Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

   I rise today as this Congress commemorates perhaps the most horrific day in our Nation's history, that day being September 11, 2001. So many of us in New Jersey and New York lost our friends, our loved ones, acquaintances and people we never met before.

   It's difficult to believe that it was almost 8 years to the day when our Nation was attacked by foreign terrorists and claimed almost 3,000 lives, including 411 of our Nation's bravest first responders. As a Member of the Homeland Security Committee, I am proud of the steps that we have taken since that fateful day to make the American people safer, but our work obviously is far from complete. This is a mission we, as public servants, can never stop striving to achieve.

   I am also proud that earlier this year we passed the aptly named Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which will designate September 11 as the first annual National Day of Service and Remembrance. On September 11, more so than any other day of the year, we should come together as Americans and find new ways to save our Nation, and hopefully that will spill over to the days after.

   So I say to all of you that many of the wounds of that fateful day will heal over time, but that we will never forget the heroism we witnessed, the lessons we learned, the redemption the American people earned through our own strength. And so we pray that this never happens again.

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