Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 8976) to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 20 West White Street in Millstadt, Illinois, as the ``Corporal Matthew A. Wyatt Post Office''.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill, which would rename a post office in Illinois for Corporal Matthew A. Wyatt.

Wyatt joined the United States Marine Corps shortly after graduating high school in June of 2001. On December 3, 2004, Corporal Wyatt was killed while stopping a suicide bomber's truck at the gates of his forward operating base in Iraq.

I support naming a post office in memory of Corporal Wyatt, and I encourage all my colleagues to support this bill. As a historical note, my father was a Corporal in the United States Marine Corps.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost), who is a marine.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the naming of a post office after Corporal Matthew A. Wyatt.

My mama lost her oldest brother in the Second World War, and to the day she died, she talked about him. I could identify with what Marine Bost was just saying. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize the incredible work being done by Samaritan's Purse run by Franklin Graham and Mountain Ways run by my friend Joe Baker in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.

When the storm left countless families without homes, power, or hope, these organizations stepped up immediately. They didn't wait for a list of instructions or wonder how they would

get it done. They got to work delivering food, supplies, and hands-on assistance to those hit hardest.

Samaritan's Purse and Mountain Ways embody the best of who we are as Americans: neighbor helping neighbor, faith in action, and compassion when it is needed most. Their efforts have been a lifeline for the victims of Helene, providing not just relief but dignity and hope.

We need to take a hard look at how FEMA funds are distributed. Using these funds as flow-throughs to organizations like Samaritan's Purse and Mountain Ways will get resources where they are needed faster and more efficiently.

The truth is these groups know the communities, they know the needs, and they deliver the results because they live there.

Mr. Speaker, when push comes to shove and people need help the most, it is organizations like these that come through and save the day, not the Federal Government.

I would ask everybody to remember these folks in their prayers this weekend as apparently there is going to be some pretty bad snowstorms up there, and those people are just living in tents, Mr. Speaker, still waiting on aid from FEMA.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Corporal Paul Phelps. Corporal Phelps was 18 years old and working in the Baltimore shipping yards when he was drafted into the Army in 1943. He was sent to Fort Bragg in North Carolina for basic training before he was shipped to Massachusetts for infantry training.

Corporal Phelps was assigned to the 7th Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division and was sent to Liverpool, England, in May of 1944.

He was promoted to a T5 corporal during the Siege of Bastogne and received a citation from President Roosevelt. Corporal Phelps received four battle stars from his time overseas. Even though he stared death in the face, Corporal Phelps said he doesn't consider himself to be a hero.

Corporal Phelps married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy, and they were married for 54 glorious years before she passed away. They have two daughters, five grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Corporal Phelps lives in Knoxville and will turn 100 years old in early 2025. Corporal Phelps loves this country, and it is my honor to recognize Corporal Phelps as the Tennessee Second District's November 2024 Veteran of the Month.

Madam Speaker, I congratulate Ms. Ruth Henderson McQueen for making it into the National 4-H Hall of Fame.

Ruth is a remarkable Tennessean who has dedicated her life to serving our communities, agriculture, and especially 4-H youth. Ruth started out in 4-H as a fifth grader in Loudon County. Back then, her family didn't even have indoor plumbing, much less a phone or a TV. Through 4- H, Ruth's world opened up.

Madam Speaker, over her 26-year career with UT Extension, Ruth accomplished a lot of firsts. She became the first female president of UT's agriculture honor society, Gamma Sigma Delta, and she organized events like Ag Day that bring our community together.

What is most special about Ruth is her dedication to people. She oversaw a program that welcomed over 850 Japanese students into Tennessee homes, where they learned about our culture and creating lifelong friendships, Madam Speaker.

Even after retirement in 2001, Ruth stayed active. She served on boards and mentored young adults. She is also very well spoken, unlike myself. She is very compassionate, and many people have said that she is the one to call when you need a speech, a mentor, or a listening ear.

Ruth's dedication and kindness have made our community a much better place. I thank her for all she has done. She deserves this honor.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize Brooke Cottrell from Corryton, Tennessee, who recently graduated from Lincoln Memorial University as a physician assistant. She is the daughter of my good friend, Scott Moore.

Brooke has always been a very good student. She graduated from Gibbs High School as their valedictorian in 2015 and attended East Tennessee State University where she graduated in 2018 before heading to LMU.

