Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1432) supporting the goals and ideals of National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month by promoting national awareness of adoption and the children in foster care awaiting families, celebrating children and families involved in adoption, recognizing current programs and efforts designed to promote adoption, and encouraging people in the United States to seek improved safety, permanency, and well-being for all children.

Madam Speaker, I would yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter), the resolution's chief sponsor.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, far too many of our Nation's most vulnerable children long for nothing more than a safe and permanent place to call home.

As the de facto parents of foster children, it's our responsibility to ensure that each child who is unable to safely return home to their biological parents has the ability to achieve permanency through adoption. Sadly, too many children are languishing in the foster care system for far too long as they wait to be adopted.

There are currently 129,000 children who are waiting to be adopted out of foster care. These children, on average, will have to wait nearly two-and-a-half years in the foster care system before they are adopted by the family. A minute can be a lifetime in the eyes of a child. Imagine how a child feels as they wait nearly two-and-a-half years for a family to pick them.

Representative Weller and I introduced bipartisan legislation, which just passed the House, which would provide a variety of policy initiatives aimed at increasing the number of children who are adopted from the foster care system. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act extends, expands, and improves the Adoption Incentives Program. This successful program provides financial bonuses to States that increase the number of children adopted out of foster care.

I have to add that, sort of parenthetically, I started the subsidized adoption program in the Washington State legislature in 1971. There has been a very uneven spread of that concept across the States in this United States. So it's important that we at the Federal level set the standard and say to States, here's some money if you will think about doing subsidized adoptions for these kids.

Since the inception of this program, nearly 440,000 children have been adopted out of the foster care system.

The bill also would provide additional incentives for States to continue to increase the number of children who leave the foster care system for permanency through adoption or through guardianship placement with a grandparent or a relative caregiver.

Additionally, the legislation would provide adoption subsidy assistance to all special-needs kids--these are the ones that are the hardest to get adopted--rather than those children whose birth parents were eligible for welfare under rules that were in place in 1996.

The bill expands Federal adoption assistance by delinking eligibility for assistance from the now defunct AFDC program and by phasing in adoption subsidy to children by their age and their length of time in foster care.

And finally, the legislation would provide direct Federal adoption assistance to tribal governments who run their own child welfare programs. Tribal governments would be able to access the same service that is now available to the States. Such services will allow tribal governments to increase the number of Native American children that are adopted out of the tribal foster care systems.

The month of November marks National Adoption Month, and that's what this resolution is really all about.

As we celebrate the countless families who have opened their homes and their hearts to children who are in need of a home, I ask my colleagues to join us in supporting the goals and the ideals of National Adoption Month.

Every child deserves nothing less than a safe and loving place to call home. By working together in a bipartisan fashion, we can do our part to ensure permanency and success for all the children.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Madam Speaker, it has been a pleasure to work with Mr. Weller on these two bills and this resolution through the Congress. And certainly I have enjoyed working with him and have never felt that any courtesy I've extended him has been anything but reciprocal in our dealings. However, there has been on the floor here some discussion of some extraneous material that I struggle to hear how the connection was to adoption subsidies or options or foster kids, but I'm sure there was one someplace there--all the speakers at least mentioned it sort of in passing and then went on to talk about energy.

Now, as these adoptive parents, many of them ordinary folks, want to drive down to get the child at the adoption agency, they're going to have to buy gasoline. And gasoline has gotten out of control. Lots of people want to blame oil companies or speculators or a lot of other things. And the question is, do you really want to help those people?

Now, there is going to be a stimulus package coming out. And if we put gas stamps in it--the average person under 300 percent of poverty will spend $1,000 more a year for gasoline, so if we gave them gas stamps like we give them food stamps for $500, we could cut that price in half. And I hope that all my colleagues on the other side, if that happens to be in the stimulus package, will consider voting for it this time.

