[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 13 (Tuesday, January 22, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H984-H989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Horsford). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2019, the gentleman from California (Mr.
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, it is time for us to, once again, ponder
the inevitable: that the government of the United States is important
in this world; that the strongest country in the entire world ought to
have the strongest operating government; that all across this globe
people once looked to America as the symbol of leadership, as the
symbol of opportunity, as the country where things got done, and a
government that functioned, sort of functioned. We have had our ups and
downs, but really the United States was always a symbol that other
countries would point to and say: Well, there is a democracy. It has
its ups and downs, but it has worked. It has been a place where we
could look to for leadership.
We are now 32 days into the shutdown of the government of the most
important country in the world.
What in the world is our President thinking? What is going on here?
How did we come to this situation?
Before we get into all of the harm that is being done by this
government shutdown, let's understand how we got here.
Every January, early February, the administration--the President--
puts forward his proposed budget for the coming year. The House and the
Senate take that under submission and begin the process of preparing
the appropriations and the laws, the changes to enact, or not enact,
the proposals that the President has put forth.
{time} 1930
In that submission, President Trump proposed $1.6 billion for border
security. The House looked at it, the Senate looked at it, and,
ultimately, the Senate passed an appropriation of $1.6 billion.
Unfortunately, that appropriation was caught up in other debates and
other arguments, and the Department of Homeland Security that was
supposed to receive the $1.6 billion, together with the Department of
the Interior, the EPA, Department of Transportation, Department of
Justice, and several other agencies, was not funded for the whole year
but, rather, funded from October 1 until the following Thanksgiving.
Then an additional CR, continuing resolution, was passed until
December 11, and that $1.6 billion was part of that discussion. On
December 10, maybe December 11, the Senate unanimously passed another
continuing resolution that had $1.6 billion in it, and that continuing
resolution was to go until February 8.
The next morning, when that bill arrived over here in the House of
Representatives to be taken up and to pass through to keep the
government open until February, in the intervening 13 hours, something
happened. The President changed his mind and said, not $1.6 billion. He
demanded $5 billion. And in a conference at the White House with the
leaders, he said: ``If we don't get what we want . . . I am proud to
shut down the government . . . I will take the mantle. . . . ''
So on that morning of the 11th, the House of Representatives amended
the bill and said, nope, it is not $1.6 billion. It is $5 billion,
because that is what the President wanted, and the government shut
down.
I thank the President. At the very last moment, he changed the game:
not $1.6 billion, which we were prepared to accept and keep the
government open, but $5 billion, and the government shut.
In the intervening days, as the debate went on, the $5 billion grew
to $5.7 billion for a border wall.
Now, don't misunderstand. Changes during the course of a year are
common, and it is common for the administration to make a change in its
budget. That is called a budget change proposal.
It comes to the Congress, the House and the Senate, with all of the
reasons--a big stack of paper--all of the reasons why the change should
take place: some new; something happened and we have got to deal with
it; or, we need more money for this. And a budget change proposal comes
to us with all of the justification.
[[Page H985]]
To this day, 32 days into this shutdown, Congress has not received a
formal budget change proposal, nor has Congress received any detail
about where the $5.7 billion wall will be built--somewhere on the
Mexican-American border. That is 1,900 miles.
Will it be used to repair fences?
Will it be added in some areas?
What are the reasons why it would be added?
None of that has been provided here. So here we are 32 days into it,
and the most important government in this world is shut down.
This border wall is supposed to bring security to America. Wow, wait
a minute. You are talking about security? You are talking about safety?
You are talking about making the lives of America more secure? How do
you do that when the government is shut down?
All of the military is working. Thank God that appropriation passed.
But the Department of Homeland Security is not, except for those
frontline officers who are considered to be essential. All of the
backroom operation isn't operating.
The Coast Guard is out there on the water, in the ports, but those
men and women are not being paid, 40,000 of them, a few more, not being
paid. Many of them cannot pay for gas to get to their jobs.
TSA is operating, but the rest of that backroom operation is not.
Transportation is not operating. The parks are closed. The Smithsonian
is closed. The kind of safety that the American public depends upon
from its government is not operating.
There were headlines a week ago about the President somehow being
compromised by Russia. What would be the best that Putin could ever
want?
You go to war to take over a government, to shut down a government.
You don't have to go to war to shut down the American Government. You
go to the President, who gladly says that he is proud to shut down the
American Government.
Putin has to be incredibly happy that his nemesis, America, the
government is shut down.
I have got a lot to talk about tonight, and joining me are some of my
colleagues who will be talking about the effect of the shutdown in
their area.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), my
colleague and dear friend of many years.
Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, Congressman Garamendi has demonstrated
leadership both here in our Nation's capital and when we worked
together in Sacramento, and I commend his efforts and thank him for
yielding to me.
The government shutdown is simply irresponsible. The American public
understands that a Congress debates a budget, the President submits his
proposal, and we go through our committee hearing process. We make
modifications and changes. You win some and you lose some. But by
October 1, we are supposed to have a budget sent to the President, and
he is supposed to sign it into law.
Now, guess what. A budget is among the most important things we do as
Members of Congress, and it is the Nation's spending priorities. It is
thousands of spending priorities. There are some things we like in the
budget, and there are some things that we would change. But our Nation
has to have a budget, just like every family has a budget, every
business has a budget.
In that family budget or the business budget, there are things you
would rather not pay--a house payment, a car payment--but we have
obligations and commitments to make and have to be responsible.
This government shutdown, this manufactured crisis orchestrated by
the President in which he proudly proclaimed that he would take
ownership of it--they can call it the Trump shutdown, as he said so
boldly in December--is the Trump shutdown. It is simply irresponsible.
I think the American public, for good reason, regardless of their
registration, is frustrated, and I suspect many of them, like myself,
are fed up.
I went through the airport security this morning as I did last week,
as I did the week before, and I thanked those security officers with
TSA for doing their job. They are doing their job. And guess what. They
are doing it without pay. That is disgraceful. It is just not what the
shining democracy of America is about, leader of the free world.
But it doesn't stop there. There are over 53,000 TSA employees around
the country, 54,000 ICE officers, and 42,000 Coast Guard Active-Duty
members who are working without pay.
Mr. Speaker, I ask the President, how would it be if he were to
suggest to his employees at his hotels and at his golf courses--whom he
has to pay every 2 weeks or every month--that he wants them to come to
work but he is not going to pay them?
It is immoral, and it is certainly not the American way. We don't
expect people to come to work and then not pay them.
This manufactured crisis--and believe me, it is a manufactured
crisis--is the real cause for us all to be concerned about national
security. I mean, the challenges we have at the border, these Border
Patrol agents, these Coast Guard Active-Duty members are protecting our
security, and we are saying: Well, but, you know, we don't care if you
have a house payment. We don't care if you have a car payment. We don't
care if you have other commitments and obligations. We expect you to
come to work and to protect our security, and we are not going to do
anything to, in fact, take that into account. In a way, that is clearly
a dereliction of our duties.
Mr. Speaker, I would say to the President that it is a dereliction of
his duty, because he has a responsibility, just as we do, to ensure
that our government is fully functioning. We have passed the
President's bills and sent them to him which would fully fund and
reopen the government.
Last Friday, Congressman Cox and I had an informal workshop at the
Subway sandwich store in the building where my office is, where I work
on behalf of the people of the San Joaquin Valley. In that 10-story
office building are 1,300 IRS employees. That Subway sandwich store has
lost over 50 percent of its business in the last month. The two owners,
the man and the wife, are being impacted.
The store in the lobby, it has lost 70 percent of its business. And
there is another kabob restaurant in which he is helping, sometimes,
the employees who are still hanging around there by giving them
sandwiches, but this is his business.
So it is not just the direct impact of over 800,000 government
employees across this country, people who work for the USDA, the United
States Department of Agriculture, who operate the farm service agencies
throughout our constituencies.
Our farmers, our ranchers, and our dairymen can't go to those Farm
Service Agency offices and apply for loans and other things that are
important with regard to this crazy tariff war that is taking place
because, guess what. Those offices are closed.
But it is also the ripple effect for businesses that have contracts
with the Federal Government, whether it is with the United States
Forest Service or whether it is with other departments and agencies.
They are not getting paid.
But guess what. They have got employees, and they have got a contract
that they signed with the United States Government that says they were
going to get paid every month, and they have commitments to their
employees.
This is the President's shutdown, and 32 days into it, none of us
should be proud of where we are today. Third-world countries are
looking at us and wondering: America doesn't do that.
But we are looking like a third-world country. Countries around the
world just don't shut down their government.
Let me close on this note. This is a phenomena that has happened,
really, in the last 8 years. We had a government shutdown in the mid-
1990s by President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich, and that was not a
good thing.
Normally, as Congressman Garamendi suggested, you have budget
requests. You have debate in committees. You pass segments of the
budget, and it comes together in an orderly process. Ultimately, both
the House and the Senate pass that budget and send it to the President
by October 1.
I think there is another principle here that we need to be very clear
about to the American public. I don't care which party it is. We should
not allow bad behavior to be rewarded in
[[Page H986]]
this sense. If you don't like something in the budget--and there are a
lot of things I don't like in the budget--at the end of the day, you
have got to have a budget.
