Robert E. (Bud) Cramer Jr.

Madam Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to congratulate my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Peter L. Lowe, Sr. of Huntsville, Alabama, for receiving the 2008 Arthritis Foundation Humanitarian Award. This award is given annually to the person or persons in the Huntsville community who displays exemplary community leadership. The Lowes are distinguished community advocates and civic volunteers who have given countless hours to numerous community and state-wide organizations and boards.

Peter and Betsy Lowe have led efforts to nurture the cultural development of our region. Together they serve as co-Chairs of the Huntsville Museum of Art's ``Masterpiece in the Making'' Capital Campaign which is currently raising $11 million for improvements to the museum's existing facilities and an endowment for the museum's long- term financial stability. In addition to her service to the Huntsville Museum of Art, Betsy has volunteered as a board member at the Huntsville Hospital Foundation, the University of Alabama Huntsville Foundation, the Alabama Heritage Foundation and many other distinguished organizations.

Peter Lowe serves as the president of GW Jones & Sons Consulting Engineers, Inc., a highly regarded Huntsville company that specializes in real estate development, sales and appraisals. The Lowes are members of the First United Methodist Church of Huntsville and have three children and five grandchildren.

Madam Speaker, the leadership and dedication of Peter and Betsy should serve as a model for others to follow. On behalf of the people of North Alabama, I congratulate them for being named the 2008 Arthritis Foundation Humanitarian Award recipient.

I thank my friends from Tennessee, and I thank the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee where I spent so many valuable years, the staff on both sides of the aisle. I have appreciated what you have meant to my congressional district and what you have meant to the Tennessee Valley Authority as well.

I rise today to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Tennessee Valley Authority. I think it's only appropriate that we do this during what we hope will be the last hours of this, the 110th Congress.

In the 110th Congress, I had the honor of serving as the cochair of the congressional TVA Caucus, which has existed since I have been here, before I

was here. I have been here 18 years. I have cochaired this caucus along with Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee, so we have had a House- Senate partnership there.

There are 41 House and Senate Members that comprise this very proactive Tennessee Valley Authority Caucus. As I look around the room today, many of our House Members that have participated in that caucus are here today.

My friends have talked about when TVA was created. Mr. Duncan, we know that TVA is wonderfully headquartered up there in your congressional district in Knoxville. When TVA was first chartered back in 1933, it was headquartered in the Muscle Shoals area of north Alabama, so we still reluctantly accept that you have the headquarters there that we had back when TVA was first chartered back in 1933.

Let's remember back to 1933. It was the Great Depression. At that time the agriculture industry, which was the bread and butter of the Tennessee Valley, had collapsed. Trying to make ends meet, the people of the valley had overfarmed their land, leading to widespread erosion, soil depletion and low crop yields.

As part of this New Deal program, President Franklin Roosevelt envisioned TVA as a different kind of government agency that could be backed by the power of the United States Government but also have the ``flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise.''

TVA was born, TVA has prospered, and TVA has done remarkable things for our area. We are economically prosperous because of the presence of TVA. They've built the dams, they've developed new fertilizers, they've been the lifeblood of partnerships with local and State government over economic development opportunities.

You can't drive through the Tennessee Valley area without looking around and seeing a much different and much more prosperous area than we ever would have been if TVA had not been the entity that it had been.

Now the TVA of today is not the TVA of the thirties, forties and fifties. We have a different board construct today. TVA is very concerned about the environment. It's looking at its plants, making sure that they are cleaner, more efficient than they ever were before.

Reflect back, also. After the war, TVA built a 650-mile navigation channel along the Tennessee River, allowing it to become one of the longest transport systems in the country. When we make our pitches for economic development opportunities, it is that navigational channel that is our strength as we acquaint those prospective new industries with what we have to offer.

In the 1990s, TVA began several energy efficiency and conservation programs. These initiatives allowed TVA to cut their annual operating costs by more than $800 million while still meeting the electricity needs of the growing population of the Tennessee Valley.

In 1998, TVA started a new $5.8 billion clean air program that has reduced their emissions by 70 to 80 percent. Additionally, TVA recently began its Green Power Switch Program, designed to increase the availability of energy derived from renewable resources such as solar and wind for customers in the Tennessee Valley.

TVA is also leading the way to clean and safe nuclear power. In my district, TVA is making great strides to increase our Nation's use of nuclear energy. That is a reality we must confront.

So I believe the TVA today, under the leadership of Chairman Bill Sansom and CEO Tom Kilgore, is ready and able to meet the growing environmental and power demands while continuing to be a valuable economic partner to the men and women of the Tennessee Valley.

Since I am leaving Congress, I want to thank my colleagues for serving with me and making sure that our TVA area is the area that we know it to be today, an efficient government entity, and that is not something you can say very often.

Joe Bonner, thank you. On behalf of this Alabama delegation, I appreciate your team membership with us. Even when you worked in Sonny Callahan's office, you were part of our delegation there, because, of course, Sonny was our team leader for a while there as well.

As you and maybe the rest of the country doesn't know, there are only seven of us from the State of Alabama. When I came here in the year 1990, I was broken into, introduced to the Alabama team, and understood pretty quickly that regardless of party label, we were one for the State of Alabama, and hopefully for the country as well.

So it has been a pleasure to work with you, and I thank you for you taking the time tonight to allow folks to express these words of kindness for my service here, but particularly for my colleague Terry Everett.

Terry Everett, this gives me the opportunity to say to you that I can think of no one I have enjoyed serving with more than you here, and I have many friends on both sides of the aisle. You and I are bookends in our State, you from the southeastern part of the State, I am from the north-central part of the State.

But your service on the Armed Services Committee, and then eventually on the Intelligence Committee, I joined you there on the Intelligence Committee. The Congress may not know, but I am currently the chairman of a subcommittee on the Intelligence Committee called the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, a new subcommittee that was formed two Congresses ago. I was ranking member until this term of Congress, and now I am the chairman. You are the ranking member of that subcommittee. So it is interesting and ironic that Alabama has had kind of service on that committee, that we can't talk much more about, but it has been particularly important to the rest of the country as well.

I will miss you. I will miss Barbara as well--your wife, Barbara-- whom I came to know because I got to know you, and we're like family. That speaks well of the entire Alabama delegation.

When we presented our Intel authorization bill on the floor earlier in the year, I was able to get a little more specific as Chairman Duncan Hunter was able to do tonight about your commitment to defending space and to making sure that this country's investment in space is preserved. I hope, in your next life, whatever that might be, that you continue your expertise in that area because you still have a lot to offer to the space intel community and to the defense community as well from your service right here in this remarkable arena.

So I will miss you. I will miss this Alabama delegation. I will still be active with you, and will make sure that we, together, continue to look after the State of Alabama.

I will yield back my time, but thank you, Jo Bonner.