[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5451-5455]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          AMERICA'S TO-DO LIST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) is recognized 
for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, we all got elected. I have been here 5 
years now. You are fairly new to this institution. Everybody comes with 
a dream. You don't come because you are looking for new business cards. 
You come because you want to make a difference for folks back home. We 
all have about 700,000 bosses back home, and they want us to make a 
difference. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about some of those differences 
today.
  You can't see it from where you are sitting, but I have got a little 
America's to-do list down here. I didn't have enough paper back in the 
office to do the entire to-do list. There is a lot out there, as I know 
you hear every weekend when you go home as well, but I put a couple of 
the top things out there.

                              {time}  1130

  I have ``fix our roads and bridges'' out there--just a terrible 
infrastructure issue. What separates America in terms of getting our 
goods to market around the globe is a world-class infrastructure. 
Investment in that infrastructure has waned in recent years as we have 
dangerous bridges and we have roads that are in desperate need of 
repair. That is one of those things--to maintain the postal roads--that 
the Constitution uniquely assigns to the United States Congress. That 
is on the to-do list.
  Update our national WRRDA policy, Mr. Speaker. We are going to have 
wars on this planet--mark my words--not over oil, but over fresh water. 
Having a freshwater infrastructure, maintaining our natural resources, 
taking care of and being good stewards of those resources that we have 
been entrusted with are critically important. It is one of those things 
that the Federal Government has a dominant role in doing. We have to 
get on that.
  Tax relief, Mr. Speaker. Where is that family back home who isn't 
trying to figure out how next month works and the month after that and 
the month after that?
  I keep hearing about this economic recovery, and yes, the numbers are 
getting better slowly, but they are not improving nearly fast enough. 
The folks cannot afford to support an inefficient Federal Government. 
Tax relief is on that list.
  Medicare, Mr. Speaker. There is not a man or a woman in this Nation 
who depends on Medicare who does not know it is in fiscal peril. There 
is not enough money in the Medicare trust fund to meet the promises 
that we have made to America's seniors. There is not enough money in 
the Medicare trust fund even though working age men and women begin 
paying in on their very first paychecks to meet the promises of this 
generation and the next. We owe America better than that. Fixing that 
is on the to-do list.
  Improving veterans' care, Mr. Speaker. For Pete's sake, talk about 
something that is uniquely this government's responsibility. We ask so 
much of the young men and women in uniform who serve and protect this 
Nation, and they ask nothing of us. We make promises to them, and we 
must keep those promises. It is hard to open up the newspaper and not 
read a story of America's failing its veterans. We must do better, and 
we can do better.
  Mr. Speaker, cutting spending. For Pete's sake, when folks back home 
do send a dollar's worth of taxes to Washington, D.C., they don't 
believe they are going to get a dollar's worth of value out of it. They 
think it is going to get thrown down some rat hole somewhere, on some 
pet project that is not going to benefit anyone. They think it is going 
to get wasted on a regulatory infrastructure that isn't modernized for 
the 21st century. Every family has to do more with less in tough 
economic times, and the Federal Government is no different. This is 
just the beginning of the to-do list, Mr. Speaker.
  It is dreary outside. There is a steady mist coming down. I haven't 
seen the Sun out there for days. Sometimes I get back home, and I hear 
that same kind of spirit coming from folks who are trying to feed and 
provide for their families. There is a dreariness out there, Mr. 
Speaker, such that folks feel like self-governance is not serving them 
in the way that it should. That is why you and I ran for Congress and 
that is why I have come to the House floor today with good news.
  It is true that when you open up the newspaper, it is failure after 
failure after failure, but that is not telling the story of the work 
that the good men and women of this Chamber are doing, that Republicans 
and Democrats are coming together to do, that the House and the Senate 
are coming together to do, that the Congress and the White House are 
coming together to do. In this election season of everybody's talking 
about what divides us, of everybody's talking about what the failures 
are, I want to talk about those things that unite us and on which we 
are succeeding for the American people together.
  Mr. Speaker, there have been 36 short-term transportation extensions 
since the last time we passed a long-term transportation bill. Thirty 
six short-term extensions. If anybody is in the construction business, 
Mr. Speaker, they know you can't plan to build a bridge in a matter of 
days. This is a multiyear project. You need long-term planning and you 
long-term certainty.
  Historically, that is what the Congress has provided: Republicans and 
Democrats coming together in a bipartisan way and Congress and the 
White House coming together to provide for a multiyear transportation 
bill. But it has been more than two decades, Mr. Speaker, since this 
body has passed a 5-year transportation bill--a multiyear 
transportation bill--that provides certainty to folks back home and 
that fulfills the commitment that every American citizen expects from 
the Federal Government in having collected gas taxes on every gallon of 
gas that the American consumer buys.
  We all know about the infrastructure needs in this country. For more 
than two decades, Congress and the White House had not been successful 
in fulfilling that responsibility. When Republicans ran the show, we 
failed. When Democrats ran the show, we failed. When Republicans were 
in the White House, we failed. When Democrats were in the White House, 
we failed. But this Congress--the men and women gathered here with this 
President in the White House--came together, and we succeeded with the 
first long-term transportation bill in more than 20 years.
  Mr. Speaker, 5 years of funding is just the beginning. I won't tell 
you this is the end of the show. Our Transportation and Infrastructure 
chairman, Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, wants to do more. This isn't 
the end. This is the beginning. It is a fantastic beginning, and it is 
one that we ought to celebrate of $305 billion going back to 
communities around this Nation to focus on safety and infrastructure.
  Mr. Speaker, it streamlines the process--the most dramatic 
streamlining of 

