Jesse Jackson

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the nonviolent movement for social change in Iran. I have always maintained that the Middle East is in need of a nonviolent movement for social change, not only in Iran but also in the Gaza Strip, a nonviolent movement in Syria, a nonviolent movement for social change. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ``Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.'' Today we are not only supporting democracy in Iran, we are also supporting the nonviolent thrust for democracy in Iran, so the conflicts may be settled, Mr. Speaker, without resulting to weapons, to violence and conflict, not only within that country, but among nations. So, today, Mr. Speaker, we rise today to support the proponents of the nonviolent movement.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise with my friend from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) to engage in a colloquy with the distinguished chairwoman of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee. Madam Chairwoman, as you know, Mr. Wamp and I worked with you to name the main hall in the Capitol Visitor Center Emancipation Hall. However, we feel the naming of Emancipation Hall needs context and want to work with you, the House Administration Committee, and the Senate Rules Committee to do this. I yield to Mr. Wamp.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. I thank the chairwoman, and while this may not necessarily be part of a colloquy, I would like the gentlewoman to yield me an additional 30 seconds, if she wouldn't mind.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. I just wanted to say that on behalf of every Member of this institution, we owe a debt of gratitude to the distinguished chairwoman and the ranking member for their extraordinary efforts in wrapping their arms around the Capital Visitor Center, which, since the inauguration of the President and since its opening, has served as a beaming moment of pride for every Member that brings their constituents through that enormous visitor center. And while it started out, Madam Speaker, as somewhat of a controversial project, the chairwoman and the ranking member have done an extraordinary job on behalf of this institution and all Members are grateful. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Last night, Mr. Speaker, I tried to explain this horrific event to my daughter when she asked me why. I tried to tell her that African Americans fought for our country in World War II, and a Holocaust survivor once said and told the story of how survivors of the Holocaust knew they had been freed when African Americans showed up, knowing full well, because of their race, that they could not be Nazis even if some African Americans had to fight under a different flag. African Americans and Jewish Americans banded together in many of our Nation's great campaigns for social justice. Martin Luther King, Jr., used to often quote Rabbi Abraham Heschel. Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney--two Jews and a black killed for registering people to vote in Mississippi. Stephen Tyrone Johns lost his life defending visitors at a Holocaust Museum in the hands of a white supremacist. As I believe President Lincoln would paraphrase: Their sacrifice as martyrs is far above our own ability to add or detract. I would hope in this moment that we would recognize that the ties of human decency and dignity that bind us and the blood that unites us are stronger than the hatred and the demagoguery and the acts of violence that divide us. It is my sincere hope, Mr. Speaker, that we might find some shining moment in recognizing that we have more in common in working together than we do in fighting and in being apart.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2410. I want to thank Chairman Berman for including H.R. 2828, a bill that Congressman Blunt and I cosponsored in the last Congress that passed the House 409-12, in the manager's amendment. H.R. 2828 compensates relatives of U.S. citizens killed in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. On August 7, 1998, al Qaeda truck bombs exploded simultaneously at the embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. The embassy bombing in Nairobi killed 12 Americans serving the American people. They were: Sergeant Nathan Aliganga; Consul General Julian Bartley and his son, Jay Bartley; Jean Rose Dalizu; Molly Huckaby Hardy; Staff Sergeant Kenneth Hobson II; Prabhi Kavaler; Arlene Kirk; Dr. Louise Martin; Michelle O'Connor; Master Sergeant Sherry Lynn Olds; and Tom Shah. H.R. 2828, therefore H.R. 2410, remembers their sacrifice and provides restitution to the loved ones they left behind. Mr. Chairman, this provision is the very least that a grateful nation can do. I urge an ``aye'' vote on H.R. 2410, and I want to thank Chairman Berman, Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen, and Mr. Blunt for their support.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise today to express my condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of one of my most prestigious constituents, from Country Club Hills, Ms. Koko Taylor the ``Queen of the Blues''. Ms. Taylor passed away yesterday afternoon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. For more than 40 years, Koko Taylor's powerhouse vocals have thrilled audiences, from little bars in Chicago's South Side to giant international festivals. Ms. Taylor has been described by Rolling Stone as ``the great female blues singer of her generation.'' She's been in movies, on television, on radio and in print all over the world and has received just about every award the blues world has to offer, including 29 Blues Music Awards, and a Grammy Award in 1984. I personally had the privilege of presenting the National Endowment of the Arts National Fellowship Award to Ms. Taylor in 2004. Undoubtedly, Ms. Taylor's contributions to the music world have been innumerable. I am deeply saddened by her passing and I rise today to honor her many achievements and offer my condolences to her family, friends, and fans across the country.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, this commission has worked for a few years now to help pay homage to commemorate the life of, from my perspective, the most extraordinary American who ever lived: Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was our 16th President who, today, would have been 200 years old. This President's impact on the lives of every American has been told in more books than any book written on any single figure in human history. I have been honored and privileged by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve as the Democratic representative on the extraordinary commission that has worked tirelessly to pay, globally, the kind of homage to the 16th President that President Abraham Lincoln deserves. I got up early this morning and went to a dedication ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial. And there, Mr. Speaker, I had this awesome sense of the impact, in my own small way, that the 16th President had on his generation of Americans. To look at that extraordinary temple, to see the figure, the enormous figure of Abraham Lincoln recessed into the temple with a constant vigilance over our Republic, even in death, the presence of Abraham Lincoln is felt and it is awe inspiring. To see President Lincoln looking out over the National Mall, looking out over the activities of the Congress of the United States, gives him a sense of divine presence in the life of our democracy. In fact, he becomes, and is, the most pre-eminent figure in American history. And as you sit there looking at the enormity of the temple, it's not that Lincoln is looking over us; it's also that we look to Lincoln for guidance. In other words, because Mr. Lincoln offered the last full measure of his devotion, saved the Union and saved our country, President Abraham Lincoln has earned the trust of the American people. And since his Presidency, very few Presidents of the United States have not ventured in deep and reflective thought upon the single proposition of what is it that Mr. Lincoln would have me do. Members of Congress and others who have entered into public life throughout this country, they look to the example of Lincoln knowing that he gave the last full measure of his devotion to keep this country together, to guarantee for us the future; that even as our newest President, President Barack Obama, said today in the Capitol Rotunda, he said, ``It seems that the problems that we have as Americans are small compared to the problems that Mr. Lincoln dealt with. And yet, Mr. Lincoln persevered.'' Sure. We're arguing about to vote for the stimulus or to not vote for the stimulus, to support the President's agenda or to not support the President's agenda, to help our economy, and from some others' perspective to not help our economy. But the central issues that we deal with, President Barack Obama said are small by comparison to the issues that Lincoln dealt with. We owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude. There have been some questions raised during the Lincoln bicentennial about whether or not Abraham Lincoln should be credited with freeing the slaves. And I came to the floor tonight, Mr. Speaker, to address three central issues. The first part of my presentation is to answer the question, Did Lincoln free the slaves. The second part of my presentation tonight, Mr. Speaker, is to answer the question, What is it that Lincoln saw. And it's in that second part of the presentation that we will venture back through American history to understand the complex issues that Abraham Lincoln had to deal with--and I apologize for the limitations upon my time to answer all of those questions. And I hope tonight, Mr. Speaker, to close on the future that Abraham Lincoln guaranteed for all of us. I hope to accomplish this in the allotted time frame. Interpreting Lincoln's life and work is extremely important. It's important to the past, it's important to the present, and it's important to the future. It's why I've come here tonight to lay before the House of Representatives my understanding of that interpretation. Recently, there have been questions raised as to whether Lincoln should be credited with freeing the slaves. The argument goes, given some of Lincoln's history, his racial attitudes and statements, his moderate views on the subject, his noninterference with slavery where it already existed, his once proposed solution of colonization, his gradualist approach to ending the institution, his hesitancy with respect to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and using colored troops in the war, his late conversion to limited voting rights for blacks and more, why should Abraham Lincoln be credited with freeing the slaves? Some have even argued that it was the various actions taken by the slaves, including the power given to the Union cause as a result of the moral case for overturning slavery, plus the actual military role of working and fighting in the Union campaigns that actually freed the slaves. I've heard the arguments. I've read the arguments of our Nation's most profound historians who make this case. By forcing the Emancipation Proclamation issue on to the agenda, first of military officers, then of the Congress of the United States-- which we all know then and now know to be reluctant--and finally of Lincoln, it was their actions, the actions of the slaves themselves that led to their freedom. I think when looking at this argument--clearly just as the Congress and President Lyndon Johnson would not have been able to pass and sign the civil rights and social legislation of the 1960s apart from a modern civil and human rights movement--so, too, the military commanders, the Congress, and Lincoln would not have been able to achieve what they did without the agitation and the movement of the slaves and their allies. There is no doubt about that. On the other hand, the slaves would not have become freed men apart from what these leaders did. Because historical interpretation has played up the role of white male leaders while playing down the role of mass movements and leaders of color and women, our understanding of history has been skewed. Some of the current put-down of traditional historical interpretation is legitimate rejection and reaction to this past, limited, and distorted understanding and interpretation of our history. The search now, Mr. Speaker, it seems to me, should be for a more balanced interpretation, which includes striving to put many forces and multiple players in proper balance and perspective. That, I think, is what is at issue with regard to the question did Lincoln free the slaves. To answer this question, James McPherson says in ``Drawn with the Sword,'' that we must first ask what was the essential condition, the one thing without which it would not have happened? And the clear answer, the clear answer to the essential condition, the one thing without which it would not have happened, is the war. Slavery had existed for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. It was more deeply entrenched in the South than ever. And every effort at self- emancipation--and there were plenty--had failed. He said, ``Without the civil war, there would have been no Confiscation Act, no Emancipation Proclamation, no 13th amendment to the Constitution, not to mention a 14th and a 15th amendment, and almost certainly no end of slavery for several more decades, at least.'' Fifteen Presidents before Abraham Lincoln had failed to sustain all of these forces to bring the politics of a peculiar institution to a moral head in our Nation. As to the first question, what brought on the war, there are two interrelated answers. What brought on the war was slavery. What triggered the war was disunion over the issue of slavery. Disunion resulted because initially 7, and ultimately 11, Southern States saw Lincoln as an anti-slavery advocate and candidate, running in an anti-slavery party on an anti-slavery platform who would be an anti-slavery President. Rather than abide such a black President and black Republican party, Southern States, led by the Democratic Party, severed their ties to the Union. Through secession, which Lincoln and the Union refused to accept, they went to war over preserving the Union. While Lincoln was willing to allow slavery to stand where it stood from 1854 when he reentered politics onward, Lincoln never wavered or compromised on one central issue, one central issue, the extension of slavery into the territories. And while gradual in his approach, Lincoln and the slave States of the South knew this would eventually mean the end of slavery. It was Lincoln who brought out and sustained all of these factors. Thus, while Lincoln's primary emphasis throughout was on saving the Union, the result of saving the Union was emancipation for the slaves. If the Union had not been preserved, slavery would not have been ended and may have even been strengthened. In fact, the first 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the very first one, passed the Congress of the United States, and only the secession of States from the Union kept that 13th amendment from being added to the Constitution. It was the 13th amendment that would have allowed slavery to exist in all States and all territories. Lincoln strategically understood that the Union was a common ground issue. It wasn't about black. It wasn't about white. It wasn't about slavery versus non-slavery. Lincoln said, Whatever your position is on the question of slavery, no State has the right to leave the Union. The Union became the rallying cry, the common ground issue around which he could rally the American people. Some of us want the American people rallied around whatever we want them rallied around, but from the perspective of a President, particularly Abraham Lincoln, keeping the country together was central. Today, we have agreements and disagreements with President Barack Obama, but President Barack Obama sees something that we don't see, unprecedented economic catastrophe. And he's driven by saving our country for future generations, not by tax cuts versus spending or spending versus tax cuts, but a way to work our way out of the economic condition that we find ourselves in. And so the language that the President uses is about saving all of us. Look at Lincoln in perspective. By holding the coalition together around the issue of the Union, enough Unionists eventually saw the connection between the two issues that he could ease into emancipation in the middle of the war when it gave the North a huge boost. Even when Lincoln believed he was going to lose the presidency in August of 1864 he said, There have been men who proposed to me to return to slavery the black warriors who had fought for the Union. I should be damned in time and eternity for doing so. The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will. In effect, our 16th President was saying that he would rather be right than President, and as matters turned out, he was both right and President. Clearly, Mr. Speaker, many slaves did self-emancipate themselves through the Underground Railroad before the war and throughout and even during the war, but even so, this is not the same as bringing an end to the peculiar institution of slavery, which only the Civil War and Lincoln's leadership did. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, by pronouncing slavery a moral evil that must come to an end and then winning the Presidency of the United States in 1860, provoking the South to secede by refusing to compromise on the issue of slavery's expansion, or on Fort Sumter, by careful leadership and timing that kept a fragile Unionist coalition together in the first year of the war and committed it to emancipation in the second, and by refusing to compromise this policy once he had adopted it, and by prosecuting the war to unconditional victory as Commander in Chief of an Army of liberation, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. All of these factors came together in President Abraham Lincoln. Now, did he sign the Emancipation Proclamation? Of course he did. Was it a political act? Of course, it may have been. In 1862, President Lincoln had Northern free States that were committed to staying in the Union where slavery was already illegal. He had border States all around the Nation's capital where slavery was legal, but these border States agreed, from their perspective, that while they felt they had the right to maintain slavery, they did not believe the South had the right to leave the Union. And so Lincoln had to balance the politics of Members of Congress who were running in mid-term election saying, you know, I'm for keeping slavery alive in Maryland, but I also believe that our State needs to stay in the Union. Now, if I catch Mr. Lincoln saying something like this is about slavery, then I'm going to say we need to join the South because this is about our property. Lincoln had to balance the politics of Members of Congress and balance the politics of Senators and balance the politics of Governors who were threatening to join the Confederacy but chose to stay in the Union because they agreed with Abraham Lincoln's position that the South did not have the right to secede. Other States in the South, before he was even sworn in as President, had left the Union, and yet Abraham Lincoln from the outset pronounced slavery a moral evil that must come to an end. And then winning the Presidency in 1860, some of us believe that slavery was a moral end at that time, and it was a moral disgrace at that time, but it's one thing to advocate for it. It's another thing to advocate for the slavery being a moral inconsistency and immoral and wrong and run for President on that position. He pronounced slavery a moral evil that must come to end, and he won the Presidency, and because he pronounced it and because he won, the South seceded. And by refusing to compromise on the issue of slavery's expansion into the western territory, which would have brought more pro-Confederate congressmen to the Congress and more Confederate pro-States rights Senators to the United States Senate, the President of the United States refused to compromise. No, not in the western States, you do not have the right the carry the institution into the Western States or on Fort Sumter. And by careful leadership and timing that kept a fragile Unionist coalition together in the first year of the war, and committed it to emancipation in the second, by refusing to compromise this policy once he had adopted it and by prosecuting the war to an unconditional victory as Commander in Chief of an Army of liberation, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Fifteen Presidents before him, Mr. Speaker, did not do that. And so, Mr. Speaker, I would like to now turn my attention to what Lincoln saw, having at least in my own mind settled the question that the 16th President was divinely inspired and helped define a brand new and very different future for America. So I think it most appropriate, Mr. Speaker, to start with the question: What did Lincoln see? What did Abraham Lincoln see? Well, we know that the 16th President of the United States was assassinated in 1865, and given the depth of his writings, the speeches that he delivered and thousands of books written by Lincoln historians, Lincoln, who passed in 1865 by assassination, understood all of American history up until this point, which means Abraham Lincoln clearly understood that just as we commemorated and memorialized the 19 Africans who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, Abraham Lincoln saw that. Those 19 Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, 157 years before the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln understood that on July 4, 1776, when our Founding Fathers and the Founding Fathers of this Republic issued the magnificent words that Martin Luther King called the magnificent words of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, that this document, this question of equality, this question of the idea that all men and women are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I heard a Presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, this morning deliver an oration at the commemoration celebration in the Rotunda, and she said that as President Abraham Lincoln was riding the train from Illinois through Pennsylvania, he stopped in the hall where the Declaration of Independence had been written. And when he walked out of the hall, a number of people in the crowd began chanting as the 16th President was heading to his inauguration, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln, would you please give a speech. And according to Doris Kearns Goodwin, as best my recollection as I can remember, she said this morning that Mr. Lincoln walked out of the Liberty Hall and said: I've often pondered what the men who were in this room thinking when they issued the Declaration of Independence. I've often pondered what was on their mind when they advanced the idea that all men are created equal. I've often thought about what they were thinking and how I would imagine how divinely inspired they were to utter such immortal words on that occasion. And yet, by 1787, when our Constitution is written, the biggest sticking point, even while the Founding Fathers had declared in the Declaration of Independence, in that Constitutional Convention was a sticking point about how slaves should be counted for the purposes of representation. In 1776, all men are created equal to the date in 1787 about how human beings should be treated is a significant departure from the founding principle of this Nation. The other big debate at the Constitutional Convention, which Abraham Lincoln clearly understood, was the debate between big States versus small States and Northern States versus Southern States. He understood the questions of how Senators are elected by Representatives. At that time, there was no direct election of United States Senators, which laid the foundation for the Lincoln-Douglass debate as they traveled across the State of Illinois trying to elect a very different State House that might elect Abraham Lincoln to the United States Senate. He understood this question of the electoral college and how weighted votes could ultimately determine the President of the United States, not by direct election or by popular vote. He had to have thought about all men being created equal when he looked at the Constitution and its ratification in 1788 and the amendments to the Constitution in 1791, known as the Bill of Rights, and to watch the advocates of States' rights argue for a 10th amendment to the Constitution creating dual federalism. Two systems. One system where the Constitution spoke specifically to powers relegated to the Federal Government. And those powers not relegated to the Federal Government would somehow remain in the purview of the States. President Abraham Lincoln recognized that this amendment, this question of the 10th amendment, had a lot of moral ambiguity, because if the Constitution of the United States is silent on a question, it allows the States themselves to assume responsibility for the questions not raised in the United States Constitution, including moral questions. While Abraham Lincoln may have never talked about it, he had to recognize that the 10th amendment to the Constitution, however appropriate--I am not anti States' rights. It has its appropriate place in American life. But Abraham Lincoln had to know that on the question of human rights, States' rights presented a profound problem. A dual system. If all men are created equal in our Declaration of Independence, then States cannot treat women differently. If all men are created equal, then some States can't have an institution, peculiar institution of slavery, while other States do not allow slavery. In contemporary times, some States cannot be advancing health care for all children and some States have no children's health care program at all. Separate and unequal. Some States can't be spending more per capita on public education for America's children while other States either can or don't, or don't have the wherewithal or don't have the political wherewithal to advance a higher quality education or an equal high-quality education for all Americans. Lincoln understood that the advocates of the 10th amendment presented a profound problem for the future of America. Lincoln, in 1865, looking back on his life, looking back on American history, understood the Nation's oldest political party was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792. The Democratic party. Abraham Lincoln understood that Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, was one of the Nation's great advocates for local control and States' rights, who happened to also own slaves. Abraham Lincoln understood that that generation of Americans saw themselves identified with their States first and not as Americans. I'm the gentleman from Virginia; I'm the gentleman from Illinois; I'm the gentleman from Georgia; I'm the gentleman or the gentlelady from. They saw themselves identified with their States first and not with our flag. The primary party that made the arguments for local control and States' rights, the primary defender of the peculiar institution of slavery, the Democratic Party. Between 1794 and 1823, the Federalist Party came into existence. And, during that period, the Missouri Compromise. Abraham Lincoln saw the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise was an agreement passed in 1820 between pro-slavery and antislavery factions in the United States Congress. Statuary Hall is where this debate took place involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 3630, except within the boundaries of the proposed State of Missouri. Prior to the agreement, the U.S. House of Representatives had refused to except the compromise, and a conference committee was appointed. The United States Senate refused to concur in the amendment, and the whole measure was lost. These disputes involved the competition between southern and northern States for power in Congress and for control over the future territories. There were also different factions emerging as the Democratic- Republican Party began to lose its coherence. In a letter, April 21, to John Holmes, Thomas Jefferson wrote that, ``The division of the country created by the compromise line would eventually lead to the destruction of the Union.'' This is April 21, 1820. And I quote, ``But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence, a geographical line coinciding with the marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark deeper and deeper.'' The Missouri compromise between northern and southern Congressmen. Abraham Lincoln in 1865 had to have understood the consequences of Jefferson's thinking in that compromise. In 1834, another party comes into existence. The Whig Party. And though the Federalist Party has now expired, we are now left with Democratic Party and Whig Party between 1834 and 1856. The most notable pieces of legislation that advanced through this body were the California Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The California Act. The Compromise of 1850, which Abraham Lincoln had to have understood, was a series of bills from Congress aimed at resolving the territorial and slavery controversies arising out of the Mexican-American War. There were five of these such laws. California was admitted as a free State. Texas received compensation for relinquishing claims to land west of the Rio Grande, what is now New Mexico. The territory of New Mexico, Arizona, and portions of southern Nevada was organized without any specific prohibition of slavery. The slave trade, but not slavery itself, was terminated in the District of Columbia, and the stringent fugitive slave laws were passed, requiring all citizens to assist in the return of a runaway slave, regardless of the legality of slavery in the specific States. I want to talk about that for a moment, the fugitive slave laws. Not really to make anyone feel bad about this very unique and special moment in American history, Mr. Speaker, but to show you us how the government functioned during this period. Here we had a government, a central government, that was unwilling to end the peculiar institution of slavery, relegating through most of its arguments the power over slavery to the States. But, if one slave escaped from slavery, the Congress of the United States would pass a law allowing anyone in the country to return that slave back to the State from which it escaped. Now this is an amazing expansion of Federal power over the lives of one individual. Imagine that. A Federal Government with the power, when someone escapes from slavery to freedom, to pass a law to take that one person who made it to Massachusetts, the one person who made it to freedom, the one person who got out of slavery by his own admonition and his own efforts, the Federal Government hunted him down and sent him back to slavery. Now that's an amazing amount of Federal power over the life of one individual. I'd like to put the reverse on that. I'd like to imagine a little differently. I'd like to see the Federal Government having the power to go into a community on the south side of Chicago and give one person health care. And I don't want to hear from the other side or even from some Democrats that there's never been a moment in the Federal Government's history where it's not been able to have the power over a single individual. That's just not true. It hauled a slave to slavery. Now why can't it provide, in a positive sense, health care for someone who doesn't have insurance? Why someone is going to tell me that's not a Federal responsibility, it's not a State responsibility, it's a private sector responsibility. That's old, tired argument. At one moment in American history, the Federal Government had the power over one individual's life who escaped to freedom. Now why can't the Federal Government have the power to find one person in a coal mine in West Virginia and give them a better job? And who are we to be making the argument that we can't imagine a Federal Government that doesn't have that? That's just too much power. Too much power to give a man a job? To provide a higher quality of life for an American from a government of, for, and by the people? Well, there has been a moment in American history where the Federal Government had the power to do something similar but, however, in a negative way. Rather than helping someone get to freedom, it returned someone back to slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act. Abraham Lincoln had to have seen it. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries. Now, how about this? The Kansas-Nebraska Act. Talking about moral leadership. Look at what Congress did. We passed legislation that said, We don't want to deal with it here in Washington any more. We're going to turn this fight over to the people. You determine for yourself how you're going to handle the moral issues of our day. We're not going to show any national leadership. When we create these States, we're going to create a movement, the Ruffians and everyone else who can run to the west. If you get to the State before someone else, you can set up a free State or you can set up a slave State. What kind of leadership is that? Well, that actually happened. And Abraham Lincoln saw it. Abraham Lincoln saw the Dred Scott decision. That decision, Dred Scott versus Sanford, by the United States Supreme Court, that rules that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves, were not legal persons and could never be citizens of the United States. It also held that slavery, which had been illegal in some States, was now legal everywhere. Justice Taney, in this building, in this building where the Old Supreme Court Chambers are still preserved, ruled in this building that slavery was legal everywhere. Lincoln, even while constructing the Capitol during the Civil War, fully understood that Members of Congress knew the Dred Scott decision about the same time the Dred Scott decision was being made because Justice Taney worked in the building. And that Congress, specifically in the Dred Scott decision, had acted beyond the boundaries of the Constitution. That is, if the Congress of the United States--and this is important for contemporary times--seeks to provide health care for all Americans, or it seeks to expand its authority in these difficult economic times, Justice Tawney at that time could have easily argued that Congress is acting beyond the boundaries of the Constitution. Of course, we have gone through several and subsequent amendments to the Constitution that have expanded Congress's role in these affairs. Interestingly enough, I want to say something kind about Justice Taney. Justice Taney was a nationalist who rendered decisions that expanded our Nation's railroads. He rendered decisions that helped establish a single currency as opposed to the bartering system of just trading wears, but the establishment of a national infrastructure. Justice Taney, actually, one of our court's most profound jurists towards the idea of building a more perfect union for all Americans, until it came to the decisions of race. And, on decisions of race, Justice Taney was a product of his time. The Dred Scott decision remains one of the most infamous and dreaded decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court. Lincoln, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates--remember, we're not discussing 1860, we're not discussing 1861. In 1858, Lincoln had heard all of these arguments and he had watched Senator Stephen Douglas play a role in the Kansas- Nebraska debate. He had watched these guys play roles in California. And he is questioning what it is about Members of Congress in these discussions that would lead to the suggestion that Congress did not have a role and that the Federal Government did not have a role in stopping the expansion of slavery into the western States. Lincoln would obviously not be elected to the United States Senate. But in 1854, before the Lincoln-Douglas debates by about 4 years, a little known party would come into existence, a little known antislavery party called the Republican Party in Ripon, Wisconsin. By 1860, Abraham Lincoln would be elected the Nation's first Republican President. Before he can even be sworn in as President of the United States, southern States would begin leaving the union because he would be perceived as an antislavery candidate who ran on an antislavery ticket who was committed to the idea that all men are created equal. And so, Mr. Speaker, this is what Lincoln saw. Between 1860 when he was elected President and 1865, we could go through the details of the American Civil War, but I purge the timeline to make this point. Abraham Lincoln sustains important forces in our Nation's public life to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He pronounced slavery a moral evil that must come to an end. And then he ran for President. And he won. And because he won, States who believed in the 10th amendment and the rights of States to make judgments about their internal affairs would leave the union, and then he would press the question, provoking the South to secede by refusing to compromise on the expansion of slavery and filling Congress with even more pro-slavery Congressmen. And because the South knew that Abraham Lincoln was expanding States into the western territories, he just didn't want them to be pro- slavery States, that eventually, through his gradual approach, more Members of Congress would come here and Members of Congress who had been brought into the union, one free and one slave, would now confront a majority in Congress of people who understood the immoral nature of the peculiar institution. So this question of States rights has dominated our Nation's history until Abraham Lincoln gave us a sense of national union. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. I thank the Speaker. Toward that national union, around July 4, 1863, a couple of extraordinary events converge at a battlefield not far from here in Gettysburg and in Vicksburg in the South. Tens of thousands of Americans, both North and South, have lost their lives. And yet Abraham Lincoln understood that while some States were in the union because they believed in union, other States remained border States but believed in union and fundamentally believed that the southern States, our countrymen, did not have the right to secede from the union, he offered a redemptive tone to redefine our national existence. Look at what Abraham Lincoln says on November 19, 1863, in a eulogy in a battlefield not far from here, with the dead still unburied, with thousands of men still unburied and with the stench having been smelled for miles from that battlefield and that battle on July 4. He says: ``Four score and seven years ago--at that eulogy--our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that we are highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.'' Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg eulogy, better known as the Gettysburg Address, in 3\1/2\ minutes. He redefined July 4. Watch this, Mr. Speaker. On July 4, 1776, African Americans found themselves in a position of chattel slavery. And women could not vote. On July 4, 1854, I believe it was, Frederick Douglass delivered an oration talking about how hypocritical the nation's independence celebration was given that African Americans found themselves in a position of chattel slavery. By July 4, 1863, Abraham Lincoln is saying that the men who died in this battlefield have paid a price higher than any of us can ever add or detract, but the future belongs to us. By July 4, 2007, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were locked in an unprecedented campaign for President of the United States, a beneficiary of the events on July 4, 1863. By July 4, 2008, Barack Obama would be the presumptive Democratic nominee of the Democratic Party, the very party that was responsible for States rights and localism and denying people of color their basic freedoms, including the right to vote. And by July 4, 2009, he's the 44th President of the United States. Here's what Abraham Lincoln saw. He saw all the other July 4ths, all those Americans who were stuck in time and could not move on. That's part of what Lincoln saw. And so in the Gettysburg Address, he decided to give all of us a brand new July 4. And so July 4, 2007, we saw Hillary and Barack running. And July 4, 2008, we saw President Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee. And by July 4, 2009, he's the 44th President of the United States. And by July 4, some date in the future, your child will be President or could be President of the United States. And by July 4, some distant future date, all Americans could have health care. And by July 4, some distant future date, all Americans could have decent, safe and affordable housing. And by July 4, we're not just known by our States, but we will be known as Americans. That's what makes Abraham Lincoln the greatest American. That's why we commemorate his 200th birthday, because the gift that Abraham Lincoln gave us, he keeps giving us. It just never goes away. That the America that we once were is not the America that we are. And it's certainly not the America that we will be. Oh, yes, there are some efforts at regression. As President Obama says, some of the old, tired arguments that we've heard over and over and over again. Some of the old adherents to dogma. Some of us don't even know why we're Republicans. Some of us don't even know why we're Democrats. We're just out of habit up here speaking and doing things. Some of us. Others of us are clear on the history and clear on the ideologies--in both parties. And yet there is a part of us, Mr. Speaker, that wants to build a more perfect union for all Americans, to move beyond the past, to forge a new future, where we turn to each other and not on each other, and bring about change for everybody. That somehow we rise together and we fall together, that who cares what color the hand is that reaches into the hole to pull you out of the hole that you find yourself in, as long as someone extends a hand. This, I believe, Mr. Speaker, is the spirit of our 16th President. It makes him the greatest American, as he sits at one end of the national mall recessed into a temple, forever enshrined in the Nation's memory, as someone who loved his country so much that he would carefully use the power of the Commander in Chief, the great powers of his office, to bring wayward States back into the union and at the conclusion of the war to treat his countrymen as countrymen again. Sure, from the perspective of African Americans and as an African American, I have a lot of misgivings about how national reconciliation during that period was handled. If the northerners fought the war to save the union, they never had to acknowledge the underlying moral cause of the war--slavery. So it's not about freeing African Americans. And many northerners fought the war to save the union, not to free the slaves. Southerners, many of them argue they weren't fighting to preserve the institution of slavery, they were protecting their way of life down here, that big government doesn't have a right to come down here and tell us what to do, a very different principle. And so at the end of the war, the northerners can forgive the southerners because, well, we've settled it on a battlefield. Except the central issue for which the war is fought, the issue of slavery from a northern perspective and the issue of slavery from the southern perspective, the people for whom the war is being fought over are never brought into the reconciliation: When are we going to get the right to vote? When are we going to get housing? When are we going to get equality? When are we going to help the nation live up to the true meaning of its creed? And that process would begin immediately after the Civil War during reconstruction--I wish the House of Representatives would let me line up the rest of my charts--through reconstruction and then through Jim Crow and the struggle by the NAACP which the House of Representatives passed legislation commemorating the 100 years of their existence because many of the promises of reconstruction had never come to fruition for all Americans and women were still struggling for equality in our country beyond the war. But it was Abraham Lincoln who ordained the human rights movements that would allow us to come to Washington, Mr. Speaker, and begin to argue our case that this nation must live up to the truest and the highest means by which it was founded. And so there sits Abraham Lincoln, and just a few steps down from Abraham Lincoln would stand Martin Luther King in August of 1963. ``Today we stand in the shadow of a man who, 100 years ago, set the slaves free,'' that 100 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr., would say, 100 years later, that is 1963, we would still find ourselves trapped in segregation with Governors using words like ``interposition'' and ``nullification,'' that if Congress passes a law to extend people's civil rights or if the Supreme Court would render a decision that might expand people's human rights in 1963, it is hard to imagine that we still had Governors using words like ``interposition'' and ``nullification'' meaning that their State had the right to ignore a decision of Congress or a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. Because in 1963, some of our leadership was showing more adherence to their State than they were to that Union, to that Flag, to that one country for which those men in a battlefield in Gettysburg had already paid the price for us not to have to revisit again. We already paid the price that we are going to be one Nation, not multiple nations, not 50 different States, all separate and all unequal. Oh, the problems for President Obama are even more complex today. Because our system is still separate and unequal. Yes, we have a Federal system. And yes, we have respect for our State system. Some States are in surplus. Some are in deficit spending. Most are in deficit spending. And in deficit spending, it is very difficult to provide a high quality education for every single child in every single county. Even before the economy was in the condition that it was in, we had problems. And the problems now are only more exacerbated by the fact, any adherence to dogma that doesn't allow the Federal Government and the States to work cooperatively to bring relief to the American people should be seen as problematic by any side of the aisle. Why are we adhering to old dogma about what the States can do and about what the Federal Government isn't supposed to do? The American people at this hour are asking of us to do something for them. But the fact that President Barack Obama can even say that our problems today are small by comparison to the problems that Mr. Lincoln confronted is a statement about the magnitude of the problems that Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President, confronted. And so, Mr. Speaker, even as we come to the floor and I stand here as the 91st African American to ever have the privilege of serving in a Congress where more than 12,000 people have served, and I'm just the 91st, I owe my service in the Congress to the unsung heroes, to the men and women, the sheroes and the heroes, who fought to advance the idea that all men are created equal, to Medgar Evers and Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, two Jews and a black, to Viola Liuzzo, to those martyrs, to those champions of equality and equal rights. But all of us owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the 16th President who allowed our generation and those succeeding generations to fight for what is right, to have the right to agree to agree and agree to disagree in the context of our magnificent Republic. And so, Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, on the 200th anniversary of the greatest American who ever lived, and on behalf of the American people, we say thank you. And we say happy birthday. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the economic stimulus but also to advance the idea of a new paradigm for all Americans in terms of public-private cooperation in advancing economic opportunities for all Americans. It is difficult when you listen to my esteemed colleagues on the other side of the aisle whose arguments seem to rehash the past as the American people at this hour find themselves fearful, in some contexts desperate, as our economy has taken an unprecedented turn for the worse. Yet the arguments of rehashed tax cuts and tax breaks for too few Americans and for too few businesses have brought us to this very unique moment in American history. The President of the United States, President Barack Obama, essentially has said to us that the arguments that we have heard have taken us down this road over and over and over again. Yet we are looking at unprecedented layoffs. We are looking at plants closing on workers without notice. We are looking at the 401(k)s of the American people essentially diminishing right before their eyes. We have seen Members of Congress in the last years whose homes as Members of Congress have gone into foreclosure. Each of us has heard from our constituents who have lost their jobs and who have experienced the kind of unprecedented economic desperation that has brought us to this unique moment in American history, an unprecedented moment. At least according to A.P., a few moments ago, the Senate leader announced that we now have a stimulus deal. ``Moving with lightning speed, key lawmakers announced agreement Wednesday on a $789 billion economic stimulus measure, designed to create millions of jobs in a Nation reeling from recession.'' Conservative economists, liberal economists, almost everyone agrees that the government at this hour cannot stand idly by and do nothing. We must do something. ``The middle ground we have reached,'' the leader says, ``creates more jobs than the original Senate bill and costs less than the original House bill.'' The bill includes help for victims of the recession in the form of unemployment benefits and food stamps and health coverage and more as well as billions for States that face the prospects of making deep cuts in their other programs. Who here does not represent a State that is not experiencing unprecedented economic disaster? No Democrat and no Republican in this body can sit idly by and play politics as usual--blame the other side, not work in a bipartisan way to bring about the kind of growth and jobs that are necessary. While I come to this floor to talk tonight about innovative public- private partnerships, which I fundamentally believe are and represent the new paradigm, I cannot help during this Democratic hour to at least rebut some of what I have heard tonight in the context of the 20th bicentennial of our 16th President. Either we are a government of, for and by the people or we are not. During this hour of economic desperation, the American people are not turning to their governors; they are not turning to their city council persons; they are not turning to their mayors; they are not turning to any of the major industries in this country that are laying off workers. They are turning to some entity, to some flag, to some church, to some god, to some sense of higher being, to something that calls us as a Nation to turn beyond that which we do on a daily basis and just see ourselves and see our country. Maybe we, together, can work our way out of this profound crisis. Before the American Civil War, our 16th President lived in an environment where the States, themselves, asserted themselves and where the United States Government was, at best, fledgling in terms of its national responsibility because, before the American Civil War, it never had to assert itself. Yet, through Abraham Lincoln, ``the United States are a government'' became ``the United States is a government'' because the idea of saving the Union took on national cause whether you were for slavery or against slavery, whether you were in the northern States, the border States or the southern States or whether you were following the movement of popular sovereignty into the western States, making arguments, as you have heard from some of my colleagues, about their property and their liberty. But the real question that confronted the Nation at that hour was whether or not we were going to be one Nation under God that was indivisible. Questions of what to do with the slaves, questions of what to do with women's rights and the suffragettes who would later culminate in the 19th amendment would be left for other generations to resolve. But one thing is for sure: The question of ending slavery and the question of stopping and providing women with equality was something that required one Nation to accomplish, not 50 different States, not the private sector and different industries but the leadership of an executive--the President. So, in the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln took what was a celebration, if you will, after the American Civil War--July 4, our Independence Day--and he redefined it in Gettysburg by saying that the men who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Gettysburg and in Vicksburg have paid a sacrifice higher than our ability to add or detract. He essentially relegates it to the future to make the judgment about what kind of a Nation we would become, not that I would become, not the people of Virginia, not the people of Georgia, not the people of Illinois, not the people of California. What kind of a Nation we will become. In my own lifetime and at 43 years old, all of us felt that tremendous sense of angst when our Nation was attacked on September the 11th. For a moment, we stopped being Democrats; we stopped being Republicans; we stopped being black and white. We were attacked. We were attacked and we wanted to respond. We looked to our national government to protect us. We did something extraordinary for a moment. We became Americans. There are these moments in American history where we look beyond our individual selves and we make the judgment that we have to do something for ourselves or our people for our future. And the American people find themselves economically at that hour. So we have a stimulus deal. Roosevelt said, ``During these troubling economic times that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.'' But that's what we've been hearing from the other side. I've even heard it from some Democrats--just fear; fear--when we should be turning to each other and not on each other to work and provide the American people with some hope, a way out of our predicament. The American people at this hour don't need to hear the Democratic proposal, the Republican proposal. They need to hear an American proposal that suggests that we are coming together as one people to solve an American problem. That was the best of Abraham Lincoln--not that he was our Nation's first Republican President fighting many southern Democrats in a great war, in a great battle--but our President rose above the circumstances of the hour to ensure that you and I would have a very different future. So we heard the past. For the last hour we've heard the past. We've heard a recycling of the same old ideas. President Obama has hinted at a new future. That new future suggests a new paradigm economically. Recently, he said that he wants to limit executive compensation, which I believe many Members of this body applaud if we are giving taxpayer funds to the private sector so that they might help shore up the economy and financially troubled institutions. Certainly people shouldn't be buying Leer jets and jet planes and taking excursions and vacations with taxpayer funds. There's the hint of a public-private partnership and greater responsibility during this desperate hour for the American people. I want to talk for a few moments about public-private partnerships as a stimulus plan, a recovery plan for all Americans. We were once a manufacturing-based economy. We moved from a manufacturing-based economy with trade deals and with other opportunities that took place in the global economy to a more service- based economy. During the Clinton administration, a new economy emerged: the information-based economy. However short-lived, it gave birth to the Internet, the high tech companies with computers, and has automated our system to the point that computers do the jobs now that people used to do. From a company's perspective, computers obviously don't need health care and don't need benefits. But from a government of, for, and by the people, the responsibility for health care, for decent housing, for a higher quality of life must fall on a caring government. Not everyone can make the transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy based upon education level and skill as quickly. My mother. Love momma to death, but momma is not as proficient on computers as my children are. My children are better able to transition from the last economy to the new economy much faster than the last generation. But most jobs in America, while they may not be in manufacturing and because of the education levels associated with the information-based economy, are in the service-based economy, the services that we provide. The hardworking men and women of the United States Postal Service, of UPS, of Federal Express, of the Hyatt Hotel, and the Hilton Hotel, and the Fairmont Hotel. The service-based economy employs more Americans than any single aspect of the Nation's economy. Whatever it is that stimulates the service-based economy by definition is good for the Nation and can stimulate job creation for more and more Americans. I support the stimulus bill. We've got to do something, and we have to do something right now. What few Members of Congress will tell you is that behind this trillion dollar bill is probably another trillion dollar bill. And given the depth and nature of the crisis, maybe even another trillion dollar bill. And it is my sincere hope that out of the idea of repairing our economy and restructuring our economy, a new partnership will emerge between the public sector and the private sector in unique public-private partnerships to accomplish and finish public works projects. Before I came to the floor, I went to Wikipedia and I pulled up ``public-private partnership.'' And it describes, specifically, a ``government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies.'' In some types of public-private partnerships, the government uses tax revenue to provide capital for investment, with operations run jointly by the private sector or under contract. In other types, capital investment is made by the private sector on the strength of a contract with government to provide agreed-upon services. Government contributions to a public-private partnership may also be in kind, i.e., transferring existing assets to the private sector; i.e., leasing them land for the purposes of putting a business on top of the land to create jobs, to grow the business, and to grow the economy. In some ways, and particularly in urban areas, public-private partnerships manifest themselves in the forms of tax incrementally financed districts, or TIFS. They manifest themselves in the form of enterprise zones to attract businesses that have moved to other areas to open up shop in high unemployment, high density areas. And in some other cases, the government may support the project by providing revenue subsidies, including tax breaks or providing guaranteed annual revenues for a fixed period. The idea of a public-private partnership is part of a new paradigm. Public-private partnerships are not the same as private-private partnerships, that is, a quasi-government entity allowing the private sector to run and operate without any public accountability. Private- private partnerships or quasi-private partnerships do not work and are ripe with corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse. I wish that the TARP funds that we voted on in the last session of the Congress had taken the idea of a public-private partnership approach before President Obama had become elected President. The responsibility for limiting executive compensation should not have been an afterthought. It should have been in the original bill. Public accountability for taxpayer funds: It's fair, it's right, it's accountable. Typically, however, when Congress moves big economic stimulus bills and emergency supplemental bills, more often than not, some of the best ideas are afterthoughts. And so, before Congress spends the next trillion dollars after we vote on this trillion dollars, I