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HIGHLIGHTING IMPORTANCE OF GOVERNANCE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 30 minutes.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, thank you for your courtesies. And I begin with a clarion call. The Speaker wears many hats, and we have been in meetings where we have focused our legislative prowess, legislative questions, on voting rights. So, I think it is appropriate to begin today to say that a crisis is pending.
I am stunned by this decision. I am aghast. I will not use the word
``enraged'' because action requires a calm and contemplative mind.
Today, the Supreme Court upheld voting restrictions. They might have written it and said they upheld voting laws. They upheld voting restrictions in Arizona and signaled that challenges in new State laws making it harder to vote--my God, I am going to say that on this floor--making it harder to vote in spite of the constitutional privilege that is ensconced in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that generates into the States the dignity of humanity, that citizens' birthright is the right to be precise in your desires of your representation.
And then, it signaled in this article that challenges to new State laws making it harder to vote would have a hostile reception from a majority of the Justices.
The vote was just as we expected. All the Court-packing--all the Court-packing--has borne fruit.
Forgive me. I wanted to be on this floor speaking eloquently, if you will, about a myriad of things, but a 6-3 vote, not even a light of difference: three who were not appointed by Republican Presidents, and then, of course, the packing by the former President of the United States.
By the way, I just want to make a public statement. I know the First Amendment has its privileges. I ask the media to call the former President ``the former President.'' He is not the President of the United States. He is not ``President'' and his name. He is the former President. He is not ``President'' and his name at the border. He is the former President at the border, creating havoc.
And havoc was created with this 6-3 vote. The decision was the Court's first consideration of how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups.
It was issued as disputes over voting rights have taken center stage. We are still suffering from the Shelby case of 2013 that indicated that the Section 5 provision is unconstitutional and has left us with no tools to deal with this.
As Republican-controlled State legislatures increasingly seek to impose restrictions, new voting rules, we are in the fight of our life.
I am on the floor of the House today to indicate that there is no divide in any of us, thanking the Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Beatty on the urgency of voting rights, and the Judiciary Committee and the chairman of that committee, the subcommittee chairmen of that committee, and all the Members and staff, we needed this decision to be able to craft the record that is going to withstand and fight the battle and be able to pass what the Supreme Court cannot undermine with its decision.
In fact, we must thwart its decision. We must protect the vulnerable. We must not allow the disabled to be videotaped in Texas. We must not allow the hungry and thirsty to be denied water and food in Georgia. We must not allow judges to overturn willy-nilly the elections in Texas.
We must not allow, if I might, the idea of a former officer of the United States--in fact, the Chief Officer of the United States. We must not allow that person to make a mockery of the order of government.
There is but one President of the United States. That is President Joe Biden. There is but one Vice President, Vice President Kamala Harris. And they are effectively leading this government and this Nation. They are caring people.
President Biden is, as we speak, either there or en route to the enormous tragedy in Surfside, Florida, to provide comfort but also to provide the strength of the Federal Government in any investigation that will proceed.
That is the able work of the Florida delegation and this President. They will do their job, particularly those Members who represent that area, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and many other Members.
But it is challenging to be thwarted in voting and to ignore the Constitution, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
So, today, I want to proceed with what I think is a necessary agenda that is so important to this Nation. I will talk about so many different aspects of the issue of governance, why voting is so important, and why we need to close the social and racial divide, or racial and social equity should be intertwined.
Let me emphasize, if you will, the enormous difference that what we are going to be working on over the next couple of weeks is going to make in lives, and that is, of course, the child tax credit.
Votes and winning the majority in 2020 of the House and Senate by Democrats, and, of course, the new President and Vice President, led us to the expanded and improved child tax credit.
It is a historical change that is a lifeline to the middle class and cuts child poverty. It provides children and their families with additional payments through the year that help them with the cost of food, childcare, diapers, healthcare, clothing, and taxes.
