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REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  Good evening. I’ll try that one more time. Good evening.

ATTENDEES:  Good evening.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  I am so delighted to be here with all of you tonight, and I’m deeply honored to have received this award from USGLC. And let me first thank Mr. Glin for the kind introduction and to all of you here at USGLC for that moving tribute that I was not expecting tonight.

It’s especially an honor and a privilege to be here at the same time that LTG is getting an award, Susan Collins, Senator Collins—I’m so honored to be there—and my good friend, Senator John Boozman, who we worked together when he was in the House before he went to the other side of the chamber.

You know, in this room we have an assembly of global citizens who recognize that we no longer live in a world where we can afford to be isolated. When I was elected to serve as the first African American Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the world was still mired in a once-in-a-century pandemic, costing millions of lives and devastating every economy on every continent on this place we call Earth. It was clear then, just as it should be clear now, just how interconnected we all are and how small the world has become and that no nation can hide behind their borders and go it alone.

You know, when I first came to Congress in 1998—I can’t believe it’s been that long—it was already clear to me that the world was growing smaller and was getting even smaller than it was already. And I remember—you know, I came in a special election. And so the first committee they gave me was Financial Services, and I remember talking to then-Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, and I told him that I had an interest in getting on the Foreign Affairs Committee. And I found out even at that time, some people questioned why did I want to do that. I found out that at that time, one third of the Members of Congress did not even have a passport. That shocked me. But I insisted in talking to Mr. Gephardt that I wanted to get on this committee.

And so we have this process called “steering and policy,” and I went in and I gave my name. And when they came out, I was told that I did not get on the committee. So I learned my first lesson in Congress. So I went to two people who I really attribute my escalation on the Foreign Affairs Committee to but for them. One was the Honorable Donald Payne Sr., and the other was the illustrious Charlie—Charles B. Rangel.

So after I was told that I could not get on the committee, I saw Charlie and I saw Don, and I said, “Man, I really want to get on this committee, and I didn’t make it. I was just told I didn’t get on.” They said, “You didn’t get on?” They said, “Wait a minute.” So they went back into steering and policy, and so I just—they told me to stay outside of the room, and I did. I stayed. And then just a few minutes later, they came back out of steering and policy, and guess what? I was on the committee.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  And so I’ve been very fortunate to have many great mentors and colleagues over the years. But there’s another piece that came that I can tell you was probably one of the best pieces of advice that I got as a freshman in Congress:  Don’t walk into the Oval Office with Bill Clinton unless you’re going to say yes to what he wants.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  I remember freshman, special election, so I didn’t go through all of the same activities that other freshmen go through with a class. So I was just sitting in my office, very proud, my parents very proud that I’m now in Congress, and it was just a few weeks after I had gotten elected that the phone rang in my new office. And my staff said it was President Clinton on the phone. Now, I thought they were joking with me. I couldn’t believe that it was true. I thought it was just a joke. And I picked it up, and sure enough, it was William Jefferson Clinton on the phone, and what he was doing was there was—there was this issue at the time that we were trying to talk about, and it’s something that’s still relevant, what we moved today. It’s called Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, PNTR. And they were trying to figure out whether we should do it or not, and I’ve got a number of individuals who were coming to me, some telling me that I should go and see what was going on in China for myself, and others were saying don’t go. You just don’t go because people, number one, as an African American, they’d never talk to you. They’d be afraid. They’d run away from you, et cetera.

And so when I couldn’t turn the President of the United States down, so of course, I said I’m coming to the White House. And I didn’t know what I was going to do at that particular time. And so the President explained to me that then-Secretary Glickman was going to do a presidential trip to China and that I should go. But I was bold enough because I didn’t know what to do because some of my colleagues did not want me to go. So I said, “Look, I’ll go, but I’m going to do—and I’ll request one thing. Give me a car and a Chinese interpreter, and when I finish going to all the meetings that you want me to go to”—because some did not want me to go, they said that I would only see one side of the story, and I would only be going to the meetings that they wanted me to go to, and I wouldn’t know what was going on. So I said, “Give me a car and an interpreter, and after I go to your meetings, let me do what I wanted to do. Let me just go myself to get a feel of China.” And he let me go.

