Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share my grave concern about the Keystone XL pipeline and H.R. 3, the Northern Route Approval Act, which, unfortunately, passed through committee this past week. It will allow accelerated building of this pipeline and give certain advantages to a foreign country--Canada--against our citizens that otherwise would have rights to go to court, which are being deprived.

The world's foremost climatologist, former NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, was one of the first scientists to warn of the dangers of burning carbon fuel. 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.

Dr. Hansen warns that the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline will only reinforce our dependence on fossil fuels, not strengthen our Nation's energy independence, which has been argued by some on the other side.

By furthering our dependence on fossil fuels, we only push Earth farther and farther away from the point of no return. Just last week, the highest rating of carbon in our atmosphere ever was recorded in Hawaii--400 points. This portends a hotter summer even than the hottest summers we have ever faced on this planet.

Building a pipeline that carries the dirtiest of oils--tar sands-- from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico on their way to China is exactly the opposite of addressing climate change in America. So, next week, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 3 in the interest of preserving our Earth for generations to come.

Mr. Speaker, there was a recent survey of about 9,000 outstanding high school and college students and graduates asking them where they would like to work. They had 200 companies that were all in the Fortune magazine list of top companies. I'm proud of that group of students from ages 15 to 27. Their number one choice was St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. It speaks well of that group of young people that they want to work to help others and to find a cure for cancer--and to work at St. Jude, which is such a wonderful institution in my home city of Memphis.

Eight of the 25 sites that were selected by these young people were in the health care field. I think it's admirable and commendable that so many young people want to help others and do it through efforts in the health care industry, not necessarily in ways to enrich themselves.

I'm proud that they chose St. Jude, and it wasn't just because of the Grizzlies.

Mr. Speaker, the education system in our country needs help. But instead of helping education through additional funding, the sequester, which I voted against as a bad idea, cuts education services to the children in our country who are most at risk.

$740 million will be cut from Title I education programs that provide financial assistance to improve academic achievement of disadvantaged students. Tennessee would receive $14.5 million less and, in Memphis, almost every single school relies on those funds. Head Start would be stripped of $406 million.

These programs are relied upon by low-income families, families that need more assistance to assure that their children have a safe place to learn while their parents work to pay their bills.

Nationwide, nearly 1.2 million students are affected by Head Start cuts. Tennessee will lose at least $7 million and, in Memphis, it means 31,000 children will lose access to affordable early education.

As a result of this reduction in Federal funding and the needs to reprioritize our allocation of Title I funding, Memphis City Schools will be forced to eliminate approximately 80 of their pre-K classrooms for the next year. Eighty-two classrooms are being closed, affecting 1,640 children, more than a third of the students.

The sequester needs to go.

Mr. Speaker, today was one of the saddest days this House of Representatives has probably ever seen. The 40-hour workweek, a great part of our heritage since 1938, destroyed. Don't get overtime, get comp time. Employer decides if you get comp time, when you get it, when he wants you to have it.

Assuming that everybody around here that's working is working 40 hours and wants to get some extra time is well-heeled and got time to take off and doesn't need that extra money, that time-and-a-half overtime, and they've got time to go out and play 18 holes of golf or something.

Most hardworking Americans need that overtime to take care of their families and to get through from day to day. But today this House voted to take away that opportunity for employees to have the 40-hour week and overtime thereafter. It was a shameless day.

We need to look out for our workers and preserve American rights, not give more to the 1 percent, more control and more money away from the 99 percent.

Mr. Speaker, last night, there was historic and important news from the Middle East. For the second time, the Israeli and the Turkish governments met and feel they're close to having an agreement to renew their diplomatic relations, which for 3 years have not existed.

There could be nothing more important to peace in the Middle East and America's interests than the Turkish and the Israeli Governments working together.

Having that historic relationship mended came about because President Obama, on his trip to Israel, urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to apologize for the incidents with the flotilla. He did so. That was a major act on Prime Minister Netanyahu's part. And for Prime Minister Erdogan to accept it was important too. They're working together. They're very close.

I'm pleased with both the Turkish and the Israeli Governments and their leaders, and I thank President Obama for his initiative.

Mr. Speaker, today, in Memphis, Tennessee, a great lady passed away--a lady who is as fierce, as brave, and as courageous a woman who's ever lived in this country: a lady by the name of Maxine Smith.

Maxine Smith was the executive secretary of the NAACP from 1962 up to around 2000. She served on the Memphis City School Board from 1971 to 1995 and was on the National Board of the NAACP. She helped take Memphis beyond Jim Crow and beyond segregation into a great city in America and America's mainstream.

Because the scourge of discrimination and desegregation stained this country, she was not allowed to enroll at Memphis State University. So she went to Spelman and then to Middlebury and got a master's degree. She went to work to help others and spent her life fighting against discrimination in all ways and all manners.