[[Page 5452]]

the regulatory process. It often takes longer to get 
regulatory approval to build a bridge than it does to build the bridge 
itself--years wasted on approval processes that could have been 
streamlined while we are still being good stewards of our environmental 
resources. This bill does that. It also eliminates the increase in 
costs that come with those delays, Mr. Speaker, the increase in costs 
that come from that bureaucracy so as to make sure the American 
taxpayer is getting more value for his dollar.
  Mr. Speaker, it shores up the highway trust fund, and we will talk a 
lot about trust funds in this time today. The highway trust fund was 
going bankrupt. The highway trust fund didn't have enough money to meet 
the needs of the American highways, so $70 billion has been transferred 
into that trust fund to make sure that we are keeping the promises that 
we have made to America.
  Mr. Speaker, it has been two decades since America has had this kind 
of transportation success. We did that together. Open up the newspaper 
and see the divides and see the failures, but know that this is a 
success that we had together.
  Mr. Speaker, I had water resources on America's to-do list. It had 
been 6 years since we had passed water resources legislation in this 
body, not in 2008 when Republicans controlled the White House, not in 
2009 when Democrats controlled everything, not in 2010 when Democrats 
controlled everything, and not in '11 or '12 or '13, but we have come 
together, and we have gotten that done. It is not easy. It is hard. It 
doesn't happen quickly. It happens slowly and deliberatively. It has 
been 6 years since we have been able to succeed together in passing 
what we call the WRRDA bill, Mr. Speaker. Now it is done. Now it is the 
law of the land.
  I want to make that clear, Mr. Speaker. I am not talking about bills 
today that the House has passed and are going nowhere. I am not talking 
about bills today that the House has passed and the Senate has passed 
but that are going nowhere. I am talking about bills today on which the 
House has worked entirely through the process, on which the Senate has 
worked entirely through the process, and those which the President of 
the United States has signed into law--bills that are laws and are 
making differences for America's families.
  This WRRDA bill, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, is 
the most comprehensive policy reform bill, again, in two decades, Mr. 
Speaker. It accelerates project delivery because, again, there is no 
more urgent need--as we see in Flint, Michigan--than having a stable 
and safe water infrastructure.
  Mr. Speaker, it goes into $18 billion worth of projects--projects 
that have been on the books for years but have failed, projects that 
folks have not committed the time and resources to complete--and it 
pulls those back in. It cancels all of those projects, saves that 
money, and rededicates it to projects that the American people can 
benefit from; and it strengthens the oversight and accountability 
because these are American taxpayer dollars we are talking about here. 
When they go out the door to localities back home, folks deserve to 
know they are being used responsibly. It is an increase in oversight 
and accountability. Again, it has been more than two decades since we 
have seen something of this kind. We got it done together--Republicans, 
Democrats, House, Senate, and White House.
  Mr. Speaker, tax relief is on the list for American families, and tax 
relief was delivered by this body--this Congress--and this White House. 
Mr. Speaker, what Republicans failed to be able to do--and I am not 
knocking them. It was a difficult environment. I am a hardcore 
Republican from the great State of Georgia, but when George Bush was in 
the White House and when Republicans were running the House and when 
Republicans were running the Senate, they provided tax relief, but they 
couldn't make it permanent. They didn't have the votes to make it 
permanent, so it languished out there--families uncertain about what 
the tax future would hold, businesses uncertain about what the tax 
