[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1854-1857]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            CHALLENGES AHEAD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. O'Rourke) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, our country and the community 
that I have the honor of representing, El Paso, Texas, lost one of our 
best: Dr. Joseph E. Torres, who was 93 years old at the time of his 
death, still practicing dentistry in the community of El Paso, and 
somebody who left a terrific legacy for his family, for our community, 
for this country, and for all posterity.
  Dr. Torres served in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945. He 
first served as an infantryman, and then later as a bombardier and a 
navigator for the B-17 aircraft.
  Dr. Torres flew 13 bombing missions over Germany, one of the most 
difficult missions to be assigned to anybody, over the course of World 
War II. He later joined and served as a lieutenant in the Army Air 
Corps Reserve from 1945 to 1947. He later joined the Air Force Dental 
Reserve, where he reached the rank of colonel.
  As I said, he was a practicing dentist in El Paso, Texas. After his 
time in uniform, he continued to serve his community and he continued 
to serve his El Pasoans, his fellow Texans, and his fellow Americans. 
He never stopped being an advocate for servicemembers, veterans, and 
this country.
  So here today we mourn his loss.
  Preceding him in death from that Greatest Generation, not too long 
ago, in August 2016, was Maynard L. Beamesderfer, known as ``Beamy'' to 
his friends and his fans. He was one of the original 350 Pathfinders, 
who were the first combat paratroopers to jump into Normandy, France, 
before the D-day invasion in 1944. He was a member of the 501st 
Parachute Infantry Regiment and 101st Airborne Division. Mr. 
Beamesderfer died at the age of 92.
  The third gentleman that I want to introduce to you and who I would 
like to talk about today and whose story I would like to share is 
someone I greatly admire and who I have had the privilege of meeting 
several times and being able to introduce my oldest son Ulysses to. 
That is Retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Chisolm, ``Bob,'' who is a 
founding member of the 82nd Airborne Division Association in El Paso. 
He is someone who is very much still with us, full of vigor, strength, 
energy, and an inspiration at a time that we so badly need him.
  He is also the rarest of Americans. He is a combat veteran of World 
War II, he is a combat veteran of Korea, and he is a combat veteran of 
Vietnam. In fact, he is one of only 325 combat veterans in the history 
of the United States military authorized to wear the Triple Combat 
Infantryman Badge for combat service in three separate wars.
  During World War II, he earned the Legion of Merit Award, which can 
only be obtained after receiving direct approval from the President of 
the United States. He was also recognized by the French Government more 
recently in 2012, at which time a French general awarded him the French 
Legion of Honor Award and the status of Knighthood.
  We are grateful for the service of these three amazing Americans, 
these three outstanding El Pasoans, these three great examples to each 
and every one of us of who are we when we are at our best and what we 
are willing to do to serve this country and the cause of freedom and 
the best interests of humanity.
  It is these three men and others who join them in the Greatest 
Generation, the men and women throughout this country who endured and 
suffered, survived, and began to thrive through the Great Depression. 
Following that, they proudly and gladly served their country in World 
War II in a world away, whether it was in North Africa, Italy, Europe, 
or the Asia Pacific.
  These were men and women who fought for not just this country, but 
who fought for and won a world order that has more or less sustained us 
for the last 75 years; a world order that was won, fought for, and 
sustained

[[Page 1855]]

