Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Professor Perry Wallace, a Vanderbilt University graduate who integrated basketball for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and current professor at American University, for overcoming the racism and violence he experienced as an African-American collegiate athlete during the Civil Rights era. While Wallace never viewed himself as a pioneer or a change agent for civil rights, he nonetheless helped break the color-barrier in the SEC as the first African-American basketball player in the Conference.

Like many African-American college athletes at the time, Wallace faced tremendous challenges, both physical and emotional, that highlighted the ugly reality of race relations in America. One significant memory Wallace has when his health and life were threatened was during a 1968 game between Vanderbilt and the University of Mississippi that was played in Oxford. During this game, Wallace--who was the only African-American player on the team--was subjected to racial epithets, taunting, threats of lynching, and physical violence when he received a swollen eye due to a thrown elbow just before halftime. Perry eventually returned to the game after tending to his injury, but he was mindful of the fact that after halftime, no members of his team stayed behind to accompany him back to the court. He went on to help his team win 90-72.

Unfortunately, the incident at Oxford was not the only time when he had to endure racism at an away game. Wallace and his teammates have recounted a noose being dangled near the Vanderbilt bench at a game in Knoxville and items being thrown at him, including Cokes, coins, ice and even a dagger. Perhaps adding insult to injury, many of the venues were very small and the sounds of racism could be easily picked up and broadcast over the radio for all to hear, including his mother who listened to the game against Ole Miss from her hospital bed. Despite the intolerance he experienced, Wallace remained steadfast in his resolve to not succumb to those who wished to see him fail. He was fortunate, in this manner, to have such mental strength to survive. Others, including Henry Harris, who also played in the SEC, and Nat Northington, one of the first two African-Americans to play football at the University of Kentucky, found the pressures all too great.

In a stand against the injustices of the Jim Crow laws that made segregation legal and gave protection for acts of violence and death toward African-Americans, in his last game played in Nashville against Mississippi State, Wallace ended his college basketball career with a slam dunk--a play that was deemed illegal at the time. The illegal play was allowed to stand and he finished the game scoring 28 points and 27 rebounds. He dedicated the game to his mother who passed away a year earlier.

Perry Wallace graduated from Vanderbilt and was drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1970. He earned his Juris Doctorate from Columbia University in 1975 and moved to Washington, DC where he worked in the Executive Office of then-mayor Walter E. Washington before becoming an adjunct professor of law at George Washington University. Professor Wallace then served as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and later rejoined academia as an associate professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Today, Perry Wallace is a professor at American University Washington College of Law where he specializes in environmental, corporate and international economic law, business and environmental studies, and is the Director of the JD/MBA Joint Degree Program. Perry has received numerous awards for his accomplishments in academia and his list of publications and writings is extensive. In 2003, he was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame and in 2004, his Vanderbilt jersey, number 25, was retired. In 2014, Andrew Maraniss, a Vanderbilt alum and former associate director of media relations at the school's athletic department, published Wallace's biography entitled ``Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South.''

Vanderbilt University has a program called VUcept where freshmen students are paired with upperclassmen to make their transition to the school easier. As a freshman there, I was fortunate to have Wallace as my VUceptor. I ask all of my colleagues to join me in recognizing Perry Wallace for his tenacity in the face of adversity and for his many professional accomplishments and contributions to academia.

Thank you, Mr. McGovern.

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that pain is a subterfuge. This bill is not about pain to the fetus. This bill is about outlawing abortion and repealing Roe v. Wade.

The other side knows that the Supreme Court has set out in Roe v. Wade the conditions of viability, and viability is 22-24 weeks. Well, they couldn't get past that in the Court, they knew

they couldn't, so they created this new class of when the baby, the child, can feel pain.

They found a doctor that said he assumes they can feel pain, and they base their whole premise on that, an argument to try to repeal Roe v. Wade and to not give the women of this country the opportunity to exercise choice on their own lives and when they produce children.

This has been the law in this country since 1973. I consider it the right law. I was in law school when the Supreme Court brought down Roe v. Wade. It was progress, and we continue to march forward, but the other side wants to stop progress. If they could outlaw all abortions, they would do it, and this is the first step toward doing it.

They don't provide for the life of the mother in the bill. They don't provide for exceptions for rape and incest, and they didn't allow any amendments because they knew if they had amendments they would carry, and the full rape and incest exceptions which are in the law today would be put on this bill, and that would be difficult for them to swallow.

