Ritchie Torres

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Captain Edwardo Santiago, who is retiring after 32 years of service at the Lincoln Hospital Police Division in the heart of my district. As a public hospital with the busiest Emergency Department in New York City and the third-busiest Emergency Department in the nation, Lincoln is an indispensable medical facility for my constituents. On the Occasion of the Retirement of Captain Edwardo Santiago, we honor him for his dedication and selflessness in service to the Bronx community. We hereby recognize and acknowledge his numerous achievements by sharing some of his professional achievements and contributions: Captain Santiago's distinguished and honorable career began in 1985 when he served in the United States Marine Corps as a 0341 Mortarman. He received numerous commendations for his outstanding service, including the Navy Achievement Medal, Good Conduct Medal, and Meritorious Mast until his Honorable Discharge as an E4 - Corporal in 1989. Following his Honorable Discharge, Captain Santiago returned to the Bronx and began working at Lincoln Hospital, where he would spend the remainder of his career. Captain Santiago served as a Hospital Police Officer for four years protecting Lincoln Hospital's patients, personnel, and visitors until he was promoted to Investigator, where he served as a Crime Prevention Officer. Captain Santiago's exceptional service was reflected through his subsequent promotions to Detective, Sergeant, and Lieutenant until he became Captain in 2003, a position he has held ever since. As Captain, he has ensured the safety and security of the Hospital through a wide array of duties. Captain Santiago oversaw numerous programs and initiatives in the Hospital Police Department, served as a Preventing and Managing Crisis Situation Instructor for New York City Health and Hospitals, and maintained the proper level of discipline and duty for all subordinates. Captain Santiago has been an exemplary public servant in every role he has held, and he is admired by his many colleagues and friends for his selflessness and work ethic. On the occasion of his retirement from the Lincoln Hospital Police Division, I am honored to pay tribute to Captain Santiago for his numerous achievements in service to the people of the South Bronx. We proudly recognize Captain Santiago for the tenacity, camaraderie, and dedication he has exhibited throughout the last 35 years. I join the Lincoln Hospital community in wishing him the best as he moves on to the next chapter in his life.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, a cyberattack on a software supply chain is like an infectious disease outbreak, spreading widely and rapidly, and causing untold damage far and wide. The SolarWinds espionage campaign against the United States, which spread surreptitiously through a software product, represents the greatest intrusion into the Federal Government in the history of the United States. SolarWinds should serve as a wake-up call. The United States Government can no longer take for granted the safety of the software it uses. The Federal Government must be proactive in identifying and correcting cyber vulnerabilities; and as the lead agency on cybersecurity, DHS in particular must emerge as the gold standard. I am therefore proud to partner, on a bipartisan basis, with my colleague, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Garbarino), to pass H.R. 4611, the DHS Software Supply Chain Risk Management Act of 2021. H.R. 4611 would require the DHS Under Secretary for Management to issue department-wide guidance that in turn requires DHS contractors to submit a software bill of materials, identifying the origin of each component of software provided to DHS. DHS should know the precise origin of the software it uses; whether a software component comes from a questionable firm that fails to follow best practices in cybersecurity; whether it comes from a hostile nation-state intent on planting back doors. Homeland security can easily die in darkness, and the purpose of H.R. 4611 is to bring greater light, greater transparency to the software supply chains which for far too long have been left wide open to cyber espionage and sabotage. We owe it to ourselves to learn from the experience of SolarWinds, for those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, one of the central values of the Build Back Better Act is pandemic preparedness. COVID-19 has left a death toll of more than 600,000 Americans and a cost of $16 trillion. If the cataclysm of COVID-19 cannot move our country to prioritize pandemic preparedness, then nothing will. A wise person once said, Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And if we fail to pass the Build Back Better Act, we are in danger of reliving a history whose repeat we cannot afford. The Build Back Better Act would enable the United States to develop and distribute vaccines within a few months of a new pandemic threat. It would enable the United States to develop vaccines not only for particular viruses but whole families of viruses with pandemic potential. It would shore up domestic manufacturing of critical supplies so that we are no longer at the mercy of a fragile global supply chain. We have the resources to prevent the next pandemic. The only question that remains is do we have the political will to Build Back Better.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, both the 2020 and 2021 election cycles have been a powerful testament to the influence of the Black vote. I proudly come from New York State where we have seen a golden age of Black political power: the attorney general, the State Senate majority leader, the State assembly speaker, the mayor, are all Black. And we know that but for the Black vote, President Biden would have never won the Presidency, and the Democrats never would have won a majority in the Senate. And the attempts at voter suppression that we have seen threatens to reverse the racial progress that has been made. Increasingly, we are becoming a multiracial democracy. You know, 70 percent of the Democratic Caucus consists of people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. But you would never know that from the structure of the Senate. The structure of the Senate concentrates power in a small subset of States that are much Whiter, much more rural, much more conservative than the rest of the country. Before the Democratic party won the Senate in 2021, the Senate Republican majority represented 10 to 15 million fewer people than the Senate Democratic minority. And the problem is that the filibuster takes the undemocratic structure of the Senate to an even greater extreme. The notion that one Senator, who represents a State smaller than our congressional districts, should have the power to overturn the will of the President and the Senate and the House, is profoundly undemocratic. It makes an absurdity of the democratic process. One particularly egregious example of the filibuster can be found in the area of gun safety. In a rational world, every gun would be registered and safely stored. Every gun owner would be licensed and trained. Every gun sale would be subject to a background check. But there is nothing rational about a political system that enables one Senator from a State smaller than my congressional district to filibuster gun safety at the expense of 330 million Americans. Name any cause: LGBTQ equality, voting rights enforcement, immigration reform, democracy reform, criminal justice reform, all of these causes have died at the hands of the filibuster. I would submit to you that we have a party in America that is intent on holding power at any cost and by any means necessary. If the Republican party cannot win democratically, then it will insist on winning undemocratically through voter suppression, gerrymandering, the structure of the Senate, the electoral college, right-wing judicial activism on the Supreme Court. All of these are means of holding onto power by any means necessary. All of these are means of subverting democracy at any cost. That is the challenge that lies before us.