through enormous treasure, blood, and sacrifice of this country, 
sustained, fought for, and won by men like Bob Chisolm, ``Beamy'' 
Beamesderfer, and Dr. Torres.
  I bring them up today so, one, we can pay honor and tribute to them; 
and, two, so that we can remember what is at stake today, in 2017, 
seemingly a world away from when Dr. Torres first served in the Army 
Air Corps in 1942. It is a world where the United States is the sole 
superpower, where we guarantee the lanes of trade, the connections 
between countries, the viability of an entire continent in Europe. The 
benefits from the treasure and the blood and the sacrifice and our 
sustainment of these policies over the last 70 to 75 years has accrued 
primarily to the United States, but also to our allies and also, I 
would argue, to the rest of the world.
  We have largely seen in that time a time of peace, a time where we 
avoided major world wars, where we peacefully sustained and outlasted 
the Soviet Union and ushered in a new era of peace in Eastern Europe.
  When we think about the challenges that we face today, those 
countries who do not see a place in this world order that we won and 
have sustained--countries like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, each 
of whom, in their own way, pose a threat not just to the United States, 
not just to their neighbors in their respective regions, but to the 
world and the order that we have bought at such a dear cost.
  When we think about what is going on today, it is critically 
important that we move forward very carefully and mindful of what it 
took to bring this world order about and what could happen if this 
world order collapses.
  As General David Petraeus told us last week in a House Armed Services 
Committee meeting, this world order did not will itself into existence. 
It did not sustain itself. It did not win itself. All of that was done 
by Americans, for Americans, for our allies, for our interests, and our 
values around the world. It is important that we be mindful of that 
when all of that is at stake and when it is under threat unlike any 
time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  As we begin a new Congress with a new administration, we have several 
choices before us. We can shore up that world order and the alliances 
and relationships that underpin them. An example is the North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization, or NATO, our partnership with 28 European 
countries that has effectively kept the peace on that continent for 
more than 70 years. Or we can refer to that arrangement and that treaty 
as obsolete and we can ask the Europeans to take care of their own 
business without assistance or alliance from the United States.
  Perhaps that is in the best interest of this country. Perhaps that 
reduces the burden on the United States taxpayer. Perhaps that reduces 
the burden on the servicemembers now deployed in Europe, reassuring 
that continent.
  Perhaps it is also better for Russia as they continue to probe the 
weaknesses in the Western alliance; as they move into Ukraine and seize 
Crimea or are active in the eastern part of that country; as they 
interfere in elections throughout the Western world, most notably our 
own in 2016, but not limited solely to the United States, and where we 
fear they may be active again in interfering in other elections in the 
free world.

                              {time}  2015

  Perhaps this is good for Russia to think of NATO as obsolete or to 
withdraw our commitment because our allies are not ponying up their 
fair share of the burden, and I think that is a real concern. Maybe 
that is good for us. Maybe that is good for Europe. It is certainly 
going to be good for Russia. The consequence for that, my colleagues, 
may very well be that, while we might save some in what we are spending 
in treasure and sacrifice and service in Europe today, we may be called 
back again, as we were in the World War I and afterwards in World War 
II to defend that continent from tyranny at extraordinary costs to our 
treasury, to the lives of those who serve, to the lives that are lost, 
to the lives that are changed forever.
  When we look at another part of the world in the South China Sea and 
to our allies there like Japan, the Philippines, increasingly, Vietnam, 
perhaps it is better that we allow China to decide what is best for 
that region and for those countries at the expense of those who, today, 
are our allies. Certainly, it would save the taxpayer the resources 
that we expend today to prop up and support our allies, to ensure their 
defense, and to ensure our interests. Perhaps it would be good for 
those countries in that region, including Taiwan. It would certainly be 
good for China, a growing competitor not just in the South China Sea, 
not just in Asia, but, increasingly, around the world.
  So we have a choice there to make as well: Do we retrench, withdraw, 
close ourselves off from the rest of the world and our commitments and 
our obligations? Again, the benefit of which has largely accrued to us, 
as it has to our allies and much of the rest of the world. Or do we fix 
what is not working now; sustain, perhaps even grow, that commitment; 
meet the threats; and address the fears that that part of the world 
has? It comes at some cost, and it is not a trivial one.
  But I would argue that we cannot foresee the future where the United 
States is not involved in the South China Sea, in east Asia, with our 
allies in that region. We don't know for sure what will happen, but we 
know that power abhors a vacuum. We know that where the United States 
is not, other world powers will be; and they certainly don't have the 
interests of our citizens, our values, and our way of life at heart.
  When it comes to the Middle East and the series of serious challenges 
that we face there from Iraq and Syria to north Africa in Libya, to our 
difficult relationship with Saudi Arabia, who is an ally and at the 
same time the source of so much that threatens that region and, 
ultimately, the United States, certainly, in the short term, it would 
be cheaper to withdraw our commitments and our support, our resources 
and our servicemembers, who are there at such great cost, again, to 
this country and to themselves and to their families, who bear the 
burden of the fight and sustain those injuries when they are incurred 
and mourn the losses of those servicemembers who never make it back.
  It is easy to argue, in the short term, that that could be good for 
the United States. But it is hard to argue, in the long term, that, 
without our leadership, without some level of involvement, including 
military involvement, but especially diplomatic and political 
engagement with the governments and the people and the interests in the 
Middle East, it is hard to argue that, without that, our interests, our 
goals, our values will be respected, accepted, honored, and seen 
through. What is much more likely is that we will find ourselves there 
again, responding to a great crisis at greater expense of life and 
treasure to this country.
  And that story repeats throughout the world. Whatever country, 
whatever region, whatever hemisphere, whatever continent, when the 
United States is not there, neither are our interests, neither are we 
able to benefit, and neither is the world able to depend on some level 
of peace, security, and stability.
  I urge this House, our new President, those whom we represent to 
think about what is at stake right now around the world, to understand 
how this international order was brought about, how it was fought for 
and won and sustained, and how tragic it would be, after 75 years, 
after the noble sacrifice of so many of the Greatest Generation and of 
the generations that followed who served in Korea, who served in 
Vietnam, who served in the first Gulf War, who are serving today in our 
wars that followed the attacks of 9/11, how terrible would it be for us 
to lose what we have fought so hard to gain in the span of one 
administration?
  It does not have to be that way. I think working together, across 
party lines, with this administration, with Congress, both Houses, with 
the American people, certainly supporting our servicemembers and 
honoring the sacrifices of our veterans, I think together