She was inspired to become a physician assistant because tragically she lost her Meemaw and Papi to COVID. She said: ``God called me to take care of people during some of the most vulnerable and scary moments in people's lives. I want to use my medical training and faith in God to provide healing and comfort.''

Along with her academic achievements, Brooke has a heart to help those in need. She has spent a lot of her time working with local community organizations to help folks who are less fortunate, and she wants to use her career to continue taking care of east Tennesseans who need it most.

Brooke is a true Tennessean, so, of course, she loves the country life, farming, and UT football. She enjoys the opportunity to take in the natural beauty of east Tennessee while hiking and spending time with her dogs, Enzo and Biscuit.

I congratulate Brooke on her recent graduation.

I am looking forward to seeing Brooke's bright future that she has ahead of her.

I drove by their house, Mr. Speaker, on the day of her celebration. My daughter asked me what was going on. I said: Honey, I don't know, but, obviously, we weren't invited.

Oddly enough, when I got home I found the invitation, so I missed the party.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Milton Jones, an East Tennessean who served our country in the U.S. Navy and worked on the Manhattan Project.

Milton grew up with an interest in technology and how it works, which would serve him well throughout his career. After he graduated from Farragut High School in 1941, Jones earned a first class radio license from Madison College in Nashville. He then went on to train the Army Signal Corps until he was

called back to Tennessee to help on the Manhattan Project.

After the end of World War II, Milton started at WIVK radio as a chief engineer and proceeded to help set up new stations throughout the South. He retired in 1993, but continued to work as a consultant for different radio stations and helped tune their towers.

Milton raised four children with his wife Anna Ruth Atkins, and turned 101 years old in March of 2023. He has served his country and his family well, and the East Tennessee community is thankful for the impact he has had on those who have been fortunate enough to know him.

Madam Speaker, I recognize my dear friend, Coach Bill Higdon, who is turning 80 years old this month.

Coach Higdon retired from the University of Tennessee in 2009 and was inducted into the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame, something I will never be inducted into. Coach Higdon had a career at UT athletics that spanned 35 years.

Coach Higdon played basketball at Holston High School in east Tennessee and described himself as an ordinary basketball player. He wanted to pursue coaching and took the path that led into multiple sports.

Bill was a basketball graduate assistant at Western Kentucky University when they reached the Final Four. He went on to recruit for the UT football team. He was still working in an administrative role when the Volunteers played in the College World Series not once, not twice, but three times.

Bill loved his work as a recruiter, and he was great at it. He was named one of the top recruiting coordinators of the year under Coach Johnny Majors when Coach Majors returned to the University of Tennessee.

Happy birthday to Coach Higdon. His work at UT is legendary. He deserves a spot in the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame.

Coach and Sue-Sue have an incredible life. They have two wonderful children and four grandchildren. On a very personal note, he was always so kind to my parents before they left this Earth, and he took care of us. Coach is a great man, and I love him.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the life of my good friend, Bill Baxter, who passed away recently at 71 years old.

Bill was well-known as a very brilliant businessowner and a very charitable man.

He joined his dad's industrial gas business, Holston Gases, in 1980 after he graduated from the University of Tennessee Law School. Since then, the business grew from one location in Knoxville to 42 branches operating across 10 States.

He also bought the Wort Hotel in Wyoming in 2004 and helped the hotel earn a four-diamond designation from AAA in 2008.

Bill also served as the chairman of the board of the Knoxville Zoo, the commissioner of Tennessee's Department of Economic Development, and he was appointed to the Tennessee Valley Authority board by President George W. Bush.

He had the integrity to resign from the TVA board after 5 years because he wanted to honor a bill that had passed in Congress which imposed 5-year term limits, even though the bill didn't apply to him.

I offer my condolences to Bill's wife of 45 years, Ginger; his sister, Jennifer, and her husband, Frank; his four children and their spouses, Elizabeth and Rick, Jennifer and Jonathan, Joe and Emily, and John and Vivian; as well as nine grandchildren; and everyone else who knew and loved Bill.

On a personal note, Mr. Speaker, he actually tried to talk me out of running for office, and I often wonder where my life would be if I took his advice. I am glad I didn't, though, Mr. Speaker. Bill was a dear friend, and he will be missed.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 39 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, September 24, 2024, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, I recognize and congratulate my dear friend and Blount County Sheriff James ``Jimbo'' Berrong on being named Tennessee's Sheriff of the Year. It was much deserved.

