Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend Brian Schnelle who will graduate from college on Saturday at the age of 30.

Brian had a rough start in life and has overcome many obstacles. Born in Modesto, California, in a hospital serving a mostly indigent population, baby Brian and his biological mother somehow made it to a Truckstops of America near downtown Nashville. There his mother got into an altercation and was jailed and Brian ended up in foster care. After months of custody battles, his mother left town and the Schnelle family of Nashville was free to adopt the three-year-old on July 3, 1991.

As a toddler, Brian loved books, cars, and trains and every Kidsongs video on the market. His new family took him to the library, read him books and took him where he could see trains, planes and 18-wheelers. But it was clear Brian had health issues, including needing breathing treatments for asthma, and he was labelled as having ADD, ADHD and finally Asperger's Syndrome. Brian was verbal but lacked many of the social skills of kids his age. School was not easy, but Brian's eventual academic success came about when he began attending Genesis Academy which could meet his special needs. Brian graduated with a regular high school diploma after taking the Tennessee Gateway Test three times. It was then he announced he wanted to go to college and major in sports management. Brian had always been an avid fan of University of Tennessee sports--especially women's basketball, women's volleyball and women's softball.

Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville was the best choice for Brian to pursue his dream of getting a college degree. The University has recognized his efforts by creating a special award, the Brian Schnelle Perseverance Award, which will be presented annually to future persistent students. It took 12 years, but Brian graduates with a Bachelor of Science degree in Sports Management--with honors--on Saturday.

I want to congratulate Brian and the entire Schnelle family, including his sister, my legislative assistant Alex Schnelle, for this major accomplishment, and wish them all a bright future.

Mr. Speaker, the CDC announced that there are now over 700 cases of measles in our Nation. Measles was allegedly an old disease that wouldn't come back in 2000 because people got vaccinated. This is the largest outbreak in measles since, I think, the 1996 time.

I, unfortunately, got polio in 1954. When the polio vaccine was being given to second grade children, I was not in the second grade; but my father was giving shots, as a pediatrician, to second graders, which included my brother. He brought the vaccine home and considered giving it to me but knew that it was outside of his charge, so he didn't do it.

I came down with polio 3 or 4 months later. My father and I both wished I had the vaccine. It would have solved and cured a lot of the problems I have had since and have even today.

I ask each parent out there to make sure your children get vaccinated so that they don't get measles and they don't spread measles to others so we don't have another terrible outbreak.

Vaccinations work.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 70th Anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

NATO emerged out of the ashes of World War II and has been the cornerstone of our security across the Atlantic and around the world. It has also been an important building block for our relationships with transatlantic partners.

NATO remains the most important and critical security link between the United States and Europe. NATO has been an important way for the United States to demonstrate a strong commitment to the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and democratic development of the countries that have emerged from the former Soviet Union, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. NATO allies and partners in both Central and Eastern Europe have stood alongside the United States in joint peace operations in the Western Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

NATO stood with the United States in one of the darkest days of our history when we were attacked on 9/11. When the United States invoked Article 5, the first time done so by a country in the history of the Alliance, NATO joined our fight and are still engaged in Afghanistan to this day.

Last year, I was proud to introduce and see the House of Representatives pass H. Res. 256, a resolution expressing support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The House of Representatives sent a strong message that no matter what President Trump says during the NATO Summit in Brussels, Congress strongly supports our treaty allies and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our friends in Central and Eastern Europe.

We will continue to work to counter Russian aggression in Europe including the occupation of Georgian territory, the annexation of Crimea, continued violations of Baltic airspace and threats to Moldovan territorial integrity and sovereignty.

We will stand by our allies, as they have stood by us.

Mr. Speaker, the American public very much wants to see the full Mueller report. The Congress wants to see the full Mueller report. They want to know what is in there about the Russians interfering with our elections and if there is anything in there that shows obstruction of justice, which Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Mueller, was not exonerated for.

I am here to tell you, President Trump has said he wants the American people to see the entire report unredacted. He thinks the American public deserves to see everything in it about what the Russians did and whether or not he or any people in his administration talked to Russians or knew about Russian activity, whether there was even a scintilla of collusion, and whether there was any possibility of obstruction of justice.

That is President Trump today.

