[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23513-23517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




THANKS AND APPRECIATION TO MEMBERS, STAFF, CONSTITUENTS, AND FAMILY FOR 
               SUPPORT IN MEMBER'S SERVICE TO THE NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), for her lovely comments, and 
to say how much I have enjoyed working with her through the years. I 
wish her and her family all the best and the best to the gentlewoman in 
her future endeavors. She is a great asset to this institution and also 
to the country.
  I also want to appreciate the kind words uttered by my friend and 
colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who will be the new 
Democratic whip. I wish him much success in his new responsibilities; 
and to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), who also expressed some 
very kind words, I wish him all the best. It was wonderful over the 
years working with him and engaging in colloquies at the end of the 
week, looking forward to the following week. I wish him the best.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon just to say thank you. I wanted a 
chance before I left to thank the Members of this institution and my 
staff for the support of individuals who make this building and this 
government run so incredibly well.
  I want to start by thanking my wife, Judy, who has been absolutely 
fabulous. I thank her for her love and support; for her loyalty to the 
issues of social and economic and racial justice; for her wise counsel 
over the years, keeping me out of trouble when I needed to be kept out 
of trouble. Most of us who serve here find a way into trouble too 
often.
  She was wonderful in keeping me on the right path, but she also was 
very good about encouraging me to create controversy, trouble, if you 
will, when the times clearly needed it. I thank her for helping me lead 
a path to clarity

[[Page 23514]]

among much of the confusion that sometimes engulfs our lives, our 
personal lives, as well as our professional lives, and also for stoking 
my outrage when outrage was needed, when the situation called for us to 
become indignant and to stand up and to express ourselves in the most 
forceful and emotional way, sometimes, that we could to get our points 
across.

