Different colors. All woven and held together by a single precious thread of democracy. Paul has taught us so much and as students who followed him, worked with him, believed with him, loved him and now miss him, we could never, ever be more thankful. With that, mr. Trone and mr. Speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. Mr. Trone i recognize mr. Levin. Mr. Levin thank you very much for recognizing me, mr. Trone and i thank the majority leader for organizing this. Mr. Speaker, i rise to speak for mr. Sarbanes, senator sarbanes employees. And especially for my sisterinlaw milley freeman, who worked for Paul Sarbanes from december of 1989 to january of 2007. And im not going to talk about all the Amazing Things about senator sarbanes that his maryland colleagues have eloquently mentioned and john, im not going to talk about fathers and sons, but my dad who served in this house and my uncle carl levin who served in the senate, both loved him very much. Andlet me talk about nellie his broader staff. Nelley loved serving in the senate, on the staff, and she loved the senator. Thats what she called him, the senator. Nelley sarbanes saw freeman for who she was, he saw her talent and he unleashed her people of with the maryland of which she was a tive, to organize events, to organize his participation in festivals and convenience of all kinds, and she just loved this work. And saw the value in it understood that the connection with human beings and the essence of politics. And he once said that nelley knew more constituents and more local organizations than anyone else in maryland. And i think she is incredibly proud of that to this day. I know that she shared a joy of working for senator Paul Sarbanes. And how you treat your staff, and how you see your staff says a lot about you as a public servant. Senators have a lot more staff than we do over here in the house. And he really knew his staff and treated them great. After senator sarbanes retired, nellie went on to work for another senator and then she retired. When she retired, her current employer, the senator couldnt attend her retirement party, but Paul Sarbanes did. He showed up and he spoke about nelley. Thats the kind of person he was. So its a great loss for maryland and for our country. And i just want to say all of his former staff that you all dont get enough appreciation. Our staff doesnt. Senator sarbanes treated his staff right and i hope we can live up to his example. With that, mr. Speaker, i yield back. Mr. Trone thank you, mr. Levin. I, too, rise today to honor the life and legacy of maryland senator Paul Sarbanes. The magnitude of his loss will be felt throughout maryland and the country. Senator sarbanes spent his entire career fighting for the issues that marylanders care the most about. He was a champion for justice, authoring the first article of impeachment against a corrupt president. He was a champion for fairness, tackling corporate Regulatory Reform and transparency for investors, he was a champion for the environment, spearheading efforts tom protect Chesapeake Bay for generations to come. Its not just his long list of accomplishments that senator sarbanes will be remembered for. But his dedication to the people. Senator sarbanes defined what it eans to be a public servant. Who showed up in the communities that felt left behind. He listened to the concerns of his constituents. And he worked hard to get things done for our state and the country. That type of leadership is hard to find here in washington. We can all learn a lot from him. I know i have. My wife and i extend our condolences to the friends and family of senator sarbanes and especially his son, our friend, congressman john sarbanes. I yield back to the chair. The speaker pro tempore under the speakers apolicy of january 3, 2019, the gentlewoman from indiana, mrs. Brooks, is recognized as the designee of the minority leader. Mrs. Brooks i yield troo 30 minutes to representative byrne. Mr. Byrne i thank the gentlelady. My grand parents were from indiana and the gentlelady from indiana represents her state well. Mr. Speaker, i rise today to give my pairewell speech to this house and i am going to say i rise today with hope and optimism. I know thats unusual because there are people on both sides of the house who want to say this country is in a bad place and headed in the wrong direction. I believe that view ignores two very important things. One is our history. And the other is what i hear the people of america telling us. Several years ago, a number of us from the senate and the house, both parties had the privilege of spending an evening at the library of congress with a noted history writer. And at the end of the evening, the moderator said, what parting words do you have for these members of congress . And he said i think the people of america knew history better, they would be more hopeful and more optimistic. I have been listening to the people of my district for the last seven years. And i heard what they thought and they told me and the American People through elections told us, too. And the great things about elections is there are no filters. If you look at the history of this country, you will see notable things, one is that this country was founded by people who believed in principles, in morals and values, who define who we are. They took a tremendous risk in fighting the most powerful military nation in the world, Great Britain and did it after declaring something very important, not just that they were declaring independence but the reasons for why they were doing it. That congress was the second continental congress. The First Continental Congress which met in 1774 is the forerunner to this house, a group of people elected to represent the people of this country. Its a notion as old as the creation of parliament and the house of commons, something that was their heritage. They took a great risk because they felt they faced a great risk. And when the colonies were founded that they would have the same rights