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to be here with Congresswoman Jackson Lee. The culprit is not only the Republican Party, but it is also the Supreme Court. The rightwing majority on the Supreme Court gave the Voting Rights Act the narrowest possible meaning in order to render it powerless against 21st century voter suppression. Congress deliberately wrote the Voting Rights Act broadly so as to protect against both obvious and insidious forms of voter disenfranchisement. The broad language of the Voting Rights Act prohibits not only the denial, but also the abridgement of voting rights. It prohibits not only discriminatory intent, but also racially disparate impact. It requires that all methods of voting be equally open to communities of color, and that communities of color have an equal opportunity to cast their ballots. And so anything that undermines equal openness and equal opportunity is a violation of the Voting Rights Act properly interpreted. I would submit to you that voter suppression in America has no greater ally than rightwing judicial activism. Instead of interpreting the Voting Rights Act as written, the rightwing majority on the Supreme Court has chosen to rewrite the statute out of existence. The enforcement mechanisms of the Voting Rights Act have been all but eviscerated. There was section 5, which provided for preclearance, which enabled the executive branch to protect voting rights. Then there was section 2, which provided for litigation, which enabled the courts to protect voting rights. Both of those enforcement mechanisms had been gutted at the hands of the Supreme Court, the former in Shelby County v. Holder and the latter in Brnovich v. DNC. We know from history, Madam Speaker, that the most effective tool for preventing voter suppression is preclearance. According to Justice Kagan, from 1965 to 2006, the Federal Government harnessed the power of section 5, the power of preclearance, to prevent 1,200 voting restrictions from taking effect. We should see the desecration of both section 5 and section 2 as a call to action, as a call for the United States Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore our preclearance not only for select jurisdictions but for every State and locality across the Nation. Let it be known that the greatest obstacle on the path to 21st century voting rights enforcement is the filibuster. The filibuster perpetuates a status quo that disenfranchises communities of color. If you are a defender of the filibuster, then you should dispense with the pretense that you are a champion of voting rights. If you are a defender of the filibuster, you are not part of the solution, but you are part of the problem.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in favor of my amendment to the INVEST Act, which clarifies that the capping of highways with deck parks shall qualify for funding under the Reconnecting Neighborhoods Program. The South Bronx is the most densely populated congressional district with the highest concentration of diesel truck traffic. In Hunts Point alone, there are 15,000 trucks traveling every day from and to the Hunts Point Terminal Market. Children living near the Cross Bronx Expressway are, through no fault of their own, breathing in air pollutants that cause respiratory disease. The sheer prevalence of asthma in the South Bronx is no accident. It is a consequence of the Cross Bronx Expressway, which stands both literally and metaphorically as a structure of racism. My amendment to the INVEST Act would lay the groundwork for capping the Cross Bronx Expressway in the hopes of preventing diesel truck traffic from polluting the air we breathe in the Bronx. There is no policy or project that would do more to fundamentally improve the air quality and life expectancy in the South Bronx than the long-overdue transformation of the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I thank Chair Beatty for yielding. And I know brevity is the soul of wit, so I will express my thoughts as succinctly as I can. I am honored to be the co-chair of the CBC Special Order hour and to serve under the dynamic leadership of the CBC chair, Joyce Beatty, who is a force to be reckoned with. I thank the gentlewoman for affording me the honor to co-chair the CBC Special Order hour. I echo what our majority whip said, that we cannot afford to take an obsolete view of infrastructure. Infrastructure is about more than roads and bridges. It is about the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is about access to the internet, especially in a world of remote learning and telehealth. It is about safe, decent, affordable housing, which is a human right. Abraham Maslow spoke about a hierarchy of needs, and the highest need we have is self-actualization. And in order to actualize ourselves, we have to meet our most fundamental needs, our need for employment, housing, transit, and education. That is what we mean by infrastructure. Infrastructure is not simply physical, but it is social and human. It is that which enables us to become the best version of ourselves. The component of infrastructure that matters most to me is affordable housing. I would not be where I am today were it not for affordable housing and the stability that it gave me and my family. For me affordable housing is not simply brick-and-mortar, but it is the foundation on which we build a better life for ourselves and our family. It is often said that the south Bronx is the poorest congressional district in America, but I think of the south Bronx as the essential congressional district. Because it is home to essential workers who put their lives at risk during the peak of the pandemic so that the rest of the city and the country could safely shelter in place. And I believe deeply that the essential workers of America, the essential workers of New York City should be able to afford to live in a city that cannot survive and succeed without them. Now, the American Jobs Plan proposes hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for affordable housing, but just as important