                              {time}  1300

  She is a great asset to this institution herself, having served here 
for over 20 years; and we look forward to the rest of our lives 
together and continuing on issues that we care deeply about and 
supporting many of the people who have supported us, especially the 
young people who are making their way up politically in their lives.
  I also thank my children, to Stephen and Julie and Andy, the three of 
them. They are grown adults now and out of school, fully employed and 
working in the Washington, D.C., area, for the most part. They have 
given much sacrifice over the years when their father was not there, 
when sometimes he should have been. They are great kids. They have 
worked in the campaign over the years. They have just been super lovely 
children and now wonderful adults, and I cannot thank them enough for 
their patience and for their encouragement and sometimes for their 
criticism when their father needed it. I wish them, of course, the 
best; and we will continue to love and support them.
  I want to also mention some wonderful people on my staff. Seneca once 
said that loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart. While I am 
not so sure that it is the holiest good in the human heart, I 
appreciate the sentiment. Loyalty is a very important part of work, 
whether it is government work or private work or family life. You have 
to have loyalty, and I have had the most loyal, wonderful staff that 
one could ever imagine.
  I am going to start by talking about, just very briefly, four people 
who have been with me throughout basically my whole career. The way my 
office basically ran was we had four people, two in Michigan, two in 
Washington; and they worked as a group, as a board: Ed Bruley, Chris 
Koch, Sarah Dufendach, and Kathy Gille.
  Now, they all were with me for virtually my whole career: Ed Bruley, 
25 years; Chris Koch, 25 years; Sarah Dufendach, 25 years; and I think 
Kathy about 20 years, although she worked on my first campaign 26, 27 
years ago. So we have known each other, we have supported each other, 
and we have marched together with each other. They have all left now 
over this last year, but they will always be in my heart, and I wish 
them the best. They are really special people.
  Ed does such a great job with young people particularly, nourishing 
them and helping them grow, helping them to become involved.
  Chris Koch was sort of the person in our office who managed things 
and who was always there to lean on when you had a personal problem and 
who had a real common touch and a real decency.
  And Sarah Dufendach, who ran the office with Kathy Gille here and the 
whip operation, Sarah has now gone on to work with the Vietnam Veterans 
Foundation and doing wonderful things. We grew up together in the same 
neighborhood, and I wish her and Alan all the best in the future. She 
is a wonderful person.
  And Kathy Gille, who grew up on the east side, all of us, by the way, 
were east-siders in the Detroit area, and Kathy's fight for economic 
and social justice and racial justice has been steady and passionate. 
And now she is working on peace with respect to the situation in Iraq. 
I wish her and Doug Tannear, who runs the Faith in Politics Institute 
that the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) alluded to a little 
earlier, all the best in their endeavors in the future as well.
  Then, of course, there are some of my old whip staff who are now with 
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi): Jerry Hartz, Howard Moon, 
Paula Short, Jon Stivers, people I have already talked about on this 
floor several months ago, and who are wonderful assets to this 
institution, and I wish them all the best.
  If I could also address some other staff individuals who have 
performed tremendously for our office and the people of the 10th 
District of Michigan: Erich Pfuehler, who was my Washington staff AA. 
Erich's been with me, for, gee, I am reluctant to guess now, but I know 
it is in the teens, the number of years, and he is a fabulous young 
man, and still a young man, and I wish him and Sarah the best in their 
endeavors.
  Maya Berry; Amy Furstenau, who left a while ago; Dana Hopings, who 
has just done excellent work on urban issues and legislative issues; 
Kevin Mauro, who has worked in our office in the Rayburn Building; 
Nicole Nice-Petersen, who left recently to go to law school; Charles 
Powell, who has spent many, many years working for me doing the mail, 
providing the humor, keeping the office on a level keel in the Rayburn 
Building. We will miss him. He is off to Louisiana to make a new home 
for himself and Sarah.
  Paula Short, who I mentioned earlier, who did a fabulous job just 
keeping me in order for a number of years before she went over to the 
gentlewoman from California; Kim Kovach we brought over just out of 
school and in a short couple of years was doing the key work in our 
office on trade legislation and who is now working for the 
steelworkers. We wish her and her husband all the best.
  Bridget Andrews, who has been with me now for about 2 years and came 
from Michigan and there, at the end, closing the offices, doing all the 
difficult work. So, Bridget, thank you for your patience and for your 
hard work.
  I do not want to miss anybody. Brian Taylor, who worked in our whip 
office, who is now with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Blagojevich). 
Brian, the best to you in your future. Allison Remsen, who has now left 
but worked as a press secretary in the whip's office; and Matt Gelman, 
who did a good job for us and worked on the floor here and many of you 
knew. He has two lovely babies now and a good job, and we wish him the 
best.
  And Mary Doroshenk and Chris Davis. Mary and Chris actually were 
married; and that was one of many, many marriages that came out of our 
organization over 30 years, and we wish them the best.
  And Adri Jayaratne, who would make a great legislative director for 
anybody in this institution, a fabulous young man. And, Adri, thank you 
for so much of what you have done.
  And in Michigan, I would like to say a particular thanks to the 
following people: Tim Morse, who has run my Port Huron office for 17 
years. He is really a wonderful man, and we wish Tim the best in his 
endeavors.
  And Rania Emara and Mark Fisk, Bob Allison and Joy Flynn and Steve 
Gallop. Steve has been with me 26 years, the whole time. He is as 
steady as a rock and as knowledgeable as it comes on grants and aid and 
support, and he is and will always be a very close friend. His sister 
Ruth, who was with me for 17 years, 17 years, and who now is going 
over, on her first day, with Senator Stabenow today. So good for you, 
Ruth.
  I mentioned Joy Flynn and Bob Allison, who did some press work, and 
Mark Fisk, really very capable people, good people.
  And Bob Gibson, who is now working for the Service Employees 
International Union, very good person who deals with workers' issues 
and community issues.
  Charlie Jackson and Cindy Janecke. Cindy, thank you so much for 
putting up with me through all that scheduling difficulty we had, 
particularly in the Governor's race. We will certainly miss you, but I 
know you will do very well in the future. Best to you and Rick.
  And to Tyler Kitchel, who is one of my top research people. Tyler is 
going on to graduate school and who will be missed.
  Fred Miller, fabulous guy. Anything you want. Fred worked in the whip 
office and went back to Michigan and did the politics and other 
constituency work. We are going to miss Fred, but he is a neighbor, so 
I will see him on a regular basis.
  And Sally Torres, who was one of our caseworkers. Sally has a 
master's degree in social work from the University

