mesut/congress_speeches huggingface dataset:
RELIGIOUS TESTS
Mike Lee (Republican, UT) \u2014 2017-9-7

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about the fascinating men and women of America's founding generation. I want to share with you one of their stories. prgtoken Jonas Phillips was a penniless Jewish immigrant to America. He was an indentured servant, a hard-working businessman, and an American patriot who served in the Philadelphia militia during the Revolutionary War. During the British occupation of New York City, he sneaked messages past the censors by writing notes in Yiddish, understanding that his adversaries wouldn't be able to understand or decipher it easily. prgtoken Years later, Phillips addressed a letter to George Washington and to other delegates at the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia. He urged the delegates not to include a religious test in the Constitution as any kind of requirement for service for the Federal Government because no man, he wrote, should be ``deprived or abridged of any civil right, as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments.'' prgtoken Jonas Phillips wrote this letter for a reason. He wrote this because Pennsylvania, the State where he lived, required officials to swear that the New Testament was inspired by God. As a faithful Jewish person, Jonas Phillips could not do that. ``By the above law,'' he wrote, ``a Jew is deprived of holding any public office or place of government.'' prgtoken Thankfully, Jonas Phillips' letter--Jonas Phillips' prayer-- ultimately would be answered. The Convention had voted unanimously to ban religious tests for Federal office. The language the Framers inserted into the Constitution was unequivocal upon this point. It said that ``no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.'' prgtoken When the Founding Fathers wrote the word ``ever,'' they meant it. That word means something in the Constitution, and we need to protect it. prgtoken I feel the need to stress this point because of the conduct of some of my colleagues. Yesterday a Notre Dame law professor, Amy Coney Barrett, came before the Senate Judiciary Committee on which I serve. She had been nominated as a prominent legal scholar and lawyer in this country to be nominated as a circuit judge. That is why she was before our committee. prgtoken Her nomination has been endorsed by prominent legal scholars from across the political spectrum and across the country, including Neal Katyal, President 's Acting Solicitor General in the previous administration. Nevertheless, at Ms. Barrett's confirmation hearing, a number of my colleagues insinuated that her Catholic faith would somehow prevent her from applying the law freely and fairly. prgtoken Here is an actual quote from that hearing: ``Dogma and law are two different things,'' remarked one of my colleagues. ``When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern.'
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2018
Billy Long (Republican, MO) \u2014 2017-9-7

I say this is a nonpartisan issue, and I would like to point out that the organization, National Association of SARA Title III Program Officials, back in 2012, in an earlier version of a similar amendment, had opposed this. Back on May 28 of this year, they announced that they are no longer in opposition. So I don't really think it is controversial at all. prgtoken , .
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2018
David G. Valadao (Republican, CA) \u2014 2017-9-7

I rise today in support of my amendment, which ensures critical funding for ongoing demining projects in Nagorno-Karabakh. prgtoken As a result of land mines laid during the Nagorno-Karabakh war, the men, women, and children of the region have lived their lives under the constant threat of crippling injury or death from an exploding mine. Not only have many families in Nagorno-Karabakh lost loved ones as a result of land mine accidents, families have had their entire livelihoods destroyed from economic and societal consequences. prgtoken Since 2000, the HALO Trust, an organization dedicated to restoring communities threatened by various weapons of war, has cleared more than approximately 90 percent of the minefields scattered throughout Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the organization, $8 million will be required to make the region mine-free by 2020. My amendment will help secure $1.5 million to be used as an important downpayment for this effort. prgtoken , ensuring families in Nagorno-Karabakh can live without fear of land mine accidents is indisputable, and I urge my colleagues in the House of Representatives to support my amendment.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2018
Harold Rogers (Republican, KY) \u2014 2017-9-7

I rise in respectful disagreement with my colleague who offered this amendment. prgtoken The United States Institute of Peace works to help prevent, reduce, and resolve violent conflicts abroad. The Institute works alongside our military, our diplomats, and development experts in some of the most conflict-affected and fragile environments, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Tunisia, South Sudan, and Ukraine. Eliminating the U.S. Institute of Peace would hamper our efforts to stabilize these areas and to prevent further outbreaks of conflict. prgtoken The Institute also works with local leaders and other partners to find solutions to religious freedom and to mitigate the rise of extremism and persecution. prgtoken Let me point out, too, that the staffer the gentleman just mentioned in his remarks is no longer with the Institute. She is gone. prgtoken , I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.
REINFORCING EDUCATION ACCOUNTABILITY IN DEVELOPMENT ACT
Rand Paul (Republican, KY) \u2014 2017-9-7