{time} 1945
What is happening here is that this is a manufactured crisis that the
President is using to hold hostage a campaign promise he made 2 years
ago to build this wall.
By the way, Mr. Speaker, wasn't Mexico going to pay for the wall?
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I believe so.
Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I say to Congressman Garamendi, that is what
I heard.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Over and over.
Mr. COSTA. I heard it not once, not twice, but more times than I care
to remember. Clearly, Mexico is not going to pay for the wall.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Garamendi and I know that there is bipartisan
willingness to improve border security. The gentleman and I know,
because we are from California, that the majority of the drug
trafficking and the other crimes that are occurring are through what we
call ports of legal entry. That sounds like a complicated technical
term, but it just means it is an open border crossing between the U.S.
and Mexico, and thousands of people cross every day at many of these
border crossings. That is where the overwhelming majority of the
illegal trafficking is taking place, and along the ocean. And no bill,
no bright and shiny 30-foot wall, will make a difference.
El Chapo, whom we are holding now in prison, built tunnels to get out
of prison. There are tunnels under existing walls that the President
was briefed on when he went down to the border last week.
Mr. Speaker, I don't care how the wall is built, because it is not
going to improve border security.
Mind you, we have more than 500 miles of existing barriers and fences
at the San Ysidro border, and some of the other portions of the U.S.-
Mexican border, where it makes sense. Certainly, I am willing to
provide support to improve those existing barriers and to provide the
sort of equipment, drones, and other technical devices that are cutting
edge, that Border Patrol agents and ICE agents say will improve our
border security. That is what we should be doing.
But what we should not be doing is holding America hostage because of
a political campaign promise that was made 2 years ago. That is wrong.
That is simply wrong.
Mr. Speaker, Congressman Garamendi is to be commended for taking a
leadership role in this effort. We have to do some things here that
change the debate and how we produce a budget so that we don't allow
groups of either party--our extreme elements--to decide: Well, gee, I
am not going to go through the regular process. I will hold this
Congress and I will hold the American people hostage.
This is impacting our GDP. If the President doesn't believe us, he
should ask his own Council of Economic Advisers, because they came out
with a report last week. It is not affecting only our economy, but it,
therefore, affects the world's economy. That is why we need to reopen
government and have a thoughtful debate on how we can, on a bipartisan
basis, improve our border security.
Of the $1.2 million we allocated in last year's budget for border
security, this administration, I am told, has spent around 10 percent
of that $1.2 billion. Now we were going to give him another $1.6
billion. Then the President--I know we are getting close to the Super
Bowl--to use a football analogy, on December 18, when we thought we had
an agreement, he decided to move the goalposts. I can't say it any
plainer than that.
Mr. Speaker, I ask Congressman Garamendi if he can.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, if I might, I say to Mr. Costa that is
exactly what he did. In the negotiations, before inviting the leaders
in, agreement had been reached with both Houses. We were going to move
forward. The President changed his mind, demanded $5 billion, and took
credit. He said: I will shut the government down, and I will take
credit for it.
Indeed, the credit goes to him.
The gentleman said things that are very interesting. The gentleman
went back to the Gingrich shutdown. That reminded me, at that time, I
was actually at the Department of the Interior. There was nobody in the
Department of the Interior except three of us in that entire department
who were working.
Then there was the Ted Cruz shutdown, and then there were two other
short shutdowns having to do with one or the other of the fiscal
cliffs. In every case, our Republican colleagues--Gingrich, Ted Cruz,
other leadership, and now the President--have used the American
Government as a hostage to get something that they wanted. Senator Cruz
wanted to kill the Affordable Care Act. I don't recall, but I think
Gingrich was over some tax issues or some financial issues, fiscal
issues. But in every case, they used the government as the hostage.
Now, over in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader McConnell is cobbling
together a piece of legislation that would affect the rest of
Americans.
Let me just show you some things here. He is taking a piece of
legislation that we passed last week--it was the supplemental Disaster
Relief Act to provide additional money. In this case, this is Paradise,
California, where some 18,000 homes were destroyed and 87 people
killed. The President was there, together with Governor Brown and our
new Governor, Mr. Newsom. It is a supplemental disaster recovery
program that we passed last week. It is over in the Senate.
I understand that Senator McConnell is going to take that bill and
literally hold not just Paradise, California, but also Puerto Rico.
Does the gentleman remember the hurricane in Puerto Rico?
Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I was in Puerto Rico last weekend, and the
recovery funding is a serious matter, as it is in Paradise. It is
simply wrong. It is wrong and immoral for us to do this.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, he intends to hold Puerto Rico hostage,
along with South Carolina; Houston, Texas; and southern California, the
Ventura area, all of which have incurred a natural disaster and, in
this case, a dam breaking in Puerto Rico.
In the case of Paradise, California--the great fire that occurred
there and the wipeout of a community of 30,000 people--it is now being
held hostage for the border wall. So not only do we have the U.S.
Government hostage--and the American economy with 800,000 employees who
are not getting paid--we are now using the supplemental disaster
recovery, some $12 billion that would go to recover these communities
that have been wiped out that are now being held hostage.
So the gentleman said earlier that there is something immoral about
this, that to use people's lives and their ability to recover, their
ability to sustain their family, to get a paycheck, to work for the
American Government to keep this economy moving, to be held hostage
somehow is terribly, terribly wrong. But that is what the President is
doing. And, apparently, that is what Senator McConnell wants to do with
this new bill that he intends to introduce that would hold the disaster
recovery program hostage for a $5.7 billion wall somewhere on the
border, undefined. Something is terribly, terribly wrong here.
Now, there is an alternative, and I think Mr. Costa mentioned it. We
passed legislation repeatedly beginning on January 3, the first day of
the new Congress, and every day thereafter. I think it is about 8 days
now that we passed legislation to open the government. That is, the new
Democratic majority has done that to open the government. All of those
bills are over on the Senate side.
There is a clean bill that is also open for discussion on the Senate
side this week. It is the bill that we passed last week. It would fund
the government at the appropriations level that the Senate agreed to,
$1.6 billion for border security and all the other programs all worked
out in a great compromise. That bill passed the House last week. It is
sitting over in the Senate.
There would be one exception to full funding for the remainder of
this year--that is until September 30--and that is the Department of
Homeland Security, which controls the border. That would be a temporary
continuing resolution until February. I think it is the 28th of
February.
Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I think until the end of February, which
would
[[Page H987]]
allow us to debate appropriate border security in a committee process
in the House and in the Senate, working together with this
administration and the President. There would be give and take. There
would be compromises. I think we should get back to doing the people's
business in an appropriate fashion, without taking hostages, because it
is simply wrong. We should not let the American public think that we
have lost sight of what the regular order of the United States Congress
is to pass appropriations bills and, ultimately, to pass a budget.
That is where this incredibly egregious activity is taking place in
recent years. I think we know that, at some point, there will be a
series of compromises, and we will reopen government. So why don't we
just do it sooner rather than later and end the pain and anguish of
hundreds of thousands of people who are protecting our security--they
are hardworking men and women of our country--without paychecks?
All the other independent contractors who do business with the
government and who have employees or have small businesses, like that
Subway sandwich shop in Fresno or the market or the kabob restaurant,
let these people do what they do best--work hard and make a living for
themselves and their families, and contribute to our economy--because
what we are doing right now is wrong.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Costa mentioned the Subway sandwich
shop. When I was back in my district over the weekend, I was contacted
by a small company operating in Davis, California, that has technology
that the TSA would employ at the airports to keep us all safer. They
will go out of business. They have 13 employees. Their contract is
sitting, not finished. They are not getting paid for past work that
they have done. They just said: We don't know how we will continue
here.
It is a good program. It is necessary for security at the airports.
That is just one example.
The gentleman mentioned the farmers. I have farmers in my district
with the same problem. I have universities with research contracts that
are being held up. All of that is being held up.
The reality is that the most important government of the world is not
operating. When they say it is just 25 percent, that is 25 percent of
the money. It happens to be 80 to 85 percent of the activities of the
government.
Mr. COSTA. And the ripple effect.
Mr. GARAMENDI. And the ripple effect all the way through.
Mr. COSTA. To our national parks.
Mr. Speaker, let me close by underlining one comment that Mr.
Garamendi made earlier. I know, as a member of the Armed Services
Committee, the gentleman is one of our leaders as it relates to our
Nation's security. And I am engaged with a host of other efforts in our
Foreign Affairs Committee and with our European allies. When the
gentleman said that no one could be happier about this series of events
than the President of Russia, President Putin, let me underline that,
because we are doing to ourselves what the Soviet Union and Russia
today have never been able to do to us, which is undermine our
security, undermine NATO's security, and undermine the security of the
free world.
That is how serious this is. This manufactured crisis has now risen
to such a level that we are doing to ourselves what our adversaries
have never been able to do to us through decades of Republican and
Democratic Presidents and Congresses in which, at the water's edge, we
all bind together because it is America's security. I don't know how
they celebrate in Moscow, but right now, they must be very pleased this
evening, with smiles on their faces, as we look at the 32 days of this
government shutdown.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so very much for
joining us and bringing to our attention the issues in his district, as
well as his experience.