future would hold. Together, in this body, with the President's 
signature, we provided 99 percent of Americans the certainty that even 
George Bush and a Republican House and Senate could not do.
  Divided government is hard, Mr. Speaker. Divided government is hard. 
The differences that we have on policy are dramatic, but there is still 
more that unites us as a Nation than divides us as a Nation. That is 
true in this Chamber as well, so we came together on tax policy and did 
that. Taxes were going to go up, Mr. Speaker. In this tough economy, 
taxes were going to go up on almost every family in the land. We 
prevented that income tax increase from hitting 99 percent of all 
Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to prevent the tax increase on 100 percent of 
Americans, but I couldn't get the votes to get that done, and I know 
you would have joined me in that. Sometimes you have a choice between 
can you get something done or will you get nothing done. Mr. Speaker, I 
promise you, if you are working hard in trying to provide for your 
family back home, you do not care who is to blame for a problem; you 
just want the problem fixed. We could have stood around this Chamber 
and we could have argued amongst ourselves about whether the perfect is 
the enemy of the good. We did not. We struggled to find agreement, and 
we found that agreement, and we made a difference for 99 percent of 
Americans in the struggling economy to date. That counts, Mr. Speaker.
  We talk about the to-do list as to the Medicare trust fund. Mr. 
Speaker, back in the late 1990s, when Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of 
the House and when Bill Clinton was the President, they made an effort 
to protect the Medicare trust fund from going bankrupt. This is 
something that has been on the minds of Americans all the way back to 
1965. The Medicare trust fund has never been properly funded. 
Healthcare costs have always had a rate of inflation that has been 
higher than that of other services, and we have struggled with how to 
make the math work. They came up with a plan back in 1997 to fix it. 
The plan didn't work, and it was going to cause a dramatic reduction in 
what doctors were reimbursed and a dramatic reduction in the benefits 
that were available to senior citizens.
  Mr. Speaker, so what happened in 2003, when it came time for those 
first painful cuts to go into place, the first effort to protect the 
Medicare trust fund?
  Congress kicked the can down the road. They delayed those cuts from 
going into place for 1 year.
  What happened the next year?
  They delayed it for a year again. The next year, they delayed it 
again. Then the next year, again and again and again and again--17 
times, Mr. Speaker. We had come together and passed legislation that 
was designed to protect the Medicare trust fund, and when it came time 
to actually do the heavy lifting, we kicked that can down the road, all 
the while having the trust fund becoming more and more and more 
unstable. We all knew there was a problem, but nobody wanted to take 
the responsibility of fixing it.
  Mr. Speaker, in this divided Congress, in this divided government, in 
this Washington that supposedly can't come together to fix American 
problems, we passed H.R. 2. It was the first bill out of the gate. 
Well, it was the second bill out of the gate, but it came right out in 
front. H.R. 2 was the first Medicare reform proposal to be signed into 
law in more than 10 years, and it solved a problem that had been 
created almost 20 years ago but that no Congress before or no President 
before had had the courage to permanently fix.
  Mr. Speaker, we talk about Medicare as one of the third rails of 
politics--don't touch that rail, or else you will be defeated. This 
body is not about who wins and who gets defeated. This body is about 
who can make a difference. We needed to make a difference for folks who 
were relying on Medicare. There were 392 House Members and 92 Senators 
who supported this bill. We hadn't been able to fix it for almost 20 
years. We hadn't been able to fix it, so the can had been kicked down 
the road 17 times.