I will be in my town, Houston, Texas, on July 3--yes, the Independence Day weekend--to be able to open the eyes of my mothers and fathers caring for children, that this is their legitimate opportunity to receive monthly payments, $250 per month per child and $300 per month for every young child. All the families in my community can feel more secure and better able to deal with the burdensome expenses that face them weekly and monthly.
Let me be very clear: This brings America together, this idea of the child tax credit. But, let me remind you, it was because of our votes that elected a Democratic majority, not a majority that does not include a desire to work in a bipartisan manner. We do desire that.
I think this is the first opportunity that I have had since the historic passage--maybe the second--a moment that I can say to the Chamber and to this historic Congressional Record a large thank you for bipartisanship that has brought about, after 38 years, the historic Juneteenth holiday that was celebrated because it was signed on June 17th, the first historic holiday on June 18th.
Thank you to Opal Lee. Thank you to the initiator of the State holiday in Texas, Al Edwards. But more importantly, thank you to that teacher in the airport who stopped me and said: Thank you for Juneteenth. I can now teach the original sin of slavery to even elementary schoolchildren, not out of anger and hatefulness, but the whole story of America's original sin and what liberation, emancipation, and freedom represent.
Thank you for the quote about President Joe Biden that said: He may be known for many things in his administration, but he will probably be remembered for signing the Juneteenth holiday.
I am grateful to my colleagues for allowing me to lead, to have introduced that bill, the first Member of Congress to do so. I am grateful to Members of the other body--Senator Markey and Senator Cornyn--who rallied so that the Senate could move and that, in 1 day, we could pass it in the House, the bill that I introduced that the Senate then took.
To the leadership here, how much we exalted this body when it was a 415-person vote. I hope with that vote that there are those thinking that: Wow, I voted for that. I am not finished because we are not finished.
If anything reinforces that our journey is not finished, it must be the idea that, today, the Supreme Court rendered a decision that completely turns upside down the writing of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, led so ably by my colleague and friend Congresswoman Terri Sewell, a bill that will come through the House Judiciary Committee. We will be able to be the fixers, the doctors, those who will hold the Constitution and say: The Supreme Court, though the highest body in the land, in this instance, because of the Court-
packing, is wrong because the Founding Fathers did not intend for us to have a restraint on that unfettered right of voting.
My friends, we would not be in the midst of the debate right now on the INVEST Act that is going to provide such a new difference in our lives. That is because of the vote.
I thank the chairman of the Transportation Committee, Mr. DeFazio, because now that first step will be toward rebuilding the Nation's roads, bridges, transit, rail, and we will be fighting against climate change.
Look at our Western region, where hundreds are impacted, thousands, millions, but then they have lost tens upon tens, maybe hundreds of people, maybe, but certainly numbers who died from the enormous heat.
We actually passed that historic bill today. I am very proud that part of it, working out of Energy and Commerce and working with Chairman Pallone, we have provided real dollars to communities for wastewater infrastructure. You know that is important. We have done that through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. We have provided, I want you to understand, the historic funding level for drinking water, the State revolving fund, making improvements to prioritize replacing lead service lines that have plagued so many of our Midwestern States and Southern States, our public housing, improving water quality in schools.
I know it well because my schools are old. Children before bottled water, with the historic water systems, were drinking out of those old water fountains and addressing needs in territories, reforming the broken standard-setting to make it work better as it relates to public health and to eliminate toxins.
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The vote, the right to vote, is an extremely vital part, and as we have had the right to vote, and each Member has had the right, I am glad to publicly announce that I will have complete reformation of a historic street in my district, Scott Street--the right to vote--with the grant that was awarded through me to Houston and metro and the city of Houston, which we will be announcing soon.
Those of you living in and around Scott Street, the University of Houston, Texas Southern University, there will be a new light, a new opportunity. And then we will be able to expand on the Greenways project, neighborhood greenways. I have heard you. I have heard the neighborhood. And so we will have that opportunity.
