Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to remember the life of Kathleen DePiero who passed away unexpectedly on Saturday, December 30, 2017 after a brief illness.

Kathleen graduated from Parkersburg High School and received a degree in journalism from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. She was an Emmy Award winning television reporter and anchor, which included stops in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Cleveland, Ohio. Known for her captivating storytelling and being a natural on camera, Kathleen was well respected and admired by her colleagues. Kathleen was also a loving mother to two children, Blake and Hadley. She wanted to be there for every aspect of their lives, every single day. Kathleen treasured her time at her family's lake house and her parent's home in Hilton Head Island. She was the happiest surrounded by family and close friends.

Kathleen was known for describing herself as a: Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother, Friend, Cousin, Aunt, Colleague, Head Room Mom, Hillary lover, Country Music Fan, Book Worm, Wine Aficionado, Half Marathoner, KI Girl, Dog Mom, FFLOP, Happy Hour Connoisseur, SIL, Paddle Boarder, Staunch Democrat, Backstage Dance Mom, Reporter, Supper Clubber, Singer, Work Out Enthusiast, Impersonator, Traveler, Dancer, Hallmark Christmas Movie Watcher, Royal Family Follower, Weather Reporter Wannabe, Granddaughter, Katie Couric Stalker, Mountaineer, Bobcat Girl, AOTT Sister, aka Deeeeelores, DIL, Chicken and Biscuit Consumer, Essential Oil Guru, Carpooler, Emmy Award Winner, Yogi, Beachcomber, Cookbook Collector, Salty Dog Frequenter, and so much more.

Kathleen had an infectious laugh that will live in our hearts forever. I know she is deeply missed by her friends and family. I extend my deepest and sincerest condolences

Mr. Speaker, this is about Members of Congress doing their job.

The number one function of a Congress is to put out a budget. This Congress spent the last 6 to 8 months giving away $2 trillion to the wealthiest people in the country, and now we come to do a budget and say: Well, we don't have any money.

We have priorities here, and it is about taking care of people who are getting hurt.

It is about a gentleman who drove a truck for 40 years, missing baseball games and soccer matches because he was on the road. Now that he needs his pension, it is cut in half, and this Congress isn't doing a damn thing about it.

It is about the coal miner who climbed into a dirty hole for 40 years and now wants a pension. The Republican leadership here is absent.

It is about healthcare for kids, and it is about 11 million kids who are going to law school, going to college, going to med school, and all they want is a chance to sleep good at night.

This Congress needs to get back to work.

Mr. Speaker, I was unable to cast my vote for roll call vote 18 on January 16, 2018. Had I been present, I would have voted Yea on Roll Call No. 18.

Mr. Speaker, what a day in Washington, D.C. We have many Republicans in this town saying: What a great day it is for the American people; what a great Christmas for America.

The average family--63 percent in America--can't withstand a $500 emergency. With this tax cut, Apple is going to get $47 billion and Donald Trump's family is going to get $1 billion. They are going to toss out a few crumbs to working class families who work 60, 70 hours a week, and the fat cats in Washington and Wall Street are going to run off with the whole pot of gold.

Whatever happened in this country where we said, To whom much is given, much is expected?

We need to challenge the wealthy corporations. They are sitting on $4 trillion worth of cash. If they want to start a factory, buy a machine, or hire workers, they could do it now. They don't need to take it from the middle class.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to remember the life of Harold ``Babe'' Erdos who died on July 21, 2017 after a long battle with cancer. Babe lived in Morristown, Ohio with his wife Sue.

Babe was a third-generation coal miner and a union man. He was a union member for 46 years and United Mine Worker of America member for 43 years with Local Union 1304. After working underground for many years, he joined the staff of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) as a union organizer. In this position, he used his family's stories and experiences to advocate for miners. In 1983, he became actively involved in the political component of UMWA where he worked to influence legislators and to inform miners about legislation that would affect them. Even after retirement, he remained actively involved in the political action of the union. Babe considered this group of miners as a family rather than simply a profession. While Babe is perhaps most known for his work with the coal miners, he also served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War and later in life he was elected Mayor of his hometown of Cadiz, Ohio.

But above all, Babe was a dedicated husband, father, union member, and member of the community. Those who had the pleasure of knowing him spoke of his character and commitment to representing working class people. He is remembered as a man who

never complained and always carried himself with a dignity that defined who he was. He leaves behind an enormous legacy and some big shoes to fill in the union. I extend my deepest sympathies to Babe's family, friends, and Union family. I know he is deeply missed by all.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to remember the life of James Salvatore ``Doc'' Pipino who died on November 21, 2017 at his home, surrounded by his family.

Doc was born on July 30, 1934 to Salvatore Rock and Mary Frances (Rizzi) Pipino. He graduated from St. Mary's High School in Warren, Ohio. After playing collegiate football and graduating from John Carroll University, he became a teacher and coach at St. Mary's High School. In 1960, he joined his brother, Don, in the insurance industry, where he spent the remainder of his professional career, earning multiple professional insurance designations along the way. He was also involved in a variety of business ventures, including his ownership of Fonderlac Country Club and Niles Restaurant Business, Inc., a local Arby's franchisee, of which Mr. Pipino was chairman of the board at the time of his death. He also served as a member of the Board of Southwoods Surgery Center.

Outside of his professional life, he was an active participant in a variety of civic, community, and faith activities. He was a member of the Boards for the Easter Seals and Niles Community Services. He also served as the president of the Trumbull Country Club, chairman of values and visions for John F. Kennedy Catholic Schools, and president of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish Council (Niles, Ohio). In addition, he enjoyed volunteering as a basketball coach of boy's and girl's teams for Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Blessed Sacrament, and St. Mary's schools. Lastly, Doc was recognized for several honors and awards including the Golden Eagle Distinguished Alumni Award from St. Mary's/ John F. Kennedy Catholic Schools, the Mahoning Valley Italian American Sports Hall of Fame Man of the Year, and he was inducted into the Warren Sports Hall of Fame.