There is a question in my mind, however, about the description of what went on last night. It's as though the Democrats didn't propose anything. It's as though we just sort of walked around and fiddled around and looked at the sky. But, in fact, there was a very good proposal here on the floor. There was money for renewable energy standards. There was money for strategic energy reserve to be invested in renewable energy. There was royalty reform. Can you believe that the oil companies never give any money to the Federal Government?

And this bill last night said, look, we want to repeal the tax subsidies and make the oil companies pay their fair share for drilling on public lands. Now, that's land that belongs to you and me and the foster kids and the children who are being adopted. But the oil companies have some idea that they don't think they should have to pay any royalty when they suck the oil out and then sell it to us at four bucks a gallon. Now, that seems like a good proposal.

We also paid for the bill last night by taking $18 billion that was allowed in a loophole several years ago. We closed that loophole and said we're going to use it to do the future development of renewable energy in this country that needs to be done.

Now, by contrast, the Boehner bill that was brought out here had no payment for anything, just increase the national debt. That is the Republican plan for this country: Do whatever you want, spend whatever you want, drive up the national debt, and leave it for these foster kids and these adopted kids. They're going to pay for it. Most of the Members in here will be dead before we get anywhere near paying for the debt that's been driven up by this Congress. And yesterday's oil bill was just more of the same.

Now, the other part of it that's really sort of interesting, our bill required actually using the leases that they already have, sort of ``use it or lose it.'' They have millions of acres under lease, but they want to get something more out there somewhere, I don't know. If you go out 50 miles off the coast of California and Washington State, you're at about 10,000 feet. If you think you're going to drill for oil out there, you have never been on the West coast of this country and looked at what we have for an ocean.

So, this business about ``drill, drill, drill, oh, good, drill, drill, drill,'' it makes a nice slogan, probably goes on a bumper strip pretty well, but the basic assumption behind that bumper strip is that the American people are stupid. It seems like the Republican Party thinks that the American people are stupid, and if they can just get into chanting, ``drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill,'' that somehow the price of gasoline will come down. I don't know if that is some kind of a mantra, maybe it's some kind of magical thing they got from a witch doctor somewhere. But drilling everywhere is not going to bring down the price of gasoline.

We've seen in the last month gasoline go from $150 a barrel down to wherever it is today, somewhere below $100. And has gasoline dropped by 33 percent? Is gasoline down to $3 or down to $2.70? And why did it come down? Because we drilled? No. Because the speculators got worried. The speculators got worried that Americans were getting smart and they were figuring ways to get around without using gasoline. And so consumption has come down in this country, and suddenly the speculators are really worried.

What if the American people don't do what we expect them to do? What if they don't buy big gas guzzlers anymore? They buy cars that get 35- 40 miles per gallon. I drove from my house in Seattle to Spokane for the State convention, over the Cascade Mountains, over 5,000-foot peaks, and you know what? I got 49.5 miles per gallon.

Now, the oil companies are really worried that a lot of people are going to start doing that, and so the speculation on where the price of oil is going to be started coming down. But it didn't affect anything at the pump--maybe 10 cents, maybe five cents, who knows. But we didn't drill a single bit, and yet the gasoline prices came down. So what is it that makes them go up and what makes them go down?

Nothing in this bill from Mr. Boehner has anything whatsoever to say about speculation or about oil company profits, not one single word. All he says is, open it up, let them drill anywhere they want. Let them go and sink a drill. In fact, we got some votes out of the Republicans because they actually were drilling in places where the military said this kind of creates a problem, please don't drill there; don't let that area be open for drilling.

And so when people come out here and stand out here and say over and over again, ``we have to drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, that's going to fix it all,'' they haven't looked at our bill.

Now, the Senate is over there, and they're going to send us over a bill here shortly to extend the tax credits on wind and on solar and on geothermal because they know that renewable energy is the way this country has to go. We are not going to solve our problem by drilling inside the Continental Shelf of the United States.

