Brian Mast: “I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) for including me in this Special Order tonight and for yielding to me…”

“I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) for including me in this Special Order tonight and for yielding to me and for becoming a friend of mine. Mr. Speaker, it is with tremendous honor and humility that I rise to represent the hardworking values of the 18th Congressional District of Florida, with communities like Palm Beach Gardens, home of the PGA tour; Stuart, Florida, home to the U.S. Sailing Academy; Port St. Lucie, the spring training home of the New York Mets; and Fort Pierce, Florida, the home of the only Navy UDT-SEAL Museum in the entire country. It is an amazing place for anyone to go to. Before I go any further, I do want to--and I know I am joined by the rest of my freshmen colleagues, and probably the entire body, when I say that our thoughts and our prayers have been with our new colleague, Mr. Rutherford from the Fourth District of Florida, the sheriff as I call him. He is a friend and a patriot. I know that we are all praying for his speedy recovery. As I talk to people in my community, there is one issue that keeps them up at night more than any other issue, and that issue is the water quality in our area, or rather, the lack thereof. I can tell you, it is nonnegotiable. It is a nonnegotiable priority for me, that we allow the water in our community, water that used to be so blue that it looked like something out of a postcard, to once again become clean for this generation and for future generations.…”