Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 433 I was unavoidably detained at a personal doctor's appointment. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 432 I was unavoidably detained at a personal doctor's appointment.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker on rollcall No. 431, I was unavoidably detained at a personal doctor's appointment.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``no''.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 430, I was unavoidably detained at a personal doctor's appointment.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes''.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 429 I was unavoidably detained at a personal doctor's appointment. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall no. 428, I was unavoidably detained at a personal doctor's appointment. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I recently heard a story about one of our wounded soldiers being forced to participate in a lengthy and uncomfortable security screening at the airport. I immediately contacted the head of the TSA to express my outrage and disappointment that one of our Nation's heroes would be forced to go through such an ordeal.

I believe one of the most solemn responsibilities of our government is to care for our veterans and those who have been injured in the line of duty. We must remember that even little things can be cumbersome and difficult. The last thing our heroes need is to face a long line or be forced to answer endless questions about their conditions when all they want to do is board a plane and fly home to be with their loved ones.

As chairman of the Transportation Security Subcommittee, I've had an active role in working with TSA, the administrator, and my colleague, Ms. Gabbard, the author of this legislation, to adopt protocols that will increase accessibility and privacy and offer less invasive screening for those with severe combat-related injuries.

I urge my colleagues to help pass the Helping Heroes Fly Act, as amended, by unanimous consent today. I am proud of this legislation because it shows an example of Republicans and Democrats working together to find solutions for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 1344) to amend title 49, United States Code, to direct the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security (Transportation Security Administration) to provide expedited air passenger screening to severely injured or disabled members of the Armed Forces and severely injured or disabled veterans, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, as a cosponsor of this amendment, I rise to speak in support of eliminating the Essential Air Service program.

I thank my colleague from California (Mr. McClintock) for his work on this amendment.

Another Californian once said, ``There's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.'' Mr. Chairman, I'm sure all my colleagues recognize that famous line from former President Ronald Reagan. His statement was accurate then, just as it is accurate now, regarding the Essential Air Service program.

This program was intended to be temporary. It was created as a transition program in the seventies after airline deregulation to help rural airports adjust to a free market system. We are now more than 25 years after the intended end date of 1988, and the taxpayers are still footing the bill.

This is yet another example of Washington's spending problem, Mr. Chairman. It has to stop.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, North Carolina state representative Jerry Dockham has been a public servant of Davidson County for 23 years. Appointed to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1990, Representative Dockham was continuously elected to serve 12.5 terms to represent the 80th District in the NC House.

A business graduate of Wake Forest University, Jerry operated an insurance company in his hometown of Denton, North Carolina for 38 years.

During his time in the North Carolina House, Jerry served as Chairman of the Committee on Insurance, Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Banking and a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Commerce and Job Development. Representative Dockham was consistently ranked in the top 10% of House legislators by the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation. He has received numerous awards, such as, `Legislator of the Year' by the North Carolina Society of Anesthesiologists and the `Emergency Medicine Advocate of the Year Award' by the North Carolina College of Emergency Physicians.

The husband of a teacher assistant, Representative Dockham has served on the Davidson County Community College Board of Trustees for 26 years. Jerry is an active member of his community, serving as a member of the Thomasville Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Denton Lions Club. He and his wife, Louise, are the proud parents of Andy and Matthew.

In his farewell speech on the floor of the North Carolina House, Representative Dockham left his colleagues with these words of advice: ``I would just leave you with two requests. First of all, always honor this chamber. Always honor the House of Representatives and what it stands for. This is the People's House. And secondly, I would ask you this: always be kind to each other. We're down here,

we're away from home, we're away from our family and we deserve to be kind to each other. Whether you agree or disagree with someone, it doesn't cost anything to be kind to that person.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise to call his extraordinary service and devotion to North Carolina to the attention of my colleagues and other readers of the Record.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 365, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

I thank my colleague, Mr. Speaker. It's an honor to be here tonight.

I'm a new Member of Congress. I was elected just last year. I ran for Congress the first time I had ever run for office because I want to come up here and fight for people, because there are folks back home that are frustrated, they feel like their government is not being responsive to their needs. So I'm here to represent them and be a voice for those people.

I think of the homebuilder in Monroe, North Carolina, who told me he's just struggling to keep his head above water and he'll take any kind of work just to keep his crew intact so he can keep them together. He'll do remodeling work or anything. He's not even worried about profit so much as being able to keep afloat.

