Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be here. I don't often come to the well of the House for 2 or 3 minutes, let alone 60 minutes. But today is special, certainly for me, for my family, my extended family, and staff who are here today. This is my…
Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be here. I don't often come to the well of the House for 2 or 3 minutes, let alone 60 minutes. But today is special, certainly for me, for my family, my extended family, and staff who are here today. This is my chance to really say thank you, and I had a heck of a good ride serving the people of the Eighth District back home, and some thank yous upfront to my wife, Kristi, who is here, who is both my best friend and the love of my life. Thank you for being here.
Boy, this is going to be harder than maybe I imagined. To my family, Erin and John, thanks for weathering the storm for a Member of Congress who is more often gone at times when they should be home. As a matter of fact, I remember I knew I was getting in trouble when my daughter, who was going into the fifth grade, and because I would fly out to Washington from Michigan every week, I had scheduled Mondays as lunch day at her local school for years, and so I got the lecture going into her fifth grade year that I would have to stay within a zone of her when I came to lunch. I was no longer able to sit next to her at the lunchroom tables because that, after all, would be god-awful to have your father at lunch with you in the fifth grade. So I did get to sit across from her for about one more year. And going into sixth grade, by the way, that was pretty much done.
To everybody who had the great privilege to walk these Halls, including the visitors and folks at home, I hope you still have that reverence for this building and for this institution for what it means not just to America but to the world. I know I did every single day that I walked these Halls. This morning when I came in I still got that little tingle about what it meant to be a Member of Congress in this great institution.
I know I felt that with the members of my staff throughout the years. Every chief of staff, every legislative director, every staff director, and every other staff member that I have ever had, fellows and interns, stepped up to the plate and certainly I know helped me become a better Representative for the people of the Eighth District. And all the things that we were able to accomplish--all of them--happened because we had people who cared a little bit more about something bigger than themselves. They cared enough to sacrifice probably better careers with higher pay and shorter hours in the private sector. They chose to come to Washington, DC, or work in the district offices to plow through and represent really average Americans to a big Federal bureaucracy that sometimes seems so intimidating they had nowhere else to go. They were the friends on the other side of those phone calls.
Many of these folks have graciously showed up today: Chris Cox, Matt Strawn, Andy Keiser, Andrew Hawkins, Allan Filip, Heather Strawn, Mike Ward, Diane Rinaldo, Kyle Kizzier--thanks, Kyle, for not killing me on the highway on the way to meet the Turkish newly elected prime minister, I appreciate that a lot--and Michael Allen and Darren Dick.
I think of my first crew that was right in the district office fighting it out: Tony, Penni, Katie, and Stuart, all of those folks who were so committed, again, to getting it right on behalf of the people that they represented. To my campaign team--and by the way, there were so many more people, I could take the whole 60 minutes and thank them all--a campaign team who fought it all, beat every odd, and beat every pundit's prediction that I would never stand and walk these Halls as a Member of Congress: Terri Reid, Val Tillstrom, RJ Johnson, John Nevin, Katherine Van Tiem, Joe Rachinsky, Mike Gula.
I want to thank someone who is special in all of that to me, somebody who has been with me 22 years, from the very high points to the very low points, Anne, I couldn't have done it without you. Thanks for being here today. Wow. I said I wasn't going to do this. I think of all the things that as a staff you were able to accomplish, from cancer care legislation to protect rural patients to medical devices for children, and biodefenses. We even figured out a way to make server farms more efficient without mandates. That was clever.
To all of the constituents that picked up the phone and found a friend at the other end, I think of the time that we all gathered up to help keep a soup kitchen operating through the holidays by getting private donors to step up for people they had never met or organizations they had never heard of to help those folks get fed through the church kitchen.
I think about all of the time we huddled all the staff in because we had one of the great, successful, painful IRS issues where, after years of trying to get this thing straightened out and, certainly, the anxiety and problems that are faced when dealing with a bureaucracy like the IRS, we got to make that phone call.
