Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to say thank you to the wonderful people of the 23rd District of Texas who, for the last 2 years, have given me the great privilege of serving as their voice here in the people's House.

I am living proof that this is a nation of opportunity and that the American Dream still exists. God has blessed me in many ways. I was born into a warm and loving family. My parents, Pete

and Elena, taught me to work hard and respect others. I am married to a wonderful wife, Maria Elena, who has stood with me through the peaks and valleys of the last 25 years. We are the parents of a phenomenal son, Nicolas Miguel, who has brought us joy we never knew possible and has taught us the true meaning of love. In addition, though my roots are humble, I have had the privilege of working in this Chamber. Few people get the privilege to serve here.

Yet Congress isn't what it once was. Agreements are few, partisan rancor is common, statesmanship is rare. Who are the giants of history among us? Where are the statesmen and -women who accomplished historic feats through significant signature legislative achievements?

But we know that progress is still possible. We saw this session that when Congress puts party labels aside and gets to work, like we did on VA reform, we can accomplish some great things for the American people. But those occasions were far too rare.

More often, this Chamber saw bickering and pettiness, and this Congress made history as the least productive and most unpopular Congress in the history of this proud Nation. The American people responded by making history of their own. On election day, a record number of them simply threw up their hands, wondered what is the point, and didn't go to the polls.

It is easy to see why Americans are so tired of politics, to understand why many of us don't check in on election day; when our democracy needs us the most, we check out.

Polarization, discontent, dissatisfaction, disappointment, dismay-- all now normal in the course of our public discourse. Old-fashioned values like truth and good manners and respect for others' views and appreciation are no longer in vogue. Candidates and officeholders and super-PACs are shrill and mean--and yes, for some, the word would be even un-Christian--to one another.

Politicians distort truth and attempt to stampede people with fear, and many times our fears or our lack of faith win out. We fail to realize how really truly lucky we are as Americans.

Before chiding people for not meeting their civic responsibilities, Congress as a body should reflect on whether it has been meeting its own responsibility because even Congress complains about Congress, yet it does nothing to change. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle, but that is not where Congress is. In our current system, super-PACs attack those Members who stake out middle grounds.

The American people deserve better than they are getting. Our country deserves better. Our future and our children's future is too important. Both Congress and our country must rise to the occasion and confront and conquer our own internal paralysis. Patriotism must trump partisanship.

A robust democracy requires active participation. Congress--indeed, America--needs all of us. It needs Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians and Latinos and Anglos and African Americans and Asians-- Americans all.

Soon I will have the highest title that any American can have--not the title of an elected official, but the title of citizen. And as a citizen, I hope to continue to remind Congress of the importance of governing well and our fellow Americans of the importance of participating in our electoral system.

I have faith that ours is a resilient Nation blessed by God. Despite our frustrations and our fears and our failings, despite ourselves, we still live in the greatest Nation the world has ever known.

Sure, times are tough, but they were tougher for our parents and our grandparents. If you think back a moment and you compare your life to theirs, you can see how far you and all of us have come.

The job now is not to be mad about and continually relive the old battles of the past nor to be afraid of the future, but to look forward and to build our future together.

I leave this institution with no regrets and many accomplishments for the people of home, particularly grateful for the opportunity to work with and serve our veterans and our Active Duty military and amazed at the incredible and still untapped potential of our amazing democracy.

I want to say thank you to each of my employees and thank you again to all the people of the 23rd District of Texas, especially to those I have had the privilege of representing since I first became a State legislator in 1991.

I wish my successor well, and I offer my prayers for all the Members of the 114th Congress. You are capable of doing great things for America when you remember to put people and policy ahead of partisanship and politics.

May God bless Texas, and may God bless the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Palo Alto College on the famed south side of San Antonio. Making a high impact through education, Palo Alto College has been meeting the needs of first generation college students in the San Antonio area and in the surrounding communities.

In doing so, Palo Alto College prepares students for a 4-year degree program or to enter the workforce with

the skills and the training necessary to strengthen the future of San Antonio, Bexar County, and the 23rd District of Texas.