He will be dearly missed by his wife of 58 years, Patricia Ann; his sons, Atty. James D. (Mary Jeanine), Theodore S. and Atty. Samuel M. (Kimberly Kirtland) and his daughter, Mary F. ``Mimi'' Pipino, Ph.D.; grandchildren, James A. (Lynsey Harris), Elena Dean (Michael), Marisa, Dana, Matthew, Daniel, Camille and Lorenzo Pipino, and Cailin Jaspers; his brother-in-law, Dr. Theodore (Cheryl) Gabig, and numerous nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents; his brother, Donald P.; his sister-in-law, Delores, and many beloved aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Doc was a valued member of the community and will be deeply missed. I extend my sincerest condolences to his family and friends.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here for a Special Order. The issues of the day in Washington, D.C., are many. Tonight I would like to choose to talk about what is happening with the tax reform bill that is coming before the United States Senate. We are hearing rumors that it will be here this week, maybe a possible vote on Friday.

It is important for us, as we look at the first tax reform bill in 31 years, to understand that we do need changes to our Tax Code, that the Tax Code has become too complicated and too complex. It needs to be simplified. The Tax Code has become burdensome to small and medium- sized businesses. It is not always the most cooperative Tax Code for entrepreneurship or innovation. It lacks incentives for helping us in certain sectors of the economy to help us grow.

But the most staggering problem in the Tax Code today is that it has direct and substantial benefits for the wealthiest people in the country.

I am of the mindset that we need to have a Tax Code, an economy, and public policies that are going to allow the free enterprise system to work efficiently, that will allow for growth, especially in communities that have been distressed for many decades and are looking for the private sector to come in and hire our workers. It is very important.

Like most issues in the United States, like most issues that we face here in Congress, we have to look at these issues in the context of what is happening in the free market and what is happening in the rest of the economy.

So it is important for us to know that over the last 30 years, since the last time we have done tax reform, we have had a lot of growth in the country. Globalization and automation has led to enormous amounts of wealth being created, and that wealth has gotten concentrated. It has gotten concentrated into a small group of people in the country and it has gotten concentrated in certain areas of the country.

Over the last 30 years, we have seen 96 percent of income growth in the United States has gone to the top 10 percent of the people in the country, the wealthiest 10 percent of the people. That is a fact. Ninety-six percent of income growth has gone to the top 10 percent.

For the majority of Americans, we have seen wages that are stagnant. We have seen pensions that have collapsed. We have people who go from making $30 or $40 an hour down to $15, $10, or $12 an hour.

So the great middle class of the United States has seen its wealth go up to the top 10 percent of the wealthiest families in the country. That is a fact. We have seen now that the top 1 percent of the people in the country own 90 percent of the wealth in the United States. The ultimate statistic shows where most Americans are. It is the one that tells us that 63 percent of Americans families could not withstand a $500 emergency.

Now, think about that. Sixty-three percent of American families can't withstand a $500 emergency. We have had this huge wealth creation over the last 30 years that has gone primarily to the top 10 percent. Now we come back to the idea that we are going to reform the Tax Code.

We look at charts like this. This is corporate profits after tax, going back to 1950. We see that, as globalization took hold and we started moving in that direction in the seventies and into the eighties and up into the nineties and then into the 2000s, corporate profits go up.

In 2001 and 2003, we implemented a new round of supply-side economics, per George W. Bush. He cut taxes for the wealthy. They will take that money and reinvest it back into the United States, drive up wages, hire people, and we will get growth. That was the philosophy.

Well, what we saw happen is a huge increase in corporate profits from that moment on until the collapse of the economy in 2009-2010. So the philosophy was: We are going to cut taxes for the wealthy and milk the corporations, and the wealthiest families will put that money back into the economy, wages will go up, and we will get growth.

We saw huge increases in corporate profits and the slowest decade of growth in our country since the Great Depression.

You don't have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out that what our friends on the other side of the aisle were telling us back then about what the big tax cut to the wealthy was going to do didn't work.

This is what happened. Funny. If you cut taxes for the wealthiest and you help corporations, their profits go up significantly. But growth for average families has been stagnant to the point where, today, 63 percent of families can't afford a $500 emergency.

That is what the Republican Party is now talking about doing again. It was already proven not to work, but let's not let that stop us. Let's keep going.

So we are now going to see a tax cut that will make permanent a lower corporate tax rate. Any benefit at all that may go to the lower classes of people will not be permanent. That will go away.

Not only that, but here is the kicker: in order to do this big tax cut, the United States is going to have to borrow the money because we can't afford it. We are going to give this huge tax cut to people who are primarily the wealthiest people in the country. We can't afford it, so we are going to go to China and borrow the money from them and bring it back to the United States and give it to the wealthiest people in our country.

Then we are going to pay China back, with interest, the money we borrowed to give to the wealthiest people in the United States, all under the premise that it is going to get the economy going and it is going to lift up wages, when we already tried that and we know it doesn't work.

So what are we doing?

Not to mention the fact that the Chinese are aggressively plotting slowly the erosion of the United States of America. They are going to take our money that we have already borrowed from them and we are going to borrow more and pay interest on it and they are going to take that money.

They are building islands in the South China Sea. They are building islands. Yes, islands, in the South China Sea. They are building airports and military bases on the island so they can continue to project out force in the South China Sea. We just borrowed a bunch of money and we are going to pay interest on it so they can go and build more islands.

They are making huge investments in cyber. They are making huge investments in submarines, in their navy, and in their military apparatus, financed primarily by money they lend out to us.

So not only do we borrow money and have to pay it back, our bank, China, is going to use the interest that we are paying to fund their war machine. They already moved into Africa, where they are digging out a lot of the minerals and natural resources that they are using to feed their industrial machine, putting a base in Djibouti, projecting force into Africa. They are going to continue to do that, and the United States is going to go into an extra $2 trillion in debt and continue the concentration of wealth here.

China is putting a ton of money into wind and solar. They just announced a few weeks ago that they are going to move to battery- powered cars, renewable energy. They are putting billions of dollars into things like additive manufacturing.

This is our competitor. We are getting everything wrong. Everything.

At this point, this tax bill is not going to be good for the middle class. It is not going to grow the economy. It is going to put us $2.3 trillion in debt and it is going to feed the beast that is China, which is trying to come after the United States in every which way.

Then we see on the news today that North Korea is firing another missile.

Who do we have to get to talk to North Korea?

We have got to get China to talk to North Korea. President Trump has said China has got to help us with this. China is not going to help us with anything. We owe them. That is the problem. That is the problem you get into when you borrow so much money.

