Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to remember the life of John Kurzweil, whose passing is a great loss for California and our country. I can only hope that his passion and love for his family, his country and life in general will endure among the countless lives he touched. It was my privilege to know him, my joy to work with him, and today it is my honor to celebrate his life.

John's longtime friend and colleague Bill Saracino offered a moving tribute in John's memory:

John Kurzweil: The Passing of a Patriot

(By William Saracino)

America lost a true patriot and conservatism lost a fierce

warrior and leader on November 9th with the passing of John

Kurzweil.

While known to most as the publisher and editor of the

California Political Review magazine, John's political

involvement dates to the 1970s and Ronald Reagan.

Having just graduated from California State University

Humboldt, John was appalled at the state of the country and

the national Republican Party in 1974-75. Deciding to do

something about it, he walked in an office of Young Americans

for Freedom, volunteered to help, and worked the rest of his

life advancing conservative ideas and strengthening the

conservative movement.

John worked in both the 1976 and 1980 Reagan for President

campaigns, as a media writer and spokesman and grassroots

college organizer both in California and around the country.

His work in 1976 took him to North Carolina, where he became

a favorite of Senator Jesse Helms. John returned to the Tar

Heel state in 1978 to help in Helms' first re-election

campaign.

1980 also started John's association with State Senator H.L

Richardson, who made John the Press Director for the Law and

Order Campaign Committee (LOCC). The Committee concentrated

on publicizing and campaigning against the ``soft on crime''

philosophy that permeated California's judiciary at the time.

Before serving a stint as the Communications Director for

the California Republican Party, John also was the Editor of

Policy Digest for the Heritage Foundation and Senior Editor

for the National Catholic Register.

It was then that he formed the California Public Policy

Foundation and started publishing the California Political

Review. The magazine has just celebrated its 20th anniversary

of providing Republicans and conservatives in California with

their only state-based source of news, opinion, practical

politics and humor. The magazine became a staple in the

Capitol and anywhere in California where politics was the

topic.

Perhaps more important than any of the above, John was a

faithful friend, mentor and helper to hundreds of those who

have been and are leaders of the GOP and the conservative

movement in the state, fulfilling Ronald Reagan's observation

that there is no limit to what could be accomplished if you

don't care who gets the credit.

Mr. Speaker, I support this week's Republican YouCut amendment that would be prohibited by this rule. The amendment would reduce the Federal workforce to its pre-Obama level by phasing out 188,000 new Obama bureaucrats who have already been added to the public's burden. This spending isn't stimulating the economy--it is stimulating the government at the expense of the economy.

Before government can create a job by spending money, it must first take that money out of the economy, destroying the productive jobs that create wealth and replacing them with government jobs that merely consume it.

In 1946, Harry Truman slashed Federal spending from $85 billion down to $30 billion. He fired 10 million Federal employees. It was called War Demobilization. The Keynesians at the time predicted catastrophic unemployment. Instead, he produced the post-war economic boom that produced unprecedented prosperity for middle- and working-class Americans.

We know how to revive an economy because we've done it before--by reducing the burdens that government has placed on productivity. All we lack is the political will. Maybe the American people can help with that in a few weeks.

Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 528, had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Madam Speaker, I rise today to remember the life of Robert Biller of La Canada, California. Bob was a gifted educator and passionate advocate for the students of California, and it is with a grateful heart I remember him today.

Bob received his bachelor's degree from University of California, Los Angeles in 1959 and spent the next several years serving his country as the administrator at the U.S. Naval Ordinance Test Station in China Lake, California. He would go on to earn his master's and doctorate degrees from University of Southern California in 1965 and 1969, respectively, winning recognition from his peers and the Henry Reining Jr. Dissertation Award for his dissertation in public administration.

