Floor Statements

I thank the chairman for his kind words and his leadership on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this historic piece of legislation that will expand health care coverage to millions of my fellow Americans.

The way we provide health care in this country is unsustainable. In Nevada, the cost of a private family health insurance plan is expected to grow from over $11,000 in 2009 to more than $19,000 10 years from now. If we do nothing, we will reach a point in this country where hardly anyone will be able to afford health insurance.

This bill is good for Nevada. Over 400,000 uninsured Nevadans will be able to get health insurance because of this bill. This bill is good for Nevada's seniors. It closes the doughnut hole, eliminates copays for preventive services and extends the life of Medicare over 5 years.

The bill isn't perfect. It doesn't contain a provision to protect bone density tests that I fought for, and it doesn't fix the Medicare physician payment system, and we must do both. But I support this bill today for the needed reforms that are included. They are very important. It's a great first step.

Faye Schwartzer in Las Vegas, Nevada, this vote is for you.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today once again in strong support of the Travel Promotion Act. In these difficult economic times, this bill is vital for our Nation's economy.

Last year the U.S. lost nearly 200,000 travel-related jobs. In my district, we have been hit particularly hard, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and a hotel occupancy rate among the lowest we've ever seen.

The Travel Promotion Act would help bring back those jobs and put Americans back to work. Independent economists have said that every dollar spent on this program will bring in three dollars in increased revenue--from the added jobs and economic growth that we will see from increased tourism to our country. And this can all be accomplished without adding to the Nation's debt.

Every State in our Nation benefits from tourism--whether you have mountains, beaches, amusement parks, vineyards, ballparks, historic monuments or casinos, we all benefit from this bill.

This is a common sense piece of legislation that will help energize our economy at a time when we need it most. I urge support for the bill.

I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3548. This proposal would extend unemployment benefits by 20 weeks for workers in States with high unemployment, like Nevada. This would serve as a lifeline, aiding those still struggling to find work in Las Vegas and other parts of Nevada. The once recession-proof economy of my district of Las Vegas has not been spared from the effects of this downturn. Quite the contrary. Nevada has been hard-hit, and almost harder hit than any other State by the foreclosure crisis, and currently our unemployment rate has skyrocketed to over 13 percent, second highest in the Nation.

Additionally, this bill includes important tax provisions, extending and expanding the homebuyer tax credit and allowing businesses to carryback losses in 2008 or 2009 for 5 years. The extended homebuyer credit will allow more people to purchase a home in my district and help stop the continued downward spiral in housing prices caused by the foreclosure crisis. The net operating loss provision will help keep businesses afloat during the tough times, preventing further layoffs.

Mr. Speaker, I can't stand here today and tell you that this legislation will solve every health care problem we face as a Nation, but I can tell you this. There's 460,000 Nevadans that have no health insurance at all. In my district alone, this bill will provide coverage for 163,000 of my fellow Nevadans.

It's not just the uninsured that will benefit. In Las Vegas, more than 200,000 households will receive credits to make insurance more affordable and over 16,000 small businesses will be provided with a tax credit to make it easier for them to provide coverage to their employees.

The bill improves coverage for seniors by closing the doughnut hole, eliminating copays for preventive services, and extending the solvency of the Medicare program for another 5 years. It eliminates preexisting conditions as a reason to deny coverage. It lifts the lifetime limits. I have 10-year-old children who are juvenile diabetics in my office that have already exceeded their lifetime caps. This bill eliminates that.

The current health care system is unsustainable.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on this issue, and I thank my friend Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for introducing this important resolution.

Today, the American people stand with the State of Israel and all other peace-loving nations and people who face the threat of terrorism and are forced to defend their innocent citizens from terrorist attacks.

In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza to allow the Palestinians to begin building a state. They didn't. Instead, Hamas used the Gaza to terrorize the Palestinian people and as a launch pad to rain missiles on Israeli cities, 8,000 rocket attacks in a 3-year period. The U.N. was silent.

In the fall of 2008, even more rockets fell on innocent Israelis and the situation became untenable. And the U.N. was silent. Only when Israel retaliated in order to protect its own citizens did the U.N. speak up, to condemn Israel.

For those who suggest that Israel used disproportionate force, I say Israel used extraordinary restraint: missile after missile, injury after injury, death after death, and year after year.