When corporate profits are at the highest they have ever been, we can't ask these folks to help us.

Do you know how much one-fifth of the Fortune 500 corporations paid in corporate tax?

One-fifth pay zero in corporate tax.

The corporate tax is a mess, too. But this is where the wealth is concentrated: the owners of these businesses, the shareholders of these businesses.

We have a situation where capital and capital gains has been given preference over labor. If you make money off of money, you are good, you pay a lower tax rate. Warren Buffett said it a million times that he pays a lower rate than his secretary pays. That doesn't seem fair.

We stack the burden on top of labor. This is a huge concentration of wealth, and then we have a huge concentration of opportunity, too, in the United States. A lot of it is through geography, where Silicon Valley is doing really well and Wall Street is doing really well. We have little tech pockets here or there in Austin, Texas, and up in Massachusetts, to the point where venture capital, which is the money that makes that engine go for growth, is concentrated in three States. Eighty percent of venture capital goes to California, New York, and Massachusetts; ninety percent of it goes to men; and only 1 percent goes to African-American people in this country. Opportunity is being concentrated.

We need a new energy grid. We need broadband in the United States to reach to every corner of our country to plug these communities back in that have been unplugged from the global economy and globalization. They need plugged back in. They need investment. They need technology. They need business incubators. They need research at their universities. Their kids need access to broadband at their schools and in rural communities across the United States, where kids literally have to go to McDonald's to plug into the WiFi to download their homework and do it.

Is that where we are in the United States? Is this what we are settling for? Are we okay with this?

I am not. This stinks and we have got to do something about it.

I want to make just one or two last points. You think about who is going

to benefit from this tax cut, and one of the prime beneficiaries is going to be the President of the United States and his family members, one of the prime beneficiaries.

One of the provisions is to get rid of the alternative minimum tax, which means that, if you have got enough lawyers and you have got enough accountants and you can find every loophole, at the very least, you'll pay the alternative minimum tax. And if the bill were passed--we are talking about passing here--passes and was applied to the only tax returns we have for the President, he would save $30 million just on the alternative minimum tax repeal.

The Donald Trumps of the world are going to get a huge tax break, and wages are stagnant for middle class families. And if you talk about the Donald Trumps of the world passing on their wealth, his family will save $1 billion--$1 billion under this provision will benefit the Trumps.

Now, look, I am not mad at anybody for being rich. I don't care. I am happy for you. God bless. But my goodness gracious, in a time of such great income inequality, at a time of stagnant wages for 30 years, and 60 percent of families in the United States can't afford a $500 emergency, can't blow a couple of tires on your car or have your car break down, and your world unravels. Somebody gets sick, your world unravels, and we are going to give the Donald Trump family a $1 billion tax cut?

We have communities that are dying from the inside. There are dilapidated homes all over communities that need to come down, no broadband, no nice roads, no nice schools, no new schools, teachers who haven't seen a pay raise for 10 years, erosion of the tax base. We need investment, public investment, to stimulate private investment into these communities.

And we are going to borrow money from China not to rebuild our own country, not to say: We are going to borrow $2.3 billion from China; we are going to do roads, bridges, airports; put everybody back to work; drive up wages; broadband in every community; new energy grid; jobs that are in the ground that can't be outsourced to China. That is not what we are borrowing money for. We are going to borrow the money, and we are going to give it to families like this.

I just don't think this is the direction we need to be going in. The benefits for the middle class sunset and the benefits for the major corporations are made permanent. There is even a provision, in the House bill for sure, that allows companies to write off an expense shipping their jobs overseas.

Now, can you imagine? Who is writing this stuff to where we are going to give the company and a big corporation the ability to expense moving equipment and people and all kinds of other things from the United States to China, to Vietnam, to Mexico, to somewhere else?

This is some dark stuff what is happening here. I will tell you that if somebody could prove to me that borrowing $2.3 trillion from China was going to create jobs in Youngstown; in Akron, Ohio; Warren, Ohio; Niles, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; Buffalo, I would be the first one to say: We have got to do something. We have got to do something. Let's talk about that.

Maybe it is worth it for us to borrow that money and make an investment like you would borrow for your kid's education or you would borrow for your house or you would borrow for your business to reinvest, maybe it would make some sense for us to do that, but there is no evidence that that is the case.

So I say, let's start over. Come talk to the Democrats. There is no reason why this has to be done by the end of the year. What is the rush? What is the hurry? We haven't done this in 31 years. Let's do it right. Congressman Ro Khanna and I and several others have offered a trillion-dollar tax cut for working class families. People who make $75,000, $80,000 a year and have two or three kids would get thousands of dollars back. Let's approach that.

How do we expand the affordable housing credits? How do we expand the wind credits for the renewable industry and wind and solar industries that are growing at 20 or 25 percent a year and then target those investments to distressed areas? Let's sit down and talk about that.

Let's sit down and talk about how we can get all these government jobs out of Washington, D.C., and spread them around the country. There is 300,000 here. Let's get a good chunk of them and move them out. Everyone doesn't need to be in Washington, D.C. These jobs could be done: 1,000 jobs in Youngstown, 1,000 in Akron, 1,000 in Biloxi, and 1,000 in Tallahassee. Stabilize these communities and then rebuild. Let's sit down. There is a way out if we come together.

This is going to get rammed through. No Democrats are even at the table. President Trump said he invited our leadership over, come down to talk. And he tweeted before that: I am not going to accept any of the Democratic provisions, but come on over. I am happy to talk.

I don't think the coffee is that good at the White House if we are not going to have a serious conversation. This is a wrong move for our country. You know, you start to think--not to be doom and gloom, but we are already trillions of dollars in debt. We already have the highest level of income inequality we have had since the Great Depression.

We have Republican control of the House and Senate and the White House, and they are going to pass a tax bill that borrows another $2.3 trillion from China, feeds that beast, feeds the Chinese beast all over the world in Africa, in the South China Sea, while here in the United States we have communities that are collapsing.

How much longer can we go? Because I know in communities like mine, we have been dealing with this for 40 years, and it is time both parties step up with a grand solution or series of strategies to fix it. And I will tell you one of those strategies is not to give a huge tax cut to Donald Trump and his family, to the wealthiest corporations who have the highest corporate profits in the history of our country. That is not the solution.