Bob began his professional career in academia teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, where he helped establish the Graduate School of Public Policy and its Experimental Program in Health and Medical Sciences. He returned to USC in 1976, serving as the Dean of Public Administration until 1982. During this time, Bob raised the standard of education for the public administration program and raised the school's first one million dollar endowment as well as serving in leadership roles with the Deans' Council and the Budget Advisory Committee. Bob spent the next twenty years serving in various roles at USC including Executive Vice Provost (1982-1988), Dean of Fine Arts (1987), Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid (1988-1989), Vice President for External Affairs (1988-1992), Vice President for Undergraduate Affairs (1992-1993), Interim Dean of the School of Policy, Planning and Development (1998-2000) and he continued to be actively involved in university life after his official retirement in 2001.

Madam Speaker, it is without a doubt that through his commitment to education and service Bob Biller made USC a better place and its students better off. On behalf of the countless students whose lives he touched, it is my privilege to rise today in recognition of the many accomplishments and contributions of Robert Biller.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to remember LTC Charles Lyda of Truckee, California. Chuck was born to Charmian and Lu Lyda in July 23, 1952 in San Diego, California where he grew up with his older sister Laramee, and younger brother, Grady.

An extraordinary athlete, by age 16 Chuck was competing on the world stage, racing for the U.S. National Team in Wildwater Kayaking in the 1969 World Championship. Chuck would go on to be a two-time Olympian and two-time World Champion in Canoe/Kayak, as well as qualifying for 28 U.S. national teams in Canoe, Kayak and Biathlon and serving as U.S. Olympic Team coach from 1996 through 2002. His athletic legacy also includes serving as the first Nordic Director for the Auburn Ski Club Training Center, founding the biathlon program at Northstar-at-Tahoe and the long-running 10th Mountain Division Race, as well as developing the ASC 1-2-3 program, which has introduced nearly 20,000 young men and women to cross-country skiing.

While Chuck's athletic achievements alone would represent a full and accomplished life in their own right, he was also a dedicated and faithful patriot. Enlisting in 1983, Chuck joined the 132nd Engineer Battalion as a combat engineer and served 27 years in the United States Army National Guard. Chuck served multiple rotations as the Mobilization Officer for California, ensuring that the men and women going overseas from California were deployed on time and brought home in the same fashion. It is safe to say that his diligence in this role touched the lives of nearly every soldier who was part of the largest deployment of California troops since the Korean War. In 2005 Chuck was selected to deploy to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he served as the Chief of Operations, Corps of Engineers in Tikrit. Even though he was in his mid-fifties while serving overseas, Chuck maintained the highest levels of physical fitness and discipline imaginable, consistently improving his two-mile run time every time he took the test.

While preparing to deploy to Iraq for his second tour, Chuck lost his battle with cancer and passed away on June 12, 2010. Known by his friends for fierce loyalty and unending perseverance, he will most certainly be missed. Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today in recognition of LTC Charles Lyda and to extend my condolences to his family and my gratitude for his many years of service to our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, throughout what was supposed to be a recovery summer, the President has repeated a familiar theme, that the Republicans ran us into a ditch and now they want the keys back. That's an important point. We need to understand exactly what it was that the Bush administration did to run us into a ditch.

In fact, President Bush made two major policy blunders. The first was to preside over unprecedented regulatory intervention into the housing market that deliberately enticed people who couldn't afford homes to buy them anyway. At the same time, these policies deliberately encouraged lenders to make irresponsible loans by promising them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would cover the risk. This created a massive artificial housing bubble that ultimately burst with catastrophic impact.

But my question of President Obama is, if we know that this road leads to ruin, why does he continue down it at even higher speeds? Failing to learn from the damage that government intervention does by creating artificial bubbles in the economy, the President has repeated and amplified Mr. Bush's blunders not only in the housing market with mortgage subsidies and home purchase credits, but now also in other markets like automobiles and home improvements. Each time he has squandered billions of dollars merely to borrow from future demand, leaving behind economic craters each time these bubbles have burst.

President Bush's second blunder was to increase Federal spending at an unsustainable rate, transferring economic decisions from the productive sector to the government sector and crowding out the capital market by excessive government borrowing. Now remember, the $168 billion stimulus bill was a Bush brainchild. That's when we all got those $600 checks. If massive deficits and record government spending create prosperity, well then the final Bush years should have produced a golden age for the American economy. Has the President reversed these irresponsible Bush-era policies? On the contrary. He has amplified and expanded them.