And after I did the meetings, I got my car and I got my interpreter, and we just started to drive. And then I told the driver to stop. When I saw a bunch of individuals, Chinese individuals, who were at a bus stop waiting to go to work, because I wanted to see whether they were going to run from me or not.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  So I got out the car with the interpreter, and I walked up to the bus stop, and I started talking to individuals. No one ran. In fact, they engaged me. They knew that I was American, and they wanted to talk to me. And I asked them, I wanted to see how they lived. I told them a little bit about how I was raised in public housing and what we’ve done in America, and one such individual on that bus stop that was on the way to work was so intrigued, he said, “I’ll be late to work. I want to take you to see where I live and how I live.” And I also saw that it was important that the United States of America had a presence. Even though I knew that still we didn’t agree on everything, it was really important for us to have a presence and to know what America was all about. And so that was one lesson for me, the key of showing up and being there and knowing that the United States of America, even if we don’t agree with everything that the other side wants, but to have the opportunity to talk, to negotiate, and get to know one another was a good way for a better day and to get along with other people.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  And I got in trouble sometimes thereafter because I became a pro-trade Democrat, which was, I thought, very important. But if you ask me what is one of the most precious resources we have in the United States, I will tell you it’s our people.

Now, I represent Southeastern Queens in New York, and Queens is the most diverse borough in the country, home of over 250 ethnicities and languages in Queens County alone. And my district is also home to the JFK Airport, a hub to the world. And with the rich ethnic, racial and religious diversity of our nation comes diversity of expertise, knowledge and lived experience. So we’re able to leverage our deep people-to-people ties, and that’s something that we have that our adversaries and competitors simply don’t. But that, of course, requires prioritizing diplomacy.

Another Bill Clinton story that I’ll never forget, this was in 2000, as he was about to leave office. I asked him, “What do you realize now leaving office that you did not think about when you entered office?” and he quickly said, “Many of the nations, whether they were big or small ones, that it’s not the power of the United States that they want or what moves them, but it’s the respect of the United States of America.” He said that we should be building better relationships, working together collectively instead of just throwing around our weight and threatening them with our might.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  So from my early years in Congress, I made it a point to travel and engage in places that weren’t exactly frequent stops for Members of Congress. So one of the first bipartisan delegations I took was to South America with my colleagues, Republican Congressman Cass Ballenger from North Carolina and Representative William Delahunt from Massachusetts. And we went to meet a new leader, a leader in Venezuela that had recently been elected by the name of Hugo Chávez.

Now, Chávez had previously tried to stage a coup, but now he had become legally elected by the people of Venezuela. And so when we met him, he said to us that he wanted a better relationship with the United States. He wanted, at that time, to meet with President Bush. In fact, he was saying, “All I need to do is to meet with President Bush, and if I did, he’d see that we have more in common and we can talk together,” et cetera. And then he pulled out the Venezuelan constitution and kissed it and said, “I believe in constitution.”

And what we realized was that between the opposition and the Chavistas, at the time, there was a big fight, and we were trying to talk to them, to tell them and explain to them how we can work together, a lesson that we may—as Senator Collins talked about, it’s a difficult time. We need now, again, in the United States, how we work together as one, Democrats and Republicans, to get something done, which is really important.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  So what took place there was with Senators Kerry and Kennedy, we took both the Chavistas, one who included Nicolas Maduro, and the opposition leaders to the Kennedy compound. And we had them working and playing softball together like they’d never had before, and so there was another message to me that if we work together, we can get things done.

And so let me just close by saying this. One of the things and the objectives that I’ve had is to make sure that countries, that ordinary that are not on the front burner, countries from the continent of Africa, countries from Central and South America, countries from the Caribbean, countries in Asia and the Pacific, those that have been on the back burner for so long, it is important to put them on the front burner so that they are now known and talked to, so that everybody has an opportunity to participate in a democracy and follow and work along with the greatest country this planet has ever seen called the United States of America.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  And so I dedicate myself—and this is why this is a huge honor for me—to making sure that we put diplomacy first. Diplomacy is the first track that we should take. Military is last. Just as General Mattis famously pointed out during a hearing in Congress, if you don’t fund the State Department fully, then we need to buy more ammunition. And it’s a shame that we fight to get a State authorization bill passed and we—easy to get a DoD bill passed. We’ve got to make sure that the State Department and State authorization is just as important as a defense bill.

REP. GREGORY W. MEEKS:  When we do that, what I learned first from President Clinton, we will see that the small states, countries as well as the big ones, will look at us with respect, we look at them with respect, and we will live in a better place on the planet that we all share called Earth.

Thank you all, and may God bless each and every one of you.