[[Page 23515]]

of Michigan and does exceptionally good work and is a very caring and 
decent person. We wish her the best.
  And Paul Soderberg and Patrick Rorai and Rick Suhrheinrich. They are 
all wonderful people, young people who started with us, those three 
actually, in high school, and now are graduates out of college and have 
been working with us. I am sure some of those people, Paul, Rick or 
Patrick, will eventually end up serving the public someday in public 
office; and I am looking forward to being there with them and helping 
them in that endeavor.
  Darlene Kaltz, whose great humor and organizational skill and 
accounting skills have kept us on the straight and narrow. We wish 
Darlene the very best, and we will be seeing much of her as well.
  I want to go back to Ed Bruley for a second, because Ed has sort of 
been the political guru of my staff. I met Ed at a campaign 30 years 
ago. I ran against him and beat him for State representative. But I 
knew from that race that I did not want him on the other side, so we 
formed a partnership. This was right after the McGovern defeat in 1972, 
and we formed a group called Locus Focus, basically to rebuild the 
party locally. And Ed was a big piece of that. We got to be good 
friends, and when I ran for Congress he was one of the key people who 
made the campaign work and then was hired, and he has been with me for 
26 years and ran the gubernatorial campaign.
  What Ed was so particularly good about was putting young people 
together. Over the years we did something called Student Summit, for 15 
years, where we would bring high school kids from each of our 100 high 
schools together and for a weekend we would teach them basically how 
this institution worked. It was role playing. Each one would take the 
persona of a Member of Congress. We would take an issue, an 
environmental issue or an education issue or racial justice issue, and 
we would lay it on the table. They would elect their leaders, they 
would elect a speaker, and they would go about trying to get a piece of 
legislation passed and thereby learning how this institution and their 
government works.
  I am proud to say that over those 15 or 16 years that we have done 
this a number of people have come out of that and done extremely well, 
actually been elected to school boards and city councils, and Ed puts 
that together. He brings people and school-to-work programs from 
Germany, from Ireland, from Canada into our congressional district, and 
we have a regular flow of people coming back and forth. That is one of 
the things that he excelled at, and I think he has given many 
opportunities to many people as a result of his interest in young 
folks. So, Ed, congratulations to you.
  In fact, right now, he has taken about 20 people and taken them over 
to Germany. That is where they are at this very minute, some of them on 
my staff, some other young people, to expose them to government in 
Germany and the school-to-work program over there, among other things.
  So we thank all of them. And I am sure I have left somebody out, and 
I deeply apologize if I have. It is not because I do not love you and 
respect you and appreciate what you have done; it is because I am not 
as organized as I probably should be this afternoon. But we thank all 
of you for your kindnesses and your support and your help.
  There are other people I want to thank. I saw Ellen Rayner was here a 
little earlier. She has worked in this institution for 30, gee, I think 
it is 32 years, and in interesting ways, with the Iran-Contra and a 
whole host of special committees and recently for the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Waxman) and his committee. And she does a great job. 
She is going to retire after 32 or 34 years, and we are going to miss 
her.
  But there are so many folks like that who have given their careers 
and their lives to this institution who need to be thanked and 
appreciated.
  I want to also thank the staff, people who run the floor, the pages, 
the people in the cloakrooms, too numerous to mention. So many of you 
have made our lives easier. I know what it is like, being the former 
whip of my party, having to deal with over 200, at one time 260 
Democrats on a daily basis, trying to keep them happy and informing 
them and bringing them together collegially. I know how difficult it is 
sometimes to please Members of Congress. But you do it every single day 
that we are here.