[[Page 5453]]

  We came together, grappled with it, struggled with it, but ultimately 
came up with a proposal that almost all of the House and almost all of 
the Senate could support. They called it the sustainable growth rate, 
the SGR, that eliminated this failing piece of Medicare policy, that 
bent the long-term cost curve of Medicare, extending the life of the 
trust fund. In fact, it cuts the actuarial deficit in Medicare by 
almost 10 percent.

                              {time}  1145

  This is heavy lifting, Mr. Speaker, that Congress has punted on and 
punted on and punted on. With the leadership we have here today, with 
the collaboration that we have here today, not only did we pass it, not 
only did the Senate pass it, but we were able to pass it into law.
  There are many parts of Medicare, Mr. Speaker. There is part A, part 
B, part C, part D. $2.4 trillion, Mr. Speaker, is the way we bent the 
cost curve on those various components of Medicare in order to protect 
and ensure Americans for another generation that Medicare would be 
there for them.
  Veterans: Mr. Speaker, again, you cannot open up the newspaper today 
without seeing the way that the system is failing our veterans. There 
is nothing that brings us together more in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, 
than standing up for those who have stood up for us.
  We did that in the Veteran Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, 
Mr. Speaker. It was the largest overhaul of veterans health care, 
again, in more than a decade.
  When Republicans ran the whole show, we couldn't get it done. When 
Democrats ran the whole show, they couldn't get it done. When we are 
divided, but focused, on crisis in this country, we have come together 
and we have gotten it done for the first time, Mr. Speaker.
  For the first time in the history of veterans health care, we have 
said: If the veterans healthcare system is failing you, but you, as a 
serviceman or -woman, did not fail us, we are going to give you a 
process to get outside of that veterans system. We are going to give 
you a chance to go see your own doctor. We are going to give you a 
chance to go see any specialist you need. We are going to give you a 
chance to get the care that we promised you, but that the bureaucratic 
healthcare system has failed to deliver.
  Mr. Speaker, in all of these many years of budget cutting that we 
have talked about--trying to clamp down on spending, trying to make 
sure that all taxpayer dollars are being accounted for--so many 
accounts are going down, but veterans spending is going up.
  Why? Because budgeting is about prioritizing. And when we come 
together not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans, we 
prioritize those who have served us.
  It is the biggest change in health care for veterans in over a 
decade, Mr. Speaker, and folks are finally able to get the health care 
that they need. That is not it. There is more.
  There is still a system in place that is failing veterans, Mr. 
Speaker. We couldn't come together on reforming the entire Veterans 
Administration. But we did come together on saying that: If you work at 
the Veterans Administration and you are failing our veterans, there is 
no place for you on the Federal payroll.
  You know how hard it is to get rid of failing Federal employees, Mr. 
Speaker. We came together in a bipartisan way to say: If you are in the 
upper echelons of the VA, we are asking more of you. If you are in 
charge of serving our veterans, we are asking more of you. If you fail, 
we are going to ask you to leave so we can get somebody else in there.
  We streamlined the firing process, Mr. Speaker, to get rid of 
ineffective employees as we had not done before in Federal employment.
  Mr. Speaker, let's talk budgets. You know ending budget deficits is 
one of America's priorities. You know getting out of the businesses of 
mortgaging our children's future is one of America's priorities.
  From 1966 to 2009, Mr. Speaker--and I chose that time because that 