April Fools.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the DUI Reporting Act, a bill I introduced today with my colleague, Steve Chabot, along with the support of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

If enacted, this bill would address the loophole in our nation's drunk-driving laws that enables repeat DUI offenders to be charged and tried as first-time offenders because of inconsistent reporting.

Currently, when police make a drunk driving arrest, they don't always have access to information about all of the driver's previous arrests for driving under the influence.

The reason is because not all police departments report DUI arrests to either the National Crime Information Center, or ``NCIC'' for short, or the Next Generation Identification database, or ``NGI,'' which are the national crime databases that can be made instantly available to police right from their patrol cars.

The consequences of this lack of reporting can prove tragic. Just a few years ago there was a terrible accident in northern Mississippi, just outside of my Congressional District. Two teenagers from Memphis were killed when the car they were driving was struck by a drunk driver who had accrued seven DUI charges since 2008 and had been allowed to plead guilty five times to a first-offense DUI.

When the law enforcement officer ran the suspect's driving record in the national database, his past DUI convictions never showed up.

This is shameful. A DUI somewhere should be recognized as a DUI anywhere. It should not matter where you were caught driving drunk. If you drive drunk, previous offenses should be recorded and penalties should increase so innocent lives can be saved.

The accrual of multiple first-time DUI offenses is unconscionable and must be ended.

Our bill will save lives by enacting common-sense, bipartisan reforms to harmonize reporting standards for DUI offenses across the states.

I urge my colleagues to help pass it quickly.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay a special tribute to a great woman of Memphis, Patricia Claxton Howard, a staunch

advocate of women's rights and girls' empowerment. Mrs. Howard had a lengthy Memphis lineage--one of her uncles played in W.C. Handy's band and her parents had a hair styling shop and a tire repair business on opposite sides of Chelsea Avenue. After graduating as the salutatorian of her Manassas High School class, she was admitted to Southwestern at Memphis, an early African American pioneer integrating what is now Rhodes College. It was as a sociology major at Southwestern that she got involved with an embryonic Girls Club of Memphis as a work-study project, an association that lasted more than 50 years during which she rose to become its President and CEO. She also served as the regional director of Girls Inc., and on the board of the national organization. Mrs. Howard also served as the executive director of the Memphis Center of Reproductive Health and on the board of the Memphis Regional Planned Parenthood. Mrs. Howard was inducted into the Memphis Chapter of The Links, Inc., in 1987 and served over the years as its vice president, president and financial secretary. Always active in her community, Mrs. Howard was on the Memphis and Shelby County Collaborative for American Humanities; the Community Forum; the Work Force Investment Agency; the Coalition of 100 Black Women; and the Blue Ridge Institute for Community Services Executives in the Southeast. She was also a member of Leadership Memphis '86. In 2017, she received the Girls Inc. of Memphis SMART Award. She received the Black Students Association Alumni of the Year Award from Rhodes in 2004, the 1999 Pinnacle Leadership Award from Youth United Way, the Thomas W. Briggs Community Service Award, the 1997 Mertie Buckman Mentor Award from the Women's Foundation and the 1992 Women of Achievement Vision Award. I want to extend my sincere condolences to her husband of 48 years, Aubrey; her son Adrian; her extended family and her many loving friends. She led an exemplary life and will be missed.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to remember my friend John Kilzer, a man who embodied the very essence of Memphis as a Memphis State basketball player, talented musician and songwriter and Methodist minister specializing in recovery from addiction. John died Tuesday night at 62. Born in Jackson, Tennessee, he spent most of his life in Memphis. An All-American high school basketball player, he came to the then-Memphis State Tigers roster as a good outside shooter and a scrapper. A chance encounter with legendary Stax guitar player Mabon ``Teenie'' Hodges in a Memphis State dorm room led to his serious study of guitar playing and a songwriting career. He went on to become an English Literature professor at his alma mater and also received a master's degree in divinity from the Memphis Theological Seminary in 2006 and a Ph.D. from Middlesex University in Britain in 2010. John's evident lyrical skill with poetic storytelling resulted in two early albums produced by David Geffen--the roots-rock 1988 ``Memory in the Making'' and the 1991 ``Busman's Holiday''--and appearances on MTV. His ``Seven'' was produced by Grammy Award winner Matt Ross-Spang. More recently, his 2014 ``Hide Away'' marked the return of an artist at the height of his powers, an album graced with such all-star talent as Kirk Whalum on saxophone; Hold Steady's Sid Selvidge, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Stax's Bobby Manuel on guitar; North Mississippi All Stars Luther Dickinson on mandolin, Rick Steff on keyboards and Greg Murrow on drums. When I learned of his death this morning, I played John's ``Until We're All Free,'' which Whalum co-wrote and plays on, and I want to hear ``Sleeping in the Rain'' again tonight. Some of John's songs were recorded by such artists as Roseanne Cash (``Green, Yellow and Red''), Maria Muldaur, Dobie Gray and Trace Atkins. His most recent album, ``Scars,'' came out in January, and he was scheduled to play the Beale Street Music Festival in May. John will be remembered in Memphis for his weekly Friday night recovery ministry at St. John's United Methodist Church that he called ``The Way,'' begun in 2010. John was beset by the demon of alcohol and knew the inside of jails but did a lot of good for a lot of people with his exceptional talents. As one admirer

