[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13224]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 LOCAL ISSUES IMPACTING MANY AMERICANS

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, in the midst of serious discussions on 
America's next step forward on issues involving Syria, I rise simply to 
talk about local issues and issues impacting many Americans. One of 
them has to do with foster care and the situation of foster care in my 
own State, one dealing with children who've aged out in the city of 
Houston, and there are no facilities for them to be able to utilize, 
except for a few, like Little Audrey's, which is under siege, and which 
we're trying to draw the attention of the community to, to be able to 
help those children or young people that have no place to go, and then 
to provide more counselors for foster care children so they have a 
lifeline while they're in the foster care system.
  Finally, some good news: I want to salute the Zion Ministries, the 
church that I joined yesterday, where they received their marker of 
historic preservation in the Fourth Ward, Freedmen's Town area.
  In our local communities, good things are happening and challenges 
are happening, and I hope that, as we look at these hard decisions, 
we'll be able to work with our communities as well on some of the 
important issues they face.

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