David Price

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for that clarification. My remarks will await the proper amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I seek time in opposition.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), our distinguished ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment which, purely and simply, would end intercity passenger rail for our Nation. I remind colleagues, there is not a single mode of transportation in this country that is not subsidized, contrary to what we have just heard. To make the case further, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown), a distinguished member of the authorizing committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), our colleague who is the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, as we begin consideration of H.R. 2577, the fiscal year 2016 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, I want to start by thanking our chairman, Chairman Diaz-Balart, for the hard work he has put in on this bill. He has been open and accessible throughout this year's process, and he has been receptive to my concerns and the concerns that other subcommittee members and other colleagues have raised. It has been a pleasure working with him, and I look forward to continuing to do that throughout this process. I also want to echo the thanks he just expressed to our hardworking staff, to Dena Baron and her colleagues in the majority, to Kate Hallahan and Joe Carlile on our side of the aisle, as well as Laura Thrift and Kate Roetzer from my personal staff. Now, unfortunately, I have to add that there is going to be a lot of further work to do. It is necessary, and it is going to be difficult. That is not the chairman's fault. He was dealt an impossible hand in the Republican budget and an allocation that is simply unworkable. At first glance, it might appear that this bill is a relative winner when compared to other appropriations bills, as Chairman Rogers did increase the subcommittee's allocation by $1.5 million. However, the reality is that once you factor in declining Federal Housing Administration receipts, increased Section 8 renewal costs, and other inflationary adjustments, this bill is actually $1.5 billion below last year's funding level, resulting in fewer services and less capital investment than last year. Mr. Chairman, the programs under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee are critical to our Nation's economic and social well- being: providing necessary funding to improve housing and transportation options, creating infrastructure jobs for hardworking American families, and ensuring safe and adequate transportation networks for goods, commuters, and travelers. But our Nation's transportation and housing systems face daunting challenges, and on almost every count, this bill falls short. The President requested a robust increase for this bill for fiscal 2016, calling on Congress to provide the critical investments necessary to accelerate and sustain economic growth. Unfortunately, the bill before us would not even begin to address our infrastructure needs. In transportation, the bill levies deep cuts to capital programs. As we learned from the Amtrak derailment last month in Philadelphia, these cuts can have clear, direct consequences for the safety of our transportation system. The bill before us cuts Amtrak by 18 percent--18 percent--below last year. There is no funding for the expansion of safety mechanisms, including Positive Train Control, which regulates the excessive speeds that caused the Philadelphia derailment. Now, no one can say whether Positive Train Control would have prevented the tragedy in Philadelphia, but cutting funding certainly isn't making our transportation system any safer. How many train derailments, how many bridge collapses is it going to take before the majority agrees that we must invest in our crumbling transportation infrastructure? The bill before us would also reduce funding for the New Starts program in the Federal Transit Administration by 8 percent below this year, 40 percent below the President's request. It would cut DOT's enormously popular TIGER program by 80 percent. It cuts the Federal Aviation Administration's capital program by $355 million below the President's request, $100 million below last year. That will hamper FAA's ability to maintain and improve aging facilities and will slow down progress on the critical NextGen program. The bill doesn't just provide insufficient funding for critical investments; it also contains toxic provisions completely unrelated to the appropriations process. For instance, riders on truck length and weight have no place in this bill. They should be left to the authorizing committees. The bill also continues to delay full implementation of the Department of Transportation's hours-of-service rule for driver safety by including additional, unmanageable study requirements. These riders, I regret to say, value the bottom line of the trucking industry over driver safety. They will actually make our roads more dangerous. The bill also attempts to undermine President Obama's new policy related to the United States' relationship with Cuba. Some of the riders aim to prevent scheduled air services and cruise ship travel to Cuban ports of entry. On the housing side, the bill fails to adequately address the capital needs of public housing. For example, the bill provides only the token amount of $20 million for the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. At such a low funding level, the program won't be able to fulfill its mission--transforming clusters of poverty into functioning, sustainable mixed-income neighborhoods and allowing the children who live there to have the opportunities that all Americans deserve. The bill contains $1.68 billion for the Public Housing Capital Fund, which is a $194 million cut from last year. If enacted, this level would be about the same as the funding level in 1989. That is 26 years ago! Given that new maintenance needs accrue at $3.4 billion per year, this level of funding would cover less than half the need while doing nothing to address a backlog that now amounts to $25 billion. The majority's bill transforms--or, more accurately, devolves--the Housing for the Elderly and Housing for the