Pelosi Remarks During Congressional Delegation Visit to Flint
Contact: Ashley Etienne/Henry Connelly, 202-226-7616
Flint – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi joined fellow House Democrats, Mayor Karen Weaver and community stakeholders for a Congressional delegation to Flint, Michigan to hear from residents, observe lead pipes being replaced and discuss bringing new economic opportunities. Below are the Leader's remarks:
Leader Pelosi. Well thank you very much Congressman Kildee for the invitation to be here and thank you for your tremendous leadership on this issue.
We have not gotten everything we want, but everything we've gotten, we've gotten because of Dan Kildee.
[Applause]
And, in addition to, when he took his solicitation to the Speaker of the House, deputized by the House Democratic Caucus to say, ‘This is our priority, we are willing to negotiate on other things to make this happen,' he was successful because he had a plan, and he had a plan because he listened to the community. You told him what was important.
Now, since we're in the presence of so many ministers and pastors and the rest and people of faith, I'm just going to say this because this is what, sincerely, why some of us are here, not all of us, some of us are here for other reasons, but I truly believe, let me say I've never – it's always mystifying to me how much pain of others some people can tolerate. Right? They have a great, high level threshold for other people's pain.
And we're saying to them, ‘Wait a minute, you profess to be people of faith, right in the Congress, then why are we not attending to the needs of all of God's children?' And I'd go further and say to them, much to their discomfort level, that many of them who are of Christian faith, that we believe, and when we are on church on Sunday, we particularly genuflect when we say that He came down from heaven, born of the Virgin Mary, and Christ became man. God becoming man, participating in our humanity, he enabled us to participate in his divinity so we all caught the spark of divinity, every single person, every immigrant, every child in Flint, everybody. May I remind them, they have that spark of divinity too, that they must act upon and recognize in others.
So how can you exist if you're not all the time thinking, ‘What are we going to do about God's children who have these needs in Flint or in Darfur or wherever it happens to be?' So when we get up in the morning we are like soldiers, we are soldiers, saying, ‘Let us act on our belief.'
Again, they profess to be so religious – I don't know – but they profess to be so religious then maybe we can appeal to that common thread that we all have. So our colleagues, Mr. McGovern, an expert on so many issues but hunger has been one of his things, food for children. [Congresswoman] Barbara Lee, children in poverty, I am not, of course, being inclusive of all their credentials. Mr. Evans from Pennsylvania, right from the start, about children and food and the rest.
Mr. [Jared] Huffman, water, he knows these issues backward, forward, sideways in terms of public policy in regard to all of that. Our Assistant Leader Mr. Clyburn who was with us earlier, very much attuned to all of this. Mr. Heck coming from Washington state, taking time off from the Intelligence Committee because this is a priority.
So this is a conversation, but not just that. It's an ongoing, receiving, prioritizing of your suggestions on how we go forward.
And again, because this a man who knows vision, knows his subject and has a plan – Members listen. And we're going to do the best that we can to do all that we can.
You all know the great work of [Congresswoman] Brenda Lawrence, right here in your own state. But as relentless as Dan is, she is relentless as well. From every aspect of this, she has been a very, very solid, solid voice. And part of a very effective [delegation] – [Congresswoman] Debbie Dingell, [Congressman] Sandy Levin, Senator Stabenow, Senator Peters – this Democratic delegation, there for all of God's children.
So we look forward to hearing what you have to say in that regard, and I yield back to him.
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