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Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a floor statement or debate entry. It mentions members such as Jennifer McClellan.
Issued
June 29, 2026
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Download official House Record PDFReturn to issue contextUnder the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms. McClellan of Virginia was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.)
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, 250 years ago, the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, gave birth to a new Nation built on the revolutionary idea that the power of government is derived from the people. The Continental Congress gave birth to a government by, of, and for the people based upon principles of liberty and justice for all.
America still stands upon those principles, but we also have to acknowledge that the promise of America remains unfinished 250 years later.
the ideals upon which this Nation has been founded have too often been delayed, denied, or defended only after bitter struggle.
ongoing battles for voting rights, equal justice, economic opportunity, and quality healthcare, the story of America has always been a story of both promise and unfinished progress.
At this critical moment, we must be clear: Celebrating America's extraordinary history cannot mean ignoring the work that is still before us to form that more perfect Union. A true commemoration of 250 years must reckon with the reality upon which this country was founded, reconcile it with the ideals upon which this country was founded, and reckon with the communities who built this Nation, fought to perfect it, and continue to demand that its promises are made real for all people.
{time} 2020
our Nation's progress is measured not only by its past but by its continued pursuit of liberty and justice for all as we strive for that more perfect Union:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Mr. Speaker, when Thomas Jefferson wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence, which the Continental Congress adopted on July 2, 1776, he did not include me. He did not include nearly half a million enslaved men, women, and children in the Thirteen Colonies, including his own children at his beloved Monticello.
Over a decade later, when James Madison wrote “The Virginia Plan” that formed the foundation for our U.S. Constitution, creating a government by, of, and for we the people, in order to form a more perfect Union, he and the delegates to that convention did not include me. They did not include over 300 enslaved people who lived and labored at his Montpelier estate, over three generations of the Madison family.
individuals, like my ancestors, only three-fifths of a person for the purpose of how many people would serve in this body and for taxation. Beyond that, they were treated as property.
trying to reconcile the ideals upon which this country was founded with the reality and to make the ideals true for everyone.
We have made progress. I would not be standing before you as the first Black woman elected to this body or to serve in this body, period, from the Commonwealth of Virginia, the birthplace of American democracy and the birthplace of American slavery. I wouldn't be standing here if we hadn't made progress.
Union, there has been a backlash, and that backlash has involved propaganda, violence, and voter suppression. Yet, we continue to strive for that more perfect Union.
conscience of the Congress, that has fought for that progress, to keep that progress, and to build upon that progress.
the ideals upon which our country was founded with its reality. Established on July 30, 1619, Virginia boasts the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere. The first elected legislative assembly in the New World, the Virginia General Assembly, in which I and many of my fellow members of the Virginia delegation have served. It was the birthplace for the birth of American democracy.
with 20-and-odd Africans, captured by Portuguese slavers in West Central Africa, and they were traded for provisions.
permanent colony by recruiting English women to Jamestown to make wives for the inhabitants. When those women arrived, they had no right to vote, no right to hold public office, no right to control their own property.
a question of how to make true for all Americans the promise of our founding documents.
We have, again, as I said, made progress. A lot of that progress was bought with the blood of the Civil War, bought with the blood of people during the civil rights movement, marching, fighting, and, in some cases, dying for the right to vote.
Yet today, we face a rollback of that progress. We have a President who insists he will not sign another bill unless it is a modern day poll tax, the SAVE America Act, which would require every American to prove their citizenship before they can vote through documents that cost money.
he first registered to vote in Tennessee. It is on the Bible where he kept that receipt that I took my oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States—all of it, not just the convenient parts.
progress. We stand on the shoulders of those who paved the way before us. We are building a path for those who will come after us.
As John Lewis said, democracy is not a State. It is an act that requires every generation to do its part to build a beloved community. Democracy in and of itself is not the point. It is what you do with it. It is what you do to build that more perfect Union.
Jim Crow, as they fought to participate in their government, saw the best of government when the full force of the Federal Government was used during the New Deal to help people solve problems beyond their control caused by the Depression.
That is what gets me through the chaos, quite frankly, Mr. Speaker. I am very cognizant every day that I serve in this body, and especially on certain days when court decisions come out of the Supreme Court, I am very cognizant that I am fighting the same fights that my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents fought.
I could be angry about that, but I am joyful. I am joyful because I fight those
imagined. I fight those fights so that my children and their children don't have to. But, if they do, they fight from a position of more strength and power than I do.
government reflects the perspective and, therefore, meets the needs of the people who participate. That is why the right to vote is so sacred. That is why the Congressional Black Caucus will fight tooth and nail to protect it.
It was purchased through blood, sweat, and many tears. It was promised in our founding documents creating this government by, of, and for the people. We will not rest while some are denied the exercise of that right, because of barriers put in their way that have absolutely nothing to do with their ability to determine their own destiny.
Now, Mr. Speaker, behind every Founding Father and mother who fought to give birth to our Nation and make those ideals upon which this country was founded true for everyone, there is a family. Today, American families face serious strains as it becomes increasingly difficult to afford a home, childcare, education, healthcare, retirement, groceries, paying their energy bills. Black families especially face challenges amidst the cost-of-living crisis that makes it much harder to pay rent or mortgages, put food on the table, keep the lights on, and get the healthcare they need when they need it.