as the dollar amount is how those dollars are spent. If we simply invest those dollars in expanding housing supply without expanding housing subsidy, then we run the risk of creating housing that leaves behind the lowest income Americans. We run the risk of creating the appearance rather than the reality of affordable housing. When the subject of affordable housing is raised, the question that often comes to mind is: Affordable for whom? We need deep affordability. We need real affordability. And the best path to deep affordability--to affordability for all Americans--is housing vouchers for all. Housing vouchers ensure that you pay no more than 30 percent of your income towards your rent. Madam Speaker, I am honored to sponsor legislation with Chair Waters and subcommittee Chair Cleaver, which would expand the Section 8 program and establish housing vouchers as an entitlement, as a human right, codified in Federal law. Housing vouchers for all takes on a special urgency because we are facing the greatest affordability crisis that we have seen since the Great Depression. There are 37 million Americans who pay more than one- third of their income toward their rent. There are 17 million Americans who pay more than half their income toward their rent. And that does not even factor in the cost of utilities, food, transportation, and healthcare. There are millions of Americans who are living on the brink of foreclosure and eviction in the midst of COVID-19. And at the heart of the affordability crisis is the gap between supply and demand. The demand for affordable housing far exceeds the supply. Madam Speaker, I will provide you with some statistics in New York City. In New York City, there are 1 million households earning at or below 50 percent of AMI, which is about $60,000 a year. But there are only 420,000 units affordable to those households. That is a gap of 580,000 units. That is why we need a Federal Government that is going to take an expansive view of infrastructure and invest in the creation and preservation of affordable housing on a scale that we have not seen before. Our country deserves no less.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, we are not only from the great State of New York but the great county of the Bronx. Education is infrastructure and who better to speak about education than a lifelong educator. Well, before running for Congress, our next speaker was a principal who dedicated his life to educating the students of the northeast Bronx. He is one of the first Black Members of Congress to ever represent Westchester County, which has historically been ground zero for resistance to fair housing. If you have ever seen the movie, ``Show Me a Hero,'' in Yonkers, that is the district of our next speaker. Even though he embodies how far we have come as a country, he knows more than most how far we must go. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bowman), the one and only.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I will just quickly state, you know, we are in the midst of an FDR moment, and we have an historic opportunity to govern as boldly in the 21st century as FDR did in the 20th century. But the difference between then and now is ours is going to be a new deal for everyone; Black and Brown new deal.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, in the United States, there are 1.4 million LGBTQ businesses contributing more than $1.7 trillion to the American economy. We have a vested interest in sustaining and strengthening these businesses with equal access to credit, which is the beating heart of the American economy. As a former New York City Council Member, I partnered with the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce to establish the nation's largest municipal certification program for LGBTQ business enterprises, enabling those businesses to enjoy equal access to a $25 billion pool of government procurement. The legislation before us, H.R. 1443, builds on a foundation laid by several statutes and regulations. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) prohibits credit discrimination, including but not limited to sex discrimination. A new interpretive rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) clarifies that the ECOA's prohibition against sex discrimination applies to sexual orientation and gender identity. Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which exists to enable and enhance the enforcement of the ECOA, requires financial institutions to report information about the race, ethnicity, and sex of credit applicants who serve as principal owners of small businesses. My legislation would expand the 1071 reporting requirements to include not only sex but also sexual orientation and gender identity. It would enable anti- discrimination enforcement where none might exist. Even though the United States has made substantial strides toward LGBTQ equality, the mission is far from accomplished. Seventy percent of the LGBTQ community remains unprotected by anti-discrimination laws. When it comes to credit, according to the Williams Institute, more than 7.7 million LGBTQ adults live in states that offer no protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It is often said that knowledge is power. Knowledge affords us the power to detect discrimination that might otherwise go undetected. Take, as an example, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which is analogous to the legislation before us. Both the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and Iowa State University reviewed data from the HMDA and found that same-sex couples were denied loans at higher rates than heterosexual couples, despite having comparable creditworthiness. It also found those same-sex couples paid higher fees and interests. The lesson of the HMDA is that sunlight can be a powerful disinfectant against discrimination. H.R. 1443 would make credit more accessible, credit laws more enforceable, and creditors more accountable. It would represent a triumph of transparency in the service of economic opportunity for all, regardless of who you are and whom you love.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, H.R. 1443, the LGBTQ Business Equal Credit Enforcement and Investment Act. I want to thank Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member McHenry for their support. As the ranking member noted, we did make concessions to address his concerns about the legislation. In the United States there are 1.4 million LGBTQ businesses, contributing more than $1.7 trillion to the American economy. We have a vested interest in sustaining and strengthening these businesses with equal access to credit, which is the beating heart of the American economy. As a former New York City Council member, I partnered with the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce to establish the Nation's largest municipal certification program for LGBTQ business enterprises, enabling those businesses to enjoy equal access to a $25 billion pool of government procurement. The legislation before us, H.R. 1443, builds on a foundation laid by several statutes and regulations. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, most commonly known as ECOA, prohibits credit discrimination, including but not limited to sex discrimination. A new interpretive rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB, clarifies that ECOA's prohibition against sex discrimination applies to sexual orientation and gender identity. Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank, which exists to enable and enhance the enforcement of ECOA, requires financial institutions to report information about the race, ethnicity, and sex of credit applicants who serve as principal owners of small businesses. My legislation would expand the 1071 reporting requirements to include not only sex but also sexual orientation and gender identity. In doing so, it would enable antidiscrimination enforcement where none might exist. Even though the United States has made substantial strides toward LGBTQ equality, the mission is far from accomplished. Seventy percent of the LGBTQ community remains unprotected by antidiscrimination laws. When it comes to credit in particular, according to the Williams Institute, more than 7.7 million LGBTQ adults live in states that offer no protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It is often said that knowledge is power. Knowledge affords us the power to detect discrimination that might otherwise go undetected. Take as an example the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which is analogous to the legislation before us. Both the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and Iowa State University reviewed data from the HMDA and found that same-sex couples were denied loans at higher rates than heterosexual couples despite having comparable creditworthiness. It also found that those same-sex couples paid higher fees and interest. The experience of HMDA tells us that sunlight can be a powerful disinfectant against discrimination. H.R. 1443 would make credit more accessible, credit laws more enforceable, and creditors more accountable. It would represent a triumph of transparency in the service of economic opportunity for all, regardless of who you are and whom you love.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Jackson Lee for her leadership. In order to understand where we stand in the present, we have to understand where we have been and how we came to arrive at a society as racially divided and as unequal as our own. For me, it is a scandal that most Americans have never heard of Juneteenth and most Americans have never heard of the Tulsa race massacre because these events are rarely, if ever, taught in public education. Juneteenth is not only not taught in our public schools, but there is not even a national holiday celebrating an event that has profound meaning to Black Americans, to all Americans. So I want to commend the gentlewoman's leadership in advancing a bill that would establish Juneteenth as a national holiday. Frederick Douglass famously posed the question: What to a slave is July Fourth? Juneteenth is to Black America what July Fourth has exclusively been to White America: Independence Day. Juneteenth refers to the moment when slaves in Texas came to discover their legal freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation. Out of that discovery came a 156-year tradition of Juneteenth celebration. It refers to the moment when Major General Gordon Granger led a Union Army to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation 2\1/2\ years after its issuance. The announcement was known as General Order Number 3, and it read as follows: ``The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.'' For me, Juneteenth contains a deeper lesson that we ignore at our own peril. Law becomes real not when it is proclaimed but when it is enforced. The emancipation of enslaved people became real not when it was proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln but when it was enforced by the Union Army, most notably on Juneteenth. The desegregation of our public schools became real not when it was proclaimed by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education but when it was enforced most notably by President Eisenhower, who sent the National Guard to Little Rock, Arkansas. Voting rights became real not when it was proclaimed by the 15th Amendment but when it was enforced a century later by the Voting Rights Act enforced by the process of preclearance, which has since been gutted by the Supreme Court but which we are seeking to restore with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Reconstruction was doomed by a lack of Federal enforcement. In the beginning, Reconstruction had early success. It saw the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment, which provided for equal protection of the law and which prohibited discrimination based on race; and the 15th Amendment, which provided for voting rights and which prohibited disenfranchisement based on race. During Reconstruction, scores of African Americans began exercising their fundamental right to vote, and some African Americans began winning elective office. For a fleeting moment, there was an outburst of Black political power in America. Then came a turning point in the 1876 Presidential election, whose outcome was decided by a congressional commission. Then-Presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes cut a deal with white supremacists in the United States Congress. He agreed to withdraw the Union Army from the former Confederate States in exchange for the Presidency. When the Union Army withdrew from the South, it left behind a vacuum that ultimately came to be filled by Jim Crow, a system of racial discrimination, racial segregation, and racial terrorism. What followed the failure of Reconstruction was the lost century. Madam Speaker, for me, the lesson of Juneteenth is that an activist Federal Government is an essential defender of human rights and civil rights. It is an essential defender of equality and dignity and humanity for all Americans. We must learn from the lessons of history, and we must continue the work of Reconstruction that is long overdue.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, when I was sworn in the week of January 6, I never imagined living through an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol during the electoral college vote count. On January 6, I felt the same sense of shock and trauma that I had felt on 9/11. Like most of America, I took for granted that the peaceful transfer of power is so natural as to transcend even the most turbulent period of partisan politics. I was wrong. We were all wrong. Democracy is too fragile to be taken for granted. It demands from all of us a vigilant defense. As Members of the United States Congress, we took an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States. The insurrection against the U.S. Capitol was a literal and metaphorical assault on the very Constitution we have been charged with defending. The January 6 Commission is, therefore, not a choice, but an obligation. We have a duty to investigate what happened and why it happened and who is responsible. As a Congress, if we are not able or willing to ascertain the full truth surrounding an invasion of our very home, of our Nation's Capitol, then why are we here? The 11th-hour attempt to sabotage a bipartisan, bicameral position is not a difference of opinion, nor is it politics as usual. It is an abdication of the oath that we took to uphold the Constitution. The United States of America is not a cult of personality, it is a Nation of laws. And our loyalty should not be to one political figure or one political party. Our highest loyalty should be to our country and the Constitution that governs it. We must never forget that the truth trumps politics. And if the truth is what we seek, then we have nothing to fear from bringing the clarity that only truth can bring to the chaos and confusion of January 6.