In his first 19 months in office, this administration has run up more publicly held debt than all 8 years of Bush combined, with a promise that this would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Yet all this has accomplished is to crowd out trillions of dollars of capital that could otherwise have gone to employers to add jobs or to homebuyers seeking to re-enter the housing market or to consumers seeking to make consumer purchases. Thus, instead of the sharp V-shaped recovery that normally follows a recession, America is now entering its third year of economic distress.

The reason these policies have not worked is because they cannot work. They didn't work under George W. Bush, and they have not worked when Barack Obama doubled down on them. The core of Obamanomics is the proposition that, if government can inject enough money into the economy, it can stimulate consumer spending and, therefore, demand for production.

Unfortunately, government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of the same economy. It's true, if the government takes a dollar from Peter and gives it to Paul, Paul will have an extra dollar to spend--but Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that very same economy.

On paper, the economic effects of income transfers always net to zero. In practice, transfers net to much less than zero because they shift huge amounts of capital away from decisions that would have been made in the productive sector based on economic return towards decisions that are made in the government sector based on political return.

We see very clearly the government jobs that are created when government puts that dollar back into the economy. What we don't see as clearly are the productive jobs that were prevented from forming as government first takes that dollar out of the economy. We see those lost jobs reflected in a chronically high unemployment rate and a stagnating economy.

It's time that we stopped wrestling for the steering wheel and recognized bad public policy for what it is, whether the driver is a Republican or a Democrat. The problem is not the driver but the direction, and the direction hasn't changed.

We all know the road to prosperity. We've taken it before. When we've reduced the burdens on productivity, the economy has blossomed. It worked when Ronald Reagan did it. It worked when John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman did it. And it will work again, but we will need leaders with a far better sense of direction than what we have today.

Mr. Speaker, many people are asking why Congress is here today. I think the answer is pretty simple: We are not bankrupting the country fast enough, and so we need to come back and spend even more.

In the merciful week that Congress was not in session, my constituents had one message: Stop the spending. Obviously, Congress isn't listening.

Over the past 2 years, this administration and this Congress have increased spending by nearly 18 percent and run up more debt in 2 years than the irresponsible Bush administration did in all of its 8 years combined. Meanwhile, unemployment has increased from 7.6 percent to 9.5 percent.

Yet, the problem, in the view of the House Democrats, is that we just aren't spending enough. So we gather here today to shovel another $26 billion at the problems. That comes to about $330 from an average family taken directly out of the Nation's struggling economy.

Now, the gentleman from Oregon just told us, well, don't worry, it is paid for. Well, how is that? $10 billion from increasing taxes on businesses with foreign subsidiaries.

But remember this: Businesses don't pay business taxes. Business taxes can only be paid in one of three ways: By us as consumers through higher prices; by us as employees through lower wages; and, by us as investors through lower earnings, mainly on our 401(k)s.

Another $12 billion comes from cuts in food stamps starting in 2014, but we are going to use the savings starting now.

I tried that one out on my wife the other day. ``Honey, sure we can afford that new jet ski this year. I am planning to cut our grocery budget by $10,000 in 2014.'' I am sad to report, she didn't buy it.

We are told this is part of the plan to save or create jobs. Well, Mr. Speaker, this is not saving jobs. It is destroying jobs. Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it hasn't first taken out of that very same economy.

We see the jobs saved or created when the government puts the money back into the economy. What we don't see as clearly are the jobs that are lost or prevented when the government first has to take that money out of the very same economy. We see the lost or prevented jobs through chronic unemployment rates and a stagnant jobs market at a time when we should long ago have moved into a normal V-shaped economic recovery.

Nor does this even guarantee saving teaching jobs. Good school boards, faced with the choice between a couple of good teachers or a pointless and overpaid bureaucrat, are probably going to keep the teachers and fire the bureaucrat. But this bill says they don't have to make that choice. Indeed, this bill says they are actually prohibited from doing anything that would reduce their spending below last year's level.

What about Medicaid? A bipartisan group of legislators in my State of California tells us that they need this bailout money to save the State's Medicaid program. But bailing out bad management doesn't improve it.