as all english people and they found after the frenchindian war that that wasnt true that the rights were going to be taken from them and willing to fight for them. Let me say this very clearly, they didnt come in with clean hands. When the europeans came to this continent, this was an old wolved. There was a civilization that had been here for thousands of years. And between our germs which they had nothing and we took this land from them. And in 1619, european slave trader brought the first slave to this country. So when they went into that fight with the british, they didnt have clean hands. But society is complex. And because they didnt have clean hands didnt mean they didnt have clean hearts, and they did. They waged an incredible war for five years and they won because of what they stood on. Go back and look at the declaration of independence. One sentence says it all, we hold these truths, absolutes, nothing, we hold these truths to be selfevident. I know they used the word men but the principle of equality was in there and said we were created equal, which means we had a creator and say we hold these truths that all men are created equal and endowed, gifted by their creator by god themselves with rights that cannot be taken away from there and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And the governments instituted among men to secure those very liberties, did he risk their just powers from the consent of the governed. We need to reread that sentence over and over again. Government doesnt exist for the politicians but to secure rights and the power we have is the power of the people give us. Now, i know very well that we had to follow up that desperate war and that declaration by creating the constitution, the constitution we are under today. Sadly as the constitution out there, too many people and too many people in power dont know much about. Because the purpose was not only to create a government to have enough power for things to be done listed in the preamble but also put limits on this government. And some act that there are no limits and our founders had to fight against a tyrannical government. Those same english rights they had inherited had been secured because people for hundreds of years had to fight back against british kings. People lost their lives. There was great suffering as there was in our revolution because tyrannical Central Government dont give their power back easy or without a fight and that fight continued in the constitution. And in the bill of rights, which was adopted by this house in the very First Congress under the leadership of James Madison and he said in his speech when he introduced the bill of rights, he said this is all about making sure that we take away from this powerful government we created any trample and laid them out and all the states ratified those amendments and they are part of the fundamental law of this country, although we act like sometimes they are not. I have listened to the debates we have under the free exercise clause. The free exercise clause is in the First Amendment to the constitution. It says congress cannot make any law that establishes a religion or infringes upon the free exercise of that religion. Exercise, action. We have a right to freely exercise our religion and we need to remember that fundamental right along with the others. Now, that was our founding. The declaration of independence, the war for independence, the constitution. The bill of rights. That was our founding. Not 1619. And we need to remember the principles of our founding because they are central to who we are as people. Now, over the course of the 19th century, we were invaded by Great Britain, the Capitol Building here was burned, the white house was burned, we could have given up, but we didnt. Because thats not who we are. We not only survived, we fought on and built this great country so that by 1860, we not only boarded bordered on the atlantic ocean, we border on the the Pacific Ocean and the rio grande. We grew by leaps and bounds. Then in 1861, we entered another tragedy. Because the people that put that constitution together failed in at least one critical regard of they failed to address regard. They failed to address the issue of slavery and we fought a terrible civil war that cost the lives of 600,000 americans. To solve a problem that should ave been solved in 1787. Despite that war, we came back, we ended slavery, we adopted the 14th amendment and the 15th amendment, and we grew as a nation throughout the rest of the 19th century. Finally, in the early 20th century, did the right thing and gave women the right to vote. Neither my grandmothers as young adult women with families could vote. Its amazing that that was true just that long ago. But it was. And but we corrected it, as we always do. In world war ii, this country fought an incredibly difficult world war on three different continents and beat the most powerful nations in the world. And at the end of that war, stood as the only real power left in the earth. And we had a choice. We could have walked away. Come right back to our shores and say, were going back to being the country weve been. We could also have said, we got more power than everybody else, were going to use it against everybody else to make ourselves wealthy. We didnt either. We stood up and led the world in creating a rulesbased order that has benefited people all over the world. That has looked at lifted billions of people out of poverty, that has increased the lifespan of billions of people. That spread democracy and freedom around the globe. Because thats who we are. While we were doing, that we were also facing our problems here at home. Yes, we have problems here at home. We didnt finish the work of the civil war. We had to go through a difficult civil rights movement. And in this house we adopted the 1964 civil rights act. In this house we adopted the 1965 Voting Rights act. We did that. We provided things for the education of the children of this country that they didnt