[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 72 (Thursday, June 8, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H3548-H3550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RESIGNATION AS MEMBER OF COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore laid before the House the following
resignation as a member of the Committee on Appropriations:
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC, June 8, 2006.
Hon. J. Dennis Hastert,
Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Speaker: Please accept my resignation, effective
immediately, from the House Committee on Appropriations.
It has been my great pleasure to serve on the committee
under the fine leadership of Chairman Jerry Lewis and
Chairman Bill Young.
Thank you for your attention to this request.
Sincerely,
Tom DeLay,
Member of Congress.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is, Shall the resignation be
accepted?
The gentleman from Texas is recognized.
{time} 1715
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, political careers tend to end in one of three
ways: defeat, death, or retirement. And despite the fervent and mostly
noble exertions of my adversaries over the years, I rise today to bid
farewell to this House under the happiest of the available options.
I wish to begin the end of my congressional career by publicly
thanking for the last time as their Representative the people of the
22nd District of Texas. Everything I have ever been able to accomplish
here I owe and dedicate to them. It has been an honor and a privilege
to serve them here.
Mr. Speaker, the real Speaker, he is on his way, I want to tell the
real Speaker it has been a real honor to serve with Denny Hastert, who
is my good friend, my most trusted partner and colleague. I want to
take just a moment to congratulate him myself on becoming the longest
serving Republican Speaker in history.
What a blessing this place is, Mr. Speaker. What a castle of hope
this building is, this institution is for the people of the world. It
is one of those things in political life that you always know, but
seldom notice. The schedules we are forced to keep during our days in
Washington are not always hospitable to sitting back and reflecting on
the historical significance of our surroundings.
In the weeks since I announced my retirement, however, I have found
myself doing just that. I notice things like I have not in years. I
notice the monuments on the Mall. I notice that in Washington's
obelisk, the Father of Our Country is represented not as an object of
glory, but as a dutiful sentry at attention, minding his post for
eternity.
I notice that under Jefferson's dome, the statue of the man is
relatively understated, while his etched words still thunder from the
marble with the power to drive history.
I notice that Lincoln's chair, the man who sought above all peace and
reconciliation, keeps one of his hands in a perpetual fist. I walk
these halls with a keener perspective. I notice now the statues of old
and great, and in some cases almost forgotten, heroes that line the
halls of this building, that stand in Statuary Hall.
In these halls I have also noticed in recent weeks the number of
tourists in the Capitol who speak no English. They are not from
America, most of these visitors, and yet, in a certain sense, of course
they are. They may speak Italian or Polish or Japanese, but the
freedoms they enjoy, both here and in their own country, have been
inspired, won and secured by the ideals and the courage and the
compassion of the American people.
These pilgrims come from all over the world to the House of
Representatives to sit up in these galleries, photograph the statues,
and stare up at the rotunda, to bear witness to the awesome feat of
human liberty we have achieved right here.
The dome above us, Mr. Speaker, is a light house, a star even, by
which all of the people in the world, no matter how oppressed, how
impoverished, how seemingly without hope can chart a course towards
security, prosperity, and freedom.
It is worth considering, though I will admit it is considerably
easier to consider after you have announced your retirement, whether
the days we lead here, the debates we wage, the work we do is always
worthy of the elevated ideals embodied in that dome.
I submit that we could do better, as could all people in all things
at all times, but perhaps not in the way some might think. In preparing
for today, I found that it is customary in speeches such as these to
reminisce about the good old days of political harmony, and across-the-
aisle camaraderie, and to lament the bitter divisive partisan rancor
that supposedly now weakens our democracy.
Well, I cannot do that, because partisanship, Mr. Speaker, properly
understood, is not a symptom of democracy's
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weakness, but of its health and its strength, especially from the
perspective of a political conservative.
Liberalism, after all, whatever you may think of its merits, is a
political philosophy and a proud one, with a great tradition in this
country with a voracious appetite for growth. In any place, or any
time, on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? More.
More government. More taxation. More control over people's lives and
decisions and wallets.
If conservatives do not stand up to liberalism, no one will. And for
a long time around here, almost no one did. Indeed, the common lament
over the recent rise in political partisanship is often nothing more
than a veiled complaint instead about the recent rise of political
conservatism.