At the peak of the good times when California was taking in more money than ever before, it was already running a deficit of over $9 billion, almost 10 percent of its budget. Just 4 years ago, those same bipartisan legislatures voted Medicaid expansions that have increased its share of general fund spending from 14 percent to 19 percent. California offers such Medicaid options as acupuncture, chiropractic services, and psychological counseling. And now they are shocked, just shocked, that they keep running out of money.

I love my State, but deficits that are made in California should stay in California.

Mr. Speaker, with the Nation now some $13.2 trillion in debt, that is about 93 percent of the entire U.S. economy, it is time to invoke the first law of holes: When you are in one, stop digging. And if Congress doesn't invoke that law now, it is becoming increasingly clear that the American people will invoke it in November.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, this bill ignores a simple truth: Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that is not first taken out of the same economy. We see the jobs that are saved or created when the government puts the money back in. What we don't see directly are the jobs lost or prevented when the government first takes that money out of the economy. Those lost jobs are seen in chronic unemployment rates and a stagnant job market, despite unprecedented government spending.

Nor is this necessary to save teaching jobs. A school board faced with the choice between a couple of good teachers and an overpaid bureaucrat is probably going to keep the teachers and fire the bureaucrat. But this bill says it doesn't have to make that choice. Indeed, this actually prohibits school boards from doing anything that would reduce their spending below last year's levels.

Madam Speaker, it is time to invoke the first law of holes: When you are in one, stop digging.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Before we add more bureaucracies to the equation, shouldn't we be asking how did the existing ones do? This administration ignored the oil spill contingency plan that NOAA's former response coordinator says could have burned off 95 percent of the oil spill from day one. It took them 8 days just to do a test burn.

In the 2 weeks after the spill, 13 countries offered the assistance of their surface oil skimmers. The administration told them, ``Thanks, but no thanks.'' As the oil approached shore, the administration shut down oil skimming barges for lack of life jackets. Apparently, it never occurred to them to simply bring out more life jackets. Skimmers that could have removed 95 percent of the surface oil were blocked by the EPA for a month because they didn't remove 99.9985 percent. For more than a month, the governors of the States begged the administration for permission to take emergency action to protect their shorelines, to no avail. And now we want more bureaucrats?

The problem is not a lack of bureaucracy. The problem is a tangled mess of rigid regulations, political posturing, contradictory edicts, and administrative incompetence that produced an emergency response worthy of the Keystone Kops. More of the same is not the answer.

My advice to this administration and its congressional majority is this: If you can't lead and won't follow, then get out of the way.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in memory of Lorraine Fern Pipkin of Manhattan Beach, CA.

Lorraine was born August 10, 1925 in North Dakota. She was raised on her grandparents' farm, working to help support her family during the Great Depression. At the age of 14 she moved with her mother to Yakima, Washington, and in the 1940s Lorraine moved to Los Angeles, where she went to work to fill the vital jobs vacated by GIs fighting in World War II. Lorraine loved being a mother and cherished time with her family and raising her two sons and daughters in Hawthorne. She was known for her wonderful cooking and open-house policy of hosting friends and family on a regular basis.

Madam Speaker, Winston Churchill once said, ``There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.'' Lorraine spent her life raising a family, whom I have had the privilege to know for many years, who reflect the finest virtues of our nation, and I share in mourning their loss.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

I would say in response that, yes, George W. Bush was responsible for what was then the worst debt in the Nation. That was a terrible public policy, and I make no apologies for it. But it needs to be pointed out that this administration and this Congress in just 2 years have run up as much debt as the irresponsible Bush administration did in all 8 years combined. Yes, that was irresponsible fiscal policy. Why in the world would you want to exacerbate and continue that bad policy? Republicans have learned their lesson. It appears that lesson has not yet been learned on the other side of the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, anyone who has experienced firsthand the quiet panic that stalks every waking hour of an unemployed family knows how frightening and debilitating is chronic unemployment. You watch your savings evaporate, you watch your children going without the material things that their friends enjoy, and you count down the months or even days until you won't be able to make that crucial rent or house payment.