Not only did they not owe money, the IRS had made a significant mistake, and they were going to get a pretty sizable check back. There wasn't a dry eye in the room when they made that call as the staff together.
From all of the folks that we helped with Social Security or the folks who got their medals that they earned, to see that room filled with individuals who teared up because it was the first time that they heard their loved one tell the story of how they earned those medals fighting for the defense of the United States of America--you know, it is pretty a fantastic thing that I got to be here, so the work that I did on the Intelligence Committee, I have to tell you, was some of the biggest and best privilege that I have had the opportunity to participate in.
Someone asked me at the time: ``Why did you go from being an FBI agent to wanting to serve and go through the political process that we all do?'' I recall a story, as a fairly young agent, we were working a case, trying to locate a young girl who had gone missing from a Western State.
She had come to Chicago. I was on the organized crime squad. We had a tip that would hopefully lead to this girl's return to her parents. They were very concerned. She was young at the time, 15 when she left home.
The long story--the fast forward of that story is we were able to locate this particular young lady. She was operating in a house of ill- repute that was run and really protected by the local police, run by Chicago organized crime.
The proprietors of this particular establishment kept all of the ladies completely hooked on heroin. They would gather them up at the end of the night and take them to a building that they owned and lock them up, feed them heroin, and get them back the next day for their night's work.
When we took this young lady out, she was probably 17 by the time we found, located, and started to disrupt these types of activities. I will never forget--we got her into the car. We had arranged counseling. There was a great agent, a senior agent who was always very valuable to me, a guy named Richard Davis.
As she was coming out, she didn't have a coat, so he expropriated the money I had in my wallet when we had an opportunity to get her a coat, which we did. In the back of the car, she was immensely quiet. She didn't say a word. Again, our goal was to get her to some counseling and try to get her life back on track.
Out of the blue--and it was very quiet in the car, and so it was very cutting when she talked. She turned her head, and in the only words she spoke, she said: ``Do you know why I didn't kill myself? Because I knew somebody cared enough to come find me.''
That certainly made a profound impact on me both as a young FBI agent and the work that I was doing there, but also what I was trying to do here as a Member of Congress. To know that somebody is empowered to ask the hard questions, to go to the tough places, to kick and stir the pot when I believed and the people around me believed that it was important for the security and defense of the country, or saving those rural cancer patients from driving hours and hours, or making sure children had medical devices, or maybe we came up with a bill--and did--for the protection of biodefense in the United States.
One of my greatest privileges was having the ability to stand with the men and women as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with these folks who served all over the world in the intelligence community, the defense community.
I never forgot that story of that young lady and what it meant. I always pledged to myself that if I was ever in a position to be in authority to make that difference, maybe ask that other question, push or probe a little bit more or push a bill, that I would do that.
I think together as staff, family and friends, we have accomplished that. Congratulations to you and all of the work that you have done as well.
As I had that opportunity to stand around the world with some really brave and courageous individuals, both in our military and our intelligence community, I just have two people that I need to point out because I want them to know about the profound impact they had on me now as a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and, certainly, their country and the work that I hope I took into as the role of chairman.
To the rock star of the CIA, thank you for standing up for your country in the shadows, for your leadership, for doing, I think, the country's hardest work. You have never complained. You sought no recognition, but in those shadows, you stood up at the right time to push the right policy that I believe has fundamentally made America safe. They never get to know your name, but I know it, and I thank you.
To Karzai's favorite, thanks for having the courage to take me where you weren't supposed to. Thanks for showing me up close and personal the very real challenges that the men and women of the CIA face in very dangerous places around the world.
Those particular early-on visits and counseling sessions set the pace for my understanding of what my role could be, to not only be tough on the Agency when it needed it, but to be supportive when the men and women of the Agency needed it as well. For that, I just want to say thank you, and thank you, again, for having the courage to stand up at the right time.
For any success I have had as chairman, I would be remiss if I didn't thank a good friend of mine, Dutch Ruppersberger. I know, in this town, saying you have a friend who is a Democrat as a Republican can get you thrown out. Oh, that's right, I'm leaving.