Today, we stand up for justice and the right of all nations to act in self-defense, to protect innocent civilians and end the horrors of terrorism. Let's put the blame where it belongs, with Hamas and the terrorists, not Israel.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I had not planned to speak on this resolution when I came to the floor, but after listening to Ms. DeLauro's eloquent discussion of it, I felt duty-bound to weigh in as well in very strong support.

There isn't a woman in my family who has not died from breast cancer--both of my grandparents, all of my aunts, of which I had several, and my mother. My sister, thank goodness, is a survivor, and has just celebrated the birth of her first grandchild herself; but it is in our family, and I cannot tell you how important this resolution is to increase the awareness of this deadly disease.

By the time my mother passed away, her breast cancer had metastasized throughout her body, and as she lay there with her family around her, she couldn't help but ask why she was still there. It broke our hearts to see this woman who had raised us so well and who was so strong in our family literally fall apart before our very eyes.

So I hope that this resolution will increase the awareness of this dreaded disease that hits almost every household in the United States and that causes such pain and suffering. Let us be aware of it, and let us use this opportunity to educate our fellow citizens so that they can receive the treatment they need in a timely manner so they do not suffer as my entire family has.

I want to thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut, and want to urge all of my colleagues to give this resolution a resounding thumbs up.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I'd particularly like to thank my colleagues, Representatives Towns and Issa, for expediting the floor consideration of this resolution, because it is very time sensitive. I would also like to thank Mr. Wamp for his work on this resolution and for joining me as a lead cosponsor.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Resolution 790 and in support of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who served this Nation in building and maintaining our nuclear defenses since World War

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a proud daughter of Greece, and as a cosponsor of this resolution, to join my colleagues in honoring the Daughters of Penelope, an organization of women who exemplify Hellenic values and ideals, both within the United States and across the globe. Over the past 80 years, the efforts of the Daughters of Penelope have had a significant impact on the welfare of those in need. From assistance to battered women and children, to support for cancer research and funding for schools, the work of these women is deserving of our wholehearted recognition and praise.

I want to draw special attention to the contributions that the Daughters of Penelope have made in the fight against breast cancer. Not only has the organization participated in a variety of fundraisers for breast cancer research, the Daughters of Penelope have engaged members of different ethnic communities in countries across the world by preparing and distributing awareness pamphlets that they translated into several languages. Raising awareness is a vital method of fighting breast cancer and I commend the efforts of these women in educating underserved communities about this disease.

Another notable accomplishment of the Daughters of Penelope is the Greek Immigrant Oral History Study, recordings that document the history of Greek women, like my grandmother and great-grandmother, who immigrated to the United States. This project marked the first time that an ethnic organization had submitted its oral history to the Library of Congress, paving the way for other ethnic communities to share their own stories as well.

With great appreciation and admiration, I recognize the invaluable contributions the Daughters of Penelope have made in the spirit of Hellenism. I join in supporting this resolution and urge my colleagues to support it as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, which helps State and local governments do their part to divest from Iran.

The Iranian regime represents a threat to us, to Israel, and to our allies throughout the Middle East and beyond. Their president has threatened to destroy Israel and has repeatedly denied the Holocaust. Iran's leaders have sought to destabilize the entire Middle East and are sparking an arms race in that region. In the last few weeks, we have seen just how far the Iranians are willing to go to conceal their weapons programs, and only time will tell how many more hidden nuclear sites we will find there.

With this bill today, we help our States and local governments to play a role in the international effort to halt Iran's march toward nuclear weapons. As is so often the case, they have not waited for us to act. I am proud that, in June of this year, my home State of Nevada passed a law to help make sure our State Public Employee Retirement System does not invest in Iran, or in companies that do a large amount of business with Iran. Steps like this will help to show just how determined we are--on every level--to stopping Iran's nuclear threat.

We must do everything we can to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council must act now, and place further sanctions on Iran. UN member states must do their part to enforce the already-existing sanctions. We in Congress will soon pass our own further sanctions, and I hope we will continue to give our government the tools it needs to further tighten the screws on Iran's financial sector. We must use every tool available to us before it is too late.

I urge support for this bill.