Palo Alto College was officially chartered by the State of Texas in 1983. Two years later, in 1985, it began offering its first classes, and since then, Palo Alto has quickly grown with the city of San Antonio.

In 1991, because of its deep roots in the Hispanic community and its dedication to helping Hispanic families overcome common barriers to higher education, Palo Alto College was named a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the Federal Government.

Today, Palo Alto College serves over 8,000 students and offers 95 relevant academic programs that move the country forward. Programs include criminal justice and aviation technology, among many others. It also works very closely with employers like Toyota to be sure that its students are receiving cutting-edge training. In ensuring the college can meet the demands of Texas' energy production, it also offers programs in oil and gas technology.

It is ably led by Dr. Mike Flores who, prior to assuming the presidency, had worked his way up through each of the three vice president positions at Palo Alto, and he has served the Palo Alto community for over 19 years.

Where others have provided lip service, Palo Alto College has found success. With a firm understanding of the promise that our Nation has made to its veterans, Palo Alto College is committed to ensuring higher education remains accessible to veterans and Active Duty servicemen and servicewomen alike.

Palo Alto College has been listed among the top 20 percent of schools that support veteran education. It has an incredible network of people and resources available to serve veterans. I thank Palo Alto College for the work that they do with our veterans and the Active Duty military. It really is very impressive.

Palo Alto college also plays a fundamental role in the success of many individuals in our community, and its impact will be seen for many generations. Whether it's providing a second chance to nontraditional students through its GED programs or whether it is preparing students for the next level of education, Palo Alto College is there. It is there to meet the needs of the community and to help families achieve prosperity in the American Dream.

I congratulate Palo Alto College on its upcoming birthday--30 years of educational excellence--and I thank them for their continued commitment to ensure education remains accessible. Their mission to provide relevant and needed educational opportunities is admirable.

I look forward to seeing the many successes of those who pass through the doors of Palo Alto College.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 549, had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to say thank you to Bill McManus, William McManus, who has announced his retirement as the chief of the San Antonio Police Department in the seventh largest city in the country.

Chief McManus has been on board in San Antonio for some 8 years, but he brought with him 30 years of experience in law enforcement in such areas as diverse as narcotics, tactical positions, criminal investigations, internal investigations, the full range of experience.

As a result of his service in San Antonio, their police department is more well-respected, more well-trained than ever in San Antonio's history.

Chief McManus I first met when he was testifying before the legislature and I served as chair of the committee on criminal jurisprudence.

I know well his passion for law enforcement and his passion for people. We will miss him dearly at the city, but we wish him well in his future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, few things we do here are more important than taking care of the men and women who have fought to protect our Nation. Doing something about the issue of suicide is incredibly important.

Not so very long ago, I had the opportunity to talk to a person that I had known for a very long time who I had met while serving in the legislature and who told me that his son, who was a veteran, had come back and was doing fine; yet, one day, he got the phone call that his son had committed suicide. No family should go through that.

Here in the Congress, we have an opportunity to do something about that. It is my hope that Congress, working in a bipartisan fashion, can work together to do something about this problem and to take better care across the board of the men and women who have fought every day, day in and day out, to serve our country.

Mr. Speaker, this morning, I would like to highlight one of the really interesting towns of west Texas as we continue to journey through the 23rd District, which encompasses nearly 24 percent of the land area of Texas, some 800 miles from one end of the district to the other.

With a population of over 800 people, Sanderson, Texas, is known as the Cactus Capital of Texas. It was originally named Strawbridge or Strobridge, and Sanderson was founded as a switching point for the Southern Pacific Railroad.

In 1882, a roundhouse was built there, and the name of the town was changed to Sanderson, after Thomas P. Sanderson, who was the engineer in charge of construction. In the following year, in 1883, a post office opened in Sanderson.

In Texas lore, there is a very famous person by the name of Roy Bean who was known as the Law West of the Pecos. Judge Roy Bean, wanting to capitalize on the new town with a lot of promise, opened a saloon in Sanderson in the early 1880s, but he couldn't compete with Charlie Wilson's Cottage Bar Saloon.

