00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank you, Chairman Cole, Reckon
00:12Amendment Pingree and Reckon Member DeLauro for your great work on this bill.
00:20But I respectfully and regretfully oppose this bill as written.
00:25Mr. Chairman, while this bill rejects the President's most damaging budgetary proposals, it includes
00:32a cut of more than $176 million to the National Park Service's operational budget, which affords
00:40an additional 5,000 park staff cuts, stretching an already thin workforce that was devastated
00:49by Doge.
00:50Mr. Chairman, I began my professional career as a history teacher in the Charleston, South
00:58Carolina public school system.
01:00I spent my entire congressional career working to preserve our nation's history, both its
01:08ugly failures and its beautiful triumphs.
01:11Among my most popular legislative accomplishments are the establishments of the South Carolina
01:20National Heritage Corridor, the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War, and the Gullah Geechee
01:27National Heritage Corridor that runs from Wilmington, North Carolina down to St. Augustine, Florida.
01:34This is an interesting corridor.
01:37I remember when I first attempted to get it passed.
01:41It took me six years.
01:43They told me that South Carolina was too small a state to have more than one heritage corridor.
01:50Of course, we now have three.
01:53Because South Carolina played a very critical role in the Revolutionary War.
01:59People remember the Civil War having started there, but for the Battle of Charleston and the campaign
02:09around cow pens.
02:10I'm not too sure that the Revolutionary War would have ended the way it did.
02:18But national parks, like our heritage corridors, are home to many of our nation's most beloved monuments, historic sites,
02:28hallowed grounds, and iconic landscapes.
02:31While we just celebrated America's birthday on July 4th, Republicans' gift of gutting our treasures, our parks, and national monuments
02:42seem to be a broader, deliberate campaign to erase history and degrade educational integrity.
02:50While there are 63 national parks, three of which are in South Carolina, none of which were there before I was elected to Congress,
03:03the National Park Service manages 433 sites across more than 85 million acres.
03:12The locations amassed over 330 million visitors last year.
03:18And according to the National Park Service, their spending in communities around these sites resulted in over $55 billion in benefits
03:29to our nation's economy and supported over 400,000 jobs.
03:34Now, I might add that these national parks are mostly in rural communities.
03:41And but for these national parks, the economy in these communities would not be what they are today.
03:54Two weeks ago, the Republicans passed their big, ugly bill that took away more than $267 million
04:03from the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management that Congress previously approved.
04:13If that isn't enough, this bill cuts an additional $213 million from the National Park Service.
04:22The Republican obsession with DEI initiatives is distorting the history included on the National Park Service website and throughout the Park Service.
04:37In March, it was reported that the Trump administration efforts to dismantle DEI caused the National Park Service to take down web pages delegated to the LBGT and other civil rights activities.
04:54And in March 27th executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, the Trump administration removed references to Harriet Tubman from the National Park Service web page about the Underground Railroad before later restoring it.
05:16Now, this is happening throughout the Park Service.
05:19Now, this is happening throughout the Park Service.
05:20And I'll tell you, as someone who has studied history all of my life and I study it daily, there's not a day that goes by.
05:30But I don't dedicate some time to looking at our nation's history and how it affects what we do today.
05:37It is a shame and I don't want to be personal here, but my youngest daughter serves on our local school board.
05:50And I was shocked over the week this past weekend as we were celebrating July 4th and she talked about what she, her frustrations with these attempts to take the history out of the public schools, these attempts to get rid of civics in the public schools.
06:16And she said to me, Daddy, what I know about government, I learned in the seventh and eighth grade and sitting down with your moms.
06:26And now we can't teach it to our school children.
06:30That to me is devastating.
06:32And that seems to be what we are continuing to do here.
06:35So on May 20th, Secretary Brunker ordered that all national parks and other public lands must post notices encouraging people to report any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans.
07:03Or that failed to emphasize the beauty, grandiose and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.
07:15Charleston, South Carolina is in my district.
07:19I taught school in Charleston, South Carolina.
07:23I see the monuments to enslavement.
07:29I don't tell my students not to learn what it means.
07:35I want them to know what it means.
07:38And I want them to really work to help this country continue its track to what a more perfect union.
07:48So I implore my Republican friends to stop the madness and reinvest in our national park system from the, in our classrooms.
08:01And in these, we are the stewards of this history.
08:10We are the stewards of these classrooms.
08:12And in Pearl Harbor, where my uncle sat on December 7th, 1941, in the USS Arizona, when it was bombed.
08:31He never talked about his life in the Navy.
08:36It was not pleasant back in the 1940s.
08:40But I don't think we run away from that.
08:43I think we do the things that are necessary so that our young people will know we should not ever live that again.
08:50We ought to teach about the Japanese internment and recognize that as a site for us to continue to learn from and continue our trek toward a more perfect union.
09:05The point of preserving history is to learn from it.
09:10Learn that which was good, that which was bad, to all that we can to accentuate those positives, eliminate those negatives, and continue our trek toward a more perfect union.
09:22So, Mr. Chairman, as I said in my opening, I regret that I cannot support this bill.
09:32So, I love history, the good and the bad.
09:37And I think we should all work to preserve it, learn from it, and know how to conduct ourselves going forward.
09:45And I'll give that.
09:47Thank you for the gentleman for his comments.
09:49Are there other members who wish to make an opening statement?
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