I should add here that I do not begrudge liberals their nostalgia for
the days of a timid, docile, and permanent Republican minority. If we
Republicans had ever enjoyed that same luxury over the last 12 years,
heck, I would be nostalgic too.
Had liberals not fought us tooth and nail over tax cuts and budget
cuts and energy and Iraq and partial birth abortion, those of us on
this side of the aisle can only imagine all of the additional things we
could have accomplished.
But the fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, they did not agree with
us. So to their credit, they stood up to us. They argued with us. And
they did so honorably on behalf of more than 100 million people, just
like we did against President Clinton and they did against President
Reagan.
Now, it goes without saying, Mr. Speaker, that by my count, our
friends on the other side of the aisle lost every one of those
arguments over the last 22 years, but that is besides the point. The
point is, we disagree. On first principles, Mr. Speaker, we disagree.
And so we debate, often loudly and often in vain, to convince our
opponents and the American people of our point of view.
We debate here on the House floor. We debate in committees. We debate
on television, and on radio and on the Internet and in the newspapers;
and then every 2 years we have a huge debate, and then in November, we
see who won.
That is not rancor; that is democracy. You show me a Nation without
partisanship, and I will show you a tyranny. For all its faults, it is
partisanship based on core principles that clarifies our debates, that
prevents one party from straying too far from the mainstream, and that
constantly refreshes our politics with new ideas and new leaders.
Indeed, whatever role partisanship may have played in my own
retirement today, or in the unfriendliness heaped upon other leaders in
other times, Republican or Democrat, however unjust, all we can say is
that partisanship is the worst means of settling fundamental political
differences, except for all of the others.
Now, politics demands compromise, and, Mr. Speaker, even the most
partisan among us have to understand that. But we must never forget
that compromise and bipartisanship are means, not ends, and are
properly employed only in the service of higher principles. It is not
the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents
who degrade our public debate, but the preening self-styled statesman
who elevates compromise to a first principle.
For the true statesman, Mr. Speaker, we are not defined by what they
compromise, but what they do not. Conservatives, especially less
enamored of government's lust for growth, must remember that our
principles must always drive our agenda and not the other way around.
For us conservatives, there are two such principles that can never be
honorably compromised: human freedom and human dignity. Now, our agenda
over the last 12 years has been an outgrowth of these first principles.
We lowered taxes to increase freedom. We reformed welfare programs
that however well intentioned undermined the dignity of work and
personal responsibility and perpetuated poverty.
We have opposed abortion, cloning and euthanasia because such
procedures fundamentally deny the unique dignity of the human person.
And we have supported the spread of democracy and the ongoing war
against terror, because those policies protect and affirm the
inalienable human right of all men and women and children to live in
freedom.
Conservatism is often unfairly accused of being insensitive and mean-
spirited, sometimes unfortunately, even by other conservatives. As a
result, conservatives often attempt to soften that stereotype by
overfunding broken programs or glossing over ruinous policies. But
conservatism is not about feeling people's pain; it is about curing it.
And the results since the first great conservative victory in the
1980s speak for themselves. Millions of new jobs, new homes, and new
businesses created, thanks to conservative economic reforms. Millions
of families intact and enriched by the move from welfare to work.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world liberated by a
conservative foreign policy victory over Soviet Communism, and more
than 50 million Iraqis and Afghanis liberated from tyranny since
September 11, 2001.
To all of the critics of the supposedly mean-spirited conservative
policies that brought about these results, I say only this:
compassionate is as compassionate does.
Now, when I say that word, Mr. Speaker, compassionate, my thoughts
turn to one person, my wife, Christine. Twelve years ago, Christine
became what is called a court-appointed special advocate for abused and
neglected children. And soon thereafter we became foster parents
ourselves to three such children.
Over the last 10 years, I have spent more time and energy on the
plight and needs of abused, neglected children than on any other single
issue. It is an issue that transcends politics, let alone partisanship,
and one that will continue to command a disproportionate amount of my
time as a private citizen.
I am concerned, however, about whether it will receive the attention
it deserves here in Washington, D.C. And because this is the last time
I may ever command the attention of the House and of the national
media, I will make one more plea before I go.
