Recognizing and supporting the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 in increasing adoption and the efforts the Act has spurred including National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month, and encouraging adoption throughout the year.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak in behalf of H. Res. 959. As was described by Congressman Camp, the bill recognizes National Adoption Month and National Adoption Day. It commemorates the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and encourages adoption.

As Congressman Camp noted, it is particularly timely that the House take action on this resolution today, the week we have heroes from around the country into Washington celebrating the Angels in Adoption gala in recognition of their extraordinary commitment to the adopted children that have been brought into their families.

I want to tell about the North Dakota family of Pat and Michelle Beyer. They are in town this week. They have quite a story, like each and every family being honored at the Angels in Adoption gala.

Pat is a North Dakota National Guardsman. He is on leave from his service in Iraq. At home, Michelle is raising two naturally born children, three adopted children, each of whom have some special needs, and this wonderful loving couple is now proceeding with the adoption of yet another child with special needs.

Mr. Speaker, your heart goes out to people like this. They really reflect, I believe, the very best of goodwill and compassion in our country. I am so proud of them.

Even as I speak about what they have done to make their home available to children and what we recognize with adopted families everywhere in terms of the homes they create for children, the fundamental and profound truth of adoption, in my view, is that the parents benefit far more than they possibly could contribute to the children. I know a little bit about what I am talking about on this score. These are my children, Kathryn and Scott, adopted from Korea, the best thing that ever happened to me. So I care just enormously about this resolution.

I also want to for a moment congratulate my colleague Dave Camp for his role in the passage of what has been a very important piece of legislation to encourage and move adoption forward.

I remember very well 10 years ago with C-SPAN on in my office hearing floor debate about a proposal that was precisely something that had been worrying me for months, because I had been told in North Dakota by judges that things were out of whack, that in this business of evaluating children in foster care, the best interests of the child were being hopelessly confused and sometimes placed secondary to the goal of family reunification of completely dysfunctional families.

Now, maybe Congress had a role in its earlier legislation in giving some confusion out there to the social services system, but there was one thing we knew, and we knew very clearly, to a person, Republican and Democrat, and I also commend Barbara Kennelly, the lead cosponsor on the legislation, and that was put the best interests of the children first, foremost, exclusively, only. We wanted nothing more than to advance the interests of the children.

The legislation straightened that out, and made no bones about it, and then placed substantial expectations on the system with defined time limits about children who had been just kicked down the road without end in interim foster care arrangements. We wanted them moved out of those arrangements and into permanent adoptive status, to the extent we possibly could.

You know, there are a lot of things we do here, and we sure mean the best as we do them, and we don't always know how they work. Well, the jury is in on this one, and this act has worked, I think perhaps even better than I had hoped it might.

The number of children annually adopted out of the foster care system has nearly doubled, from 27,000 in 1996 to 52,000 in 2004. The North Dakota situation I had been worrying about, we have gone from 41 adopted in 1996 to 128 in 2004. We tripled.

So, again, David Camp, as I told you that day in debate, you have got a real fine piece of work here, and I again commend you for the leadership you have played in such an important bill.

Another aspect of this bill, in addition to the time expectation put forward by Congress, we actually put some money on the table as positive incentives for States that really took the charge to move children into permanent adoptive homes. We have paid out more than $200 million to States since that legislation. I think it has without question proven to be an extremely effective and cost-effective use of taxpayer dollars. It is also a reminder and something I think we need to keep in mind as we look at what else we can do that the carrot needs to go along with the stick.

Another positive bill we passed in advancing legislation is moving the tax credit for adoption expenses into law and then increasing it so it more appropriately reflects expenses incurred by a family in seeking to adopt.

I have gotten to experience the miracle of adoption in my life, but I don't think that in any way you have to have some kind of financial status to experience this miracle. We want everybody

to be able to experience this miracle, if they want to open their homes and raise children in an adoptive family. So increasing this tax credit from $5,000 to $10,000 is important. My Ways and Means colleague, Nancy Johnson, has played an important role on that one.

