[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6437-6438]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 RECOGNIZING THE DISTINGUISHED SERVICE OF GRETA JOYNES AND CHRIS SARLEY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to come down to the floor to 
recognize and thank two of my major staffers in my office who are 
leaving to pursue other opportunities. The first one is Greta Joynes.
  Greta recently left as my legislative director; and as you know, Mr. 
Speaker, that is your top adviser in the legislative field. So not only 
running the legislative office, she also had some personal expertise in 
the telecommunications regions.
  But Greta is from northern Illinois, north of I-80, originally from 
the Chicagoland area, and is a graduate of Northern Illinois 
University, NIU. She started as a staff assistant in 2003 and worked 
her way up through the ranks, as I said, becoming legislative director 
in 2011, and then served as deputy chief of staff from 2013 until she 
left recently in March.
  She focused on telecommunications as her expertise, and we primarily 
in our office dealt with 911 issues, especially the Next Generation 911 
Advancement Act. She also spearheaded the Next Generation 911 Caucus in 
my office.

[[Page 6438]]

  She is married to Bob and has two children, Gavin and Hadley. We 
already miss her activity and work in the office, and we pass on best 
wishes.
  Next is Mr. Chris Sarley, who has a 14-year career on Capitol Hill. 
This is his tenth year with me, and I think it is uncommon in many 
offices for people to stay that long. I think it is a tribute to my 
chief of staff, Craig Roberts, and the fact that I don't meddle too 
much how they manage the office and get their job done.
  Chris has served 10 years with me. In addition to handling health 
care and energy policy in my office, Chris has served the committee 
under Chairman Walden and Chairman Emeritus Upton as policy coordinator 
for the Subcommittee on Environment since 2011.
  Chris has been an invaluable member of my team, and some of his 
achievements include:
  Before he came to my office, he worked on the Medicare part D 
rollout.
  Under my office, he advanced several medical device titles in the 
21st Century Cures Act.
  He worked on what we call the ADAPT Act and the GAIN Act, which 
target the antibiotic threats that hopefully will not occur in our 
country, but we need to be ready to respond.
  He was very involved in ADUFA, Animal Drug User Fee Act, and enabling 
the FDA to approve drugs used for pets and livestock.
  But for all of us on the Energy and Commerce Committee, he was one of 
our primary House negotiators during the first major rewrite of a 
United States environmental protection law in over 2 decades, and 
facilitated passage of the Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, 
which amends the Toxic Substances Control Act, which is the Nation's 
primary chemical regulation law.
  I think the public really would appreciate if they knew the work that 
our staff members do on long hours and over the weekends. We mention it 
all the time, especially when we are fighting across the aisle, because 
it is primarily the staff that is trying to get to the point where they 
can share language where we can then give a thumbs up or thumbs down, 
and it is very seldom that we say thanks for those. A Member is only as 
good as the folks he has who work for him and who he or she surrounds 
himself with.
  I wanted to take this time, Mr. Speaker, to call out two great 
government employees who served their Nation well and served me well. 
And it also sends a signal about all our other staff members who do 
tremendous work under great stress to serve this country.

                          ____________________