Speaker Pelosi Remarks at Arrival Ceremony for Chairman Elijah E. Cummings

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Congressional Leadership and other Members of Congress for a formal Arrival Ceremony for Chairman Elijah E. Cummings to lie in state. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Please be seated. Good morning.

Elijah Cummings: son of sharecroppers, master of the House. It is my official and personal and sad honor to welcome Chairman Elijah Cummings and all who loved him to the celebration of his life.

Thank you, Maya, for giving us this honor to say goodbye to Elijah in this Statuary Hall of the House of Representatives.

Elijah was truly a master of the House. He respected its history and in it he helped shape America's future. I have called him our North Star: our guide to a better future for our children.

Elijah has said that ‘our children are our living messengers to a future we will never see.' For the children he wanted a future worthy of their aspirations and true to the values of America. It was in defense of the children at the border that Elijah said, ‘We can do better.'

It was he who mentored – he was also a mentor of the House. When we were deciding Committee assignments, he said, ‘Give me as many Freshmen as you can. I love their potential, and I want to help them realize it.'

As a mentor, he was always generous with credit, giving Members the opportunity to take the lead. He knew it was not only important to them, but the fresh eyes – their fresh eyes were important to any decisions we made about America's future.

In his Chairmanship of the Oversight and Reform Committee, he lived up to the responsibility to exercise the Congressional power of oversight of Congress.

Thank you, Elijah, on behalf of the future of our children, on behalf of the future of America, to be true to our beliefs.

We say this to you as we are gathered here today in the old House Chamber where Lincoln served, beneath the same clock Lincoln heard ticking, under the gaze of Clio, the muse of history.

Clio reminds the men and women in the Congress in these hallowed halls that we are part of history, that our words and actions will be recorded and the face of the judgment and – and face the judgment of history, and that we are a part of a long and honorable heritage of our democracy.

Chairman Cummings understood that.

God truly blessed America with the life and legacy of Elijah Cummings.

Leaders – That's why I'm very grateful to Leader McConnell, Leader Schumer, Leader McCarthy for agreeing to have Elijah lie in repose on the same catafalque that Abraham Lincoln lay in repose at his death.

May Elijah rest in peace.