The final words that he has said ring in my ears, and I am sure they
ring in the ears of people around this world who are looking at the
United States and saying: What is going on there? What is this all
about?
There is much, much more to say. I will go through a couple things
very, very quickly here.
There are 800,000 government employees across the Nation--in
California, there are 37,542--who are not being paid but still working.
They are furloughed, and they are wondering how they will meet their
mortgages and how they will meet their bills.
{time} 2000
We also know that this shutdown is approaching the 1-month mark. And
very, very soon, if we don't act and we don't get this government back
up and working, there are 45,714,688 people in the United States who
will lose their SNAP benefits--these are the food stamps--in other
words, their ability to have food on their tables--45,714,000 people.
The day of reckoning for these people is coming very soon. The exact
day is not exactly known, but it is toward the end of this month or the
first weeks of February. So let's keep in mind those 45 million people
who depend upon food stamps.
In my own district, just upstream from the district is the Oroville
Dam, which came close to collapsing and put at risk nearly 200,000
people downstream from it. Part of the disaster recovery is to shore up
the levees downstream from the Oroville Dam, but that is now being used
as a hostage by Senator McConnell.
It is unconscionable what is going on here in America, and it is not
necessary.
Democrats have always supported border security--always supported
border security--and we have supported walls along the border. In 2006,
almost 700 miles of border fencing and walls were built. In California,
in the Tijuana-San Diego border area, those walls have been there for
nearly 30 years, maybe even longer than that.
The point here is border security is more than a wall, and if the
President wants a wall, he needs to tell us where and why.
Why is it more important than upgrading the ports of entry, as Mr.
Costa talked about, where we know 80 to 90 percent of the drugs come
through the ports of entry, the legal ports of entry? One out of five
cars is checked; four are not.
The containers, the trains, the planes, the ships all coming through
legal ports of entry, but we don't have the technology to check all of
them, nor do we have the operations to be able to check all of the
cars, all of the planes, all of the containers. So the drugs come in--
even through the post office.
Wouldn't it be wise that we spend money where 80 to 90 percent of the
drugs enter the United States? It is not in a bunch of children
carrying backpacks who are bringing drugs into the United States. That
is not where the problem is. The problem is at the ports of entry.
Mr. President, you have the authority and you have the budget today,
the appropriation today, to fill 3,000 positions that have remained
unfilled for more than a year, positions at the ports of entry, U.S.
Customs and Border Patrol positions--3,000. Why are they not filled? If
there is such an emergency, why are you not out hiring?
You were given $1.2 billion a year ago to enhance the border
security. Less than 20 percent of that money has been spent. Why? Why?
If we have a national emergency, why are you not hiring the necessary
people who are authorized? Why have you not spent the money that was
appropriated previously?
Why did you shut down the American Government for an ill-defined
border wall that seems, in the minds of most of us, to simply be a
fulfillment of a campaign pledge? What is that all about?
What is going through your mind that you ignore things that we know
create security: better devices to observe what is going on, unmanned
aerial vehicles to observe what is happening, sensing devices to know
what is in those containers, men and women to conduct the inspections,
all of those things? Why are you not doing it? Why?
Why, Mr. President, did you say that, unless you get your way, you
are going to shut down the American Government; in your own words, you
will take the mantle of the shutdown? In so doing, you created a real
serious national security threat. Yes, you did.
You shut down the government, and, in doing so, you have created a
real--a real--national security threat.
[[Page H988]]
Honoring Harris Wofford, Jr.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, before I terminate this, I want to change
subjects.
A very, very dear friend died, and I want to bring to the attention
of the House Harris Wofford.
Harris Llewellyn Wofford, Jr., was born in New York City on April 9,
1926. At the age of 11, he had the opportunity to travel around the
world with his grandmother, in 1938. He experienced many defining
events during that time, including what was going on in Italy with
Benito Mussolini and in Germany with Hitler, the Japanese aggression in
Shanghai, and Gandhi's movement in India.
His passion for creating change and fighting for progress began in
earnest during those years. As the civil rights movement began, Mr.
Wofford quickly became a fervent supporter of Reverend Martin Luther
King, Jr., whom we remembered yesterday.
He marched alongside Reverend King for civil rights and voting rights
in Selma. And during John F. Kennedy's campaign for President, Mr.
Wofford played a key role in Kennedy's efforts that freed Reverend King
from prison, a move that galvanized the civil rights movement and
helped carry President Kennedy to the White House a year later.