[[Page 1856]]

we can meet this challenge, just as we have met serious challenges in 
the past. But we are going to need to correct our course, and we will 
need to do so immediately.
  No longer can we mock allies, try to humiliate our neighbor to the 
south, the country of Mexico.
  No longer can we call into question an alliance that has withstood 
the test of time and has ensured the peace of this country and the 
continent of Europe: the NATO alliance.
  No longer can we threaten to withdraw from international obligations, 
whether they are at the U.N., whether they are bilateral trade 
negotiations or multilateral trade agreements.
  No longer can we think that the United States can serve as a bunker 
against the rest of the world. It is too late for that. It was too late 
for that in World War II when the three brave gentlemen that I began my 
speech with decided to serve this country and to purchase the freedom 
and the world order that so many take for granted today.
  I think it is incumbent upon us to try to offer an alternative to the 
course that we are currently on, an alternative that I would say starts 
here at home and with those countries that border ours. It starts with 
acknowledging that Mexico, for example, is far more an opportunity than 
it is a threat to the United States, that today we do hundreds of 
billions of dollars of trade with Mexico, trade that is unique in its 
character such that, when we export to Mexico, certainly we win. Those 
are U.S. jobs, U.S. products being exported to the country of Mexico, 
bought by Mexican consumers. The proceeds flow back to the U.S. worker 
and to the owners of those businesses and companies.
  But when we import from Mexico, it is important to remember, 40 
percent of the value of our imports from that country were generated 
here in the United States. Those same factory floor jobs in Michigan, 
in Indiana, in Ohio, in Tennessee, in Texas produce products that are 
exported to Mexico for final assembly and then brought back into the 
United States.
  Forty percent of the value of our imports from Mexico are U.S. 
content. When we look at China, it is 4 percent. When we export to 
Mexico, we win. When we import from Mexico, we win. We win jobs, 6 
million American jobs that, today, are dependent on U.S.-Mexico trade.
  Nearly half a million of those are in the State of Texas alone, each 
one of them jeopardized by the course that this country has taken under 
this new administration, each one of those potentially lost if we 
cannot redevelop a positive relationship with the country of Mexico, 
certainly one in which our interests are most important to the United 
States, where the U.S. worker is preeminent, but where, nonetheless, we 
understand the larger picture and the longer game, that our future--the 
United States and Mexico--is a shared future, that the way we 
manufacture today is done together, both countries producing products 
that are made in North America along with Canada. That is what is going 
on here today, that we are linked in a way that cannot be unlinked 
without causing serious trauma, job loss, economic downturns, and 
insecurity for the United States.
  In the last 30 years, as we have grown closer to Mexico and had a 
stronger economic relationship with that country that results in the 
hundreds of billions of dollars of trade that cross our ports of entry 
every year, at the same time, we have grown a stronger, closer security 
relationship such that the most notorious criminal mastermind in the 
history of Mexico, Joaquin Guzman, El Chapo, was recently extradited to 
the United States despite considerations of Mexican sovereignty. 
Despite, perhaps, the loss of pride that is entailed in sending that 
country's criminal who is responsible for countless deaths, for drug 
production, drug transit, and the drugs that cross into the United 
States and are consumed in Mexico and other parts of the world, Mexico 
did that precisely because of the strong security relationship that has 
grown between these two countries.
  So should we pursue a path of humiliation for our southern neighbor? 
Should we build a 2,000-mile wall in a hopeless effort to seal that 
country off from ours? Should we propose imposing a 20 percent tax on 
all goods coming in from Mexico which, again, remember, will not just 
hurt the Mexican worker, but will hurt the U.S. worker as well?
  Should we do all that, not only will we hurt ourselves economically, 
we will deeply damage the security bonds that exist today between those 
two countries, security bonds that keep us safe, that keep us secure, 
that help explain why today, despite the headlines, despite the 
campaign rhetoric, the facts show that the U.S.-Mexico border has never 
been more secure. It has never been more safe. It has never posed less 
of an immediate risk or hazard to Americans.
  It has a lot to do with the brave men and women in the United States 
Border Patrol, those who also serve in police departments like ours in 
El Paso, in sheriff's departments like those under the command of 
Sheriff Richard Wiles in El Paso County. It has a lot to do with the 
immigrant populations who live in the communities along the U.S.-Mexico 
border who are such a part of our safety because they are striving to 
get ahead, to keep out of trouble, to learn, to study, to do better, to 
contribute to, participate in, and reap the benefits of the American 
Dream.
  But we are also safe because the country of Mexico has made a 
commitment to help keep us safe. When we are concerned about 
transnational criminal organizations coming from the three most 
dangerous countries in the world today--El Salvador, Guatemala, 
Honduras--we have a partner in Mexico, who checks their advance at 
Mexico's southern border, who ensures, when we have the greatest 
humanitarian crisis this hemisphere has ever seen because of the 
brutality and violence that we see in those northern triangle countries 
in Central America, that Mexico is our partner in helping to provide 
shelter, sustenance, and aid to those frightened young children leaving 
the northern triangle.
  Some still make their way to the United States and present 
themselves, not trying to evade detection, but present themselves to 
Border Patrol agents and Customs officers at our ports of entry. No 
wall could ever keep them out.
  But as many as are coming from Central America today, we have record 
low levels of northbound migration and asylum-seeking attempts crossing 
the U.S.-Mexico border. The number last year was somewhere around 
400,000 northbound apprehensions. The number 16 years ago was 1.6 
million northbound apprehensions.
  For all the reasons that I gave, and one of them an important one--
and we must keep that in mind--is Mexico: our relationship, our 
partnership, part of that world order that we have fought for, worked 
so hard for, sustained at such great cost. These are the dividends that 
world order is producing for the United States today in jobs, in 
economic growth, in the security and safety of our communities and the 
people we represent.