Jimbo has served for over 30 years, and he has done a great job keeping our constituents safe. He was appointed in 1989 and has been elected every term since 1990.

He is known for being a dedicated leader with a proactive approach in protecting the folks in Blount County. He knows his people and their problems, and he has taken great steps to address everything he can, from substance abuse to church safety to increasing the number of officers we have in our schools.

He started one of the first school resource officer programs as well as a senior outreach program. Sheriff Berrong also runs the top agency in the State for dealing with sex offenders and human trafficking long before it made the news.

I thank the sheriff for being my dear friend. He has always been good to me and my girls, and that means the world to me. I can't thank him enough, and I can't think of anyone I would rather have run the Blount County Sheriff's Office. His work does not go unnoticed. It has always been appreciated by me and my family. I know the folks of Blount County love him.

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my dear friend, chef Dave Pinckney, on his retirement from the Cherokee Country Club.

David has worked in the food industry since he was 16 years old, washing dishes at The Orangery, which was a very nice restaurant. As a matter of fact, at the time it was a 4-star restaurant in Knoxville.

Eight years later, David became the restaurant's executive chef. I went there one time with a very nice family. The Burchetts usually didn't dine at places like that. They didn't take coupons.

I was amazed to find that the menu was written in French. I was a little embarrassed, didn't know what to do, and the waiter said: Sir, the chef would like to prepare you something special.

When it came out, it was two small grilled steaks with some ketchup in the middle. It saved me from embarrassment, and I was fed. That was my dear friend, Dave Pinckney. He is a fraternity brother of mine.

My heart goes out to Dave. He just lost his dad who was a dear UT professor and was idolized by people on the UT campus and all around the State of Tennessee.

In 2006, Dave took a new job, though, as Cherokee Country Club's new executive chef, again, a country club I am not a member of.

As Jackie Gleason said: I would not join a country club that would have someone like me.

Clearly, I am not in line to be in the membership roles there.

He is known for dedicating himself to making high-quality meals and making sure every customer enjoyed the food he brings to them.

He also taught cooking classes, he helped his friends open popular restaurants of their own, and he has appeared on several TV shows to showcase his cooking skills.

The Cherokee Country Club has been lucky to have him, and I wish him well in his retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the vice chair for yielding, first of all, and I thank his dedication to this country and his friendship to me, and he will be missed. He is a good dude.

Mr. Speaker, the State Department has been giving out cash vouchers to illegal aliens. Now, imagine this. There are veterans living, literally, under bridges in the district I represent, yet they are giving folks that come over our border yours and mine hard-earned tax dollars. We don't know who the heck they are.

They have never been able to provide an actual number or amount. That is by design, Mr. Speaker. I have heard it stated, our country has been flooded with 10 million, 11 million, but I think it is probably closer to 15 million illegals in the last almost 4 years, and nobody knows exactly how many. Again, that is by design.

You add to that list the answers we don't have. Not only do we not know how much they have received in assistance, dadgummit, we don't even know how many people have received this assistance. The White House will not give us this information. We have all had the phone calls and the emails and the letters. We have seen the pictures of the buses unloading folks when they drop these folks, illegals, out into our districts, and no one can tell us who the heck they are, where they came from, or if they are expected to return anywhere. All you can count on is more tax dollars being spent.

We are $35 trillion in debt. Every 100 days we add another dadgum trillion dollars, and neither party has a plan to pay it back. You cannot put a pin down on how much money we have doled out. We have got some serious problems.

Caravans travel fast and word of mouth travels even faster. These people know about the benefits that they are going to get before they even start their journey. They are more educated at it than, I daresay, any State Department official that is supposed to know what the heck is going on.

We are incentivizing illegal immigration, which means we are incentivizing breaking the law. Everybody knows it is wrong. They know it is wrong. We know it is wrong, but they are willing to forgo it. They know these folks are going to be voting. They know they are going to add to their rolls. One way or the other, they are going to get a driver's license, and then they are going to go to another State, and they are going to present that driver's license, and they are going to get a voter registration card, or they are going to do it within their own State.

