[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16949-16950]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                    IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM LOUIS ISSA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ISSA. Today is July 7, 2009. Today would have been the 24th 
birthday of my own nephew, William Louis Issa. Last week, I attended 
his funeral.
  He had a connection to this House because he worked both in 
Cleveland, his home, and here in Washington for his Congressman, Dennis 
Kucinich. In his passing, I lost a nephew; Cleveland lost somebody who 
cared about the environment, who was passionate about wolves in the 
wild, who in fact had graduated from college and was going on to law 
school to be an environmentalist, to seek what liberty allows us in 
this country, which is the right to feel and do what you think is right 
for your country.
  I speak from this side of the center of this body and I speak about 
somebody who I disagreed with on many policies. As a young man, while 
he was summering here and staying at our home, he wanted me to know 
that the eating of meat was wrong and that if I wasn't a vegetarian, 
then I wasn't getting it. And he admired Dennis Kucinich, who's a 
lifelong--or at least as an adult person--a vegan. And he on a host of 
other issues felt so strongly. But, most of all, he felt strongly about 
the individual liberties, particularly his.
  Now his choice was a Prius and his choice was in fact to try to do 
and be everything for a sustainable ecology as he saw it. So when I 
thought about coming and using his nexus here to the House floor 
tonight to speak on what would have been his 24th birthday, I thought 
it appropriate to say that from

[[Page 16950]]

the left--and he certainly was a child of the left; perhaps a child of 
the sixties reborn in a next generation--and from someone on the right, 
I wonder if we shouldn't come together the way this young man did with 
everyone he met and talk in terms of America's liberty.
  What in fact is this body doing--not to pass new laws. That wasn't 
what we were sent for. But to defend the inherent constitutional 
obligations: Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
  I believe that he ended his life far too soon and without 
accomplishing what he would have, had he lived longer. But tonight I 
will tell you that I'm brought to the House floor for perhaps only the 
third or fourth time in 8 or 9 years to say that those on the left and 
those on the right, we need to recommit ourselves.
  At a time when we're talking about regulating CO2, where 
we regulate the highways, the waterways, where we're looking at an 8 
percent tax on health care to pay for the new health care proposal, 
while so much of what we once thought of as the free wild, wild west of 
the United States has been changed, particularly post-9/11, I wonder if 
this wouldn't be a good time for men and women of good conscience on 
both sides of the aisle to say: Shouldn't we relook at every liberty? 
Shouldn't we form a liberty caucus? Shouldn't Congress be dedicated to 
ask the question not as Republicans or Democrats, but in fact as 
Americans sworn to uphold the Constitution?
  Isn't it time we start looking at every single law we passed and the 
regulation they produced and find out how many of them we could do 
without--not liberal laws, not conservative laws, but all of them. I 
believe that that is the highest calling for those of us here in 
Congress.
  I will tell you tonight, perhaps as a small tribute to my nephew, 
that I will reach out and I will ask every Democrat I see and all of my 
colleagues on this side of the aisle: What have we done in fact to 
defend liberty? What have we done to give somebody the right to decide 
they want to spend three months with wolves in the wild or that they 
want to in fact go out and save our delicate ecosystem from the 
unnatural twisting that 300 million people here in America bring upon 
the world.
  That liberty is important. It's important that we pay tribute to it 
every chance we have, and can.
  Madam Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to, in a small 
way, talk about liberty and a man who would have fought for it.

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