This is a sham on pain. This is an attempt to take women's rights away and to repeal Roe v. Wade. I would ask that when the bill comes up that we vote ``no'' and vote women first and progress.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday was the day that we honor Martin Luther King's life and legacy--it should be honored every day--a great American who stood for justice, liberty.

Yet in this House, there is not a desire on the other side of the aisle to increase the minimum wage, which would be one of the first things Dr. King would want. There is not a desire on the other side of the aisle to pass a Voting Rights Act for which Dr. King is known to have worked on the march in Selma and help bring about some 50 years ago. And there is no effort to reduce the great disparity in wealth that threatens the middle class and threatens the future of democracy and the way we know America.

We should honor Dr. King every day. Unfortunately, many and most of his values are being neglected by the majority in this House.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, January 12th, 2015, I was unable to cast my votes on the House Floor due to repeated flight delays. Had I been able to avoid these travel complications, I would have voted as follows:

YES on H.R. 203 the Clay Hunt SAV Act Suspension Bill;

YES on H.R. 33 the Protecting Firefighters Emergency Responders Act Suspension Bill; and

YES on the Journal Vote.

Mr. Speaker, today the President will be speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee, on extending college educations to Americans.

I share with the President the goal of giving more Americans the opportunity to go to college, but I would submit to him he should not be holding up the Tennessee Promise plan in Tennessee as an example. He should be holding up the Tennessee HOPE Lottery Scholarship program, which I worked 20 years to achieve in Tennessee and has provided over $3 billion to education, $250 million a year.

Scholarship programs such as the President is talking about should have standards for students in high school to achieve to get a scholarship. They should have strong standards in college to maintain them. They should be in addition to Pell grants and in addition to other scholarships to pay for books and tuition.

The Promise plan takes from middle class and lower income students and gives to higher income students, doesn't have standards in high school to get the scholarship, and doesn't have high standards to keep it. It is a last dollar scholarship.

The President's plan should be more like the Tennessee HOPE Lottery Scholarship: assure students have an incentive in high school to get it and incentives to keep it with high grade standards, and it shouldn't go to for-profit schools, for that is an invitation to abuse.

I thank the President for his commitment, but I think he has the wrong program as his model.

``When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.

``The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call the Congress' attention to what I think is our most important issue we face as a Congress and as a people, and that is preserving America's greatest asset, which is the health and lives of our citizens.

In doing so, I request, as I have done on many occasions, that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle join me in adequately funding our Nation's other department of defense--coequally important--the National Institutes of Health.

Yes, the Department of Defense is important, and we fund it more than adequately, more than they even ask for, and it protects us from ISIS and others that caused the great tragedy in Paris and has caused terror and havoc in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada and that I am sure will come to our shores sooner than we expect, but the National Institutes of Health protects us from disease, disease that threatens every American and every American's loved one.

The sequestration has cut billions from NIH's budget, and that is our country's foremost medical research center. It has helped billions of people across the country and across the world who suffer from heart disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, you name it, but we have inadequately funded the NIH.

It has not kept up with the level of inflation over the last decade. Based on that level of inflation, the funding we have given the NIH has resulted in a 10 percent diminution in funding on the purchasing power of the National Institutes of Health.

The likelihood of any one of us dying from a terrorist attack or from some weapon fired from North Korea or Russia or Iran is very slim, but the odds of us suffering from the diseases which I have mentioned previously is likely in our loved ones. We need to fight those diseases. We can do it, and we can successfully come up with treatments and cures if we fund the National Institutes of Health.

Supporting the NIH used to be a bipartisan commitment, especially seeing that every dollar invested results in about $2.21 in economic growth. I hope that this new American Congress will see that and that my Republican colleagues will agree with me that we need to put a focus on our individual capital, the personal capital of people, their health and their well-being.

I talked to Representative Marino recently, and he is going to join me in founding an NIH caucus. I think there is nothing more important. In the past, many times, when I have brought up funding for the NIH, friends on the other side have said: ``Well, we will have to pay for it. If we put more money in it, then our children and grandchildren will be paying for the debt for years to come.''

That may be true, but nevertheless, the children and the grandchildren will be receiving the benefits of the treatments and cures more likely than any of us will, for research takes a long time.

We also need to change our course in stem cell research. We have had problems with allowing scientists to use this opportunity to come through with great medical breakthroughs.