If the President wanted to bring gas prices down, all he would have to do is release some of the oil out of the oil reserve. We've got millions of gallons of gasoline sitting out there. And if the market truly is what we say it is, if there is more supply, then the price should come down. Well, dump some of that reserve out onto the market. It was done once before and gasoline dropped about 15 cents a gallon, but not under this President. They want to keep it up there and keep talking about drilling because this administration has been an oil administration from the very first week. When the Vice President of the United States had in his office a great conference with all the oil people in this country and has kept secret for 8 solid years what was decided there, you have to wonder about what's happened to this country and the average taxpayer and the average person in this society.

So we're here today to deal with a few problems of some kids. And I really appreciate the efforts that have gone in by the bipartisan support on the committee. And I don't really like to get out here and talk like this, but you just can't stand here or sit here and listen to that baloney without ultimately saying, do they really care, or is it just about winning an election? Is it looking for a bumper strip that will work and that the American people will hear ``drill, drill, drill''?

They're going to do it all day long. Every single suspension bill has 20 minutes on each side. So on the Republican side, we're going to be treated to the same litany. It will be different people, I hope. I mean, I don't want the same person coming out here. They're probably lined up somewhere back in the cloak room getting ready to come out on the next bill. But the fact is the American people aren't stupid.

I was saying to my staff as we were listening to this, can you imagine grandma or mom or a father who is out of work? I mean, unemployment in this country is now over 6 percent; it's gone up. You've got banks crashing all over the place; you've got the Federal Government putting $85 billion into trying to save AIG, and you're talking about ``drill, drill, drill.''

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this resolution.

I thank my colleague from Illinois for yielding this time.

I certainly am in very, very strong support of this resolution. I think that it is very important that we pass this bill, goals and ideals of National Adoption Month. I, too, have seen the impact of children having to be in foster care for long periods of time.

And as a grandparent of two and reminded on a constant basis of the fragility of children, and particularly their self-concept and how they interact with other people and their need to be in loving homes, with parents who really want them and make them feel accepted and help them succeed from birth through adulthood, it makes a huge difference in the life of a child to be in a stable environment instead of being moved from foster home to foster home.

I admire tremendously the people who open their homes and open their hearts to children who are not their birth children, and I commend them for being willing to do that and want us to pass this resolution and acknowledge those people.

But I think one of the most important things that we could do for all families in this country, not just those who are good foster parents, not just those who open their homes to become adoptive parents, but those who are struggling every day with their own children, is to do what we possibly can to bring down the price of gasoline and fuel oil.

We are facing a major problem in this country. Families are facing major problems in this country because of the high price of gasoline.

I received a letter from a Boy Scout recently who said to me, ``I'm afraid we're going to not be able to continue to go to church on Sundays because of the high price of gasoline.'' Those are the kinds of things that tear at any person's heart because you know that that's coming from the heart of a child who has heard his parents talking about how the high price of gasoline is affecting their family, and it's certainly affecting everyone in this country. And yet we have a do-nothing Congress that has not been willing to take up that issue.

I am, again, very happy that we're dealing with talking about the needs of foster parents, talking about promoting adoptions. However, what we could be doing is some real action to bring down the price of gasoline and truly, truly help American families.

Instead, when given the options of doing that, this Democrat majority refuses to do it. What they do is they bring up sham bills, bills that are hoaxes and illusions to the American people and say, well, yes, we have been asked all summer long to drill, to create more supply, and then they bring up bills that don't do that, that in fact make it more of a problem to be able to create additional supply. And that's what happened on this floor yesterday.

We started out last year by trying to compare the promises that were made by the Speaker--who was then minority leader--and the majority leader in terms of the promises that they made and what they were doing. Well, all along the way it's been promises made, promises broken.

They said they would have the most open, most bipartisan Congress ever in the history of this country, and what do they do? They start out immediately by bringing bills to the floor that haven't gone to committee and that are not allowed to be amended. They continue to do that. They did that again yesterday.