Madam Speaker, a recently identified retrovirus called XMRV has been linked to the debilitating neuroimmune disease that affects more than 1 million people in the United States. Scientists from the Whittemore Peterson Institute, located at the University of Nevada, Reno, and their collaborators from the National Cancer Institute and Cleveland Clinic have discovered a retroviral link to chronic fatigue syndrome. This is a major breakthrough in understanding the origins of this debilitating disease.

I rise in order to congratulate Harvey and Annette Whittemore. Ms. Annette and her husband, Harvey, have a daughter that was diagnosed with chronic disease syndrome. They have worked tirelessly and relentlessly to fund and ensure that they can find a cure to this disease.

I rise also to tell people that the money to purchase the equipment used to discover this medical breakthrough was funded by an earmark by the United States Congress. This is a good expenditure of taxpayers' dollars and will ultimately save millions of our fellow Americans' lives.

I congratulate the Whittemores and the institute. I look forward to working with them, not only to identify and isolate this enzyme that causes this disease, but to actually cure it.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Congressman Murphy for providing me with the opportunity to speak on this important issue. As a cosponsor of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, I fully support the repeal of the unjust, unnecessary, and unsound ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy. I believe we must reject current practices that have institutionalized discrimination against many valuable members of our armed services for too long. Instead, we must establish a new policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' is simply unjust. It flies in the face of the fundamental American value of equality for all. No individual, including those in our armed forces, should be discriminated against based on his or her sexual orientation. Members of our armed services have fought honorably to protect our safety and freedom, so the least we can do in return is to fight to protect their freedom and equality as well. My hometown of Las Vegas includes Nellis Air Force Base, one of the premier Air Force facilities in the U.S., and I believe the courageous men and women who serve there deserve to be treated with equality and respect, regardless of their sexual orientation.

The ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' policy is also completely unnecessary. The vast majority of Americans believe our troops deserve the opportunity to serve with honesty and honor. And most importantly, a majority of servicemembers have said they would have no reservations about serving alongside gay and lesbian troops, proving the problems this policy supposedly prevents are not, in fact, problems at all.

Not only is this practice unjust and unnecessary, it is also unsound. Our military should not fire valuable servicemembers simply for being gay, particularly during a time of war when we need every American who is willing and able to serve. Furthermore, repealing ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' would increase, not undercut, unit cohesion by fostering openness and trust among troops.

Ultimately, ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' does nothing to contribute to our national security. In reality, it only undermines the strength and integrity of our military system. I believe this practice should be repealed immediately, not only for the benefit of our armed forces, but for the safety of Nevada and our Nation as a whole.

I thank the gentlewoman and I thank her for her hard work on this and every other piece of legislation that this body votes on.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the conference report of the National Defense Authorization Act. I'm pleased to see that the conference report includes an important provision which would require a study on providing Federal retirement benefits to former Air America employees.

From 1950 to 1976, Air America was a government corporation owned and operated by the CIA that supported America's missions during the cold war. The corporation conducted flight operations in various countries, including China, Korea, and Vietnam, on behalf of the Department of Defense and the CIA.

The CIA conducted Air America operations in secret and did not acknowledge that Air America was a government corporation. Therefore, those Air America employees have never received their government retirement benefits.

This noncontroversial Air America provision included in section 1057 of the

conference report simply requires a report from the Director of National Intelligence on the visibility of correcting this oversight and retroactively giving these employees Civil Service Retirement System benefits. It is only right. It is only fair. Air America employees served their country with distinction, often at great risk to themselves. They earned these benefits.

This, in addition to so many other parts of this bill, make it well worth voting for, and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

I thank the gentleman for the recognition. I rise in support of this important piece of legislation. This bill would ensure that members of the U.S. military, the Foreign Service, or the intelligence community who are deployed overseas are not penalized by the requirement to repay the first-time homebuyer tax credit.

For those who have been stationed abroad for at least 90 days this year, it would also provide an additional year to qualify for the first-time homebuyer tax credit. This would include the 1st Squadron, 221st Cavalry out of Las Vegas, Nevada, and the 1st Battalion of the 168th Medevac Unit of the Nevada National Guard. Both are deployed overseas in Afghanistan on behalf of their Nation.

The brave men and women who selflessly serve this country should not be penalized because of their commitment to our Nation. This legislation ensures that they do not miss out on the important housing tax benefit.

