[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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