The bill that they brought up did not go through the committee structure. In fact, I read the bill last night, and I meant to count how many committees but there must have been eight or 10 committees that this bill was supposed to go through. It went through none of them. It was written in the Speaker's office. Nobody got a chance to see it until about 12 hours before we were going to vote on it. It was 290 pages long. It was brought to the floor with no opportunity to amend it.

The Republicans had one opportunity to have an impact on the bill, and that was in a motion to recommit. And in that motion to recommit, we offered a bipartisan bill, a bill called the Peterson-Abercrombie bill put together by Democrats and Republicans, and we offered that as an option to the bill that was being brought up because the bill that was voted on last night is going to lock up over 90 percent of the oil reserves off the coasts of this country and put them out of reach for us permanently.

And I want to talk about how it's not been only the people in charge of this Congress--the Speaker and the majority leader, they're the ones who are in charge; they've broken every promise that they have made. They even promised in 2006 that we would have a commonsense energy plan that would bring down the price of gasoline. Well, we've been here almost 2 years. Not until last night did we get a bill, and we know that's not going to bring down the price of gas--but even the rank-and- file Democrats who promised their constituents that they would vote for bills, even sponsored bills, that they then would not vote on.

I want to mention some of those and quote them. Many of them also say they want to stimulate the economy, but almost every single one of them voted against this bipartisan bill authored by Representatives John Peterson of Pennsylvania and Neil Abercrombie from Hawaii. Mr. Peterson is a Republican; Mr. Abercrombie is a Democrat. Their bill would lower gas prices on behalf of working families and small businesses.

There were 24 Democrats who were cosponsors of the Peterson- Abercrombie bill who voted against that bill last night after they said they would vote for it. Many of them promised their constituents that they would vote for it. And I want to give some examples of that.

Representative Nancy Boyda, Democrat from Kansas, who was a cosponsor of the Peterson-Abercrombie bill, voted against it when given an opportunity. However, earlier in the month, she issued a press release that promised that she would work to get this bill passed. She said, ``I have been working with a large, bipartisan group of Representatives to develop a comprehensive, commonsense energy bill. Our [Peterson- Abercrombie] bill would provide sorely needed relief for Kansas families. It will help create energy independence for America and millions of jobs to help stabilize our struggling economy.'' Representative Nancy Boyda, Democrat, Kansas, press release, 9/04/08.

She issued that press release and then voted against the very same bill she had told her constituents she was working to get passed.

Representative Baron Hill, Democrat of Indiana, a cosponsor of the Peterson-Abercrombie bill, once said, ``I hope this bipartisan bill will indeed be brought to the floor.'' But when given a chance, he voted against it.

Again, in a press release dated August 14, 2008, he said, ``I hope this bipartisan bill will indeed be brought to the floor for a vote when we return to Washington in September.'' Hill said, ``It would provide immediate relief, while also bolstering development of new energy sources in order to move this country closer to energy independence.'' Again, Representative Baron Hill, Democrat, Indiana, press release August 14, 2008.

These press releases show that what the press here in Washington is reporting is that the bill that was brought up last night by the Democrats was only brought up to provide cover for Democrats who are in vulnerable seats this fall. There was never any intention of that bill becoming law. They wanted to

give them a chance to say they voted for drilling when in fact the bill doesn't provide for additional gas and oil.

It's never going to be passed by the Senate. The Senators, even Democratic Senators, have said the bill is dead on arrival in the Senate.

Another Democrat who was a cosponsor of the Peterson-Abercrombie bill who also voted against it was Representative Steve Kagen, Democrat from Wisconsin.

Here is a quote from the Herald Times in Wisconsin, 9/13/08. ``Kagen, who signed onto the bill Tuesday, said the Abercrombie-Peterson bill 'really is a comprehensive energy policy and a roadmap forward. That bill has the balance in investing in renewable sources. It raises royalty (fees) from those who are drilling and it doesn't limit drilling to four or five States,' Kagen said.''

The headline on that story was ``Congress Sitting on An Energy Hot Seat.''

