[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 36 (Wednesday, March 1, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1521-S1523]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONGRATULATING THE STATE OF NEBRASKA ON THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE
ADMISSION OF THAT STATE INTO THE UNITED STATES
Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise to recognize a pivotal moment in
our Nation's history. On this day, 150 years ago, the Territory of
Nebraska became the 37th State to enter the Union.
Let me tell you the story of Nebraska. In a deep and powerful way, it
is the story of America. America grew up in Nebraska. We were the first
State admitted after the Civil War, but our admission was first vetoed
by President Andrew Johnson. It was the only time in American history
that this had happened. The reason? President Johnson disagreed with a
fundamental condition of Nebraska's statehood--that Black men be
allowed to vote.
Fortunately, Congress overrode this veto, and on March 1, 1867,
Nebraska became a State. I said before that Nebraska's statehood was a
pivotal moment for our country. Nebraska gave America a chance to be
better.
By bringing Nebraska into the Union, our country turned away from
slavery forever. We turned toward the truth about humankind--that
everyone is precious in Heaven's eyes. By making Nebraska a State,
America reached for a future more closely aligned with that truth.
Since that new birth of freedom, our Nation has taken many more
steps--some bold strides, some stumbles--but always we seek to be more
fully the country we were made to be. At a crucial moment, Nebraska
strengthened our commitment to do that. Nebraska renewed America's
identity.
As a State, Nebraska had not only hard but also humble beginnings.
They called it the Great American Desert. In the early 1800s, the
famous military officer and explorer Zebulon Pike shrugged us off,
saying simply: ``Not a stick of timber.'' A few years later, geologist
Edwin James and MAJ Steven Long gave us this review: ``The land was
uninhabitable by a people depending on agriculture.''
Today, wagon ruts can still be seen on Windlass Hill on the Oregon-
California Trail, where settlers passed through. They were looking for
greener pastures.
Well, last year Nebraska ranked No. 1 in the Nation in beef exports.
The State ranked No. 1 in both the number of mother cows and cattle on
feed. We are the beef State. We are Corn Huskers. With both corn and
cattle, we produce high quality protein products that are sought by
consumers all around this globe. We are No. 1 in the Nation in great
northern bean production, popcorn production, and irrigated acres of
cropland. Nebraska agriculture is diverse and it is expansive.
We also have more miles of river than any other State. As we sit over
the great High Plains in the Ogallala Aquifer, water flows to seven
other States from Nebraska. Our abundant supply of groundwater makes us
leaders in producing soybeans, wheat, pork, and grain sorghum.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. It made
Americans really a simple offer: Strike out west, cultivate 160 acres
of surveyed government land for 5 years, and at the end of that time,
the land would be theirs. Families crossed the plains in covered wagons
to take Mr. Lincoln up on that offer, and this time they stayed. In
fact, the law's very first claimant was a doctor and a Civil War
veteran named, fittingly enough, Daniel Freeman. So powerful was his
dream that Dr. Freeman filed his paperwork just a few minutes after
midnight on New Year's Day, 1863, the day that law went into effect.
His homestead lies just outside of Beatrice, NE, where today we find
the Homestead National Monument of America. In this vast and ruthless
land, the homesteaders made the American dream real. They tilled the
earth, first to feed themselves and then to feed the world.
Nebraskans made the Great American Desert into one of the greatest
agricultural exporting regions in world history. They did this in part
by scientific discovery. Developments in agricultural technology,
including the center pivot, pioneered in Nebraska, have allowed
Nebraska ag producers to feed the world. Nebraska continues to lead the
Nation in center pivot irrigation technology, and today we are home to
the four largest irrigation companies in the United States.
Other technological breakthroughs came in transportation, especially
rail. These developments helped us to connect our communities and our
country. The route of the First Transcontinental Railroad runs through
my State. Today, Bailey Yard in North Platte is the world's largest
railroad classification yard. In addition, Nebraska now connects her
families by 97,000 miles of public roads. Well, that is a far cry from
those wagon ruts. These improvements allow us to continue that noble
work which we gladly accept of feeding the world.
I would like to take a moment to reflect on something. Nebraska not
only helped America find its moral compass again, but our State also
shows what wonders a free and virtuous people may work, and it reveals
the relationship between the two. When you seek the right thing first
and you work at it hard, amazing things follow. This is true not only
in our rural areas but also in our cities.
Omaha began as the ``Gateway to the West.'' Pioneers and immigrants
made it a mighty city in its own right. From the former stockyards to
the strong family businesses and Fortune 500 companies that you will
find there today, the fingerprints of hardworking, dedicated people
cover every inch of concrete.