                              {time}  1315

  It is not easy sometimes, and I appreciate the patience of the staff 
and to their devotion.
  To the parliamentarians, to the people who cook the food, to the 
waiters, to the elevator operators, to the janitorial service that keep 
this place looking really good so the public can enjoy it and 
appreciate its beauty and its specialness.
  If I might also this afternoon, I would like to say a few words about 
my colleagues. It has been a great joy to serve here. They say over 
10,000 people have served in the Congress. I do not know how many 
Members I have served with, but I suspect it is probably close to 
1,000, probably that many over 26 years, and they are some of the 
finest people that a person would ever want to meet. They work long 
hours, they work hard, and are devoted to their constituents, to the 
issues they care about, and to their party for the most part. They do 
good work for this country, and it has been a joy to have created so 
many friendships over the years, and I hope to maintain those to the 
extent that I can in the coming years. To them, thank you for your 
kindnesses and courtesies.
  And to my party, thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve in 
your leadership. I spent about half of my political career in the 
leadership here in the House, and it is a gift. It is a very special 
gift. I will always be grateful for that opportunity. I thank my 
colleagues for it.
  Let me say this to my constituents from Macomb and St. Clair 
Counties, and these are counties just northeast of the city of Detroit, 
I thank them for the incredible gift they gave me of allowing me to 
serve them and to represent them. I have not been the easiest guy to 
keep sending back. I understand that.
  I kind of believe in the old adage if you are not living on the edge, 
you are taking up too much room; so I like to kind of push on things, 
and sometimes I know I have tried people's patience. But my 
constituents have given me the opportunity to do that, and I thank them 
from the bottom of my heart. Judy and I will retain our home in Mount 
Clemens, Michigan. We do not know what I am going to end up doing next, 
but hopefully it will involve a little bit of teaching and a little bit 
of community service along the way, and perhaps some other things as 
well.
  There is an old saying in the Bible in Proverbs that where there is 
no vision, the people perish. And in order for an institution or a 
people to be successful, you have to know where you are going and how 
you are going to get there. At least one needs an initial plan.
  Throughout our career, and I say ``our'' because I consider this not 
only my career, but the career of the people who work for me and my 
family, we have tried to have a vision where we wanted to take the 
district and the country, and that vision revolved around social, 
economic and racial justice.
  These are very difficult times that we are living in today, changing 
times at an incredible rate, technologically changing, changing times 
with respect to our natural environment, with our political 
environment, and the challenges that await my colleagues in this next 
Congress are monumental. I was going to try to resist leaving a few 
last words of comments to them, but I cannot help but give a little bit 
of advice if I could before I leave today.
  At the beginning of today's session, Father Coughlin said these words 
when he gave his prayer. He said, ``Dear Lord, deliver us from fear, 
hatred and war.'' Of course, if you can deliver yourself from fear, you 
are a long ways from delivering yourself and your community from hatred 
because fear is an ingredient into hatred. If you can move away from 
hatred, you can move away

[[Page 23516]]