I think about the families across the Eighth District of North Carolina who are looking to us for solutions. That's why I'm here tonight to join this conversation, to talk about immigration reform. The key to immigration reform, as far as I'm concerned is, we've got to look at compassion and we've got to look at fairness.

When it comes to fairness, we are a Nation of immigrants, but we're also a Nation of laws. So we've got to make sure we're enforcing the law in this country and we're respecting the rule of law when we're looking at making changes to immigration policy.

We also need to look with compassion on those who have come here to the United States seeking that American Dream when we try to determine what we're going to do going down the road.

But I think the key to this is the approach we're taking here in the House

of Representatives. The Senate has passed an immigration bill. It's a bill that was cobbled together behind closed doors. It was a bill that in my opinion went too far too fast. We're taking a much more thoughtful approach here in the House. We're going to go through the committee process. We're going to bring legislation to the floor so that we can debate these key issues affecting immigration as single issues and let the American people take part in this conversation and tell us what they think about issues like border security.

Now, the key to immigration reform in my opinion is we've got to secure the borders first, and any legislation that we pass out of this Chamber, any agreement we make with the Senate on immigration, we've got to have a trigger so that no other pieces of this immigration puzzle fall into place until we've got that border secure. So we're going to work hard to make sure that's part of our solution.

There are actually five pieces of legislation that have already passed out of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. I serve on the Homeland Security Committee. We passed the Border Security Results Act of 2013.

What this does is it requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop a comprehensive strategy to secure the border. What a radical concept: let's actually have a plan. And so what we're saying in the House is: give us a plan. We want the Department of Homeland Security to work with the border sheriffs to come up with a plan to secure that border and come back to Congress and say, here's what we need. Here's the sections where we need fences. Here's the other types of technology, whether it be drones or other types of technological monitoring. These are the pieces of the puzzle we need to secure the border.

And a key to this is we have to have a metrics so we can measure whether the border is secure or not. Currently, we know the numerator, but we don't know the denominator. We know how many folks we're stopping coming across the border, but we don't know how many we aren't rounding up. And if you talk to any of the border sheriffs, you'll know that we're not anywhere close to being secure. So that's a key component of this legislation.

I look forward to talking more about some of the legislation that came out of the Judiciary Committee, some of the pieces of this immigration reform puzzle that we need to discuss.

I appreciate my colleague pointing out some of the legislation that the Judiciary Committee has already passed because I think it is important to understand that the House of Representatives is taking a different approach when it comes to immigration reform. So we passed the Border Security Results Act out of Homeland Security. We have also passed the Legal Workforce Act, which is the bill that reforms the E-Verify system, which gives us a much more workable E- Verify program, that gives our employers the certainty and the assurance that they can verify the citizenship of potential employees.

The second piece of legislation that came out of the Judiciary Committee already is the Skills Visa Act. This has to do with what's called the H-1B visas. These are for your high-skilled workers. These are for folks in math, science, and technology who may come to the United States to go to university to learn these skills and get on this career path, but then they don't have a visa to stay here. Most industrialized nations in the world, 80 percent of the visas they give out are based on work skills and needs of the workforce. Here in the United States, it's about 12 percent of the visas we give out. We have a lottery to give out visas; and to me, that's ridiculous. We need to reform the system so we're giving out visas to the type of people that we want to attract to this country. So the Skills Visa Act is legislation we're considering here in the House that will do that.

The third piece of legislation is called the SAFE Act. One of the issues we've talked about, we have to enforce the rule of law. Frankly, we don't have enough Federal agents enforcing the law. So what we need to do is empower States and municipalities, local governments that want to enforce the immigration law to be able to do that. That's what the SAFE Act does.

And then the fourth piece is the agriculture guest worker, AG Act. That is a critical piece for our economy. There are at least 11 million undocumented workers here in this country that we know of. Many of those folks don't want citizenship. What they want is the ability to work here legally. If we have an ag worker program that actually works, this is the H-2A program. Frankly, when I'm home, and I go home every weekend and meet with our local folks and I see farmers across our my district, I ask them, How many of you are using H-2A program? You'd be amazed how few use the program, because it's not workable.

And so as my colleague from Colorado asked the question that he hears at town hall meetings, Do we really need to do immigration reform, yes, we do. We can't just secure the border with a fence and technology if we still have that attraction, that need for illegal workers to fill jobs in this country. We've got to have a pathway to bring in legal workers, whether it's in agriculture or home-building, or some of the more high-skilled types of jobs. We need a legal pathway to fill those positions; otherwise there's going to be this tug of illegals that will continue to happen.