After Bean opened his saloon, Wilson allegedly spiked the whiskey with coal oil. Judge Bean soon had to move eastward to Vinegarroon and Langtry, and Sanderson was dubbed as being ``too mean for Bean.'' Those were the years of railroad workers and cowboys which filled the area.

At the turn of the century, in 1905, the once unruly Sanderson became the county seat of the newly-created Terrell County, and it remains the county seat even to this day.

Shortly after becoming the county seat, Sanderson started looking more and more like a town on the move, but, as time passed, Sanderson left behind its Wild West origins and became a crossroad--the midpoint, if you will--between San Antonio and El Paso.

The courthouse was built in 1906. Near the courthouse some years later, in 1931, an art deco-style high school was built, and Sanderson's population continued to grow to about 3,000 people during the first half of the 20th century.

Sheep and goats became the main goods as part of the livestock industry, and they are still main commodities of the area today. For example, in 1970, over 1 million pounds--over 1 million pounds--of wool and mohair were shipped out of Sanderson.

In 1965, Sanderson was devastated by a flash flood. The usually dry Sanderson Creek overflowed and claimed 24 lives. After the tragic event, 11 flood control dams were built around Sanderson by the Army Corps of Engineers to make sure that that would never happen again.

Sanderson was built around the railroad, and its fate has largely been determined by the railroad. A series of decisions altered, decisively, Sanderson's growth. During the 1970s, the new construction of Interstate 10,

I-10, bypassed Highway 90, and it bypassed Sanderson. It left Sanderson out of its path.

In addition, Union Pacific later moved its crew from Sanderson to Alpine. These had a detrimental effect on the community; but today, Sanderson remains a small but proud community which fights to maintain its rich history and its tradition of railroads, cowboys, and west Texas culture.

Sanderson High School, known as the Sanderson Eagles, produce a lot of incredibly talented kids who go to universities from Rice to my own alma mater, Sul Ross State University in Alpine. In fact, many of the kids that I went to Sul Ross with were from Sanderson, Texas, and many of their teachers have degrees from Sul Ross.

In more recent times, Sanderson has put out a number of people. My immediate predecessor in the legislature, Judge Dudley Harrison, was from Sanderson, and ``Chago'' Flores, who is the first Latino elected county judge in the history of Terrell County, is serving even now.

If visiting that area, I want you to know that you will have access to an extensive variety of memorabilia at the Terrell County Memorial Museum, and I want you to know that Sanderson is still the Cactus Capital of Texas and the East Gate to the Big Bend Wilderness Area.

I invite you to stop by Sanderson if you are ever visiting the 23rd District of Texas.

Mr. Speaker, today as we continue our journey through the 23rd District in which I take viewers and listeners on a 1-minute journey through the district, through its towns, its cities, its cultures, and its people, this morning I have the great privilege of highlighting Fabens, Texas.

Fabens is located in the Mission Valley south of El Paso and, as of the 2010 census, had a population of 8,257 people. It is about 30 miles southeast of El Paso, located along the Rio Grande River and I-10.

Known as the home of the Wildcats, Fabens has long been a fierce competitor and a rival of my own Alpine Bucks. In fact, I still remember rather vividly when Alpine lost the district championship in football to Fabens my senior year of high school in 1980. I don't think anyone in either Alpine or Fabens has ever forgotten that football game. Kids in Fabens are competitors, whether in sports or academic competitions, and their prowess is known far and wide.

The history of the community itself dates from the late 19th century, though in 1665 a mission branch known as San Francisco de los Sumas was established just southeast of the future site of Fabens. A stagecoach station called San Felipe was in operation about 3 miles northeast of the site before 1870.

In the 1870s, Teodoro and Epitacia Alvarez owned a small farm on the actual site of what is now Fabens. That farm was known as the Mezquital. In 1887, the town site was sold to E.S. Newman, and the first permanent settler in what is now Fabens became Eugenio Perez, who came from San Elizario around 1900.

Mr. Perez himself owned a small farm, opened a small store; and shortly thereafter, when the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railway built through the area and established a water-pumping station, the community began to grow. In 1906, this store became the very first Fabens post office.

