[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5053-5054]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                DON'T FILIBUSTER GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Today, the bodies of this Congress have an 
opportunity to save lives. In fact, they have an historic moment. They 
actually have the ability to act for once after a tragedy of the 
proportions of Newtown, having not acted over the years--after 
Columbine, the theater in Aurora, the horrific tragedy at Virginia 
Tech, and many, many others, including that of our colleague in 
Arizona.
  So I am hoping that as we stand here today that the right consciences 
of those who have the opportunity in the other body to pass sensible 
gun legislation will do so. In order to aid them, to listen to the 
voices of the people, 50 Members of the United States House of 
Representatives have asked for those in the other body not to 
filibuster any gun legislation, but to have an up-or-down vote. The 
reason we say that is because of the massive numbers of loss of 
children, some 80 children who die every month by gunshot, the 
thousands of teenagers who pick up guns to resolve differences, and the 
million people who were killed by guns since the assassination of 
Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.
  This is a Nation that is gunned, but not safe. The tragedy that 
happened in my area just a few days ago with the slashing of students 
by another student at a community college. Just imagine--14 people were 
injured--if that person had had an assault weapon with multiple rounds, 
similar to the heinous acts that occurred in Newtown, when 155 rounds 
were shot in 5 minutes. So I'm hoping that this letter will move those 
Senators not to filibuster and to let us have an up-or-down vote.
  I also rise today to encourage us to do the right thing and to vote 
``no'' on

[[Page 5054]]

the National Labor Relations Board legislation that wants to stop the 
President from his Presidential authority, and that is to make sure 
that the government runs by appointing people to the NLRB through 
recess appointments, among others, just like President George Bush did 
140 times, to make recess appointments to be able to move the 
government forward. In contrast to the D.C. Court of Appeals decision 
that ruled that our President cannot, three other decisions and other 
court decisions said you can.
  We need to vote ``no'' on this legislation. It is destructive, it is 
only to stall government, and it is only to stop the work of the NLRB, 
where workers and corporations come together to solve their problems.
  What we should be doing is working to create jobs. That's what 
Americans want us to do. They want us to make it in America. They want 
us to build up manufacturing. They want us to create and pass 
legislation, as we introduced yesterday with whip Hoyer, 38 pieces of 
legislation that we all are joining to support to create jobs.
  One thing they don't want us to do is to pass anything with a chained 
CPI on Social Security because Social Security is solvent. Those people 
are not the fault of any deficit or any debt; they are hardworking 
people. I will not ever vote for a chained CPI. And I am not a whiner.

                              {time}  1020

  I, frankly, see those people in my district who are supported by 
Social Security and Medicare, which they earn because they work for it. 
They did not have it as a handout, because seniors are important and 
seniors believe in young people. We should protect our seniors; we 
should invest in education.
  I salute the President for his early pre-K initiative, that every 
child should have the opportunity to be in a pre-K program, supporting 
our teachers. So here we are; this is what we should be doing. We 
should be promoting job creation to bring down unemployment and to, in 
fact, get those who are underemployed and those who have completely 
gone out of the marketplace. They can be hired, they have skills, 
including our disabled.
  Then we should continue to invest in education, including higher 
education, making it easier for parents to get the Parent PLUS Loans to 
send their children to college and putting the burden on colleges to 
make sure that these young people finish college and not go in and get 
debt and, therefore, come out with a large debt and no degree.
  This is what America is about, investing in young people, protecting 
our seniors, and realizing that the chained CPI is not the way to go on 
Social Security. It's to save it because they earned it.

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