Disabled programs into purely rental renewal programs. Without capital funding, the supply of safe, decent, and affordable housing for the elderly and for the disabled will not keep up with the demand. Mr. Chairman, for centuries, our country's economic competitiveness has been built upon a world-class infrastructure that enabled innovation and ingenuity to flourish. This bill and the budgetary levels it reflects undermine the continued viability of our Nation's infrastructure and our economic vitality. We simply cannot write a credible bill until we have a new budget agreement. This bill clearly illustrates the folly of dogmatically insisting on domestic appropriations cuts as the sole focus of deficit reduction-- that is the majority's strategy--while leaving the main drivers of the deficit unaddressed. Under sequestration funding levels, any advancement of appropriations bills is simply delaying the day of reckoning. So let's stop this charade now. Let's not wait for Presidential vetoes or for governmental shutdowns. Let's confront it now! Let's begin serious, broad budget negotiations. I know we can responsibly chart a course to fiscal balance; we have done it before, as recently as the 1990s. We achieved budget surpluses as the result of a concerted, bipartisan effort to balance the budget through a comprehensive approach. And I mean comprehensive. Revenues, entitlements, military and domestic appropriations, everything was on the table. We balanced the budget 4 years in a row. We paid off more than $400 billion of this Nation's debt. Why is that lesson so hard to recollect? By contrast, the current Republican budget gives us the worst of both worlds. It fails as fiscal policy, and it decimates the investments a great country must make. In its current form, Mr. Chairman, I cannot support the fiscal 2016 T-HUD Appropriations bill. I do remain hopeful, however, that this bill could be improved as it goes through the appropriations process. I will continue working with the chairman as we move forward. I am confident that a new agreement on funding levels can give this bill and America's transportation and housing infrastructure the resources that our national interest requires. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I think it is very important that this moment not pass without us expressing appreciation to Mr. Nadler and to Ms. Norton for these amendments they have offered, because they are addressing a critical issue, a critical deficiency in this bill. And believe me, Mr. Chairman, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The President proposed in his budget to provide additional rental vouchers to compensate for those lost earlier to sequestration. He also proposed funding for 30,000 new targeted vouchers, as Mr. Nadler was indicating: homeless families, veterans, Native Americans, victims of domestic violence and stalking, reuniting families. Because of this budget policy that has us so hamstrung, we are simply not addressing in this bill any of these desperate needs. I invite colleagues to talk to their local housing authorities, if they haven't already. Ask how many are on the waiting list. Ask how many people are desperate for decent housing. There is nothing more basic to our communities' well-being than decent housing. I don't know of a single housing program that isn't underresourced, and all this because of a budget policy that really isn't working as fiscal policy. That is what it is supposed to be doing, but it is decimating these investments that our country needs to be making. I said the tip of the iceberg. Here is what I mean. The Choice Neighborhoods initiative is the successor to HOPE VI. That has been an enormously successful program in my area of Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina. That is $20 million. That is a token amount. I hope we will revisit that amount later. Public housing capital fund, $1.68 billion. That is $194 million cut from last year. That goes back to where we were 26 years ago. And then we have a $25 billion backlog--not even beginning to address that. Mr. Chairman, my district displays rental housing for the elderly, housing for the disabled. Local congregations have taken on these projects. We have group homes for the disabled that have done a wonderful job. This budget simply turns them into rental renewal programs. No capital funding, no increase in the supply. And so it goes. So Mr. Nadler and Ms. Norton have done us a great service tonight in pressing the case for tenant-based rental assistance--for these vouchers--and for addressing some of these very needy categories of our fellow citizens. But it is the tip of the iceberg. It is only one of an array of programs that we very much need to address. I am hopeful that the inadequacy of this bill tonight, and the kind of debate we are having tonight, the kind of sharp relief that these needs are being put into, will motivate us very strongly sooner rather than later. Let's not wait for a Presidential veto. Let's not wait for some kind of governmental shutdown. Let's show that we can govern. Let's show that we can take hold of our situation, invest the way a great country should invest, and do a budget agreement that secures our fiscal future but also makes room for the kind of investments that we should make. So I thank my colleagues for bringing up these critical housing needs. We simply must address them in the weeks ahead. I yield back the balance of my time. amendment offered by mr. grothman

