[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 186 (Monday, December 16, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H7145-H7146]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      BIDDING FAREWELL TO CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Phillips) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PHILLIPS. Mr. Speaker, today, I bid farewell to my amazing staff, 
some of whom are in the gallery, my wonderful colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle, constituents, and the myriad of unsung heroes to whom our 
entire Nation owes a debt of gratitude.
  I thank them all from the top of my heart.
  To my amazing family all around the country who has stood by me in 
times of both great joy and pain: my mother, DeeDee, and my late 
father, Eddie; my brothers, Tyler, Jay, and Bobby; my sisters, Hutton 
and Lily; and my treasured daughters, Daniela and Pia, who compelled me 
to run for Congress in 2018: I love you all with all my heart.
  I depart this august institution with a combination of deep 
gratitude, a little bit of attitude, and a healthy dose of American 
optimism.
  To those who are pleased to see this affable but outspoken gadfly 
ride off into the sunset, I am sorry to say that my mission to restore 
common sense and a home for the exhausted majority of center left and 
center right Americans is just beginning. It is a mission whose roots 
were not planted here in Washington or back home in Minnesota but 
rather 8,000 miles away on Dragon Mountain in Pleiku, Vietnam, where my 
father, Captain Artie Pfefer, was killed fighting a war in which he did 
not believe, but for a country in which he believed very deeply.
  Last year, I traveled to the very ground on which he took his last 
breath and where I took my first.
  He died just 4 days after the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and I have 
often pictured him along with a half million other young soldiers 
looking up in awe that morning, many probably in tears, as two fellow 
Americans achieved the unthinkable. They got a glimpse of America at 
her very best up there while we were at our very worst down here.
  I picture our predecessors in this very room voting to fund both that 
giant leap for mankind and that giant tragedy for mankind all in the 
same year.
  On my flight home from Vietnam last year, I reflected on my father 
and the 1 million--yes, 1 million--Americans who have been killed in 
service to our country since 1776. I thought to myself they did not 
sacrifice their lives for Members of Congress to act like 
kindergartners.
  They did not sacrifice their lives for Members of Congress to spend 
10,000 hours per week begging for campaign cash used to eviscerate 
fellow Americans running for office.
  They did not sacrifice their lives for Members of Congress to do 
nothing as 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
  They did not sacrifice their lives for Congress to do nothing as 
500,000 Americans go bankrupt every year from medical debt and 26 
million go without any health insurance at all.
  They did not sacrifice their lives for Congress to do nothing as 
50,000 Americans die from gun violence and another 100,000 from 
overdoses every single year.
  They did not sacrifice their lives for Congress to do nothing as 
wealthy industries shower millions upon millions of campaign cash on 
the very committee members who set the rules for their industries, and 
then Congress allows each party to collect dues from those committee 
members to fund their campaigns. It is legalized corruption, and it is 
unacceptable.
  My father and 1 million other Americans did not sacrifice their lives 
for Congress to enable two private corporations, the two major parties, 
to maintain a virtual monopoly on our democracy, and having paid the 
ultimate price themselves, they surely did not sacrifice their lives 
for Members of Congress to prioritize their own self-protection over 
their principles.
  However, they did sacrifice their lives because of decisions made in 
this very room by people just like us.
  So, as I bid farewell, I humbly ask all the Members of the next 
Congress on both sides of the aisle to call on their better angels and 
act with courage, not cowardice: the courage to compete with our ideas 
rather than defeat one another with our ideologies, the courage to fix 
our problems rather than fixate on our politics, the courage to replace 
condemnation with invitation,

[[Page H7146]]

and the courage to replace confrontation with common sense.
  In closing, I believe that we all have a choice to make--all of us. 
Do we wish to be a nation that metaphorically goes to the Moon together 
or one that goes to war against one another?
  As a free people, that choice remains ours, all of ours. As Albert 
Einstein, a notable immigrant to the United States of America, famously 
said that the world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do 
evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
  I believe in us. I love you all, and I will see you down the road. 
Godspeed.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair reminds Members that the rules do 
not allow references to persons in the gallery.

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