[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6310-6312]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PUBLIC SERVICE RECOGNITION WEEK


                 Tribute to Adam Schildge and Mia Beers

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. I thank my colleague for his graciousness. I told him I 
would speak for 10 minutes. It is usually about 10 hours, but I only 
have 10 minutes.
  Mr. President, I rise today on the Senate floor to recognize the 
efforts of many of our Nation's public servants. Since 1985, the very 
first week of May has been dedicated to highlighting the millions of 
hard-working Americans who serve our Nation as Federal employees, State 
employees, county and local government employees, and members of the 
uniformed services, which I have been privileged to be one for some 23 
years.
  This week marks the 30th annual Public Service Recognition Week and 
serves as an important opportunity for those here in the Senate to show 
our appreciation for their dedication and service to our community and 
to our Nation.
  Throughout my time in public office, including during my time on the 
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which I have been 
a member of now for about 14 years and which I chaired for the last 2 
years, I have had the great pleasure of meeting with any number of 
dedicated and accomplished public servants. In talking

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with them, I have been able to learn more about their work, more about 
their families, learn more about their commitment to public service 
that they share with all of us.
  Today, I would like to take a couple minutes to highlight the 
outstanding service of some of our public servants across our Federal 
Government. In these cases, their extraordinary service has directly 
impacted the lives of the Americans they serve. In fact, the two 
individuals I plan to highlight today are finalists for something 
called the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals that are awarded 
by the Partnership for Public Service each year.
  As you may know, on October 29, 2012--at least we know in Delaware, 
New Jersey, and New York--Superstorm Sandy made landfall in the United 
States. Its impact up and down the east coast was, in a word, 
devastating. In another word, it was heartbreaking. New York, New 
Jersey, and parts of New England were hit particularly hard. My home 
State of Delaware was hit hard, too. Widespread flooding caused severe 
damage to many homes and businesses. Our transportation infrastructure 
suffered, too. Roads and bridges were damaged or washed out, hurting 
commerce and transportation and cutting off access to hospitals, 
schools, and work.
  What we learned through the difficult recovery that followed is that 
sound and effective mitigation policies should be thoroughly calculated 
into any recovery effort. Through mitigation, we can get better 
results, save money, and save lives.
  Following Superstorm Sandy, Congress passed an almost $11 billion 
special transportation appropriations bill. A large portion of that 
funding--roughly one-third of it, $3.6 billion--was to be used for 
something called resilience grants dedicated to protecting the 
infrastructure repaired after Sandy.
  A fellow named Adam Schildge--Adam Schildge--senior program analyst 
at the Federal Transit Administration in Washington, DC, was a key 
player in developing, implementing, and managing a competitive grant 
program to distribute those $3.6 billion in resilience funds. Those 
grants, once awarded, supported construction projects that will reduce 
the cost to taxpayers in cleaning up after future storms. They will 
also reduce the number of lives and properties lost from powerful 
natural disasters.
  As you can imagine, the task assigned to him--here is Adam right 
here, Adam Schildge--the task assigned to Adam was not an easy one. His 
mission was critical. His mission, basically, was to identify projects 
that, if funded, would get better results, save money, and save lives. 
In order to determine what projects should receive funding, Adam 
meticulously combed through grant application after grant application 
to assess the resilience of planned infrastructure projects.
  When I think of ``resilience,'' I think about how we save money in 
the future in the event that we have a storm of that nature again. And, 
believe me, we will. Because of Adam's painstaking attention to detail, 
eye for innovation, and his dedication to the lives at stake during 
future storms, Adam was able to grant funding to transportation 
projects that will serve all Americans for generations to come and to 
endure the forces of extreme weather.
  According to Adam, he took the position in public service because it 
was--these are his words--``the greatest opportunity to impact 
communities.'' He went on to say: ``I've always known I wanted to work 
for the public good and I've found a good way now to give back to 
communities across the country.'' Those are his words.
  Our Nation's public servants are making a difference across the globe 
too.
  As the Presiding Officer may remember, less than a year ago, a deadly 
epidemic of the Ebola virus gripped Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and 
Mali. The severity and scale of the outbreak was an unprecedented 
challenge to the worldwide public health community. The rapid spread of 
the outbreak reminded us that deadly and infectious diseases know no 
borders.
  It also sent us an important reminder to remember the parable of the 
Good Samaritan, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. Jeff, 
my friend, Senator Sessions over here, knows the Bible pretty well. He 
recalls in the New Testament where some of the pharisees are trying to 
trick Jesus. They asked him a question. They said: What is the greatest 
commandment of all?
  Jesus responded: It is not just one; there are two. The first is to 
love the Lord thy God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind. 
And then he said: The second great commandment is to love thy neighbor 
as thyself.
  The pharisees said: Well, who is our neighbor? He told them the 
parable of the Good Samaritan. That is where we come up with that. But 
in the spirit of the Good Samaritan--and the story goes back a couple 
of thousand years--thousands of public servants were dispatched to 
battle Ebola at its epicenter, on the ground in Africa.
  A woman named Mia Beers--there she is. Mia Beers was one of those 
courageous public servants. As the Director of the Humanitarian Policy 
and Global Engagement Division at the U.S. Agency for International 
Development, Mia led the U.S. Ebola Disaster Assistance Response Team 
into the epicenter of the epidemic in Monrovia, Liberia.
  On the ground, Mia synchronized the efforts of thousands of public 
health and emergency response workers across five different Federal 
agencies. Under her leadership, the response team offered training 
support and contact tracing to better protect health workers in close 
contact with this deadly disease.
  She also worked closely with the State Department to strategize 
response efforts in real time, including ways to inform vulnerable 
populations about the disease as quickly and efficiently as possible.
  According to Mia's colleagues, her robust leadership and coordination 
helped to steer the worldwide response out of the crisis mode and to 
stem the tide of the deadly global outbreak. According to Mia, it was 
all because of--these are her words--``the dedication and passion and 
knowledge'' of the people who she worked with.
  Not long ago I was with Department of Homeland Security Deputy 
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, meeting with some Department of Homeland 
Security employees at a roundtable. The roundtable was focused on 
employees and improving the employee morale. During that meeting, he 
reiterated the profound impact that each employee has on his or her 
agency and the mission. All told--Ali Mayorkas told the story of an 
employee at NASA headquarters who was working late one night into the 
morning hours. The employee finally gathered himself to leave, and he 
came across a custodian mopping the floors. He asked the employee: What 
do you do?
  The custodian who was mopping the floors replied: I am putting a man 
on the moon.
  Think about that. I am putting a man on the moon. Every day that 
custodian went to work thinking he was part of an important mission. 
The same is true for employees across the Federal Government in its 
various agencies. These dedicated and hardworking public servants are 
just two among the hundreds of thousands who are making a difference in 
the lives of their fellow Americans every day.
  I want to encourage us all to visit a Web site that is called the 
Partnership for Public Service to learn more stories about some 
outstanding public servants and public employees. Today and every day, 
I want to thank these employees--we ought to thank these employees--for 
their service, their humble service, their selfless service to our 
Nation. I hope they all know how important their work is--everything 
you do in this work across our country and around the world and that 
you know what brings joy to you.
  Let me close with this, if I could. I say through the Presiding 
Officer to my friend Senator Sessions: I was reading earlier this week 
in the newsclips that come to me from my staff--I was reading the 
results of an interview, I think, from interviews with maybe 1,500 very 
senior-level Federal