was the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid, which are two of the 
largest spending programs on the ledger today. They are two that have 
ballooned much larger than their authors ever suggested that they 
would. This is when we got into some really difficult entitlement 
spending decisions.
  From 1966 to 2009, that 43-year period, the debt in this country went 
up by 55 percent relative to GDP. It is still these mandatory spending 
programs that are driving our debt, but over a 43-year period our debt 
went up 55 percent.
  Mr. Speaker, in the first 3 years of the Obama administration, our 
debt went up another 34. For 43 years, it had gone up 55 percent, way 
too much, but a gradual increase. In 3 years, it went up 35 percent. We 
went from going up about 1 percent a year to going up 10 percent a 
year, Mr. Speaker.
  Today, with this Congress, this House, this Senate, divided 
government, from 2012 to 2015, when we have been grappling with this 
issue together, when we have been looking for answers together, when no 
side had complete control, but we had to work together to find 
solutions, we have collapsed that increase back down to that 1 percent 
a year. There is so much more to do, but we just disagree.
  The President introduces a budget every year. That budget never 
balances, not this year, not next year, not 10 years from now, not 100 
years from now. The President has different investment priorities than 
I do.
  I serve on the Budget Committee. We do a budget every year. It always 
balances. So I have budgets that balance and budgets that never come to 
balance. Clearly, that is a big gap to bridge.
  We have begun to bridge it, Mr. Speaker, collapsing the dramatic 
increase in the debt to levels that are still too high, but don't 
threaten our security as years past have. But no one ever believed we 
would be able to come together to do that. No one ever believed we 
could work with the President to get that done, and, yet, we have.
  Mr. Speaker, a lot of that comes from the Budget Control Act. One of 
the best votes I have taken in this institution was the vote for the 
Budget Control Act. It was the largest reduction in Federal spending in 
the history of the republic. Hear that, Mr. Speaker.
  In divided government--in fact, there was a Republican House, 
Democratic Senate, Democratic President, dramatically divided 
government. Power of the filibuster in the Senate. Hard to get anything 
done. We came together because America needed us to, to reduce spending 
in the most dramatic way in the history of the republic. It is not 
because somebody had all the votes and they jammed it through, but 
because we worked together to find a policy that made sense.
  Mr. Speaker, people always think, when you talk about big budget and 
deficit reductions, that you are talking about some sort of phony 
Washington, D.C., math. You have seen the examples where you raise 
spending by $5 instead of $10 and then you call that a cut. We have all 
seen that math. Nonsense.
  When I talk about budgets, I am talking about real numbers. I am 
talking about money going out the door. I am talking, even though we 
have 10,000 men and women a day qualifying for Social Security and 
Medicare, 10,000 new applicants every day for Social Security and 
Medicare, working together, we reduced the total amount of money going 
out the door not just for 1 year, but for 2 years. That is not funny 
Washington, D.C., math, Mr. Speaker. Those are real numbers, real 
dollars, going out the door.
  We bent the curve together. Some of my colleagues might say we did 
too much. I would say we haven't done nearly enough, but we came 
together and we made a difference for deficits.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest differences we can make for deficits 
is putting folks back to work. It turns out you can't pay taxes if you 
don't have a job. You have to have money coming in the door in order to 
be part of the system. So we focused together on creating American 
jobs. We focused 