We need to come together, sit down, make this right, start over. Both parties need to be a part of this grand solution, this grand strategy.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this.

The last time there was tax reform was 31 years ago. Since then, 96 percent of income growth went to the top 10 percent of the people in the country. Ninety-six percent went to the top 10 percent. The top 1 percent control 90 percent of the wealth in this country.

Sixty-three percent of average families in the United States of America could not withstand a $500 emergency.

We have pensions collapsing, we have communities that have eroded, wiped out, and the Republican plan to fix all of this is to go to the Chinese Government, borrow $2.3 trillion and bring it back to the United States and give it to the wealthiest people in this country.

That is not going to fix a damn thing in the United States. It is not going to help Flint, or Springfield, or Youngstown, or Pittsburgh, or Gary. I am talking about Gary, Indiana, will get hammered from this thing.

We have tried this before, and many of you were here. President Bush did

this. He said: We are going to cut taxes for the wealthy. It is going to lead to growth. Wages are going to go up.

We had the most stagnant decade of growth since the Great Depression, and it ended in a complete economic collapse. This is a canard. This economic philosophy stinks. It doesn't work, and it hammers working class people.

To put a little salt in the wound, Madam Speaker, you keep the deduction that allows a corporation to outsource jobs from our communities to other countries.

Madam Speaker, the only place this is going to create a job is in Beijing, China.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here once again and follow up on the gentleman from Texas and his remarks that I think hit the nail on the head with regard to what working class families out in the heartland, in the Deep South are facing every single day.

I think it is important that every policy that we push here in the United States Congress is a policy that addresses some of those deep concerns that they all have.

Sometimes I think that this town gets into a little bit of a bubble. Two separate political parties that talk to each other, talk at each other, talk within each other, but we are in the midst of deep change in the United States. We are in the midst of the kind of structural change we have not seen in our country in a long, long time.

We have an economic system, a Tax Code, a trade regime, that has not, quite frankly, been up to task to meet the needs of working class families.

We have a healthcare system that, even though many changes have been made, I think, to help people get coverage, to help them afford their healthcare, it is still not up to task with the deep needs of our country.

We have an education system that is not quite up to speed.

The deliberations in this body need to be a little bit deeper. I think we need to take a little bit of a step back.

We have tax reform that is on the docket this week.

We have a consistent dialogue with other nations with regard to how we are going to organize our trade relationships with other countries, whether it be in North America, whether it be with China or Europe or any other country.

Mr. Speaker, I will just say that after looking at the tax bill that has been presented in both the House and the Senate, the Congressional Budget Office has said that this tax bill will run a deficit and a long-term debt for our country to the tune of $1.7 trillion. So this tax reform that our friends on the other side are pushing has a $1.7 trillion hole in it.

What has to happen is that the United States Government, because the Republicans are going to pass a tax cut, which the majority will go to the wealthiest people in the country, and because there will be this hole in the budget now, this country--our taxpayers are going to have to go to China, go to Saudi Arabia, and we are going to say: Hey, can you loan us some money? We have got this big deficit. We have got this debt we are running up in the United States. Can you loan us like $1.7 trillion? Because we are going to give that money back to the wealthiest people in the country, in the hopes that it stimulates the economy and grows jobs and wages. And, oh, by the way, we tried that in 2001, and 2003, and it didn't work.

To me, I think it is very difficult for us as a country to say we are going to give China more power over us. We are going to give China more say in the negotiations that we have with them, whether it is North Korea, whether it is them moving bases out into the South China Sea where they are actually building islands so that they can put bases on them and project more force in that area of the world.

We are going to have less negotiating power with them as they continue to move into Africa and extract natural resources to feed their industrial machine. We are going to ask them for $1.7 trillion to give a tax cut that goes primarily to the biggest corporations in the country and the wealthiest people in the country.

Now, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to most people. It sounds like a little bit of a scam. And the $1.7 trillion, which you have got to watch, we are borrowing it, and then we have to pay interest on the money that we are borrowing. So if interest rates go up, we are going to start paying more.

Meanwhile, back here in the United States, we have got a number of challenges that we have got to deal with. We have got to rebuild our country. The President, while he was campaigning, said: We are going to do $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements in the United States. I am a builder. We are going to rebuild the country.

It is now November, and we have not heard anything about an infrastructure bill or building roads and bridges and all the rest. In fact, we have had a President who campaigned--might see a little theme developing here--the President also campaigned and said: We are going to expand healthcare. We are going to expand Medicare. We are going to expand Medicaid. We are going to make it cheaper, accessible. It is going to be beautiful, and it will be easy to do. I can do it.

And so goes life.

The two bills, in both the House and the Senate, from the Republicans, as analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office--not as analyzed by Democrats--it was analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, which is a neutral third party. They are kind of the umpire down here. They are the referee in

Washington. They just look at the numbers. Whatever party is in charge, they always don't like the Congressional Budget Office because they always tell you things you don't necessarily want to hear.

So the Congressional Budget Office said, on both of those bills for healthcare, both the House and the Senate: 20-plus million people will lose their healthcare.

So we had a campaign saying we are going to rebuild the country, and that hasn't happened; a campaign saying we are going to get people more healthcare, and that is not happening. Then, we had a campaign where our President was saying: We are going to be tough on China. We have got to be tough on them.

There are all kinds of little quotes I can say from when he was in Ohio, or he was here, or he was there. He was going to be the tough-on- China guy.

As you can see from this chart, for good measure, this is a chart that outlines where Chinese trade, foreign trade, and automation have hurt our country, and who has been hurt the most. The red is the hardest hit; and then as it moves to more lighter colors, less so.

So you can see in the industrial Midwest, in the Great Lakes States, in the South, up in New England, Pennsylvania, and some out West, they were devastated by trade. The President is in China this past week, and he says: I don't blame the Chinese. It is not their fault, but it is the United States' fault.

Now, I will say that the United States has not done a great job of being as firm on China as I would have liked. I was one of the original cosponsors of the China Currency Manipulation Bill, with former Representative Duncan Hunter, the father of current Representative Duncan Hunter.

So we have been on this for a long time. But this does not gloss over the fact that the Chinese intentionally steal our intellectual property. They intentionally skirt global trade rules.