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I do want to take a little extra time to mention some things connected to this that I think need to come to our colleagues' attention. First of all, this is not an ideal offset that Mr. Nadler has chosen. This is simply an example of the problem we have had all evening. Any funding amendment will fill only one hole by digging another, and so that is just the reality we are dealing with. I do support this amendment. It runs the risk of further delaying HUD's acquisition of improved IT systems. We are going to need to attend to that. In this bill, HUD's IT account is already $150 million below the fiscal year '15 level and $234 million below the President's request. This is not an account that has a lot to spare, so I hope we can revisit that. It may be relatively easy to target this funding line. We have got to provide HUD with the tools it needs to properly administer HOPWA and other programs. We need, of course, eventually, a bipartisan budget agreement that will allow for a more credible bill that will adequately fund HOPWA and HUD's IT account both, both of those. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, I, in addition, hope that the chairman and other longtime supporters of HOPWA are going to be able to work--we are all going to be able to work together moving forward to get this HOPWA formula updated once and for all. The formula hasn't been updated for the distribution of funds, the allocation of funds, that formula hasn't been updated since the inception of program in the early nineties. Without an update, many Americans who are living with HIV in areas of the country with the fastest growing infection rates--namely, the South and rural America-- are not getting the housing support they desperately need. As a Member from a State with an AIDS death rate higher than the national average, this issue, getting this formula right, is a matter of life and death for many of my constituents. As we work on this bill in the months to come, try to get the funding levels where they need to be, we also very much need to address that formula issue, and I pledge my readiness to work with colleagues to have an equitable funding formula. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding, Mr. Chairman. During the full committee consideration of this legislation, the chairman will recall that we discussed the accompanying report language that, for the first time, would allocate NSF research funding by directorate and, in particular, would disproportionately reduce funding for the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences and the Directorate for Geosciences. This has raised critical questions and concerns within the scientific community. As the legislative process goes forward, I ask for the chairman's assurance that we can work together to preserve the National Science Foundation's traditional discretion and flexibility in allocating basic research funding among the Foundation's directorates.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman. This is critically important. I appreciate the chance to work on this, as the legislation moves forward.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to honor the memory of Bill Guthridge, long-time basketball coach at UNC-Chapel Hill, a skilled and dedicated mentor and leader on and off the court. Bill is best remembered for his illustrious coaching career. He won two national championships in three decades alongside Coach Dean Smith, and he was an assistant coach on the gold medal-winning 1976 Olympic basketball team. After Dean retired, Bill was named head coach of the Tar Heels and took Carolina to two Final Fours in three seasons. All told, he played or coached in more Final Fours than anyone else in NCAA history. Bill was content to operate behind the scenes, and he liked to tell the story that he and his wife Leesie enjoyed an anniversary dinner in Chapel Hill the night before he took over for Coach Smith without being recognized by a single student or basketball fan. But anyone who knew anything about Carolina basketball understood the critical contribution that Bill made to the program, and his passing on May 12 has brought forth a torrent of fond memories and tributes. Those tributes include an appreciation for the remarkable role Bill and Leesie have played in the community of Chapel Hill since their arrival in 1967. I have personally appreciated their encouragement and counsel, and my wife and I have admired the generosity with which they have extended themselves to support numerous good and visionary causes. As a former UNC student, I particularly appreciate their efforts to renovate and modernize the Undergraduate Library through the creation of the William W. and Elise P. Guthridge Library Fund. I am not alone in appreciating Bill Guthridge's contribution to our community. Ask anyone who knew him--and many who didn't--and you will hear about his quiet devotion to the students he coached, his loyalty to his colleagues and friends, and his commitment to community betterment. I feel very fortunate to have called Bill Guthridge a friend, and I am honored to pay tribute to his many contributions and the lasting impact they have made on the University and the community.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I appreciate my colleague from Florida yielding, and I appreciate the work that she and colleagues on both sides of the aisle have done on this bill. I want to commend them for their work. Mr. Chairman, I do want to address an amendment yet to come, one that I hope this body will reject. This is an amendment that will be offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ratcliffe). It will be an amendment to undo the bipartisan work of our Appropriations Committee. It would terminate the Open World program at the Library of Congress, which is a major outreach effort of our legislative branch in Russia and former Soviet and Soviet bloc countries. At a time when these countries' democracies and sovereignty are under threat, the Open World program, I believe, is more important than ever. This isn't President Putin's favorite activity, as others have stated. That puts it very mildly, believe me. But he has not been able to stop it. It is now more important than ever, not just in Russia but in fragile democracies and would-be democracies, such as Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia. This is the best program of its kind that I have ever seen. And I have a lot of personal experience with Open World groups that have come to Washington and have come to my district. This is a program unique in both scope and concept. Most participants aren't the people who typically participate in international exchange programs. They are teachers, judges, local officials, young activists, people who live in rural areas and small towns. This program penetrates deeply, rather than just being another run-of-the-mill exchange program. I invite any colleague to talk to any of our diplomats in the participant countries. You will leave with no doubt about how unique and how valuable the network of Open