[[Page 5454]]

together on putting families back to work. Again, this 
is something that unites us. It does not divide us.
  We have done it in the spirit of trade, Mr. Speaker. We have done it 
in the spirit of manufacturing. We have passed legislation here that 
the President signed into law that is working today to make sure, if 
you work in a manufacturing industry in America, you are not 
disadvantaged relative to foreign competition.
  If we are trying to export the best products made in the world today, 
those manufactured by American hands, we are tearing down the trade 
barriers that are preventing those products from getting into the hands 
of customers who want them overseas. We have done that together.
  When it comes to tearing down those trade barriers, Mr. Speaker, 
America is already virtually a free trade zone. We always say we will 
play fair with other nations, but other nations don't always say that 
to us.
  So this Congress empowered the President to go out and do those 
negotiations, to tear down those barriers, to make sure that American 
working families always get a fair shake on the global scene. Mr. 
Speaker, we haven't seen that happen in a decade.
  A Republican Congress came together to work with a Democratic 
President to say we are all in this boat together. Putting families 
back to work is not a Republican priority alone, though it is a 
Republican priority. It is not a Democratic priority alone, though it 
is a Democratic priority. It is an American priority. That is why 
America's House and America's Congress and America's President work on 
it together.
  Mr. Speaker, that takes me back to where I started. I will put 
America's to-do list up here on the board. I talked about the dreary 
weather outside and kind of the dreary spirit that I feel sometimes 
when I talk to folks about how Congress is operating and how Congress 
and the President are working together and how America, in the spirit 
of self-governance, is succeeding or failing at addressing America's 
priorities.
  Mr. Speaker, we did the first roads and bridges bill, $305 billion, 
in more than two decades. It is more long-term certainty than America 
had seen in 20 years because it was the right thing to do.
  We updated the national water policy, Mr. Speaker. We have done 
more--it was the most substantial, positive improvement to delivering 
clean water to American citizens than we have seen in more than a 
decade. We did that together.
  Tax relief: Mr. Speaker, working together, we prevented taxes from 
going up on 99 percent of American families. Working together, we did 
things that George Bush and a Republican Congress couldn't do because 
they didn't have the votes 15 years ago. We did that together because 
it was the right thing to do in this tough economy.
  Mr. Speaker, we came together on Medicare reform. There were 17 
short-term extensions, kicking the can down the road, Congress and the 
President afraid to take a stand and solve a problem. We came together 
and did that, Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, President 
Obama and America's Congress.
  Improving veterans health care: Mr. Speaker, for the first time in 
American history, if the veterans healthcare system is failing you, we 
give you an exit ramp to go and see your physician, your specialist, 
the best that America has to offer, because, as a serviceman or -woman, 
we have made promises to you and, in a bipartisan, bicameral way, we 
are committed to keeping those promises. It is the biggest reforms in 
more than 10 years.
  Mr. Speaker, we have cut spending. We have cut spending not with 
phony Washington, D.C., math, but with real dollars going out the door. 
The biggest deficit-reduction package in American history we did 
together, a divided government, divided Congress. But it is the right 
thing to do for the American people, and that is what this Congress is 
about.
  Mr. Speaker, that is just the beginning of the to-do list. I don't 
want to feel like I am tooting the horn of bipartisanship in this 
institution. I didn't even have education reform on that list. I didn't 
have education reform on that list. But we have done it.
  We have come together in a bipartisan way, bicameral, with the White 
House, signed into law the biggest evolution of education policy that 
we have seen in 10 years. Again, it has been more than a decade since 
we have come together to make sure that principals, teachers, and 
parents have more control over the education of children in our 
communities.
  We repealed 49 different programs, Mr. Speaker. I am not saying 
hardcore conservative Republicans repealed them. I am not saying 
liberal Democrats repealed them. I am saying together we scoured the 
entire Federal education landscape looking for ways to do better for 
our families back home.
  When we rolled up our sleeves, when we took off the Republican and 
Democratic labels, when we all sat down as parents and grandparents and 
community leaders about how to do better for our children, we found 49 
programs, all of which had a constituency out there, all of which had 
somebody making a buck off of them, but they were programs that were 
failing our children and we ended them. We ended them together because 
it was the right thing to do. It is the biggest education reforms, Mr. 
Speaker, again, in more than a decade.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't have the time to go through the difference that 
we are making together. From our veterans, H.R. 91, H.R. 203, H.R. 313, 
H.R. 2499, on and on and on, not bills that we have passed here in the 
House, though we have, but bills we have passed in the House, bills 
that have been passed in the Senate, bills that the House and Senate 
have come together on, bills that have been sent to the President's 
desk, and bills that the President has signed into law, making a 
difference.

