[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 179 (Wednesday, December 4, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H6336-H6338]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS POST OFFICE BUILDING
Mr. LANGWORTHY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
bill (H.R. 9544) to designate the facility of the United States Postal
Service located at 340 South Loudon Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland, as
the ``United States Representative Elijah E. Cummings Post Office
Building''.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
H.R. 9544
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS
POST OFFICE BUILDING.
(a) Designation.--The facility of the United States Postal
Service located at 340 South Loudon Avenue in Baltimore,
Maryland, shall be known and designated as the ``United
States Representative Elijah E. Cummings Post Office
Building''.
(b) References.--Any reference in a law, map, regulation,
document, paper, or other record of the United States to the
facility referred to in subsection (a) shall be deemed to be
a reference to the ``United States Representative Elijah E.
Cummings Post Office Building''.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from New
York (Mr. Langworthy) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) each
will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York.
General Leave
Mr. LANGWORTHY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material on this measure.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from New York?
There was no objection.
Mr. LANGWORTHY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill, which would rename a
post office in Baltimore after Congressman Elijah Cummings.
Congressman Cummings was born in Baltimore on January 18, 1951, and
was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1982. In 1996, Mr.
Cummings was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and later
served as the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to support this bill, and I
reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in very proud support of H.R. 9544. It is a
proud day for people of Maryland. It is a proud day for the House
Oversight Committee.
It is a proud day for the United States Congress that we have the
opportunity to vote on a post office named after the late, great
chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings.
Mr. Speaker, Elijah Cummings was a favorite son of Maryland who
devoted his life and his career to making the government an instrument
of the common good for everyone and uplifting everybody in our society
together. He was always seeking that higher ground, always telling us
in the midst of debate and discussion we are better than this, that we
can always lift ourselves higher to find unity and consensus around the
values that make our country great.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr.
Mfume), who is both his predecessor and his successor in office.
Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the
ranking member, for his kind and overly gracious remarks.
Mr. Speaker, in his absence, I thank Chairman Comer who made a
commitment several months back that we would get to this point and for
his cosponsorship of this bill. I thank my other colleagues from the
State of Maryland, some of whom will be speaking today.
I rise in obvious support of this, encouraging Members of this body
to embrace it and to say that the diligence and the collective
commitment to your word to get us to this point means a lot to me. It
is not lost on me. It is not lost on the people of the State of
Maryland.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation designates the United States Postal
Service facility, as you heard, located at 340 South Loudon Avenue in
Baltimore, Maryland, as the United States Representative Elijah
Cummings Post Office Building.
This legislation will bestow, I believe, a very fitting honor on a
former chair of the Oversight Committee, former chairman of the
Congressional Black Caucus, and, most importantly, an unwavering
servant of the people in the House that we now all serve in.
His legacy, in many respects, lives through the work that he has
done, and this legislation will ensure once and for all that his name
will continue to be called by the people that he so dutifully served.
Mr. Speaker, Elijah Cummings, as was noted a moment ago, was born on
January 18, 1951, to Ruth Elma and Robert Cummings, two South Carolina
sharecroppers who moved to Baltimore in search of more opportunities
during the period of the Great Migration.
Elijah's parents worked long and hard, as did many parents in that
era, because they were up against so many things coming out of the
Great Depression and out of a period of war that our Nation found
itself in.
They worked and also served as preachers of a local church that both
of them founded. With their teachings, his parents instilled in Elijah
a sense of faith, justice, and morality that would go on to exemplify
his four decades of public service.
While they were not formally educated in the traditional sense,
Elijah's parents made certain that all of their children understood the
importance and the essence of education. He tirelessly worked, as many
of you know, over and over again to earn his Phi Beta Kappa key at
Howard University and his juris doctorate degree at the University of
Maryland School of Law.
Elijah knew that his story would ultimately illustrate the power of
hard work and perseverance, and he always did that in a sense of
believing that it would be the kind of message that young people who
might be lost in many different ways would find a way to latch onto.
His values instilled in that generation, we believe, a whole new
sense of public service. As a young lawyer in 1983, Elijah was elected
and served with distinction in the Maryland House of Delegates. I might
say, his personal credibility and relationships with members of that
body existed then, and they still exist now.
He has, in many respects, given us the sort of model and the sort of
example that we all talk about and many of us strive to attain.
In 1996, Elijah won his first of 12 elections to this body, assuming
the seat that I had voluntarily vacated to head up the presidency of
the NAACP.
Elijah's sense of fairness, his respect for others, and his
relentless efforts to make life better for all people won him the
respect and the admiration of his colleagues on this side of the aisle
and his colleagues on that side of the aisle.
He and I were friends for 42 years up until the day of his death, and
so I carry with me a lot of memorable moments of his congressional
career, of the time that we served together on the board at Morgan
State University, and as our people will tell you, as part of our
organizations, our time together learning politics in the street,
finding a way to organize and make a real difference.