from violence, and violence often manifests itself, in our business, in 
war.
  I am very much concerned about the state of our planet from a variety 
of aspects, but I will say this in conclusion. I have never seen in my 
30 years of public life the international community as brittle as it 
is. It is almost as if on a hair trigger. I wake up to public radio, 
and the conflicts are raw, bitter, more frequent, and they seem more 
intractable.
  I am generally an optimist, but I have found myself over the last 
couple of years, particularly on the international scene, becoming more 
and more pessimistic. While I know these conflicts in the Middle East 
and even here at home, and in Asia and South Asia in particular, and 
other places around the globe are not religious based, they do spring, 
to some extent, from misconceptions about other people's religions.
  It is important for all of us to remember, it seems to me, that 
Christianity and Judaism and Islam all spring from the same fountain, 
they spring from Abraham. They are monotheistic in their teachings, and 
their values are incredibly similar. There is this disconnect out there 
in terms of what Christianity is about or what Islam is about.
  I woke this morning to a story in Nigeria in which 100 people were 
killed over Christians and Muslims fighting, killing each other over a 
beauty contest. I am sure that it runs much deeper than that, but that 
was the issue that triggered the violence.
  We have to be able to talk to each other better. We have to be able 
to reach out to each other more. I am so concerned about our inability 
to do that, the turning away Christian to Muslim, Jew to Muslim, Muslim 
to Christian. We need more coming together and understanding about each 
other's religion and who we are and the great traditions and histories 
of each other's religion. That is why talking to each other is very 
important.
  I know there are Members in this institution who take great pride in 
the vote that they cast in 1991 regarding the Gulf War. And I stood at 
this very spot and gave the final speech in opposition to the Gulf War, 
and I did so because I felt that the Gulf War, while undoubtedly we 
would be successful militarily in the short run, would lead eventually 
to problems down the road in the future. I felt that we would be 
creating the atmosphere for another generation of people who felt just 
totally disillusioned and would be susceptible to moving into terrorist 
kinds of activities, suicide bombings, the kind of things that we have 
so painfully witnessed and suffered, not only here in our country, but 
abroad as well.
  In 1982, about 20 years ago, I was in the Middle East and was on a 
trip. I went to seven countries, and ended up in Lebanon. At that time 
Members may recall, the Israelis were bombing Beirut in the summer of 
1982. Arafat was confined in an underground bunker, which I was taken 
to to meet him, with a few other Members of Congress, and it looked 
like his time was just about up, and this was 20 years ago. This was a 
brutal civil war in Lebanon in which tens of thousands of people were 
lost, and much violence accrued to not only the Lebanese people, but 
other people in the region.
  I remember one particular evening I was having dinner at the American 
ambassador's residence to Lebanon and the residence overlooked the city 
and I was eating outdoors with the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Bashir 
Gemayel. His father, Pierre, had been head of the clan, and also Amin 
Gemayel. The conversation became very tough and very accusatory with 
respect to who was to blame for what was going on just below us in the 
city.
  Some ugly words were spoken, and I said to myself that evening, this 
is never going to end. The depth of hate and anger is so large, so 
deep, this is going to go on and on and on, and it did go on for many 
years afterwards.
  That evening after we were done with our dinner, we walked to the 
edge of the cliff that overlooked the city of Beirut, and we watched 
the Israelis dropping fluorescent lighting over the city so they could 
pinpoint activity in the city, and perhaps even bombing the city. The 
next morning there was a lull in the fighting, and I was walking 
through the city and I saw the cluster bombs that were made by the 
United States and dropped in these neighborhoods, and I walked to this 
one neighborhood and I saw this house smouldering, and as I was 
standing by this house, a car came up with a father and mother in the 
front seat, and three teenaged sons in the back seat. The father came 
over to where I was, and asked me who I was. And I told him I was a 
United States congressman, and I asked who he was. And he said, ``This 
is my home. It was bombed last night, and I lost a child and my home.'' 
I commiserated with him and expressed my sorrow and sympathies.
  He went back to his car and he told his family who I was. One of the 
teenaged sons in the back seat came out of the car ran towards me, and 
started to attack me. He was pulled off. I had a security person with 
me. He went back to the car with his father. I will always remember 
that because I am positive that young man went after me because he 
associated me, a United States congressman, with the destruction of his 
home and the loss of his sister.
  I think about that a lot because I wonder where those three teenaged 
boys in the back of that car, where did they end up? Did they end up as 
guerillas, as terrorists? What was their future going to be like?
  Over the last 20 years, particularly the last couple of years, it has 
been so painful to know that some of our actions, and I do not want to 
stand here and blame the United States because we are a good country 
and do great things, but some of our actions have led to this kind of 
estrangement, this kind of hopelessness, this kind of terror-driven 
maniacal activity that is occurring around the globe today.