That unemployment check is a lifeline in such times, and I fully appreciate and understand how desperately an unemployed family is looking to the security of getting 99 weeks of such checks, but I can't go along with this for a simple reason: The only way out of this nightmare of unemployment for these families is a job.

Speaker Pelosi and others have said the most important thing we can do to create jobs is to extend unemployment benefits to 99 weeks because the unemployed would spend this money and stimulate the economy. Well, this analysis completely ignores the harsh and glaring fact that, before this money can be put back into the economy, it must first be taken out of the very same economy.

We will have to take $34 billion more out of the economy in order to finance these extra benefits through November. In fact, this is the eighth such extension, totaling $120 billion. That means over $1,600 from the pocket of an average family of four in America. Since we don't have that money, we will have to borrow it from exactly the same capital pool that would otherwise have been available to loan to businesses seeking to expand jobs or to home buyers seeking to reenter the housing market or to consumers seeking to make consumer purchases.

Remember, two-thirds of economic growth depend upon consumer spending, but that money now won't be there to loan for jobs and homes and economic growth. This is $34 billion of relief to the unemployed that they desperately need and that I desperately wish we could responsibly extend, but to do so would also mean $34 billion of fewer jobs. It would mean perpetuating this never-ending nightmare of unemployment for these families and, indeed, throwing more families into that nightmare.

We have been told for several years now by Presidents Bush and Obama that stimulus spending would help the economy, but it hasn't, and there is a reason it hasn't. Government cannot inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of that very same economy. Government cannot provide a dollar of temporary relief to the unemployed without first removing a dollar of permanent relief for the unemployed--namely, a job.

The talking point du jour from the other side is, well, the Republicans have no problems giving tax breaks to the wealthy but won't extend a lifeline to the unemployed. Well, once again, they just don't get it.

Milton Friedman once observed that spending is the effective rate of taxation. Spending can only be paid for in two ways--either by current taxes or by future taxes to retire borrowing. High taxes and deficits are just the symptom. The problem is the spending, and this is a spending bill.

On May 9 of 1939, after nearly a decade of unemployment checks and stimulus spending and with unemployment at 17.2 percent, Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, made this stunning admission during a meeting with Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee:

He said, No, gentlemen. We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. I have just one interest, and if I am wrong, as far as I am concerned, somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say, after 8 years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.

Mr. Speaker, let us heed the lessons of history before we totally destroy our economy. Perpetual unemployment checks put these desperate families farther and farther away from the only thing that can truly end their suffering--a real job. That is a fact nobody around here wants to face, but until we do, chronic unemployment will continue to stalk the land, and God forbid, a few years from now, another Democratic Treasury Secretary will have to make the same admission as Henry Morgenthau did 71 years ago.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

The jobless need jobs. Why is it that the majority doesn't understand that? We do not help the unemployed by making more of them.

The gentleman from Florida asked an important question: What would have happened without all of the trillions of dollars of stimulus spending? It's becoming increasingly clear what would have happened: a normal V-shaped recovery.

In every past economic recession, save one, the greater the economic contraction, the more dramatic has been the following recovery. That one exception was the recession of 1929 when Keynesian economics had come into vogue. Herbert Hoover responded to that recession by enacting the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that was a tax on tens of thousands of imported products. He increased Federal spending 60 percent in 4 years. He increased the Federal income tax rate from 25 to 63 percent. These were policies that were extended and expanded under Franklin Roosevelt, and as Roosevelt's own Treasury Secretary admitted in 1939, it did not work.

The gentleman's history is simply wrong. The Depression ended and the great postwar economic boom began in 1946. You will find that, in 1946, Democrat Harry Truman cut Federal spending dramatically. In 1946, he cut the Federal budget from $80 billion down to $35 billion. He fired 10 million Federal employees. It was called demobilization, and the result was the entire postwar economic expansion.

Mr. Speaker, it's said that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. I fear that the majority party is repeating a failed history of economic contraction at just a time when we need pro- growth policies.

Mr. Speaker, when the stimulus bill became law, unemployment stood at 8.2 percent. Today, a year and a half and hundreds of billions of dollars later, unemployment is 9.5 percent.

