Ritchie Torres

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 396, the Transit Security Grant Program Flexibility Act. This legislation, as introduced by my colleague from New York (Mr. Garbarino), seeks to make commonsense adjustments to a DHS grant program that helps keep my constituents safe. H.R. 396 requires technical changes to the Transit Security Grant Program to allow grant funding to be used for backfill staffing when associated with security training and give transit authorities more time to expend grant funds on security improvements for public transportation systems or infrastructure. Our transit systems are absolutely vital to daily travel and commerce. According to U.S. Census figures, 56 percent of all New Yorkers rely on public transportation. In New York City, over 5 million people depend on our trains and subways on a normal workday. Under the TSGP, New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority received about $20 million in fiscal year 2020 to protect riders from acts of terrorism and other targeted violence. H.R. 396 is informed by feedback from grantees about challenges with the program over the years, and it is intended to ensure that the Transit Security Grant Program remains current, and that funding reaches maximum impact. Enactment of this bill will help improve a key DHS grant program and better secure our Nation's transportation infrastructure. Madam Speaker, I urge my House colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, New York City has the largest public transit system in the country, and New York City has the greatest vulnerability to terrorism. I thank my colleague, Congressman Garbarino, for his leadership in advocating for transportation systems across the country. H.R. 396 is a measure that this country needs. I believe all of us in this body can agree that securing America's transit systems is critical to homeland security, and so too must we invest to make and keep it safe. Enactment of H.R. 396 would bolster the security of what, in the view of my constituents, is about as critical as critical infrastructure gets and protect these systems and their riders against terrorist attacks and targeted violence. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 396, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, Robert Leder, as his name would suggest, was a natural leader, loved by the thousands of students whose lives he lifted. I, for one, would not be here were it not for Robert Leder, who set me on a trajectory that led from public housing in the Bronx to the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. My story is a mere footnote in the much larger legacy of public service that Robert Leder left behind after his passing in 2018. Mr. Leder entered public education in the 1960s as a Spanish teacher. In the late 1970s, he rose to become the principal of Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx, a position he held for nearly three decades, making him, at the time, the longest-serving educator in America's largest city. As principal, he knew the name of every student. He held everyone around him to the highest standards, but he held himself to the highest standard of all. We, the alumni of Lehman High School, will always love you, Mr. Leder. We will never forget you. I will not always be a Member of Congress, but I will always be the grateful student of the greatest educator I have ever known, Robert Leder. May he rest in peace.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, Israel embodies the resilience, the ingenuity, the can-do comeback spirit of humanity at its best. One need not be Israeli to be inspired by the survival and success of Israel, which has persisted in the face of improbable odds. One need not be Jewish to be inspired by a Jewish state whose rebirth and resilience and resourcefulness is one of the greatest success stories the world has ever seen. A tiny nation the size of New Jersey has emerged, in the span of a few decades, as a global power and a global innovator, as a start-up nation and as a water superpower. The story of Israel's renaissance takes on special meaning in our present moment, at a time when our own country is reeling from the cataclysm of COVID-19. Israel reminds us that it is possible to overcome. It is possible to emerge stronger than ever. And it is possible, in the words of President Joe Biden, to ``build back better.'' Madam Speaker, Israel has endured for more than seven decades. And by the grace of God, may it endure for many more.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, a law is only as strong as the power to enforce it. For far too long, the NLRB has been too powerless to enforce the National Labor Relations Act. For too long, workers have been left to largely fend for themselves in the face of retaliation and intimidation and arbitration. The PRO Act would breathe new life into the National Labor Relations Act. It would empower the NLRB to impose civil penalties on and empower workers to seek punitive damages against retaliatory employers. Most importantly, the PRO Act would preempt the Orwellian right-to-work laws so that union organizing is given the freedom to flourish everywhere in the United States. The PRO Act requires an employer to disclose every time it seeks the services of a professional union-buster. I am proud to introduce an amendment that requires DOL to make these disclosures available through an app. App-based notification would empower essential workers to be vigilant in defending their essential right to organize.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, as a person of color who has seen in my own life the dehumanizing effect of stop-and-frisk policing in New York City, I know firsthand that the Achilles' heel of American policing is the absence of accountability. We, as a country, have a choice. We can either choose police accountability or choose qualified immunity, but we cannot choose both. The purpose of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is not to second-guess officers who act in good faith. The objective is to hold liable officers who repeatedly abuse their power and who rarely, if ever, face consequences for their repeat abuses. If you are a good officer, you have nothing to fear. But if you are a bad officer, you have accountability to fear, and fear accountability, you should.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. As a child of the Bronx who grew up in the projects, I was often too scared to come out of the closet, too blinded by fear to see clearly my own value, my own equality. My younger self could have never imagined standing on the floor of the House as a Member of Congress, voting for legislation that, if enacted, would make me equal in the eyes of the law. As the first LGBTQ Afro-Latino Member of Congress, I feel palpably the weight of history on my shoulders. On behalf of my community, I am here to claim what discrimination denies: equal protection under the law. Indeed, we are here to uphold the abiding truth of the American experiment, that we are all created equal and that none of us should be evicted, fired, or denied accommodations and services simply because of who we are and because of whom we love. We are equal by nature, and we ought to be equal by law. The logic of equality is as simple as that. Yesterday, a Member of Congress said that the Equality Act was ``disgusting, evil, immoral.'' I wish to set the record straight. What is truly immoral and disgusting and evil is discrimination. It always has been, and it always will be. Discrimination denies us our deepest humanity. The profound degradation it causes has no place in a society that pledges liberty and justice for all. So I hope that my colleagues, all of them, will find the moral courage to uphold what the Declaration of Independence promises and what the Equality Act delivers: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, without exception, without discrimination.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank Teresa for those kind words. I have the honor of representing New York 15, the South Bronx, which is often said to be the poorest congressional district in America. The unemployment rate in the South Bronx can be as high as 25 percent compared to 5 percent in the Upper East Side, so we are living through a tale of two cities. But COVID-19 has shown the South Bronx to be the essential congressional district. It is the home of essential workers who put their lives at risk during the peak of the pandemic so that the rest of us could safely shelter in place. We owe it to those workers to give them a fighting chance at a decent and dignified life. Our society will be judged by how we treat the most essential among us. There is a gap between the value of what our essential workers do and how poorly we treat them and how poorly we pay them. Bridging that essential gap is one of the great moral imperatives of our time. Raising the minimum wage is long overdue. The minimum wage in America has been lagging behind inflation. It has been lagging behind the productivity of the American workforce. It has been lagging behind the historic average. We have gone more than a decade, the longest we have ever gone, without raising the minimum wage by even a cent. By every metric, whether it is inflation or productivity or the historic average or the length of time that we have gone without raising the minimum wage, it is time to finally lift the minimum wage for the most essential workers among us. The statistics are clear that raising the minimum wage would lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty. It would raise incomes for 17,000 Americans. For me, the minimum wage is exactly that. It is the minimum of what we should do for our most essential workers. If we fail to raise the minimum wage, then shame on us. Shame on us for failing to do right by the essential workers who did right by all of us in our moment of greatest need.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, she is exactly right. The promise of America is that if you work hard and play by the rules, then you should have access to a decent, dignified life. Too many of our essential workers are paid starvation wages. You have people who are doing everything right. They are working their heart out for the country and for their families, and they are struggling to survive because the cost of living in America, especially in cities like New York, is spiraling out of control. So the promise of America is broken as long as we continue to pay our most essential workers poverty wages. It is no longer defensible.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, we cannot simply honor our essential workers with hollow words. We, as a country, have to put our money where our mouth is and do right by them.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, it is an honor to rise to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an institution like no other, the Congressional Black Caucus. I am honored to be in the presence of fierce and formidable public servants like the CBC chair, Joyce Beatty, and today's anchor, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Madam Speaker, I thank her for those inspiring words. I thank her for reminding us of the long and rich history of the CBC, a history that continues to inspire us all. Madam Speaker, I am also honored to be here in the presence of my brother, Mondaire Jones. You know, in the history of the United States Congress there have only been about 163 Black Members of Congress, and none of them were openly LGBTQ until the election of Mondaire Jones and myself. So I am proud to join my brother in making history in the 117th Congress. You know, before I was Congressman Ritchie Torres, before I was Councilman Ritchie Torres, I am and will always be the son of the most powerful woman I know, Debra Bosolet, my mother. And the most important lesson that my mother taught me is never forget where you come from. Never forget where your roots lie. And my roots are in the Bronx. Even when I leave the Bronx for Washington, D.C., the Bronx never leaves me. I was born, bred, and battle-tested in the boogie down Bronx. And I have the high honor of representing New York's 15, the south Bronx, which for too long has been ground zero for racially concentrated poverty. The unemployment rate in the south Bronx could be as high as 25 percent, comparable to the joblessness of the Great Depression. More than half the residents in the Bronx pay more than half their income toward their rent, and that is before you factor in the cost of prescription drugs and utilities, and food, and all the bare necessities of life. And even though the south Bronx has long been known to be the poorest congressional district in America, COVID-19 has shown the south Bronx to be the essential congressional district. It is the home of essential workers who put their lives at risk during the peak of the pandemic so that most of us could safely shelter in place. And our mission, as the CBC, should be to give those essential workers, who are overwhelmingly women of color, a fighting chance at a decent and dignified life. You know, I never thought as a poor kid of color from the Bronx that I would embark on a journey that would take me from public housing in the Bronx to the people's House in Washington, D.C. And I never thought that as a Congress Member I would live through an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol. Now, on