Thanks, Dutch, for really sitting down and putting our differences aside and working through tough and difficult issues to make the intelligence community work and work for the United States. It should happen more around here. It should happen every day around here. Sometimes, it does, and it doesn't get noticed, but I want to thank you for that.
We have had our donnybrooks. We have fought. There may even have been some finger-pointing-in-the-chest moments during our time together on the committee, but at the end of the day, we always came to the conclusion that we both mutually agreed was in the best interest of the United States of America and the security of not only our citizens here at home, but the well-being of the men and women who serve in harm's way. So, Dutch, thank you for that.
In all of the travels that I have had the benefit to do and all of the things that I have just reminisced about--and, hopefully, that was the hardest part of my remarks today--something always struck me, that America is the light of the world, still, today. People still hold in reverence something special that happens here.
It was reinforced to me when I was asked to go to the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. That was a few years ago. I thought: I'm not sure. Do I want to go to Belgium and go through all that?
I wasn't quite sure, but they hustled me up. They said, ``Let's do this. We will represent America. This will be a great event.'' So I went to the Battle of the Bulge.
We got tours of the battlefield, and all of that was wonderful, but the day of the parade--so the mayor of Bastogne, a town of 15,000 now, and it was a town of about 10,000 during the war. If you recall your history, that was the town where the 101st occupied that town surrounded by the Germans. It was difficult, tough fighting.
The mayor of Bastogne brought back all of the soldiers who could still walk and march in the parade, and even those who wanted to make the trip, but couldn't, they had a vehicle for them. You wondered: How would they remember this 60 years later? How would they remember what service and sacrifice these young kids who were from all over the country who had never been away from their farms or their retail shops, never been out of their communities, traveled all that way to fight for something so much bigger than themselves?
The town was packed. There must have been 100,000 people there. As the gentlemen marched during that parade, it was the proudest moment I can remember, as they tried to stand straight for those that could. They even carried the American flag. People were screaming and hollering and clapping. They held signs up that said, ``Thank you for saving my grandparents from a concentration camp.'' That was a powerful moment.
That evening, people who were children of Bastogne during the surrounding of Bastogne by the Germans who came up to offer some words at the microphone to these folks who were getting a medal from the mayor, and think about it, these would have very young gals who had grown up, and they were telling stories about these big, giant men who would come down into the basement and offer them their coats and their scarves and what little bit of food they had left, some candy, blankets. They would take off their boots and give them their socks because they had none.
Remember, these were the civilians who were trapped in this town during the ravages of war. They talked about the reverence of a country that would come that far away to stand with them at a time when they thought that their lives mattered very little in the gears of war.
You think about the fact that about $15 billion in the United States has been spent to save a million lives in Africa through our AIDS program that started a few years ago under George Bush--1 million lives saved.
Sixty percent of food aid that goes out, that goes to people who need food security, they can't eat, let alone have a program to take care of them, comes from the United States of America--the farms of the United States of America. The next highest contributor is less than half of that, and that is the EU, combined, for world hunger.
The Marshall Plan right after World War II, many maligned, but we invested a certain amount of money, so we could provide stability across Europe. Back then, it was $12 billion, which was a tremendous amount of money, money we probably didn't have.
Because of that--and we made the investment to keep soldiers there, not to occupy, we wanted nothing, we took nothing. We took no soil. We were invited to stay. It brought peace and stability across Europe in a way that we had never seen before. Think of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small and large conflicts across Europe from the 12th century on, including the 19th century.
We brought them peace and prosperity in a way that Europe never believed it could do on its own. We did it through commerce, stability, and a commitment to stay. At the end of the day, no other nation in the world could have done that. We pushed back at the ravages of a cold war.
If you think about today, you see those events, and you come back to the United States, and you turn on the TV, and you listen to political dialogue today, you wouldn't think too awful much of the United States of America. You would think that we had become a country who didn't think that we provided much value in the world, we are going the wrong way, don't have much to offer, a nation in decline.