World participants is in the struggle for democracy in those countries and for the way our country is regarded, and there is a long list of veterans of Open World who are now public and private sector leaders in their countries. Mr. Chairman, some may question the placement of Open World in the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill. In fact, I think that is a huge asset. Because the program is not tied to a specific administration with its goals and politics, there is no hurdle to participation. There is no possibility that it will get lost as the State Department focuses on our other regions or on other priorities. Now, unlike the other programs in this bill, sure enough, Open World is not about us. It is not about our salaries. It is not about our staffs. It is not about our operations. It is not about us. But I assure you, it is about our country. It is about what we stand for at home and around the world. It is about projecting the value of our democratic principles to countries with histories of oppressive rule. The Appropriations Committee included funding for Open World following a bipartisan effort led by Representatives Fortenberry and Farr. Hopefully, today that wise decision will be sustained. I strongly encourage this body to stand with the pro-democracy advocates, many, many brave and courageous people in a critical part of the world. Oppose the Ratcliffe amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank my colleague from Minnesota and rise today in cautious support of this legislation. Our nuclear negotiators, with the cooperation of a fragile coalition of longstanding allies and new partners, have made historic progress toward preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, a critical foreign policy imperative for our country. We must continue to give diplomacy a chance and allow our negotiators to build on the framework agreement they negotiated earlier this spring. Many of our colleagues in the House of Representatives agree, Mr. Speaker. Just last week, Congresswoman Schakowsky, Congressman Doggett, and I sent a letter to the President urging persistence in negotiations, a letter that was signed by 148 of our colleagues. Diplomacy isn't just the best way of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran; it is the only way. Opponents of the President's efforts have yet to provide a single viable alternative to diplomacy short of military action, and military action, defense experts tell us, would only delay nuclear development for a few years. While I can understand why some Members of the House and Senate insisted upon congressional review of a final deal with such historic implications, I have strongly refused to support legislation or other congressional intervention that was likely to drive Iran from the negotiating table or to alienate our international partners. We must not set impossible goals for these negotiations or insist that every outstanding issue our country has with Iran be resolved before the core nuclear issue can be addressed. The bill before us, which is a product of a thoughtful compromise between Senator Corker and Senator Cardin, Republicans and Democrats, does none of these harmful things. It is free of riders designed to undermine the negotiations, and it provides a reasonable path forward that allows for Congress to weigh in on a final deal without setting it up for failure. So I rise in cautious support of this bill because I believe it clears the way for the President's negotiators to do their job, to work with our international partners to secure a comprehensive, verifiable nuclear agreement that will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and thereby will make the world a safer place.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dean Jack Boger, the 13th Dean of the University of North Carolina School of Law, who will step down in June after nine years as Dean. Dean Boger is a native of Concord, North Carolina and a graduate of Duke University, Yale University, and the UNC School of Law. After completing law school at UNC in 1974, he clerked with the Honorable Samuel Silverman of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division and practiced for three years in the litigation department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City. In 1978, Boger joined the staff of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he litigated capital punishment cases for a decade, becoming the director of the Fund's Capital Punishment Project in 1983 and a new poverty and justice program in 1987. Boger became a member of the UNC School of Law faculty in 1990, going on to teach courses in constitutional law, education law, racial discrimination, and poverty law. In 2002, he became Deputy Director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights, working with Director Julius L. Chambers to encourage innovative civil rights research, train a new generation of civil rights attorneys, and address pressing civil rights issues in North Carolina and throughout the Southeast. In addition to his service at UNC, he has taught as a lecturer or adjunct professor at Harvard, New York Law School, and Florida State University. In 2006, Boger became the UNC School of Law's 13th dean. His deanship has provided a steady hand and a strategic vision for the school during one of the more trying times in the history of legal education. Dean Boger recently wrote that he has always understood the real meaning of the ``Carolina Way'' to be the unfaltering faith that light and truth, set free without fear or favor in a university setting, will eventually provide keys to meeting the deepest human needs. During his time as Dean, he has exemplified this understanding of the ``Carolina Way'' as well as the motto of the University of North Carolina: Esse Quam Videri, to be rather than to seem. Thank you, Dean Boger, for your service as Dean of the University of North Carolina School of Law. On behalf of my colleagues in North Carolina's congressional delegation, I wish you good luck and Godspeed in all your future endeavors.