in Washington, we have a disease--or a syndrome rather. I call it the dinosaur syndrome: big hearts, small brains. Unfortunately, it is a recurring problem year after year, bill after bill, day after day. prgtoken In Washington, it is argued that you are more compassionate if you give away more of someone else's money. I would argue that true compassion is in giving your own money away. I would argue that truly rational policy is giving away money that you have. It is one thing to give away other people's money. It is another thing to give away money you do not even possess. As a country, we have a $20 trillion debt. We borrow $1 million every minute. Yet we are putting forward a bill to allocate $15 billion to those who are suffering from Harvey without paying for it and without finding the money from anywhere. We are simply adding it to our tab--adding it to our $20 trillion bill. prgtoken How did we get to $20 trillion in debt? Big hearts, small brains. Nobody has the courage to ask: Why don't we pay for it? Why don't we be legislators and stand up like men and women and say: Let's set priorities. prgtoken If it is a priority to help those in Texas--and I have great sympathy for those in Texas. My family is there. I have family members with 2 feet of water in their house so I have great sympathy for those who are in need, but there is no reason to be foolish. We shouldn't just borrow the money. Why don't we take the money from something less important? prgtoken My amendment, the America first amendment, would take the money from money we are going to send to foreign countries. We send billions and billions of dollars to countries that hate us. We send billions and billions of dollars to countries that burn our flag. I think it is a very simple choice, when we are looking at helping those in need in our country, that we quit sending money to other countries. prgtoken What my amendment would do would be to pay for the $15 billion in aid by taking it out of the foreign aid account. Who gets the money in the foreign aid account? What is it spent on? I will give you a couple of examples of what we spend our foreign aid on. prgtoken We spent billions of dollars--I think it is over $100 billion--on building roads in Afghanistan, blowing up roads in Afghanistan, building schools, blowing up schools, and then rebuilding all of them. Sometimes we blow them up, and sometimes someone else blows them up, but then we always go back and rebuild them. What about rebuilding our country? Why don't we look at our country and rebuild our infrastructure and rebuild our roads? For those who are flooded in Texas, let's help them, but let's help them by not sending the money to Pakistan and to other countries that do not even like us. prgtoken In the foreign aid account, we spent $273 million last year teaching people how to apply for more of our money. So it is not bad enough that they take your money and send it t
REINFORCING EDUCATION ACCOUNTABILITY IN DEVELOPMENT ACT
Ben Sasse (Republican, NE) \u2014 2017-9-7

Hurricane Harvey is a horrible tragedy. It has ruthlessly taken lives. It has taken diplomas and baby albums. It has taken homes and gardens and playgrounds. It has also given us many new pictures of volunteerism, heroism, and neighborliness, and God bless those many helping hands. It has also revealed the willingness, the advanced planning, and the hard work of many government employees in the State and local governments, in the National Guard, in FEMA, and beyond. prgtoken So what are we doing here today in this body? And what should we be doing? What is the specific duty of the U.S. Congress at this moment? We should provide emergency funding relief. We should provide emergency funding for FEMA and for related agencies. They are doing important work, and they need it. prgtoken The amount agreed upon by the administration and the House of Representatives on Tuesday--just 48 hours ago--was $7.8 billion. It passed noncontroversially. The vote was 419 to 3. They did the right thing. So let's approve it. Let's do the exact same thing. Let's let FEMA spend that $7 billion. It is important money. There is a genuine emergency. There is real need. I am a small government guy, but there is a clear and urgent governmental role in this moment, so we should do it. prgtoken But what we should not do are unrelated things that we will pretend are hurricane relief. We should not fool ourselves into pretending that the legislation on the floor today is actually doing what it says it does just because it has a certain name on the top of the legislation. What we are actually considering doing today in this body is much, much larger, much clunkier, and much less explicable or defensible to your and my constituents. prgtoken Do your constituents know, for example, that far less than half of all of the spending in this bill before us today is in any way related to emergency relief for Hurricane Harvey? Think about that. Do your constituents know that far less than half of the spending is actually related to hurricanes? Shouldn't they know that? Shouldn't they know that the vast majority of the money this body is going to spend today, under the pretend guise of an emergency in the Schumer-Pelosi- bill, is not actually emergency spending at all? prgtoken Do your constituents know that we are using the hurricane as an excuse to extend the debt ceiling? Translated, that means we can't pay our credit card bill, so we are just going to take over the credit card company and change our credit limit without any discussion. We are not going to have any conversation about the fact that prgtoken we constantly spend more money than we have, and we have to borrow to do it. prgtoken There is a mechanism by which, when we hit up against our debt limit, we are supposed to pause and have a conversation, but we are not going to do that today. We are going to use the hurricane as an excuse to hide from that truth. prgtoken What
INVESTING IN HEALTHCARE RESEARCH
Roy Blunt (Republican, MO) \u2014 2017-9-7

