Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I join the leader. Eighteen years ago, on a cloudless Tuesday morning, my city, our country, and our world changed forever. In the span of a few hours, the Twin Towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and smoke rose from an empty field in Pennsylvania.

More than 3,000 souls were taken from us that day. I knew some of them: a guy I played basketball with in high school, a businessman who helped me on the way up, and a firefighter whom I went around the city doing blood drives with. It was one of the bloodiest days on American soil since the Civil War.

Each year we correctly and appropriately pause to remember that awful day. We mourn those whom we lost and think of them. The day after 9/11, I called for every American to wear the flag. I wear this flag every day. I have worn it every day since then in memory of them.

We also remember our resiliency and the resiliency of New Yorkers, the brave firefighters, police officers, and ordinary citizens who rushed to the Towers.

The generosity--I will never forget a man who had a shoe store about two blocks north of the Towers who just gave shoes to all the people. Some men and women who had to run 90 flight of stairs left their shoes behind.

I remember the next day, when President Bush sent us back up to New York, and the empty skies, a bunch of F-16s around our plane going down there, smelling the smell of burnt flesh and death in the air, and seeing over 1,000 people lined up with little signs, because we didn't know who was gone and who might be found: Have you seen my sister Mary? Have you seen my son Bob?

It was an awful day and a day we live with, but we know our resilience. Many predicted that Lower Manhattan would be a ghost town forevermore. It has more people, more jobs, and more business than before 9/11. Many thought that America would succumb to the evil brutality of the terrorists. We have fought back very successfully.

We think, finally, of those who are dying now as a result of their rushing to the Towers into the hours and days after, and we are also grateful that this body has now fully funded both the health fund and the fund to see that the families are taken care of.

It is an amazing moment. I live with it all the time. I ride my bike around the city, and every seventh or eighth block has the name of a street commemorating someone who died--firefighter this and police officer that.

But America, New York, and all of us have not been beaten by the terrorists and have not been beaten by adversity. On this issue, we have come together, and we will prevail.

Moment of Silence in Remembrance of the Lives Lost in the Attacks of September 11, 2001

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