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, due to an event with the President in my home state, I was unable to vote during Roll Call 154, the motion on ordering the previous question for the rule H. Res. 200, as well as Roll Call 155, passage of H. Res. 200. I was also unable to vote on Roll Call 156, final passage of H.R. 1562, the Contracting and Tax Accountability Act, as well as Roll Call 157, final passage of H.R. 1563, the Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act. Had I been present, I would have voted against the motion ordering the previous question on the rule H. Res. 200 and against final passage of the rule. Also, I would have voted in favor of H.R. 1562 and opposed H.R. 1563.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I am thrilled to rise today to congratulate the Duke men's basketball team on winning the 2015 NCAA Division I National Championship! I say this as a Member who, depending on the vagaries of redistricting, has represented the campus, but also as a proud on-leave faculty member and the father of two Duke alumni. This Duke team's combined talent, tenacity, and teamwork helped them to overcome a tough conference schedule and make one of the most memorable runs in recent NCAA tournament history. Both Duke and the University of Wisconsin Badgers deserve recognition for their excellent play in the tournament and throughout the year. But Duke's thrilling victory over Wisconsin to clinch the national title was a fitting finish to an historic season that also saw its legendary head coach, Mike Krzyzewski, ``Coach K'', notch his record 1,000th win. The Duke Blue Devils have a long history of success in men's basketball, and I am proud that this year's team was able to add a fifth national men's basketball title to its collection. Congratulations to the players, staff, and coaches, who will be remembered as one of the greatest Duke teams of all time. Blue Devil fans everywhere are proud of your remarkable season, the latest chapter in our storied basketball tradition!

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Chief Dan Jones of the Chapel Hill Fire Department, who will retire in May after 25 years of distinguished service to my hometown of Chapel Hill. Chief Jones began his career with the Pinellas Park Fire Department in Florida, where he was quickly recognized as a leader and named Firefighter of the Year and Florida Fire Instructor of the Year. In 1990, he left Florida to become Fire Chief in Chapel Hill. As soon as he arrived in our community, Chief Jones set about modernizing what was then a small-town Fire Department, most notable for its Carolina blue trucks. Today, thanks to his leadership, the Department is recognized as one of the finest in North Carolina and the country. Chief Jones has faced his share of challenges as well--notably the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity fire in 1996, which took the lives of five UNC students. He helped lead the community back from that tragedy, bridging the gap between students, Chapel Hill residents, and the Fire Department. He also became an advocate for new safety techniques and equipment, reforms that have saved countless lives since. Chief Jones has received many awards from his peers for his remarkable work, including National Fire Service Person of the Year and the International Fire Chiefs Association President's Award. He has also served as President of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors, written extensively on the topic of fire safety, lectured at UNC-Chapel Hill, and taught leadership classes around the country and the world. Chief Jones has also been quick to assist me, particularly during my time as Chairman or Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, giving sound policy advice and convening numerous first responder gatherings from central North Carolina. Whenever I see a Carolina blue fire truck drive by on Franklin Street, I am thankful that Chapel Hill has been lucky enough to have Dan Jones serve as its Fire Chief. On behalf of our entire community, thank you for your service, Chief Jones. I wish you the very best in retirement.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor a proud son of North Carolina, Captain Carlyle ``Andy'' Blomme, as he prepares to retire from the United States Coast Guard. Captain Blomme has served as the Coast Guard Chief of Congressional Affairs since June 2012, where he has been an excellent representative of the Coast Guard here on Capitol Hill. Captain Blomme has worked diligently to ensure the Coast Guard has the resources and authorities necessary to not only keep our nation safe, but to be a steward of its natural resources. His deep knowledge of Coast Guard operations, acquisitions, and strategic priorities has been invaluable to the members who work closely with the Coast Guard, which I came to appreciate as Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee of Homeland Security. This has been especially true as we have worked to recapitalize the Coast Guard's aging fleet in a time of shrinking budgets. There has been no better advocate for, or representative of, the Coast Guard than Captain Blomme and I am proud to have had the opportunity to work closely with Andy during this time. My staff and I have often relied on him and his staff's knowledge and understanding of the missions, challenges and responsibilities of the Coast Guard. Captain Blomme comes from a distinguished family of seafarers from North Carolina. His great, great grandfather was First Mate on the SS Ella and Annie, a Blockade Running Steamship in the Civil War. Ella and Annie ran the Federal blockade on behalf of the Confederacy until November 1863, when she was captured by USS Niphon off New Inlet, North Carolina. Demonstrating his pride as the son, of the son, of a sailor, Captain Blomme came back to the same proud roots decades later as the Commanding Officer of Coast Guard Cutter Diligence, homeported in Wilmington, North Carolina. Captain Blomme is a 1985 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. He has served at sea and ashore in a variety of operational and staff tours throughout his distinguished career, including serving in Command of Coast Guard Sector Jacksonville, as well as Coast Guard Cutters Diligence, Nantucket, and Point Huron. He also rounded out his nearly twelve years of sea duty with tours aboard Coast Guard Cutters Gallatin and Chase. Aside from an impressive record of sea service, Andy has also served ashore as a controller in the Coast Guard's Fifth District Command Center in Portsmouth, VA, as the Operations Officer at Coast Guard Group Miami and as Military Assistant to the Secretary of Homeland Security during the tenures of Secretaries Michael Chertoff and Janet Napolitano. This week, Captain Blomme will depart his post on Capitol Hill and retire after 30 years of honorable service. During that time, he has embodied the spirit of the Coast Guard and its motto, Semper Paratus, Always Ready. We thank him and his family for his service to the United States Congress and to the country. On behalf of the House of Representatives, we wish Captain Blomme, his wife Peg, and their two sons, Matthew and Alex, the best in their future endeavors. We congratulate Captain Andy Blomme on his retirement and wish him fair winds and following seas.