Affirming the obligation and leadership of the United States to improve the lives of the 37,162,000 Americans living in poverty and the 15,600,000 of those who live in extreme poverty.

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman just stated a rule that is unclear. The gentleman was questioned by the gentlewoman from Florida about the rule. The gentlewoman basically said, are you saying we cannot refer to the President of the United States or to the Vice President of the United States? I would like clarification on the rule that you attempted to describe.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) for organizing us this evening to talk about poverty. As a matter of fact, I know that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) had already began to organize around the issues of poverty and had been trying to focus us for some time to really get involved in unveiling what is going on in America. And, despite the fact that there are so many competing interests and despite the fact that not enough Members of Congress have the courage to talk about poverty or race or class, Katrina has brought us face to face with what is wrong in America.

As we stand here today with this picture from Newsweek, with this child's face, this baby's face with the tears running down, the caption: ``Poverty, Race, and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame,'' we are forced to have to deal with these issues of poverty, race, and class.

There was an interesting debate going on when this hurricane first struck. The journalists would say to African American legislators, did race have anything to do with this? They were looking for the confrontation, helping to draw out the right-wing conservatives so that they could say what they normally say when we begin to describe what is wrong in America: Ah, there they go, playing the race card again, or trying to marginalize someone when they dare to get up and talk about race, poverty, and class.

Well, what is interesting about this discussion is every journalist who confronted an African American legislator raised the question until finally I said to them, you are asking this question so often, you must know something. You must know something that you want to talk about. Do you think this is about race? And so I say to my colleagues I have decided, based on what has happened with this horrendous disaster, that we must talk about class, race, and poverty.

As a matter of fact, as I sat in my bedroom watching the 20,000 or more people sitting outside the convention center and I heard the head of FEMA, Mr. Michael Brown, say that he did not know they had been sitting there for 3 days, they were without water, they were without food, they were without lights, and that coming on the heels of what had happened in the dome where the evacuees were placed, no electricity, toilets not working, food ran out, water ran out, I got up from my seat and caught a plane and went to Louisiana, because I could not sit there any longer watching what was happening to the most vulnerable people in the world.

Going there, going to these shelters, going to the Louis Armstrong Airport, watching people suffering, thousands of people without water, without food, without medical care, old women in wheelchairs who needed their medicine, people with diabetes and high blood pressure and the morgue that was being placed right there in the airport to accommodate the people who were dying on the sidewalks, I decided that it may not be politic to talk about race or class or poverty, but, Mr. Speaker, when I came to this place, I came to talk about those issues, and I decided that I, too, had been organized by the right-wing and others not to confront the issues in ways that I know I feel deeply about.

So I do not care what happens and from whence it shall come. In addition to everything that I do, call me whatever you want to call me, say that I am playing the race card, say whatever you want to say. I am going to talk about race, I am going to talk about poverty, and I am going to talk about the class issues of America.

We are brought face to face with these issues, looking at what happened in New Orleans. The population of New Orleans is 448,000 people; 67 percent of the city's population is African American. About 27 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The city's median household income is $27,514. Two in 10 households in the disaster area had no car, compared with 1 in 10 nationwide. About 4.5 percent of the disaster area received public assistance. Nationwide, the number was about 3.5 percent. In 2000, New Orleans had the fifth highest poverty rate and the fourth lowest household income of major American cities.

In the lower ninth ward neighborhood, which was inundated by the floodwaters, 98 percent of the residents are black, and more than a third live in poverty. Sixty-five percent of these families are one- parent families. The housing in New Orleans is much older than the national average, with 43 percent built in 1949 or earlier, compared with 22 percent for the United States and only 11 percent of them built since 1980, compared with 35 percent for the United States.

New Orleans public schools are 93 percent black; 55 of the State's 78 worst schools are in New Orleans. The State of Louisiana rates 47 percent of New Orleans schools as academically unacceptable, and another 26 percent are under academic warning.

About 25 percent of New Orleans adults have no high school diploma, and we can go on and on and on. Louisiana has the largest percentage of children living in poverty, 30 percent.