want to put a marker in the next bill that public-private partnerships, public oversight that encourages private spending to help create jobs and grow the economy for most Americans, is something that all Americans ought to support. For the 14 years that I've had the privilege of serving in the United States Congress, I have been working on such a project, and I want to discuss and share with you in some details the nature of that project. I believe that the goals of this project are consistent with the goals of the stimulus. Long before I decided to run for Congress, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, I believe under President George Herbert Walker Bush, said that we needed to build 10 new airports the size of O'Hare Airport in the City of Chicago to handle today's congestion problem. Some of you may argue, ``Congressman Jackson, what do airports have to do with stimulating the economy?'' Airports are like the heart of the service-based economy. It's like the central organ that pumps blood to every artery in the body. You show me an airport and I will show you several hotels: the Hyatt, the Hilton, the Fairmont. You show me an airport and I will show you Hertz that buys fleets of cars, and Avis, and Dollar, and Enterprise. You show me an airport, and I will show you convention centers. They're never that far from airports. You show me a convention center and I will show you conventions: visitors, shows, and hardware shows, and auto shows, and trade shows. You show me an airport and I will show you Boeing; I will show you Airbus; I will show you Lockheed Martin, and Gulf Stream, and Jet Star, and Leer. You show me an airport and I will show you roads and highways and interstates and intermodal transportation. You show me an airport and I will show you metro; I will show you bus service, limo service, CTA, Pace. You show me an airport and I will show you tens of thousands of jobs tied to the service-based economy. Even when airports close at night to customer service, they're still open for cargo service, and so Fed Ex packages move all throughout the night, UPS and DHL packages move in the third shift, 24-hours delivery. You show me an airport and I will show you an economic engine that keeps on giving. So during the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, President Bush, the First, the director of the FAA said that we needed to create 10 new airports the size of O'Hare, O'Hare Airport in the City of Chicago responsible for creating nearly 286,000 jobs conservatively; 10 new airports the size of O'Hare Airport, 286,000 jobs times 10, 2.8 million jobs. Nearly 3 million jobs associated with expanding and building 10 new airports. How many airports have we built in the United States since George Herbert Walker Bush's administration said that we needed to build ten new airports? Not one because Congress is a slow-moving institution. All of us have our interests in expanding existing facilities and tweaking a few runways here and there and lengthening a few runways here and there in existing facilities. But the problem is even though aviation capacity is growing nationally at our existing facilities, they're all constrained, meaning that aviation traffic has to be moved to new airports in new air space. Mr. Speaker, 2.8 million new jobs associated with the service-based economy, if the Congress of the United States can find a way to enter into public-private partnership, if State governments can find a way to enter into public-private partnerships, that is, taking the best of public oversight with private ingenuity and capital, buying land, leasing it to the private sector like a TIFF or enterprise zone, allowing airport developers to put an airport on existing land and begin the process of generating jobs, this is the stimulus. Airports generate economic activity in communities that desperately need them. Building airports is consistent and compatible with the goals of the President in this stimulus. It's stimulative by creating jobs and developing infrastructure and expanding aviation capacity. In Chicago, a third airport as a unique public-private partnership would be the biggest job generator in the region for my congressional district. In some of the communities in my congressional district--I've been here for 14 years--there were 60 people for every one job when I got to Congress. Today, in some of those communities, there are still 60 people for every one job. Why? Because Wal-Mart is not the answer. Another drugstore is not the answer. Another liquor store is not the answer. Incremental, small businesses, sure, we welcome small businesses, but we need some big businesses on the south side of Chicago. We need growth. We need development. If we have growth and development, our crime rate will go down. People can afford their homes because they will be working, and they can pay taxes and they can pay their mortgages. And because they're paying their taxes, their schools can subsequently flourish. But it's one thing in a stimulus bill to be fighting for unemployment compensation--I'm for that. It's one thing in a stimulus bill to be fighting for more health care for those who lose their jobs and are uninsured--I'm for that. I'm for all of the programs that make sense in the stimulus bill, but we need a jobs bill. And so the infrastructure components of the stimulus bill are most attractive to me, the infrastructure components, the permanent, lasting components so that decent men and women in this country can get up every morning and do exactly what we do, go to work. The American people want to work. They don't want a handout. They're looking to this Congress not to be Democrat and Republican and bickering back and forth. They're looking for us to come up with a solution to a real problem, not with hints of the past, pre-Civil War arguments about the Federal Government shouldn't be involved in the lives of the American people. We didn't have a problem with them being involved after 9/11. We didn't have a problem with them being involved after the Great Depression. There are these moments in the history of our Nation when we look to our Nation and the source of our strength, our faith in each other, our faith and belief in country, our faith and belief in who we are that we can somehow rise above our petty differences. That's what I experienced and witnessed over the course of the last 2 years in the Presidential cycle, in the election of the 44th President. So with that said, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk with you about public- private partnerships and the approach to creating 286,000 jobs, with the hopes, Mr. Speaker, that you're listening to me today and that other Members in their offices are listening to me today, with the hopes that my constituents can hear me and the American people can hear us as we wrestle with issues that matter to them, not partisan bickering and division, but issues that matter to them, real solutions to real problems. So the first thing I want to talk about is the public side of a partnership, and Mr. Speaker, the example that I have is the example that I've been working on for 14 years, and so I'll need my charts. The late Congressman Henry Hyde and I, distinguished gentleman from Illinois who is now deceased, but I must say up until the moment that he expired Henry Hyde was probably the closest Member of Congress that I was with and to in the Congress of the United States. The late Henry Hyde took me all around the world and showed me how the institution of Congress works. I miss my good friend Henry. Henry was kind enough to recognize that the south side of Chicago and the south suburbs had a profound economic problem: too few jobs, too many people who wanted to work, too few people interested in trying to provide them with a real solution to a real problem. It was Henry Hyde who helped me understand that the manufacturing economy had fundamentally shifted in our country to other parts of the world. I knew it because United States Steel, which used to employ 22,000 people in my congressional district at its South Works facility, had closed, and those 22,000 people, while they lived next door to the plant, suddenly woke up without employment opportunities, without health care. And while Gary Works still produces high quality steel, there was nothing quite like the economic impact on the south side of Chicago when United States Steel closed. Henry Hyde understood that. I asked Henry what was the key to his congressional district. I have 60 people in some of my communities, 60 people for every one job. In his congressional district, three jobs for every one person. Did Henry come to me and tell me my constituents needed more tax breaks? No. Did Henry make the occasional argument--and he did--that somehow welfare was bad and wrong? Yeah, he made the argument. But most importantly, beyond the partisan bickering, which dominated the politics of the 1980s and the 1990s, Henry Hyde said the key to what's taking place in the northwest suburbs is the service-based economy. Sixty years ago, there was no O'Hare airport in the northwest suburbs. In fact, those of you who travel through O'Hare, your baggage tag says ORD. It doesn't say O'Hare airport. It says ORD because it was called Orchard Field in DuPage County, not even in Chicago. It's just a big, old field outside of the metropolitan area. He said, When the goose laid the golden egg, when O'Hare was built, it brought with it unprecedented economic growth. We extended the Kennedy Expressway all the way to O'Hare. We extended the CTA all the way to O'Hare. The mayor of the City of Chicago is advancing the O'Hare modernization program. He wants billions of dollars in future bills in this Congress to throw them at O'Hare. And United has expanded its terminal, and American expanded its terminal, and we built a Hilton and Hyatt and a Fairmont and a Doubletree and a Sofitel and the Rosemont Horizon. And communities that never existed before began popping up around the economic engine, but the goal was always to get to the jewel of the region, the City of Chicago. The only way to get to Chicago is through O'Hare airport and through Midway airport. Midway's most profound problem is that its runways are too short for a 747 to ever land there. So O'Hare airport remains the crown jewel of our area. Henry Hyde said, Jesse, O'Hare airport has reached operational capacity, but out in your area where they need jobs, if we can expand aviation capacity to your area, you get to lay a golden egg on the south side of Chicago, Hyatt and Hilton and Fairmont. And we can hardly some days catch a taxi on the south side of Chicago, but if we build an airport, guess what taxicab drivers like to do. When they see you standing out on the corner here in Washington or anywhere in America with a suitcase, you can immediately get a taxicab because the cab driver assumes you're going to some local airport. It's the best fare even for a cab driver. The trip to the airport is the golden jewel of a hack. So we began the process. I said, Chairman Hyde, the Federal Government doesn't build airports. State governments build airports. However, State governments build airports with the assumption that the States have in their budgets the financial wherewithal to actually build an airport. There's no State in the Union that's in a position to build a new airport. But George H.W. Bush, the former President, said we needed 10 new airports the size of O'Hare 20 years ago, and we haven't built one, and with each airport, about 286,000 jobs or 2.8 million jobs. Every time I say that we need to build a new airport in this Congress, someone from the other side says, oh, here comes a Jackson earmark. A Jackson earmark? 286,000 jobs, a Jackson earmark? Oh, you can't put that in the bill, that's earmarking. You haven't worked out the local politics yet. The local politics? The State of Illinois lost 1,200 jobs a day in December, 36,000 jobs in the month of December alone. And I want an earmark? And someone comes down to the floor arguing about, why are you putting in an earmark? I didn't get elected to Congress to hear rhetoric about earmarks. 286,000 jobs at stake with just building one airport. So the public side of the partnership has to be structured under State law. The Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission--how appropriate--we hope to start construction on the 200th birthday of our 16th President. ALNAC, Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission, is a local airport authority that was formed through an intergovernmental agreement between its constituent members comprised of 32 Illinois municipalities located within the Chicago region. The Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission publicly solicited private entities to build and finance a commercial airport--there it is, public municipalities, 32 of them, solicited through a bidding process private developers to build an airport--at the site approved by the FAA in their Record of Decision on the Tier 1 Environmental Impact Statement. After evaluation of proposals submitted in response to their solicitation, the Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission selected the joint venture of SNC-Lavalin America and LCOR as their private development partners. So now we have the public side, the 32 municipalities, the government oversight, making sure that the facility is consistent with the public's intent, and we also have private capital. Notice what I have said so far. I've not asked for a Federal dollar. I've not asked for a State dollar, yet. Public-private partnership. ALNAC's private partners then submitted a comprehensive airport alternative concept to IDOT--the Illinois Department of Transportation--in 2004, 2004. Of course, everyone knows that our government and the State of Illinois, the Illinois Department of Transportation in 2004, just like many of us are now realizing in very public ways, has not been a functioning government. But in 2004, we submitted the paperwork for the public-private partnership. Due to their financing proposal, ALNAC believes that their alternative offers the best flexibility to provide for optimum land utilization, maximized cost efficiencies, and create better long-term planning for their private capital and investors, as well as airports, commercial stakeholders, and tenants. This is a really important part of public-private partnerships. If we're going to have a public-private partnership, there is some give and there is some take. The private sector is not just in this for the public good, and the public sector is not just in this to restrain the private sector. The private sector must be able to make a profit out of a public-private partnership. And so the appropriate balance between public accountability and the goals of the private sector, its investors, and its stakeholders is a unique balance that has to be struck in any public-private partnership. Our proposal is analyzed and compared to all other alternatives in ALNAC's report, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation, addressing the ultimate airport concepts, along with the inaugural airfield passenger terminal facilities and landside access concepts. In short, the Illinois Department of Transportation determined that the Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission had the Nation's first public-private partnership for building commercial aviation in the United States. A perfect model. So, where do the jobs come from? Well, for nearly a decade now the State of Illinois has been acquiring land for this inaugural airport, albeit at a snail's pace. The public-private partnership is simply a business between the public sector and the private sector on the State land, like a TIFF or an enterprise loan. Let's say, for example, you want to attract Wal-Mart to the south side of Chicago or you want to attract Costco to the south side of Chicago. The city of Chicago, the city of San Francisco, the city of Atlanta offers land in an area and says, Hey, if you put 300 jobs right here, we will give you tax incentives, we will give you tax rebates for however long, whatever the terms of the agreement are. And, as a result of that, 300 Illinoisans, 300 Americans, are somehow working because of the public-private partnership. Well, we are the same thing. The State of Illinois has been purchasing land for an airport. But they cannot afford to build an airport. And the Federal Government does not build airports. So somehow a balance must be struck between the goals of the public to relieve national aviation, and the private sector, who has got the money. And the private sector needs to be able to get their profit out of the project. What do we get out of the project? Well, remember, I said some communities have 60 people for every 1 job. An airport with one runway and five gates in this market, on State land, creates 15,000 new jobs. One runway, five gates, 15,000 jobs paid for by the private sector, with public oversight. Why public oversight? Well, you just don't launch planes into the air. They have to have air traffic controllers, they have be integrated into the national aviation system. So the national aviation system is part of the process. The FAA is part of the process. You have to have cooperation between the Federal Government. No tired arguments about Federal Government. You have to have the FAA in order to fly a plane. You have to have State governments. This land is owned by the State of Illinois. But the State of Illinois leases land all the time. But one runway, five gates, in a unique public-private partnership, creates 15,000 jobs. Well, Congressman, how do 15,000 people get into a terminal with only five gates? Fifteen thousand people don't get into a terminal with only five gates. Fifteen thousand people come in the form of pilots, flight attendants, engineers, gate workers, maintenance workers, TSA, Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, Dollar, Hyatt, Hilton, Fairmont, Radisson, Double Tree, the Zanzibar Hotel on Stony Island Avenue. Taxicabs, convention- goers, visitors, hardware shows, auto shows, trade shows. It comes in the form of people coming and going from the Nation's aviation system. That's one runway and five gates. Within 10 years, the plan then progresses from a small terminal with five gates to, very quickly and very inexpensively, 13 terminals, 13 gates. A $400 million investment goes from five gates--one, two, three, four, five--to 13 gates very quickly. And every time the airport expands, if five gates equals 15,000 jobs, well, how many jobs do we think the next five gates equal? That's right. A 10-gate airport is 30,000 jobs. Still paid for by the private sector. So now we have gone from 5 gates to 15 gates--phase one of the airport--at very little cost to the private sector. Phase two of the airport. While this part of the airport is under construction, you then build phase two of the airport. And then you build phase three of the airport. And then you build phase four of the airport. All using modular construction paid for by the private sector, with the finances of the airport reinvested in the airport; reinvested in the business, because that is what it is; reinvested in the landside development of the airport; while paying the State back for the land that it acquired from the beginning of the project. So the taxpayer gets their money back associated from their initial investment in the land, the airport gets built, hotels, and tax bases expand, and schools are funded and people who work pay for their own health care or any other form of health care they choose to because they have a job. I'm voting for the stimulus bill. But I'd like to see an airport built on this House floor that builds 10 of these monsters right here. Ten of them. And I am sure 2.8 million jobs will be created. This is just the initial terminal. So, remember, our airport was phase one. We then built phase two. We accomplished additional capacity by just extending the terminal with a very modest expansion and very cheap expansion to 13 gates. And then we build phase four, we build phase five, and once this side of the airport is operational, then we come back to the other side of the airport, without any disruption in service, and we turn this very modest gate into a much more consistent and pronounced