said today, his recovery is now complete. He will be missed.

Mr. Speaker, what we are discussing is one of the most important documents that will ever be produced and given, potentially, to Congress for the American people in

our modern history: a question of whether or not this administration was involved with the Russian Government, our number one foreign enemy, in influencing the outcome of our Presidential election, something tantamount to treason.

The report needs to be made public because the American people have a right to know. The American people, as Ronald Reagan, to paraphrase, said: I paid for this microphone, the American people paid for this report, they paid for the special counsel, they deserve to see the fruits of his work and whether or not, as Richard Nixon said, their President is a crook, they need to know that.

Unfortunately, as I sit here listening to this discussion, I feel like I am thrown back into a time in the 1970s--I think it was 1977, somewhere around there--in Kinshasa, Zaire, not in the Washington, D.C. capitol. It is the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight, and the other side, the Republicans, are playing the role of Muhammad Ali. Not the ``float like a butterfly, sting like a bee'' Muhammad Ali, but the rope-a-dope, sit back, take the punches, let them swing, let them hit you, because they know that eventually they will wear themselves out and they know the outcome, because the fix is in.

There is a reason why the Attorney General was picked by this President, and we will soon find out. But we need to pass this resolution and show the American people that Congress is on the side of transparency and are releasing this report and letting the American public, who paid for this report, know the results of it and know what needs to happen to protect our democracy and the rule of law.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Digital Goods and Services Tax Fairness Act, a bipartisan, bicameral bill I introduced earlier today along with my colleague on the Judiciary Committee, Representative John Ratcliffe from Texas, and in the Senate, Senators John Thune from South Dakota and Ron Wyden from Oregon, to curb discriminatory taxation of digital goods and services.

We live in an increasingly digitized world. Digital goods and services make consumption of entertainment media more convenient and have a lighter carbon footprint than their tangible analogs such as e- books, movies, online documents and much more. In addition, many vital health, education, and computer systems have turned to digital goods and services to increase the reliability and efficiency of access to important data.

The lack of a uniform framework for state taxation of digital goods and services has led to a patchwork of state tax laws that confuses consumers and unnecessarily challenges the digital economy. Consumers risk being taxed by multiple jurisdictions for a single download. For instance, three different states can currently tax the same purchase of a digital good or service.

Discriminatory taxes also discourage the new, innovative, emerging technologies and products that American inventors continue to develop.

The Digital Goods and Services Tax Fairness Act would ensure that consumers are not taxed at a higher rate for purchasing digital goods than they are for purchasing tangible goods by establishing a national framework to determine which state has the right to decide whether to tax a digital transaction. It would also protect consumers from potential multiple state taxes on a single digital purchase.