She served on the State Board of Education in Tennessee and made sure people got a good education, whether they were White or Black; and she overcame all of the hate and discrimination that she faced. She was a beautiful woman who lived Dr. King's dream--seeing people and judging them by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

She was a person to be emulated, honored, and remembered. She had a

great life--a life extremely well lived. I will miss her and so will this Nation.

Many people have been concerned about the sequester and the effects it has had on airplane flights. And I am, too. People are delayed a half hour, an hour, or whatever, and that's bad. But the biggest thing people ought to be upset about the sequester is the fact that it takes $1.6 billion out of the National Institutes of Health.

Mr. Speaker, each person in this room at one time will face a rendezvous with destiny. Whether that rendezvous is cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, AIDS, diabetes, or Parkinson's, the National Institutes of Health is working for cures and treatments. By taking $1.6 billion from what is our personal Department of Defense, we are going to put certain people at risk for death and for trauma. That is wrong. There is no more important funding that we do than the National Institutes of Health. That's our opportunity to save people's lives.

I will introduce a bill to take that funding out of the sequester. I ask my colleagues in a bipartisan manner to put the people first. The real enemy is disease. Fund the National Institutes of Health fully.

Last night, PBS aired the ``Memphis Soul'' performance recorded last week at the White House. The performance featured many songs that were recorded at Stax Records located in Memphis.

In 1998, Memphis civic leaders raised more than $10 million to build the Stax Museum on the original site of Stax Records. The museum honors all of the artists who recorded at Stax, including Isaac Hayes, Al Green, Otis Redding, Booker T and the MGs, and others.

From Eddie Floyd's ``Knock on Wood'' to Booker T and the MGs' classic ``Green Onions,'' Isaac Hayes' ``Shaft,'' and Sam and Dave's ``Soul Man,'' the recordings at Stax Records made significant contributions to the music of the era.

Beyond honoring its history, Stax is about education. In 2005, the Soulsville Charter School opened its doors to 60 sixth graders. Now expanded to grades 6-12, the 2013 class of Soulsville Charter School has a 100 percent college acceptance rate and scholarships.

I encourage everyone to come to Memphis to visit the Stax Museum and see the Soulsville Charter School to learn more about Memphis' contribution to music. I also hope you will tune in to PBS this afternoon to watch another performance of ``Memphis Soul'' at 5 o'clock eastern, 4 o'clock central.

I rise today to recognize the 40th anniversary of the founding of FedEx, one of the world's great companies.

According to business lore, CEO Fred Smith originally introduced his idea for FedEx in a Yale economics paper that got him a C grade. Today, 40 years later, we can all appreciate the merit of that C paper after the company originally set up shop in 1973 near the Memphis airport with 14 aircraft and 186 packages set for delivery. That first day, FedEx flew to 25 U.S. cities from its home base in Memphis, which remains its world headquarters. Today, FedEx has grown to ship more than 9 million parcels daily across the globe.

FedEx and Fred Smith have also shown great generosity to the country, and Memphis is lucky and proud that it's our home company. Fred Smith, a combat marine, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, served as the cochair of the World War II Memorial Committee to build a memorial here in Washington.

It used to be said that what's good for General Motors is good for the Nation, but now I think what's good for FedEx is good for the Nation--absolutely, positively.

I congratulate Fred Smith and FedEx on 40 years of great service, and I look forward to another 40 years of innovation and service.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio mentioned the concert that the President hosted with PBS and the Grammys on Tuesday, and did a poor imitation, I guess, of Justin Timberlake on ``(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay.''

It was a phenomenal shout-out to Memphis music; and while there were a lot of great performers there, I want to put a particular shout-out to Ms. Cyndi Lauper because she's special. She did another Otis Redding song, ``Try a Little Tenderness,'' and it was a phenomenal performance.

I would suggest to some of my colleagues on other side of the aisle that they ought to try a little tenderness on occasion.

Ms. Lauper is special. She did an album called ``Memphis Blues'' in 2010. It was one of the best albums of the year. It brought blues back. She had Memphians B.B. King and Ann Peebles and Charlie Musselwhite on the album. She's a phenomenal lady, and I give a special shout-out to Cyndi Lauper and Memphis music.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Dr. Jacquelin Perry, a renowned orthopedic surgeon and physical therapist known for her revolutionary work on treating Polio. Dr. Perry was born on May 31, 1918 in Denver, Colorado and was raised in Los Angeles, California. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles and graduated in 1940 with a bachelor's degree in Physical Education. After earning her degree, she joined the United States Army and trained to be a physical therapist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She was then assigned to a hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where many polio patients were being treated.