The town of Fabens itself, when you think about the name ``Fabens,'' where did that come from? It was named for George Fabens, an officer with the Southern Pacific Railroad.

In 1910, Fabens had just a few section houses for the railroad employees and two stores; and in 1914, the estimated population was only about 100, but the next few years brought many to the area as people began fleeing the Mexican Revolution.

The town site was laid out in 1911, but the development didn't really happen until the Fabens Townsite and Improvement Company bought it in 1915. The completion in 1956 of the Franklin Canal and the subsequent rise in cotton prices during World War I attracted a number of wealthy visitors to the area.

The rolling fields of the area, nestled in the shadow of the mountains to the west and immediately adjacent to the Rio Grande, were and still are perfect for farming.

The estimated population rose from 50 in 1925 to 2,000 2 years later, despite a major flood at that time. The price of cotton dropping and going up has all impacted Fabens. During the Great Depression, the estimated population of Fabens fell to 1,600. But in the early 1930s, as the Depression took hold, it fell and fell; but at the end of the 1930s, by about 1939, it had started an upward trend again.

In April of 1972, Fabens served as the location for the filming of the Sam Peckinpah film, ``The Getaway.'' The crime drama starred Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. Movie scenes were shot in the area and included explosions and car chases and shootouts. The film became a success and earned a big sum for those days of $25 million at the box office.

Today Fabens is also home to one of west Texas' most popular and famous restaurants, the Cattleman's Steakhouse. The steakhouse serves delicious food, and it too has played a role in several movies.

Fabens is also the home of jockey Bill Shoemaker.

As I indicated earlier, kids in Fabens are served by the Fabens Independent School District and are known as the Wildcats. Many teachers in the Fabens ISD got their degrees from my own alma mater, my college alma mater, Sul Ross State University. Perhaps

that is part of the reason I always feel so at home in visiting Fabens.

The next time you are in the 23rd District of Texas, I invite you too to visit Fabens, to enjoy the hospitality, to see the sights, and to learn the history of Fabens and all of west Texas.

Mr. Speaker, today, as we continue our journey through the 23rd District of Texas, I would like to highlight the historic city of Socorro, in El Paso County. It is located in the center of El Paso's Mission Valley, a valley named for three historic missions founded by Spanish priests, soldiers, and colonists.

Socorro is also home to the Socorro High School Bulldogs. They are known for many things, but particularly they are known for their prowess in baseball. Socorro High is a former State

champion in baseball. In a State as big as Texas, that is a pretty impressive feat.

The roots of Socorro began to take shape in 1680 when Governor Antonio de Otermin and Father Francisco de Ayeta led the Spanish and Piro Indian refugees who were fleeing the New Mexico Pueblo Indian revolt to the El Paso area. Two years later, they built a mission, Nuestra Senora de la Limpia Concepcion del Socorro, the second-oldest mission in Texas. Unfortunately, this first mission was swept away by a flood on the Rio Grande in 1744 and a second mission was built.

Today it may be hard to imagine, but the Rio Grande in those days was a wild river, much different from the dry riverbed or placid stream of today. And a powerful flood also washed away the second mission in 1829.

In 1843, the main part of the present Socorro mission was completed, and at that time, Socorro had a population of about 100 people. The city of Socorro is one of those cities in Texas that has seen several flags flown over it. Founded by the Spanish, it became a part of Mexico from 1821 to 1848, and as a result of the U.S.-Mexican war, Socorro became part of Texas.

The area around El Paso can be arid and harsh, but the secret to Socorro's longevity has been its acequias, a well-designed system of irrigation canals still in existence today. These acequias provided water for crops and vineyards.

The development of Socorro suffered a setback in 1881 when the railroads laid their track all the way to El Paso but they bypassed Socorro. This shifted the development and the political power into the city of El Paso itself. And yet the determined city of Socorro continued to grow, and it diversified and developed various industries. Its resolute citizens were determined to stay in the area.

Later on, unscrupulous developers started to build homes and residential subdivisions there that didn't have paved streets or water or sewer, but Socorro residents again rose up against these builders of these colonias to make sure that their city survived and prospered. And today, the city of Socorro is home to some 32,000 people, making it the 95th largest city in Texas.

