On the recordApril 6, 2017
I thank the gentleman for his outstanding comments, his insights, and his leadership on the arts and humanities issues. As co-chair of the Humanities Caucus here in the Congress, I appreciate his efforts in helping me organize and colead this effort to speak out against the effort to zero out the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities budget. We hope it will not stand, and we hope that the President will reconsider his initial budget proposal. I am proud to yield to a number of my colleagues and want to begin with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), no shrinking violet himself, someone who is artistic and colorful in his own right, but it is no surprise to me that being from New Jersey he would be here since it was one of his late colleagues, the former Congressman from New Jersey, Frank Thompson, who was the House sponsor of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act.