enterprise. So, the initial long-range phasing of the airport, an airport of this magnitude, about 85,000 jobs to a local economy. In the service-based economy. No, this is not manufacturing, although there are still steel implications and glass implications for building airport terminals and concrete and asphalt associated with building airports. So there is some manufacturing impact associated with building airports. No, this is not a computer-generated information-based economy, where people write software programs and participate in online chats and engagements of information, although there will be WiFi at the airport. But airports are central to the service-based economy. The service- based economy. Different than the manufacturing-based economy and very different than the information-based economy. And very different, quite frankly--and I know some members of my staff are going to be a little upset about this--very different than some of the approaches even in this bill that I am supporting. Yes, this bill has gone from a stimulus bill that was supposed to be stimulating the economy, and this is truly stimulative construction, to a--watch this now--recovery bill. The economy is so bad, we are now in recovery. And we still need even more stimulation. But we are moving now from the language of stimulation to recovery because the problem is profound. But if we can find private developers anywhere in this country who are willing to put up their own money under public oversight to build public works projects, that is the point. That really is the point. Because the private sector, many of these corporations, do have the money, and are willing to put it up, if the State, if the Federal Government is willing to cooperate so that we can create jobs, move beyond the local politics. I began this presentation, Mr. Speaker, by saying that there are unique moments in American politics, in American life, in American history, where we no longer look to the States; to the locals; to the old, tired arguments--tax breaks and Big Government and socialism--to doing something for all Americans. Lincoln did it in Gettysburg and during the Civil War to save the Union. Roosevelt did it when he appealed to something greater in each of us to save our Nation and our economic system. President Bush did it after September 11th, albeit some of us had problems with the direction. But we did rally behind our President and behind the flag because of our sense of insecurity associated with those profound events of September 11th. I'm suggesting to you, Mr. Speaker, that we can rally behind our President. But we ought to rally behind a new paradigm that makes a difference for all Americans. So, 85,000 jobs associated with this facility, paid for by the private sector, under public-private partnerships. Future stimulus bills ought to encourage them. Mr. Speaker, it's not just about the traveling public. Serious airport design and planning includes the possibility of cargo, because there are tens of thousands of jobs associated with cargo. Handling mail, handling packages. The global economy. Moving goods and services throughout the world. Making it more efficient. Every time we add a cargo plane carrying cargo to our Nation's aviation capacity, it constrains commercial aviation. Every time we add a new commercial flight, it means one less cargo plane that can fly unless, of course, we are expanding and building new airports. I'm particularly proud that this concept is conceived of by the private sector at no cost or risk to the taxpayers because the private business model pays the State and the Federal Government back for its investment in building the project. There are no airports in the country to do that. They are like sinkholes. They serve a valuable purpose, but they don't pay back the taxpayer for the public works projects. Well, this is the example that I like to talk about. Airports. But this could be a port. Any port in America could be built under a public-private partnership model. Job growth in this country in almost any sector of the economy can be built under a public-private partnership model. Not a private-private partnership model, but a public-private partnership model. Where does this airport go? Well, how about this: Because the private sector has an interest in profitability, they also have little tolerance for graft or corruption. They don't do political fund- raisers. They reinvest in their project for their stockholders and for their investors. They're in it to turn a profit. You enter into a public-private partnership with the full knowledge that the private sector investor wants to make a profit out of the project. So when the private sector develops and plans an airport of this magnitude, they start with the entire land use scope as part of the project. They start with the big vision first, what the airport could become. An airport of this magnitude in the exact same space, 286,000 jobs, Mr. Speaker. There it is. That's what 286,000 jobs looks like. That's what it looks like. Nothing else that we've discussed on this House floor comes close to that. Not a tax incentive, not a tax break, not stopgap measures to help us recover. And we do need to recover, helping the poor, the disenfranchised and those who have been locked out. We do need to help those Americans who are suffering. But many of those Americans who are suffering also want full-time work. We need infrastructure projects like this that uses the private sector's money that pays the Federal taxpayer and the State taxpayer their money back in a unique public-private partnership. So, airports usually designed by States start with big plans like this and they never find the money to build an airport of this magnitude. So what the private sector does, as I prepare to close, Mr. Speaker, they start with complete land use, what it could look like, how we get to the 286,000 jobs. And then they do just the opposite of what we do in government. I really like this part. They start with the big use plan, they then scale it back to 1X, they then scale it back to various phases because they can't build the whole thing at one time, phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3. They only build what they need. And they work it all the way back to the smallest, least expensive facility that creates the most jobs that allows them to operate their business--one runway with five gates. And this one runway and five gates, that same one runway and that same five gates is right here, and this is the same runway. When it becomes a four-runway airport, they've wasted nothing. When it becomes a six-runway airport, they've wasted nothing. They've taken the big plan and they've scaled it all the way back down to the smallest common denominator and they're in a position to go to their investors and say, okay, we have public support in the partnership, we have private capital, only $400 million. That's what it costs to build one runway and five gates, $400 million. They're ready to pay for it. They're ready to put up their own money. And as their business begins to expand, they then move from one runway and five gates to 13 gates while they're working on phase 2. And then they work on phase 3. And they're constantly reinvesting their profit. Not coming to Mr. Oberstar's committee or going over to the Senate looking for another earmark, more taxpayer funds, hustling around Capitol Hill, going to receptions, trying to get the Congressmen's attention. No more of that. Enough of that. The new model shouldn't have them coming up here every year hustling a transportation bill. The new model ought to free them to do what they do with public oversight and expedited interaction from the FAA. Not the old rigmarole. If we want a new Washington, set them free to build the economy. Set them free to grow. Let them do what they do, accountable for their money and their oversight within the rules of local public accountability. Break up the routine where, can I get an earmark this year? Can I get another earmark this year? I've got a worthy project. One more worthy project. And then when we support the worthy projects, we then get criticized for doing what we've been elected to do. Mr. Speaker, the new model for all Americans, the new paradigm, is a paradigm of public and private partnership that creates a new era of accountability. We don't have to look back to the old America where we don't turn to our government for help. Sure our government can play a role. It can establish a new paradigm of participation for all Americans. And so, Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere hope that my colleagues who are in their offices, who want to advance the idea of public-private partnerships, that they will look closely at the arguments that we made in the Congressional Record, look at our approach and our processes that we followed at the local level with complete transparency, so that we can grow an economy for all Americans that all Americans can be proud of. I want to enter one more thing into the Record, Mr. Speaker, just before I yield back the balance of my time. I was reading in a local newspaper here that in the month of December, our Nation's busiest airport experienced the worst delays ever. ``Chicago's air travelers endured the worst delays in the Nation during December, as foul weather offset any benefit that airlines might have gained from a steep drop in flights at the city's major airports, new data show. O'Hare International Airport, the gem of our city and the gem of our region, reported the worst performance for on-time departures among major U.S. airports for December and calendar year 2008, even after the November opening of a new runway that is designed to help reduce the problem in the first place.'' Because it's not just a function of new runways at existing airports, it's about new runways in a new airspace. God has only given us so much space above this building. He's only given us so much space above airports. And so there's only so many circles they can drive around or fly around an airport. You have to build new airports in new space. But by building them in new space, it means that we change the habitual traffic patterns of people who normally go one way to go to the airport, they now have options to go both ways. And by doing that, Mr. Speaker, we create balanced economic growth for all Americans and all Americans can begin to participate in the bounty that is America. With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank the leadership for allowing me this opportunity, and I thank the Speaker for his indulgence.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. We need to pass a stimulus conference report that stimulates the economy. We need to combine the best of public oversight and private spending in public-private partnerships to build and, in some cases, rebuild public infrastructure. This stimulative spending should be encouraged by Federal and State stimulus programs and bills. But here's what we have to look out for. Public-private partnerships are different than private-public partnerships where the private sector tells the public what is in their best interest. Do not confuse the two. It doesn't work. Do not confuse public-private partnerships with quasi-public-private partnerships. They are not the answer. They lack public accountability and can be rife with corruption. Only by achieving the best in publicly accountable oversight in public works projects, with private capital, can the balance be struck and we create jobs. Today, the President will limit executive compensation for executives of companies that take advantage of taxpayer bailout funds. This is the right thing to do. However, the relationship between the public sector and the private sector should not be an afterthought, and the private sector cannot demand its own rules while using taxpayer funds. We are slowly getting to the idea, Madam Speaker, of public-private partnerships as a way of bringing government, business, and labor together. It's time to establish a new American paradigm.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I have been closely following the troubling events and escalating violence in the Middle East. We in the United States must continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in support of our friend and ally Israel as it defends itself against Hamas' unrelenting rocket attacks from Gaza. I'm encouraged by the recent cease-fire negotiations underway in the region. The talks must seek to end the intolerable rain of rockets on southern Israel and stop the violence and killing of Israelis and Palestinians. Until a cease-fire agreement is reached, I hope that every effort and scrupulous care continues to be taken to avoid the death of innocent civilians. I've long believed that the only route to a sustainable peace in the Middle East is through diplomatic means, not military might. The United States must once again take a leadership role and actively engage in the multilateral effort to build a permanent path to peace between the Israeli and the Palestinian people.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. I rise today to pay tribute to an extraordinary man, former Congressman Louis Stokes on the 40th anniversary of his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. The Congressman's achievements and legacy continue to be celebrated through scholarship programs, building designations and many other initiatives that bear his name. In 1998, Howard University recognized Congressman Stokes with its designation of the Louis Stokes Health Services Library. On September 28, 2008, colleagues and friends will commemorate this important occasion at this state-of-the-art research facility on the University's campus in Washington, DC. Congressman Stokes' historic election in 1968 marked the beginning of 30 years of distinguished service to the state of Ohio and the nation. His leadership as a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus; a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee; his chairmanship on the Select Committee on Assassinations; chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; chair of the House Ethics Committee; service on the Iran Contra panel; and the legislative proposals that he successfully authored throughout his tenure in Congress, earned Chairman Stokes the respect of his constituents and the admiration of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I have had the privilege of following in Congressman Stokes' footsteps with my service on the House Appropriations Committee, specifically the Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, and Education. On the Labor, Health and Education Subcommittee, Congressman Stokes drafted the blueprint to end health disparities. Congressman Stokes' pioneering efforts as the first African-American to serve on the Appropriations Committee can be seen today in Jim Clyburn, Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, Chaka Fattah, Sanford Bishop, Barbara Lee, and me. Congressman Stokes, I congratulate you and thank you for your leadership.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ``In a sense we have come to our Nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ``It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given us a bad check, and it has come back marked insufficient funds.'' Dr. King went on to say, ``As a nation, we can spend billions of dollars to put a man on the Moon and a war in Vietnam, but we can't put a man on his own two feet right here in America.'' Last week this Congress could not provide money for community health care centers. They couldn't find money for day-care programs, for community policing, for crumbling schools, but this week we found $700 billion to bail out incompetence on Wall Street. For months, President Bush has refused to sign appropriations bills that exceeded his budget request. This week he wants the Treasury, with bipartisan support of the Congress, to give him maybe up to $1 trillion. Stop defaulting on the American Dream. Stop issuing promissory notes. Mr. Speaker, I too have a dream: Let's bail out homeowners and Main Street before Wall Street.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend the American Society of Hematology (ASH) on its 50th anniversary. I also want to thank hematologists for their significant contributions to the research, treatment, and advocacy of sickle cell disease and other blood and bone marrow disorders. Sickle Cell disease affects between 50,000 and 100,000 individuals in this country. In addition, almost 2,000 babies are born with sickle cell disease each year. While researchers make progress with treatments, patients continue to suffer from debilitating pain, frequent infections, anemia, and vision problems. Sickle cell disease also can lead to serious complications such as blood clots, organ failure, and strokes. Undoubtedly, hematologists have helped lead the way in the development of new therapies and treatments for sickle cell disease. As a result of their work and advocacy, today's neonatal screening program has improved the overall health and survival of patients. In 1998, transcranial screening allowed doctors to identify sickle cell patients at risk for stroke and treat them with blood transfusions. Hematologists also have been responsible for pioneering the use of hydroxyurea in the successful treatment of the disease. Moreover, ASH has been a leader in sickle cell advocacy by seeking additional funding for the Federal Government's sickle cell programs as well as helping Federal agencies identify major scientific opportunities in basic and clinical research of the disease. ASH was one of the leading organizations working with Congress on legislation to create the Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Demonstration Program--a federally funded program designed to improve and expand patient and provider education and the continuity and coordination of care for individuals with the disease. In fact, ASH worked diligently with congressional leaders to fund this program through August, 2010. I look forward to continuing to work with ASH and its members to pursue the common goal of expanding research and providing excellent care for patients with sickle cell disease.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin. I rise in strong support of amendment No. 2 and amendment No. 3 to the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008. As a member of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, I have fought to include overseas humanitarian assistance in these supplemental appropriations bills. I want to thank Chairman Obey for including several of these provisions in amendment No. 3 which truly reflect the will and generosity of the American people. Because of the rising cost and shortage of food, riots and instability have hit Haiti, have hit Egypt and the Philippines. Amendment No. 3 contains a total of $850 million for P.L. 480 Food for Peace Programs, which will be made available as soon as this bill is signed into law. In Sudan, Chad, Kenya, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thousands of people die each day, not from conflict, but mostly from malnourishment and lack of health care and shelter. Amendment No. 3 includes $200 million for urgent humanitarian disaster assistance, and $300 million for assistance for refugees and internally displaced persons. These funds are desperately needed, and I strongly urge my colleagues to vote for amendment No. 3.