Mark Souder: “I am delighted to rise in honor of our country's greatest president whose birthday we celebrate today. We Republicans…”

“I am delighted to rise in honor of our country's greatest president whose birthday we celebrate today. We Republicans honor Lincoln as a founder of our great political party and the first Republican president. We are right to this. But this is not the source of Lincoln's greatness. Lincoln used the Republican party and the presidency as vehicles to achieve three magnificent things. He preserved this great union of ours. He ended slavery on this continent. He extended to the American entrepreneurial spirit to millions of people of all walks of life. We have a word for that on a subcommittee I chair. We call it ``empowerment.'' Without a strong union, the United States would not have become the economic power it is today. Because of Lincoln's work, this nation produced the highest standard of living of any in the history of the world. And because the United States remained one nation, it was able to assemble the moral military might that liberated millions this century from three of the worst tyrannies in all of history: nazi Germany, imperial Japan, and the Stalinist ``evil empire.'' Throughout the world, the name ``Lincoln'' connotes compassion--and for good reason. Slavery sickened him. ``If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong'' he said. He worked to restrict its expansion before the civil war; used that military emergency to end it; and forced through the thirteenth amendment to the constitution to prevent its re- instatement.”