He was the only person that I know of who continued to remind us that
we could be better than this. I am so glad that Mr. Raskin brought that
up.
Mr. Speaker, I am hoping I might get an additional 30 seconds here. I
would like to conclude. I know we are running out of time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the
gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, in this time of national division and in this
time of great partisanship, I am reminded of when we went through
similar periods, and it was always Elijah Cummings on this side of the
aisle and others who would remind us that we really were better than
this, that we really did have a higher calling.
For me, personally, as a friend, as a former colleague, and as
someone that
[[Page H6337]]
I admired--even though he would tell you he admired me, I admired him
even more--it is just a great honor to bring this bill forward. I would
ask that it is adopted today, and I thank all of those Members who
supported this, both Democrats and Republicans, and the sponsor.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the former distinguished majority leader of the
House of Representatives.
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we are better than this. Surely, all of us
ought to be saying that to ourselves as we conclude this Congress. We
are better than this. You will hear that said so often when we talk
about our friend, Elijah Cummings.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this legislation. The Old
Testament tells us of a man long ago who saw injustice, wrongdoing, and
suffering and devoted his life to banishing these evils from his native
land, a man who kept an enduring faith not only in God, but in his
fellow men and women, a man who inspired that same faith in the people
around him. That man was Elijah the prophet.
{time} 1530
The Elijah I served with in Congress for nearly 23 years was my dear
friend Elijah Cummings. He was like Elijah the prophet. He possessed a
moral clarity that guided him in every part of his life.
Whether it was protecting voting rights, alleviating poverty,
expanding civil rights, or promoting justice, Elijah Cummings
demonstrated principled tenacity and boundless energy when standing up
for the causes in which he believed. He believed in this House's
ability and sacred responsibility to better our Republic and the lives
of each and every one of our citizens.
It was because of that belief that he held all who served in this
House to such a high standard of ethics, the same standard to which he
held himself.
When he believed this institution was falling short of that standard,
he would demand of us, as I said at the beginning and will repeat
again: ``We are better than this.''
Frankly, as we sit in these extraordinary seats given to us only
through the hands of our neighbors and friends in our districts, when
we have the opportunity to make a decision, we ought to have resounding
in our head that someone will say when we act that we are not better
than this but we are what we have done. We need to be better.
No place benefited from Elijah's principled leadership more than his
hometown. He was a true son of Baltimore.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the
gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, he was a true son of Baltimore, the city of
grit, of opportunity, of hard work, and, as they would say of
themselves, of charm.
He loved his city, and his city loved him in return.
Naming this post office after him pays tribute to his lifelong
devotion to Baltimore, to democracy, to justice, to the average person,
to every person, to his brothers and sisters, and to his country.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the
gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we lost Elijah far too early. His memory
continues to guide us. His example is one to which all Members of this
institution, all Members, all Americans, and all people ought to
aspire.
Attaching his name to this post office will serve as a reminder to
all who seek, in his words, ``not just common ground, but higher
ground.''
Mr. LANGWORTHY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes).
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. Speaker, I certainly support this legislation to
pay tribute to the giant Elijah Cummings.
I have so many memories of Elijah. The first memory I have is that we
both represented Baltimore for many years together. I started to notice
that he and I, even though we represented different parts of Baltimore,
there would be events that were for the benefit of the entire city, and
we would always be showing up at those together. It gave me great pride
because I felt like that showed we had some shared values about what
was important. His leadership in those places was unrivaled.
A second observation I have is that--and certainly Kweisi knows this
intimately--Elijah was always the person who the family wanted to come
to give the eulogy at the funeral. It was because oftentimes he had a
deep connection to the family that made a difference. They also knew
that he would articulate what that person had meant to the community
better than anybody else could. It was always an inspirational time
when you would sit there and hear those powerful words with that
powerful voice kind of enveloping you.
The thing I remember most is the story he would tell about when he
was sworn in and his father was sitting up in the gallery. Many of us
know this story. His father began to cry. Afterward, Elijah went to him
and said that he noticed that he was crying. He had never seen his
father cry. He observed that not even when his own mother died had his
father cried. He asked why he had been crying. His father said: You
think it is because you became a Congressman, don't you?
Elijah said yes. His father said no, that was not the reason,
although he was very proud of him. He said that he was crying because,
looking at Elijah, he could see what he could have been.
That is an observation that many generations of Americans who
encounter barriers could make looking at the success of the next
generation and the generation beyond, ``I see what I could have been,''
and how emotional that is. Elijah was representing all of those
generations, but in the same way, they were saying that those children
and grandchildren could look at an Elijah and say not that is what I
could have been, but that is what I can be. This is why he made such a
powerful difference in the lives of so many.
If we could all reach a little bit for the kind of service that
Elijah Cummings gave to this country, the world would be a better
place.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Mfume for leading this effort to pay
tribute to our former colleague, our former friend, a giant, Elijah
Cummings.
Mr. LANGWORTHY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the
distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez), the vice
ranking member of the Oversight Committee.
Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding,
and I thank my colleague, Representative Mfume, for presenting this
tremendously important legislation.
What else can there be said about the great chairman, Elijah E.
Cummings? He was a father, mentor, visionary civil rights leader, and
fierce defender of democracy.
As the son of sharecroppers rising to become chairman of one of the
most powerful committees in the United States Congress, his life and
his existence were a testimony to the American Dream.
As chairman of the House Committee on Oversight, he would often
remind us of our purpose within this body. He asked: ``When we are
dancing with the angels, the question will be asked . . . what did we
do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?''
Our democracy is what made Elijah's life possible, the great arc of
his life possible. He was an inspiring coach and mentor who was
uniquely focused on serving his hometown of Baltimore and improving the
lives of the American people.
His work inside and outside of this building was a master class in
how to speak truth to power and keep our country together. He was tough
yet compassionate and always reminded people that they were never too
late to do good.
Elijah dedicated his life to preserving American democracy, a fight
that will be even more prevalent in the years to come, and his legacy
guides many in our work today.
[[Page H6338]]
I am proud to support the renaming of the South Loudon Avenue post
office after Chairman Elijah E. Cummings as a nod to his incredible
legacy.
Mr. LANGWORTHY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman
from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding. I thank my good friends from Maryland, Mr. Mfume and Mr.
Raskin, for their diligent work on this bill to honor the life and
legacy of Elijah Cummings.
Chairman Cummings was known throughout this Chamber and the Nation as
a man of strength and integrity and someone who compassionately yet
fearlessly wielded his powers of oversight and transparency to make our
Nation as strong as it could possibly be.
He was also a mentor to me and many others, and someone I proudly
called my friend. I had the privilege of serving on the Committee on
Oversight and Reform under Chairman Cummings and saw up close how he
fought for what is right and just, even if it wasn't popular.
Elijah Cummings was also known for telling hard truths. It didn't
matter who you were, what your politics were, or where you came from.
He told difficult truths to American baseball heroes who had tarnished
our beloved pastimes, and he confronted powerful people who priced
prescription drugs beyond the reach of our citizens.
One of Elijah Cummings' best qualities was that he listened, and more
importantly, he actually heard you. He heard you whether you were a
schoolteacher or a janitor, a colleague here in Congress or the
President of the United States.
I still carry the advice that Chairman Cummings gave to me, and I am
sure he shared it with many of you as well: You need to think about the
decisions you make and their impact not just on the moment at hand but
on the future.
I could spend all day listing out his legislative and political
accomplishments, but one thing stands out and cements his lasting
impact: the thousands of people he inspired to fight for justice and
freedom.
He served this House and the American people with grace, unmatched
integrity, and passion. He loved the city and the people of Baltimore,
and they loved him right back.
This post office is another visible and lasting testament of respect
for this true American giant, and I proudly support this bill and
encourage all of my colleagues to do the same and continue to
acknowledge the incredible legacy and leadership of this remarkable
man.
Rest in power, my friend.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume,
and I thank the gentlewoman from Florida for those beautiful remarks.
Elijah Cummings was a great Representative for the people of
Baltimore and for the people of Maryland. He was a great leader, and he
was a great teacher, too.
I remember when I was in my third term in office, and I had started
off here on the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight Committee, to
which Chairman Cummings had recruited me. I was also on the House
Administration Committee. Then, I had an invitation to go on the Rules
Committee, but I was afraid that I might be overextended.
I went and sat right over on the floor next to Chairman Cummings
where he liked to sit, and I told him that I was afraid that I might be
overburdening myself with too many committees. He turned silent for a
moment, and then he said: ``Raskin''--he spoke very sharply to me at
that moment. I had never heard him use that tone of voice. I said: Yes?
He said: You are never too busy to do that which you ought to be doing.
I never forgot that, and I have used that line for a lot of other
colleagues. People will complain about being tired and exhausted and so
on, but we are never too busy to be doing that which we ought to be
doing.
Congressman Mfume, with this visionary legislation, is setting up a
post office at 340 South Loudon Avenue in Baltimore that will be graced
with the name of the great Elijah Cummings. How fitting that is, a
place where people go to send letters and messages, because another
thing I remember Chairman Cummings always saying was that children are
the ultimate message that we send to future generations of people who
we will never meet. He meant we have to invest in children and young
people because they will end up defining a world that will long outlast
and outsurvive us.
{time} 1545
I hope that post office lasts forever, and I hope when parents take
their kids to that post office to mail their letters, they will be able
to tell them that there was once a great man named Elijah Cummings
whose whole life repays a lot of study for all of us.
Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I urge all of our colleagues
on both sides of the aisle to support H.R. 9544, legislation in honor
of a true American hero, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. LANGWORTHY. Mr. Speaker, I support this legislation to honor
Congressman Elijah Cummings. It has been wonderful to hear so many
great stories of his time here in these hallowed Halls. I yield back
the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy) that the House suspend the
rules and pass the bill, H.R. 9544.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the
rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________