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Floor Speech

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Mr. SOTO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Tracie Pough: This Is Your Life, the Congressional Version.

In this House of Representatives, every knight needs a good squire, and Tracie has been a super squire. Team WS is one of the most prolific offices in this Chamber, and Debbie's legacy is her legacy. We all know it.

Disaster relief, protecting reproductive rights, advocating for immigrant rights, a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, navigating the COVID crisis--but for me, the biggest legacy is all the funding brought back for the Everglades.

None of this was a guarantee. It took 20 years of work. When we started, water was drying up in the Everglades, and the water supply in south Florida was a real challenge. Roads cut right through it.

There was a lot of hope with CERP in 2000, a little before they got here, but without all the work, CERP would have been just words on a paper. Instead, they wrote a reg.

To the gentlewoman, how long did it take before you became a cardinal, literally working the budget that makes that happen? What was it, 6 years?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Two.

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Mr. SOTO. Two years.

Mr. Speaker, Tracie is a super squire for all that, and Debbie's legacy is Tracie's legacy, in particular with the northern Everglades, which we are starting to work on. I know Tracie worked a lot with our team, helping us navigate the Army Corps of Engineers. That is like the seventh level of black belt Kung Fu legislating around here. I thank her for helping us with that.

Secondly, as it was alluded to a little bit, Tracie is a chief of chiefs. Not only has she advised a lot of other chiefs, new ones coming in for the entire Florida Democratic delegation over the years, but she was my chief's boss back in the day. That was on the DCCC side, and that is a whole other thing, but my chief still to this day considers Tracie a mentor, so I thank her for helping because that knowledge can be lost. Imagine being a chief with no mentor coming into this place. Tracie served Florida well through that.

Tracie has also been a committee assignment guru, with Debbie always seemingly one way or another getting onto steering and policy, now one of the chairs two terms in a row. It was with Tracie's help and DWS' help getting on the Energy and Commerce Committee, getting on the Agriculture Committee, getting on the Natural Resources Committee as of just a few hours ago. Her legacy is still being written right now.

I thank Tracie for all of her help personally because it makes me more effective to be on the committees I need to be on. I thank her for all the advice to my team to help her boss navigate that.

Central Florida also lays claim to Tracie, too. I heard the Tampa Bay story, but she went to Rollins College, so we claim Tracie also as a favorite daughter of central Florida.

Lastly, since there have been a lot of things about age and all this and that, Tracie has a whole third act left. I am looking forward to seeing what she ends up doing. I know it is going to be something special. Because of her work ethic and passion, I know it is going to be another big thing--hopefully, a little easier for a while, maybe a sabbatical for a few weeks. Maybe not. Probably not, but I am hoping.

Either way, I wish Tracie well in this third act. I know it is going to be amazing.

Thank you so much for all you have done for my team. On behalf of our constituents, we appreciate you.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Soto and all of my colleagues for helping me honor this remarkable woman.

Mr. Speaker, I will close with this. I think every Member can appreciate that their chief of staff, really their entire congressional staff, but their chief of staff is often a person we spend more time with than we spend with any member of our family, including our spouses and significant others. It is someone who needs to put up with us and tolerate the highs and lows.

Tracie has done all that and more. She has taken calls at all hours of the night. Then, in the morning, she has always made herself available.

The sacrifices that all of our staff members make to be able to help us be successful and make sure that our constituents are able to have their representation maximized is truly remarkable.

Tracie and I have been through marriage, children, raising those children, helping one another raise our children; appointments to committees for me, like the Appropriations Committee in my second term, becoming a cardinal on my first day; being diagnosed, beating, and surviving breast cancer; and chairing the Democratic National Committee, and surviving the aftermath of that experience, including threats, bomb threats, international hacks.

We had the absolutely incredible opportunity to be able to do all of that together and to be able to make sure that we do the best job every day when we walk across the threshold of our office doors to give voice to the people of now Florida's 25th Congressional District, but prior to that the 23rd, and prior to that the 20th.

Mr. Speaker, I am so proud to be able to honor this remarkable woman on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, the beacon of democracy, our temple of democracy that is a light unto the world and whose light is going to be a little bit dimmer with her departure on Friday.

I know that we will continue to work together and lean on one another for all the rest of our days.

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