And through voting, the Jackson Lee-Espaillat amendment, it is in now, it is law, and it is going to the Senate to be finally passed.
And I am going to be an optimist that we were able to have an amendment in the Safe Streets program where funds are spent to give local governments more control over where the funds for the new Safe Streets program are spent by requiring the State Department of Transportation that ignores local government.
They are ignoring local governments right now in my community on I-
45. They ignore them by expanding I-45 and taking out houses and schools and buying up historic neighborhoods. They are wrong. TXDOT, you are wrong. And we will continue to investigate until you realize that you are wrong.
But I have an amendment now that says that local governments must be heard, and they must be consulted with on the amount of dollars to help them carry out Safe Streets projects, and that is to use a Safe Streets program to set aside safety funds to reduce fatality and serious injuries on public roads with a focus on vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, and motorcyclists.
Why? People are dying.
In my district, a woman stopped her car to help a handicapped person in a wheelchair get across the street, and another car hit her and the handicapped person and killed them without even stopping.
Who needs to have the resources, but our local government?
And then, of course, we have seen death take a toll on motorcycle riders. Bike Texas has been fighting for this. And we lost a young man a few years ago as he was riding his bike in the Heights area. He lost his life. I promised his family.
The lady who lost her life pushing the wheelchair was Lesha Adams, 54, and she was helping Jesus ``Jesse'' Perez to cross. Ms. Adams pulled over and got out, and as I said, another vehicle struck them. And they were both killed.
And on March 7, 2019, right before the pandemic, I went to the spot where David Leon Loya was killed in a collision with a school bus while riding his bicycle. That was the way he got around in the Heights.
This is in their name, to make local governments take charge of those dollars and to help stop that kind of violence, which it is.
And then the motorcycle riders, they have motorcycle clubs, and they are ignored. And in the name of Jamal Harris that was killed around Mother's Day or in May, this amendment was put forward.
In the freeze we have suffered. People died. And so I have an amendment that was passed and will now become law that requires the EPA administrator to initiate a study on the distribution of wastewater infrastructure funds to rural communities, economically disadvantaged communities, and Tribal communities during the 20 fiscal years preceding.
And the reason is, there has been the understanding that wastewater resources in inner city infrastructure and rural areas is poor, not working, and you feel the impact. I am grateful. But again, I am going to say voting.
And then, of course, we know the freeze. So many died in early February.
The President came to acknowledge something that we had never experienced. Our whole grid shut down, which is why we need the American Jobs Plan in its totality. I stand with my friends in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Budget Committee, and the Congressional Black Caucus, and all of the Democratic Caucus that we must go big. We must work with this bipartisan legislation, but we must get climate change. We must get the care economy. And we must deal with the broadband and cyber.
But the electric grids have been failing. And so my particular amendment implements a program under which the administrator may award grants to community water systems to carry out activities to educate and assist persons by the community water system in adapting and responding to bad acts and natural disasters, including sub-zero temperatures.
What does that mean? It means that our pipes froze. People were still suffering from freezing, and those pipes burst and destroyed homes. Not only did people die, they frozen to death because they had no electricity, and they had no water.
And I remember standing and giving out water to thousands, being part of giving out water to thousands all over our community. We were giving out water in 2021. They had no water. Not only did they have no water, but it took a very long time.
I will include a study to show you why wastewater is so important. The groundbreaking 2019 study and report is ``Flushed and Forgotten: Sanitation and Wastewater in Rural Communities in the US.'' And it was conducted by the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise and the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights. It indicated, sanitation is essential to everyday functions such as urination and defecation. Without a system in place to dispose of wastewater, individuals experience environmental contamination. The perpetual appearance of wastewater in and around homes that occurs when systems are absent or failing takes a significant toll on mental health and the ability of individuals to live in dignity.
Do you realize that that is occurring in America? That is why I am here today.
And I am here today because no one is going to tell me with conditions like this that we don't need the American Jobs Plan and that we don't need the dollars that will stop flooding in Houston, which we have built up enormously.
