[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6365-6368]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                OUR TIME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. FORTENBERRY. Mr. Speaker, before I begin my own remarks, I want 
to commend my colleagues for continuing to aggressively address the 
deep wound that so many people have experienced with this form of abuse 
in our military. Our military prides itself on its clear goal of 
protecting our Nation and doing their duty even to the point of self-
sacrifice. So to think that certain members of the military would abuse 
others in this manner is not only unconscionable, but demands that this 
body act. So I want to commend my colleagues for their leadership in 
this regard.
  Mr. Speaker, our Nation recently watched in horror as flight staff at 
a publicly traded airline, having failed to motivate volunteers with 
sufficient compensation, then called Chicago Aviation Police to 
forcibly remove one of the randomly selected passengers so they could 
seat their own employees instead. After the bloodied but unbowed victim 
was dragged from the flight, aircraft and airport personnel claimed 
they acted out of concern that they would lose their own jobs if they 
had not removed the passenger. The stated motive--that was later proven 
to be false--was that the flight was ``oversold.''
  Now, Mr. Speaker, bizarrely, the airline CEO initially defended these 
actions. The corporation's airline personnel could have offered more 
money to find volunteers, but they did not choose to use that option. 
As a result, this airline-specific issue mushroomed into something far 
larger as Americans unleashed long-buried resentment against distant 
corporate structures that too often treat them just as incidentals.
  Here is the problem, Mr. Speaker: in technocratic bureaucracy, one 
size fits all. Management and optimization replace the art of human 
interaction. When entities grow too large and too distant from the 
persons they are designed to serve, when technical procedures rule over 
prudential judgment, when process is improperly elevated to an 
unyielding standard, persons are not only treated like cattle by 
airlines, but individuals--in this age of information--sense that they 
no longer matter.
  When you treat people as abstractions, it is easier to push them 
around, like data points on a spreadsheet. The broken-nosed, busted-
teeth, and concussed passenger could only mutter the words: ``Just kill 
me, just kill me.''
  One man's last stand against Leviathan. What he experienced on that 
airplane struck such a visceral chord with me and so many others. 
Indignity has its limits--even beyond the limits of the Big Money 
corporate public affairs teams to manage.
  Mr. Speaker, last year, the United Kingdom voted to leave the 
European Union; and right now, similar debates are taking place across 
the continent most seismically perhaps in the upcoming French election.
  At its core, what is at issue?
  It is this: whether more and more power should be consolidated in 
massive and detached, centralized, and technocratic bureaucratic 
institutions.
  Many people are demanding decentralized alternatives that better 
harmonize the needs of particular persons in their particular places 
with the shared goals of security, immigration stabilization, 
environmental stewardship, and economic well-being. That is what the 
deeper debate is in Europe and about the European Union.
  At its core, Mr. Speaker, I think the issue is this: even more 
deeply, economic development without a soul robs us of our capacity to 
fully prosper. Regular people are wondering if they have a seat at the 
table anymore, and home-team advantage continues to seem to go to a 
triumvirate class of Big Business, Big Data, and Big Government--a type 
of transactional aristocracy disconnected from the deeper needs of 
persons. That is at the core of what is being debated here.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, indicting large corporate and governing structures 
is not merely the point I am trying to make. Certain types of 
development that come with larger-scale entities has been very positive 
as goods and services and ideas freely travel at speeds across the 
world that were unheard of just a few years ago.
  Worldwide poverty has declined significantly as underdeveloped 
nations use their comparative advantage on costs to lift themselves to 
a higher economic standing.
  Moreover, the creative disruption that accompanies technological 
innovation has yielded new powerful tools for communications, for 
medicines; and in commerce, it has helped create the sharing economy.
  However, a thriving marketplace needs to work for larger swaths of

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America, including Nebraska, where I live, which remain distant from 
power centers. For more and more Americans and their families, 
globalized supply-side elitism has delivered downward mobility, a 
higher cost of living, wage stagnation, and skyrocketing inequality.
  When you couple this with social fragmentation, this is a recipe for 
disaster, and profit-driven technocracy will not be our answer. It will 
not solve these challenges. Economics, Mr. Speaker, is more than math, 
is more than efficiency, and is more than management. It is the art of 
living.
  Now, regarding the airlines, after much embarrassment, they settled 
with the passenger and instituted important reforms. Maybe this belated 
gesture signals that we have a better ticket forward. However, unless a 
new vision emerges of the proper relationship of governing economic and 
political systems to the persons that they serve, we will likely 
continue to be told: Just stay in your consumerist seat--unless we 
deign, yet again, to violently rip you from it.