Louisiana and Mississippi have the highest infant mortality rate in the Nation, 10.3 percent per 1,000 births. Louisiana and Arizona have the biggest teen dropout rate in the Nation. Well, as we travel around the Nation and we take a look at poverty, today we are talking about New Orleans, but let us take a look in St. Louis, Missouri, let us take a look in Philadelphia, let us take a look up in Harlem, let us take a look in Appalachia. Let us take a look at poverty in America.

We cannot continue to place our heads in the sand. Why do we have this poverty? Why it is that public policy no longer discusses poverty, race, and class? It is because the right wing conservatives have been very successful at silencing those of us who should be discussing it.

They have pulled every trick in the book. They have their talking heads on Fox Television and other right wing stations that are basically undermining us and basically denigrating us whenever we talk about these issues.

But, ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that we are going to have to do this, not only for ourselves but for America. The attitudes that have come out of this hurricane, the President's mother, Mrs. Barbara Bush, said the people in the Dome were disadvantaged anyway, they were better off.

Attitudes. You know, people want us to say the President went into the White House and said, we are not going to go to New Orleans to help the black people. No, we are not saying that. We are not saying that it is that obvious, that it is that overt. It is about attitude. It is about the kind of attitude that drives your actions.

When you have Barbara Bush saying, well, they are better off. People who are dying in the Dome, people who are dying outside of the convention center, they are better off, so why should we care? I mean, it is that kind of attitude that leads to the kind of policies and the kind of marginalization that leads to a lack of concern and resources for the people who so desperately need it.

Attitudes. We have one of the Members of my committee that I serve on, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker), who said God had done what we had not been able to do in getting rid of public housing. Attitudes that lead to the kind of decisions that result in racist actions.

In addition to all of this, we find that there are things still going on in Louisiana that we thought we would never see again in life. There were a group of people who were told to cross a bridge to get to safety and to high land.

These African American women and men, for the most part, with a few whites with them, started across the bridge to a little town called Gretna, I believe. And they were met by the police officers with guns. And they shot their guns over the heads of women and children, mostly African American women and children, and said, get back over to New Orleans, this is not the Superdome, we do not want you over here. You cannot come over here.

And for those people who managed to get past them at the end of the bridge, they came and they took their food and their water away from them and drove them back on the other side of the bridge.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would not be worth my salt if I did not direct my attention to these atrocities. I would not be worth being elected to the Congress of the United States of America if I did not stand up for the least of these and the most vulnerable of these.

We have seen the face of poverty. It was reflected in a profound way, people trapped and died because they did not have transportation. People died because they did not get rescued. Their government let them down. People said do not point the finger. How many fingers do I have?

I am pointing them all. Because in addition to whatever mistakes were made at the local and the State level, in the final analysis, we have the most powerful government in the world, and they let the people down. They let the people down even though we had the resources, we have the helicopters, we have Navy bases. We found a Navy base over in Alexandria, Louisiana, England Air Force Base, that is boarded up that has 450 rooms, dormitories, that are not being used.

We had ships fully equipped with all of the medical equipment right there right off the coast. Unused. We have the resources. We have the National Guard. We have the money. We have what it needs.

Now, people want to ask me, did it happen because of race? I submit to you that when you have the kind of attitudes that speak like the President's mother, Barbara Bush, who spoke like the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker), who acted the way the police officers acted that drove my people back across the bridge shooting guns over the heads of women and children, that results in racist acts.

It results in the kinds of decisions that marginalize, that deny, that cause people to die and to be harmed unnecessarily. And so poverty is an issue that we must pay attention to.

Today, we are focused on New Orleans; but tomorrow, we have got to focus on poverty all over the United States of America, whether we are talking about New Orleans or any of the other cities that many of us represent.

I am grateful to be able to be in good strength, and I am grateful that I have found my courage again, the courage to do what we should always do. I am so grateful that I am resigned, and I have resolved that this Congress is going to hear about this day in and day out.

Never again shall I find myself in a position where I am crying and lamenting after the fact. I have got to be in the faces of those who make public policy. I have got to use my influence. I have got to do everything that I can possibly do.

The President of the United States does not back up. They are in our faces. Yes, Mr. Speaker, he gave another no-bid contract to Halliburton. We have criticized him time and time again about Halliburton and the fact that they stole our money in Iraq, they cheated us. But they do not back up. They stay in our faces with their policies, and we have got to stay in theirs.

