Brendan Boyle

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Scott. One of the things that made the 20th century known as the American century was that the United States had the largest middle class in the history of the world--the idea that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you would get a fair wage and good benefits and that your children would be even able to do a little bit better than you have been able to do. It wasn't always that way, though, in the United States. We can thank to a great extent some of the great advances that we had in the 20th century, as far as workers' rights, to that of organized labor. Without labor unions, we would not have the strength of the middle class today. It is no accident that in the post-World War II period, when you saw average incomes rise in the fifties, in the sixties, in the seventies, you saw average incomes rise for workers, sure enough, you saw the percentage of the American workforce unionized also increase. It is also no accident that, as the percentage of the American unionized workforce declined, so, too, did the average wages to the point at which we are today, where we have had a 20-year period in which middle class wages are stagnant, in which the working class has actually fallen behind, and in which--no surprise--we actually have the lowest percentage of the workforce unionized today in over 70 years. Mr. Speaker, let's stand up for the middle class. Let's stand up for our workers. Let us reject this antilabor, anti-union, antiworker measure, and let's start fighting and working for those who are working for America.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, today is the funeral for one of the most influential figures in higher education, the Catholic Church, and domestic and international affairs: Father Theodore Hesburgh. He served as president of the University of Notre Dame for 35 years, in that time taking a small Catholic college and transforming it into a world renowned institution. During his career he was granted 150 honorary degrees, more than any other person. This Congress awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal in the year 2000, becoming the first figure from higher education to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. He was also appointed by both Democratic and Republican Presidents to 16 Presidential commissions, ranging from atomic weapons policy to immigration, to civil rights. Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to be a graduate of the Hesburgh Program in Public Service and hope to be able to live up to that awesome example he set.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 101, had I been present, I would have voted ``no.'' Personal Explanation

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I realize that I haven't been serving in this body very long--only 8 weeks--but today is exactly the kind of day that drives most people nuts about Congress. Even though we all agree--Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, in a more than 2-1 vote; House Democrats and House Republicans--that we need to fund the Department of Homeland Security, yet here we are a few hours before the deadline once again playing around with the security of the United States. Madam Speaker, we have a way to end this. We have the Senate bill in front of us. Let us adopt the bipartisan bill, get the Department of Homeland Security funded, and then we can move on and have this legitimate debate about immigration.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. The gentleman asks a great question. Actually it is the exact opposite of the sort of spirit that was invoked on September 11. I remember seeing the pictures of--I believe it was a spontaneous gathering of both Democratic and Republican Members serving in Congress at that time who came together on the Capitol steps to sing ``God Bless America.'' I think it is a sad commentary that just a decade and a half later that we are here at an incredibly dangerous time, mind you, in some ways actually more dangerous than the days immediately following September 11, and instead of talking about how we can come together in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion, pass this what should be noncontroversial bill to fund our Department of Homeland Security, the fact that we are right here caught up in a partisan fight over this is deeply disappointing and does not at all jibe with the spirit of September 11, and I think the spirit of a generation that was called to serve in the wake of those events.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the previous speaker for exercising tremendous leadership in helping to forge this, the Future Forum. I am proud to join him in being a founding member of this important caucus, one that I hope will go out and touch the lives of many young people throughout the country. In having a conversation with the previous speaker about what brought him to public service and what brought me to public service, I was relaying my personal story, and that happened to involve September 11. I was not one of the heroes by any means, just one of the ordinary Americans working in the private sector straight out of college, attempting to pay off a ton of student loans, and right here in the Washington, D.C., area, just a couple miles from the Pentagon, that bright blue-skied beautiful morning when the world suddenly changed. Mark Twain had said a long time ago that America's two best friends in the world are Miss Atlantic and Mr. Pacific. September 11, 2001, proved that that was no longer the case, that we were not a separate fortress unto ourselves and completely removed from the problems around the world. That was, as the previous speaker mentioned, such an important event in my life and in the lives of so many people in their thirties and younger. As a member of this September 11 generation, I decided right then that I would devote my life to public service. The very next year, actually, on September 11, 2002, I began my graduate program in public policy and embarked on a path that about 14 years later has led here to serving in the Halls of the House of Representatives, attempting to make a difference, solve problems, and do so on a bipartisan basis. I know there