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include any extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I am honored to share today's Special Order hour on Black Wall Street on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is chaired by our great leader, Congressmember Joyce Beatty. I want to extend my condolences to Congressmember Beatty and her family for the loss of her husband. On May 30, 1921, a single scream in an elevator became the spark that ignited a powder keg of racial terror that set on fire Black Wall Street. A young Black man enters an elevator, and an elevator operator, a young White woman, screams, giving the impression that she had been assaulted. A local newspaper, the Tulsa Tribune, accuses the young Black man of raping the young White woman. The headline of the article was an incitement to racial violence: ``Nab the Negro Who Attacked the Girl in the Elevator.'' As a result of the incitement, a White lynch mob descended on Black Wall Street and set on fire the wealthiest Black community in the United States, reducing it to ashes. The ashes of Black Wall Street are a metaphor for the failure of Reconstruction. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, there were newly emancipated African Americans who set out to build a better life for themselves and their family, only to be held back by racial terror and violence that ultimately came to be codified in the form of Jim Crow. We, as the CBC, are not only here to recite the facts of the Tulsa Race Massacre, but we are also here to reflect on the deeper meaning. The massacre in Tulsa tells a larger story about false accusation as an incitement to violence. It tells a larger story about the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. It tells a larger story about domestic terrorism and white supremacist extremism as a form of domestic terror. It tells a larger story about the systematic denial and destruction of Black wealth. And, finally, it tells a larger story about the legacy of discrimination and the need for restitution. It is worth noting that here in the United States Congress there is no greater champion of reparations than the chair of the Special Order hour, Congressmember Jackson Lee. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Johnson for his deep insight and kind words earlier. Some background on Tulsa, Oklahoma: The district of Greenwood in its time was famously described by Booker T. Washington as ``Black Wall Street.'' It was so named because it was the most vibrant and affluent African-American community in the United States. It was an oasis of opportunity in a desert of du jour discrimination. For many African Americans in search of a better life, it was a promised land amid the broken promise of Reconstruction. It was home to 10,000 residents. There were 30 vibrant restaurants, 45 vibrant grocers and meat markets. There was a 54-room hotel. There was a theater and a hospital. Black Wall Street was a self-contained, self-sufficient community of Black wealth, a community of Black entrepreneurship and Black ownership. And Black Wall Street, at the hands of racial terrorism, at the hands of racial violence, the wealthiest Black community in the United States became a scene of mass murder, looting, and arson. It became a scene of death, destruction, and displacement. Nothing was spared in the Tulsa Race Massacre. Churches, schools, and hospitals were burned down. Twelve thousand homes were burned down. Thirty-five blocks burned down. The Tulsa burning had a death toll of 300 and a displacement toll of 10,000. Ten thousand people lost their homes, their businesses, and their livelihoods. And 6,000 of those people were relegated to internment camps. Then, after the internment camps, Black professionals, Black business owners who lost everything, were forced to live in tents and shacks. It was the worst act of racial terrorism and one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States. Now, I see a parallel between the Tulsa Race Massacre and January 6. The insurrection against the United States Congress on January 6 was not simply an attack on a physical structure, it was an expression of racial rage and resentment against multiracial democracy. And the same is true of the Tulsa Race Massacre. We have to recognize that the domestic terrorism that we saw unfold on January 6 did not happen in a vacuum. It has a history, and that history includes the KKK; it includes Jim Crow, and, yes, it includes the Tulsa Race Massacre. And it is a scandal in America that most Americans have never heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Madam Speaker, as Congressman Johnson noted earlier, it has been referred to as a race riot, which is an attempt to whitewash the white supremacist, domestic terrorism at the heart of the massacre. And so we are here to tell the truth about the Tulsa Greenwood Massacre because we see a proper revision of history away from whitewashing as part of our national reckoning with race in America. It is worth noting that in 2021, Black homeownership is at historic lows. The rate of Black homeownership is lower today than it was before the Fair Housing Act in the 1960s. The gap between Black and White homeownership has never been greater. According to the Federal Reserve, White households on average have eight times more wealth than Black households. And part of the reason is the Tulsa massacre, and the systemic racism that it represents. There is a racial income gap between White households and Black households, but there is an even greater wealth gap. And the wealth gap is not an accident, it is a product of public policy. It is a consequence of systemic racism. During the post-war era, we saw Black Americans systematically excluded from programs providing homeownership and higher education, which are the pillars of wealth-building. And if you have no home to own, then you have no home equity to build. And if you have no home equity to build, then you have no wealth to pass down from one generation to the next. And so, instead of realizing the dream of intergenerational wealth, too many Black Americans were condemned by public policy, condemned by systemic racism to the nightmare of intergenerational