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Where do we go from here? Where does this end? Some kind of conference? We already have a conference report. It is the bipartisan Homeland Security bill. That can pass today. We can put that on the floor, and it would pass in a heartbeat. That is what the majority needs to do, not this 3-week holding action. We need to pass that negotiated bill and keep the Homeland Security Department functioning at full strength.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I thank our ranking member for yielding. As the gentlewoman from New York suggests, the account of the history of this bill that Chairman Rogers has just given needs to go back a bit further. The original failure in this case was in December. Today we are voting on a 3-week continuing resolution. I rise in opposition to that. But this is only the latest manifestation of the majority's failure to govern this institution and to get the funding in place for the Homeland Security Department for the full fiscal year. The initial failure was in December. That is what we need to look back to and understand that it was a profound mistake to leave Homeland Security out of the omnibus appropriations bill. This Department, and this Department alone, was put on a 3-month continuing resolution, rather than including the bicameral, bipartisan, negotiated Homeland Security bill that is the equivalent of a conference report. People are talking about the need for a conference report. We already have our conference report. It is an agreed upon bill that the majority deliberately left out of the omnibus bill in December. And why did they do that? They did it for political purposes, because they didn't like what the President was doing on immigration. They wanted to poke him in the eye. They wanted to add these riders enacting a radical anti-immigration policy, and they were willing to sacrifice regular funding for the Homeland Security Department in order to pursue their political objective. Ironically, in passing a CR rather than the regular negotiated bill, they sacrificed increased funding for things they profess to care about. They are supposedly all about border security. They are all about immigration enforcement. And those very things were reduced by virtue of their failure to accept the negotiated bill, going down the road with a continuing resolution. Now the clock has run out. The 3-month clock has run out, and here we are again. And today, we are about to compound December's failure by passing a 3-week CR, which doesn't solve the Department's basic problems but, in fact, just postpones the day of reckoning by a few weeks. The Republican-controlled Senate has shown the way here. They have resisted the Tea Party siren, this desire to make the Homeland Security bill a vehicle for radical anti-immigration policy. The Senate will soon be passing the negotiated Homeland Security bill, the same bicameral, bipartisan, negotiated bill which we should have approved in December. The Secretary of Homeland Security has made very, very clear that a continuing resolution is not an acceptable way to run this Department. State and local terrorism prevention and response grants will be held up, for example. For my State of North Carolina, that means $9 million in emergency management preparedness grants. It means $5.5 million in state grants. That is true of every State in this Union. The security upgrades at the White House are also on hold. The acquisition of the Coast Guard's eighth National Security Cutter is on hold. Construction of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility out in Kansas is on hold. A continuing resolution is just what it says: It is a continued resolution which does not permit us to make the upgrades, to undertake the innovations, or to make the grants that our homeland security requires. The House majority is still unwilling to follow the lead of the Senate and put that negotiated, bipartisan Homeland Security bill on the floor. So here we are, stuck with an inferior proposal, a 3-week continuing resolution which doesn't do the job. We should reject this.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, due to the tragic shooting of three young Muslim students in my district, I was unable to vote during Roll Call 79, the motion to recommit H.R. 644, the Fighting Hunger Incentive Act, as well as Roll Call 80, final passage of H.R. 644. I was also unable to vote on Roll Call 81, the motion to recommit H.R. 636, America's Small Business Tax Relief Act, as well as Roll Call 82, final Passage of H.R. 636. Had I been present, I would have voted for both the motions to recommit and voted against H.R. 644 and H.R. 636 on final passage.