Now, for all the platitudes, and they were especially in commemorating the successes important to make, I know David doesn't feel like we have arrived and gotten the job done. I don't either. We have more to do. There are 118,000 foster children today waiting to be adopted. To find a loving home for every waiting child, we should focus more attention on recruiting adoptive parents and on providing post- adoption services to help families with ongoing medical, counseling and referral needs.

In the passage of this resolution, I hope there is a bit of this vote that represents a recommittal to continuing to explore whatever we can do to unite families, parents who want to provide a loving home to innocent, precious children that so richly deserve it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 959) recognizing and supporting the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 in increasing adoption and the efforts the Act has spurred including National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month, and encouraging adoption throughout the year.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 959, a resolution that recognizes the successes of the landmark Adoption and Safe Families Act and honors National Adoption Day and Month. I was proud to introduce this resolution and the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which we honor today.

The work of Congress over the past decade has led to dramatic improvements for children in the foster care system. In fact, since 1997, the number of children adopted from foster care has increased significantly, from 28,000 in 1998 to 51,000 in 2004.

I have been pleased to work with my colleagues to refocus Federal child welfare programs, to ensure the best interests of children are first. The way to make that happen is to place children in safe, permanent loving homes. That is why National Adoption Day and Month are so important.

This year, National Adoption Day will take place on November 18, 2006, and is designed for communities around the country to highlight adoptions. Last year, over 227 events were held in 45 States, which finalized the adoption of 3,300 children.

I have been honored to participate in these events the past several years. To be part of such a special occasion reinforces the need for further efforts to move children into adoptive homes. I would like to applaud the Department of Health and Human Services for their efforts in this cause. In 2002, HHS launched a series of public service announcements promoting the adoption of children eight and older and activated the Web site www.adoptUSkids.com. This Web site has helped move 6,000 children into adoptive homes.

The consideration of this resolution today is timely. Tomorrow, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute will be holding its annual Angels in Adoption awards ceremony. This event also seeks to highlight those who have opened their hearts and their homes.

The couple I nominated this year, Pam and Randy Streu of Midland, Michigan, have three biological children, and have opened their hearts and their home to seven adopted children and almost 50 adoptive foster children placements. They deserve special recognition, not just for the number of children they have helped, but for helping those children that needed the most love. When others may have said the challenge was too great, Pam and Randy stepped in, recognizing that each life was worth fighting for and that it was about hope and love.

I first got involved by helping families with their adoption proceedings in private practice as a court-appointed lawyer. Since that time, I felt that the government should do more to encourage adoption and help those in the foster care system. That is why it is so important to recognize families who make extraordinary efforts to welcome children into their family.

I thank my colleagues who have helped me move this resolution forward, including Mr. Herger, chairman of the Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee; Mr. McDermott, the ranking member of the subcommittee; and Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite and Mr. Oberstar, co-chairs of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. I look forward to further working with my colleagues to promote adoption.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Dakota for his comments, a distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite).

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.

First, I want to commend him and Mr. Camp for their outstanding leadership and the passion with which they display relative to this issue and their personal involvement.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the significance of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. ASFA provided sweeping changes in Federal child welfare law designed to ensure children's safety and to quicken permanent placements in the event that a child could not return home.

By enacting the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, Congress recognized the need to align Federal incentives with the desired goal of providing abused and neglected children safe, permanent homes. This law has helped move States to promote adoption and has helped moved children into permanent homes.

In praising ASFA, I want to take a moment to highlight the need to develop similar policies to promote permanency more broadly. ASFA has done much to promote adoption, but policymakers should extend ASFA's successes to other areas of permanency to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of children for whom adoption is not appropriate.

Using ASFA as a model, the bipartisan Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care recommended that Federal policies create subsidized guardianship programs and State incentives to promote permanency more broadly, be it via reunification, adoption or guardianship.

Also, we must use our understanding of the implementation of ASFA to make it better. I am particularly concerned about the over 29,000 children who have entered our child welfare system due to parental incarceration, most often from nonviolent acts. The parameters set forth by ASFA do not align well with those of the criminal justice system, leading to a permanent separation of many children from their parents and family.

