The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“VIRGINIA'S EIGHTH DISTRICT IS SUFFERING” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1007-H1008 on Jan. 23, 2019.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
VIRGINIA'S EIGHTH DISTRICT IS SUFFERING
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Beyer) for 5 minutes.
Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, my Northern Virginia district includes more Federal workers--almost 87,000--than any other, and my people are suffering.
This week we entered the second month of a shutdown which President Trump began by rejecting a Republican bill which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate after promising that he would, in fact, shut down the government.
The undeniable fact is that if the President told Senate Republicans today to vote for the exact same bill they already passed, the exact same bill he promised to sign, then this shutdown would end. But he refuses to do so because his demands are unmet.
President Trump's complaints of a crisis, Madam Speaker, are correct in one respect: they are a crisis for the people I represent and for people in every district across this country.
The President has said many things since he promised that he would shut down the government, but few of his comments are directed to the Federal workforce. I have gotten many hundreds of calls, emails, and letters, and they are overwhelmingly opposed to the shutdown. They are about tuition they can't pay, rent, healthcare premiums, insulin and other drugs, and groceries.
I am particularly concerned because so many of the folks who work in northern Virginia have security clearances, and the number one reason people are denied a security clearance is because of a financial blot on their record. It is the number one reason their security clearance is taken away. If they are late on car payments and mortgage payments, they can actually lose their jobs.
I am concerned about the impact on contractors. These are the folks like guards at the Smithsonian or food service workers or people in cleaning crews. They tend to be minimum wage. They tend not to have savings, and often no benefits. They are not getting paid, and they have nothing to fall back on. All the people who serve in our community--waiters, dental hygienists, auto mechanics, and hairstylists--are seeing their ability to make money day after day disappear.
President Trump says his shutdown is about making the country safer, but that doesn't make any sense if you talk to the people who are suffering today. I have heard from furloughed FBI agents, air traffic controllers, State Department officials, workers at TSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, and even Customs and Border Patrol, and they all vehemently oppose the shutdown.
Madam Speaker, we all support effective border security, but keeping these people furloughed or making them work unpaid doesn't make us any safer.
But on the positive side, as the pain has gotten worse for our community, I have also seen something else, which is that communities are coming together to make sure that no one gets left behind. Business after business throughout the country and throughout northern Virginia are helping with free sandwiches, free meals, and free services.
Nonprofits are stepping up their efforts to meet the worsening conditions created by the shutdown, and government officials, furloughed and unfurloughed, are doing everything they can to pitch in and lighten the blow on their unpaid colleagues.
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Yesterday, I was helping serve food to Federal employees at Chef Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen. There was a line around the block, and it was D.C. police officers on their lunch break who came to help serve.
By the way, Madam Speaker, I think I handed out more than 300 meals, and not a single person said: Open up the government. Give Trump his wall.
We are better than this. We are good, kind, and industrious. The American people don't deserve this shutdown.
It is axiomatic that we shouldn't negotiate with hostage takers, but the President has taken our government hostage. If we give him what he wants, he may well use this tactic again and again and again.
President Reagan said: ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.''
We say: President Trump, tear down your wall--your unreasonable obsession with an obsolete, medieval, ineffective way to secure our borders--and open up our government.
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