The city of Socorro is El Paso County's second largest municipality, and there is a lot of history in Socorro, a lot of places to go and see. If you have got a young kid, a young child, you will want to hang out where the community gathers, and that is at Bulldog Championship Park, which includes a splash park, an amphitheater, walking trails, and a pond.

There is also the Socorro Entertainment Center, known as Speaking Rock, operated by the Tiguas, a Pueblo tribe located in the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. The Entertainment Center welcomes recording artists like B.B. King and the Gipsy Kings, Everclear and Korn, just to name a few.

Socorro is served by the Socorro Independent School District, with one high school, three middle schools, and five elementaries.

I invite people visiting the 23rd to stop by Socorro, enjoy Texas culture. It is an infusion of Southwest history and Southwest traditions.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 493 I was temporarily off the House floor. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, if you read what reporters are already saying, they are saying that this isn't a serious bill that will ever become law--that opportunity was lost yesterday when the original bill was pulled. They are saying this bill does nothing because it isn't going anywhere once it leaves the House.

The perception of the press and the American people is that this is all political theater. Why don't we prove them wrong? Why don't we cancel our travel plans and commit to staying here until we can agree on an actual solution to this border issue that we can put into a bill that might actually have a shot of becoming law?

Any single one of us who is married knows the importance of compromise. Imagine what happens if you walk in your house every day and you tell your spouse: I really don't care what you think today, I am not interested in your opinion, we are going to do it my way.

Well, that marriage wouldn't last very long. Anyone who is in a marriage knows the importance of compromise and knows what happens when a relationship is one-sided.

We can get together on this. We did it for the VA; we can, and we should do it for this. An opportunity to sit down around the same table and negotiate our way through in a very serious and in a very real way--without the rhetoric, just simple reason, simple common sense-- that makes a difference every day for the people on our border. That is what I would ask, and that is what I think the American people are asking.

Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise in support of the conference committee report, asking all of our fellow members to support it, and I congratulate the chairman with whom I had a rather spirited conversation on this floor, as well as the ranking member on accomplishing the first step, I think, and it is the first step, but it is a significant step.

I am particularly proud that two of the provisions that I came to this floor to argue for--that being additional facilities, including an expansion of the facility in San Antonio, as well as additional support personnel, medical personnel, and health care personnel--are included in this bill.

This bill includes so much more: a graduate medical education component and, in addition, educational opportunities for spouses and families. This is an incredible first step.

I, again, want to underscore my thanks to the chairman, to the ranking member, to the members of the conference committee, and this is a great first step at putting us in the right direction towards finally treating our veterans with the respect that they not only deserve, but they have earned over the period of their service.

Mr. Speaker, today, I would like to continue the journey through the vastness of the 23nd District of Texas and pass through a Texas town with an early reputation for infamy. ``Cotulla! Everybody get your guns ready,'' that is what train conductors would yell as they approached the town of Cotulla, which was established in 1881.

In spite of its infamous start, Cotulla emerged from the roughness that is common to early Texas towns and became an early indicator of the social change that was to come to America, taking on issues such as civil rights and women's education.

Life in Cotulla inspired a very young teacher, a man by the name of Lyndon B. Johnson, who went on to serve as our country's 36th President, and inspired him to lead the fight for change. President Johnson taught Mexican Americans in Cotulla's segregated public schools.

Early on, he understood how education could pull a family out of generations of poverty and push them into the middle class. LBJ, after his experience in Cotulla, once said:

This Nation could never rest while the door to knowledge

remained closed to any American.

Education, the key that opens the locks of success, found an early ally in Cotulla. The town itself was founded by a young entrepreneur by the name of Joseph Cotulla, who was a Polish immigrant and a veteran of the Union Army. He was willing to take the risk of establishing a town after learning that the International-Great Northern Railroad intended to expand into La Salle County. This willingness to risk is still what makes our country great today.

The town grew from an early farming and ranching community into an energy boomtown in the 1950s. That still continues today in the Eagle Ford Shale area. Today, as in the past, the folks in Cotulla work to secure America's energy future, and by 2035, our energy deficit will be reduced to 4 percent.