So we can build a 10-foot wall, but someone is going to invent an 11- foot ladder. So it has to be a comprehensive approach. That's why we need the ag guest worker program, as well. So as you can see, we in the House are looking at this step by step. We are looking at what are the actual problems so we can address them in a very thoughtful way so that we aren't just rushing to get a big bill, as was once said by a former Speaker of this House, Let's pass this bill so we know what's in it. Well, we don't want to make that mistake again. We don't need a big, huge, comprehensive bill. We need to look at these issues in a very thoughtful, comprehensive way.

I appreciate that. And I think it's many of the same things.

First of all, people don't trust Washington to actually address this problem. We've got a pretty bad track record here in the Congress.

I think the other thing, though, I hear from my farmers, from my homebuilders, that they need labor, and we've got to have a legal pathway to get that done. And so we've just got to do it in a way that's fair and respects the rule of law.

If any of you would like to close, I believe we're getting near the end of our time.

Well, I'm happy to jump in. I thank my colleague from Colorado for giving us this opportunity.

I think the problem is just the general distrust in the way Washington does things, and you only have to look at the process we just went through to understand why; because any problem that we ever face as a Nation, Congress can solve it by very quickly passing a big piece of legislation with a great title and saying the problem is solved.

Unfortunately, in 1986, when we passed immigration reform it didn't solve the problem. It gave amnesty now with a promise of border security later that we never saw, and I believe that's the same thing that happened with the Senate bill. We very quickly put out a bill that has a great title, thousands of pages that I doubt many folks have even read, and saying the problem is now solved.

And then you immediately hear the pundits and the folks who talk on TV about what happens in Washington saying, Well, the House, since you aren't quickly moving a huge bill with a nice title, you don't care. But the truth is we do care, but we're here to represent the people of the United States of America that sent us here, and we're going to do this in a very thoughtful way, and we're going to do immigration reform the right way so that we don't have to do it again in another 20 years.

Mr. Speaker, I'm Richard Hudson from North Carolina, and I represent a district that's been hit very hard with job losses. People out there are really struggling.

I go home every weekend and I travel my district and I talk to real people every day who are struggling to get by. I talk to folks who have lost their jobs either in the textile industry or in the furniture industry. I talk to folks who are just trying to keep their companies afloat. I talked to a homebuilder the other day who is just trying to keep enough work so he doesn't have to lay off any more of his crew so he can keep a skilled labor force there, so when the economy does pick back up, he'll have the folks that he needs to get the job done.

People are really hurting out there, and there are some signs that the economy is getting better. But, Mr. Speaker, in my district, we're just not feeling it yet. In fact, I was in Richmond County, North Carolina, yesterday, and the folks there tell me that home foreclosures have increased this year over last year. We aren't out of this yet.

On top of this economy, where folks are struggling and just trying to stay afloat, trying to keep food on the table for their families and paying the bills, the President comes out today 4 years to the day from when he introduced his disastrous cap-and-trade ideas and has this new scheme that's going to add cost to our energy, that's going to destroy jobs in this country, and it's just unconscionable.

The people in my district are wondering the same thing they are in other places around the country: why doesn't the President understand what's going on here. So, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to continue to fight for an energy policy that makes sense.

We've got energy off the shore of North Carolina that we ought to be going after. We've got huge reserves of oil and natural gas. We've also got a potential for fracking in North Carolina. I want to get North Carolina in the energy business. I want to create those energy jobs in North Carolina like we see in western Pennsylvania and North Dakota and other places. Now is the time. Now is the time to start getting American energy sources, getting Americans in the energy game, not taxing and regulating our energy industry out of business, which is not only destroying the jobs but is increasing the cost of energy. When the cost of energy goes up, Mr. Speaker, everything gets more expensive, whether it's food or the cost of transportation of goods. It's hitting us really hard.

I would love to address this war on coal a little bit more. I just think it's outrageous that the President of the United States' advisors say that the President wants a war on coal. You know, we ought to have a war on gas prices. We ought to have a war on energy prices. We ought to have a war on joblessness. I mean, these are the things that we should be concerned about and angry about and upset about.

You look at the fact that the United States has more coal than any country in the world, and we've got technology to use that coal for energy production in a clean way. Clean coal technology, liquefied coal, there are plenty of ways we can use that energy, Mr. Speaker, here in America, putting Americans to work to reduce our energy costs. That's what we ought to be focusing on. Let's get Americans to work making American energy. Let's bring American energy costs down, and let's stop the war on jobs, which is what we are seeing from this administration.

Absolutely.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 254, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes.''

Stated against: