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Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a floor statement or debate entry. It mentions members such as Mike Kennedy.
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June 30, 2026
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Download official House Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. Kennedy of Utah was recognized to address the House for 5 minutes.)
Mr. KENNEDY of Utah. Mr. Speaker, this week America turns 250 years old.
A birthday like that invites reflection. I have found myself considering what a privilege it is to be an American, on what it actually means to be one, and on the history that all of us get to claim as our own.
I reflect, too, on my own State and on its place in history. I think about the pioneers of Utah. We often gather in Utah to recite their deeds. We praise their determination, and we tell their stories. We are tempted to believe that because their story is great, we have become great by inheritance.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to say that idea is only half true. The great stories of the past are not what make us great. The great stories of the past are what we measure ourselves by. The founders and the pioneers and the ideas that animate them do not belong only to the past. They belong in this room, forcing us to ask what we have done with what they have built, and shaping what we should do next.
ocean and walked the plains to Utah. When work began on the Salt Lake Temple, he answered the call to help build it.
Every Monday John woke at 2 in the morning. He walked 22 miles to reach his post. He worked all week. On Friday night he walked 22 miles home in the dark. He did this year after year.
Then a family cow kicked him in the leg. His leg could not be saved. His family strapped him to a door and took the leg off with a common bucksaw. Most men would have stopped there.
John Rowe Moyle did not stop. He carved himself a leg out of wood. He walked on it through the pain, and he continued to walk to the temple. Standing on that wooden peg, with his own hands, he carved the words: “Holiness to the Lord” into the granite.
He would not live to see that temple finished. He knew that would be the case, yet he spent years of his life dedicated to the task anyway.
Mr. Speaker, John Rowe Moyle did not do this for praise. He did it because he wanted to leave something for those who came after him.
That temple still stands, and in our time its care was handed to us. The Salt Lake Temple is emerging from the largest restoration in its history. For years it stood wrapped in scaffolding. This year the scaffolding came down, and it will open again. All of you are invited next year between April and October to tour this remarkable and sacred building.
We did not simply admire what the pioneers built. Utahns restored it. Crews built the new foundation built to carry it through an earthquake that the pioneers never could have imagined. They preserved the old craftsmanship, and they made it strong enough to stand for generations we will never meet.
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That is the whole lesson, Mr. Speaker, in one building. A great thing was handed to us Utahns, and we did not take it for granted. We did the hard and unseen work to make it last, and we will pass it on stronger than we found it.
Here is the difficult question. It is the test of this generation, the test of this body, and the test of this people. When something great is handed to us, are we the kind of people who only stand back and admire it, or are we the kind who will do the quiet and difficult work and pass it on better than we found it?
That is what the pioneers in Utah did. That is what the Founders did 250 years ago. They did the hard work and got up a steep road for a reward many of them would never collect.
Mr. Speaker, let us be worthy of the people who built before us. Let us carry our own burden. Let us leave behind something that stands.