Brett Guthrie: “I thank my good friend for yielding. I appreciate that. Mr. Speaker, I am here to honor one of my dear friends. When I…”

“I thank my good friend for yielding. I appreciate that. Mr. Speaker, I am here to honor one of my dear friends. When I first got on the Energy and Commerce Committee, the battle that was going on in that committee was over healthcare policy, and Dr. Burgess knew it frontward and backward. As a matter of fact, I always liked looking at his copy of the Affordable Care Act. I think it was tabbed, and he even diagrammed sentences, I believe, in that to make sure he understood it and could explain it and tried to figure out how to fix it. He was always going that direction. I was on the committee when he was chair of the subcommittee, and I became his vice chair. That is when he became more than a friend; he became a mentor. He was somebody that I just admired the way that he studied, he learned. He was an expert on whatever subcommittee you were on, particularly healthcare. He mentored me. He set a standard that I tried to live by when I had the chance to become the subcommittee chair, now chairing the Energy and Commerce Committee. It is a privilege. Congress truly is a snapshot of America. We come from all walks of life. We bring different perspectives. Chairman Burgess being an OB/ GYN, I will never forget the series of hearings we had on maternal health. If you controlled the studies for all the things you think was causing a problem in maternal health, we still were having issues with maternal health and the life expectancy of the mother.…”