                              {time}  1330

  That is why I voted against the Gulf War resolution 10 years ago in 
this House of Representatives, or 11 years ago, because I felt that 
that effort was going to lead to another generation of people who are 
going to be disillusioned and who will strap something to themselves 
and walk into a building or a bus and blow themselves up. It has 
happened with much, much more frequency now. I do not know when it is 
going to abate or how it is going to abate, but we have to start to 
talk to each other. Violence and war is not the only answer.
  I do not stand here as a pacifist. I was supportive of our efforts 
during the last administration to stop the ethnic cleansing in the 
Balkans and worked very hard to get President Clinton involved in that 
situation. I have supported President Bush in his efforts in 
Afghanistan. But I want to say to you this afternoon that I am so very 
fearful that our engagement again in Iraq will lead to another 
generation. They may not be necessarily in Iraq. They may be in 
Nigeria. They may end up in Indonesia. Does the United States really 
want to take on a huge part of the world? We have got to be able to 
talk to each other. We could find ourselves fighting on seven or eight 
different fronts in a very, very short time.
  So violence is not the answer. It is discussion. I would encourage my 
colleagues and the American public to be a little bit cautious about 
reading those individuals on war or listening to those individuals in 
our media on war who have themselves refused to serve their country in 
time of war. The Rush Limbaughs and the George Wills and the Cal 
Thomases, these are folks that have not seen a war that they have not 
liked in their careers. They believe in America using its power 
repeatedly, consistently, expressing itself through its military might 
on every possible occasion.
  If you read their writings, you will find that. I choose them because 
they are three that stand out. We need to have a more balanced 
perspective. If you watch the nightly news or the cable news over 
particularly the last couple of years, there is this frenzy to outdo 
each other for ratings or for whatever it is, a hyping of the 
situation, the war situation, in this instance, in Iraq. There is very 
little said, if anything said, about the horrific implications of what 
our sanctions

[[Page 23517]]