Speaker Pelosi has said over and over again that they're going to create an energy strategy that's going to make it look like vulnerable Democrats are voting on real energy reform without actually doing it. She stated that herself. But they went a step further than that. These people cosponsored a bill and pledged to support it and then voted against it when given a chance to do it.

Madam Speaker, I would like to include in the Congressional Record today the list of all 24 Democrats who were for this bill before they were against it.

Again, yesterday, though, the House Democrats in charge denied Republicans the opportunity to a full debate, an honest vote on the American Energy Act, the Republican bill that does do all of the above to help working families and small businesses dealing with record fuel costs.

But this fight is not over. We are going to continue to bring this message to the American people. It's important that the American people know that the Democrats are in charge, they are the ones responsible for the high gas prices, and I hope the American people will hold them responsible this fall.

Speaker Pelosi and her leadership team have made no bones

about their elaborate strategy of making it look like

vulnerable Democrats are voting on real energy reform without

actually doing it. But these Democrats took it a step

further: They cosponsored a bill and pledged to support it

and then rejected it when given an up-or-down vote. Here is a

list of all 24 Democrats who were for it before they were

against it: Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Rep. Sanford Bishop

(D-GA), Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-KS), Rep.

Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA), Rep. Bud Cramer

(D-AL), Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL),

Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), Rep. Gene

Green (D-TX), Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL), Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN),

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Rep. William Jefferson (D-

LA), Rep. Steve Kagen (D-WI), Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA),

Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA), Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA),

Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-TX), Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), Rep.

Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX), Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding.

As a proud member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 1432. This important resolution recognizes the goals and ideals of National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month by promoting and raising national awareness of adoption and children in foster care, as my colleague from Nevada was just explaining. I commend him, the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter), for working in a bipartisan matter to bring this important resolution to the floor, a resolution that celebrates the children and the families involved in adoption, as well as the current programs and efforts designed to promote adoption.

As was said by my colleague in Illinois, I was an OB/GYN physician for nearly 30 years before coming to the Congress back in 2003, and I am especially passionate, Madam Speaker, about protecting children and their right to life by encouraging adoption.

Madam Speaker, adoption brings joy to many loving families who cannot have children of their own or who simply wish to welcome even more children into their homes and into their hearts. Both National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month, which will be recognized on November 15 and, indeed, throughout the entire month of November, raise awareness nationally for the more than 129,000 children who are currently in foster care and looking, almost begging, for those permanent homes.

I wholeheartedly believe that raising awareness for adoption, as this resolution does so well, will help place more children in those loving homes. However, I believe that we should spend more than just 1 day, or even 1 month, during the year raising awareness on this issue. Both children and parents greatly benefit from adoption, and I want to applaud all individuals in my home State of Georgia and across this country who work so tirelessly to bring joy to these families who sometimes have very little joy.

Madam Speaker, I want to urge all my colleagues, and I'm sure they will, to support H. Res. 1432.

Madam Speaker, I'd like to thank the gentleman for yielding.

As I spoke earlier in regard to this bill in support of adoption and adoption week, certainly it's a great resolution that our colleague, Representative Porter from Nevada, brings forward.

But I, too, wanted to take the opportunity in my few minutes to talk a little bit more about this energy situation.

I think that the problem is that a lot of people in this country--and certainly it would appear that the leadership of this House, Ms. Pelosi, the Speaker, and the leadership of the Senate, the Majority Leader, Mr. Reid of Nevada--are completely convinced that fossil fuel is a bad thing and it needs to be stamped out, eliminated; kill that sucker dead as soon as possible.

The quotes that I have heard, I think Senator Reid said, ``Fossil fuel,'' which includes, of course, coal and petroleum and natural gas, ``Fossil fuel is poison, and we need to get rid of all fossil fuel in the good old U.S.A. by the year 2020.''

Madam Speaker, when I asked during the August recess about whether or not she would come back and allow some drilling to obtain our own domestic sources of fossil fuel, she said, ``I want to save the planet.'' She hit her fist on the table and said again, for emphasis, ``I want to save the planet.''