Mr. Speaker, first, let me just remind those who are listening tonight that there have always been two Americas here in the United States. I was quite taken aback right after the very recent catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina that reporters and many individuals kept commenting that this is not America, we do not know this place, this cannot be America. But my response consistently has been, this is the America that I know and this is the America that brought many of us here to Congress.

By race or class, there are two distinct and separate societies surviving on sheer will and determination here in our own country. It just does not make sense that the richest, most powerful Nation in the world has some of the poorest, unhealthiest, and most vulnerable people in the world. In many ways, Hurricane Katrina has brought to light the shame that the United States really, quite frankly, has tried to sweep under the rug for decades.

Now, the Congressional Black Caucus has represented this hidden America for nearly 40 years in this Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus has consistently worked to eradicate poverty throughout our country. Just look at the disparities agenda put forth by the Congressional Black Caucus under the leadership of our great chairman, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt). Whether it is unemployment rates, whether it is health statistics, whether it is statistics as it relates to decent and affordable housing, the gaps are glaring. The disparities are glaring.

The disparities of poverty severely and disproportionately affect African

Americans and people of color in our country. Let us just for a minute, and I put this chart up here so we can look at the poverty rates right now in the United States and where they were in 2000, in 2000, 11.3 percent was the poverty rate, increasing every year to 2004, which, of course, the Census Bureau has just put out, 12.7 percent, and it is climbing.

So who are the poor? Newsweek magazine, and I hope everyone reads Newsweek this week, September 19, and what Newsweek says. Let me read a paragraph from that article where it describes who the poor are: ``With whites making up 72 percent of the population, the United States contains more poor whites than poor blacks or Hispanics. In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that the increase in white poverty in nonurban areas accounts for most of the recent uptick in the poverty rate, but only a little more than 8 percent of American whites are poor.'' That is 8 percent compared with 22 percent of Hispanics and nearly 25 percent of all African Americans, 25 percent in a country that is 12 percent black. That is the point that we need to make, that people need to understand.

So those naysayers who say we are playing the race card, which we are not, they need to look at the facts. They need to look at the disproportionate numbers of Americans living in poverty who are African American and who are Hispanic. The facts speak for themselves.

We are going to talk tonight about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on people who are poor and who did not have the money to leave and to evacuate, most of whom happen to be black. We are going to talk about that tonight. I hope those who are listening and watching understand that this America that many of us here understand and know, these two Americas that unfortunately we have been faced with, is one of the reasons why we fight each and every day against the budget cuts, against the tax cuts, against putting unnecessary resources into an unnecessary war.

That is why many of us here are here tonight as members of the Congressional Black Caucus, as Americans, as Members of Congress to really call to the attention of the American people the huge impact of poverty, the disproportionate numbers of individuals who happen to be black and Latino in our country. Here we have the greatest, most industrialized, most technically developed country in the world; and we have this unbelievable number of American citizens who are poor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), who has been all of his life a warrior, a fighter for the poor, who organized the Poor People's Caucus here in Congress and who will talk to us now with regard to why he has embraced this agenda as his life's mission.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) for his comments.

Let me just say I believe, unfortunately, that this Congress and the administration suspended the requirements to include minority- and women-owned businesses in the upcoming contracts, which to me is appalling and unacceptable; and we need to go back and repeal what they repealed.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown) to come forward and make her statement.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois for that very eloquent statement.

Let me just say in reference to the comment made by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) earlier and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) in terms of the President taking responsibility, which he just said he would take, I think it really warrants us to ask the question, why was he so irresponsible early on in responding to this great tragedy? And that answer has to be gotten, I think, for all of us to be able to understand the direction in which he is going to move. Tomorrow he is going to talk I think about his plan and response, but I would just hope that he would talk about his plan to eradicate poverty by the year 2010, and that is what many of us are working toward.

I would like to now yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) who all of her life has worked to eradicate the conditions which give rise to this very obscene and immoral condition which so many millions of Americans live in.

I want to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) for that very clear and powerful statement also. If there was any doubt who was left behind in the Gulf region, I think the entire country knows now who was left behind.

Let me yield now to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney).

I want to thank the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney) for her very passionate statement and for asking the tough questions, as she always has and will continue to do.

I would like to now yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis). We all know that poverty knows no boundaries. We see high incidences of poverty all over our country in rural and in urban areas.