I encourage my colleagues to consult the wonderful policy brief by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law on the topic. ``Rebuilding Families, Reclaiming Lives,'' draws attention to hurdles created by the lack of consistency in Federal policies with regard to children of incarcerated parents. It also offers policy recommendations to promote stability and well-being for the children.

Mr. Speaker, I also take this second to commend the One Church, One Family, One Child program in Illinois, who are indeed going to be here for the Angels in Adoption gala. They have developed a unique program of recruiting families to become foster parents to children coming out of correctional institutions. I commend them for that outstanding work and note Reverend Parks, Reverend Nelson and Ms. Hunt who have developed a fantastic program with the other members of their board.

Again, I commend the gentlemen for their outstanding work on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support H. Res. 959 recognizing and supporting the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 in increasing adoption and the efforts the Act has spurred including National Adoption Day, National Adoption Month, and encouraging adoption throughout the year.

As the Chair of the Congressional Children's Caucus, I especially understand the importance of providing a stable, safe, loving home for all of our children. Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, the number of children adopted from foster care has increased significantly, with approximately 51,000 children from foster care in fiscal year 2004 alone.

This progress must be recognized, yet we know that there is much more work to be done to ensure that every child has a safe, permanent and loving home. On a daily basis, in America, children enter the foster care system as victims of abuse, neglect or abandonment. Most of them will wait at least five years before being adopted. Siblings will be separated from each other and most will have moved at least three times before being adopted. It is currently an unfortunate fact that one in five children will never be adopted, and will be forced out of the foster care system at the age of 18 with little or no family support.

Modeling the successes of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and National Adoption Day, states have significantly increased adoptions from foster care. National Adoption Day inspires a collective national effort to raise awareness to the 119,000 children in foster care awaiting permanent, loving families. For the last six years, National Adoption Day has seen the dreams of thousands of children come true by working with courts, judges, and attorneys to finalize adoptions and find permanent, loving homes for foster care children.

Let me add that I hope that before we recess, we may have the opportunity to make a further statement with H.R. 1704, Second Chance Act. This important legislation reauthorizes, rewrites, and expands crucial provisions regarding adult and juvenile offender reentry demonstration projects, in order to address issues of recidivism and the effects of the criminal justice system and child welfare services on families.

The welfare of children must continue to be a priority for all Americans. Every child deserves a warm, safe, stable home environment. It is imperative that we support and recognize the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 of increasing adoption of foster care children. Because children are the future, we must support them in the present.

I urge my colleagues to support this important resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 959, which recognizes and supports the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 in increasing adoptions. I would like to thank the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Camp, for introducing this resolution and for his work to enact legislation to improve the lives of abused and neglected children.

The number of children adopted from our nation's foster care system has substantially increased since enactment of the Adoption and Safe Families Act from 31,000 in 1997 to over 51,000 in 2004. I applaud the judges, attorneys, state officials, and other adoption professionals who have worked tirelessly to move foster children more quickly into permanent, loving families. National Adoption Day in November 2005 finalized the adoptions of more than 3,300 children from foster care and I hope the November 2006 National Adoption Day is even more successful.

There are currently 118,000 foster children available for adoption and we must do more to find them loving families. Almost half of these children are aged 9 or older and therefore at risk of spending their entire childhood in foster care and aging out of the system without a permanent home. In 2003, President Bush signed the Adoption Promotion Act, which extended the availability of adoption incentive payments to the States while promoting the adoption of older children. We will continue to support policies that ensure children who cannot be safely reunified with their parents are

moved quickly into permanent, adoptive homes.

I also wish to recognize the many talented and hardworking staff at the Department of Health and Human Services for their outstanding work in this area. More than 6,000 children have been placed in adoptive homes since the launch of www.adoptuskids.org., a website which connects families with waiting children. We must do more to help connect would-be adoptive parents with these children to ensure every child grows up in a safe, loving family.

Again, I wish to thank the gentleman from Michigan for introducing this resolution. I'd like to personally thank the many child welfare professionals and most importantly all the adoptive families across America who have made a permanent commitment to improve the lives of these vulnerable children. They are the real heroes behind the many improvements we have seen in recent years.