She continued her education and in 1950, Dr. Perry was one of seven women who received a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco in a class of seventy-six graduates. When her residency was completed in San Francisco, Dr. Perry was recruited to work at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. While there, she created a program for patients suffering from polio and other diseases and helped develop the ``Halo,'' a metal ring that screwed into the skull to immobilize a patient's spine and neck that were weakened by polio complications.

From 1972 to the late 1990s, she taught at the University of Southern California's School of Medicine. While there, Perry established a scholarship for the study of the human gait, which she used to research how forward motion is achieved in the legs. During her lifetime, she wrote over four hundred peer-reviewed papers and contributed to numerous scientific publications. Her book, ``Gait Analysis: Normal and Pathological Function,'' published in 1992, has become a standard textbook for orthopedists, physical therapists and other rehabilitation professionals.

Dr. Jacquelin Perry passed away on March 11, 2013, at 94 years of age in her Downey, California home. Although she suffered from Parkinson's disease, it did not deter her from attending work a week before her death. Dr. Perry leaves behind a legacy as an inventive physician, author and teacher. She lived an extraordinary life, and gave her time, her effort and her expertise to the advancement of medicine, and to the struggle to defeat Polio and Post-Polio syndrome. As a survivor of Polio myself, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the life and work of Dr. Jacquelin Perry.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the storied career of America's foremost climatologist, and the world's, Dr. James Hansen. Last week Dr. Hansen retired from his position as head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. After 46 years at NASA, he's leaving the agency to focus his efforts on the political and legal efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

He started his career by working on the atmosphere of the planet Venus in the sixties. Luckily for the world, he changed his emphasis to the atmosphere of the Earth.

Dr. Hansen is perhaps known best for his 1988 testimony to the Senate committees that helped raise the initial broad awareness of global warming across the United States. He sounded the warning bell of the effects of climate change, and can be credited with bringing the issue to the forefront of the American conscience.

Dr. Hansen, who fittingly called the proposed building of the Keystone XL pipeline akin to the ``lighting of the carbon bomb,'' is one of the world's leading advocates of decreased fossil fuel consumption.

While his departure from the Federal climate research community will undoubtedly leave a gaping hole in NASA's climate program, I look forward to the role Dr. Hansen will take on his retirement as he pursues actions to limit emissions and his fight against the development of Keystone and other tar sands pipelines.

The future of our planet rests in the hands of scientists like Dr. Hansen, and I ask my colleagues to join me in wishing him the best of luck in his retirement. I truly hope he can continue the work that he has successfully pursued throughout his storied career in this new capacity.

Thank you. I appreciate your leadership on this issue and your scheduling this Special Order.

Dr. James Hansen did retire. He is considered the foremost climatologist in the world. As I understand it, he shared in a Nobel Prize in 2007 on this general type of issue. He's been the leading proponent of watching out for the future.

The Keystone pipeline, he's the clarion call, I guess, on the problems that that would cause to the environment in the future. Because the tar sands, to mine, is a very carbon-intensive activity. You take away the forest. You also have to use a lot of water and a lot of energy in the production. Just the production of the tar sands causes great damage to the environment, let alone the potential for damage to our country when they would travel through the pipelines. Then, when they're burnt, that's, I guess, lighting the carbon bomb and letting it go off. But Dr. Hanson studied climate and was one of the first to warn on this issue. He has retired, so we will have his voice.

I live in Memphis. It's kind of the center of the region, Oklahoma over, for tornadoes. Tornadoes have been much, much more prominent in the United States. This just isn't a quirk. Mother Nature can have her times and certain variances in her schedule, but it's obvious what's been happening with the increase in tornadoes, the droughts, the floods. The Mississippi River, it's been the lowest it's ever been in spots--and it's flooded. It had the worst floods in Memphis ever about 2 or 3 years ago, and this year the river

was its lowest. We've gone from its highest to its lowest, and something's happening; it's obvious something is happening. Scientists, almost to one, tell us that this is because of what we've done to the environment.

There might be two out of 100 scientists. It seems so unfortunate that the other side always grabs one or two of those people, rather than the 98.

We all have a debt and a duty to protect the Earth and, I think, looking out for issues where we do conserve, as you've said. I've got a company in Memphis I met with last week--they're really in Mississippi--called Griffin, and they have found a way to come up with a system that when a vehicle idles--and they're talking about, in their specific situation, armored cars that have a lot of going around and they idle their engines when they pick up their financial deposits--it costs a lot to the environment in burning of oil when the car is running. They've got a way where the car can be turned off and the idling of the engine can stop, but, nevertheless, the vehicle still gets air-conditioning and power. It can save a tremendous amount of gasoline and protect the environment. Hopefully, they can come within some grants that are already available to make companies that need to retrofit their vehicles to use that, but it is like raising our CAFE standards. The best way to save energy is not to have to use it and to conserve on that.