We know much of your community is a rural community steeped in poverty.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his statement also raising the need for sustained commitment, because that is what this country and the President must do and develop a plan to eradicate poverty by 2010.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about poverty in our nation--the harsh reality of which played out painfully for all of the world to see after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast region.

The televised images of hardship, death and despair from New Orleans may have opened the doors to this nation's reservoir of compassion--but something more than a momentary outpouring of conscience will be required to keep those doors from slamming shut again once the television spotlights dim.

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath revealed the harsh realities of poverty in America. The heartbreaking visions of lost children searching for their families, elderly people trapped in their homes, diabetics suffering without their insulin and corpses floating in the streets have the potential to become a transforming event.

That potential will be realized, however, only if Americans of conscience join together in a national movement to end poverty in America.

Once again, a generation of Americans must find within ourselves the courage, optimism and organizational skills that will allow us to demand an end to the poverty that underscored the New Orleans tragedy-- and to make permanent our demand for positive change.

The road toward achieving this goal must begin, as all missions of change begin, in our personal experience as a people. Consider two families who have been transformed by the New Orleans disaster--whom I will call the Jones and Smith families. I am using fictitious names and relaying a blended story to protect their privacy--but quite frankly Mr. Speaker their stories are a common refrain from the Katrina fallout.

Prior to this storm, Mr. and Mrs. Jones lived in public housing with their three children. Neither parent had a high school diploma and--as a result--they lived in a neighborhood surrounded by unemployment and poverty.

If it had not been for Hurricane Katrina, the Jones family might never have met the Smiths, a middle-aged couple who live in an upscale suburban home hundreds of miles away.

The Smiths were haunted by the suffering that they were witnessing on their television screen. Called to take action by their church, they reached out to the Jones family and gave them a place to live in the basement of their home. The impact of their generosity has been profound.

Before the storm and the flood, Mr. Jones had been unemployed due to layoffs at the New Orleans oil refinery where he had worked. Now, one of Mr. Smith's neighbors, a lumber yard supervisor, has given Mr. Jones a job--and the Smiths are helping the Jones family research GED programs that can help them get even better jobs.

Across America, churches and good people like the Smiths are coming together to provide the shelter, warm meals, clothing and other help that will allow many of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina to rebuild their lives. School districts have opened their classrooms to the more than 372,000 students displaced by the storm. Government and non-profit organizations are holding job fairs to help those who have been displaced find employment.

We cannot remake the past, but we can give meaning to the staggering toll of those who have suffered and died as a result of this national tragedy. That is what the Smith family is doing, and they deserve our applause.

Yet, if the debacle in New Orleans is truly to become a ``tipping point'' that guides this nation toward a more just and humane society, something more than individual acts of compassion will be required.

Consider these facts. In New Orleans before the storm, three out of every ten residents lived below the poverty line--and at least 37 million Americans (including 13 million American children) are now living in poverty nationwide.

In fact, the number of Americans falling into poverty increased again last year for the fourth straight year. While the economy grew 3.8%, median income has remained flat for the fifth straight year at $44,389. Income inequality is at an all time high with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households-- where only the top 5 percent of income earners saw an increase in real income gains in 2004 according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Mr. Speaker, it is an undisputable fact that many of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were victims of poverty and neglect.

However, I believe like many of my colleagues that they should not have to wait for our compassion until another disaster brings with it their televised deaths in our streets.

At the federal level, we must demand that those who now control both the Congress and the White House back up the words of compassion that they speak. That is why I have joined House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in urging that the House Republicans set aside their plan to cut the federal budget by $35 billion to help pay for another $70 billion tax cut for the rich.

Americans need to know that, while the Republican leadership expresses compassion for this nation's poorest citizens, they are planning to cut $10 billion from Medicaid, $9 billion from federal student aid, and additional tens of billions of dollars from the federal food stamp program, public housing assistance, Head Start, public education and job training programs.

As a nation, we can do better than this. Shortly after the New Orleans tragedy touched our Nation, I offered this challenge to the Bush Administration and its allies in the Congress.

``We cannot allow it to be said by history,'' I declared at a Washington press conference, ``that the difference between those who lived and those who died in the great storm and

flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age or skin color.''