Today, many of the descendants of Joseph Cotulla still live in the town. The town has seen tremendous change since its founding and its infamous early reputation. In truth, we find a small reflection of America in Cotulla: a willingness to overcome adversity and take risks to find success and to achieve. Cotulla's history also points out that the fabric of American society doesn't always match our founding values, but in Cotulla, it set in place a desire to change that.

I invite anyone who is visiting south Texas to stop by Cotulla, to learn its history, and to enjoy its hospitality.

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to continue the journey through the 23rd District of Texas and talk about Kermit, Texas, which many people know as being one of the communities in the center of all of the action with respect to the energy economy in Texas, but I know it as the home of the Yellow Jackets, the Yellow Jackets who, for years, have been a formidable foe for my own Alpine Bucks.

Kermit started life, the town started as a local trading and supply company, or trading and supply depot, for the ranches that dotted the west Texas landscape. Kermit gets its name not from a notable green frog known for being the first frog to communicate with humans, but, instead, it gets its name from Kermit Roosevelt, the only place in the United States that is named for the son of a former U.S. President, Teddy Roosevelt.

Kermit, Texas, became the county seat of Winkler County in 1910 and was a city, like many of the other rural communities in Texas, that had a challenge staying alive.

Small towns have always had a particular challenge, and in Kermit's case, they were devastated by a drought that struck the area in 1916 that forced many homesteaders and ranchers to leave. Kermit ran dry by 1924, and the Ern Baird family was the sole family in town, with three houses, a single-student school, and a lone courthouse.

The whole town nearly evaporated into the air until that sea of oil was discovered below the surface and, in 1926, Kermit, Texas, became a boomtown. That boomtown continued into the sixties, and through the boom, the town has seen tremendous growth.

During the rapid expansion of the city, flooding actually became a problem. As with small towns that are scattered throughout rural Texas, they worked through that problem to a solution. They constructed crown streets, and the city kept growing and building additional infrastructure to support the oil boom and the growing needs of their county.

Kermit, Texas, although small in size, has displayed that same attitude reflected in many of the successes of our great Nation. They work through tough situations with creativity and resolve, and, as a result, we as a nation greatly benefit from their willingness to stick through it.

Kermit, Texas, and those who worked and lived and raised families there, they have all contributed to our energy security. They have all contributed to the energy security of our entire country. Without them, it would have been difficult to meet the energy demands of World War II and, after the war, the economic boom that the U.S. would experience.

Even today, Kermit is a mainstay of the west Texas economy, an active chamber, an active community, a wonderful place to live and to raise kids, and, of course, the ever-proud Yellow Jackets.

If you find yourself near Kermit, Texas, I invite you to visit this small and historic town that has contributed so much so greatly to our Texas values, our Texas history, and our Texas success, Kermit, Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity.

I am constantly frustrated in this Chamber by our inability to come to an agreement. And today, we stand here arguing about whether a Senate position is better or whether a House position is better.

The truth is that the American people want action. One of the basic things that we can all agree on is that we do not have enough medical providers in our system. We see a lot of veterans, and we try to force a lot of veterans through a very small funnel with very few providers.

In fact, if you look at the data recently, as men and women come back from different places across the world, like Iraq and Afghanistan, we have a much higher pronounced need than ever before for physicians to treat PTSD. And yet, we have fewer physicians able to do that because, in that area of specialization, we do not have enough medical care providers in the VA.

It seems pretty basic that one of the things that we ought to be able to agree on is the fact that we need more health care providers in our system. You can leave aside the issue of construction or leave aside the issue of technology or any of those kinds of things.

The fact is that when a person, a patient, comes into the VA system, he needs a health care provider to be able to see him or her, and we do not have enough health care providers. That fact is inescapable.

Today's motion, essentially, seeks to take care of that one issue, and that one issue is that we need more health care providers.

It makes no difference to me, to the American people, to anyone that I know, whether we adopt the Senate position or the House position. The idea that we are arguing about that, about whether the Senate does this or the House does that is, frankly, ludicrous.