are many people on the other side of the aisle, good Republicans, who feel the same way I do; that we can have our legitimate debates, that we can have our debates on public policy, but that when it comes, of all things, to the security of the American people, we need to put the nonsense aside and actually focus on protecting our people. So, Mr. Speaker, when we had come down here and planned to speak about the Future Forum, I had expected that my speech would be about the student loan debt crisis, something that is deeply affecting our generation, a generation that is more indebted than any other in our Nation's history. But, instead, we are here to talk about the fact we are just 3 days away from seeing the Department of Homeland Security completely shut down, seeing the furloughing of 35,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security. On the very same day that information was released, three American citizens attempted to join ISIS, which should be called Daesh, the so- called Islamic State, who truly are evil and would do whatever they could to harm any one of the 310 million of us living in this country.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Mr. Polis. Mr. Swalwell, I would just take issue. My wife, as you may know, is a kindergarten teacher and is teaching that generation, and I think she would take issue with you comparing Members of Congress to the kids she teaches. I think she would say the kids she teaches are much better behaved than many of us here in Congress. But, you know, I do want to just circle back to a point that Mr. Polis made, Mr. Swalwell made, a number of the speakers here tonight have made. This is a false choice. We can have the necessary debate on immigration and immigration reform. There has been a great American tradition going back to the very beginning of, on the one hand, praising the immigrants of yesteryear while simultaneously expressing concern about the immigrants of the present day. That was the case in the 1840s and in the 1880s and in the 1920s, and so it is today. That debate will always be a part of who we are as a nation of immigrants and as a nation of laws. I think that debate needs to happen, and we need to have that here on the floor of the House, the same way they did in the Senate where they passed the bill with 70 votes on a bipartisan basis. So let's get to that debate. Let's not allow this sideshow over holding up a Homeland Security bill that I think all of us agree here, all 435 of us agree that we need. These are real, dangerous threats we face, people who actually thought that al Qaeda was not extreme enough so they wanted to go, instead, join an even more murderous, more barbaric group. As the sign that Mr. Swalwell had up was showing, our enemies are certainly not shutting down their efforts, nor should we. I do want to ask Mr. Swalwell a question--and I think this is important whether you are near the Denver Airport or the Philadelphia Airport or the bay area--and that is: What message do you think it sends to ordinary citizens who are looking to their Congress to just get things done and protect them, the people who aren't necessarily strongly ideological one way or the other, who just want to believe that their government can work, what kind of message do you think we are sending to them this week with this sort of behavior?

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. It would be, in a word, devastating. I am proud of the fact that a part of the district I represent is the city of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Fire Department, one of the largest and oldest in our Nation, also a number of volunteer fire departments in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. There are so many of them around the country. To put them in this position is just deeply unfair. I am also thinking, as I am looking to my friend to the right, fellow freshman, Mr. Moulton, he happens to be from Massachusetts. They right now are devastated with mountains of snow that fortunately most of us in the rest of the country, while we have had snow, not nearly the way they have had it in New England. It is important to note that a number of those who work in FEMA are the officials who receive those grant applications, those emergency applications that so many in Massachusetts and Vermont and other parts of New England and other parts of the country are applying for right now because they have been so overstretched, given this incredible winter that we have had and record breaking in terms of snow. So they can keep on doing the applications and applying for assistance. The only problem is, come Saturday, we shut down the Department of Homeland Security, there will be no one on the other end to receive them. I want to make one final point, and I think that this really strikes at the heart of why we are here and why the Future Forum was created. This is my first year in the House. I might end up serving one term, might end up serving 10, who knows? For anyone who serves here, they all talk about the fact that it goes by extremely quickly. We, right now, are Members of a body with an approval rating of approximately 9 percent. I don't want to dedicate my life to public service in an area that is so poorly regarded by the American people. That is not something I want to do. I don't think that is something that other Members on the other side want to do. It is important to our American democracy that whatever your ideology may be, whatever political positions you may have, we have to show the American people that their institutions of government can work. The American people, the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans, have lost confidence in us, in all of us. I don't think this kind of a political fight, frankly, benefits either side. I think it is only a race to who loses less. We can end this now. Let's do the responsible thing, the mature thing, the right thing. Fund Homeland Security, and then get on to the important debates that we must be having.