Federal funding is currently prohibited by the 1996 Dickey amendment to the appropriations bill that funds the NIH, but researchers around the world have dived headfirst into the field using stem cells and producing incredible findings and progress.

In 2010, a gentleman named Darek Fidyka, a Polish man, was stabbed multiple times in a knife attack, and he was paralyzed from the chest down, but thanks to stem cell research in Poland, in collaboration with researchers and doctors there and in the United Kingdom, Darek can now walk again with the help of a walker.

Dr. Geoff Raisman, the chair of neurological regeneration at University College London's Institute of Neurology called this development--and I agree with him--``more impressive than man walking on the Moon.''

We allowed a man who couldn't walk, couldn't stand to walk, and more will come from that research on stem cells and other scientific research. Darek otherwise would have been paralyzed for life, and now he is walking again thanks to private investment in stem cell research, but the government needs to participate.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for this Congress to adequately fund the National Institutes of Health, recognize its importance to our constituents who are important to us, and whose lives and health are the most important things that we can provide for them. It is time this country no longer turns a blind eye to research, and to stem cell research in particular. I urge my colleagues to seize the opportunities offered by this new Congress and join me in the efforts to fund the National Institutes of Health and to join the National Institutes of Health Caucus.

You are very welcome, Representative Lee, and I thank you for bringing this Special Order. You have indeed, as people have said, been the leader on this issue for many years, and I appreciate that and so many other issues you have been a leader on, but this in particular.

Also, Mr. Rangel has been an important leader on this issue, as have Mr. Meeks and others.

I had written the President and talked to Valerie Jarrett about what I considered the three Cs that he could engage in with executive authority, one of which was Cuba, and I commend him for taking this leadership role; the second of which was commutations, which he has not done nearly enough to commute unjust sentences here in this country; and the third is cannabis, which should be rescheduled to a schedule III drug so we could do research on medical marijuana and Charlotte's Web, that can help children with epilepsy who otherwise are either dying are not being treated.

But I commend the President for his actions toward Cuba. This is a policy that many have mentioned has been a failed policy for over 50 years. We do have engagements and diplomatic relations with China, where the Maoists are getting more and more power, with Vietnam and with Russia. Why should we not have relations with Cuba? There was no reason. The only reason was Florida and electoral votes. So I commend the President for rising above politics and doing the right thing for human beings and for Americans.

As Representative Castor said, so many Americans want to travel to Cuba; and for many years I thought it was absurd that I couldn't travel to Cuba, because I wanted to and I couldn't because my country was stopping me from doing it.

People were going through Canada or going through Mexico and other countries and getting in and subverting the law, but that wasn't right. If you were going to follow the laws of your country, you couldn't go and you didn't go. It was wrong.

I did the have the opportunity to visit Cuba as a Member, and I found the Cuban people very, very, very friendly. As I was walking around Havana, I thought: This is so strange. I am supposed to think that these people aren't going to like me, that this is our enemy. They are on the terrorist list. I should be concerned.

But I felt as safe as I was anyplace in the United States or anyplace in the world, and people were very friendly and very nice. It was no different than being anywhere else in the hemisphere.

I really like the old cars, the old fifties cars that are all over Havana, and they are kind of part of the culture now. While I like them because I remember as a child those cars and my parents having them and seeing them and thinking fondly upon them, I also thought about AutoZone in my district and all the parts they could be selling in Havana to make those cars work more efficiently and maybe have less impact on the environment.

I also thought about Federal Express and how many packages that might be shipped in and out of Cuba by America's number one and the world's number one carrier of products. I thought about the hotel industry that is located in my community--we used to have Holiday Inn; we have still got Hilton--and the hotels that could be built there. Other countries-- mostly, I think, Spain and Sweden and Canada and even Israel--had hotels and restaurants and businesses, but not America. So it made no sense.

I remember Katrina and the great tragedy just south of Memphis in New Orleans and when Cuba offered medical aid, doctors and medical aid, and we turned it down. How foolish of us to turn down an offer of humanitarian aid, but we did. And they offered aid after 9/11 as well.

Now, my appreciation for Cuba goes back to my childhood. In 1955, I was befriended by a baseball player whose name was Minnie Minoso. His real name was Aurelio Saturnino Armas Minoso, the Cuban Comet, number 9 with the White Sox, with the Indians, a little bit later with the Cardinals and the Washington Senators. Minnie befriended me and gave me a baseball when I was just 5 years of age. It was in the segregated Memphis, Tennessee, so the player who gave me the baseball originally was a White player named Tom Poholsky. I guess I didn't have to say he was White when his name was Tom Poholsky, but he was.