                              {time}  1200

  Mr. Speaker, reducing the size and scope of government. H.R. 1626, 
H.R. 2029, H.R. 2048, and the list goes on and on and on. Doing things 
together for our bosses back home because they are going to make a 
difference.
  Mr. Speaker, creating jobs and expanding economic opportunity. Again, 
H.R. 2029, H.R. 22, H.R. 1000, S. 535. Mr. Speaker, yes, there are even 
some bills that originated in the Senate that are delivering for the 
American people. I am proud to say most of them start with H.R., but 
there are even a few Senate bills in there. Good ideas from the other 
body that we took on, that we made better, that we sent to the 
President's desk, that he signed.
  Defending America's freedom and security, patient-centered healthcare 
solutions. Mr. Speaker, everybody talks about the President's 
healthcare bill. You are either for it or you are against it. It is a 
divisive issue. Nobody talks about the fact that there are parts of the 
President's healthcare bill that I believe are broken from the hard 
core right and that my friends on the left believe are broken, too. And 
so we have come together not once, not twice, not three times, not five 
times, but almost a dozen times to repeal parts of the President's 
healthcare bill that we all agreed were not serving the American 
people.
  Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, it is not about who can be a good 
Republican or who can be a good Democrat. It is about who can be a good 
public servant, and that is never going to make the front page of the 
newspaper. It is never going to be a part of this Presidential election 
cycle. It is never going to be in a commercial on TV talking about how 
successful we are when the cameras go off, when the labels come off, 
and when we are focused on what we all came here to do, and that is to 
make a difference.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going to keep going on through this election 
cycle. There is going to be more division, there is going to be more 
strife, and there is going to be more finding out who is to blame and 
whose fault it is.
  I have gotten to know the men and women in this Chamber, Mr. Speaker. 
I confess, there were some of them that I wanted to dislike from the 
get-go. Oh, I wanted to dislike them. I had seen 

[[Page 5455]]

them on TV, and I knew 
they didn't have any merit, didn't have any business being here, didn't 
have any desire to serve the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, my confession here today is I was wrong. I was wrong. 
There are colleagues on the other side of the aisle with whom I 
disagree with about virtually everything, but for that one small issue 
on which we find some common ground, they will roll up their sleeves 
and they will bleed with me and sweat with me until we find a way to 
make a difference for families back home in their district and mine.
  Mr. Speaker, there are folks on the other side who come down here on 
this floor and rail and rail and rail, and it is every partisan tagline 
that you could imagine, but when the camera goes off, they roll up 
their sleeves and they get to work on making a difference for their 
district and for mine.
  Mr. Speaker, my voice is not loud enough to drown out all the 
division that is in a Presidential election campaign. Mr. Speaker, my 
voice is not loud enough to drown out all the commercials going on all 
over the country and all the headlines all over the country that talk 
about how Washington is a big cesspool, and it is broken, and we should 
just give up on self-governance altogether, but not me. My voice may 
not be loud enough, but it will be tireless.
  I believe in self-governance. I believe that my district has 
priorities that are going to be different from priorities in another 
district, and that is okay. I believe that division sometimes brings 
out the best of ideas, and that is okay. I believe that my colleagues 
believe that there is no challenge too big for America to confront when 
Americans confront it together.
  I do not know what November holds, but I know this: We have the best 
system of governance on the planet. It is not easy. It is not clean. It 
is not simple. But when you put the American people in charge, it is 
effective.
  Mr. Speaker, you are not going to sell good newspapers talking about 
the difference that we make together in self-governance, but we are 
going to make that difference together. Folks here didn't come for the 
headlines. They came to do the things that mattered, and I am proud to 
work with folks on both sides of the aisle to get that done.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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