Expressing Sense of House Regarding Arizona Shooting

Floor Speech

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Ms. PINGREE of Maine. I thank my colleague from Iowa for yielding the time.

Madam Speaker, it's hard, after a long day like this when all of us are feeling so sad and discouraged about the challenges that have been faced by GABBY and her family and others, to actually think of anything that hasn't been said. But I want to reiterate what so many of my colleagues have said, so many of us who consider ourselves friends of GABBY, who are so proud of the work that she has done, who know what a hard fighter GABBY is and hope that she continues to pull through every day.

I sit near GABBY on the Armed Services Committee, and I have never seen GABBY walk into a hearing room without a pile of letters that she plans to sign, a few things that she is going to read, prepared to ask good questions and keep her eye on the conversation and the debate the whole time we are in there. That is just GABBY; she is always working, she is always thinking.

You turn to her and ask her a question. She always has a smile or a little joke or is ready to make a plan for some kind of an outing or a field trip or something that we could all do together. She is a wonderful colleague, as
we can see today, well respected by both sides of the aisle, well regarded by all colleagues, whether they agree or disagree, and highly well regarded back in her home community where she had another hard-fought election but came through.

Our thoughts and prayers are with her. I know Gabby is on the Armed Services Committee because she's a fighter. She's a fighter for the people she represents, and I do believe she's fighting in her hospital room today, fighting for her life alongside her husband.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the others who died alongside where Gabby was lying, who came to that event and were injured, innocent victims--a young woman and a staff member who was dedicated.

Many of us realize when we take this job on that we take a risk, but we often forget the risk of those who serve with us, those young people who come out and stand beside us, the risk that they are also taking just to be with us everywhere we go.

I also want to mention someone else who I was asked to mention who wasn't appearing in the resolution that we talked about earlier today, but Dr. Steven Rayle, a former emergency room physician was just a few feet away from Gabby when the shooting began. In the terrifying moments after the shooting, Rayle was able to use his trained first responder skills to triage what I can only imagine was a terrifying scene. And we owe him a great deal of gratitude.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.

Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I yield the gentlewoman 30 additional seconds.

Ms. PINGREE of Maine. I just again want to thank Dr. Rayle for his heroism and for his being there with Gabby in the first possible moments. We owe him our gratitude, and everyone else who worked so hard to make sure that people were safe as quickly as possible at that scene.

And I echo the remarks of my earlier colleague, Dana Rohrabacher. I hope this all reminds us to think about how we speak, to think about how we speak with each other, how we conduct our business, and how we move forward. This is a solemn week. We will have many solemn weeks ahead of us, and we have a lot of work to do.

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