If we put tariffs up on Chinese steel tubing coming into the United States, the Chinese will ship it to another country, and then, from that country, send it to the United States to avoid the tariffs that we put on because their product, their final product, was cheaper than the raw material costs of a company like Wheatland Tube, in my congressional district, that is trying to sell the same thing; or Vallourec Star, in my district, that is trying to sell the same thing.

So we would put tariffs on, and they would skirt the rules and come around through another country. So we play this constant game of trying to figure out where the Chinese steel is going to come in from. That is not our fault. That is not playing by the rules. That is not playing fair.

Our President needs to recognize--I am all for being a diplomat--but when you are in the country, you need to be firm with the leaders of that country and tell them to stop hurting American businesses and putting American steelworkers out of work, especially when you campaigned on doing that just a year ago. We are seeing communities completely wiped out.

So back to the tax cut, we are going to go to this same country, and we are going to borrow money from them. That doesn't make any sense at all.

What Democrats are proposing, and what our side is proposing, is that the people in the country that really need a break are those people the gentleman from Texas was just talking about, the ones working swing shifts; the ones who take a shower after work; the ones who stand on their feet all day long, making minimum wage or maybe a little bit more. Those are the people we should be pushing a tax cut toward. Put a little money in their pocket; help them lift up the ladder.

Here is why I think this makes sense: If you go back to the last time we did tax reform, 31 years ago, in the last 31 years, 96 percent of all income growth went to the top 10 percent of the wealthiest people in the United States. So over 30 years, 96 percent of that growth went to the top 10 percent. That is where all of the money went.

We have seen it flatline wages across the middle class for 30 years. We know the story, unfortunately: communities gutted, manufacturing base eroded. So to say we are going to take this group that has made all of the income gains in the last 31 years, and we are going to give them a tax cut that we are going to finance by borrowing money from China, which is going to increase our national debt; so we are going to have to pay more on that; we are going to lose leverage in the world with China; and now they are our banker--even more so than they are right now.

So what I am asking is for us, in this body, to take a time out, to stop the process, to reach across the aisle to Democrats, to say that we have got to figure out this disparity that has happened over the last 20 or 30 years between capital and between labor. All of the gains have been on the capital side, yet capital gets taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Warren Buffett said it a million times that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary pays. Now, is that fair? Is that right? It is not. Of course, it isn't.

The argument is--because we have been adopting this system in one form or fashion or another for most of the last 30 years since Reaganomics--that has been the same time that all of this has happened. So we need a new way of doing this. This is not working for people. The Tax Code is an opportunity for us, I think, to ask those people who have been doing pretty well over the last 30 years, who make their money through capital gains, to pay the same level as the guy working the second shift at General Motors Lordstown. I think that is only fair. With that revenue, we can start rebuilding the country.

Let me just say, lastly, that there is no evidence--and I know in Washington that most things aren't based on evidence--but there is no evidence that cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in the country somehow makes it down to improve wages for middle class people. There just isn't any evidence of that.

George W. Bush, I was here for the second round of these tax cuts, but he cut, primarily, for the top 1 percent and threw some crumbs to the middle class folks. They got 300 bucks. That was supposed to create jobs, stimulate the economy, grow wages, and everything else. That was the slowest decade of growth in modern American history going back to the Great Depression.

We had a more stable line of growth with the Bill Clinton budget in 1993, in which we asked the wealthiest to pay a little bit more. We balanced the budget, reinvested back into the country, and created 20 million new jobs. Every income group, from top to bottom, saw wages go up.

When he walked out of this Capitol and George W. Bush came in, I think there was a $5.6 trillion projected surplus. I hate to say it, but we were having the debate about what we were going to do with the surplus. You may remember Al Gore was campaigning saying: We ought to put that surplus in a lock box, and make sure we support Medicare and Social Security and extend the life of those programs.

George Bush was saying that we want to give it back in a tax cut. So George Bush won, and it went back in a tax cut. The only benefit-- supposed benefit--is that at least we didn't necessarily borrow that money. We were projected to have that money come in, and then we gave it back in a tax cut as the country collectively--some of us weren't for that.

But now we don't have a surplus we are going to give away. We have got to go borrow the money. So then we give that $5.6 trillion back-- again, primarily to the top 1 percent--and have a slow decade of growth. We ended up in two wars, put that on a credit card, too, then a complete economic collapse, and we are just trying to climb our way back.

This is not the time to go borrow more money from China and give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in the country. It is just not the time to do that. We have got a lot of investments here at home that we need to make. We need to create an economic system that starts working for most people in the country which it is not now.

We have jobs, but we have stagnant wages. We do have jobs, but wages are low. We do have jobs, but people are still losing their pensions. We do have jobs, but people still don't have the kind of healthcare that they need.

We can do better than this. It starts, I think, now with our rejecting the Republican tax bill and saying to them:

Reach across the aisle, work with Democrats, and let's do something that is bipartisan here and something that makes this a revenue enhancer or, at the very least, revenue neutral by asking and increasing the rates on capital and not borrowing $1.7 trillion--if not more--with increased interest rates from China.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 47 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, November 14, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Patricia Bowser, age 67 who passed away on Monday, November 6, 2017.

Patricia was born on October 3, 1950 in Youngstown, Ohio to Stephen and Mary Ann (Svesko) Sinkovich. She was a graduate of Cardinal Mooney High School and attended Youngstown State University for college. She devoted 30 years to working with the Youngstown Board of Education with behavioral and special needs children. Patricia was also a member of the AFL-CIO executive board and was an active participant with the Democratic Party of Mahoning County. She was also an avid cat lover.

She is survived by her mother, Mary Ann Sinkovich of Struthers, Ohio; two sons, Russel Bowser and Jerred Kent Bowser, both of Youngstown; two sisters, Sue Benish of Struthers and Marianne (Keith) Burnside of Struthers; a niece, Kayla Burnside; and a nephew, Keith (Luca) Burnside. She was preceded in death by her husband, Melvin K. Bowser, whom she married in 1979, and by her father and brother.

I extend my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to Patricia's family and friends. She will be dearly missed.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Rex Earl Golden, age 95 of Machesney Park, Illinois who passed away peacefully surrounded by family on Tuesday, October 31, 2017.

Rex was on born on September 3, 1922 in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas to Luther M. & Mettie Golden (Hislip). A Veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corps, he served his country with distinction in Europe during World War II on D-Day. He was a proud 50-year member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local Union 364, and a former member of the Ancient Free & Accepted Masons, Rockford Lodge No. 102.