In fact, I had the occasion to have a meeting with a Russian general officer some time back about missile defense and some other things. When the meeting was done--this was a very large general. He was maybe the largest human being I have ever had a meeting with.
He put his arm around me. His hand hit my chest. It was about the size of a big dinner plate. He asked me to go into the library. He wanted to say something to me. As we were walking into the library, I thought: I have seen this movie, I don't think it works out all that well for me.
When we got into the library, he said something that startled me--it shouldn't have, I suppose--but he said: ``It is great to finally see that America is admitting she is a nation in decline. We have been through it. We will give you all of the advice and counsel you can take.''
He didn't come to that conclusion on his own. America--maybe our political rhetoric, maybe our own actions, maybe our own sense of isolationism is the answer for us--helped him come to that conclusion.
A few years after that, seeing the world the way it was--Putin owns 20 percent of the country of Georgia, no intention of leaving; he annexed Crimea, certainly playing games in eastern Ukraine. The world notices when we stop believing in ourselves. I can't think of a better example of that to me in recent times. For all the debate about Afghanistan--should we or shouldn't we? Should we stay? Should we not? I have, certainly, my own definite positions on that.
In 2001, the average age, the average life span of an Afghan citizen was 43 years--43 years. Last year, it was 64 years. Nine percent when we got there--9 percent--had access to any form of health care. Today, 60 percent.
We asked women to come out of the back of their homes and participate in society, because we knew as a country you cannot isolate half of your population and be great at anything; you can't even be good at anything. We asked them and said we will be here, because we knew that was a long-term investment for the state's stability and security of Afghanistan.
When we got there, there were no girls in school, or almost no girls in school. Today, 9 million Afghan girls go to school 5 days a week. Thirty-seven percent of the labor force today are women in Afghanistan. It was about zero when we got there. One-quarter of their parliament is women.
We have these discussions about how hard it is and how difficult it is and maybe we should change direction and, I don't know, maybe that we are not the America that we used to be. And now we talk about just pulling up stakes and going home because it is easier. What a stain on our national character if we walk away from the women we asked to come out and engage oppression and brutality and ignorance because we just didn't think that we believed enough in freedom, democracy, and stability the way we used to.
I had a woman doctor I met there on the very first occasion I went who trained in America. She had been sentenced to the back of her house in Pakistan. She was an orthopedic surgeon. She had not been out of her house in 6 years. When the U.S. forces first got there and she heard the sounds of the guns, she said she took off her burka, she walked about 9 to 10 miles to the children's hospital and volunteered.
I happened to meet her at the children's hospital, a pretty tough place. They didn't have clean sheets. They didn't have antiseptic the way they needed. Remember, this is really early in the process.
I asked her if it bothered her to hear the sounds of the guns in the distance. I will never forget, because she grabbed my jacket that I was wearing and said: Last night, in this particular bed--and, by the way, there were two and three children per bed. They didn't have enough beds. And because they had chased all the nurses away, mothers would come in with their children and would have to stay in the hospital rooms. So think of small rooms, two and three children per bed, plus the mothers who provided some minimal care without the greatest of cleanliness conditions. You can imagine how tough this is.
And she grabbed my lapel and said: Last night, in that bed, I had to amputate the arm and a leg of a 9-year-old boy. I didn't have the right medical devices. I didn't have the right antiseptic. But if it weren't for the United States, he would have no chance at all, and none of the children here would have a chance at all.
So we have to ask ourselves: Are we going to let our politics become so small? We have let our politics become the thing that, if I can make you believe you hate someone else, I could get that someone else's vote.
Is that the America we are going to give to the next generations of Americans? We are going to find the one thing that divides us, or even if it doesn't, we will make it up and let you believe it does. We are going to decide that if you are of this race or of this color, you can't be for that party or this idea. I can't think of anything more small and more petty than that.
I think of the challenges of the world that lie before us, not only just here at home. We have some big problems here at home--$18 trillion in debt. Seventy percent of our budget now goes to entitlement programs, and it is growing. We have a Tax Code that is so convoluted, so ugly, so brutal American companies are leaving or, worse yet, they are not even starting. Social security is in financial trouble; Medicare, financial trouble.
