Michael Burgess: “I do want to thank my friends who have come to the floor to help us today honor Dr. Michael DeBakey. I do want to thank…”

“I do want to thank my friends who have come to the floor to help us today honor Dr. Michael DeBakey. I do want to thank Al Green for his persistence in getting this bill to the floor. It has been a long time in the making. And obviously I want to thank our senior Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and certainly thank Chairman Frank for allowing the Senate bill to come through the floor procedure so that we may hasten this floor process for Dr. DeBakey. As has been mentioned here several times this morning, Dr. DeBakey is 99 years old and certainly deserving of this honor, and we need to get it to him with all haste. Dr. DeBakey is the father of cardiovascular surgery in our country. And I do encourage my colleagues to vote in favor of S. 474, a bill to designate the Congressional Gold Medal for the famed Houston heart surgeon. This bill has been very important to me, as one of the physicians in the House of Representatives, to be able today to come to the floor and talk about how Dr. DeBakey changed the face of medicine so significantly forever in this country.”