Omaha leads in banking, insurance, telecommunications,
transportation, and in medicine. Last year, the University of Nebraska
Medical Center was ranked fifth in America among the best medical
schools for primary care. I think Dr. Daniel Freeman, America's first
homesteader, would be proud of that, but I doubt if he would be
surprised. This is what happens when we work hard and let ourselves be
guided by goodness.
It happened in Lincoln, our State capital, which was renamed after
President Lincoln was assassinated. It happens in our Nebraska
Panhandle towns and in our cities along the broad and braided Platte
River, all along our I-80 corridor, and in so many rural small towns
across our State. Nebraskans are a people who are engaged in
manufacturing, technology, ag business, education, and the arts. We are
strong people, and we build strong communities.
I have to say another word about doing the right thing. In 1879,
Nebraska was the site of the first time that American Indians had their
day in court, when Standing Bear made his famous statement: ``I am a
Man.'' The U.S. district court eventually ruled what we all know to be
absolute truth--that a person is a person. Here again, Nebraska gave
America the opportunity to be better. There are many other moments.
Nebraska was the first State in which women were the two major party
candidates for Governor, when Kay Orr, a Republican, defeated Helen
Boosalis, a Democrat, in 1986.
I am on the Senate floor honoring the State I love on its 150th
anniversary. I encourage you to come and see what the good life is
about. See our cities--their industry, their creativity, their
culture--where our innovators work new wonders, so much so that we are
now called Silicon Prairie. Feel the thrill of Memorial Stadium, which
becomes our third largest city on a game day. Shout ``Go Big Red'' and
cheer on the Huskers. Delight in our opera and ballet. Breathe in our
small towns. Stop in at a family-run bakery. Have lunch at a local
cafe. Enjoy some of the national food sensations that began in
Nebraska: Kool-Aid, our Reuben sandwich, and, of course, runzas.
Enjoy local favorites, like kolache, kuchen, fried tacos, and pork
chili. Enjoy a Nebraska rodeo. Ride out to our rural areas, where, as
Poet Laureate Ted Kooser says, the ``pickup kicks its fenders off and
settles back to read the clouds.'' Be awed by the vastness of Nebraska,
which gives us perspective on things great and small. Learn from
Chimney Rock, our western buttes, and the Pine Ridge, how to stand tall
no matter the weather or the season of life. Be soothed by the
Sandhills--the largest grass-covered sand dunes in the world and God's
own cattle country. Find peace in the song of the Sandhills cranes.
Take in the Central Flyway, where millions of migratory birds fly,
including our State bird--the western meadowlark. See our gently
rolling eastern hills. Canoe our
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rivers, fish our trout streams, and relax on our lakes. Follow the
trails that tell the story of our history and the roads that lead to a
bright future. See Nebraska at night, under a sky filled with stars.
Know why people travel from all across the world simply to stargaze.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Willa Cather, who grew up in
Nebraska, wrote of the West: ``Elsewhere, the sky is the roof of the
world; but here the Earth was the floor of the sky.''
We are a people of the Great Plains, the prairie, the Sandhills. We
remember our enduring sources of strength--faith in God, reliance on
family, and a habit of hard work. These things give us a sure footing.
For America for 150 years, Nebraska has been a place to look up and
begin again, a land of vast possibility, of opportunity, a place to
dream and to realize dreams--a model for America and the envy of the
world.
Congratulations to the people of the great State of Nebraska as we
celebrate our rich history, the exciting present that we are building,
and the brighter future we will have in our next 150 years.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, if I could just begin with a hearty
``amen'' to the great words of my senior Senator, it felt like old home
week there for a moment, with the quote about the Nebraska sky. My
kids--I have one of them with me almost every week in DC. We commute,
and I bring somebody with me. Another two of them are almost surely
going to be exploring along the Platte River later this afternoon, as
happens almost every day. As for the comments about the 1986 campaign
between Kay Orr and Helen Boosalis, it was the first time in America
that two women had run for Governor of any State. I worked for Kay, the
Republican Governor; it was the first campaign I had ever worked on as
a 14-year-old. And then, most fundamentally, were her great words about
the Homestead Act and the settling of America. I am a fifth generation
Nebraskan and descended from homesteaders in the exact counties that
the Senator was talking about engaged in Jefferson County.
Our State on its 150th anniversary, looks back on a history built by
grit from homesteaders, as Senator Fischer mentioned, to a football
team at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. Today, we celebrate all of those
things that make Nebraska special: hard work, resolve, and love and
care for our neighbors.