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to ``The King Legacy Award for International Service.'' In January 2007, Greek Ambassador Alexandros Mallias received this coveted award for his contributions to peace in the Balkans, to Greek-American relations, and to efforts to prevent such abhorrent practices as human trafficking, which is a modern form of slavery. Accepting the award, the Greek ambassador spoke of Dr. King's struggle for freedom and against discrimination in the context of the search for justice memorialized by classic Greek tragic playwrights, like Aeschylus in his play ``Prometheus Bound'' and Sophocles in his play ``Antigone.'' He also highlighted the inspiration given by Dr. King to struggles for democracy worldwide, including Greece during military dictatorship in the late 1960s, and against discrimination, noting also that AHEPA, the largest and oldest Greek-American association, was founded in Atlanta, GA in 1922, precisely to defend Greek immigrants from persecution and segregation. Below is an article Ambassador Mallias wrote on Dr. King and the Greek classics. [From the Washington Times, Jan. 29, 2008] Dr. King and the Greek Classics (By Alexandros P. Mallias) This year will mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. His death on April 4, 1968, found my country in the midst of one of its darkest hours, as the one year anniversary of an oppressive military dictatorship neared. With my fellow citizens living under military rule and deprived of the very basic freedoms, I was inspired by the people of Birmingham, Ala., of Memphis and Atlanta, who, in a most dignified way, poured into the streets, standing up for what was rightly theirs. Across the Atlantic, the civil-rights movement reached us in the clarion voice of Martin Luther King Jr., and hope stirred in the hearts of many Greek people like myself that ``We'', too, ``Shall Overcome.'' Upon my arrival in Washington as Greece's ambassador, and influenced by what I call the current ``Golden Age for the Classics'' in the United States, I have gone back to the staples of my education with new appreciation--Sophocles, Plato, Homer, Heraclitus, Thucydides. And I realized that the Rev. King's speeches and homilies are fraught with references to the Greek classics. I pored over his writings and speeches and realized his was no simple preaching. I began to sense he had a profound understanding of what we call the ``classics.'' In his Nobel acceptance speech, he spoke of Greek literature, of Homer and the temptresses Sirens, of Orpheus--not in dry academic fashion, but as part and parcel of his understanding of the world. As the beneficiary of a classical education, as were most young Greeks of my generation, the words of Dr. King brought to mind great orators of ancient Greece--Demosthenes, for one, who had to overcome his own particular limitations. In his sermon ``Loving Your Enemies,'' delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., Nov. 17, 1957, Dr. King expounded on the power and comprehensiveness of the Greek language, explaining how Greek ``comes to our aid beautifully in giving us the real meaning and depth of the whole philosophy of love . . . for you see the Greek language has three words for love . . . eros . . . a sort of aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his dialogues, a sort of yearning of the soul for the realm of the gods. Then the Greek language talks about philia . . . the intimate affection between personal friends. The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape . . . the understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return.'' Erudite men and women have researched the education of Dr. King, concluding that he studied the ancient Greek classics at length and drew inspiration not only from the Bible, but also from ancient Greek philosophers, playwrights and political figures. Dr. King's ``Letter From Birmingham Jail'' of April 16, 1963, was addressed to his fellow clergymen and expounded upon his own theory of civil disobedience: ``I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment . . . is in reality expressing the highest respect for law'' brought to mind Antigone, a reluctant but inevitably brave heroine, in Sophocles' namesake play, who said: ``I will not obey an unjust law, and if something happens because of it-- so be it.'' This was not wasted on classics professor Lewis Sussman of the University of Florida, who wrote extensively on this connection. I need no further proof of the inspiration Dr. King imparted from the classics than his own words in the last speech of his life, ``I've Been to the Mountaintop,'' which resounded around the world on April 3, 1968, just one day before his assassination in Memphis: ``I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.'' Dr. King's words continue to inspire me. And what I impart from him is similar to what I imparted from the ancient Greek tradition that the ``good life'' is the one in which the individual partakes in the responsibility and concerns of all society.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend Metropolitan Family Services on its 150 years of service to individuals and families of the Chicago metropolitan area. Metropolitan Family Services, MFS, was launched on February 15, 1857, as the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, renamed as United Charities in 1909, and then renamed again in 1995 as Metropolitan Family Services. MFS was assigned by Chicago Mayor R. B. Mason to help citizens recover after the Chicago Fire. It assisted more than 18,000 families, constructing more than 7,000 temporary homes and administering more than $10 million, in 1871 dollars in aid donated around the world. MFS was one of the Nation's first organizations to provide free legal services for the poor through the Legal Aid Society. A leader in meeting the needs of thousands of people through the Great Depression, World War II, and postwar years, MFS provided a range of services including mental health counseling, elder care, and early childhood education. MFS successfully advocated for State legislation enacted in 2005 that protected poor and lower-income families from predatory lending practices. Presently, Metropolitan Family Services employs 559 professionals serving close to 55,000 families and individuals. It has seven community centers that provide a full range of services, including child and youth development, mental health services, child welfare, employee assistance programs, legal aid, services for older adults and their families, social policy and community development, and violence prevention and intervention. I congratulate MFS on its success in providing and mobilizing the services needed to strengthen Chicago area families and communities.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I was deeply saddened to learn that Henry J. Hyde passed away on Thursday, November 29, 2007. I know I join my colleagues both past and present in thanking this truly remarkable man for his contribution to this country. Former Representative Henry Hyde served his country honorably both in the U.S. Navy during World War II and later as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Representative Hyde was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1975, where he later served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the House International Relations Committee. During his tenure in Congress, Henry Hyde will most be remembered for leading the impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton and for his staunch opposition to abortion rights, both issues on which he and I strongly differed. Despite my opposition, Henry Hyde always took principled stands on issues and legislation and personified what it means to be called ``The Honorable.'' Henry Hyde had always been considerate to me, generous with his time and extremely helpful to me as a legislator. Not long after I was sworn in as a new Member, he acted as a mentor and we became close friends despite our political and ideological differences. I was pleased to work with Henry on ``The Hyde-Jackson Partnership,'' the effort to bring a third airport to the Chicagoland region. On this specific issue, I owe Congressman Hyde a debt of gratitude for his leadership, public service, experience and wisdom. I will miss my good friend and trusted mentor and my deepest condolences go out to his family.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, let me first begin by expressing my support of a suspension bill that was offered to this body by Mr. Clyburn, Mr. Miller and the ranking minority member on education to help provide emergency funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities that are seeking some bridge loans for construction projects. I think that my remarks today in the 60 minutes that I have been allotted under the Speaker's announced policy are very consistent with the historical concept and circumstances for which that bill will be passed into law and hopefully signed by the President of the United States. Today, Mr. Speaker, we have come to this temple of democracy on this momentous occasion to write a new chapter in the unfolding story of human freedom. Today this body passed H.R. 3315, a bill to name the Visitor Center great hall Emancipation Hall, offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp), and the gentleman from Illinois, myself, Mr. Jackson. The event of emancipation marks one of the most, if not the most significant event in American history, and so too, at least from my perspective, was the passage of this bill. Unfortunately under the rule, it did not afford Members of Congress the opportunity to have a broader discussion about the significance and the importance of this bill. But I do want to take this time to remind the Nation of the importance of this period and to reflect upon it during this Thanksgiving season. Emancipation was more than an act; it was a process. Emancipation was not a date but a period. Emancipation was not an event but the fulfillment of providence that the Arc of history may be long, but it bends towards justice and human freedom. When the American Civil War erupted, both North and South defended their cause as morally just, legally right and constitutionally sound. Northerners and southerners saw themselves as true Americans following in the tradition of the footsteps of the Founding Fathers. North and South used the Constitution as the source of their moral and their legal authority for conducting a war against the other. Both sides saw themselves as standing in the tradition of the American Revolution. Each side contended that it was fighting for freedom and liberty, though certain facts contradicted the beliefs of both. The South said it was fighting to preserve freedom while protecting the institution of slavery. The North said it was fighting for liberty while not initially fighting to grant liberty to the slaves. President Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President's address to the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore on April 18, 1864, summed up the quandary. He said, and I quote, ``We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word `liberty' may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself and the product of his labor, while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men and the product of other men's labor. Here are two not only different but incompatible things, called by the same name, `liberty.' And it follows that each of these things is, by their respective parties,'' President Lincoln goes on to say, ``called by two different and incompatible names, `liberty' and `tyranny.' '' He then went on to say, ``The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon the definition of the word `liberty'; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all profess to love liberty.'' Today, women, lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgendered Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and students see in the word ``liberty'' one thing. Today for the Titans of Industry, it still means quite another. For the dispossessed, it means for each person to do with himself as they please. For the Titans it means for them to do as they please with other men and the product of their labor anywhere in the world. As Lincoln said, ``And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names, `liberty' and `tyranny.' '' That is why efforts to name the great hall Liberty Hall will settle for some but still not settle for others the fundamental question of human freedom in the American historical context. For millions of Americans to pass through Emancipation Hall and not Liberty Hall is an important acknowledgment about the process for attaining human freedom in our context as Americans. Lincoln understood for his time and ours that we must not be confused about the language and the process of human freedom. Much has been said about Lincoln and his ambivalence about emancipation. I believe when placed in the greater context, clarity emerges in Lincoln's calculation of emancipation. In 1862, Lincoln's announced support of colonization, along with his lack of public support for emancipation, was generating sometimes vicious attacks from militant abolitionists, including a ``Prayer for 20 Millions'' editorial urging emancipation that appeared in Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. On August 22, a month after the private announcement to his Cabinet on July 22 that he intended to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln replied to Greeley's editorial with a masterfully written open letter. Here's what our 16th President had to say: ``If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing a single slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all of the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forebear, I forebear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.'' Lincoln was reiterating his central thesis, that the purpose of the war was preservation of the Union, but in light of the intransigence of the border States, he was publicly hinting that he might have to do something more, including emancipation to save the Union. In this open letter, Lincoln was saying ``if,'' but he had already concluded in his mind ``that'' the only way to save the Union was to free the slaves. After the emancipation proposal became public, President Lincoln sometimes was ridiculed in public political oratory and newspaper editorials about his Emancipation Proclamation, which would free the slaves only where the President had no power to do so, those States in rebellion, but he preserved the institution of slavery everywhere he did have the power, those border States that chose to stay in the Union. But Lincoln's enemies either misunderstood the President, lacked the understanding of the Constitution, or ignored his politics. On saving the Union, Lincoln had additional flexibility under the Constitution. Politically, he could sometimes get away with violating it by engaging in arbitrary arrests and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. On the question of ending slavery, however, Lincoln saw no such flexibility. His understanding of the Constitution committed him to acting within both it and the law, for neither had yet been changed. Under the Constitution, slavery was still legal in the United States. On the first question, Lincoln and all Republicans of that era agreed that a 13th amendment outlawing slavery must be added to the Constitution. The Senate quickly passed such an amendment; but the House, which had gained 34 Democrats in the 1862 mid-term elections, was opposed. Lincoln understood, if others didn't, that issuing the Emancipation Proclamation would convert a struggling Union Army, trying to hold a Nation together, into an army of liberation to free the slaves. The newly freed slaves could help win the struggle by fighting along the Union forces and soldiers. Of course, the liberation of the slaves would only happen, and only happen if the North won the war. Militant abolitionists still thought the proclamation weak; Southerners thought it an outrage, but most antislavery advocates, both black and white, understood its revolutionary implications. It was the one act that changed the entire character of the war. It gave the war a moral purpose, human freedom, to bolster the political goal of saving the Union, and a purpose with such deep emotional power condemned the Confederacy to sure defeat. The question now was, having transformed the conflict into a war of liberation, would the Northern soldiers still fight? Some said no. ``An Ohio Democrat amended the party's slogan to proclaim, `the Constitution as it is, the Union as it was, the N-I-G-G-E-R-S where they are.' '' But most said yes. ``A Democratic private in the Army of the Potomac whose previous letters railed against abolitionists and blacks now expressed support for putting away any institution if by doing so it will put down the rebellion, for I hold that nothing should stand in the way of the Union, the N-I-G-G-E-R-S, nor anything else.'' With the July 4, 1863, victory at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Northern hopes rose and Southern spirits sank. The burial at Gettysburg nearly 144 years ago this month was originally planned for October 23, but rescheduled to November 19 because the principal orator, Edward Everett of Massachusetts, could not be ready before then. Lincoln, by comparison was casually invited to attend and make a few remarks. ``No insult was intended. Federal responsibility or participation was not assumed then in State activities. Lincoln took no offense. Though specifically invited to deliver only `a few appropriate remarks' to open the cemetery, he meant to use this opportunity. The partly mythical victory at Gettysburg was important to his administration's war propaganda.'' There are mythical accounts that Lincoln wrote his Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. Even though the 272-word speech probably took less than 3 minutes to deliver, interrupted with applause five times by 20,000 in attendance, such cavalier preparation would have been totally uncharacteristic of President Lincoln, who took such opportunities seriously and chose his words very carefully. Lincoln intended to use this occasion and this speech to lift the Nation's eyes above the death and the carnage of Gettysburg ``to a level of abstraction that purges it of grosser matter.'' Lincoln did for the whole Civil War what he accomplished for the single battlefield.'' He transformed its meaning and, in doing so, transformed what it meant to be an American. Lincoln mentioned neither slavery nor Gettysburg in the Gettysburg address. He drained his speech of all of the particulars in order to lift up an ideal. Lincoln intended to create something good and new out of this tragic and bloody episode. Both North and South strove to interpret Gettysburg to further their own war interests. Lincoln was after an even bigger victory, winning the ideological as well as the military war, and I believe he succeeded. The Civil War today is, to most Americans, what Lincoln wanted it to mean. Words had to complete the work of the guns. What is it that President Lincoln had to say on that occasion? He said: ``Four score and seven years ago,'' and this is a 3\1/2\ minute speech. In fact, Martin Luther King delivered the ``I have a dream speech'' in about 13\1/2\ minutes. So my thinking is anytime someone speaks, they should speak between 3\1/2\ minutes and 13 minutes. If they give a speech longer than that, well, they are really giving history a fit. Also, if you can't say it between Gettysburg and ``I have a dream,'' it probably shouldn't be said at all. So let's see what Lincoln had to say at Gettysburg, 3\1/2\ minutes: ``Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent,'' November 19, 1863, right around the time we are trying to break for Thanksgiving, 144th anniversary, and let's reflect, 144 years ago. ``Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new Nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great Civil War testing whether that Nation, or any Nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those here who gave their lives that the Nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.'' I love this part: ``But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here but it can never forget what they did here.'' That is his message to the future, that we should not forget what happened there. ``It is for us the living, rather, to be here dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus so far nobly advanced. ``It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.'' When we wave the flag and celebrate on July 4, Independence Day, we are not so much celebrating our American-ness in terms of our independence from England. We are celebrating the meaning of the flag and America as Lincoln interpreted them in his Gettysburg Address, because July 4, 1776, only white males could vote, and then they had to be landowners. On July 4, 1863, with the Northern victory at Gettysburg and the Northern victory at Vicksburg, Abraham Lincoln saw an opportunity to reinterpret what July 4 would mean for the future. So when we barbecue on July 4, and when we celebrate our Independence Day, when we look at Hillary Clinton running for President; Barack Obama; Mitt Romney, a Mormon running for President, none of this was possible on July 4, 1776. An African American running for President on July 4, 1776, was a different America. A woman running for President on July 4, 1776, was a different America. Barack Obama running for President, Mitt Romney, a Mormon running for President on July 4, 1776, a different America. Abraham Lincoln says this July 4, 1863, is going to yield a new birth of freedom for all Americans and we will never look at July 4 again because July 4 will never be the July 4 that it used to be because we are en route to being a different America. At Gettysburg, Lincoln reinterpreted the Constitution. Looking past slavery in the Constitution, he appealed to the Declaration of Independence and its claim that all men are created equal. Conservative political heirs to this outrage still attack Lincoln for subverting the Constitution at Gettysburg. Let's see what Garry Wills had to say about this. He said that Lincoln is here not only to sweeten the air at Gettysburg but to clear the infected atmosphere of American history itself, tainted with official sins and inherited guilt. He would cleanse the Constitution, not as William Lloyd Garrison had, by burning an instrument that countenanced slavery. He altered the document from within, by an appeal from its letter to the spirit, subtly changing the recalcitrant stuff that legal compromise, bringing it to its own indictment. By implicitly doing this, he performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleight-of-hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of 20,000 people who heard Abraham Lincoln on that day had their intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new Constitution Lincoln has substituted for the one they brought there with them. They walked off from those curving graves on that hillside at Gettysburg, under a changed sky, and into a different America. Lincoln has revolutionized the revolution, giving people a new past to live with what would change their future and our future indefinitely. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was transforming the United States of America from a plural to a singular noun, from the United States ``are'' into the United States ``is'' a free government. According to Gary Wills, Lincoln, by his words and his actions, converted the Union from a mystical hope into a constitutional reality. Looking out over the extraordinary events of 1863, on October 3, 1863, realizing that the North had made substantial progress in Gettysburg and substantial progress in Vicksburg, and Robert E. Lee, the Democrats, troops were on the retreat throughout the South, and he saw an opportunity to make an extraordinary period for which all of us are grateful even to this day. On October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the following, Mr. Speaker, proclamation: ``By the President of the United States. ``A proclamation. ``The year that is drawing towards its close,'' and I quote, ``has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and promote their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle or the ship. The ax has enlarged the boarders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals have yielded,'' this is in spite of a civil war, they have ``yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camps, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins has nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and with one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverance and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become,'' because of the Civil War, ``widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the intervention of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of our Nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union. ``In testimony whereof, I have heretofore set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed. ``Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth. ``By the President: Abraham Lincoln.'' Thanksgiving has nothing to do with the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Thanksgiving is looking out over a national disaster, a war over Federalism between the big government in Washington and the States and the fact that the slaves had been freed and the Northern armies were in pursuit through Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and Abraham Lincoln said the Nation is going to be preserved. And we deserve to give the person who is responsible for its preservation the greatest thanks, God, and therefore every third Thursday in November is set aside as a national day of thanks to remember the path that we took to save the Union. That is what Abraham Lincoln was after. I haven't quite figured out yet why national memory has bypassed this event and decided to somehow ascribe it to events that have absolutely nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln's proclamation. The very first Thanksgiving was about the Civil War and about emancipation. The same can be said for the story of our Capitol. From the moment a visitor enters this building, the unfolding process of emancipation, the players in the drama, the actors, the people, the heroes. The ``sheroes'' have been hidden. They have been denied a fair and accurate account of these unfolding events. When you enter the Capitol Rotunda, we look up at the ceiling and we see the story of America, from Columbus all the way around the Rotunda to the Wright Brothers, from Columbus to the Wright Brothers, and not a single African American in the Rotunda's mural of the story of America. From Columbus to the Wright Brothers. In Statuary Hall, the Old House Chamber, emancipation is ignored in Statuary Hall, where there today are status of the honored dead of the Confederacy. President Jefferson Davis is there, the greatest traitor in American history. Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens has his statue there. Confederate General Robert E. Lee is there, in uniform. Confederate Commander Joseph Wheeler is there, in uniform. In that room, Old Statuary Hall, is where States were admitted to the Union, one free and one slave, to keep the balance between the North and the South, so that the House of Representatives and the Senate would never have more Members than any regional faction of the country. Yet for the millions of visitors, Mr. Speaker, who come through our Statuary Hall, we never tell them that story. We would rather talk to the floor and show them that the Chamber has acoustic capabilities that allow us to talk to the floor and watch our voices bounce off the ceiling and arrive somehow on the other side of the room. In the Old Senate Chamber, Charles Sumner got beaten half to death by Preston Brooks, and a book still sits on Charles Sumner's desk, the central story in the Old Senate Chamber. The Old Senate Chamber doubled as the Supreme Court Chamber while the Supreme Court was under construction. It was in the Old Senate Chamber that Plessy v. Ferguson was decided, the Old Supreme Court Chamber. Of all of the decisions made in that room, it is known for two decisions under Justice Taney's leadership: Dred Scott and the Amistad Africans. So whether it is the Rotunda, from Columbus to the Wright Brothers; whether it is Old Statuary Hall where people visit our Capitol and are taught about the acoustics of the building and not about how States were admitted to the Union to keep the balance between North and South or why all the Confederate generals have their statues in Statuary Hall; whether it is the Old Senate Chamber, Charles Sumner getting beaten, caned half to death by Preston Brooks and the Plessy v. Ferguson decision; or whether it is the Old Supreme Court Chamber, where Dred Scott and the Amistad Africans, Joseph Cinque and the others, were told they could go back home, only parts of the story are told, when they are told. Mr. Speaker, it is the emancipation process, process, process, not an event, not a date, not a time, it is the emancipation process that led to the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th Amendments to the Constitution. And as descendants of slaves, we believe that as Americans are better educated on this history, that that process, that American process, that process that we cannot change, it is part of our history, as more Americans are educated about that process, that it will lead to our 28th Amendment, our 29th Amendment, our 30th Amendment: health care for all, education of equal high quality for all, a cleaner environment for all, fixing our Nation's voting system for all, providing equality for all people, especially women. It is our Nation's historical process, and only that process that can provide emancipation for all. Not liberty. Emancipation. Mr. Speaker, interpreting Lincoln's work and his life is extremely important. Recently there have been questions raised as to whether Lincoln should be credited with freeing the slaves. The argument goes, given some of Lincoln's history, his racial attitudes and statements, his moderate views on the subject, his noninterference with slavery where it already existed, his one proposed solution of colonization, his gradualist approach to ending the institution, his hesitancy with respect to issuing the emancipation and using colored troops in the war, his late conversion to voting rights for blacks and more, why should he be given credit for freeing the slaves? Some have even argued that it was the various actions taken by the slaves themselves, including the power given to the Union causes as a result of the moral calls for overturning slavery, plus the actual military role of working and fighting in Union campaigns that actually freed them. By forcing the emancipation issue on to the agenda, first of military officers, then of Congress, and finally of Lincoln, it was their actions that led to freedom. Clearly, just as Congress and Lyndon Johnson would not have been able to sign the civil rights legislation of the 1960s apart from a modern civil rights and human rights movement, so too the military commanders, the Congress and Lincoln, would not have been able to achieve what they did without agitation and movement from the slaves and their allies. On the other hand, the slaves would not have become freed men, apart from what these leaders did. Because historical interpretation has played up the role of white male leaders, while playing down the role of mass movement and leaders of color and women, our understanding of history has been skewed. Some of the current putdown of traditional historical interpretation is legitimate rejection and reaction to this past limited and distorted understanding and interpretation of our history. The search now, it seems to me, should be for more balanced interpretation, which includes striving to put many forces and multiple players into proper balance and perspective. That, I think, is what is at issue with regard to the question that did Lincoln free the slaves. Mr. Speaker, but for Abraham Lincoln and the answers for which he so nobly fought and advanced, we today would be without the capacity of building a more perfect Union for all Americans. The naming of Emancipation Hall is an extraordinary event on behalf of all Americans. We begin the process now of broadening the education of all Americans to make the Union more perfect for all. I would close, Mr. Speaker, by just saying this: I shall never forget the movie ``Roots.'' There was a great scene in the movie ``Roots'' when Kunta Kinte was being told by a slave master that his name was Toby. And he kept saying no, my name is Kunta Kinte. And he said, no, your name is Toby. He said Kunta Kinte. Toby. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Kinte made an extraordinary contribution to saving this Union, to preserving it, and his descendants are making a contribution and making it more perfect. Congratulations to all Members of Congress today who voted to name the great hall Emancipation.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Let me express my great appreciation to the chairman and to the ranking member of this committee. Today we have come to this temple of democracy on this momentous occasion to write a new chapter in the unfolding story of human freedom. The event of emancipation marks one of the most if not the most significant event in American history. Emancipation was more than an act; it was a process. Emancipation was not a date but a period. Emancipation was not an event but the fulfillment of providence that the arc of history may be long but it bends towards justice and human freedom. When the American city war erupted, both North and South defended their causes as morally just, legally right, and constitutionally sound. Northerners and southerners saw themselves as the true Americans following in the tradition and the footsteps of the Founding Fathers. North and South used the Constitution as their source of moral and legal authority for conducting a war against each other. Both sides saw themselves as standing in the tradition of the American Revolution. Each side contended that it was fighting for freedom and liberty, though certain facts contradicted the beliefs of both. The South said it was fighting to preserve the freedom, while owning slaves. The North said it was fighting for liberty, while not initially fighting to grant liberty to the slaves. President Abraham Lincoln's address to the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore on April 18, 1864, summed up the quandary. He said, ``We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word, we do not mean the same thing. With some the word `liberty' may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men and the product of other men's labor. Here are two not only different but incompatible things called by the same name: liberty. And it follows that each of these things is, by their respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names: liberty and tyranny.'' Today women, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and students see in the word ``liberty'' one thing. Today for the Titans of Industry, it still means quite another. For the disposed, it means for each person to do with himself as they please. For the Titans, it means for them to do as they please with other men and the product of other men's labor anywhere in the world. As Lincoln said, ``And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names: liberty and tyranny.'' That is why the efforts to name the great hall Liberty Hall will settle for some but still not settle for others the fundamental question of human freedom. For millions of Americans to pass through Emancipation Hall and not Liberty Hall is an important acknowledgment about the process for attaining human freedom in the American historical context. Mr. Speaker, it is most appropriate that the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Zach Wamp, offered this amendment, in conjunction with the gentleman from Illinois, to help establish a marker in the Capitol of the United States about the significant role that these Americans, these Africans, played in the process not only in constructing the temple of our democracy but in strengthening America. Madam Chair, it is probably most appropriate that the Emancipation Hall designation be established during this Thanksgiving period, as the first Thanksgiving established by proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln was during the American Civil War when President Lincoln, on October 3, 1863, looked out over a Nation torn by war, ravaged by internecine, intrafamily and interfamily struggles, and concluded that because of the extraordinary efforts of the North and the South, men and women who thought their causes were just, that we needed a national day of thanks. And so on October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln affixed to a national proclamation a national day of thanks to say thank you for now until eternity for all of the blessings that have been bestowed upon our Nation. Thanksgiving has a lot less to do, Mr. Speaker, with Pilgrims in 1620 and much more to do with the emancipation of human freedom. I thank the gentlewoman for the time. Lincoln understood for his time and ours that we must not be confused about the language and process of human freedom. Much has been said about Lincoln and his ambivalence about emancipation. I believe when placed in context greater clarity emerges in Lincoln's calculation of emancipation. In 1862, Lincoln's announced support of colonization, along with his lack of public support for emancipation, was generating sometimes vicious attacks from militant abolitionists, including a ``Prayer for Twenty Millions'' editorial urging emancipation that appeared in Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. On August 22, a month after the private announcement to his cabinet on July 22 that he intended to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln replied to Greeley's editorial with a masterfully written open letter: If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. Lincoln was reiterating his central thesis, that the purpose of the war was preservation of the Union, but in light of the intransigence of the border States, he was publicly hinting that he might have to do something more, including emancipation, to save the Union. In this open letter, Lincoln was saying ``if,'' but he had already concluded in his own mind ``that'' the only way to save the Union was to free the slaves. After the emancipation proposal became public, Lincoln was sometimes ridiculed in political oratory and newspaper editorials about his Emancipation Proclamation, which would free the slaves only where the president had no power to do so--in the rebel southern States--but preserve the institution everywhere else. But Lincoln's enemies either misunderstood the president, lacked his understanding of the Constitution, or ignored his politics. On saving the Union, Lincoln had additional flexibility under the Constitution. Politically, he could sometimes get away with violating it by engaging in arbitrary arrests and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. On the question of ending slavery, however, Lincoln saw no such flexibility. His understanding of the Constitution committed him to acting within both it and the law, for neither had yet been changed. Under the Constitution, slavery was still legal in the United States. On the first question, Lincoln and all Republicans agreed that a Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery must be added to the Constitution. The Senate quickly passed such an amendment, but the House--which had gained thirty-four Democrats in the 1862 midterm elections--was opposed. Lincoln understood, if others didn't, that issuing the Emancipation Proclamation would convert a struggling Union army, trying to hold a Nation together, into a liberation army to free the slaves. The newly freed slaves could help win the struggle by fighting alongside the Union soldiers. Of course, the liberation of slaves would happen only if the North won the war. Militant abolitionists still thought the proclamation weak, southerners thought it an outrage, but most antislavery advocates, both black and white, understood its revolutionary implications. It was the one act that changed the entire character of the war. It gave the war a moral purpose--human freedom-- to bolster the political goal of saving the Union. And a purpose with such deep emotional power condemned the Confederacy to sure defeat. The question now was, having transformed the conflict into a war of liberation, would the northern Union soldiers still fight? Some said no. ``An Ohio Democrat amended the party's slogan to proclaim, `the Constitution as it is, the Union as it was, the Niggers where they are.' '' But most said yes! ``A Democratic private in the Army of the Potomac whose previous letters had railed against abolitionists and blacks now expressed support for `putting away any institution if by so doing it will put down the rebellion, for I hold that nothing should stand in the way of the Union--niggers, nor