This, I submit, is the continuing challenge of poverty in America--a challenge that will continue to test the moral fabric of our Nation. I applaud my colleague Representative Barbara Lee, for her tireless efforts to shine a bright light on America's economic disparities and resultant poverty. I hope that her bill H. Con. Res. 234, serves to allow us to begin to discuss and to address solutions to ending poverty in this country. To do so, I firmly believe that we have to rethink how our federal fiscal and social policies are lending significantly to the poverty problem.

A moral people would take up this challenge. A moral people would understand that it is time for a change.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman please explain to me, because I quite do not understand it. I heard what he said about the Halliburtons of the world. But could he explain why minorities and women, the people that are most affected by this hurricane, cannot participate in the recovery.

Just a follow-up, Mr. Speaker.

Can he give me the criteria, how they participate? Is it some kind of campaign contribution? Is there some kind of criteria? I need to be able to go somewhere and tell my small businesses who want to participate how to participate. Whom do they have to write the checks to?

Mr. Speaker, let me commend the congresswoman for her leadership in this area. Let me commend the Congressional Black Caucus for their leadership; and I also want to commend the American people, because the American people have come forward, the private businesses, the private organizations.

What has been blatantly clear to all Americans is that the Federal Government has been missing in action. We have two Americas. It is tragic. We have one black. Yes, I said it, black, African American. One white. One rich and one poor, and the poorest Americans are still the most vulnerable. We need to ensure that all Americans, regardless of where they live, can find a quality of life and work.

This hurricane has put a spotlight on the tragic situation that exists with this administration, and I call it reverse Robin Hood, robbing from the poor and working people to give tax breaks to the rich. I am going to repeat that. Reverse Robin Hood, and I have said it over and over again. Robbing from the poor to give tax breaks to the rich. That has been the policy.

There are two things that I want to discuss today. In light of the hurricane, why are we doing away with Davis-Bacon? And, two, why are we doing away with affirmative action contracting programs?

Almost as disturbing as this administration's horrible response to the hurricane is their suspension of all labor rules for hurricane- related contracts. Just like in the past, the Bush administration is taking every opportunity to destroy organized labor but has taken it to a new level by suspending all affirmative action programs in contracting. This is a new mandate by this administration, and it will do absolutely nothing to ensure quick or better service for those suffering from the hurricanes but will certainly ensure that none of them are involved with rebuilding their homes and communities. The very same people whose tax dollars will be paying for the reconstruction will be shut out of the opportunity to participate in the cleanup.

Just like in Iraq, where we never had any oversight, we cannot afford to see the repeat of this situation in the gulf States. And let me say again, Iraq, no oversight, over $1 billion, no accountability. If this had been a Democratic administration, somebody would be in jail, and certainly the Congress would be investigating and investigating, and there would be hearings and hearings and hearings.

Nothing, nothing goes on in the people's House. The only thing that we do is vote on somebody's courthouse. No discussions about the issues of the day. If it was not for this Congressional Black Caucus, no discussion.

As always, President Bush talks the talk. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that our government is a paper tiger. We talk the talk, but we do not walk the walk. He and his political cronies continue their assault on minorities and the working poor, while lining the pockets of their political cronies and filling their campaign coffers.

Lo and behold, whom do we see getting the biggest contract in the cleanup of the hurricane? I heard one of my sisters last Tuesday night ask the Secretary, the Secretary that was here, can anybody do any business with the Federal Government other than Halliburton? A $588 billion contract, no bid, no opportunity for anybody else to participate. If I am incorrect, please somebody speak up. None other than Dick Cheney's Halliburton. So while the poor in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi suffer from Federal neglect, Dick Cheney and his cronies keep getting rich. I said it. If Hurricane Katrina's high winds, rain, and furious power were not enough, the Federal Government's inadequate response to this tragedy just adds gasoline to the fire.

I want to take a moment to thank the people locally in my area of Jacksonville. We have sent over 18 tractor trailers full of goods and services. Goods. I asked them to give me their wish list, and everything on their wish list we filled. And, in fact, I got a call today. We have got another one filled, and we are getting ready to send it to Mississippi.

And let me tell my colleagues something. People from Mississippi and Louisiana are calling me. To this day no one has been to their community. They do not have communication. They do not have water. They do not have lights. What is the problem in the richest country in the world? We are not a third world country. We still have not gotten services to these local communities.