Following that election, he served as President Kennedy's special
assistant for civil rights and later served as the head of two
colleges. And during his time with the Kennedy administration, he
helped launch the Peace Corps, which my wife and I joined shortly
thereafter; and that inspired Patti and me as we served 2 years in
Ethiopia.
In 1991, Mr. Wofford became Pennsylvania's first Democratic Senator
in more than 20 years, unseating the former Republican Governor and
U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh.
As Senator, he led the effort that established the community service
program, AmeriCorps. My wife, Patti, had the opportunity to work with
Mr. Wofford as they, together, created the AmeriCorps program in the
1990s.
In 2008, he introduced then-Senator Barack Obama before his defining
``A More Perfect Union'' speech that is often credited as the origin of
Obama's successful campaign for President.
In 1995, Mr. Wofford left the Senate and began serving as the chief
executive at AmeriCorps, where my wife was able to work with him.
In a 2005 speech commemorating the work of French philosopher
Teilhard de Chardin, Mr. Wofford, in considering the impact of the
invention of nuclear weapons during World War II, said this: `` . . .
the burning question, above all other questions in the political world,
is: How do we crack the atom of civic power and start a chain reaction
of constructive force to do for peace what man has shown can be done
for war? You may say that is the old question that vexed the 20th
century in its occasional search for the moral equivalent of war. For
the 21st century, let's accept Teilhard's challenge and set out to
discover the moral and political equivalent of fire.''
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record all of Mr. Wofford's speech on
that day, April 11, 2005.
[From the Woodstock Forum, Apr. 11, 2005]
The Global Legacy of Teilhard de Chardin--Georgetown University
(By Harris Wofford)
It's a special honor to participate in this 50th
Anniversary commemoration of Teilhard's death--but really
this is much more a celebration of his birth, his new birth
that came to pass after his death when his words began to be
published and spring to public life.
I would have been here earlier today listening and learning
but for our family's memorial service in Philadelphia this
morning for my 96-year-old stepmother, who died this week.
Phyllis Taylor Wofford was the first woman Minister of the
Riverside Church of New York, ordained at age 50 in 1959,
just as Teilhard's books were spreading around the world.
Remembering our many discussions in the 43 years since she
married my father and reading her sermons and poems this
weekend, I know she was a reader of Teilhard--and I think he
would have liked one of her most recurring metaphors that she
attributes to her mentor, the great preacher Harry Emerson
Fosdick: The Sunset of Spirit that people fear as death.
``Sunset,'' she believed, ``is only our limited human way of
looking at things. Nothing has happened to the sun.''
You can say that about Teilhard. The limited human way of
looking at his writings led to perhaps the greatest
intellectual mistake made by the Church since Galileo. The
earth does move around the sun, and the sunlight of Teilhard
is still there for us, even if he did not live to see it
shine on the world during his lifetime.
Teilhard would have understood what my mother the
Congregational minister meant when she said in her ordination
statement that her studies at Union Theological Seminary
started ``an adventure in faith'': ``Doors which had been
closed opened and beyond them were tremendous vistas.'' She
said that ``All the little scattered fragments of existence
as I know it were at last caught up and knit together in one
comprehensible whole.''
In the late 1950's that is what seemed to be happening to
me, in a more amateur fashion, as my heart leaped up when I
first started to read Teilhard. I was ready for Teilhard--for
his vision that knit together in one comprehensible whole,
not only a view of the world and human destiny but a view of
the ever-expanding universe of universes--the existence we
are all trying to comprehend. Before there was anything of
Teilhard's to read, I had committed my mind and heart to his
proposition: ``The Age of Nations is past. The task before us
now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth.''
At age 12, in the spring of 1938, while Teilhard was in
China or briefly back in France, I was looting Shanghai.
Literally looting. Except for the international quarter
protected by the French and British forces and the United
States Marines, Shanghai had been bombed almost out of
existence, and then occupied by the Japanese army. They sold
looting permits to tourists and my grandmother and I were
driven into the deserted Chinese city to the roofless remains
of a teahouse. I went in to find some loot. Other tourists
came out with china, silver and works of art. To my
grandmother's dismay, I emerged with a 4-foot stuffed
ostrich--which later I tossed overboard when we sailed into
Yokohama harbor.
That six-month trip around the world on the eve of World
War II is no doubt what led to my later readiness for
Teilhard. It sparked a lasting love affair with the world--
with the Earth, Teilhard would say--and a deep-seated sense
that the world is truly our stage and the frame in which all
the burning questions of our time must be seen.
I returned to 7th grade as an ardent interventionist; a
presumptuous, know-it-all, politically active boy who wanted
America to join the war to stop Hitler and the Japanese
militarists from conquering the world.