The catastrophe of America's child welfare and foster care systems is
a national outrage, a government failure, and a bipartisan
embarrassment. Congresses, administrations, Governors and State
legislatures of every party and ideological bent for almost 100 years
have thrown abused and neglected children into a vicious cycle of
violence, fear, and instability.
Children who have already been beaten and betrayed by the people that
are supposed to love them the most are routinely tossed from one
temporary placement to another, often 10 to 20 times during their most
formative, vulnerable years.
The system we have created still includes perverse economic
incentives that deny children permanent homes, and in some States still
lacks meaningful child monitoring or even background checks for
perspective foster parents. The courts charged with overseeing each
case are overrun with unrelated duties. So the thankless, unexciting
work of looking after foster kids is just set aside in favor of more
glamorous cases on the docket.
{time} 1730
Bureaucracies layered one on top of another consign these children to
the perdition of government and foster care for years at a time and
with little or no effort made to finding them permanent loving forever
families.
Instead, every few months these children throw their despair and
distrust into a black plastic trash bag along with their few belongings
and head off to the next place, the next letdown. They are abused and
neglected long before they ever reach our abusive and neglectful foster
care system and once in, things often only get worse.
Children are dying, Mr. Speaker, inside and out, and it is our fault.
There is legislation now waiting in the Senate to help expedite
interstate placement of foster children, and within its narrow focus
this bill will do some good on the margins of some cases. I am proud of
what little I have been able to accomplish for these children over the
years, but in truth, I have only moved molehills, not mountains.
So I leave you today not by asking that one take up this cause, but
by asking that all of you do. That you listen to the stories of these
children and
[[Page H3550]]
the stories that they tell and study the broken system we have created
for them and help them, for God's sake, help them.
I ask this of Republicans and Democrats alike, not in the name of
bipartisanship but in the name of principle, which brings me back, Mr.
Speaker, to those memorials and those statues.
The great Americans honored here in bronze and marble, the heroes of
our history and the ghosts of these halls were not made great because
of what they were but because of what they did. George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln have almost nothing in common with Junipero Serra and
Jack Swigert, except the choice they each made, to live, to fight and
even to die in the service of freedom. We honor men with monuments not
because of their greatness or even simply because of their service, but
because of their refusal even in the face of danger or death to ever
compromise the principles they served.
Washington's obelisk still stands watch because democracy will always
need a sentry. Jefferson's words will still ring because liberty will
always need a voice. And Lincoln's left hand still stays clenched
because tyranny will always need an enemy. And we are still here, Mr.
Speaker, as a House and as a Nation because the torch of freedom cannot
carry itself.
Here on this floor, I have caught and thrown spears of every sort.
Over the course of 22 years, I have probably worked with and against
almost everyone in this Chamber at least once. I have scraped and
clawed for every vote, every amendment for every word of every bill
that I believed in my heart would protect human freedom and defend
human dignity. I have done so at all times honorably and honestly, Mr.
Speaker, with God as my witness and history as my judge. And if given
the chance to do it all again, there is only one thing I would change.
I would fight even harder.
This place has given me so many memories, so much life. For 22 years,
I have served the best I knew how. In this House, I have found my
life's calling and my soul's savior. Eight years ago, I witnessed evil
in the murder of two Capitol Hill police officers, one just outside my
office and another, a very dear friend on my protection detail, inside
my office itself. And 5 years ago, I witnessed unparalleled courage as
their surviving comrades stood at their posts inside this building
during the frantic evacuation on 9/11. They are around us every day,
the Capitol Police force.
I tell you, those police officers are Members' and staffs' own
personal army of guardian angels. They are the bravest men and women
serving under this dome, and I offer them now, one more time, my great
respect and admiration because believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, this is
a happy day for me, though admittedly perhaps not as happy as it is for
some of our old friends on the other side of the aisle. But nothing,
not this retirement, not tough losses or old wounds, can detract from
the joy that I feel and the blessings I offer to this House and its
Members.
I say good-bye today, Mr. Speaker, with few regrets, no doubt. And so
with love and gratitude for friends and foe alike, patriots all, I
yield back the floor of our beloved House. And I exit as always, stage
right.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the resignation is
accepted.
There was no objection.
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