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak briefly about two aspects of the President's budget that really struck me and a number of my constituents in Philadelphia and Montgomery County as so important. As a new Member, it has been a special honor to be serving in this Chamber, and I have had a few incredibly special moments that all Americans can identify with. One is the swearing-in of a new Congress, something that dates back to right after our First Congress was sworn in right after the U.S. Constitution was signed in Philadelphia. One of those other moments--a constitutionally mandated moment--is when the President comes to Congress to give a report on the state of the Union from time to time, as the Constitution says. Sitting right here in this Chamber and hearing President Obama speak about the state of our Union would be exciting in any year, in any circumstance, but it was especially this year because, for the first time in 6 years--after the deepest and darkest recession in almost a century--we have turned the page. After 6 rather difficult years of digging our way out of a ditch, we now can build a foundation to move forward. With that, there were two areas specifically that the President focused on. One was a universal college education. As the first of my family to go to college, I know I wouldn't have had the opportunities that I have had in life without having a higher education. I needed a combination of scholarships and student loans and every sort of work-study job imaginable to get there, as well as help from parents and even grandparents. That is a story similar to so many working and middle class Americans, but for too many Americans today the cost of a higher education is simply unaffordable. The question is: Do you go without it at all even though two-thirds of the jobs by the end of this decade will require some form of a higher education? Do you just forgo a higher education altogether, or do you take on tens of thousands in student loans and then be burdened with paying back that debt upon graduation? Either scenario is far from ideal. What the President said--and I completely agree--is let's make 2 years of community college universal and free in this country. Now, that may be unthinkable today. 100 years ago, it was unthinkable that a free, fully funded high school education would be universal. Yet, for us, that is the reality today. It would be unthinkable for Americans of my age and even of an older age to imagine a time in which high school was not universal. Let's get there with 2 years of a college education. The second area the President focused on was the child care tax credit. For so many working families and young families, affording child care is simply unaffordable. We have an opportunity through this budget to change that, to build on the successes of the last 6 years and to finally prepare to make this century the second American Century. Ensuring that we have good, high-quality, affordable child care is vital to this middle class. The reason the last century was the American Century was that we had the largest and most productive middle class in the world. Access to higher education and access to child care are two necessary ingredients in making sure we have a strong and vibrant middle class in the 21st century.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank the Republican majority. As a new Member, I haven't had the opportunity to speak on this issue on the House floor or vote on it. When I saw that the previous Congress had voted 55 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, I was a little concerned that I would miss all the fun. So I am very happy that we now have a 56th vote on this issue, and it gives me an opportunity to say what a strong supporter I am of the Affordable Care Act. This has worked. More than 10 million Americans have health insurance today that otherwise would not have it. More than 3 million children have been able to stay on their parents' plan who otherwise would not have had health insurance. And another 3 million, on top of that, have extra protections through State-affiliated agencies, such as CHIP, that would not have it today if not for the Affordable Care Act. Now, with the rate of the uninsured at its lowest percentage in American history, you would think that with this success that maybe the downside would be that health care costs would have gone through the roof. In fact, quite the opposite has happened. We have just had a year in which health care costs rose by the lowest rate in 50 years--and this is something that all Americans can celebrate, Democrats and Republicans. So, Mr. Speaker, for the 56th time, this Congress will attempt to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act. It is a mistake. I will join my colleagues in voting against it. I would say sincerely to Members on the other side, if there are those who are willing to look openly at this issue and say, yes, it has largely worked but let's address those areas that could do better, I think you will find those, particularly new Members on this side of the aisle, who are open-minded toward that and want to address areas that can be improved. Look at all the times that Medicare has been improved since its initial passage in 1965.

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be here and speak on the House floor for the first time. I want to thank my constituents, the 13th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Montgomery County, for giving me this unique opportunity. Mr. Speaker, I am here to speak about an issue that affects millions of Americans in the middle class, myself included--the student loan debt crisis. While I applaud President Obama's announcement of the America's College Promise proposal, which would provide 2 years of community college to responsible students, we do need to make expansion of higher education more enduring through the weight of legislative action. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has become the largest form of consumer debt in the United States other than mortgages. The financial load on America's students has more than tripled over the past decade to well over $1 trillion. The formidable costs that aspiring students face as they consider college or trade school poses an enormous obstacle to their personal and professional development. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to many other occasions to speak about this issue, as we clearly have to deal with it as a nation and come together.