A spokesperson for the Sierra Club, maybe it was the president of the Sierra Club, Madam Speaker, said it's a good thing that American people are now having to pay these astronomical prices for petroleum.

In other words, the idea is this is such a horrible thing, this burning of coal, which, by the way, generates 65 percent of our electricity, this driving cars and trucks and using gasoline and diesel fuel in our trains. Literally, our transportation system couldn't function without fossil fuels.

Now there may come a day, and hopefully there will come a day, when we will be able to wean ourselves off of fossil fuel and come up with some other alternatives, alternatives like wind and solar and bio- products and ethanol that absolutely give us great efficiency for our needs, electricity and transportation, and cause us absolutely no harm and that we have a tremendous abundance of all of these alternatives and renewables so that we're not dependent on anybody. That is kind of a euphoria, and hopefully it will one day occur. But we don't know for sure that it might not be opening up Pandora's box, Madam Speaker. We don't know that.

While it's true that greenhouse gases probably do cause a little bit of global warming--

I mean, these things might cause some harm, but how do we know that eventually we might create a country of alcoholics by burning all of this ethanol in our automobiles? People today are starving to death because they don't have jobs, and I think that's the first priority.

Let's get this economy back on track, and let's get a decent energy bill and do it right now.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include therein extraneous materials on the bill under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I am here today as an honored Member of the United States Congress, and I appreciate, Madam Speaker, your leadership and that of our chairman and our ranking member on an issue I think is very important to every family in this great country, but most important for those families that are trying to adopt a child or those in foster care.

Today, we're recognizing National Adoption Day, which is November 15, 2008. It's for continued awareness of adoption and foster issues.

Madam Speaker, can you imagine that there are children today sitting in a living room somewhere across America, possibly watching television, maybe reading a book or playing cards with their friends or another sibling. But imagine if you're that child and a car pulls up in front of your house, and out of it comes one or two individuals that come and knock at your door and tell you that you have to move. You may have been there for a week. You may have been there for a month. You may have been there for a year with this particular foster family. Imagine the pain of that child, realizing that two strangers are coming to the door to take them to another place to reside.

Now, most children in our country are blessed they don't face that particular challenge. Again, can you imagine if that same child then is removed from that home and moved to another home, without even a medical record, they may have to have additional inoculation, they may not have their glasses, they may not have all their personal belongings.

Madam Speaker, this is why we are recognizing Adoption Day and recognizing foster families across the country, because of the important role that they play in the well-being of our children.

Currently, there are 500,000 children in the foster care system around the United States, and there's 130,000 children just waiting for adoption. At firsthand knowledge, in the State of Nevada, we have about 4,000 children a year that enter into the foster care

system, and last year, many of those children were blessed to find a home; 444 children were adopted.

I have a family that I recognize this week. The Congressional Coalition on Adoption has provided for us as Members to recognize individuals for their help in fostering homes and creating adoptions, and that's Scott and Kathleen Greenberg of Las Vegas, Nevada. They are proud parents of a 15-month-old son, Evan.

They, of course, found it rewarding but also challenging because it took close to 5 years for this loving family to be able to adopt a child. They started in Tennessee. They then worked through Georgia, through different adoption agencies. They now are working through Nevada, but it took 5 years, and each time they had to start over. They had challenges of arranged adoptions; they had challenges of the public system.

Madam Speaker, the reason we're here today is to encourage families to adopt these children, to be patient, but also, the legislation, with the leadership of our chairman and our ranking member, should make it easier now for families like the Greenbergs to adopt children.

In Nevada, I've worked closely with the foster care program, and I think, like most of us, our children keep coming back no matter what age, but for foster kids, at the age of 18, as they move on from the foster care system, many of them do not have a home to come back to. So in the Nevada legislature we passed legislation to create a program for foster children between the ages of 18 and 21, and we created a fund to help these children with education, with training, with housing, with health care. It's funded through a copying of documents in the county of Clark, and we're raising about $1 million a year right now to help these children in transition.