poverty. The Tulsa Race Massacre should be understood as a microcosm of what white supremacy has done to Black people and Black property, to Black business and Black community. And the ghosts of Jim Crow, the ghosts of the Tulsa and Greenwood massacre hunts us till this day. I represent a neighborhood named Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, and many of the businesses on Arthur Avenue have been owned by the same family for more than 100 years, but those businesses--all of them are white. And I thought to myself, what if Black Wall Street had been left alone, had been left to survive and thrive. It may very well be the case that some of those businesses would have endured until 2021. We could have had businesses owned by Black families for more than a century had it not been for the racial terrorism that took hold in 1921. And we know that when it comes to business, longevity is often the basis for resilience. Established businesses which tend to be wealthier and whiter had greater resilience in the face of COVID-19; whereas, newer businesses, which tend to be Black and Brown, were too fragile to survive the cataclysm of COVID-19. In the first two months of the outbreak, 44 percent of Black businesses were wiped out, which raises the question, what if Black Wall Street were left to thrive, and what if we could have had businesses that would have endured for more than a century and could have had the resilience, the longevity, to overcome even a cataclysmic event like COVID-19. Madam Speaker, I want to provide some more historic background, on May 31-June 1, 1921, a White mob attacked America's Black Wall Street, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and what is known as the Tulsa-Greenwood Race Massacre. The White mob of thousands of people shot and murdered Black residents, looted their homes and businesses, and burned more than 1,000 homes, churches, schools, and businesses. Not only did local authorities and law enforcement fail to maintain civil order and protect Tulsa's Black residents, some government agents aided the White mob in carrying out the massacre. Many of the residents who fled the massacre were detained in internment camps immediately following the massacre. And local officials later made, and ultimately failed, an attempt to block the ability of the Black community to rebuild the Greenwood commercial district by enacting a restrictive building ordinance. Less than a month after the massacre, a grand jury placed the blame entirely on the Black community and indicted 85 people--mostly African- Americans--with massacre-related offenses. No White person was ever held individually accountable for crimes committed during the massacre, and the vast majority of survivors and their descendants were never directly compensated for these harms. So not only did a White lynch mob set the most vibrant, Black community on fire, but then the United States proceeded to whitewash the history of the Tulsa massacre, claiming that it was a race riot rather than the act of domestic terrorism that it was and should always be seen as. No White person was held to account, and no Black person was made whole. Despite the acute challenges of racism in the late 19th and early 20th century, Black residents have been able to create thriving community in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. However, this community was literally burned to the ground in one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. And to this day, no one has been truly held responsible. And it is worth noting, even though Greenwood has rebuilt itself, Greenwood does have among the highest rates of poverty and unemployment in the city of Tulsa, which demonstrates the legacy of systemic racism, how hard it can be to overcome that legacy. The Tulsa Massacre resulted in property damage valued anywhere from $25 million to $100 million when adjusted in today's dollars. As the descendants of the white mob that looted Tulsa businesses have had the opportunity to benefit from the wealth of their ancestors, many Black survivors of the Tulsa Massacre and their descendants have not been able to recoup the wealth that had been lost or destroyed during the massacre. Despite the Oklahoma Commission to study the race massacre of 1921 stating, ``Reparations to the historic Greenwood community in real and tangible form would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional and physical scars of this terrible incident in our shared past.'' Despite that finding, neither the State of Oklahoma nor the city of Tulsa has provided direct compensation to survivors or their descendants. Discrimination against Black Tulsans did not end following the massacre. Over the local decades, local ordinances to prevent rebuilding, redlining, urban renewal, and slum clearance, gentrification, highway construction, tearing apart communities. I will offer a note of personal reflection. I represent the South Bronx, which has been ravaged by a racist highway known as the Cross Bronx Expressway. It was built by Robert Moses and largely funded by Federal dollars. And the Cross Bronx Expressway has left behind decades of displacement and environmental degradation. There are children who are born in the Bronx who live near the Cross Bronx Expressway, who breathe in pollutants every day that cause respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease. And we saw those diseases become lethal during COVID-19. As a son of the Bronx, I was often in three places. I was at home, I was at school, and I was in the emergency room, because I was repeatedly hospitalized for asthma. And the asthma epidemic in the Bronx, again, is not an accident. It is a consequence of the Cross Bronx Expressway, which is both literally and metaphorically a structure of racism. The South Bronx has a childhood asthma hospitalization rate that is double to three times the national average. So like the South Bronx, the neighborhood of Greenwood has its own racist highway. And one of the most exciting features of the American Jobs Plan is a proposed $20 billion fund that would rebuild neighborhoods that have been divided and devastated by the structural racism of highways. And I hope neighborhoods like Greenwood and the South Bronx will benefit from our national reckoning with race. The impact of the massacre and the ongoing systemic discrimination is clear when you compare North Tulsa, where many Black residents of Tulsa now live, to other areas. North Tulsan residents are significantly poorer than residents in other parts of the city. There are fewer businesses and large-scale employers in North Tulsa than in other cities. According to a 2018 city study, North Tulsa had the fewest jobs of any region of Tulsa. The unemployment rate is 2.37 percent times higher for Black Tulsans than for White Tulsans. The lowest life expectancy in Tulsa occurs in the poorest regions with the greatest concentration of Black residents. The United States has a responsibility to both acknowledge the harm caused by the Tulsa Massacre and to enact legal remedies and policy proposals to compensate survivors and their descendants. And as many of you know, there is no greater champion of making the victims of systemic racism whole, no greater champion of reparations than the chair of our Special Order hour, Congress Member Jackson Lee. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, in the United States, there are 1.4 million LGBTQ businesses contributing more than $1.7 trillion to the American economy. We have a vested interest in sustaining and strengthening those businesses with equal access to credit, which is the beating heart of the American economy. As a former New York City Council member, I partnered with the National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce to establish the Nation's largest municipal certification program for LGBTQ business enterprises, enabling those businesses to enjoy equal access to a $25 billion pool of government procurement. I am continuing in the United States Congress the advocacy that I began years ago in the New York City Council. My legislation, the LGBTQ Business Equal Credit Enforcement and Investment Act, builds on a foundation laid by several statutes and regulations. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, ECOA, prohibits credit discrimination, including but not limited to sex discrimination. A new interpretive rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau clarifies that ECOA's prohibition against sex discrimination applies to sexual orientation and gender identity. Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank, which exists to enable and enhance the enforcement of ECOA, requires financial institutions to report information about the race, ethnicity, and sex of credit applicants who serve as the principal owners of small businesses. My legislation would expand the 1071 reporting requirements to include not only sex but also sexual orientation and gender identity. In doing so, it would enable antidiscrimination enforcement where none might exist. Even though the United States has made substantial strides toward LGBTQ equality, the mission is far from accomplished. Seventy percent of the LGBTQ community remains unprotected by antidiscrimination laws. When it comes to credit, in particular, according to the Williams Institute, more than 7.7 million LGBTQ adults live in States that offer no protection against credit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Francis Bacon once said that knowledge is power. Knowledge affords us the power to detect discrimination that might otherwise go undetected. Take, as an example, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which is analogous to my legislation. Both the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and Iowa State University reviewed data from the HMDA and found that same-sex couples were denied loans at higher rates than heterosexual couples, despite having comparable creditworthiness. It also found that those same-sex couples paid higher interest rates and higher fees. The experience of the HMDA tells us that sunlight can be a powerful disinfectant against discrimination. The Equal Credit Enforcement and Investment Act would make credit more accessible, credit laws more enforceable, and creditors more accountable. It would represent a triumph of transparency in the service of economic opportunity for all, regardless of who you are and whom you love. Hate Never Brings Peace

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, earlier in the week, a public official posted on Twitter the following image of a map where the State of Israel is nowhere to be found. There is nothing accidental about the omission. Wiping Israel off the map is the objective of the BDS movement. Notice the image includes flowers to symbolize peace, as though peace meant the destruction of Israel itself. When most Americans speak of peace, we mean the peaceful coexistence of an Israeli state and Palestinian state, not the existence of one to the exclusion of the other. Most Americans are anguished by the trauma of Israelis seeking refuge in bomb shelters in the face of relentless rocket fire. And most Americans are anguished by the deep suffering and death toll of Palestinians who live under the repressive rule of Hamas and who have fallen victim to the wretchedness of war. The rapid-fire rhetoric that we have seen directed at Israel is so hyperbolic, so vitriolic, that it inflames rather than informs. It delegitimizes Israel rather than deescalates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those propagating hate are not part of the solution, but part of the problem. Hate never brings peace. It never has. It never will. You can either promote hate or you can promote peace, but you cannot advance both. Let us not be fooled by the pretense of peace. Let us find the wisdom to tell the difference between genuine peace and hate hidden under the guise of peace. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a study conducted by the London Bridge Association on the benefits of implementing a repair-in-place model for rehabilitating the East River Tunnels in New York City. The full study can be found at the following web page: http://www.gatewayprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ 2020-11-23-LBA-vFINAL.pdf. . . Track bed and overhead line replacement is a priority because it is responsible for a large percentage of the delays. 1.5. NRT Current Conditions--Overview The NRT consists of two tubes and was constructed in the early 1900s and, in addition to suffering from old age, was impacted by Superstorm Sandy, the deadliest and most destructive, as well as the strongest, hurricane of the 2012 hurricane season. The NRT is located on the Northeast Corridor (NEC), the most heavily used passenger railway in the United States and is used for over 200,000 passenger trips by NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak customers. The NRT is experiencing the following conditions: Long-term damaged and deteriorating tunnel infrastructure Leaks in shafts and tubes Tunnel services are beyond their useful life and need replacement Track faults Overhead line (catenary) issues Poor drainage and maintenance issues Salts/chlorides from Superstorm Sandy corrode rails and exacerbate stray current Due to the long-term deterioration and the conditions described above, the NRT's two tubes are currently experiencing incidents that are increasing in frequency and unpredictability and are threatening the reliable operation of the NRT for Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT customers. A report from the Northeast Corridor Commission (Ref 12.1.6) analysed more than 3 million train movements and 750,000 daily delay records between 2014 and 2018. The report found there were 65 days where incidents in or around the NRT resulted in more than 5 hours of train delay, of which 45 were caused by infrastructure issues, resulting in 2,500 delayed trains and 65,800 train delay minutes. The report indicated that the delay minutes were due to: Signal Problems (13% of delay minutes) Track Conditions (31% of delay minutes) Overhead Power (35% of delay minutes) Other (21% of delay minutes) 1.6. Current Refurbishment Plan The current proposal for the NRT Refurbishment proposes a solution that would be completed after the construction and completion of the new Hudson River Tunnel (HRT) in 2028, thus leaving the NRT ``at risk'' until 2032, at the earliest (as of the 2019 financial Plan). Based on LBA's review of the current NRT conditions, LBA believes that this is an unsatisfactory situation, does not meet global best practice, and that there are approaches that could be adopted to target the refurbishment at a much earlier time. LBA, therefore, considered how this risk to the NRT infrastructure and to the Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT customer experience could be reduced and a resilient and reliable service established at the earnest possible time whilst delivering better value. 