Help for the Philippines

Floor Speech

Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a mission of mercy, with a message of gratitude.

I am grateful today to members of the Foreign Affairs Committee; the chairperson, Mr. Royce; and the ranking member, Mr. Engel. I am grateful that they have filed a resolution to support the people of the Philippines.

My mission of mercy is to ask for help for the people of the Philippines. This resolution, H. Res. 404, speaks to some of what we may be able to do, and it also addresses our sympathy for the people of the Philippines.

It expresses our solidarity with the people of the Philippines. It expresses our continuing support for relief and reconstruction assistance for the people of the Philippines, and it goes on to commend the Filipino community in the United States of America for their efforts to organize and to help with the disaster relief.

The Philippines are our allies. The people of the Philippines have been there with us through many struggles. They are the victims of a force of nature, but they can survive this with our help.

I want people to understand that there is a special relationship between America and the people of the Philippines. They were there with us during World War II. They fought side-by-side with our troops. Many of them fought and died together. My hope is that this special bond, this special connectivity that started long before World War II but that continued through World War II, is something that will cause us to remember that these are our friends. They need our help.

They were also there during this war at the Battle of Bataan. More than 70,000 troops marched in the Battle of Bataan. They were marched to a camp where they were to be incarcerated. Many died along the way. Many of them were Americans. More than 10,000 Americans were a part of that Bataan Death March, as it is called.

We have more than 17,000 troops that are buried in the Philippines. These persons are the ones that took up the clarion call to answer the call to duty in a distant place. My hope is that we will remember that they sacrificed their lives and that the people of the Philippines mean a lot more to us than just a simple place on a map.

I would remind us that on August 30, 1951, 62 years ago, we signed a Mutual Defense Treaty with the people of the Philippines. This is not defense in the traditional sense of defense, but it is defense in the sense that people are defenseless because they have been impacted by a force of nature unlike any other we may have seen on our planet.

This force of nature, according to USAID, has caused 9.7 million people to be affected. It has caused more than 23,000 people to have their homes damaged or destroyed. It has caused more than 600,000 people to be displaced. It has caused more than 700,000 people to find themselves being evacuated. The death toll is still climbing. It is at more than 2,000.

Today, I rise on a mission of mercy with a message of gratitude. The gratitude is to the United States of America and to this administration for sending in our troops. The Marines have landed, and more are on the way. We have an aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, one of our finest. It will be there to provide support services and produce water.

$20 million in aid is good, but the world has to come to the aid of the people of the Philippines, and we have to do more.

I know that these are times of great austerity. I understand that we have cuts. I also remember something that happened in my family when a person who lived in our community lost their job. We were poor. We were not born into plenty. We were born into poverty. While we were poor, we still understood that someone who had lost a job merited some support. I can remember my parents talking between themselves about how we could help this family, notwithstanding our sense of poverty. When I say we were poor, I was telling a Member just yesterday that the subsidized public housing would have been a step up in life for us. We called it the ``projects,'' and we looked forward to moving to the projects. We never did, but we looked forward to it.

My point is this. Even when we were poor and when we had little, we still made room to help others who had less, and this is what a great country does, I believe.

A great country doesn't ask what will happen to us if we take up the cause of the people of the Philippines. A great country will ask what will happen to them if we do not take up the cause of the people of the Philippines.

So I beg today that we do all that we can to help and that we sign onto H. Res. 404, expressing our sympathy for the people of the Philippines.

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. Let's pray for the people of the Philippines.

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