January 6, we were reminded that there are two competing realities that define America. There is the reality of multiracial democracy. America is slowly emerging as a multiracial, multiethnic, LGBTQ-inclusive democracy. Seventy percent of the Democratic Caucus consists of people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ Caucus. But then there is the reality of white supremacy, which reared its ugly head on January 6. And, for me, the scene on the U.S. Capitol was not simply an attack on a physical structure, it was an attack on the very idea of America as a multiracial democracy. And it is that vision of America that, we, as the CBC, are charged with defending. And despite the overwhelming shock and despair that I felt on January 6, Madam Speaker, I have hope. The inauguration was reason for hope. The image of Kamala Harris, a Black woman in the Vice-Presidency, being sworn in by Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Supreme Court, is a powerful encapsulation of how far we have come, of how much we have achieved. And that moment reminds us that the future of our country does not belong to white supremacy. The future of our country belongs to multiracial democracy. And the Congressional Black Caucus will continue to be at the forefront of making America the more perfect multiracial union that it ought to be. In the words of the CBC chair: Our Power, Our Message.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, as always, for the inspiration of words. Our colleague, Congressman Jones, spoke earlier of Brown v. Board of Education. Brown v. Board of Education was the first legal case I ever read. In high school, I participated in a form of legal debate known as moot court, which taught me how to think, read, write, and speak critically and artfully. I will never forget after reading Brown v. Board of Education how inspired I felt, those words in the field of education: Separate but equal is inherently unequal. Those words inspired me to see myself--as a young Black man--as a public servant and maybe one day as a Member of the United States Congress. But I have to be honest. If you had said to me 1 year ago that I would become a Member of Congress during an infectious disease outbreak, that I would witness an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol during the electoral college vote count, and that I would then vote to impeach an outgoing President who had been impeached once before, I would have said that sounds a lot like a movie. So this has been the most draining and disorienting beginning for any freshman class in the modern history of the United States Congress, but I am nevertheless honored to be here. January 6 is a reminder that the mission of the CBC takes on a renewed urgency. The Congress Member and I sit on the Homeland Security Committee, and one of our highest priorities is going to be counterterrorism. During one of our recent hearings, I made the observation that America has a pattern of willful blindness toward white supremacist extremism as a form of domestic terror. Even though the statistics have been clear that white supremacist extremism has been the dominant driver of violence in the United States for decades, the U.S. Government did not designate a white supremacist group as a terrorist organization until 2020. 2020. Never mind the massacre against African Americans, against Latinos, and against members of the LGBTQ community. It took the Federal Government until 2020 to finally recognize white supremacy as a form of domestic terrorism. I am often asked: Whom do you admire in history? The gentlewoman brought up the Underground Railroad, and I am a great admirer of Harriet Tubman, who, as the architect of the Underground Railroad, is America's Moses. She was a genuine liberator of an enslaved people. I also have deep admiration for Ida B. Wells, who was alone as a journalist in standing up to the campaign of domestic terrorism and lynchings against African Americans. And we have to draw from the legacy of Ida B. Wells and renew our commitment to fighting domestic terrorism in our own time. Madam Speaker, I look forward to joining the gentlewoman in that fight and learning from her.

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, I want to pay tribute to my classmate, Congress Member Nikema Williams, who, as the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, was instrumental in winning the Senate for the Democratic Party. Thanks to the leadership of on-the-ground organizers like Congress Member Williams, a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House, a Democratic President means we have the makings of an FDR moment. We have a historic opportunity to govern as boldly in the 21st century as FDR did in the 20th century. Systemic racism in America traces back 400 years, and it is incredible to think that in the 400-year history of our country, we are as close as we have ever been to confronting the root causes of systemic racism. That is the burden that we bear as the Congressional Black Caucus, but it is not only a burden. It is a blessing. Public service in an FDR moment is a blessing. It is said the first historian, Herodotus, said that he wrote the first historical book so that the deeds of brave people cannot be forgotten. That is the same reason the CBC exists, so that the deeds of Black heroes like Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells, like John Lewis, like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, are never forgotten, that the contributions of Black America should remain front and center in the life of our country. It has been an honor to be with you, Congress Member Jackson Lee. I cannot tell you how honored I feel to be a member of the CBC. You know, I grew up poor most of my life. I was raised by a single mother who had to raise three children on minimum wage, which in the 1990s was $4.25 an hour. I grew up in public housing, in conditions of mold and mildew, leaks and lead, without consistent heat and hot water in the winter. I never could have imagined myself as a member of the greatest institution in the United States Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus. It is an honor to be here with you in this caucus at this moment.

Mr. TORRES of New York

Mr. TORRES of New York. Madam Speaker, the dangerous mob that Donald Trump unleashed on the United States Capitol represents a violent assault on the separation of powers and on the peaceful transfer of power that we have long taken for granted. The impeachment of Donald Trump is not politics but law, not passion but reason, not vengeance but justice. And we, as the people's Representatives, must rise to the challenge of defending democracy in the face of its gravest threat, and we will.