me, he was also a mentor.

I will always remember Martin Luther King Day 2016, because it was the day my father had a heart attack and passed away a week later. In the chaotic hours after he passed, there were too many calls and texts of support to count and certainly too many to answer. Despite all of this, one person's grief persisted and pierced through the profound grief: Billy Kenoi.

Billy called, asked where I was, and told me to come to the State Capitol. He said, ``It was time.'' I didn't know what he meant by that. My father had just passed, but when Billy spoke, I listened. When a man who was once a boy from Kalapana calls you in the middle of a family crisis, you know that he summons with it the resilience and strength of an island community that persisted through lava flow after lava flow.

I went to the State Capitol, to the desk of my father in the State Senate, surrounded by his colleagues, and my life was forever changed. Five years to the day after he passed, Billy Kenoi went into po himself, and he crossed into the afterlife. He left behind a beautiful wife, Takako, and three children, Justin, Liam, and Mahina. He was only 52. And like my father, he was too important a leader to lose too soon.

Billy was the personification of Kalapana. No matter what change life threw at him, he embraced it with pride, resilience, and a sense of humor. As Hawaii is now altered by the passing of this leader, we will conjure his spirit and the spirit of Kalapana. We will remember the boy from Kalapana who became the incomparable leader Billy Kenoi.

Colleagues, I leave you with words from his final speech--and he was famous for speeches--to remember him and take us to a more resilient and prouder future: If impossible is nothing, then everything is possible.

Madam Speaker, as a member of our Armed Forces, now a Member of Congress, I have taken and given the oath of office many times. I will support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

On January 6, the President violated his oath, inciting violent and deadly insurrection. Our sacred oaths are hollow without accountability. We must hold this President accountable, remove him from office, and ensure he can never hold public office again.

I urge my colleagues to do the same. This oath has to matter. Mahalo.