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, yet again, in support of a clean Homeland Security funding bill. First, Mr. Speaker, however, I want to thank my colleague, Patrick McHenry, for the tribute he gave a few moments ago to his predecessor in the 10th Congressional District of North Carolina, Cass Ballenger, who passed away last week. Cass Ballenger was a treasured colleague of mine. He and I came to the House together in the class of 1986. We worked together on a number of matters, including teacher recruitment and disaster relief. Cass used his time here and the work of his foundation to reach out to some of the neediest people in the hemisphere, in Latin America, in addressing their health care needs. He came here after a successful business career. He was a man of great goodwill, good humor. He was someone who was a great favorite on both sides of the aisle. So I am happy to join Patrick McHenry and other colleagues in remembering Cass Ballenger fondly and paying tribute to his years of good citizenship and service. Now, at this moment, Mr. Speaker, we are 38 hours away from a Department of Homeland Security shutdown which will undermine many of the agency's critical missions and force its essential employees to go without pay until the politics of all this are worked out. Front-line personnel at Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration, and other critical agencies are going to be left wondering how to pay their mortgages and how to feed their families instead of focusing on their critical missions. In North Carolina alone, Mr. Speaker, over 4,000 Homeland Security employees are going to be furloughed or go without pay. House Republicans forced this unnecessary stalemate by including poison pill riders in the bill that our Homeland Security Subcommittee negotiated late last year. It was a bipartisan, bicameral negotiated bill. It is ready to be passed right this minute. It should have been passed in December along with the rest of the appropriations bills. Instead, Republicans held back Homeland Security, and they added riders designed to poke the President in the eye and to impose radical anti- immigration policies on our country. Now, thankfully, Senate Republican leaders understand the potential consequences of a shutdown. They have resisted this Tea Party bait, and they have decided to take up a clean Homeland Security funding bill. So the Senate must quickly pass that bill, and Speaker Boehner must let us vote on that bill. Mr. Speaker, the American people didn't send us to Washington to shut down critical functions of the United States Government on which all of our citizens depend. Pass a clean Homeland Security funding bill.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the following article in my remembrance of Dean Smith. Carolina Athletics: The Stories Are True (By Adam Lucas, 2-8-15) I have been sitting here staring at this screen for 30 minutes. And what I have finally decided I want you to know the most about Dean Smith is this: it's true. In the next few hours and days, as the tributes to the legendary man pour in, you are going to hear all of the incredible stories again. Some you may hear for the first time. Some you may hear for the hundredth time. These stories are true, and you should remember all of them, because now it's our job to pass them down. Don't embellish them. They don't need it. They are good enough with just the facts. You will hear basketball stories. You will hear former players talk about how Smith would tell them exactly what was going to happen in a game. He would tell them what the opponent would do, how the Tar Heels would react, and how the opponent would react to that reaction. Then it would happen, all of it, just as he described. These stories are true. We know this because we sat in Carmichael in 1974 when his team came back from eight points in 17 seconds against Duke with no three-point line. I just told that story to my children on Saturday night when we drove home from the airport after returning from the win at Boston College. My nine-year-old son was talking about a crazy NBA comeback he'd read about. ``Do you know,'' I said, ``that Carolina came back from eight points down in 17 seconds with no three-point line?'' ``Whoa,'' said my daughter. ``Is that true?'' It is true. Those of us of a different generation than the Carmichael crowd were in the Smith Center when Smith's simple act of calling a timeout so shook a top-20 opponent that they meekly crumbled. I will forever believe that's what happened when Smith took a timeout after Henrik Rodl made a three-pointer against Florida State with less than ten minutes left on the clock in 1993. Rodl's three-pointer had cut the FSU lead to 17 points. 17 points! It didn't matter. All that mattered was that the Florida State players and coaches knew Smith thought a comeback was possible, or else he wouldn't burn one of his precious timeouts. And if Smith thought a comeback was possible, then it was possible, and he's done this before, you know, and uh oh, there went another turnover, and it's getting kind of loud in here, and pretty soon Carolina had an 82-77 win. That was true. That happened. Dean Smith called a timeout, and Florida State wilted. And yet despite all those wins, we know exactly how uncomfortable Smith was with celebrating any of them. I can report, with authority, that with much cajoling from his players, he once did the ``raise the roof'' gesture after his Tar Heels won the 1997 ACC Tournament championship, and then again after earning a spot in the Final Four. It was the mid- 1990's. Everyone made mistakes. Otherwise, however, the man who never looked flustered on the sideline looked completely awkward in victory. He would almost apologetically shake the other coach's hand. If it happened to be an ACC or NCAA championship, he would try to disappear while the nets were being cut, so unwilling was he to climb the ladder and be the focal point of the fans and players. Most of the time, those of us in the stands would chant, ``Dean! Dean! Dean!'' when he was finally persuaded to cut the final snippet. It seems a little disrespectful now. But it was the 1980s and 1990s. All of us made mistakes. It didn't really matter, because he would act like he didn't hear us. With scissors in hand, before cutting the first strand, he would point to every manager, player and assistant coach he could find. That was true. That happened after every championship, and there were a lot of them. There are also those who will tell you those championships are completely insignificant. Funny thing about the people who most often say that: they are invariably the ones who knew him best, the ones who most understood his true character. ``I can't put his impact on me into words,'' Phil Ford said of Smith. ``I don't know where I'd be without him in my life. He's been such an influence on me, and a friend and a brother and a father figure . . . Before I chose North Carolina, I felt that Coach Smith would be there for me my entire life. I was right.'' Imagine that. A 17-year-old boy felt Dean Smith would be