China is now pushing out, being very aggressive in the South China Sea. It has invested 13 percent per year since 1989, 13 percent into defense and modernization of its military. Russia, you saw what they are doing. ISIS, you have seen what they are doing. They are now holding land the size of Indiana.
So many Americans don't want to be bothered with the world the way they see it. They think, if we just leave it alone and deal with some of the small and petty things that not only get debated here but get debated in State capitols and county conventions, that the world will be just all right, we will be fine. We will make our politics so entertaining it doesn't matter if we accomplish anything noteworthy. I worry about that.
Are we going to be that generation that walks away from the notion of individual freedom and personal responsibility? Are we going to be that first generation that says, you know, we rejected the idea of a big government? Is a big government big enough to give you everything that you need? Is a government big enough to take everything that you have?
This is really the only place in the world where you can start sweeping the floor, maybe not even speaking English, become the supervisor, go to school, learn a trade, become a manager, maybe own the place through your own hard work. You don't have to have a title. You don't have to know someone. You just have to be willing to try.
Are we really going to be the first generation that says that all was just too hard? Our engagement in the world was just too hard? The Marshall Plan, sending our young men and women to fight for something bigger than themselves to push back Nazi Germany, fascism, or imperialism in the East, just too hard?
There is a great story about a little town called North Platte, Nebraska, that when they had the opportunity--and remember, they were under government rationing, so they were rationing eggs and rubber and tires.
By the way, we have been in conflict for 10 years and nobody has been rationed one thing. You still get your tires and your eggs and your cheese. You can get anything you want. No show has been interrupted.
But in North Platte, Nebraska, during World War II, trains would go back and forth taking soldiers to the eastern conflict and to Europe. And that little town came together, farmers from that whole region, donated all the materials
that they had--eggs and cheese and flour and their time. They met every single troop train that came through North Platte, Nebraska. They, on their own, fed 6 million meals to young soldiers and marines and airmen, sailors whom they had never met. But they believed that was their contribution and something bigger than themselves to keep America who we were.
By the way, there was no government program. Nobody told them to do it. As a matter of fact, government made it a little harder than it should have been for them to do it on their own.
This is a funny place, America. You can start out without title, without privilege. You can be the House intelligence chairman because you care enough to get involved, work hard enough. You can start out as a traveler all over the world and do different things, become President of the United States, without title, without privilege. You can start an idea in a garage, work your heart out, be smarter than the guy next to you, become one of the richest men in the country, maybe the world. You can still start a chain. You can work two jobs. You can get an education if you want to get an education.
If you turn on the TV today, would you know that we are still the last best hope in the world? I am not sure I would. I certainly see all the things that separate us, all the things that divide us, all the problems that we want to make--sometimes even though they are intimately personal and real--bigger than they are. When we do that, the world watches. The world is starting to believe that we don't believe.
I had an occasion to meet an intelligence official from a foreign country whom I befriended. And, again, after one of those long kind of meetings that we had overseas, we were walking out to the car and he said: Congressman, do me a favor. Tell your countrymen don't give up on themselves. Who will help such a small country like us and take nothing for it--the Russians? The Chinese? It can only be you, the United States of America.
We have so much to be thankful for in this country, but you wouldn't know it by listening to the quality of the debate, by the size of our ideas, by the confidence in our future.
There is a study recently that Chinese citizens believe that corporations and business lead to success and are a part of the answer at an 84 percent rate. In the United States, it was 39 percent. We have a whole generation of Americans who just turned their back on the one driver that has led the one nation to take care of more people and do so much good and ask for nothing in return, because we spend far too much time talking about how bad we are and not how good we are or how good we can become.
You think of the debates not only in this Chamber but the Chamber aft, where they talked about a country that was ripping itself apart in a Civil War. 500,000 Americans gave their lives, again, for something bigger than themselves. And do you know what? At the end of the day, we were better for it. We became a better country.