After Pearl Harbor, before entering the Army Air Corps, I
started what grew into the nation-wide Student Federalist
organization that became an enthusiastic part of the campaign
for a union of democracies to win the war and be a nucleus of
a post-war world federation with power to keep the peace.
When the United Nations was established without the power
to control the atomic bomb we campaigned to strengthen it and
to establish nuclear control backed by a world police force.
But by then the Cold War was closing in, and the vision
without which we thought people would perish became distant
and dim.
Then came Teilhard's books, one by one, re-lighting the
vision of world unity in the broader context of the Human
Phenomenon--and of a Divine Milieu. To our realistic
discouragement from the vicious circle of international power
politics, he offered a different possibility: ``the
passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the
thinking part of life ever further onward. The only truly
natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth.''
This ``sense of the Earth'', he prophesied, would become
``the irresistible pressure which will come at the right
moment to unite humanity in a common passion.''
And as a scientist, he spoke to the skeptics: ``To the
common sense of the `man in the street' and even to a certain
philosophy of the world to which nothing is possible save
what has always been, perspectives such as these will seem
highly improbable. But to a mind become familiar with the
fantastic dimensions of the universe they will, on the
contrary, seem quite natural, because they are simply
proportionate with the astronomical immensities.''
One last personal account of Teilhard's impact. In the
presidential campaign of 1960 and for years afterward, I had
the privilege of working with Sargent Shriver, the most
creative social inventor of the 20th century and a lover of
the words of Teilhard. A brother-in-law of President Kennedy,
Shriver organized the Peace Corps and later led President
Johnson's War on Poverty, along the way launching the
domestic Peace Corps, the Volunteers in Service to America
(VISTA), the forerunner of AmeriCorps; the Job Corps: Foster
Grandparents, Community Action agencies, and Legal Services
for the Poor. On nights when we worked late I often found
myself staying in Shriver's suite at the Mayflower Hotel or
in some hotel while traveling to other countries. Each night
before he turned out the lights he would read in his bed for
a while, usually a book of spiritual import. Often it would
be Teilhard de Chardin and the next morning he would talk
about it on the way to an early mass.
Then in the Presidential campaign of 1972, after George
McGovern asked Shriver to become his running mate, I was
helping Sarge work on his acceptance address. As we were due
to leave and the police motorcade was revving up, he was
still unsatisfied with its ending. ``I know how to end it,''
he said, ``It's Teilhard de Chardin! I'm going to find the
quote on a plaque in a pile upstairs.'' We
[[Page H989]]
physically tried to stop him but he bounded out and in two
minutes, came back with the plaque. He ended the address with
these words of Teilhard that brought the delegates to their
feet:
``The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, the
tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies
of Love. And on that day, for the second time in the history
of the world, man will have discovered fire.''
No one on that day is likely to have forgotten the fire
with which Shriver said that word ``fire''. Teilhard's
watchwords became the theme of his Vice Presidential campaign
and recurred again when he ran for the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1976. And Sargent Shriver
practiced what Teilhard preached, as he went on to help his
wife Eunice and son Tim spread Special Olympics to the far
corners of the world.
Let me note that those and many other words of Teilhard
played a significant part in my own little journey from the
Angelican Episcopal Church of my father to the wider Catholic
Church centered in Rome (as the world well-observed this week
of the Pope's funeral)--the church of Teilhard and the
Society of Jesus. As an advocate of civil disobedience of the
Gandhian and Martin Luther King kind on fundamental matters
of conscience I should confess that I find it hard to fathom
the faith it took for Teilhard to accept the silencing of his
most important thoughts. But we can respect his agonizing
decision to choose what he may have viewed as ``divine
obedience.''
What does Teilhard's vision say to politics today--and to
the burning questions of our times? To the world-wide
poverty, including the poverty of spirit? To the epidemics
sweeping Africa and other places that seem to be behind God's
back? To the maybe a billion children who are not learning to
read and go to sleep hungry at night? To all those suffering
violence in the streets or in their homes, from crime or
terrorism or war?
Teilhard's vision tells us to do everything in our power to
find the ways and means to harness the energies of love in
order to end as soon as possible the scandal that such
conditions exist anywhere in the world. This requires We the
People of this earth to do in the political world what
wartime America did with the physical atom; to win the war
scientists, backed by all the necessary resources of our
society, worked with fierce urgency to produce the quantum
leap and chain reaction that put in man's mortal hands the
power to end human life on earth.