                             The Deep State

  Mr. FORTENBERRY. Now, Mr. Speaker, a short distance from here, right 
through these doors, underneath the dome of our Nation's Capitol, hang 
eight large paintings that represent the scenes from our Nation's 
beginnings. In one of these paintings, George Washington is depicted. 
He is resigning his commission before the Continental Congress. This 
painting occupies a pride of place in our Nation's Capitol because it 
shows a profound and historic shift in the understanding of power. 
General Washington won the Revolutionary War. He enjoyed the support of 
his Army, yet he was not tempted to use that power for his own 
glorification. Instead, he returned it to the people.

                              {time}  1900

  Power is a tricky thing. It can be absolutely corrupting or it can be 
used for great good. Exceptional persons throughout history have used 
power to contribute to civilization. For others, power is a weapon to 
kill and plunder and crush others.
  In our country, America, we embrace the noble way. In our 
Constitution, in its deepest sense, it really is about one thing: it is 
about the proper positioning of power, the proper control of power, and 
the proper transfer of power.
  Mr. Speaker, let's now fast-forward to a recent event where a 
prominent Washington political insider recently wrote that he prefers 
``the deep state.''
  Now, what is that?
  Although not widely known, the term ``deep state'' refers to a group 
of career employees of the military, intelligence services, and other 
agencies of the United States Government who have inordinate but often 
hidden power to influence policy and society.
  It is posited that the deep state is particularly successful when it 
comes to halting or slowing implementation of government edicts deemed 
threatening to prudent stability or its own existence. This deep state, 
though, turns sinister when it operates outside of transparency and 
oversight. This concealed, controlling force, unfettered, can create an 
entirely new antidemocratic branch of our government.
  However, I want to propose something, Mr. Speaker. This discussion 
about the deep state is bigger than the government itself. A broader 
understanding of the deep state requires insight into the network of 
institutions that attempt to manage society in multiple ways.
  Some in the media, for instance, academia, and corporations 
orchestrate self-reinforcing narratives of technocratic or expert 
superiority. Frankly, again, this is why so many people in our country 
feel forgotten and are suspicious of what might be called the 
government-corporate-cultural complex.
  The notion that elites supersede the decision of voters and their 
elected Representatives is contrary to our democratic tradition. It is 
also deeply offensive to the American understanding of the source of 
proper governance.
  On the other hand, maintaining some consistency for the sake of order 
has merit. Retaining career civil servants, for instance, with strong 
institutional knowledge and experience is necessary for the uniquely 
smooth and peaceful transition of power that we enjoy in this country.
  Those who have committed themselves to a career of government service 
and risen in the ranks, those in the media who have taken a long view 
of civic responsibility, those in business who have achieved outcomes 
and wish to share them for the betterment of society, ensuring the 
stability and proper functioning of our Nation's core operating systems 
during times of disruptive change, are the persons who make up another 
type of body in our culture who are taking responsibility for the 
systems that we enjoy.
  The point is any analysis of the deep state is complex. A deep state 
that is mysterious and enigmatic, unidentified, that effectively 
triumphs over the will of the people, marginalizes our voices. At the 
same time, political transitions without the backup of those who 
maintain a continuity of service can both be volatile and 
destabilizing. There lies the tension.
  President Eisenhower warned us of the military-industrial complex. 
Perhaps the challenge of today's government-corporate-cultural complex 
is broader: a self-affirming, closed society that says there is only 
one way--our way--and you have to follow. Just plug into the 
technocracy and know your place.
  Mr. Speaker, it could easily be said that George Washington was an 
elite of his day. Nevertheless, Americans celebrate him along with 
other great leaders because they attained their status through selfless 
service to our country and its founding ideals to a genuine civic 
state.
  Mr. Speaker, on my desk there is a pile of letters. At one point, it 
approached about a foot high. It is a little smaller now, as I am 
digging out. I have to be honest. I am behind because I take the time 
to review the content of each letter that my constituents send me.
  Lately, the mail has tripled, perhaps quadrupled in size due to, 
frankly, the present philosophical divide that is all over our country 
and manifested in this body in the breakneck pace of governmental 
action and the important questions about what Congress is doing in key 
policy areas such as health care and immigration.
  This is no complaint. I stand in the seat formerly held by the great 
Midwestern populist William Jennings Bryan, and it is my duty, 
responsibility--all of our responsibility--to hear and read what our 
constituents are telling us. It is also my duty to make judgments on 
their behalf. I have an obligation to read and study and analyze the 
facts of any situation, to listen to the people who are effective, and 
ultimately to make a decision.
  I think that the irony of this great moment, of great tension in our 
country, Mr. Speaker, interestingly, has brought a renewed and 
refreshing attentiveness to this body, to the legislative branch. There 
is now a very impassioned and healthy engagement with the centers of 
government about the very nature of power and its purpose. As 
Americans, we believe that power is justly derived from the dignity and 
right of each person. When properly exercised, that power rightly 
informs the State.
  Vigorous interaction is beneficial to our Republic when it is cordial 
and constructive, when all parties in an authentic attempt seek 
workable consensus. This can be harmful to our Republic when 
interactions descend into shouting matches, rude interruptions, 
orchestrated ambushes, or worse, violence toward people or property.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a new friend who is an ambassador here in the 
United States from an African country. It is a fascinating nation that 
rebuilt after a difficult civil war. He was kind enough to have me over 
for dinner recently with one of my colleagues. My colleague is a brand-
new Member of Congress, and he happens to be in the other political 
party.
  On the ride over, we talked about the very real prospect that, if we 
could just