Rex was a beloved father, grandfather, and brother who will be dearly missed by his friends and family. He is survived by his sons, Darrin (Tracy) Golden and Alan (Nikki) Golden; grandchildren, Kiley, Brayden, Brant, Kassidy, and Jack; brother, James ``Bud'' Golden; sister, Jeanette (Bob) Pace and Pat (Frank) Todd; and brother-in-law, Thomas Neton Sr. He is predeceased by his wife, Jean C. Golden (Edwards); siblings, Edward (Edna) Golden, Georgia Gatewood and Ruby Neton.

His son Darrin and I are good friends, and it is with deep respect that I extend my most sincere and heartfelt condolences to all the family and friends of Rex Golden.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and talk about a timely issue that is an issue that is most important to most of the American people, and that is the issue of the economy, globalization, automation, and all of the issues that are coming down on many communities across the United States.

I want to take this opportunity to spend the next 30 minutes walking through for the American people a little bit about what has happened and talk very clearly about the differences in approach on how we deal with these issues, how the Republican Party is trying to deal with these issues, and how those of us on the Democratic side want to deal with these issues.

I don't want to get into a discussion at all, Mr. Speaker, about who hates whom, and who is bad and who is good,

and who is this and who is that. I want to talk about the facts, I want to talk about the historical facts, and I want to talk about what is happening to average families across these United States.

Clearly, given the volatility of the elections over the past 15 years or so, I would argue that most of those elections have been about the economy, and that most of those elections have been about wages, pensions, security, and stability for families.

My district is from Akron, Ohio, over to Youngstown and points in between, right up against the Pennsylvania border. And what we have seen over the last 20 or 30 years--for a while you think that all of this is just happening to your community, and then you realize as you read and travel, you begin to see that, unfortunately, most communities are facing very similar circumstances as the ones that I represent.

So here on this chart we have an outline of what has happened in communities with regard to foreign trade and automation. The red are the States that have been hardest hit. As it moves from red to brown to purple to blue, and then a lighter blue, red is the most down to the least affected by globalization and automation.

You will see on this chart the industrial Midwest, you will see up in New England, you will see down South, you will see as you move more to the central part of the country and then up into the Northwest, the hardest hit are manufacturing States, and the hardest hit by globalization and automation are the Deep South.

So the big question facing the United States of America today in 2017 is: How do we fix this problem?

These are States that have had significantly lower growth, and they have been hit hard with wages that have been stagnant for close to 30 years. We have seen an erosion of their pensions.

So what are we going to do about this?

The topic today in Washington, D.C., is the issue of tax reform. So we talk about tax reform in the context of the last time we had tax reform, 31 years ago. Mr. Speaker, since then, we have seen that 96 percent of income growth has gone to the wealthiest 10 percent of families in the United States. So in 30 years, 96 percent of income growth in the country--almost all of it--has gone to the top 10 percent. So the average family is getting squeezed.

When you look back at the elections going back to, I think, 2006--I thought 2004--2002 and 2004 were going to be elections about the economy, too, but after 9/11, that had an impact on what the national conversation was about with regard to our elections. But I would argue--and I have been here since 2003. I would argue that, in 2006, that election putting Democrats in was about the economy.

I would say that 2008, during the Presidential election and, again, for Congress, was about the economy. We had a complete collapse. The American people didn't think the Democrats fixed things fast enough, so in 2010 they put the Republicans in Congress. In 2012 things were getting better, and the election went for President Barack Obama, thinking that he was moving things slightly in the right direction. But they thought he would probably be better than Mitt Romney, who would have let the auto industry collapse and who was perceived as being more in line with the financial institutions in the United States. So they voted for President Obama.

Then in 2014, President Obama wasn't doing things fast enough, still the squeeze, and then obviously in 2016, America voted for President Trump, thinking that he was promising expansion of healthcare, opening up the coal mines and opening up the steel mills. He was going to get the economy back, he was going to do it. It was going to be beautiful, and he was going to do it with the waving of a magic wand. It was going to be easy. So all of those elections were about the economy.

So we still have this squeeze happening in the United States. We still have 63 percent of American families who could not withstand a $500 catastrophe in their family with their car, with their health insurance, with someone's health in their family, or with an accident. $500 in an emergency would send 63 percent of the families in the United States spinning out of control.

We see with pensions, for example, that the average person 65 years- plus only has $60,000 in a 401(k), which means they can drop out $3,000 a year--not a month, a year--out of their 401(k) for 20 years. Their average Social Security is a little over $1,000. Their pension isn't much. And all of this averages to about $25,000 a year. So you are squeezed with your pension. You have had stagnant wages. You don't have much of a savings. And most families can't withstand even a $500 emergency.

This constant squeeze over the last 30 years from globalization and automation has put many of the communities on the last chart behind the eight ball, unable to get and keep their nose above water for them and their families.

So our job is to figure out what the heck are we going to do about that. So the Republicans today proposed a new program of tax cuts. Here is what their tax cuts look like. Remember, I said 96 percent of income growth over the last 31 years went to the top 10 percent. So the Republican plan--again, we are not mad at them. This is just what they think is going to work.

Their idea is: Why don't we give a tax cut to people making more than $1 million a year? They will see a good chunk of the tax cut. The next group, people making between $500,000 and $1 million a year, will see the next part--the biggest chunk of the tax cut.

So the people who are making all of the income gains over the last 30 years, that huge concentration of wealth in the last 30 years, the Republicans think if we give them a tax cut, then they are going to take that tax cut, and it is going to trickle down to those red States that I had up here earlier in the industrial Midwest, in the South, moving into the central part of the country, and in the New England States that aren't really surrounded and based on finance. Let's give them a tax cut and hope it makes its way and trickles its way down to Youngstown, Ohio. That is their solution. That is what they think is going to work.

So let's ask ourselves: Have we tried this before?

We have. When I was early in my career, we tried this approach of supply-side economics. We are going to cut taxes for the wealthy. They are going to take that money. It is going to make its way back into the economy, and it is going to get wages up, secure pensions, and all the rest.