today I come to you after we have been able to pass out of the Appropriations Committee the bill to fund the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. I want to talk particularly about what happened in that funding, which is now out of committee and ready for the full Senate to act on it and then the Congress to act on it, as it relates to healthcare research. prgtoken We were able in our committee to have a bipartisan bill. I had a chance to begin to chair that committee 3 years ago. Senator Murray from Washington State is the leading on that committee. For the previous 6 years--the previous 5 years plus that first budget for which I was the chair--we weren't able to have a bipartisan bill. But the last 2 years, we have decided that we could figure out how to come together with this committee that actually appropriates about 30 percent of all the appropriated dollars that the Congress deals with and find a way to move forward in a bipartisan way. Certainly, Senator Murray is an important part of that partnership, and we were able to take our bill to the committee today. prgtoken Maybe the thing that we did that will have the most long-term significance in that bill was that, for the third year in a row, we were able to increase healthcare research at the National Institutes of Health. Now, for the 12 years that ended 3 years ago, there had been zero increase in healthcare research in this country. prgtoken Research, whether it is ag research or health research or other research, is one of the things that the government has done for a long time and can really commit itself to in ways that the private sector cannot. So when you begin to hold back the healthcare research here, not only do people not have the same potential they have to have their health challenges met and their family health challenges met, but we also hold back our ability to move forward with lifesaving cures and lifesaving practices in an economy where that makes a difference and in a world where these things are changing quickly. prgtoken So just 3 years ago, the people who run the National Institutes of Health and researchers around the country said that, having had no increase in a dozen years, they were basically 22 percent behind where they had been 12 years earlier in just research buying power. Young researchers were leaving the field of research because they were prgtoken really disadvantaged in a world where research dollars were effectively going down and people who had had successful research before had a much better chance to know how to get and then to be awarded a grant that young researchers weren't getting. prgtoken So 2 years ago, last year, and again today--2 years ago and last year, successfully--the Congress said: Now we are going to make a substantial increase to healthcare research. It was $2 billion each of those 2 years, which was about a
HURRICANES HARVEY AND IRMA
John Cornyn (Republican, TX) \u2014 2017-9-7

for better or worse, history repeats itself--sometimes much sooner than we would like. We now know that Florida officials, as well as those up the east coast of the United States, have begun ordering evacuations as Hurricane Irma has intensified into a category 5 storm which could make landfall this weekend. prgtoken It is my sincere hope that all residents of Florida will be safe, as well as those in other States affected by Irma, and that they take proper precautions. If there is one thing we learned from Hurricane Harvey, it is the importance of listening to local officials and leaders when it comes to evacuations and precautionary measures. But whatever happens, we are going to stand by the people of Florida and the Carolinas and others affected, just as they have stood by us in Texas and Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Harvey. In the meantime, we pray that Irma's trajectory changes. prgtoken Down in Texas, of course, we are still thinking about another hurricane, and that is, of course, Hurricane Harvey. It is hard to believe, but not even 2 weeks have passed since the storm first tore through our towns, great and small. Of course, communities are still reeling from the devastation. prgtoken One I visited earlier this week is the Meyerland neighborhood in Houston. It has been flooded three times in 3 years. On Monday, I visited the home of a single mom who survived several recent storms unscathed, but this time, Harvey found her home and destroyed it. There is a pile of debris on her front lawn, ready to be picked up by dump trucks. As a matter of fact, as you drive down the street, house after house after house, there are piles of furniture, clothing, drywall, and other debris that has been pulled up and discarded and is ready to be picked up by the dump trucks. Throughout the region, there are piles like that stacked up in Rockport, Aransas Pass, Lake Jackson, and West Columbia. As recently as this week, let's remember, some of these places were still under mandatory evacuation orders as the rivers crested and higher waters moved downstream. prgtoken But here is my main point: As the rubble piles up and up and up, it is sometimes hard to see past the wreckage of the past weeks. Sometimes it is hard to see beyond what is right in front of you. That is why some simple words by historian David McCullough are good to keep in mind at times like this, as we continue to deal with Harvey's aftermath and worry what might follow with Irma. prgtoken McCullough said: We think we live in difficult, uncertain times. We think we have worries. We think our leaders face difficult decisions. But so it has nearly always been. prgtoken He is right. We have been through tough times before. We certainly have been through tough times in storms like Harvey in Texas before. As a matter of fact, back almost a little over a century ago, on September 8, 1900, a hurricane like Harvey--a categ
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2018
Kevin McCarthy (Republican, CA) \u2014 2017-9-7