Every time we reached one of those points in our history where we struggle, we get through it because we believe in something bigger than ourselves and we believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today and, yes, we believe that our best days are still head of us.
I hope we don't decide that these problems are just too big to handle anymore. I don't care if it is our domestic problem at home or our call to stand up for that last beacon of human dignity and invest in our military, not because we fight, but because we want to avoid a fight. Sometimes by showing up, you can help your neighbor and your friend by just standing there.
I have never met a diplomat yet that really likes the military engagement, and I have never met a diplomat yet that doesn't want the 101st Airborne over one shoulder and the 7th Fleet over the other. It is always the quicker way to ``yes.''
We have been given a gift. As we debate--and this Chamber will debate--in the months and years ahead, they will talk about what role we should play, about what big problems we should solve, about what encouragement we should provide to average Americans to stand up for both their right and their responsibility as citizens of the United States. Will we take it? Will we be the ones that click the light and let it go dark for that last shining city on the hill? I don't believe we will. I believe, as Winston Churchill noted, that America will always do the right thing after trying everything else.
We are in that process of trying everything else. But when you have had the great privilege, like I have, to meet these people all over the world, the people that work here--and it may be Peggy who keeps this place running, or Doris and Pat who keep the cloakroom functioning, or Capitol Police, or our clerks, or the people who process things, or our staff who answer the phone calls--they still believe.
You can go home and see people struggling to keep their businesses open. They still believe. You can look at the eyes of any fourth grader, fifth grader, or sixth grader--not necessarily a seventh grader because they think they have all the answers by that point--and know that they believe there is something special waiting for them. That something special they may not be able to quantify, but we all know it. It is the United States of America, the last greatest force for good.
I know it by visiting those men and women in the intelligence business who are working their hearts out and, by the way, deserve our full devotion of support for the very difficult work that they do, and the young men and women in our military, or the young folks in the following story.
I had the great privilege to travel downrange. When I showed up, someone asked me if I would mind promoting one of the soldiers who happened to be there from a sergeant E-5 to a sergeant E-6. It was in a very remote place in the world. They had to culturally dress in the garb of the locals. They weren't in their uniforms.
When I got there, the sergeant going through this decided that he wanted to be promoted in uniform. So we had to go to a small room that was tucked away. He put his uniform on. The windows were darkened out. There were a lot of folks and some small gear. Some of the folks were pretty big. We had one little 3\1/2\ by 5 flag. Two of the gentlemen were fighting to see who got to hold it behind him as I posted the orders for promotion. These were pretty big dudes. I wasn't going to get in the middle of that.
They finally worked it out and decided that one would hold one corner and the other would hold the other corner. They would stand behind him. So I cracked the chem light to read the orders. There were probably eight of us jammed in this little room with gear, windows darkened, and we were doing everything in hushed tones. Somebody began to whisper ``The Star Spangled Banner.'' I am pretty sure we were off key. I am pretty sure we even missed a verse. But I can tell you it was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my life.
These fine Americans who had been away from their families for about 15 months still believed in something bigger than themselves. They knew that their mission was as important as being home with their child at a baseball game, not because that is not where they wanted to be, but this is where their country needed them to be.
They are still there. We ought to be there with them. We ought to find that opportunity to stand and, in hushed tones, show courage and commitment to the United States. We ought to snap this trend of small and petty politics and stand up for one of the greatest nations on the face of the Earth. We ought to have big ideas to solve big problems and not let the small ideas be choked out. Let us find the better part of our angels in us to do something pretty amazing and pretty incredible as we move forward.
I believe in this Chamber and in this institution. I know it will happen. I know the people that I have had the privilege to serve with know it will happen. And I know that there are many ways for all of us to contribute. I certainly plan to be one of those. I hope you all decide that you will be one of those, too. Because I walk out that door in a few months no longer a Member of Congress, I will have an even more revered title in the world: citizen of the greatest Nation on the face of the Earth, the United States of America.
God bless you.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