                              {time}  2030

  El Paso, Texas, in fact, is the safest city in the United States 
today. It was the safest city last year, it was the safest city the 
year before that, and it has been among the safest cities in America 
for the last 15 years. It is not an outlier, and it is not an anomaly. 
The second safest city is San Diego, California, another large U.S. 
border city, conjoined with its sister city of Tijuana.
  So when we upend this world order, when we upend our relationships, 
when we bully, humiliate, and threaten the countries with whom we have 
been allied and partnered for so many years now, not only will they 
suffer, which I can only assume is the intent of the President, but so 
will we. We also do deep disservice and dishonor to those who have 
fought so hard, worked so long, and done so much to build up something 
today that we are the lucky heirs to.
  Furthermore, our leadership position in the world is not sustained on 
blood and treasure and diplomacy alone. It is the values that we live 
out each and

[[Page 1857]]

every day in our homes, in our communities, and, yes, here in our 
government, in the United States Congress. Values that include taking 
in the world's refugees.
  After screening, ensuring the security and safety of the communities 
into which they will come, which we have always done--and no one is 
vetted or screened more thoroughly than a refugee from another country 
trying to enter the United States--most will not be able to make it, 
even under previous administrations. But after that screening has taken 
place, when they come to this country, those refugees, those asylum 
seekers, and those immigrants are the ones who have helped to build 
this success story, this exceptional country, this indispensable 
Nation, the United States.
  And when we turn off the lamp of liberty, when we no longer shine as 
a beacon to the refugees, the aspirational people around the world who 
are looking for a better life, who were called to our shores by our 
values and what we represent around the world, and what we have always 
fought for and proved in actions beyond our words, when that lamp goes 
out, when we begin religious tests for the kinds of immigrants who we 
will bring into this country, when we do things that are immediately 
politically popular but are not in the best traditions of this country, 
we lose that place of prominence around the world, not just to the 
countries and the decisionmakers within those countries--the kings and 
queens and presidents and prime ministers--we lose that place of 
prominence with the people around the world who have always looked to 
the United States for example and for leadership.
  And so I ask my colleagues to join me in ensuring that, as troubling 
as this course has been in the first few weeks of this administration, 
we remember that we still have time to correct it and that we have an 
obligation to offer an alternative, one that has served this country so 
well for so long and is a source of so much of our strength, our 
exceptionalism, and our greatness. I call on my colleagues to move 
beyond Presidential fiat, beyond executive order, beyond the whims of a 
new administration, and to set in law our values and our priorities.
  Ultimately, we must be able to reform our system of immigration laws. 
But short of that, we must at least be able to honor the ones who are 
already on the books. We have to do more to ensure that those who need 
us most in the world can find a home in this country, not solely for 
their benefit. That is the moral imperative. That is the argument that 
can persuade us in our hearts, but also because the value and the 
benefit will accrue to this country economically in our security, in 
our vibrancy, and in ensuring that the next generation is going to be 
the leaders, whether it comes to the businesses that are created, the 
books and the art that are created, the leadership that is needed, and 
the service that we demand in uniform throughout the world.
  Certainly that comes from native born U.S. citizens, but it also, as 
we know when we think about the history of this country, that comes 
from those who came to our shores. Or, like most of the Western 
Hemisphere, whether your family came from Mexico or El Salvador or 
Argentina, there is a good chance that your Ellis Island was El Paso, 
Texas, that your family first set foot on U.S. soil in the community 
that I have the honor to represent today. Whether it was in Segundo 