So with the Republican plan, they have done things to do that. Not just cut taxes for the wealthy, they get rid of the alternative minimum tax, which means no matter how many loopholes you are able to take advantage of, there is a minimum you are going to have to pay. And if they get rid of that minimum tax, and if that minimum tax wasn't in place a few years back, President Trump would have reduced his tax burden by $30 million--just so we can wrap our heads around this stuff.

Under the plan that they have now, the top 175,000 richest families in the country will see a $700 tax cut. That is their plan. We really can't afford it because we have got to borrow $1\1/2\ trillion to pay for all this stuff.

So that is where we are. That is their solution. Huge challenges with the middle class, huge challenges with pensions, huge challenges with wages and retirement and cost of healthcare and education, and their plan is to cut the taxes for the wealthy and hope it helps everyone else. That is their plan.

We have tried this before. When President Bush got in, there were two rounds of tax cuts that he passed in the early part of the first decade of this century. He gave most of the taxes, in the same way, to the top 1 percent of earners. They got a huge chunk of what we called the Bush tax cuts.

That was their strategy back then.

What happened in that decade following the Bush tax cuts?

Well, we see that, after the Bush tax cuts, we had the slowest economic growth in the United States post-World War II, the slowest growth across the board in the United States. They cut taxes for the wealthiest in the hopes that it would somehow help the economy. They also deregulated the financial markets because that was going to help, too.

So what happened was that we had very low growth: employment only increased by 0.3 percent, and the real

GDP only grew by 2.6 percent; wages were stagnant.

As we all remember, in 2007 and 2008, things started to unravel in the economy, and we had a huge collapse in the housing market that was deregulated. We didn't have any cops on the beat watching what was going on.

Stagnant growth ends in the collapse, and then Democrats came in and, quite frankly, fixed the problem, stemmed the tide, and did what we did. That is a whole other story.

The whole idea that cutting taxes for the wealthy is really going to bump employment and really bump GDP growth is shown in recent economic history to not be true.

Now, what do we have to compare this with?

If we go back another decade to 1993, when President Bill Clinton got into office, he had a different strategy and the Democrats had a different strategy. We started to run up the deficits coming out of the eighties. We had to get our financial house in order.

President Clinton came in and raised some taxes on the wealthiest people in the country, not because we don't like them, but the country needed revenue. We reinvested that money, balanced the budget, and what happened? A totally different strategy than our friends on the other side--right?--totally different. What we saw in the 1990s was employment at 2.4 percent, and we saw real GDP growth at 3.7 percent.

The red is the Bush tax cut that we have already tried in the historical analysis of that, ending in a financial collapse and stagnant wages. What we saw with President Clinton's economic plan is real growth, and we saw an improvement in employment. Wages went up in every single bracket, from the poorest to the wealthiest. Everybody made more money. We had a balanced plan on how to do it.

When we look at what happened with the Bill Clinton plan--oh, by the way, it ended the decade with a $5.6 trillion surplus. That is a $5.6 trillion surplus that we had here in the United States that, when President Bush got in, he gave it all away in tax cuts. I just told you that story.

What the Democrats are saying is kind of what President Trump was saying during the campaign. There has been this huge concentration of wealth at the top, and they have seen all the income gain.

We have got debt and deficits to pay for. We have got to rebuild the United States. We have got to lay broadband in every corner of the country. We need a new energy grid. We need a resilient economy to prepare ourselves for the storms and the hurricanes and the ups and downs from climate change. We have got to reinvest back into our neighborhoods. We have thousands of blighted homes in communities all across the United States that need to come down.

What we are saying is: Don't borrow $1.5 trillion from China and then take the money that you are borrowing from China, pay interest on it, and give it to primarily the top 1 percent of the wealthiest people in the United States. That doesn't make any sense.

In good times, I don't know if that makes any sense, but certainly not when we are already running huge deficits, not when we have the baby boomers moving into our healthcare programs for the elderly, not when we have an opioid epidemic where we lost more people in 1 year, last year, than we lost in the entire Vietnam war. That doesn't make any sense.

We have got to rebuild the country. We are competing with China. We have to make sure that our military is equipped, our students are educated, and that we are investing in research and development to develop wind and solar, the next generation of renewable energy, the next generation of jobs.

And we are borrowing money from China to the tune of $1.5 trillion to give to the wealthiest people in the country? Does that make any sense?

Mr. Speaker, it does not.

This is the most irresponsible tax proposal I have seen. I will even say it is more irresponsible than the Bush tax credits. At least with the Bush tax credits, we had a $5.6 trillion surplus. Many of us were saying to put that into Medicare, put it into Social Security. In the Al Gore campaign, it became a joke: Put it in a lock box; don't touch it; save it for a rainy day.

A few months later, 9/11 happened, and we could have used some of that for the next decade. We could have rebuilt the economy, moved the economy forward, reinvested it back into the United States. At least we had it coming.

The economy was growing and President Bush said: Well, we will give it back in tax cuts primarily to the rich.

Now we don't even have it. Now we are going to go out and borrow it and bring it in from China and say: Okay, China, we will owe you another $1.5 trillion because we don't owe you enough already. We are not going to give it to the middle class, who has not seen a pay raise for 30 years. We are going to give it to the top end.

I just think this is very irresponsible for us as we are trying to get the economy to work for everybody and we have all of these challenges that we are trying get our arms around here in the United States that will take some public investment.

I am not here to say that the government can solve all of our problems, because it can't. I am not saying that every solution is about writing a check from Uncle Sam and putting it into a program, because it is not. But what we do have to do is make some investments on the public side that are going to allow for growth.

When you talk about things like broadband penetration to make sure that rural America or small towns or certain parts of our cities have access to high-speed broadband, high-speed internet access, you will see that, for every 10 percent penetration, you see, I think it is, 1, 1.3, 1.4 percent growth in the GDP. It sounds like a pretty good investment.

So let's figure out how we can do a public-private partnership with the telecommunications companies and the public to make sure that we have high-speed internet access all over the United States. Let's sit down with the power companies, the energy companies, and figure out how we redo our energy grid so that we can have a 21st century, efficient, secure energy grid.

And, oh, by the way, ask all of these people who are underemployed today to help us build out this new America. Whether it is broadband or the energy grid, it is in the ground. These jobs can't be outsourced. The same with renewable energy. Many of the jobs related to renewable energy cannot be outsourced. These are the investments we need to make.