I went to thank him. I had crutches at the time. I had just gotten out of the hospital some months earlier from polio and had a White Sox T-shirt and cap--it was an exhibition game--and thanked him. He said: You don't need to thank me. You should thank number 9 over there, the darkest player on the field.

And so Minoso came over and we thanked him.

What it was is he was kind of inhibited from the segregation laws in the South of being the nicest guy on the baseball field and coming up and giving me a ball. He became my buddy. I have known Minnie Minoso ever since. He is my nom de plume on some email sites and some phone books and some other things where I need kind of an alias, and he has been my friend and we have visited back and forth.

He was a Cuban player who was beloved in Chicago, and I think is the most beloved player in Chicago today. A lot of Cuban players have gone to play in Chicago, and they play great baseball. We could have a great baseball relationship with Cuba, a great tourism relationship, a great cultural relationship and medical care.

In traveling to Latin America as a Congressman, I have been told the biggest impediment to our relations with Latin American countries is our treatment of Cuba. The President, by starting to formalize relations with Cuba, has helped America in Latin America, which is our number one--South America, Central America--our number one trading partner. It makes a lot of sense economically as well as humanely.

I look forward to the time when all Americans can visit Cuba, the great culture, and exchange good wishes. They are our friends.

Thank you, Representative Lee, for having this session on this program which shows President Obama's leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I was traveling with President Obama and was unable to be present for Roll Call Vote numbers 552 and 553, the Motion to Recommit and Final Passage of H.R. 5781, The California Emergency Drought Relief Act of 2014.

Had I been present, I would have voted Yes on Roll Call 552 and No on Roll Call 553.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday there was a vote by the Major League Baseball committee on who should be inducted into the Hall of Fame from a particular area. One of the players who was up for consideration--and, unfortunately, wasn't chosen--was Minnie Minoso, and it reminded me of the debt I owe Minnie Minoso.

Minnie Minoso was the first African Latin baseball player. And in 1954, in Memphis, Tennessee--a town I was born in and a town in the Southern United States that was especially a

part of the Jim Crow era--I went to a baseball game, an exhibition baseball game. And I was on crutches because I had polio. I had a Chicago White Sox cap on and a Chicago White Sox T-shirt.

A player came to give me a baseball from the opposing team, the St. Louis Cardinals. I thanked him. And I went and told my father. And we came down to thank him. And he said: ``Don't thank me. Thank that player over there.'' He was the blackest player on the field, number nine, Minnie Minoso. He didn't feel comfortable in 1955 to give me a baseball. Yet he was the player with the most compassionate heart and humility on the field because that was the segregated South.

Minnie Minoso became my hero, and I followed his career and became friends with him. We exchanged gifts. He came to Memphis, and I went to Chicago.

In 1960 when he came to Memphis, he was staying at the Lorraine Motel--the segregated African American hotel in Memphis--because African Cuban Latin players, African Americans weren't allowed at the Peabody Hotel, where the other players were.

I couldn't believe that my baseball hero, a great all-star, was staying at the Lorraine, which happens to be where Dr. King was murdered. But that is where he had to stay.

I learned about segregation from living in Memphis and from being befriended by Minnie Minoso. The insanity of segregation and the separation of people by race, that period of Jim Crow and previous slavery--which existed in this country for 250 years of slavery and 100-and-some-odd years of Jim Crow--still pervades this country.

There are lingering consequences which must be dealt with. The gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) well addressed them. Much must be done in law enforcement and criminal justice but also in education and opportunities for jobs, which people don't have today in the South and many other places, in inner cities.

So as I think about Minnie Minoso, and I think about segregation and the effect that it has had on America--America's original sin was slavery. We haven't overcome it.

Some write about it and get recognition. People read their books. Ta- Nehisi Coates wrote in the Atlantic. Edward Baptist has written a book about the benefits that America got from the slave trade and how many people made money from it shipping cotton, making clothes, insuring the slave trade. It was the great economic benefit of this country and made this country great, all on slavery. Edward Baptist writes it well.

Michelle Alexander writes in ``The New Jim Crow'' about the incarceration rate of African Americans, that it is wrongfully high. If you are African American, the likelihood that you are going to be arrested and incarcerated is so much greater than a Caucasian for living in the same society and doing the same things.