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have a conversation, if we just had the time or disposition to have a 
conversation, a genuine dialogue, then perhaps things would get a bit 
better in Washington.
  Mr. Speaker, most of us crave dialogue. Our country needs dialogue 
more than ever. We have multiple new technological ways to conduct 
dialogue. However, we have lost touch with what genuine dialogue is. If 
we are racing to score points or impatiently, loudly bludgeoning each 
other, we are not engaging in authentic dialogue. We are engaging in 
monologue.
  Clearly, there are many differences that cannot easily be solved here 
throughout America. We have to be sober about that. The tough arena of 
politics occupies a unique space in our country in the quest for 
answers, but holding it together depends upon a commitment to this 
ideal of the civic state, a broad attempt at friendship and goodwill to 
hold together the good that should be common for everyone.
  Mr. Speaker, on a visit to the United States Naval Academy in 
Annapolis, Maryland, I noticed that, among its many noteworthy 
qualities, the beautiful, bucolic campus reflected a dignity, a call, 
if you will, to something higher. This special place creates a sense of 
place as a message for the ages, and that used to be reflected in the 
great tradition of American public architecture.
  In one of the Academy's halls, a United States submarine commander 
named Howard W. Gilmore is honored. During World War II, Gilmore 
ordered his submarine to the surface of the ocean. The crew came out 
onto the deck. Unbeknownst to them, enemy planes were in the area and 
they spotted the vessel and began a strafing run.
  The crew of the submarine scrambled back inside to go into dive mode, 
but as one crew member looked back, he saw Commander Gilmore lying on 
the deck, wounded. Looking at his commander in the eye, he heard him 
say, ``Take her down.'' The commander knew he would be left behind to 
drown, but everyone else was saved.
  Stories like this one appear repeatedly throughout our Nation's 
history, particularly among those who have served in the military. They 
detail the brave actions of honorable men and women who have served an 
ideal far greater than any superficial distinctions in the political 
debate that might separate them, the ideal that the sacrifice for just 
and enduring principles is a noble thing.
  In this age of anxiety and petty strife, it is worth reflecting on 
why we now find this so hard.
  In the wake of World War I, poet-politician W.B. Yeats wrote this:

     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
     The best lack all conviction, while the worst
     Are full of passionate intensity.

  Mr. Speaker, present-day Washington, as a microcosm of the Nation, 
routinely exhibits a lack of political community. Partisan discord and 
dysfunction do reflect the larger philosophical divides across America: 
market fundamentalists versus government fundamentalists, 
protectionists versus globalists, elites versus the common man--on and 
on and on.
  We lack a unifying spirit. Part of this fracture is driven by monied 
interests in politics. Part of it is driven by competing world views 
that are earnestly derived about the core of what it means to be an 
American and about the core of what it means to have a functioning 
government for America. Part of it results from the lack of will and 
courage among lawmakers to move beyond these dispiriting constraints 
and find some higher ground.

