[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 15163]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     THE ADMINISTRATION IS CHOOSING CALLIGRAPHY OVER OUR MONUMENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
South Carolina (Mr. Sanford) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I came down to this well yesterday to talk 
about how for 20 years I have run back and forth to the Lincoln 
Memorial and how the day before yesterday I was shocked to run down 
there and see the place in chains. I had planned on making a run last 
night, and then tragically this shooting occurred here yesterday.
  But it turns out there's some things that I didn't know about the 
Lincoln Memorial. In this shot, I had become so agitated, I had asked a 
tourist to take a picture. And it is an amazing picture of, again, the 
Lincoln Memorial without people, because what I have come to learn is 
that it has always been a place with people.
  I didn't realize that in the last government shutdown, President 
Clinton elected not to close down the Lincoln Memorial. I didn't 
realize there had been 17 shutdowns in this country since 1976, and not 
one President elected to close down the Lincoln Memorial. That means 
President Ford, President Carter, President Reagan, President Bush, and 
President Clinton each, when given the discretion in how they would 
handle a shutdown, chose not to hold Americans hostage in somehow 
gaining political favor by a shutdown that would hurt them on their 
tour to Washington, D.C. In fact, what I came to learn is that in the 
history of the American Republic, the Lincoln Memorial has never been 
shut down.
  So, my simple question would be: Why?
  I think it's interesting that Dr. Martin Luther King came to its 
steps, and he talked about how the American Dream for many pieces of 
America and many people in America was in chains. And yet this 
President, for some reason, chooses to chain the Lincoln Memorial in a 
way that has never been done in the history of our Republic.
  I don't know why he would do so, but what I can say is that it turns 
out he has a history of holding people hostage in a political equation 
that I think is very, very harmful, because in the sequester, he chose 
to end public tours to the White House. That means an eighth grader who 
may be making their one trip to Washington, D.C., over the course of 
their life is no longer afforded the chance to visit the White House as 
school groups have done, literally, since the time of Jefferson. Always 
that has been the people's house--not a palace, but the people's house.
  What I came to learn here that I didn't know over the last 24 hours 
is that the White House, as it turns out, spends $277,000 on a 
calligrapher. Now, you can either keep the White House open for tours 
for eighth graders across this country or you can spend $277,000 on 
calligraphers. Now, what's a calligrapher? A calligrapher is a person 
who writes in very fancy prose on a very fancy invitation to rich folk 
to come to the White House. That's what a calligrapher is. And he would 
elect to do that? Or to take an extra trip on Air Force One? Or not to 
raise private money to open up the White House for tours?
  It turns out, I've come to learn, in many cases, it's costing more to 
chain these public, open-air monuments, whether the World War II 
monument, whether the Lincoln Memorial, whether the Jefferson, in many 
cases costing more to rent barricade equipment than it is to take 
people out of furlough to have them there in ways that have never been 
okay.
  So it is okay to agree that we disagree. It's okay to say you want to 
spend more, the House wants to spend less. Harry Reid wants to spend 
more, we want to spend less. I think the Congressional Budget Office 
numbers are on our side. What they show is that in just 12 years, we're 
going to be at a point in this civilization where there will only be 
enough money to pay for interest and entitlements and nothing else. And 
in that regard, what we see is simply a prelude to much greater 
problems in this country if we don't get our financial house in order.
  So it's okay to disagree on those things, but it is not okay to try 
and inflict political pain to the American citizen as a way of somehow 
scoring a political point, particularly when this House has sent four 
different bites at the apple in terms of trying to keep government 
open, and particularly when this House has sent a bill over that would 
keep the national parks open, that would keep groups like NIH open, 
Guard and Reservists, go down the list.
  So, I would come back and ask of you, Mr. Speaker, that we look for 
some way of, again, unchaining monuments that have never been chained 
in the history of this Republic, because I think they represent very 
silly political games by this President.

                          ____________________