Again, we are competing with China. This, my friends, is a very important point. When you look at what China is doing militarily with North Korea, not helping as much as we want them to, moving out, actually building islands in the South China Sea, further projecting their force, moving into Africa, already in Africa, establishing bases in Africa, building relationships, getting minerals and other resources out of Africa, moving ahead with battery-powered cars in China and here, moving and spending $360 billion on renewable energy initiatives by 2020, creating 13 million jobs, China is on the move.

What are we doing? What does the Republican Party want to do? What does the Trump administration want to do, Mr. Speaker, while China is investing billions of dollars in renewable energy, creating 13 million new jobs? This genius idea is to go and borrow $1.5 trillion from them and take it and give it to the wealthiest people in the United States in the form of a tax cut that they don't need.

We are going to further position ourselves behind them in the race for the green economy. This could mean jobs in places like Youngstown, Ohio, investments in places like Youngstown, Ohio, driving up wages in Youngstown, Ohio, increasing and securing pensions in these industrial States and in the South. That, to me, makes sense. That, to me, is a smart plan.

So, Mr. Speaker, I am deeply frustrated with this tax cut. I think it is irresponsible. I don't think it makes economic sense. As we start to peel through it, other than the big picture of $1.5 trillion that we are going to borrow from the Chinese to pay for it, they are going to get rid of people's ability to deduct student loans. Medical emergencies will no longer be deductible.

They are providing instability in the wind sector with the wind tax credit, which has about $50 billion in investments. About 50,000 jobs are at stake and 500 factories participating in this new economy.

There is a way to do this. There is a way to be smart. We can't let our ideology determine our public policy if it doesn't make any sense. If we can have a balanced approach, we pay for the spending; and because of the situation we are in, we ask the wealthiest in the United States to help us pay for this because they have seen 96 percent of the income growth over the last 30 years.

If we do it right and we do it smart, we will position the next generation of Americans to be in an economy that they can thrive in, that provides stability for them, security for them and their families, and it will also help us deal with the great challenge of our time: global climate change.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that, as this process moves forward, we recognize that this tax cut bill is not the solution to the economic problems. It has gone against what the President of the United States campaigned on, and I believe it is the very betrayal of his campaign, a betrayal of what that campaign meant to so many people, and a betrayal of those very people whom he said he was going to help.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the life of Ronald A. Russo, a dedicated father, husband, brother, and grandpa who passed away on Friday, October 20, 2017.

Ron was born on June 16, 1953, in Youngstown, Ohio to Rucco and Anna (Sikusha) Russo. He graduated from Chaney High School in 1971 and worked for the Youngstown Fire Department for the past 37 years. He was currently serving as Battalion Chief. Prior to becoming a chief, he spent the majority of his career on Squad 33. Ron earned several lifesaving valor and crew awards during his career, and he was always willing to help anyone in need. He was a member of I.A.F.F., O.A.P.F.F., and Y.P.F.F. Local No. 312. He especially enjoyed working with his father and former Youngstown Fire Chief Rocco Russo, and his twin brother, retired Youngstown Fire Department Battalion Chief Rich Russo.

Outside of work, Ron spent a great deal of time watching his son coach hockey. As soon as Ron found out he was going to be a grandfather, he put a swimming pool in his backyard. He had devoted the last eight years of his life to his grandchildren. Everything from family vacations, crabbing on the beach, teaching them to cook, and that every animal says ``moo.'' He also enjoyed cooking and hosting family gatherings with his loving wife Joann. Their home was always open to everyone. The family motto was ``La Familiga E'Tutto,'' family is everything.

He will always be remembered lovingly by his wife, the former Joann Booher, whom he married Dec. 31, 2004; four children, Rocco Russo (Melissa Singleton), Margaret (Michael) DeNiro, Marie (Jared) Rupert, and Melissa Russo; two stepchildren, Tristan (Kolt) Codner, and Justine (Corey) Keller; twin brother, Richard (Janet) Russo; brother Robert (Debbie) Russo; seven grandchildren, Gavin and Logan Rupert, Dominic, Carmen, Julianna DeNiro, Gianna Russo, and Andrew Codner; and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Ron's life will be celebrated on Thursday, October 26, 2017 at the Rossi Brothers and Lellio Funeral Home in Boardman, Ohio, followed by a funeral service at the Poland United Methodist Church, where he was a member. Ron will be greatly missed both by the community and his family. I extend my deepest condolences to his family and friends.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the life of Officer Justin A. Leo, 31, of Girard, who passed away on Saturday, October 21, 2017, at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio, following an injury sustained in the line of duty. Officer Leo, a five- year-veteran of the Girard Police Department, was responding to a domestic dispute call when he was fatally ambushed by the suspect, who was then shot and killed by Leo's partner.

Justin was born January 9, 1986, in Youngstown, Ohio, to David and Patricia (Carson) Leo. He was a 2004 graduate of Girard High School and had attended the University of Toledo and Youngstown State University before graduating from the YSU Police Academy in June 2009. Justin worked for the Mahoning County Sheriff's Department and the Vienna Police Department prior to his appointment to the Girard Police Department on July 6, 2012.

Justin was a member of the Girard High School State Champion Cross Country Team in 2000, the Girard F.O.P. Lodge No. 52, the Girard Alumni Association, and St. Rose Church. Outside of work, Justin loved golfing with his dad and his old friends from the senior tees. He also umpired for the Girard baseball leagues and coached in the 4-6 youth basketball league.

Justin will always be remembered by his parents of Girard; his aunt, Denise Mitchell of Girard; his great-uncle, John (Mimi) Baglier of Canfield; great-aunts, Edith Paz of Sun City Center, Florida and Josephine Berezo, of Parkland, Florida and many cousins. He is preceded in death by his grandparents, Jennie Ellen Leo and John and Lila Carson and his uncle, Donald Leo.

Public calling hours will be held on Saturday, October 28, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. at the gymnasium. A funeral mass will be held on Sunday, October 29, 2:00 p.m. at Girard High School gymnasium, officiated by the Rev. Msgr. John Zuraw. Justin will be laid to rest at Tod Homestead Cemetery, following a private committal service.

My heart breaks for Officer Leo's family and friends in this tragedy. They have not only my thoughts and prayers, but the prayers of a community grateful for his selfless service. I extend my deepest condolences.