[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 3, 2016)]
[House]
[Page H502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          ARMY SERGEANT RODDIE EDMONDS OF KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, the word hero is used way too 
lightly these days, but an extraordinary man from my district was a 
true hero of legendary proportions.
  During World War II, Army Sergeant Roddie Edmonds of Knoxville, 
Tennessee, was captured at the Battle of the Bulge by the Nazis and 
sent to a POW camp. When the war was nearing an end, the camp's 
commander ordered all of the Jewish prisoners to report for what they 
knew was certain death.
  As the highest ranking American in the camp, Sergeant Edmonds called 
on all 1,000 servicemen imprisoned there to step forward.
  The German commander explained: They cannot all be Jews.
  Sergeant Edmonds responded, with a pistol at his head: We are all 
Jews here.
  The German commander backed down.
  Sergeant Edmonds has now been designated Righteous Among the Nations, 
Israel's highest award for non-Jews. He is the first American 
serviceman to receive this honor.
  Much has been written about the Greatest Generation, Mr. Speaker. It 
is because of people like Sergeant Edmonds. His son was given this 
great award on behalf of his father at the Israeli Embassy last week.
  I am introducing a bill requesting that Sergeant Edmonds be awarded a 
Medal of Honor posthumously.
  Director Steven Spielberg has purchased the rights to Sergeant 
Edmonds' story, and I hope a movie about his life will come out in the 
near future. The story of his valor should be made known to all 
Americans.


                      Federal Air Marshal Service

  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I want to go in a different 
direction at this point and mention another topic.
  A couple of months ago, in interviews both by National Public Radio 
and CBS News, I described the air marshal program as possibly the most 
needless, useless, wasteful program in the entire Federal Government.
  Shortly thereafter, the Los Angeles Times published an editorial 
entitled ``It's Time to Ground America's Air Marshals'' and said, 
``Duncan has a point.''
  The editorial pointed out that there is no data showing marshals 
successfully put down in-flight threats and added: ``In fact, 
passengers are apparently more likely to stop troublemakers on board 
than armed marshals.'' The Times said that air marshals are a placebo 
the country should stop taking.
  I became concerned a few years ago about this when I read in USA 
Today that more air marshals had been arrested than arrests by air 
marshals. At that point, the Service was costing $200 million per 
arrest.
  I was able to get the Appropriations Committee to start reducing 
their funding from a high of $966 million, after they had been given 
big increases each year, to $790 million this fiscal year.
  Having airport screeners and simply locking aircraft doors have done 
much more good than the many, many billions we have spent just so air 
marshals can fly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, 
usually in first class. This money is money that could and should be 
spent on much more cost-effective security measures.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, The Wall Street Journal, a few months after 9/
11, when they noticed that almost every department and agency in the 
Federal Government was sending up requests for more money based on 
security, said a wise legislative policy to follow would be that, from 
now on, if any legislation came to the Congress with the word 
``security'' attached, it should be given twice the scrutiny and four 
times the weight.
  Unfortunately, we have wasted many, many billions on different 
programs in this country just because they had the word security 
attached. We need to take the advice of The Wall Street Journal and 
give those bills much more scrutiny.

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