Speeches & Testimony

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation to ensure that the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) fully supports our small businesses establish and maintain employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). ESOPs offer a powerful way to ensure employees become stakeholders and help run the business they've built. This wealth-generating and retirement plan approach creates a more… Read more »

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge support for my Indigenous Diplomacy and Engagement Act to ensure that our foreign affairs fully encompass and incorporate the independent interconnectedness of our world's indigenous peoples. The estimated 476 million indigenous peoples spread across all parts of our world are bound together by a common heritage, common wisdom and common challenges… Read more »

I join my colleagues in condemning what can only be seen as sheer desertion--yes, I used the word ``desertion''--of Ukraine by this President, and I deeply regret, at least to date, by my Republican colleagues in Congress. The dictator of Russia, as has already been pointed out, has not seen a better day at least since the successful death of Alexei Navalny. Let's be clear. Putin… Read more »

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to invite my House colleagues to join Congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado and me in recognizing the critical importance of the native plants of our country by cosponsoring our resolution designating the month of April as Native Plant Month. Native plants are not just a vital part of our natural landscape; they are integral to the environmental health of our… Read more »

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge support for my Saving Natural Ecosystems and Marine Organisms (NEMO) Act to protect the ornamental reef species living in the fragile and invaluable ecosystems of our world's endangered coral reefs. Our oceans, teeming with life and rich biodiversity, depend on the health of coral reefs, some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth. Nearly… Read more »

Mr. Speaker: I rise to focus attention on one of our most pressing crises: our rapidly deteriorating federal budget, crippled by unsustainable annual deficits and accelerating overall debt. While most prefer to deny or explain it away, we all recognize it, and we all must address it.  Our federal budget operates on principles no different from those of a business or family… Read more »

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my Hawaii Native Species Conservation and Recovery Act, a critical piece of legislation to protect and preserve the unique and irreplaceable native plant and animal species of our precious and endangered Hawaii. I am introducing this bill in conjunction with my Hawaii colleague, Senator Brian Schatz. Our Hawaii is one of the most biologically… Read more »

Mr. Speaker: Today I again introduce three bills to end over a century of federally-imposed monopolistic closed market domestic cargo shipping to and from my isolated home state of Hawai‘i and the other island and separated jurisdictions of our country not part of the contiguous 48 United States. In doing so, we seek to break the stranglehold on the peoples and economies of our exposed… Read more »

I rise today to reintroduce the Affordable Shipping for All Act, a bill to end discriminatory and exclusionary shipping practices faced by residents and businesses in the non-contiguous areas of our country, particularly Hawai‘i, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. This blatant discrimination and exclusion is… Read more »

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce two critically important pieces of legislation aimed at protecting our oceans and marine ecosystems from the potentially catastrophic consequences of deep-sea mining: the American Seabed Protection Act and the International Seabed Protection Act. These bills will place a moratorium on seabed mining until its full environmental, social and… Read more »