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Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
I spent about a year in Alaska going to college, have been back a number of times, and it is, as the gentleman from Alaska describes, a very unique area. It is unlike anywhere else in America.
When you get out into these remote villages, you may fly in in a small Cessna airplane, land on a gravel strip, as I have done, and get out, and there may only be 25 or 50 people there. That is it.
By the way, in the winter, it can be--what?--50, 60 below. I have seen that. And I have seen it in spring at break where we had to try to take off three different times on a runway because it had begun to soften up. The snow had begun to soften up, and we had to get out of the plane, turn it around, get back in. Eventually, we had to leave one guy behind in order to get off the ground. This is a very unique place.
The poverty that the gentleman from Alaska describes is very real. So, yes, of course, I wish we had had more time to work this out.
And to my colleague from New York, he and I have worked out most of these things along the way quite well. This bill came to us late, and, frankly, we didn't have time to deal with all of the finite pieces. Perhaps we could go back in the next session and do that, but this is before us today. The problem is before us today.
I believe this is a reasonable solution and that we should pass it. So, Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to approve this bill and send it to the President. I commit to work to make it even better next year.
I won't be the chairman, I understand that, but Mr. Tonko, Mr. Speaker, will be, I think, the chairman of the Environment Subcommittee, and I would work with him and the gentleman from Alaska.
But this is the time, as we know, when things finally get done, and they may not be perfect, but in this case, I would err on the side of passing this bill and then fine-tweak it later if we have to.
This is a real serious issue in these tiny, remote, impoverished villages. I would defer to the gentleman from Alaska, who knows it better than any of us, and encourage passage of this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to pay tribute, in closing, to our chief counsel on the committee, Karen Christian, who will be leaving us at the end of this Congress. She has been a remarkable member of the staff, engaged in the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee for years, doing incredible work, and is going off to greener pastures.
After 13 years in the committee, I just want to say to Karen: Thank you for your service. Thank you for your leadership. We are going to miss you. Good luck to you and your family
Mr. Speaker, as Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I'm convinced we have the best members in Congress and the best staff. In her thirteen years with the Committee, Karen Christian has been one of our finest. At the end of this Congress, Karen will move on, and while we are sad to see her do, we wish her well.
Karen joined the Committee in 2006 as a counsel on our Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. She's served as both the deputy chief counsel and chief counsel of that subcommittee, and for the last four years she has served as general counsel of the Committee.
As deputy chief counsel, Karen led several major Committee investigations, including investigations into the Department of Energy's management of the Loan Guarantee Program, including a failed loan guarantee to Solyndra; the stimulus bill, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; cyber security and critical infrastructure, including an investigation of Huawei Technologies; and the Federal Communications Commission's handling of a license application from LightSquared.
As chief counsel, she led the Committee's investigations into General Motors ignition switch safety failures; the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the failure of HealthCare.gov; the fungal meningitis outbreak due to contaminated drugs; mental health care and treatment, including federal programs related mental health and serious mental illness; the opioid addiction epidemic; and the Environmental Protection Agency's consideration of carbon capture technologies in developing greenhouse gas emissions standards for new power plants.
And as general counsel, Karen has been responsible for overseeing and managing the legislative process for the entire Committee--that includes a 27-hour, marathon markup in March 2017 and regularly battling to preserve the Committee's jurisdiction.
By every measure, Karen's time at the Committee has been a complete success. While we are sad to lose our friend, we look forward to seeing her next accomplishments.
Karen, we wish you and your family--Dave, Christian, Andrew, and Charlotte the very best. We thank you for your service, your hard work, your guidance, and most of all your friendship. Your work made a difference . . . America is better because of your efforts.
Thank you and remember--at Energy and Commerce, the fun never stops.
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