I rise for the purpose of a scheduling announcement. prgtoken , as we continue to track Hurricane Irma, I know many of our Members in southeastern United States are anxious to get home to their families and constituents. So, in order to ensure these Members can get home safely, the last votes for the week will now occur tomorrow afternoon on the Harvey disaster relief package at approximately 12:30 p.m. prgtoken The House will complete consideration of H.R. 3354 next week.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2018
A. Donald McEachin (Democrat, VA) \u2014 2017-9-7

I thank the ranking member for yielding. prgtoken , I am proud to rise in support of this amendment to restore funding to the Environmental Justice program within the EPA. This program enables the agency to better assist frontline communities that are disproportionately impacted by pollution. prgtoken Low-income and minority communities face disproportionate levels of hazardous pollution and environmental contaminants due to where their members live and where they work. prgtoken The harms are real. For instance, higher levels of air pollution result in members of minority groups having higher death rates and higher numbers of emergency room visits and hospital stays. prgtoken As the cofounder and co-chair of the United for Climate and Environmental Justice Task Force, it is my mission to combat these environmental injustices and ensure frontline communities no longer bear the unequal burden of environmental, economic, and health harms. prgtoken That is why, , this amendment is so important. prgtoken The Environmental Justice program leverages Federal funds to greatly improve health and quality of life in our most vulnerable communities. Since the establishment of the program, communities have been better able to revitalize neighborhoods, build health centers, expand affordable housing, and create new green spaces and recreational areas. prgtoken I urge my colleagues to show low-income and minority communities that we care about their health, housing, and overall well-being by supporting the amendment.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2018
Betty McCollum (Democrat, MN) \u2014 2017-9-7

the gentleman from Colorado is right. We have had this conversation in this Chamber, Mr. Chair, before. The Service does attempt to comply with the statutory mandate and to review the status of listed species every 5 years to determine whether or not it is classified as threatened or endangered. prgtoken It is correct. The Service has a backlog in reviews due to funding limitations. This year it is a 17 percent listing reduction contained in this bill so that they have been working on the backlog. But the Service still has only been able to complete 100 to 120 reviews per year, which is half of what is needed. prgtoken So in this bill, you and I might agree that there are things that could happen and that money isn't always the solution to a problem, but in this bill you might be surprised to know that it has cut another $3.4 million, so that only builds up the backlog all the more. prgtoken That is not necessarily the fault of the chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Chair. It is just the fact that the allocation that our subcommittee had to work with, tough choices had to be made. I know that the chairman was trying to balance a lot of things. prgtoken The gentleman talked about the court and the environment. I would love to have a conversation with the gentleman more about that, because it is my understanding--and I want to make sure I have it correct before we go into depth about it because, as the gentleman knows, we have a good relationship, and I want to make sure that I am correct when I say things--that actually some of the things that have been happening in court have actually helped to reduce some of the costs that the gentleman is thinking about because it is in place. prgtoken I will get the information, Mr. Chair, and share it with the gentleman later. prgtoken But the fact is that this amendment would not remove species without review from the list of species protected by the ESA so that the ESA's prohibition, again, would still remain, and it still would be the ability of citizens to sue or force compliance even with what the gentleman is proposing. So funding cannot be used to enforce the ESA for species with late reviews; it is going to leave the species unprotected. prgtoken Proposed language would prohibit the Service from working with the agencies. It would prohibit working with developers and landowners to comply, compliance to section 7 consultations or section 10 permits for Federal and private projects that could potentially affect the species. So as you can see, the other thing it doesn't do is the proposed language would not affect the ability of third parties to sue those agencies or landowners. prgtoken So I agree with the gentleman that we need to do a better job of making sure that these reviews are done in a timely fashion. I agree that, when a species has attained a classification where it is no longer threatened or it is no longer endangered, it should come off. So