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employees. They were basically being asked: How do you like your job? A 
lot of them, frankly, reported they did not have the sense of 
satisfaction that they really had hoped for and expected they would 
have.
  They were asked: If something could change that would make you feel 
better about the work you do and people's appreciation of the work you 
do, what would help the most?
  The first question they asked them was this: How about more pay? How 
about more of this or more of that? Believe it or not, what most of 
them said they would like to have more of was just to be thanked. For 
somebody to say: The work that you do is important. We are grateful as 
a nation that you do this.
  That is something all of us can do. I had a conversation here on the 
floor, I say to Senator Sessions, with Jim Inhofe, our colleague from 
Oklahoma. He talked about the TSA employees. When he flies home, back 
to Oklahoma, and flies out of here, either through Reagan--probably 
Reagan and on to Dallas and to Tulsa. He has gotten to know the TSA 
employees there. I think he makes a habit of thanking them for the work 
they do for all of us.
  I try to do the same sort of thing when I travel around the country. 
I bump into Coast Guard folks or other people, especially those who are 
associated with the Department of Homeland Security. It is an easy 
thing to do, just say thank you for the work they do on behalf of all 
of us--especially if we tell them who we are. They will appreciate it, 
and it will make a difference in their lives, and maybe even a 
difference in their performance going forward. Thank you so much. God 
bless.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we have a lot of good people in the 
Senate, and Senator Carper is one of the best. He does, indeed, live by 
the Golden Rule, and it is an inspiration to us--as I have told him 
more than once--when we have had hot debate in the Senate. He always 
keeps his good nature, his loving spirit, and always sets a good 
example.
  I say thank you to Senator Carper. It is appropriate to thank Federal 
employees for their work. Not counting the Army Reserve time, I have 
quite a few years myself in Federal service and love the people I have 
had the honor to work with.
  I ask that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection.

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