We must put an end to discrimination in all its forms and fashions. In the criminal justice system, sentencing reform needs to take place. In the criminal justice system, we need to see that law enforcement agencies and prosecutions of law enforcement officers are done transparently and fairly and justly.

We need to be sure that Americans continue to have faith that this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, and that our Nation is one in which people get equal justice, as was planned by our Founding Fathers but was never quite implemented.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and congratulate Harrison D. McIver III of Memphis, Tennessee for receiving the American Bar Association's (ABA) Charles H. Dorsey Award, which is awarded to attorneys who work in legal aid or legal service corporations representing low-income people. He has been at the helm of legal aid organizations from Mississippi to our nation's capital, working to ensure that all people have access to legal representation regardless of their economic backgrounds.

McIver received his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia before earning his doctor of Jurisprudence from Rutgers University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey. He began his legal career as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow with North Mississippi Rural Legal Services and later became a managing attorney for the Southwest Mississippi Legal Services and North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. McIver was Executive Director of the Central Mississippi Legal Services in Jackson, Mississippi before becoming Executive Director of the Project Advisory Group in Washington, DC, which is the national organization for legal service programs. He served in this position when Charles H. Dorsey, Jr. sat on the organization's board of directors.

In 1998, Harrison joined the Memphis Area Legal Services Inc. (MALS) as the Executive Director and gave the program new direction and focus as well as expanded the program's outreach potential. He was responsible for creating the program's first vision and mission statements, and strategic and business plans that were focused around a common purpose. McIver also worked to improve access to services by streamlining the program's delivery system. Additionally, Harrison formed partnerships and collaborations with the private bar to maximize resources. Under his leadership, MALS became the first legal aid organization participant in the Program for Nonprofit Excellence, which is a nationally recognized capacity building program that assists in providing high quality legal service. His dedication to client services has been outstanding and his 15-year leadership at the Memphis Area Legal Services is testament to his work, vision and commitment to providing legal aid services to the Memphis community.

During his 15-year tenure at MALS, Harrison has been involved in legal aid work at the local, state, regional and national levels, including at the Memphis Bar Association; the Ben F. Jones Chapter of the National Bar Association; the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services; the Tennessee Bar Association; the Southeast Project Directors Association; the National Legal Aid & Defender Association; and the American Bar Association. Harrison has received the Ben F. Jones A. A. Latting Award, the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services' B. Riney Green Award, and has been inducted as a Fellow by the Tennessee Bar Foundation, the Memphis and Shelby County Bar Foundation and the American Bar Foundation.

Mr. Speaker, Harrison D. McIver has served the Memphis legal community well and I ask all of my colleagues to join me in congratulating him on receiving the American Bar Association's 2014 Charles H. Dorsey Award.

Thank you, Mr. Polis. I appreciate the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the passage of the rule and H.R. 5682, the underlying bill. You first have to consider the opinion of the world's undisputed foremost climatologist, former NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, the guru on this subject, Betty Crocker, Good Housekeeping Seal, one of the first scientists to warn of the dangers of burning carbon fuel.

Dr. Hansen is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and he has likened the building and the use of the Keystone XL pipeline to the lighting of ``the fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet'' and nothing less.

``The fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet,'' that is Dr. Hansen. Dr. Hansen has warned the completion of this pipeline will only reinforce our dependence on fossil fuels, not strengthen our Nation's energy independence, as has been argued by some of my friends on the other side.

When you brush aside the studies funded by TransCanada and other oil companies and you analyze the pure scientific studies that have no political motivation, every analysis clearly

demonstrates that the Keystone XL pipeline poses major threats at every turn, in extraction, in transportation, in refining, and in consumption.

Nationwide, about 3.2 million gallons of oil spill from pipelines every year. Spills such as those pollute drinking water, ruin American farmland, potentially destroy sacred tribal grounds, and create an uninhabitable environment for our own homeowners.

In fact, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, there was a spill in 2010 of tar sands oil that cost $1.2 billion and years and years and years to clean up. That is where the permanent jobs are going to be created, in cleaning up the spillage, and that is not the kind of jobs the American people want.

Building the pipeline carries the dirtiest oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and is exactly the opposite of addressing climate change, which is what we should be doing today, and most of this oil will not go to America, but will go through America, endangering mid- America, and be exported overseas. There are no export restrictions on nondomestic crudes.