Barria, or the Chihuahuita neighborhood, or the Chamizal district, El 
Paso has been that first welcoming community to millions who have 
answered the promise, the potential, the opportunity, and the beacon of 
hope that we have provided for the world.
  It is no accident, and it is totally connected, that El Paso's safety 
is directly proportional to our connection to the rest of the world, to 
Mexico, to these people who so many of our political leaders want to 
sow fear and anxiety and misapprehension about. They want to vilify 
these people, call them rapists and thugs and criminals, when the facts 
bear out that they are the very reason that we are so secure and so 
safe.
  So imagine in the Ellis Island of the Western Hemisphere--El Paso, 
Texas--building a wall that would forever separate and divide us from 
the rest of the hemisphere, from the place where we meet the rest of 
the world. That, too, will compromise our leadership position in the 
world. That, too, will dishonor the noble sacrifice that we have seen 
from countless servicemembers from those who pursue U.S. policy around 
the world, and to those who are now serving in more than 140 countries 
around the globe.
  I think about another country and another wall at another time that 
proved American exceptionalism when the Soviets constructed the Berlin 
Wall to keep East Germans from being able to flee to the West, those 
East Germans who, in some way, were responding to the hope that I am 
talking about that we have so long represented around the world. It was 
the United States that overcame that wall. It was people like General 
James H. Polk who ensured that the people of East Berlin had hope, that 
the people of West Berlin had hope, that we made every effort to 
fulfill our commitments, not just to Americans on American soil, but to 
American values wherever they may be represented around the world. 
While other governments were building walls, the United States was 
doing the right thing.
  And it was a President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who 
challenged the Soviet empire to tear down this wall. How far have we 
come that today, in 2017, in the living lifetime of those who served 
with President Reagan, who voted for President Reagan, who lived in the 
America that President Reagan was a President of, that we are 
contemplating building a wall that would keep people out, that would 
separate people who have a common future, a common history? And in 
places like El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, 3 million people who form the 
largest binational community in the world, two people who have a common 
identity, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be anxious about, nothing 
to be scared of. We, the United States, are at our best when we are 
strong, when we are confident, when we are bold. We are at our worst 
when we are anxious, when we are afraid, when we are scared.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that we not make policy out of fear, that we not 
stoke anxiety, that we not lose the best, strongest traditions of who 
we are as Americans, but, instead, follow those traditions. And when we 
do, we will be able to change the course that this country is now on. 
We will be able to help this President to do the right thing, the right 
thing for this country, in this country more importantly, but to do the 
right thing for this country when it means standing up for our values, 
our interests, our allies around the world.
  Mr. Speaker, for many in this country and for many around the world, 
these are some of the darkest days in recent memory. But I have hope 
because we have had far darker days in this country before. And the 
institutions, such as the one that we are in today, and the American 
people whose work we do at whose pleasure we serve, who we represent in 
this Chamber, are a remarkable, resilient people. And they will help to 
bring this body, this administration, this government, and this country 
to its senses. And when we get there, I am confident that we are going 
to do the right thing, I am confident that we are going to honor the 
best traditions of this country, we are going to honor the brave men 
and women who have served, who helped to build what we have today, 
which so many people take for granted. Mr. Speaker, I am confident that 
working together, Republican and Democrat, we are going to do what is 
best for the world and what is best for America.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________