This is common sense legislation that is necessary in our booming digital economy. I urge both the House and the Senate to swiftly pass this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to remember Greg Jaynes, an elegant writer and reporter who began his professional writing career at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis covering the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mr. Jaynes died March 5 in New Orleans. After Memphis, Mr. Jaynes joined The New York Times as a foreign correspondent in East Africa, based in Nairobi. He later worked for Time, Life and The National Geographic and wrote two well-reviewed memoirs, Sketches from a Dirt Road and Come Hell On High Water: A Really Sullen Memoir, the latter about a voyage from Britain to Tahiti aboard a Russian freighter. Describing Jaynes, one reviewer called him ``irascible but sociable, tormented and laughable, a man whose tough, cranky exterior conceals a warm heart and a capacity for compassion . . . We are richer for the grace of his pen and the strength of his high good humor.'' I knew Greg as a thoughtful reader and writer and agree with the reviewer. We met when I noticed him walking down my street in Memphis and, shortly thereafter, returning with a copy of The New York Times; we were neighbors. Seeing him walking back up the street with The New York Times was a rather unusual sight and prompted me to introduce myself, and we became friends. He was an unusually prolific reader and was always a font of knowledge and information. I want to extend my condolences to his son Todd Jaynes and his daughter, Whitney Ann Laidlaw, his extended family and friends and his loyal readers.

Mr. Speaker, today I learned that John Kilzer, a friend, an important figure in Memphis and in the music community, passed away.

John Kilzer was 62 years old. He was born in Jackson, Tennessee, up the road from Memphis, but he lived most of his life in Memphis.

He was the epitome of what Memphis is about. A lot of times people in Memphis call us grit and grinders, and the city is the city of grit and grind. It comes from the basketball team, the Grizzlies.

John's life was Memphis and John's life was grit and grind. He was a high school All-American basketball player who went to the University of Memphis, then Memphis State, and played basketball. Didn't play it that well, but he played it. He was on the team; a good outside shooter and a scrapper.

He got interested in other things and he had some demons with him too. Those demons came along maybe from his father, who was an alcoholic, and it caused John to have problems with abuse of drugs and alcohol as well. It interfered with his basketball career, interfered with his music life, but he never let it keep him down. He came back. He came back every chance he could.

He came back as a musician who was signed by David Geffen, had two albums by Geffen, one song that made the top ten, and songs recorded by Maria Muldaur, Rosanne Cash, and others.

He became a minister and he had a series of ministries in St. John's United Methodist Church in Memphis. It was called Recovery Ministry, where he had other musicians come and join him, and they performed for folks who were having trouble with addiction, gave them a concert every Friday and helped them on the road to recovery.

He never forgot people, especially little people. He made a big difference.

For a man from Jackson, Tennessee, who was a tall guy who played basketball, to become a musician and become a minister and a writer: quite a life.

He was influenced by Reverend James Lawson, a hero of the civil rights movement, whose simple presence at a Calvary Church Lenten service influenced John to get back into ministry.

He had a ministry degree and a Ph.D. in ministry as well that he got in London, England.

He was influenced in music--which he dabbled with but wasn't very good--by Teenie Hodges, a guitarist for Al Green. He came over to see the basketball team and saw a guitar in John's room. He took up with John and taught him the finer points of music, songwriting, and guitar playing, and John did good at that, but what John did best was helping his fellow human being.

He never gave up. He always saw hope and opportunity. And he thought in universal terms.

So when I read about my friend, John, dying, the first thing I did was go around to try to find his CD in my condo. Most of my CDs are in Memphis, about 1,000 to 1, but I looked around and couldn't find John's CD. It must be in Memphis.

So I thought, maybe I can talk to my friend Alexa, see if Alexa can help me. I said, ``Alexa, play me some John Kilzer.'' And Amazon Music had John Kilzer, about eight or nine songs in there, including a song he wrote with Kirk Whalum, a great saxophonist and a legend in Memphis and in the music scene, called ``Until We're All Free''. We are not all free until we are all free. It is a great song.

So if you have a chance, if you have got Alexa as a friend, ask her to play you some John Kilzer. It is good music.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of the late Modeane Nichols Thompson, a founding member of the Memphis Panel of American Women, whose quiet resolve to establish racial and sectarian reconciliation and understanding during tense times in the 1960s will be long remembered. Mrs. Thompson, a longtime family advocate with Family Service of Memphis, died February 25 at the age of 89. An African American and Roman Catholic, Mrs. Thompson joined with Joyce Blackmon, Dorothy ``Happy'' Jones, Jeanne Varnell and Jocelyn Wurzburg to demonstrate that people of different races and religions could establish lasting relationships and bridge cultural divides. Mrs. Thompson was a calming influence in Memphis as a voice and early advocate for the communities of South Memphis where lives were disrupted by urban renewal. She was quoted in the nationally circulated Redbook magazine in 1964 in an article about racial prejudice entitled ``What Can I Tell My Children?'' She was a natural fit for the women's panel, which she told The Commercial Appeal was ``designed to confront historically difficult issues in an open and civil manner. We hoped open dialogue and minds between people for the first time.'' A lifelong member of the NAACP and the National Conference of Christians and Jews, her work was honored by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati in 2006 and by the Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis, with its Legends Award, in 2014. I extend my condolences to her five children, seven grandchildren and three great- grandchildren, her extended family and her many friends.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to serve on the Judiciary Committee in the House and be the chairman of the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee.