There are opportunities we have. Obviously, we have to concentrate on this. We've got to look to alternatives, and wind and solar are two of them. It's a disaster waiting to happen, and we just can't close our eyes to it. It's important that we take a leadership role in the world.

Mr. Blumenauer, I would like to ask you, the Defense Department that raised those issues about it being important to our national defense, were they referring to the droughts that they foresaw coming in the future with climate change and what might happen in some of those countries where they have less opportunity to produce food and have water, et cetera?

I appreciate your bringing up the idea of the hottest year. In Memphis, it does occasionally get hot, but it also does in Washington. I think it's supposed to be 90 today. I suspect, and somebody is going to be able to prove me wrong, but this may be the hottest----

I figured it was, and it's just unbelievable. And last week it was cold. I mean, I had my winter suit when I went home, and I brought my summer stuff here today.

The heat does have effects, and you brought up some of the other issues. It's not just the polar bears. I'm a big fan of the polar bears, but they're going to be eliminated because they're going to lose their ability to survive in their natural climate. Also, the flora and the fauna are at risk.

What Mr. Blumenauer mentioned about defense made me think of a long time ago when I was in college. There was a man I thought a lot of named Don Wolfson. He was a smart man from a family that had knowledge of power in this country. We were talking about who was the most powerful person in the country and what were the most powerful interests. I had said something about the military industrial complex and how President Eisenhower had warned us in his last address about the military industrial complex. What he warned us about really was the impact they would have on the budget and all those things. But what Don Wolfson told me was the military industrial complex is all tied to one thing: oil. That's what it's about.

The military runs on oil. And as Mr. Blumenauer so well pointed out, they're the most consuming user of oil, and they also at the same time are spending much of their efforts defending the trade routes to get oil. That's why the 5th Fleet is over there in Bahrain, and it is defending the Strait of Hormuz and why Iran has particular significance in the Middle East.

It's amazing what President Eisenhower warned us about, and I don't know if that was part of his warning, but maybe there was more truth to what he said and we probably should spend a part of each day reflecting on President Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex and what it has done to our Nation, because that's where the budget has really got a great problem, and that all goes back to our dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. Blumenauer, let me ask you this--and we've worked together on the Keystone XL issue--When people come to you and say that it's going to create all these jobs, we need jobs and they can get this oil, these tar sands to China if they need to by going to the West, what do you tell folks about those jobs and the effect it will have on the future?

Memphis borders Arkansas, and there was some kind of a pipeline problem over there recently. I think it might have been Exxon. They had a leak. That's kind of an expensive process. That's similar to the Keystone pipeline; isn't it? It gives us kind of a warning of what could occur.

I just want to thank you for your leadership, and it's been an honor to join you today on the floor on this issue. It's important to be addressed.

Mr. Speaker, tonight PBS and the Grammys will continue a series of concerts at the White House, and tonight's concert will feature Memphis soul. Memphis is a city known around the world for music, whether it's Sun Records and Elvis Presley and Sam Phillips or the studios which will be featured tonight, Stax Records and Hi Records. Sam Moore, Justin Timberlake, Mavis Staples, Charlie Musselwhite, Ben Harper, Sam Moore of Sam and Dave, they'll all be there.

Memphis music is part of America's cultural history, a living, breathing

part of our culture. We're pleased that PBS and the Grammys chose Memphis soul to be featured tonight. The President will be there. Without Al Green, he'll have to do ``Let's Stay Together'' by himself. We look forward to that.

We ask all of you to come to Memphis, Tennessee, and visit America's great reservoir of music history.

People sometimes ask why we can't find common ground. There's an area we should be able to find common ground on--and we don't--and that's funding for the National Institutes of Health, which is going to be cut in the sequester by close to a billion dollars. There was an amendment in the Senate that tried to put funding back in the continuing resolution for NIH, and it failed on a party-line vote, with 54 Democrats and Independents voting ``yes'' and 46 Republicans voting ``no.''

Republicans say the reason they want to cut spending and voted the sequestration in is we're putting a debt on the next generation. Let me submit, Mr. Speaker, that the research that's done at the National Institutes of Health to find cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, AIDS, and post-polio cures and treatments will affect the next generation more than this generation.

We talk about the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense should be the National Institutes of Health, because the enemy is disease, and we need to conquer it and keep our loved ones alive and keep ourselves alive and have better cures.

We talk about infrastructure--and I support that--but the most important infrastructure is the infrastructure of the human body. And that's what the National Institutes of Health works on. We should work together and fund the National Institutes of Health for all of our constituents.