H.R. 5682 is a special interest earmark that will make the U.S. a permanent conduit to international markets for one of the dirtiest fuel sources on the planet.

My colleague and friend says that we are going to be helping our friend. Yes, Canada is our friend. We play hockey with them, basketball, whatever; but this oil is going to go to our other friend, China. This is about Canada shipping oil through America and endangering American lands to supply the Chinese with oil.

The Keystone XL proponents like to talk about these jobs it would create, but the vast majority are temporary. The permanent jobs measure but 35, and as I said, the permanent jobs will really be cleanup.

As was mentioned by Mr. Polis, these jobs are important if they are in transportation infrastructure. That creates real jobs in this country, getting goods to market, and my friends on the other side have resisted transportation infrastructure jobs.

Clean energy is permanent jobs. Wind and solar are permanent jobs. The only permanent jobs are the cleanups. When the U.S. and China have come together in historic agreement is not the time to light the fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.

For these and other countless reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.'' It is time to return our focus to an issue that centers on true energy independence through renewable sources and greener, domestic energy production.

Mr. Speaker, this is Constitution Week, the week that we honor our Constitution, drafted in 1787 on September 15 and signed on the 17th.

I spoke to a class about it in Memphis. I looked at the class, which is almost entirely African American, and I thought about the Constitution having in it slavery and not having in it a woman's right to vote.

Then I have been watching Ken Burns' ``The Roosevelts'' and seeing how Teddy Roosevelt would have thought about where we are today. Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt knew we needed a central government to work for the people. Teddy Roosevelt said the Constitution was for the people, not the people for the Constitution. He put right first and he fought the trusts and he looked after labor and he looked after the average American worker. He would have been repelled at the idea of not having a Voting Rights Act, as he had Booker T. Washington, the first African American in the White House.

He would have been concerned about what this Congress is doing today and the prospect of war and our power to declare war and not acting and not exercising our constitutional prerogatives.

The Ken Burns series is a tribute to two great men and a great family, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, who made America better. I wish this Congress would do the same.

Mr. Speaker, today in Emancipation Hall, the United States Congress and the United States Government honored the fallen heroes of 9/11 with a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony--three gold medals: one to the individuals who died in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; one to the folks who died at the Pentagon; and another to those who died at the World Trade Center. Their names are all in this memorial book, nearly 3,000 innocent victims of radical Islam.

Radical Islam and al Qaeda continues to stay in ISIS. The President will address the Nation tonight about the dangers ISIS presents to the world, to democracy, and to the United States.

I plan to support the President in his request for us to join him militarily, economically, and in other measures to see that ISIS does not hit our homeland, attack democracy, and create a caliphate that will be dangerous to freedom-loving people all over the world.

I attended the National 9/11 Memorial Museum 2 weeks ago. It is stirring. It made me think of the heroes, the firemen, the policemen, the first responders, and the people on that airplane, but it also made me think of the hate of al Qaeda and ISIS.

We must respond. We are America. God bless America.

I appreciate the time.

Mr. Speaker, this is a tremendously important topic because this Congress, unfortunately, and our government are affected so much by political contributions. Because of Baker v. Carr, ``one man, one vote'' exists, but that one vote is not equal to the voice of corporations or individuals with unlimited amounts of money. The fact is those people, those corporations, have gotten more of a voice than any one person's vote.

Most Members of Congress spend a great deal of time raising money when they should be studying issues, listening to debate, participating in debate, listening to constituents. The amount of money that is in this system and determines who comes into this body is beyond anything the Framers of the Constitution ever imagined. The amendment that we offer would allow the Congress to put limits on the amount of money that can come into the system. It promotes the idea of everybody being equal, of ``one man, one vote'' and our representing people equally. It simply gives Congress the power to set limits.

I don't know why anybody in this Congress would object to giving Congress the power to set limits on corporate spending involving campaigns, which takes away the fundamental aspect of democracy that each person is considered to have a voice and one's perspectives presented on this floor in equal opportunity with those who are the most wealthy. There is nothing that affects this House in a more adverse way than money. This amendment can help this House be more representative of the great democracy that we represent and intend to represent and make it the democracy that it is supposed to be. It simply gives Congress that power.

I would urge this amendment to be considered and to be voted on in order to uphold the idea that each individual and his position is sacred and equal, that money is taken out of the system in the best possible ways, and that corporations don't continue to have the extraordinary influence they have had on this body.