The abject failure to secure our border is severely straining our communities. I can remember when I was mayor of Knox County, we had one school that had over a dozen different languages, and the population of that school was under 300. We are required to provide services for those children. Now, dadgummit, it is not the kids' fault. It is the breakdown of this town, the breakdown of the system that has caused this problem.

The people who actually pay taxes in this country are the ones who are paying for this. Our healthcare system, education, social safety nets, et cetera, are all breaking down. We don't even

know what people are buying with this cash that they are getting or where they are sending it. There is no way of telling.

Does it make it back to the cartels? I suspect it does. Who the heck knows? Nobody knows. Our State Department has a terrible track record under Secretary Blinken. That track record is bought and paid for with the American citizens' tax dollars. It is not in my notes, but it is on my heart. One thing I think we ought to remember if we read our Scripture: Jesus was talking, and he said, how you treat the least of these is how you treat me. Those 300,000-plus children that have come over our dadgum border, Mr. Speaker, nobody knows where they are, they don't know what hell those kids are in. I think our minds don't have to wander very far to know what conditions they are living in if some of them are even still living. We will pay. God will rebuke this Nation for that.

Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize my friend, the Honorable Judge Duane Slone from Jefferson City, Tennessee, who recently passed away at the very young age of 61.

Judge Slone earned his juris doctorate from Memphis State University in 1990, then moved into private practice before serving as the assistant district attorney general from 1991 until 1994.

In 1998, he was elected to the fourth judicial district court where he served until he passed away. He dedicated a lot of his life to supporting the community's fight against the opioid crisis, and he cofounded his district's drug recovery court in 2009.

Judge Slone is best remembered for his dedication to the community's fight against the opioid crisis over the years, and he received many State and national awards for his work, including the William H. Rehnquist Award from Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court pictured here to my left.

He also received the National Center for State Courts' Distinguished Service Award in 2018, and he was inducted into the Tennessee Boys & Girls Clubs Hall of Fame in 2020.

Judge Slone was a leader of the community, and he will be greatly missed. I want to offer my sincere condolences to his wife, Darrison, and his three children: Oakland, Joseph, and Estella.

East Tennessee is a much better place because of him.

Madam Speaker, I rise to honor Private Lawrence Hoo- lee, an American hero who served in World War II. In 1943, after graduating from high school, he joined the Marine Corps and began basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina, at 18 years old.

After basic training, he was assigned to the 4th Marine Division and sent to Hawaii. He was with the 24th Regiment that landed at Roi-Namur Island. His unit took part in the invasion of Eniwetok, and then prepared for the invasion of Iwo Jima.

Private Hoo-lee's next mission was the invasion of the Japanese home islands. On the way to capture the Japanese island of Sasebo, located 35 miles from Nagasaki, of course the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A day or two later, they dropped the second one on Nagasaki.

He got back to the United States on Christmas Eve, 1945. After being discharged in 1946, he went to work at the VA Hospital in Rhode Island and was instrumental in helping the area get a nursing home and a national VA cemetery.

Private Hoo-lee was married with two sons and moved to Tennessee in 1999, where he lives today. He will turn a young 100 years old this November, Madam Speaker.

It is my honor to recognize Private Lawrence Hoo-lee as Tennessee's Second District 2024 Veteran of the Month. I thank Private Hoo-lee for his service. If my dad were alive, he would say Semper Fi.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize my friend, Louis Carl Dobbs, from Childress, Texas, who sadly passed away at the age of 78.

Lou Dobbs, born on September 24, 1945, to Frank and Lydia Dobbs, earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University. He then moved into journalism, starting as a reporter in Arizona and later working as a television anchor in Phoenix and Seattle.

He joined CNN at its inception in 1980, and he hosted ``Moneyline.'' Later in 2010, he joined Fox Business Network, hosting ``Lou Dobbs Tonight'' until 2021. He also hosted ``Lou Dobbs Radio'' and wrote for Money Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, and the New York Daily News.

He is remembered for his dedication to his profession and his impact on the field of journalism, leaving behind a legacy of in-depth reporting that shaped the way many Americans understood political issues.

Lou was a dear friend of mine. He will be missed greatly. He was never afraid to tell the hard truth, something that is missing today in journalism, and that is something that is hard to find, of course, in the world in general.

I am praying for Lou's family and his friends during their time of loss, Mr. Speaker. I thank Lou for being my friend.