[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6555]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               BARBARISM

  (Mr. HIMES asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I have watched saddened as this House led by 
the Republican majority has fought to gut those things that made and 
that will make this country great.
  I'm reading a history of the U.S. House of Representatives right now, 
and early in that history, this body--when this Nation was barely yet 
born--pulled together the resources to build the Erie Canal, coming 
together to do great things that benefited the Nation. The list of 
those things goes on and on: the Louisiana Purchase, public education, 
land grant colleges, the GI Bill. I could go on for a very long time.
  Today, the Republican majority says to transportation and 
infrastructure, which are key to our businesses, they say kill it; to 
medical research, kill it; to education, kill it. Mr. Speaker, that 
instinct is utterly inconsistent with who we have always been as a 
country and why we are great and powerful and ultimately economically 
prosperous. It is not stewardship. It is not governance. It is 
barbarism.

                          ____________________