Patricia Schroeder: “I first of all take the floor and say how very, very sad I am by the passing of our colleague, Bill Emerson. This is a…”

“I first of all take the floor and say how very, very sad I am by the passing of our colleague, Bill Emerson. This is a man who cared very much about hunger issues and nutrition issues, and he will be sadly missed because those are not great power issues. You can imagine, hungry people do not have political action committees and they are not really involved in the great power process. So they have lost a friend, and we have lost a friend, and my deepest sympathy goes to their family. Now, I wanted to talk a bit today about what is going on in Tennessee, which I think is very exciting. Vice President Gore and his wife Tipper, and the President and Mrs. Clinton, are all in Tennessee doing a family reunion. They are doing a family reunion where they are calling families together and continuing the dialog of what can Government do to make family life a little less stressful. A lot of people say we do not have the values anymore for families. We have those values. We have those values. The problem is the whole society is pressing down on families so hard that it is very hard for a family to sustain itself. So the question is, Is there anything that can be done for a little relief? Mr. Speaker, one of the things that I am doing with the gentleman from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, and that they will be talking about today in Tennessee is to extend the family medical leave concept that we passed 2 years ago.”