2 Executive Summary 2.1 Overview This report takes into account the current NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak rail operations and concludes that regular weeknight and weekend periods of a one-tube outage are feasible, reliable, and safe. This would necessitate an in-service sequence of work in only one of the NRT tubes at any point in time and refurbishment could be undertaken simultaneously in a number of locations in the occupied NRT tube by means of bespoke highly productive works trains or road rail vehicles. This review is conceptual and general in nature, based on limited information provided. Further diligence is required to verify the feasibility of the LBA proposals and to confirm the assumptions made concerning the NRT, as well as developing the planning and budgeting for the NRT Refurbishment work. Refurbishment activities identified are: Repair the tunnel lining and seal the leaks Replace the mechanical and electrical services in the tunnel with new and improved systems Replace the High Voltage (HV) cables which pass through the tubes Demolish the bench walls (which are too high and failing) and replace them with new walkways and cable containments Replace the trackbed, track, and overhead catenary Replace the signalling system The refurbishment activities that are proposed to be accomplished through an in-service refurbishment are broadly the same as the activities currently proposed in the full outage scenario. The specific target of LBA's review has been to consider whether it is feasible, safe, and with no impact to the rail service, to carry out the refurbishment while both of the NRT's two tubes remain in service, with refurbishment work being carried out in agreed off-peak outage periods during both overnights and weekends. In doing so, LBA have leaned on their experience gained on recent projects in the United Kingdom and also referred to international best practice on other recent projects in the United Kingdom, Europe, Hong Kong, and the United States (the Canarsie Tubes/L-Train). Refurbishment in-service is becoming increasingly the norm of international best practice as highly utilised railway systems/tunnels get older and are under increasing pressure due to rising passenger demand. Some examples of refurbishment in-service on the London Underground, a very old and busy system, include the refurbishment of the Central Line and Northern Line tunnels as well as 3.2 km of the Metropolitan Line (the world's first underground railway dating back to 1863) between Baker Street and Finchley Road Underground Stations. To demonstrate the feasibility of an in-service NRT Refurbishment that would implement the refurbishment activities identified above, LBA has developed a conceptual approach and developed an outline plan and program for the

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, according to The Washington Post, the administration plans to propose only a temporary rather than a permanent expansion of the child tax credit. Allowing the child tax credit to expire in 2025 is a colossal misjudgment whose consequences we could live to regret. We cannot and should not be the party that cuts child poverty in half only until 2025. We should and must be the party that champions a permanent breakthrough against child poverty. Instead of making the most of our FDR and LBJ moment, we are in danger of inexplicably putting an expiration date on our own legacy. Did President Roosevelt put an expiration date on Social Security? Did President Johnson put an expiration date on Medicare? Why should we put an expiration date on the Social Security and Medicare of our own time? I urge President Biden to make his greatest achievement a permanent legacy.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on this measure.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 490, the DHS MORALE Act. Every day, the Department of Homeland Security workforce carries out an array of critical missions, from screening travelers to securing cyberspace, to responding to disasters. The 240,000 men and women who make up this workforce should feel appreciated, not only by the American people, but also by DHS. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case. The Office of Personnel Management has found that DHS employees are consistently less satisfied with their jobs compared to the average Federal employee. Since 2005, DHS' own employees ranked the Department dead last among large Federal departments in the annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey. Scratching below the surface, the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey found that DHS' workforce is the most dissatisfied when it comes to training, teamwork, work-life balance, and support for diversity. In response to the concerns expressed by the workforce, Chairman Thompson introduced the DHS MORALE Act to require DHS to create and implement policies related to leadership development, employee engagement, career progression, and employee recognition. Specifically, H.R. 490 requires the Department to prioritize career development opportunities and leadership development opportunities for DHS employees. Additionally, it would require DHS to establish an employee engagement steering committee comprised of employees across the Department to better identify the causes of low morale and what initiatives are working to improve it, and to establish an annual employee award program to recognize those in the DHS workforce who go above and beyond in their work to protect the homeland. Identical versions of this measure have been approved by the House in prior Congresses. This Congress, a new provision was added to the bill to respond to recommendations issued last month by the Government Accountability Office regarding morale challenges at the Department. The provision directs DHS' chief human capital officer to review and approve DHS component agency plans to ensure they include initiatives to address the root causes of low morale and performance metrics for measuring implementation of those initiatives. Enactment of H.R. 490 will help put DHS on a path toward fixing the longstanding morale problems at DHS. Madam Speaker, I urge the passage of H.R. 490, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.