have done to create the atmosphere, if you will, for millions of people 
to distrust the United States.
  I have said this before and I will say it again, and I am not talking 
about just the Bush administration, the Clinton administration as well, 
our policy in Iraq led to the premature deaths of 50,000 children. 
50,000 children. 50,000 a year. Children who did not get the nutrition 
they needed, mothers who did not get the nutrition they needed and bore 
children with low birthweight. Those children died of respiratory 
problems or they died of diarrhea which is rampant because they cannot 
get decent clean water because partially of the war and the bombings 
that occurred and the inability to get equipment to fix the water 
treatment facilities and the sanitation facilities.
  50,000 a year. Yes, that could be rectified through a couple of 
avenues. Saddam Hussein could deal with this problem and so could the 
United States, but no one has done it, and it has gotten worse and 
worse and worse. They know this story in Afghanistan. They know this 
story in Tajikistan. They know this story in Syria. They know this 
story in Yemen. They know this story about 50,000 children dying 
prematurely in much of the world. We do not know this story here.
  Yet we sat on a committee, the United States representative sat on 
what they call a 621 committee, if I am correct on the number. It does 
not matter. It is a committee of five people, members of the Security 
Council, and they have to vote on what medicine, what food, what 
equipment gets to be sent into Iraq. They have done this for 10 years. 
The United States has been the representative on that committee for the 
past 10 years that 98 percent of the time has said no to medicine, to 
food, to water pumps to fix their water systems. We have been the one 
who said no. They know this story. We do not even know our own story 
here. And it has led to such painful consequences for the innocent 
people of Iraq who do not want and do not care for Saddam Hussein and 
want him out of there. They are suffering. All we have done is 
strengthen him because it has shifted the focus to our inability to 
deal justly with their lives.
  During the 1991 Gulf War, some of the armored equipment and 
projectiles, projectiles specifically that we deployed, were coated 
with something called uranium, depleted uranium. The reason they coat 
these projectiles is that uranium is hard, it can pierce through tanks, 
but what they did not tell us was that once this uranium projectile 
hits a tank or an armored vehicle, it atomizes, it gets in the 
atmosphere, it gets into people's lungs, and there has been a huge 
increase in leukemia and soft tissue sarcoma of children in Iraq, 100, 
120 percent, since this war. They have the protocols to help these 
young people, they are mostly young people, I visited them in the 
hospitals when I was there, to help these people get through this 
difficult, life-threatening disease, but the United States has denied 
the medicine to treat these young children.
  I tell you these stories not because I want to rag on the United 
States of America. This is a good country. We do lots of good things 
around the world in health care and education. But we cannot isolate 
ourselves the way we have in this part of the world or in South Asia or 
in other parts of the world and expect that the people are going to 
understand us and we them.
  So I would just conclude by saying that I hope that we will look at 
our national security concerns from that perspective as well. And then 
to finally end up, I am sounding like a Baptist preacher, I am saying 
finally and I am closing 20 times here to the gentlewoman from Texas, 
but to finally say that our economic security is vitally important as 
well.
  The gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) addressed this in her 
comments as did the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Levin) and others earlier. We cannot ignore those 
workers in our country who have through no fault of their own been laid 
off or lost their jobs. We should have done the bill before we left 
today. This is a Republican bill, for heaven's sake. It was signed off 
by Don Nickles in the United States Senate. It was passed unanimously 
over there. We are talking about a million people running out of 
unemployment compensation benefits during a very important time of year 
for most people. This is a stimulus package in itself, a small one 
albeit, but needed for those devastated economies in certain pockets of 
our country. We could have done this. There is no reason we could not 
have done this. But we did not. We did not do it. And so I hope the 
first order of business, Mr. Speaker, will be this bill when the new 
Congress resumes.
  Finally, let me just say to you, Mr. Speaker, and to Speaker Hastert 
and my dear friend Dick Gephardt, whom I have had the honor of working 
with, I thank you for your kindnesses over the years and your 
leadership. Both of your staffs have been exceptionally wonderful to me 
and to my staff. I thank you for all the kindnesses that you have shown 
me. I look forward to returning those kindnesses in the years and 
months ahead.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I did not leave the floor because I knew that the 
gentleman was going to give to this Congress an oration or a message 
that we should not miss. I just want to conclude to the gentleman's 
remarks by again thanking him for his service to America. And though 
you did not announce it yourself, many of us alluded to it, it is 
important to restate that you are a veteran of wars. You did go to 
Vietnam. You did serve your country in the United States military.
  And so as you speak in concluding, thanking your staff and those of 
us of your colleagues, you speak from what you know. What I would like 
to offer to you is again an enormous thank you for educating us about 
the admonition of delivering us from fear and hatred and war. We would 
do well in the next Congress to include you, encourage you, and listen 
to you for the travels that you have made, the insights that you have 
gathered. Might I make a commitment, and might I say that I have been 
very much instructed by your words, is that we will not give up on a 
vote and that is that a vote that has seemingly given authority to go 
to war against Iraq. I always say to my constituents, there was a vote, 
but likewise there were votes, plural, that expressed a different 
perspective.
  I think it is important for those of us who view this war as both 
untimely and as well ill-directed, to follow in your line of reasoning 
and, that is, to keep raising the issues and seeking to educate the 
American population.
  Lastly, I would say the tone that you offered your message and your 
words today should be applauded by all. You were encouraging, embracing 
and nurturing. We thank you. What I would say to those who have debated 
this question of war, I would hope, and sometimes we are looked upon as 
being frivolous, that we might debate the question of peace, that there 
might be legislative initiatives that would talk about generating peace 
and understanding. I do not know if we have ever done that. I know 
there is a peace institute.
  I would encourage and simply ask the minority whip, the former 
minority whip and the very helpful leader of this Congress and this 
Nation, to continue to stay in the fight with your words and wisdom on 
these issues, and maybe we will get there someday, understanding that 
peace has a greater price maybe, but a greater return than any war that 
we could engage in. I yield back to the gentleman with an enormous 
thanks.
  Mr. BONIOR. I thank my colleague for her lovely words. I wish her 
success and happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and to the staff 
as well. Bless you.

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