Chris Smith: “I thank you very much and appreciate the gentlelady for yielding. Let me join my distinguished colleagues in expressing…”

“I thank you very much and appreciate the gentlelady for yielding. Let me join my distinguished colleagues in expressing our deepest condolences to Don Payne's family. He was truly a remarkable man. I had the privilege of sitting next to him for about 15 years as I was the chairman or he was the chairman of the Human Rights Committee, the Africa Committee as well. I was his ranking, he was my chairman, and we always worked in a very cooperative way. We always had mutual respect, and he had such a deep compassion for the people who have suffered so much on the subcontinent of Africa. Don Payne was quiet, but always determined. Extremely thoughtful, a humanitarian in the extreme, and he fought for so many important issues. You know, it was not a slam dunk or in any way a given that PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, would become law. Don was there working in a bipartisan way to ensure that sufficient funding, sufficient authorities were given to the U.S. Agency for International Development to mount a massive effort to combat the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. He did the same thing with malaria and the Malaria Caucus, and he did the same thing with tuberculosis, which sadly is an opportunistic disease that afflicts so many people who have HIV/AIDS.…”