As I bring it to a close, remember to whom God has given much, much is expected. We cannot continue to run around the world talking about our fighting for democracy, fighting for our neighbors, when we do not fight right here at home for the people who pay the taxes. We have got a lot of work to do in this Congress, and it is not just passing a bill naming a post office.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, on that question, I understand I cannot discuss their personal motives, but I understand that I can raise their names.

This inquiry should not be on the time of the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. Speaker, I did not understand what you are saying, sir. Would you repeat what you just said?

Thank you for organizing this Special Order tonight. Because our time is limited, I want to make my remarks suitably brief. But I want to pick on something that has been a theme of what I have heard from a lot of my colleagues in the last several minutes.

We have talked a lot, appropriately, about the question of national will in this country of ours, and I am reminded that several hours ago we passed a resolution on the floor honoring a woman named Rosa Parks who was a seamstress in the city I was born in, Montgomery, Alabama.

When Rosa Parks made the decision to stand up by sitting down, by refusing to give up her seat on the bus, my grandmother was a 46-year- old woman who lived in Montgomery; my mother was a 12-year-old child. And they both vividly remember at times when they were escorted or asked to leave the front of the bus, to go to the back.

And in that generation of Americans, there was a certain percentage of people who felt that, well, it is just the way it was. There was a certain percentage of people who felt that racial segregation, separating people based on color, was just in the fabric and the atmosphere of what we were as a country.

And when the Rosa Parkses of the world asserted themselves, a lot of people dismissed their effort. A lot of people said that it is a quixotic venture.

And here we are 50 years later with a whole lot of political power for this community, a whole lot of an ability to stand here and to talk about these kinds of questions. We are a long, long way from the Montgomery, Alabama that Rosa Parks and my mother and grandmother lived in.

What has changed about that 50 years is our will changed as a country. Our sense of what we would and would not tolerate changed over a period of time, and that which seemed tolerable many years ago, all of a sudden came to be seen as intolerable. It is my sincerest hope, as a Member of this House, that when our time is long done, when the youngest of us here have left this body, that some group of Americans will look back and they will say that we managed to take these questions of poverty, impenetrable, cutting, wounding poverty, off the table, that we somehow managed to find a way to build enough of a net in this country that everyone who tries to build a family has a maximum opportunity to do it, that we managed to build enough of a net in this country that when anyone gets sick, that we find a way to give them a quality of care, that we found a way to build enough of a net in this country, so that if there is an ambition in our children, the ambition will always be rewarded.

The hope that I have is that we will one day reach a point where these kinds of questions come off the table, just as the question of what side of the bus you can sit in came off the table. If we are going to get to that point, it will require a lot more than the reaction to Hurricane Katrina.

It will require a lot more than the reaction to the Gulf that was exposed in New Orleans. It will require a sustained commitment to be serious about these questions. It will require a sustained commitment to talk about issues of day care for working mothers, issues of health care for indigents, issues of exclusion for all kinds of groups who have been marginalized in America.

But I think those things are within our reach. The reason I think so is because I think that we have the capacity as a country to come back to a vocabulary and a dialogue of national greatness. We have the capacity as a country to talk about a vision that will make America great, that will not simply be based on the force of our arms, that will not simply be based on our intercontinental ballistic missiles, but will be based on the quality of the institutions that we build.

I will end by mentioning someone that I know inspired many of my colleagues in this body, Robert F. Kennedy, the Senator from New York who died seeking to change the country by winning the presidency.

He often ended his speeches by saying, ``Some men see things as they are and say why? I see things that never were and say why not?''

That has to be the constant challenge of all the Members of this institution who style themselves as progressives. The constant challenge has to be that we will see a range of visions, a range of opportunities and quality of life for our people that we have not previously seen and that we will have a national will to move toward that time.

So I thank the gentlewoman for organizing this event. I thank my colleagues for speaking.

In the final seconds I have here today, I will simply make the point that all of our citizens in this country ought to understand that we are impacted when some of our people do not share in the same circle of opportunity, but yet they are working and striving and pushing themselves every day to do it. That exclusion and that absence does not just wound African Americans, it does not just wound Latinos, it wounds everyone in this country that shares our national identity.