there for him for his entire life, and 40 years later, he still believes it. Wouldn't you like to have one person say that about you in your life? Dean Smith has--this is not an exaggeration--hundreds. ``All of that is credited to him,'' Michael Jordan once said of his career. ``It never would have happened without Coach Smith.'' These quotes mean a lot to us because they are from Phil Ford and Michael Jordan. But what Smith knew, and what he made every one of his players feel, is that the number of points they scored for him made absolutely no difference. My father and I had a joke in the mid-1990s. Carolina had a player named Pat Sullivan who was not at all flashy. At various times, he played on teams with George Lynch and Eric Montross and Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse, much better-known players who were prone to occasionally doing the spectacular. It never, ever failed: Stackhouse could have had the most ferocious dunk of the season and Wallace could have thrown down an absurd alley-oop and Montross could have had a double-double and Lynch could have had the game-winning steal. Then, in the car on the way home, we would turn on the Tar Heel Sports Network to hear Smith's postgame comments and seemingly every time, they would start with, ``Well, Pat had a good game,'' because he had set a screen to free a teammate for an open shot that the teammate missed. That happened. Pat had good games. Dean Smith talked about it. At the time, we laughed, and yet 20 years later, we still remember it. This seems like the right time to point out that without ever really knowing he was doing it, Dean Smith gave all of us some of the best moments of our lives with the most important people in our lives. It doesn't matter whether you attended every game in the Smith era or whether you watched every game on television. Because of the way Smith did it, and for how long he did it, we could relate through generations. We cried in the living room (I did that, after Louisville beat Carolina in 1986 in the NCAA Tournament) and we danced around that same living room (my dad and I did that, after Rick Fox hit the shot against Oklahoma in 1990) and we high- fived in the stands. That's what we did in 1993 in the Louisiana Superdome. My dad is an accountant and therefore spends most of March and April at the office. But when Carolina made the Final Four, he would find a way to get to the game. In 1993, he waited until the Tar Heels defeated Kansas in the national semifinals. He stayed at work two more days, then caught a flight with two connections from Raleigh to New Orleans. He slid into his seat minutes before the national championship game tipped off against Michigan, and so I can say that I watched Carolina win the national title with my dad. We went to Bourbon Street after the game, because that's what everyone told us you were supposed to do, and so there we were--perhaps the two least Bourbon Street-ish people in all of New Orleans, including one CPA with a pile of unfinished tax returns on his desk back in Raleigh--high fiving the Tar Heel players and taunting Dick Vitale (who had picked Michigan to win the game), and we did all of that because of Dean Smith. Without Dean Smith and Carolina basketball, I assume and hope we would have found something else to talk about and live together. But because of Dean Smith and Carolina basketball, I never have to know for sure if that's true. The people we cheered and laughed with on all those incredible days are the people we cry with--if we're lucky--today. I told my father the news this morning. Later, he texted me this: ``I am very, very sorry. It is really very sad. He was a large part of our family for many, many years and many, many fun times. We had a lot of good times and he was always there. It doesn't seem possible to me. It seems like he and the good times ought to last forever.'' And so that is why this news will be devastating to so many of us, because there are so many families who this morning will be texting and thinking those exact same words. We aren't ready for it to end. About a year ago, I was at the Smith Center on a typical weekday afternoon. A customized van was parked in the first parking space outside the basketball office, and I knew. As I walked into the basketball office, Dean Smith came out, being pushed in a wheelchair, a Carolina hat on his head. It was awful, and it makes my eyes moisten even now to think about it. It was not at all the way I wanted to think about him. And I would like to admit something to you now: from then on, when I saw that van, I would sometimes take a different path into the building, because I wanted my Dean Smith to be the one I remembered. I wanted my Dean Smith to be the one who I mentioned my daughter's name to on exactly one occasion, and six months later when passing me in the parking lot, he recalled it perfectly and asked how she was doing. That's my Dean Smith and I wanted that to be everyone's Dean Smith. I don't want today's students to think of him as old or sick. Understand this: this man could do anything. This man could coach and this man could help integrate a town or a league and this man changed the lives of hundreds of teenagers who played for him plus thousands of the rest of us who lived vicariously through their exploits. It still boggles my mind that so many Carolina fans in 2015 don't even remember the era when Smith was on the sideline. He's as much a name on a building as a coach to current UNC students. It's been hard enough living in a basketball world without Dean Smith in it. Now we have to consider living in an overall world without Dean Smith in it. I don't want to be part of that world. And luckily, I don't have to. On Monday, I will pack my son's lunch, and I will write a Dean Smith quote on the napkin. I don't know yet which one it will be, but I know that when I see him on Monday afternoon, I will ask him about it, and we will talk, and Dean Smith will be the one who enabled that to happen. That's true. That will happen. And it will keep happening, and we are the ones who get to do it. I guess that pretty soon I will feel lucky for having these experiences and getting the opportunity to cheer for him and learn from him and admire him. But right now I really think I want to sit down and have a good cry.