Millions of men and women settled Nebraska when our State was still
known as the Great American Desert. The Homestead Act made land
ownership accessible to anyone--to widows, to former slaves, to
immigrants. People of totally different backgrounds could legally own
160 acres of American land, and as long as they worked and lived on
that land for 5 years, they would get the deed. Your care of the land
is what mattered, not your background, not your status, not your family
name, but your willingness to work and to contribute and to feed the
world as our State still does today.
Today, Nebraska is the breadbasket of the world, exporting more than
$6 billion a year of agricultural products. We have cared about the
land for this last century and a half, but we care even more about our
neighbors. Two towns tell that story well.
During World War II, North Platte launched a hospitality initiative
that reached 6 million American troops as they would head for Pacific
and European theaters in World War II. Folks in the town saw trains
stop in North Platte every day and decided that they would cheer those
servicemen who were on their way to the war to fight for our freedom.
On Christmas Day in 1941, a young woman named Rae Wilson, a 26-year-
old saleswoman, founded the North Platte Canteen. For 4 years,
volunteers would meet each train--full of troops and passing through
North Platte--with candy, with fruit, with smiles, with hugs, and with
encouragement, thanking those men for how they were going to fight to
defend the freedoms that made places like Nebraska and the rest of this
Nation great. Some soldiers would go on to become POWs, including the
first train of men that went through North Platte on Christmas Day in
1941. They had been sent off by these women of North Platte with food
and with encouragement for their fight. Some never returned home. Who
knows how much the kindness of those women meant to people from all of
the States as they passed through Nebraska on the way to their
deployments.
In recent years, that same generosity has shown up in Pilger, NE. In
June of 2014, twin tornadoes ripped through this small Nebraska town,
killing two and leveling the entire town--destroying 78 buildings. Only
in the two corners of the town were structures left standing. Some
people might not consider a town of 352 people a top priority, but
those folks are not from Nebraska. From all across our State, thousands
of volunteers just began driving to this town where tornadoes had
destroyed people's livelihoods and their homes, bringing meals and
sorting through rubble with people who had been strangers until the
volunteers arrived and became family.
Young and old, Nebraskans from all across our State pitched in 2\1/2\
summers ago. One retired teacher would drive 180 miles every day round
trip to serve in this community, helping people dig out of the rubble.
One little girl sent $70 in from her lemonade stand. Pilger became the
town known as the town too tough to die.
When we are not coming together to help our neighbors, we are usually
coming together to celebrate Husker football. Our team represents
something much bigger than just a typical collegiate sports team. It is
about toughness, and it is about community. The Bugeaters, as the
Nebraska Cornhuskers were first known in the 1890s, started with a
volunteer coach and now boast many Heisman Trophy winners, five
national titles, and a sellout streak that dates to October of 1962.
For those of you who think there are football teams in your States--
and I say this with all due respect to the Presiding Officer, who comes
from a State that has passable football--and for those of you who think
you are from States where football is taken seriously, there has not
been a seat available to a game in Nebraska since October of 1962.
Nebraska has had, by far, the biggest winning streak--the winningest
team--over the course of the last half century in American college
football.
Nebraskans know and love this team, not just because of the prowess
on the field but because Nebraska football is the undisputed champion
of Academic All-Americans in the country, having a 43-award lead over
the second closest team in the history of Academic All-American Awards
and American life.
That is Penn State, not North Carolina, that is in second place, I
say to the Presiding Officer.
We live, we breathe, and we love our football team. After each Husker
win, church attendance goes up, and crime goes down. Literally, for
generations, half of the boys in Nebraska grew up wanting to play
quarterback for Tom Osborne in the option offense. Why only half, you
ask? It is because the other half wanted to play Blackshirts defensive
football to smack the snot out of whoever was going to line up against
the Huskers on a given Saturday.
Success on the field is great, but the real reason Nebraskans are so
proud of this team is that the Cornhuskers embody the hard work,
resolve, teamwork, passion, and sportsmanship of the Nebraska people.
While these are the trademarks and hallmarks of our football, they are
really the hallmarks of our community associations--of Nebraska's
pioneers, of our farmers, our ranchers, our teachers, our small
business men and women, our churches, and our Rotary clubs.
Do you know what? We could not be any more proud of that heritage. On
this 150th anniversary, I join my senior Senator in saying, please,
come visit, and ``Go Big Red.''
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in
legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. FISHCER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 74, submitted earlier today.
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The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
A resolution (S. Res. 74) congratulating the State of
Nebraska on the 150th anniversary of the admission of that
State into the United States.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the
resolution.
Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no
intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 74) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record
under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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