                              {time}  1915

  But, Mr. Speaker, I will add this. Perhaps there is a silver lining. 
Let's think about this. On a deeper level, the vehement animosity in 
the Capitol and across our country could, ironically, point to 
something good. Washington's inability to rally around big and 
meaningful ideas, reflecting longstanding, again, cultural and 
political divides in America, it might actually signal a desire for 
resolution. After all, if no one cared, our situation would be far more 
dire.
  If we can stretch to see that all of this negativity is actually a 
search for solidarity, then perhaps we have a shot. Indeed, there might 
be a chance to recapture our democratic narrative, our special American 
identity by embracing something larger than the insistent demands of 
self, party, or narrowly focused advocacy groups. We are a country 
whose proper aim and purpose, whose very foundation is built upon that 
which is good and that which is eternal: fairness, self-determination, 
the rule of law. Perhaps this combustible moment is actually a yearning 
to reconnect. Or maybe not. Perhaps it is too far gone. We have to 
decide.
  Mr. Speaker, yet, with all these attempts at lofty sentiments here, 
to successfully govern requires some type of consensus around core 
values. And, yes, it requires sacrifice for our ideals, for each other, 
and for America. So that the center might hold. Right before Commander 
Gilmore died, he looked at his crew and said, ``Take her down.'' 
Perhaps the commander's advice to us today to America would be: ``Lift 
her up. Lift her up.''
  Mr. Speaker, I had an incredible opportunity yesterday to meet 
hundreds of Vietnam veterans who came to our Nation's Capital on one of 
the honor flights from all over the State of Nebraska. I saw some 
people I knew, saw constituents, met many of the former troops who I 
had no idea they served. Isn't that the hallmark of many of our troops, 
doing so with a quiet selflessness, not needing to have anyone know?
  But the Honor Flight actually gave them an opportunity to be welcomed 
home because particularly after enduring the Vietnam conflict, so many 
of our soldiers, so many of our troops came home to either no welcome 
or to, in an odd way, being blamed for the situation that they were 
trying to resolve. They never got a proper welcoming home.
  So we spent a little time together yesterday at the Iwo Jima 
memorial. After a long day, they had visited the various monuments, 
including the Vietnam Memorial, the wall.
  Of course, it was a tiring day for them, but many were, I would think 
it is safe to say, exhilarated by the chance to come, to be in 
solidarity as a community, to reconnect with the purpose of their 
service and perhaps, most importantly, to be welcomed home because when 
they got back to the Lincoln airport where I live, thousands of people 
were there waiting for them, chanting ``USA, USA, USA.''
  Mr. Speaker, especially in times of significant duress like we are 
living in, I think it is particularly important to remind ourselves 
that America has tremendous capacity for replenishment. Unexpected 
opportunities give us a chance to reassess and realign in new and 
compelling ways, both to preserve our most valued traditions and to 
restore the promise of our Nation. This understanding is especially 
important as we confront dysfunctional government, economic stagnation, 
global violence, and the social fallout from the fractures and the pain 
in our culture.
  I submit, Mr. Speaker, that one way to lift America up in this age of 
anxiety might be glimpsed through four mutually supporting principles: 
government decentralization, economic inclusion, foreign policy 
realism, and social conservation.
  Now, what do I mean by this?
  First, we should consider that a more decentralized government will 
restore the local source of America's strength. I am not a person who 
is antigovernment, but what we have done in our society is we have 
federalized every conceivable level of problem, and this institution 
ought to be about doing a couple of big things well.
  We ought to respect the authority and the institutions that are 
closer to the people that have jurisdiction over things that they can 
better provide. Those closest to an opportunity or a problem ought to 
be the first to be empowered to seize the opportunity or solve the 
problem.
  Economic inclusion, as well, should help America recover from a 
concentration of wealth and power into

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fewer and fewer hands. This primarily happens through a restoration of 
the small business sector, giving rise to entrepreneurial momentum once 
again. Mr. Speaker, we are in an entrepreneurial winter. This is where 
most jobs come from. I am not talking about even larger small 
businesses. I am talking about small, microbusinesses that employ one 
to five persons. For the first time in America's history, the number of 
small businesses dying is greater than those being born.
  So if you want to restore a vibrancy and create the conditions for 
economic inclusion, a turn of focus to the small business sector, that 
great gift where people are using their talents of intellect and the 
gift of their two hands to make things, an imprint of their own 
dignity, to give rise to the ability to take care of themselves and 
those under their authority, their employees, to create benefits for 
others through exchange, that reinforces a community narrative of the 
longing and commitment and interdependence.
  Third point, foreign policy realism. Based upon authentic 
relationships and genuine friendships, a foreign policy realism should 
chart a course between passivity and ad hoc intervention. In other 
words, we are a globalized society. We are interconnected in 
extraordinary ways. We are not going to turn the clock back. We 
couldn't if we tried here. So isolationism is not an option. And yet, 
just entering into relationships that are transactional without having 
any authentic basis has led to the collapse of relationships and the 
conditions for them not to be long lasting.
  Finally, social and environmental conservation preserves family life, 
faith life, civic life, and natural life. The ecosystem, which we all 
value and live, that is not a partisan issue. That is not even a 
bipartisan issue. These are transpartisan issues because they create 
the conditions in which the human heart, the human person can thrive. 
These are the institutions that give rise to a continuity of our great 
tradition, give a meaning to life and create sustainability for 
ourselves and our children.
  We know we are confronting intensifying struggles about the direction 
of our country, the direction of our world. The fault lines can widen, 
they may widen, but we also can choose to lean into these serious 
challenges. We can still choose to rediscover commonsense governance, 
right-sized economic models, a proper foreign policy, and universal and 
foundational values that create the binding narrative of our country 
that so many persons have sacrificed for.
  It is time to rediscover our purpose as a people and reclaim this 
sense of solidarity and to reempower our communities. As the military 
says: One team, one fight.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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