I encourage my colleagues to support the passage of this bill.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding, and I particularly thank Mr. Delahunt for his steadfast leadership on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the Travel Promotion Act. In these difficult economic times, this bill is vital for our Nation's economy. It is essential to my hometown and congressional district of Las Vegas, which is the very definition of tourism and travel.

Last year, the United States lost nearly 200,000 travel-related jobs. In my district of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, we've been hit particularly hard, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and a hotel occupancy rate just about as low as we've ever seen it.

This bill will bring back these jobs and put Americans back to work. Independent economists say that for every dollar we spend on this program, we will bring in $3 of increased revenue from added jobs and economic growth that will be created by increased tourism to our country. And this could be accomplished without adding to our national debt.

Every State in our Nation benefits from tourism. Tourism is one of the largest industries in America. Whether you have mountains, beaches, amusement parks, vineyards, ballparks, historic monuments or gaming, we all benefit from this bill.

This is a great piece of legislation that will help energize our economy at a time when we need it most. I urge support for this bill.

Thank you, Congresswoman.

I would like to thank both Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and my dear friend Congressman Sue Myrick for leading the charge, and a special thank you to Debbie. She did mention that we're next-door neighbors.

And I want to tell you, Debbie, I used to--you know, in the morning before I start getting ready to come to work--and I am always at work by 8 o'clock no matter where I have to be; it's usually by 8. And I would be sitting at my dining room table having my cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, and at ungodly hours there was Debbie getting into her car, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where she was going at this hour. I said, Where can this woman be going?

But then by 8 o'clock I would see her at whatever meeting we were at. And I never knew until you made that public disclosure of what you were going through and that you were going through it by yourself, with your loved ones, but not sharing with your colleagues because you wanted to keep this personal and not tell people at that time. And I cannot tell you the admiration I had for you long before that, but particularly afterwards.

And, Sue, same thing. I recall distinctly when you were going through your treatments and how brave you were during that time, and it's an inspiration for all of us.

This is a very important piece of legislation, and that's why I came to the floor at 9 o'clock in the evening. It's particularly personal to me.

There isn't a woman in my family that has not died of cancer, of breast cancer: both my grandmothers, all of my aunts, my mother. The worst day of my life is when my sister, Wendy, 47 at the time, called me up and told me that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Given the background of my family, listening to this my knees buckled because I was so fearful of her fate. But because times have changed and there's early detection and better awareness of this dreaded, horrible disease, horrible disease, she was able to get the treatment that she needed. They practically killed her to cure her, but she's alive today and doing not only very well but she just became a grandmother last Friday. And that could not have happened in my mother's generation or my grandmothers' because they weren't aware of what they needed to do in order to protect themselves.

I am hoping that when we are discussing health care in this country that we are able to change the paradigm of how we deliver health care services to the people that we represent throughout the United States of America. This is a perfect example of legislation that is important because it raises awareness for all women, young and old, but particularly younger women that need to know what to look for, what to expect, what are the signs, and what they can do when they suspect that they have the early signs of cancer.

I think the reality is with early detection, you can prevent these diseases and seek the treatment that you need so that you can go on to lead a long and wonderful life and have children and grandchildren just like my sister Wendy.

Women don't take very good care of ourselves. We're always taking care of everyone else. And the little aches and pains we have we tend to ignore because we're too busy during the day to deal with it. We cannot afford to let that happen because sometimes it's those little pains, those little bumps, those little things that we don't pay attention to that could ultimately lead us down a path that we don't want to go.

If you have a sick mother, you have a sick family because in most cases, the mother is the linchpin of the family. And if you're going to have a women that doesn't take care of herself, doesn't know what the early signs of cancer are, doesn't know what to look for and what to do should they suspect, then they're not going to treat themselves; they're not going to have early detection; they're not going to have prevention of this disease. And the entire family is going to be harmed, and the loss to the family is dramatic.

So I cannot thank you enough for introducing this legislation. I'm a proud cosponsor. I look forward to being on the floor and voting for this and pressing that green button.

And I thank you all, not only on behalf of the women in my family-- those that have gone, those that are still here and those that are yet to be born--but for the millions of other American women and families that this legislation is going to help and to save. And I thank you both for that.