Phil Gingrey: “I thank Jim for yielding some of his time. Primarily, I will report on the Congressional Study Groups program. As a…”

“I thank Jim for yielding some of his time. Primarily, I will report on the Congressional Study Groups program. As a Member, I had the honor of co-chairing the Congressional Study Group on Germany for, I think, 4 years. It was absolutely one of the highlights of my 12 years in Congress. Today, as we stand in this well, hundreds of Members of Congress will shuttle back and forth from committee hearings to constituent meetings to the call time that we all loved so much. For a small part of their day, they will take in as much information as they can on the issues they and their committees are focused on. All of us remember the days when we served here, and information was served 24 hours a day from a seemingly endless firehose. For most of us, and for most of them, that information did not concern American foreign policy or trade or our allies overseas. Our colleague John Dingell once said of his committee's jurisdiction, ``If it moves, it's commerce. If it doesn't, it's energy.'' Looking at the United States today, we may still be made up of energy and commerce, but the impact, and our knowledge of that impact, cannot be limited to our own Nation. We have become the keystone of a global economy.…”