This spending binge hasn't made things better. It has made things demonstrably worse because, before government can put money into the economy, it first takes that money out of the economy. We see the jobs created when government puts the money back, but we don't see the jobs that are lost, because government first took that money out of the economy.

When we borrow trillions of dollars, we crowd out the very same capital pool that would otherwise have been available for businesses to create jobs; so those jobs don't get created, and the ranks of the unemployed grow.

These are the same policies that turned the recession of 1929 into the Depression of the 1930s. Do we really want to repeat that lesson?

Madam Speaker, I rise today in memory of Reginald Smart from Truckee, California.

Reg was born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1916. After immigrating to the United States and earning his U.S. citizenship, Reg enlisted in the U.S. Army and served his country during WWII working for Pan American Airlines facilitating the movement of U.S. troops and officials. He moved to Truckee in 1947 with his wife, and opened his own business, the Good Fellows Grotto. Over the next 63 years, Reg was a prominent member of the Truckee community: opening a second business, serving on the school board and in numerous community organizations, including being the oldest living Mason in Truckee Lodge No. 200.

Reg Smart's life was a true American story of an immigrant who loved and served his adopted country and was devoted to his family and community. Through his hard work and tireless dedication, he achieved a better life for himself, and undoubtedly improved the lives of everyone fortunate enough to know him.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to remember Bob Backus, a friend and devoted patriot.

Bob and his wife of fifty-seven years, Nancy, lived in Lincoln, California. Bob and Nancy raised their children: Robert, Tami and Tina, who watched and learned from their father's commitment to serving his community and others. Bob served as the Chaplain for Vine Life Ministries, ready to respond to calls night or day, going wherever people needed help. He gave freely of his time to renovate and decorate old wagons for which he became famous, painting them red, white and blue and displaying them in local fairs and parades.

Bob spent many years as an advocate for the founding principles of our nation, volunteering and serving as an elected member of local political groups. Thomas Jefferson once said that ``timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty;'' it is safe to say that Bob Backus not only chose to chance the waters himself, but through his ardent devotion to his beloved country assured a brighter future for his posterity.

Bob will be sorely missed by his friends, family and the countless individuals whose lives he touched.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of U.S. Army Sergeant Joshua Hardt of Applegate, California. Today, I read a poem, written in Sergeant Hardt's memory, which serves as a testament to both his character and fidelity.

Ode To a Fallen Hero

(By Ting De Guevara)

No one asked you to volunteer

You did it because you loved your country

More than pure piney woods,

More than sparkling, high mountain lakes

Or the sauntering, Sierra streams

The possibilities were endless

A police officer, a federal marshal, a wife and family

Perhaps a fishing guide, for the flatlanders

Who only dreamed of finding rainbows in the eddies

Instead, you answered the call of duty

Not for money, nor glory, nor fame

But because you wanted to make

A difference in the world

You traded your Carhartts

For Army green, gilded buttons,

Spit and shine

Your boyish smile

The twinkle in your eye

Betrayed who we really knew

Our jovial, jaunting, Joshy

Your country called you

Like a far-away alarm,

In the foggy dream of yesterday

Fighting your way through Iraq

Returning quieter, somber and more patient

Knowing those things that only soldiers know,

The sounds and horrors of war

Still, your passion for fishing and golf

Was unquenchable,

Displaying your catch and taunting: ``Where's your

Troutzilla?''

Oh you scoundrel! You rogue!

How we envied your hole-in-one luck, your trout madness

And your contagious laughter

Filled our hearts, refreshing

Like a cold bottle of beer

On a hot summer's day

Then Uncle Sam pinned those stripes on your sleeve

Sending you to a strange and foreign land

Where women and children were forced

To surrender their last vestige of freedom

There, in the frozen mountains

In those smoke filled hours

The tracers flying, rockets exploding

Amid the trees like a firestorm

You fought bravely

My courageous son,

Even as the world collapsed around you

You remained steadfast

To your men and your flag

You may stand down, Sergeant Hardt

Your tour is over,

Your mission completed,

We love you

God bless you

Farewell, our fallen hero.