[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 16717-16718]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         RETIRING FROM CONGRESS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CORRINE BROWN

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, December 8, 2016

  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, as I reach the end of my 24-year 
congressional career, I want to begin by thanking the constituents of 
Florida's 3rd (later renamed 5th) congressional district, for giving me 
the opportunity to serve you, and to serve the great State of Florida, 
and the United States of America. I will always remember and revere 
this remarkable institution of government, the House of 
Representatives, the People's House.
  As I look back on my years of service, among the many things my loyal 
and outstanding staff and I accomplished over the years, there are a 
few special items that stand out. First, I will always remember working 
day and night across the aisle to obtain a Congressional Gold Medal for 
the Montford Point Marines; the dedicated, African American patriots, 
who were often overlooked by the history books.
  These marines enlisted to defend our nation during a time when here 
at home, African Americans faced terrible discrimination and civil 
rights abuses. Years before Jackie Robinson and decades prior to Rosa 
Parks and Martin Luther King, they risked their lives and fought 
overseas to defend democracy against one of the most dangerous regimes 
ever to rule over much of Europe, that of Nazi Germany. And unlike the 
Tuskegee Airmen and others who were praised for their valiant efforts, 
the Montford Point Marines were never given recognition until I worked 
with my colleagues on Capitol Hill to pass a bill, which became law, to 
grant the marines who were trained at Montford Point a Congressional 
Gold Medal. I vividly remember when a handful of these now elderly 
gentlemen watched the final vote from the House gallery in tears, as 
the Members of Congress, defying House protocol for a brief moment, 
turned and gave them a standing ovation for their bravery. A short time 
thereafter, the Montford Point Marines were received with honors in the 
Capitol for a ceremony in their honor, granting them a Congressional 
Gold Medal.
  I am also very proud of my 24 years of service on the House Veterans 
Affairs Committee. In fact, I became the first African American female 
to serve as Ranking Member of the Committee, as I felt it was my duty 
after serving on the committee to take charge during an extremely 
tumultuous time at the Agency for Veterans' Affairs. During my two year 
term as Ranking Member we worked on a number of issues to improve the 
efficacy of the VA to better serve our nation's veterans, in 
particular, in the areas of veteran homelessness, assisting the rapidly 
expanding category of women veterans, psychological issues and PTSD, 
and working to decrease the wait times at VA health facilities.
  Since first coming to Congress, I have been fighting for the benefits 
that veterans were promised when they entered the service. When I first 
came to Washington, to offset the limited space for veterans' burials 
in Florida and around the country, I introduced legislation to 
establish new National Cemeteries in South Florida and in Jacksonville. 
I also introduced legislation to expand and improve the National 
Veteran's Cemetery system, and championed legislation expanding the 
health and long-term care benefits that America's veterans' receive, 
improving veterans' education benefits, and expediting claims 
processing. Most recently, I secured a new Veterans' Outpatient Clinic 
for Jacksonville. This facility consolidated most of the veterans' 
services that had been scattered around the city into one facility. In 
addition, the Gainesville VA Medical Center was completed with an 
additional $51.5 million included at my request, and the Orlando VA 
Medical Center, with my advocacy over the years, is finally completed 
and attending patients. And under my watch, Congress passed the largest 
budget in the history of the VA and also passed assured funding for the 
VA, which ensures that veterans' healthcare is not subject to the 
political winds of Washington.
  I am proud of my many accomplishments over the years in the arena of 
Transportation and Infrastructure development, where, in my role as a 
key member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I 
was able to make numerous positive, tangible contributions to our 
nation's transportation system.

[[Page 16718]]

By obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects, both 
for my congressional district (which is one of the most underserved in 
the State of Florida), and for my state, I was awarded with the slogan, 
``Corrine Delivers.'' These projects ranged from bridge construction 
and reconstruction, to the building of courthouses, roads, ports and 
buildings. They also consisted of numerous multi modal transportation 
projects, such as SunRail in Central Florida, Lynx, and Amtrak 
passenger rail, to give Floridians and Americans across the nation the 
option to travel and commute without having to use an automobile. And 
across my district, from Gainesville to Jacksonville to Orlando and 
even the smaller cities in between, I obtained millions of dollars over 
the years for their public transportation system, including city buses. 
In Gainesville in fact, the newly upgraded bus depot was named after 
me.
  Yet perhaps my greatest achievement was in the arena of civil rights. 
I am proud to have been the first African American to serve the State 
of Florida as an elected federal Member of Congress. In this capacity, 
I served as the voice of minorities and the traditionally under served 
for more than two decades. I was given the platform and the ability to 
promote change and fairness in the areas of voting rights, health care 
parity, educational access and equality, access to fairly priced 
housing, accessible and moderately priced public transportation, 
greater gender equality, racial disparities in our criminal justice 
system, and of course, for full funding of our Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid recipients. Lastly, in the area of higher 
education, I led the charge, along with my colleagues in the 
Congressional Black Caucus, to revise the strict requirements the 
Department of Education placed on those attempting to obtain or 
continue to use their Parent Plus Loans to further their college 
education. The excessive requirements were eventually revised in ways 
which allowed hundreds of thousands of previously adversely affected 
students, many at HBCU's in particular, to continue their studies.
  Yet I do not intend to abandon the fight for justice and equality 
that I have fought for all of my life. Even outside the halls of 
Congress, I will continue to advocate for minorities, for the less 
fortunate, and for those born on the ``other side of the railroad 
tracks.'' As I have said from the day I was first elected: ``to whom 
God has given much, much is expected . . . when you are born you get a 
birth certificate, and when you die you get a death certificate, but 
it's the dash in between that really matters.''

                          ____________________