On the recordApril 6, 2017
I could not leave this place, the most powerful lawmaking body in the world, in the season of Easter and Passover and sacrifice without bringing to the attention of my colleagues that children are dying. The children in Syria are suffering from the bombing and the vileness of President Assad and the chemical attack, where children and babies are struggling to breath. This Congress has to act. We must join those who want an infusion of emergency dollars. Where is our heart. And then the famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, where there are more displaced persons than we have seen in history. Sixty thousand have escaped to Kenya, and children and women are dying. In the name of our former colleague, the Honorable Mickey Leland, who died in 1989, taking grain to the famine area in Sub-Saharan Africa, we must act now. As a founder of the Congressional Children's Caucus myself, I cannot stand here and allow the children to die. This Congress must immediately issue emergency funds that appropriators such as Congresswoman Lee are putting forward. We must go to the region now and say what America is going to do. And the Trump administration must stand up for children now. ____________________