We should all come together on that one point. We should all understand that we need more health care providers. Our veterans deserve it. Our veterans need it. They are asking for that. The American people are demanding it. And Congress needs to be able to respond.

How should they respond?

They should respond through this motion to instruct the conferees so that we can agree on a very limited provision of the bill, a limited provision that says, regardless of all of the disagreements, regardless of all these side fights, we will agree on this one area, and that one area would be, we need more health care providers.

PTSD isn't the only thing where we are short of physicians. We are short of cardiologists, we are short of a lot of things. And if the VA has the opportunity and the permission to go forward and look for additional health care providers now, then we will be up and running much earlier than if we wait and wait and wait.

The challenge with Congress: manana seems to be the busiest day of the week here. We wait until tomorrow and tomorrow, and maybe next week there will be an agreement or maybe the week after that there will be an agreement. We need an agreement today, and this is our opportunity to do that.

Mr. Speaker, today, as we continue our journey through the 23rd District, I would like to travel to a small town some 40 miles west of San Antonio. That would be Hondo, Texas.

It is about 9.6 square miles of iconic America, and as you pass the city boundary, you are kindly reminded by a sign: ``This is God's country. Please don't drive through it like hell.'' That sign, erected by the local Lions Club in 1930, deters speeders. It has been featured on postcards; it has been the subject of many photos sent home by tourists; and it even made the cover of National Geographic magazine.

I remember that sign even as a little kid, long before I-10 was built and when Highway 90, through Hondo, was still the main thoroughfare-- the east-west highway--from L.A. to Florida.

Actually, the original sign just read: ``This is God's country. Don't drive through it like hell,'' but as you might imagine, it was a somewhat controversial sign for the 1930s. So, finally, in the 1940s, the word ``please'' was added to soften the tone and to placate those in town who found the sign a bit too harsh. Today, some 84 years after its installation, that sign still serves as a not-so-subtle reminder to slow down and, perhaps, to take a breath from the everyday rush of life and enjoy the little things, like family and friends and God and country.

Though settled in 1891, the Hondo area, which is now located in Medina County, was first explored by Cabeza de Vaca in 1519, only some 27 years after Columbus arrived in the New World. It displaced Castroville as the county seat, and Hondo shares a place in history with the many early Americans who built this Nation through sheer sweat and determination.

With the construction of the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railway, which was built through the county from the east in 1881, Hondo quickly transformed from a small, 25-resident settlement into a trade and shipping center for agriculture and ranching. Hondo was the scene of two bank robberies in the early 1920s. The crooks were the famed Newton Gang, the most successful outlaws in American history. Interestingly, both bank heists occurred on the same night.

Hondo, itself, was incorporated as a city in 1942, and at that time, Hondo applied for a U.S. Army air training facility to be built there. When our Nation was in need, they stepped up. The Hondo Army Airfield was constructed with local funding in 89 days, and it opened on July 4, 1942. The airfield would become the largest air navigation school in the world and would eventually train over 15,000 navigators to serve in World War II.

That airfield still exists, and though it is no longer affiliated with the U.S. military, today, it is a regional facility and is one of the busiest small commercial airports in Texas. Mayor James Danner and city leadership have done a phenomenal job of developing the airfield into a center of transportation and commerce. If your business needs a small airport near San Antonio and not too far from Eagle Ford Shale country, check out the airport in Hondo.

In addition, that airfield is home to one of the largest and most fun and entertaining air shows in Central Texas--and certainly the best air show in all of Congressional District 23. Each year, thousands of airplane enthusiasts descend on Hondo for the air show, which last year featured more than 20 or so World War II-era airplanes. Another feature of the air show was an exhibition called, ``Tora, Tora, Tora,'' a smaller but incredibly well-done reenactment of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a reenactment which was done using these vintage airplanes. It is a great event to take your kids and your grandkids to.

Hondo is a town of living history as many of its residents are descendants of the original 25 settlers. It is a town not lost in the rush of everyday life, and like much of Texas' 23rd District, its connection and commitment to the U.S. military run deep through its veins.

I invite everyone to take a trip to Hondo and experience iconic America. Remember, this is God's country. Please don't drive through it like hell.