{time} 2030
what I call the big, ugly bill made that even worse—stripping healthcare away from millions of Americans, shredding our healthcare safety net into tatters, taking food out of the mouths of hungry families, all to benefit the wealthiest top 10 percent in this country.
healthcare funding continue to threaten the well-being of families across the country.
raising a child surpasses $300,000, but it continues to face maternal mortality rates, infant mortality rates, and preterm birth rates that are worse than any other industrialized nation.
developed nations without a national paid leave policy, one in four American mothers have to return to work within 2 weeks of giving birth because they cannot afford to stay home, even though you need at least 6 weeks to recover from childbirth, 8 weeks if you have had a C- section. Believe me, you really need more than 8 weeks, as I know as I had one when my placenta ruptured and my daughter was born 9 weeks before her due date. I needed more than 8 weeks to recover.
For our families, the basic necessities of life: housing, healthcare, childcare are increasingly out of reach.
families, the Saving America By Saving the Family blueprint, which is a blueprint for conservative domestic and social policy plans; but instead of putting forward solutions to the problems that all American families face, such as the high maternal infant mortality rates, high preterm birth rates, high cost of childbirth, high cost of childcare, high cost of healthcare, lack of national paid leave, and the skyrocketing costs of everyday life, the plan focuses on a narrow view of what constitutes a family and ignores the wide diversity of families that call America home.
the all American family agenda, which illustrates a plan to make family life accessible and affordable for every American family, not just the ones that look like mine—regardless of how they are formed, regardless of where they live, what they earn, how they worship, but everyone.
families are free to plan when, whether, and how to have children; free from the fear that a pregnancy may be too costly or complicated; free from the fear that if they need medical intervention that their provider will have to wait until they are close enough to death to intervene; one where they are free to work and care for loved ones without living paycheck to paycheck.
opportunities to grow, afford, and care for their families for the next 250 years—every American family, not just a few.
Mr. Speaker, there is so much more I could say as we celebrate 250 years of this extraordinary country. It is one I am proud to live in. It is one I am proud to serve as a Member of Congress. It is also one I love enough to ask it to live up to its promises to all people who live here.
rolled back. We are in that backlash again. We are in the same backlash that my great grandfather saw: the backlash to reconstruction, the backlash that told him that he had to take a literacy test in Alabama and find three White men to vouch for his character just to be able to register to vote. It was the backlash that he faced in his community as racial terror lynchings tried to put Black people back in their place as defined by white supremacists and former Confederates who came back into power. It was the same backlash in his generation that created the live white supremacy to break up coalitions between formerly enslaved people and poor nonlandowning White people that was beginning to make progress for life, liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
We are now in the same backlash that my parents faced. My mother, who was the third youngest of 14 children, who was the first in her family to go beyond the eighth grade because, in her town, the State of Mississippi didn't think it was important enough to educate Black children, she had to move after working for a year just to get a high school diploma. She had to move to go to college. She saw firsthand in her family because her siblings, her parents, and her other family members and friends didn't have that opportunity, that they were limited in the jobs they could take. That is why every woman in her family was a domestic, caring for White people's children, and every man in her family was a laborer, because that is all that was available to them under the tyranny of Jim Crow.
until after 1965, we are facing that backlash now. We are facing the violence of people who stormed this building to take by force what they couldn't win at the ballot box for only the second time in American history. We are facing the voter suppression of a modern-day poll tax. We are facing the propaganda of stolen elections, birtherism, and the creation of villains in a limited view of what the American Dream and the American story should be.
Congressional Black Caucus is standing up here today to fight back against this one. In a government by, of, and for the people, government reflects the perspective and, therefore, meets the needs of the people who participate.
landowning men that signed the Declaration of Independence and ratified the Constitution. We fought too hard for too long to ensure every American had the ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is our job as Members of Congress to help the American people today achieve those by protecting their rights, not rolling them back.
Mr. Speaker, we are not going back. Mr. Speaker, we are going forward.
{time} 2040
founded become true for everybody, that when we say liberty and justice for all, we mean all, not just people who look like us, not just people who worship like us, not just people who were born in this country, or not just people who love like us, but everybody.
We will fight for that more perfect Union every single day. If necessary, we will die for it because too many people did.
Mr. Speaker, I will close with this. As the President wants to reshape what
spaces, and what history is shown in our museums, as he wants to ignore what he considers to be uncomfortable or puts America in a dark and unflattering light, we are not that perfect Union yet. There is good; there is bad; and there is ugly. We have to embrace all of it because it makes us who we are today, and we will never achieve that more perfect Union if we don't understand where we are and how we got here.
because the bad and the ugly help us to celebrate how far we have come. That came home to me when I took my children back to the African- American history museum last year during spring break. As I stood in the exhibit on the Middle Passage, which I had been in many, many times, that time, in the midst of the chaos we find ourselves in, I realized that somebody survived that so that I could be here in this moment, right now, celebrating 250 years of the ideal of liberty and justice for all, that I can fight for the reality of liberty and justice for all.
that. I am not going to let anybody take away my joy at coming from an unknown member of my family. We think we know, but we don't. DNA has allowed us to figure out maybe where they came from. We have no idea who they are, but to come through the Middle Passage and end up with a descendant serving in this body, that is an extraordinary American story. You can't celebrate it if you don't celebrate how it began. You can't fully celebrate how it began if you are not honest about how it began.
Mr. Speaker, as we each commemorate in our own way what 250 years of America means, it means to me that I will fight as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus with my now 61 colleagues, a record number, as we face challenges to our strength through redistricting and efforts to suppress votes. We are going to fight every day to strive for that more perfect Union because we believe in the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
that created a government by, of, and for the people. We will not rest until the ideals upon which this country was founded become true for everyone who calls America home.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.