No one is going to tell me that we don't need the child tax credit for each and every one of you. That is why we will be in Houston on July 3. We will be in Houston July 3 because these children need these resources.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining, please?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman has 7 minutes remaining.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to take a moment to physically hold this poster up and to emphasize how important our children are before I raise another very vital point.
One, it was because of votes that we got the Children's Health Insurance Program. And it will be because of votes that we got the pandemic child tax credit that you will get $250 for older children and
$300 for younger children every single month.
Meet me at the Saint John's Church at 10 a.m. on July 3 to ensure that you get the right information. This is not a sales job. This is what voting and representation is all about.
I will conclude my remarks with something that has been, Mr. Speaker, very important, and I hope that its explanation is one that is taken not historically in the way that it should, and we ought not ignore the attack on democracy and to acknowledge the leadership of this House for the January 6 committee. I have worked on the select committee. I am a Member who was here for 9/11. And when I say ``here,'' I was literally in this Capitol and among others that fled out of this Capitol and watched the billowing smoke that was a result of the hit at the Pentagon as we were escaping. And so I take very seriously the issues of January 6.
I will also briefly acknowledge the work that we have done with ensuring that Confederate statues were removed and put in a place of history but not a place that is a citadel of democracy when there were those that stood up against that democracy.
I acknowledge the validity of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and pay tribute to his family who has sacrificed so much to try to make things right.
But now I will proceed with what I think must be our next step with voting, and that is H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I want to take away any glare or misunderstanding that this is a figment of our imagination, this is something that we should do in passing, it is an impossibility, it is a third rail, if we do this, something will happen.
I welcome, and I am here, present, to speak to all of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, but I want you to look at the back of this slave. The silence is deadening as to what occurred for almost a quarter of a thousand years; in bondage over 200 years.
We have difficulty in detailing the actual facts of the precise brutality in every plantation and every nuance and every northern State and every southern State and every western State and every eastern State because it was prevalent everywhere. There were different times when it ended. Certainly, December 1965 was when the 13th Amendment was so eloquently debated with difficulty, and it was passed.
But H.R. 40 is the distinct opportunity internationally for America's presence to be known that we are back, that we are willing to acknowledge the original sin. We are not here accounting for my neighbor, who will tell me that he or she did not have slaves. That is not the accounting that we are, in essence, looking at. We are not looking to be able to see whether or not my other neighbor just left slavery.
Slavery is a part of America's history. The DNA and the progeny of slavery are here in America. You cannot ignore them. They are the foundation of this Nation.
They built the place I now stand. Slaves.
They built the White House. Slaves.
They built infrastructure.
They created cotton and made it king, never to be given any compensation for years of work. No health insurance. No insurance. No workmen's comp. No salary.
But as the U.N. Human Rights Council has said, reparations should not only be equated with financial compensation, it should include restitution, rehabilitation, acknowledgment of injustice, apologies, memorialization, education, reform, and guarantees that such injustices won't happen again.
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The legislation itself is a nonthreatening and serious legislation. It is a reflection of what General Sherman tried to do. He tried to remedy the back that we see here today. He tried to give 40 acres and a mule.
Can you imagine the conglomerate that would have occurred if 5, 6, 10, 20 slaves had come together with that?
And believe me, slaves did not ask in anger. In fact, as they did not get it, they made their way. But as they made their way, we can cite 19 sites, almost, in America where what slaves built were destroyed.
Greenwood, 100 years, is an example. Greenwood is an example of a cry for reparations. Mother Fletcher and Mother Randall. And our sergeant, her brother, articulate that they never got anything and all that they had in Greenwood was taken from them. What an unbelievable scenario that we are facing.
Mr. Speaker, so my plea today is that as you've listened to me, I leave here to go fight for voting rights. But I also leave here with a challenge and an encouragement for the understanding of all that I have said. But, more importantly, as I close, H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals, I look forward to working with our leadership and all others to ensure that we do make this an important step forward.
Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing me for this Special Order during which I will discuss the removal of statues glorifying Confederate traitors from places of honor in the Capitol, the removal of the bust from the Old Supreme Court Chamber and replacing it with a bust civil rights icon and legend, the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall.
At the outset, Mr. Speaker, let me make this brief comment.
Many of friends across the aisle, including Republican Leader McCarthy, have noted the fact that all of the persons affected by H. Res. 503 were Democrats and none were Republicans.
This is hardly revelatory.
After all, the Republican Party was founded in the 1850s because of its opposition to slavery that Southern Democrats like future Vice President of the Confederate States of America Alexander Stephens boasted was the ``cornerstone of America.''
In 1861, after the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, the eleven slave-holding states seceded from the Union, not to preserve their heritage, but to keep their slaves.
That led to the Civil War, in which more than 600,000 persons on both sides gave their lives and ended in the utter defeat and unconditional surrender of the Confederate Army led by its traitor general Robert E. Lee.
Also, as a consequence of the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed and ratified.
Mr. Speaker, I am grateful that at the time when it was needed most, the Republican Party was born and committed to the extinction of slavery.
It was the pro-freedom, pro-civil rights party.
The Democratic Party in those nightmarish days was centered in the
``Solid South,'' and proudly wore the label of the pro-slavery, white supremacy party.
This was not lost on the American people, and for a century Black Americans overwhelmingly self-identified with the pro-civil rights, anti-white supremacy Republican Party.
Even after the national Democratic Party renounced de jure racism and
``states rights'' at the 1948 DNC in Philadelphia, resulting in Strom Thurmond leading his fellow Dixiecrats out of the convention and running a failed bid for the presidency, Black Americans remained a core constituency of the Republican Party, while nearly all whites in the southern states were Democrats, distinguishing themselves from northern liberals by calling themselves ``Southern Democrats'' or
``constitutional Democrats''.
All of this changed in 1964.
That was the year the Republican Party nominated for president Sen. Barry Goldwater, an active and die-hard opponent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Southern Democrats saw in Goldwater's support for `states rights' a kindred spirit and vehicle to halt the federal government's commitment to extend the writ and guarantees of the Constitution to all persons in all regions of the country.
Mr. Speaker, the result of that realigning election remains with us to this day.
Before the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the overwhelming majority of votes cast by Black Americans were for Republican candidates.
Even in the election of 1960, the parties closely competed for the votes of Black Americans, with Republican Richard Nixon winning more than 35 percent.
Fast forward to 1964.
Republican Barry Goldwater was routed 486-52 in an electoral college landslide and lost 43 states; Lyndon Johnson won the popular vote by 16 million votes (61-38 percent).
Goldwater won only his native state of Arizona and five Deep South I states--Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina.
It is interesting to note that the five Southern states that voted for Goldwater swung over dramatically to support him; for example, in Mississippi, where Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had won 97 percent of the popular vote in 1936, Goldwater won 87 percent of the vote.
Lyndon Johnson would say the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would cost Democrats the South for 50 years but it was worth it.
What accounted for this change in voting allegiance, which persists to this day?
The answer is simple and obvious, beginning in 1964 the Democratic Party became, and was perceived by Americans, as the party of civil rights; the Republican Party not so much.
So, Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that yes, the Confederate traitors whose statues are being removed from the Capitol were then members of the southern Democratic Party.
The difference is that white supremacists have not been welcome or embraced by the national Democratic Party since 1948 and have been pariahs since 1964.
We Democrats are not reluctant to remove and banish those who bring shame and dishonor to our cause of advancing equal justice for all Americans.
I challenge our friends across the aisle to stop glorifying as
`heritage' a history of terror, injustice, violence, and racism represented by the persons whose statues are being removed and anyone who proudly waves a Confederate flag, like the one that disgraced the Capitol when it was paraded by domestic terrorists during the January 6 insurrection and attack on American democracy.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 115
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