Therefore, the burning question, above all other questions
in the political world, is: How do we crack the atom of civic
power and start a chain reaction of constructive force to do
for peace what man has shown can be done for war. You may say
that is the old question that vexed the 20th century in its
occasional search for the moral equivalent of war. For the
21st century, let's accept Teilhard's challenge and set out
to discover the moral and political equivalent of fire.
This Woodstock Forum's other question: What is Teilhard's
literary legacy? is not a burning one, but it brings to mind
Gertrude Stein's explanation for her famous line: ``A rose is
a rose is a rose.'' When Gertrude was asked what in the world
was the reason for such repetition, she said that for
thousands of years poets have been writing about roses, so
often and so sentimentally that the rose had lost its
redness. Her intent, she said, was to restore redness to the
rose.
Teilhard was a far better poet than Gertrude Stein, but as
I've been re-reading him after many years, it seems to me
that his most repeated metaphor, which he delivered in a
hundred different ways, is indeed Fire--the fire that will
blaze forth when we do discover how to harness for God and
for all human beings the power of love, and achieve the unity
of man that Teilhard foresaw.
The poet in Teilhard, I think, is seeking, in politics as
in science, philosophy and religion, to restore to the
ancient idea of creative fire the energy, heat and light that
our divided world so sorely needs. So we can hope the sparks
that Teilhard's words sent out will catch fire in the dry
tinder of these times.
``The world is very different now,'' John Kennedy began in
stating the first proposition of his Inaugural Address. ``For
man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms
of human poverty and all forms of human life.'' To follow
that proposition where it leads, we can do no better than to
lift our sights to the perspective and the passionate concern
for our common human destiny that pervades the writings of
Teilhard de Chardin. But we let's not leave it to hope, to
time, or to Teilhard to discover this fire, ``knowing,'' as
Kennedy said in closing his summons to a New Frontier, ``that
here on earth God's work must truly be our own.''
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, it is with considerable sorrow that Patti
and I bid farewell to a very dear friend and an incredible leader who
spent his life fighting for justice, civil justice, civil rights, and
world peace.
Harris Llewellyn Wofford Jr. was born in New York City on April 9,
1926 and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. with his 2 younger siblings.
Growing up in an upper-middle class family, at age 11 he had the
opportunity to travel the world with his grandmother in 1938. During
this formative trip, he experienced many of the defining events of that
time including Benito Mussolini speaking about the League of Nations,
the results of Japanese aggression in Shanghai and the movement of
Mohandas Ghandi in India.
His passion for creating change and fighting for progress began in
earnest. After his return to the United States, he quickly established
the first chapter of the Student Federalists, which would later become
a central pillar of what is now Citizens for Global Solutions. After
serving in the Army Airforce, he graduated from the University of
Chicago in 1948 and married his fellow student Clare Lindgren.
As the civil rights movement began, Mr. Wofford quickly became a
fervent supporter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He marched alongside
Rev. King for civil and voting rights in Selma and, during John F.
Kennedy's campaign for President, Mr. Wofford played a key role in
Kennedy's efforts that freed Rev. King from prison--a move that
galvanized the civil rights movement and helped to carry President
Kennedy to the White House later that year.
Following the election, he served as President Kennedy's special
assistant for civil rights and later served as the head of 2 colleges.
During his time with the Kennedy administration, he helped to launch
the Peace Corp, which helped to inspire me to enter the realm of public
service as one of the first Peace Corp officers serving in Ethiopia.
In 1991, Harris became Pennsylvania's first Democratic Senator in
more that 20 years, by unseating the former Republican governor and
U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. As Senator he led the effort
that established the community service program, AmeriCorp and in 2008
introduce then-Senator Barack Obama before his defining ``A More
Perfect Union Speech'' that is often credited as the origin of Obama's
successful campaign for President.
In 1995, he left the Senate and began serving as Chief Executive at
AmeriCorp. Harris Wofford, a Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania, a
university president and a defining colleague of President John F.
Kennedy died yesterday on the Federal Holiday commemorating the work
and vision of Martin Luther King, a vision that as a lifelong champion
of civil rights he shared. He was 92.
In a 2005 speech commemorating the work of French philosopher
Teilhard de Chardin, Mr. Wofford in considering the impact of the
invention of nuclear weapons during World War II said this:
``. . . the burning question, above all other questions in the
political world, is: how do we crack the atom of civic power and start
a chain reaction of constructive force to do for peace what man has
shown can be done with war. You may say that is the old question that
vexed the 20th century in its occasional search for the moral
equivalent of war. For the 21st century, let's accept Teilhard's
challenge and set out to discover the moral political equivalent of
fire.''
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to talk about the
necessity of reopening our government, and I yield back the balance of
my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would remind Members to properly
yield and reclaim time in debate.
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