Progressive Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Thank you. I am very happy to participate in this Special Order, especially with the esteemed women who are here--yourself, Barbara Lee, and Rosa DeLauro, a person of great justice and passion who represents truth and righteousness and tries to do the right thing and fights for those who need a voice to fight for them.

I appreciate you, Rosa, for being here and for everything that you do.

Barbara Lee--I've said it before--you are just a tremendous patriot, a wonderful person with a heart of gold, but with a fist of steel when it comes to what you believe in.

I deeply respect and honor both of those women.

Today, in a Judiciary Committee meeting in which we were engaged in the war on women--another abortion bill--I happened to notice that on the other side of the aisle there were no women on the panel. In fact, I discovered, to my horror, that there are no women on the Judiciary Committee, period, and here we are in the year 2013. On this side of the aisle, we've got some great women, like Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, Barbara Lee from California and so many others--Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I can just name them forever, and I just appreciate being able to serve with them.

I'll tell you that I'm not always out doing a lot of shopping, but I had to go shopping today because I decided to take what we call the food stamp challenge. It mandates that we go out and that we spend no more than $31.50 for one-week's worth of food. I'm just coming back from the local Safeway. Maybe I shouldn't give that name out because I might have gotten a better deal at Publix--I don't know--but I went to Safeway, and here is my bill. It is for $29.76. I went through the supermarket, trying to find a week's worth of food that could get me through.

Pardon me for my choice of food, but I had to go back to my standard Quaker Oats oatmeal. I'm trying to be healthy. I can use this for breakfast or for dinner, but I got these for breakfast, my Homestyle waffles. They already have butter in them, so I didn't have to buy the butter. I did have to come up, of course, with some sugar-free syrup. I got that. I was pleased to find Oscar Mayer bacon on sale--two for $5 and, I think it was, 99 cents. I got these two of the Oscar Mayer bacon. I didn't mean to get the maple, I meant to get the regular. Anyway--boom--that was $5, $6. I bought some milk, and I did splurge on some tea. I'm sorry. I splurged on some tea, but I did get some hot dogs and topped them off with some romaine noodles. I used to eat those a lot when I was in college, too. So I have 6 of those in there and 10 of these in here. Then to splurge I also bought some bananas.

That all ended up costing $29.76. I actually had an over-ring because I bought two heads of broccoli. Do we call those ``heads'' of broccoli? But two things of broccoli, I bought those. Those ran me over, so I had to go through the indignity of standing there while the cashier called for an over-ring. They had to come over there and fix that and redo the whole thing with people in line behind me and everything, and with people trying to get in and out of the store. They would have looked at me even more funny if I'd had food stamps to make the purchase, and they would have wondered why was I eating Oscar Mayer bacon.

This is what I'm going to be eating for the next 7 days starting tomorrow. It's going to be a challenge. I certainly will not be eating three meals a day. I will eat in the morning, and then I will eat in the evening. So between this meat, these starches, that fruit--and this is a starch here, with no greens--I think they had greens at Safeway, but there are some places--they call them food deserts--in the central cities where there is no supermarket, where there are no fresh fruits, even if I'd had the money to buy them. Nonetheless, this is not the most healthy of diets, but it will keep the hunger pangs away, I believe, for a week. If I were a child who was living on this and going to school every day, I'm not sure how angry or depressed or how, really, ready to learn I would be.

This is reality, so I am looking forward to participating in this. I understand you've done it now for a number of years, Barbara. This will be my first year. I can't say that I've been looking forward to it, but I have been getting ready for it.

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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Thank you, Barbara Lee. Thank you, Eleanor Holmes Norton, for what you bring to the table to this Congress. And on behalf of your constituents, one of whom is me, during the week, as I'm a D.C. resident. I mean, I'm a D.C. native; I had to move to Georgia before I could come to Congress.

But anyway, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Safe Climate Caucus, and as a member of the Armed Services Committee, I'd like to take a moment to discuss two major implications of climate change for the Department of Defense.

First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles and missions that the Department undertakes. It may have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to greater competition for more limited and critical life-sustaining resources like food and water.

While the effects of climate change alone do not cause conflict, they may act as accelerants of instability or conflict in parts of the world.

Second, the Department will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on its facilities and infrastructure.

With that, after pointing out that we're spending $3 billion on an east coast missile defense system which is totally unnecessary, I will yield back.

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