anything else.' '' With the July 4, 1863 victory at Gettysburg and Vicksburg northern hopes rose and southern spirits sank. The burial of the Gettysburg dead was originally planned for October 23 but rescheduled to November 19 because the principal orator, Edward Everett of Massachusetts, could not be ready before then. Lincoln, by comparison, was casually invited to attend and make a few remarks. ``No insult was intended. Federal responsibility or participation was not assumed, then, in state activities. And Lincoln took no offense. Though specifically invited to deliver only `a few appropriate remarks' to open the cemetery, he meant to use this opportunity. The partly mythical victory of Gettysburg was important to his administration's war propaganda.'' There are mythical accounts that Lincoln wrote his Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. Even though the 272-word speech probably took less than three minutes to deliver--interrupted with applause five times by the twenty thousand in attendance--such cavalier preparation would have been totally uncharacteristic of Lincoln, who took such opportunities very seriously. Lincoln intended to use this occasion and speech to lift the Nation's eyes above the death and carnage of Gettysburg ``to a level of abstraction that purges it of grosser matter . . . Lincoln did for the whole Civil War what he accomplished for the single battlefield.'' He transformed its meaning and in so doing transformed what it meant to be an American. Lincoln mentioned neither slavery nor Gettysburg. He drained his speech of all particulars in order to lift up an ideal. Lincoln intended to create something good and new out of this tragic and bloody episode. Both North and South strove to interpret Gettysburg to further their own war interests. Lincoln was after an even bigger victory-- winning the ideological as well as the military war. And he succeeded. ``The Civil War is, to most Americans, what Lincoln wanted it to mean. Words had to complete the word of the guns.'' When we wave the flag and celebrate on July 4, Independence Day, we are not so much celebrating our American-ness in terms of our independence from England. We are celebrating the meaning of the flag and America as Lincoln interpreted them in his Gettysburg Address. At Gettysburg, Lincoln reinterpreted the Constitution. Looking past slavery in the Constitution, he appealed to the Declaration of Independence and its claim that ``all men are created equal.'' Conservative political ``heirs to his outrage still attack Lincoln for subverting the Constitution at Gettysburg.'' Lincoln is here not only to sweeten the air at Gettysburg, but to clear the infected atmosphere of American history itself, tainted with official sins and inherited guilt. He would cleanse the Constitution--not, as William Lloyd Garrison had, by burning an instrument that countenanced slavery. He altered the document from within, by appeal from its letter to the spirit, subtly changing the recalcitrant stuff that legal compromise, bringing it to its own indictment. By implicitly doing this, he performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleight-of-hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his or her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new Constitution Lincoln has substituted for the one they brought there with them. They walked off, from those curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln has revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was transforming the United States from a plural to a singular noun--from the United States are into the United States is a free government. According to Garry Wills, Lincoln, by his words and action, converted the Union from a mystical hope into a constitutional reality. July 4, 1776--only white men could vote; July 4, 1863--Gettysburg; July 4, 2007: Barack Obama, an African American, Hillary Clinton, a woman, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, All are candidates for President; America and what it means to be an American today will not be the same definition of what it means to be an American tomorrow. We are all part of the Emancipation process. A bit of trivia, when was the first Thanksgiving? 1620. Why? Landing of Plymouth Rock. Interesting, because the first slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619. In November 1863, Abraham Lincoln looked out over a Nation ravaged by war, internecine warfare, intra and inter family feuding, and saw light at the end of the tunnel for Northern victory and proclaimed the 3rd Thursday in November as a national day of thanks. Proclamation of Thanksgiving: Washington, DC, October 3, 1863. This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders like this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving. Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on November 28, 1863, urging him to have the ``day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival. `` She wrote, ``You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution. `` The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November ``as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise. `` According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary that he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops. By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty- three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth. By the President: Abraham Lincoln. William H. Seward, Secretary of State. The question for contemporary American memory is why would we appropriate the memory for Thanksgiving as ``Plymouth Rock'' an event that has its formation in quite a different story. The same can be said for the story of our capitol. From the moment a visitor enters this building the unfolding process of emancipation, the players in this drama, the actors, the people, the heroes and the sheroes have been hidden, denied a fair and accurate account of these unfolding events. Rotunda: Story of America from pilgrims to the Wright Brothers. Not a story of America; Statuary Hall: Emancipation is ignored in Statuary Hall as we count among our honored dead Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and Confederate Commander Joseph Wheeler--still in uniform; Rather than discuss this history we reduce the story of this Nation to acoustics; Old Senate Chamber: Charles Sumner, Preston Brooks, Plessy v. Ferguson; Old Supreme Court Chamber: Dred Scott, Amistad Africa. It is the emancipation process that led to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. And as descendants of Slaves we believe that as Americans are better educated on this history that process will lead to our twenty-eighth amendment, our twenty-ninth and thirtieth: Health care for all; Education of equal and high quality for all; Cleaner environment; Fix our Nation's voting system; Provide equality for women. It is our Nation's historical process and only that process can provide emancipation for all. Interpreting Lincoln's life and work is extremely important. Recently there have been questions raised as to whether Lincoln should be credited with freeing the slaves. The argument goes: Given some of Lincoln's history, his racial attitudes and stalemates, his moderate views on the subject, his noninterference with slavery where it already existed, his one proposed solution of colonization, his gradualist approach to ending the institution, his hesitancy with respect to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and using colored troops in the war, his late conversion to limited voting rights for blacks, and more, why should he be given credit with freeing the slaves? Some have even argued that it was various actions taken by the slaves--including the power given to the Union cause as a result of the moral case for overturning slavery, plus the actual military role of working and fighting in Union campaigns--that actually freed them. By forcing the emancipation issue onto the agenda, first of military officers, then of Congress, and finally of Lincoln, it was their actions that led to freedom. Clearly, just as the Congress and Lyndon Johnson would not have been able to pass and sign the civil rights and social legislation of the 1960s apart from a modern civil and human rights movement, so too the military commanders, the Congress, and Lincoln would not have been able to achieve what they did without the agitation and movement of the slaves and their allies. On the other hand, the slaves would not have become freedmen apart from what these leaders did. Because historical interpretation has played up the role of white male leaders while playing down the role of mass movements and leaders of color and women, our understanding of history has been skewed. Some of the current ``putdown'' of traditional historical interpretation is legitimate rejection and reaction to his past limited and distorted understanding and interpretation of our history. The search now, it seems to me, should be for a more balanced interpretation, which includes striving to put many forces and multiple players in proper balance and perspective. That, I think, is what is at issue with regard to the question: Did Lincoln free the slaves? To answer this question James M. McPherson says in Drawn With the Sword that we must first ask: What was ``the essential condition, the one thing without which it would not have happened? The clear answer is the war.'' Slavery had existed for nearly two and a half centuries, it was more deeply entrenched in the South than ever, and every effort at self-emancipation--and there were plenty--had failed. ``Without the Civil War there would have been no confiscation act, no Emancipation Proclamation, no Thirteenth Amendment (not to mention the Fourteenth and Fifteenth) . . . and almost certainly no end of slavery for several more decades at least.'' As to the first question, what brought on the war, there are two interrelated answers. What brought on the war was slavery. What triggered the war was disunion over the issue of slavery. Disunion resulted because initially seven and ultimately eleven southern States saw Lincoln as an antislavery advocate and candidate, running in an antislavery party on an antislavery platform, who would be an antislavery president. Rather than abide such a ``Black President'' and ``Black Republican Party,'' southern States led by the Democratic Party severed their ties to the Union. Through secession, which Lincoln and the Union refused to accept, they went to war over preserving the Union. While Lincoln was willing to allow slavery to stand where it stood from 1854 when he reentered politics onward, Lincoln never wavered or compromised on one central issue--extension of slavery into the territories. And while gradualist in approach, Lincoln (and the slave states of the South) knew this would eventually mean the end of slavery. It was Lincoln who brought out and sustained all of these factors. Thus, while Lincoln's primary emphasis throughout was on saving the Union, the result of saving the Union was emancipation for the slaves. If the Union has not been preserved, slavery would not have been ended and may even have been strengthened. Strategically, Lincoln understood that the Union was a common-ground issue around which he could rally the American people, while slavery and antislavery were divisive. And looked at in perspective, by holding his coalition together around the issue of the Union, enough Unionists eventually saw the connection between the two issues that he could ease into emancipation in the middle of the war--when it gave the North a huge boost. Even when Lincoln believed he was going to lose the presidency in August 1864, he said, ``There have been men who proposed to me to return to slavery the black warriors'' who had fought for the Union. `I should be damned in time and eternity for so doing. The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will . . . In effect, he was saying that he would rather be right than president . . . As matters turned out . . . he was both right and president. Clearly, many slaves did self-emancipate through the Underground Railroad before the war, and through flight during the war. Even so, that is not the same as bringing an end to the peculiar institution of slavery, which only the Civil War and Lincoln's leadership did. By pronouncing slavery a moral evil that must come to an end and then winning the presidency in 1860, provoking the South to secede, by refusing to compromise on the issue of slavery's expansion or no Fort Sumter, by careful leadership and timing that kept a fragile Union. Toby--Kunta Kinte. Toby--Kunta Kinte. Toby--Kunta Kinte. Boy your name is Toby! Today we begin the process of educating America on who Mr. Kinte was! Today we acknowledge in a small way Mr. Kinte's contribution to the Union making it more perfect.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 2206, a bill that simply provides technical corrections to Public Law 109-116. This legislation authorizes the Architect of the Capitol to enter into agreement on behalf of the Joint Committee of the Library to acquire a statue of Mrs. Rosa Parks. It also extends the time period for that agreement by 2 years. In 2005, it was my privilege to introduce this very important legislation with Senator John Kerry and Senator Mitch McConnell of the other body to honor the life and work of the late Mrs. Rosa Parks by placing a statue in National Statuary Hall. Everyone knows the story of how Mrs. Parks helped spark the modern civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a legally segregated bus that fateful day, December 1, 1955, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott and the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. From the beginning, Mrs. Parks led a life dedicated to social change, becoming an active member of the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the NAACP, which in the 1940s and 1950s was considered a dangerous organization. It could cost you your job. It could even cost you your life. In 1943, along with the State president of the NAACP, she mobilized a historic voter registration drive in Montgomery and was later elected NAACP chapter secretary. Mrs. Parks was a courageous woman who possessed the firm and quiet strength necessary to challenge injustice. Following the 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision which provided equal protection under the law's legal framework, her refusal to give up her seat eventually led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Open Housing Act, all of which helped make America better for all Americans. Rosa Parks remained a committed activist until the end of her life. In the 1980s, she worked in support of the South Africa anti-apartheid movement. In Detroit with Congressman John Conyers in 1997, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, a career counseling center for African American youth. With dignity, with grace and with courage, Rosa Parks inspired generations and helped to make the world a more just and compassionate place. In life she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, the highest honors our Nation bestows on civilians. This placing of a Rosa Parks statue in National Statuary Hall is a testament to the fact that the long arc of history bends towards freedom and justice and equality. When Statuary Hall was created by law in 1864, African Americans could not be citizens of the United States. Indeed, the term ``African Americans'' did not exist. Under that law it was impossible for us to be considered favorite sons or favorite daughters of States. When Rosa Parks takes her place in National Statuary Hall, she takes with her Frederick Douglass. She takes with her the United States coloreds troops. She takes with her Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. She takes them there. Indeed, she takes the legacy and history of redefining what it means to be an American for all Americans as she takes her place among the enormous statues that presently represent the various States within that great Hall. She takes with her countless nameless people of African descent, who from slavery to today, sacrificed for an America many would never live to see. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose half statue is not in Statuary Hall, would implore us, Now is the time. I want to thank Senator Feinstein for introducing this bill in the other body. I want to thank Matt McGowan and Khalil Abboud from the Joint Committee on the Library for diligently working to get this extension enacted into law. I want to thank Barbara Wolanin from the Architect of the Capitol's Office for working with all of us to make sure that the goals of my original bill are realized. I want to thank Chairman Brady and Ranking Member Ehlers for their sensitivity on this critical issue at this critical hour. And I want to thank in a special way our late Chair, Juanita Millender-McDonald, who worked with me tirelessly on this effort. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I might add that in the 13 years I have had the privilege of serving in this body, I have only missed two votes: one vote because my pager died and the battery did not forward my pager the power to let me know to vote; and the other vote was when I was on the other side of the aisle so overwhelmed by the number of Republicans who were willing to sign onto a Rosa Parks statue in Statuary Hall that the Democratic clerks could not find me to tell me to vote. I was overwhelmed by that occasion. I am hoping, Mr. Speaker, that today Members of Congress will once again vote ``aye'' on S. 2206. I know of no American more worthy of an honor than the late Mrs. Rosa Parks.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Dr. Elaine Maimon as Governors State University's fifth president. I am proud to represent Governors State University, the only public university in the Chicago's south suburbs. Established in 1969, GSU's student body currently numbers 6,000 students, consisting primarily of young adults transferring from community colleges as well as older working adults returning to complete their education and advance their lives. On November 3, GSU will formally install Dr. Elaine Maimon as its fifth president. Dr. Maimon will lead a university committed to the principles of diversity. Forty-five percent of GSU's students are minority. Thirty- one percent of its faculty is minority--double the national average. Dr. Maimon will lead a university that is accessible. A study conducted by the Lumina Foundation has recognized GSU as the most accessible university in the region. Dr. Maimon will lead a university that meets the highest standards of demonstrable academic quality. Eighty percent of its faculty hold doctoral degrees or the highest degree in their field. The university itself is fully accredited, as is each program with an associated national accrediting body. Dr. Maimon will lead a university connected with its community. Approximately 25,000 elementary, middle-school, and high school students visit Governors State each year for educational and cultural experiences. GSU faculty members work closely with local governments, school districts, and law enforcement agencies to help meet the needs of the region. The university's business development center has helped secure nearly $55 million in financing since 2000 and has created and retained more than 1,100 jobs in the region. More than 30,000 men and women have graduated from GSU since its founding. Most graduates still reside in the region, where they serve as teachers, healthcare professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and municipal leaders. Their lives have been transformed and their communities enriched because they had access to a quality university education. GSU is a model for the kind of university Dr. Maimon has advocated, developed, and enriched throughout her academic career. Over the years, she has invested her considerable talents to provide access and opportunity, to encourage dreamers to help dreams come true, and to help meet the needs of the underrepresented and underserved. She has demonstrated the integrity, vision, and commitment required to take GSU to new levels of excellence and service. Welcome, Dr. Elaine Maimon, and congratulations, Governors State University.