Madam Speaker, I'm here today to ask not only for our colleagues to support this legislation, but in our own districts across the country, remind these moms and dads and these individuals that want to adopt children that we want to make it as easy and safe and a wonderful experience that it can be, and that's why we're recognizing this program today.

My great appreciation goes out to Scott and Kathleen Greenberg as the proud parents and to all those other families in Nevada that are part of the foster program, to all the professionals across the country that are working hard to make sure that our children have safe homes.

Today, I ask for your support and that of the rest of this body in supporting our resolution which recognizes National Adoption Day for November 15, 2008.

Madam Speaker, I stand here today in support of H.R. 1432, ``Supporting the Goals and Ideals of National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month by Promoting National Awareness of Adoption and the Children in Foster Care Awaiting Families, Celebrating Children and Families Involved in Adoption, Recognizing Current Programs and Efforts Designed to Promote Adoption, and Encouraging People in the United States to Seek Improved Safety, Permanency, and Well-Being for All Children'' introduced by Congressman Porter.

The fundamental purpose of adoption is to serve the best interests of children. It does so by providing loving, responsible, and legally permanent parents when their biological parents cannot or will not parent them. Serving the best interests of children should be paramount in deciding all issues of adoption policy and practice.

Adoption is healthy, satisfying, and good for children, not an enduring challenge to identity and wholeness. The children may have additional questions and curiosities to sort out, but adoption is not a psychological burden or pathology as some theorists treat it. Adoption is the way one joined one's family, not a defining characteristic or lifelong process. Persons adopted as infants grow up as healthy and productive as people raised in their biological families. To the extent there can be a greater risk of emotional or behavioral problems for children adopted out of foster care at later ages, the correlation is not the result of being adopted, but rather of difficulties experienced prior to adoption, such as neglect or abuse. The vast majority of foster children make the transition into their adoptive families and grow up very successfully.

Today, in the United States there are 500,000 children in the foster care system and of those children, there are 129,000 waiting for families to adopt them. The number of youth who ``age out'' of the foster care system by reaching adulthood without being placed in a permanent home has increased by more than 58 percent since 1998, as nearly 27,000 foster youth ``aged out'' of foster care during 2007 which is appalling and unacceptable. In addition, 3 in 10 people in the United States have considered adoption; a majority of them have misconceptions about the process of adopting children from foster care. Many Americans, approximately 45 percent believe that children enter the foster care system because of juvenile delinquency. The reality of the matter is that the vast majority of children in the foster care system were victims of neglect, abandonment, or abuse. Furthermore, almost half of the American population believes that foster care adoption is expensive and are not aware of the fact that there is no substantial cost for adopting children from foster care. Moreover, financial support in the form of an adoption assistance subsidy is available to adoptive families of eligible children adopted from foster care and continues after the adoption is finalized until the child is 18, so that income will not be a barrier to becoming a parent to a foster child who needs to belong to a family.

Passing H.R. 1432 is essential for Congress to demonstrate their support for placing children in safe and positive family environments. The first National Adoption Day was in the year 2000; since then, 20,000 children have joined families during National Adoption Day, and in 2006, adoptions were finalized for over 3,300 children through more than 250 National Adoption Day events in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

We must continue to take stride to reach out and do our best to encourage safe, positive environment for the children of the United States. This resolution will enhance the support for successful adoptions and their support for National Adoption Month in November. When orphaned children are placed in a positive, encouraging, and permanent family environment, they are in a situation where they can grow and experience life in a non-threatening way. Adoption is something that benefits the entire Nation as our children are given places where they can feel secure.

I firmly believe that we must pass this legislation to demonstrate our support for Adoption and National Adoption month. This legislation will enable us to promote healthy and safe adoptions and celebrate the successful adoptions that ensure the well-being of children.