I want to report to the American people that we passed out H.R. 1 that helps clean up corruption in our government, makes our government more transparent, makes voting easier and open to more people, and does other improvements the American people want.

We also passed out H.R. 8, the first gun reform bill in over 20 years that says you have to have background checks on all sales.

This week, we will be marking up the Violence Against Women Act. Hopefully, we will have bipartisan support for that.

We will also have a hearing on renewing the Voting Rights Act that never should have been discarded by the Supreme Court. We will be having hearings to get the Voting Rights Act back on the law books in the United States.

And our subcommittee had a hearing last week on the President's powers on emergency actions. We have bipartisan agreement that we need to reform that bill and will work together in a bipartisan fashion.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Stop Underrides Act, a bipartisan, bicameral bill I introduced earlier today along with my colleague on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, Representative Mark DeSaulnier from California, and in the Senate, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Marco Rubio, to prevent deadly truck underride crashes.

An underride crash is when a car collides with a truck and goes underneath the body of the truck. Modern car safety features are designed to ensure that a passenger can walk away from a crash where the vehicle hits a solid wall at 35 miles per hour. In an underride crash, the first part of a car coming into contact with a truck body is the windshield, and as a result, a car's safety features are rendered useless. When a car collides with a truck, it will keep moving forward, and decapitation is a serious threat at 35 miles per hour.

While large trucks have been federally required to have rear underride guards since 1953, there is no requirement to adequately maintain rear underride guards and they often fail. In addition, underride guards are not federally required to be on the sides or front of trucks. Too many lives have been lost or forever altered by these preventable crashes and the time has come for Congress to act.

The Stop Underrides Act does just that--lays out a path to bring an end to these terrible and all too often fatal accidents by requiring all large truck trailers to have front, side, and rear underride guards.

These guards, if installed, would have likely prevented the death ofMichael Higginbotham, who was killed in an underride crash in Memphis and whose parents, Randy and Laurie Higginbotham, have been urging Congress to take action on this long overdue issue.

This is common sense legislation that will save lives. I urge my colleagues to support the passage of the Stop Underrides Act.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Horse Transportation Safety Act, a bill I introduced earlier today along with Representatives Peter King from New York, Dina Titus from Nevada and Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania, to ensure the humane and safe transportation of horses.

The Horse Transportation Safety Act seeks to end the exploitation of a regulatory loophole designed to ban the transport of horses in double-deck trailers. This loophole gives drivers an incentive to inhumanely transport horses to assembly points then reload them into single level trailers just outside their final destination.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ``Double-deck trailers do not provide adequate headroom for equines, with the possible exception of foals and yearlings. We do not believe that trailers that have two or more permanent levels that are not collapsible can be adequately altered to accommodate adult equines, especially tall equines.''

This practice is not only dangerous and inhumane to the horses, but to the traveling public, as well. We have witnessed the dangerous nature of these double decker trailers in several horrific accidents. In October of 2007, fifteen horses died when a double deck trailer carrying 59 Belgian draft horses overturned on Route 41 in Illinois. Unfortunately, we know that accidents like this are not an uncommon occurrence.

The legislation is strongly supported by agricultural interests and animal protection groups including the Humane Society of the United States, the Animal Welfare Institute, the National Black Farmers Association, and Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation.

Moreover, in 2010 the Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure unanimously adopted this bipartisan legislation.

This is common sense legislation, and I urge my colleagues to support the swift passage of the Horse Transportation Safety Act. I also want to express my gratitude for the many years of hard work on this issue by our esteemed colleague, the late Representative Walter Jones from North Carolina.