have. We provided for things for health care that people in this country didnt have. We provided for clean air and clean water. We addressed our own problems while we were leading the world. Because thats who we are. We do those things. Now, i understand that there are people that want to give us a different version of that history. They want to tell us that were all evil from birth. That somehow this country is inherently evil. That just doesnt square with historic facts. They want to rewrite history. Whats the first thing any authoritarian government does, is rewrite history or attempt to do it. The authoritarian wannabes of this country are trying to rewrite our history. Because they want to do that to pursue a radical agenda that doesnt match up with what the American People want. They try to call themselves progressives. Thats not progressive. Wanting a powerful Central Government is regressive. Thats regressing back to what we rebelled against in 1776. Theyre not progressive. Theyre socialist. Theyre at least honest in saying that. But theyre not progressive. Its regressive. Let me tell you what i hear the American People say. In my district and around this country. Theyre saying this. We americans arent evil. We are and have been a force for good here and around the world. We arent socialists. We dont want a powerful, overreaching Central Government. We dont wanted me for all, where the government makes decisions for us and our doctors. And rations whether, when and how we get our health care. We believe our Health Care System is the best in the world and we want to keep it that way. But we also want to assure that everyone in this country has real access to it. We dont want a green new deal. Which jacks our utility bills, saps our economic competitiveness, and destroys jobs. We dont want to defund the police. In fact, we think spending on Public Safety is a good thing. We value our Law Enforcement officers and we grieve when one is killed, as dozens are every year. We want our government to defend our shores and interests and protect us here at home. We rely upon the men and women wearing our uniform to do that and we want our government to take care of them. Ive gotten the chance to travel all over the world to see our men and women in uniform. Many of them in harms way. And i am so proud of them. And like most americans, i want to make sure were doing the right thing by them. We want to make sure that theres opportunity in this country for everyone, everyone. Dont leave anybody out. We want everybody to be able to take advantage of all that this nation has to offer. And to achieve that goal, we need quality education for everybody in this country and not just for the privileged. It shouldnt be the case that you get one set of education because of where you live, one type of education, one quality of education, and a worse one if you live in some other place. We should give everybody the freedom to have quality education so that they can take advantage of those opportunities. We want justice for everyone, everyone. Because injustice to anyone is injustice to us all. We want air and water to be clean. We want to continue to be the economic leader of the world. Let me stop and say a word about china. The greatest external threat to this country is china. Not the chinese people, but the communist party that runs china. They seek to become the only power in the world. Not a power, the only power. And theyll do anything, anything, theyll stop at nothing to get it. And its past time for us to wake up and understand the threat that they are not just to us, but to the entire world of that rulesbased order we created after world war ii. And, mr. Speaker, we the American People are tired of being divided, divided by our region. Since when is it ok for the coast to look down on other parts of the country . We dont want to be divided by race. People arent defined by the color of their skin, theyre not defined by their ethnicity, theyre not defined by their national origin. Thats antiamerican to think that way. We should come together over that. We dont want to be divided by our gender. We dont want to be divided by our religion. Whether youve got a religion or not, we dont want to be divided by it. We dont want to be divided by generation. The young versus the old. Its always been that the old hand us something valuable to the next generation. Thats what we should be about. That division in our country is the greatest internal threat we got and i will tell you, mr. Speaker, its the greatest threat of all. Because there is nothing that this great nation can accomplish when we are united cant accomplish when we are united, when we are one out of many. That is who america is. Thats who the American People want us to be. And thats the great challenge before this house. I have had a great experience here in congress. Ive met some wonderful people. Ive had the privilege of serving the House Armed Services committee, the education and Labor Committee and the rules committee. And i have seen a lot of important things be done here and be done right. The best legislation passed in this house is bipartisan legislation. The worst legislation is almost always partisan legislation. Usually it doesnt make it across the finish line, by the way. Our ability to Work Together should be what we should all be striving for in this house. And i hope the house to follow will do that. Before i take my leave, i want to say a few things. I want to thank the many members of this house who have befriended me and helped me on both sides of the aisle. I particularly want to thank my fellow colleagues in the alabama delegation. They have been a great family to be a part of. I want to thank the staff, the staff of this house is amazing. So very helpful, so very competent. And we just couldnt get our jobs done without you. I want to thank the good people of southwest alabama. They gave me the great privilege of being here to represent them as their only representative. What an honor thats been. I hope an