Anne M. Northup

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to recognize the Kentucky Council on Economic Education and, J.J.B. Hilliard, W.L. Lyons, Inc., a Louisville-based brokerage firm, for their efforts to improve the quality of financial and economic education for elementary, middle, and high school students in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Thanks to their dedicated efforts, Kentucky led all other States in increased participation in an important educational program, the Stock Market Game, in 2005.

To help students learn fundamental economic and financial concepts and principles, the Kentucky Council on Economic Education encourages schools throughout the Commonwealth to participate in the Stock Market Game. Created in the 1970s and administered by the Foundation for Investor Education, the Stock Market Game is a 15-week curricular tool that puts students in fourth through 12th grades in the role of investors. Students are given a hypothetical $100,000 to invest in a simulated online market and must make decisions on how and where to invest their capital.

The simulated market experience that students receive via the Stock Market Game introduces them to financial markets and important economic concepts, including the sources and uses of capital and the impact inflation and recessions can have on investments. In addition to this knowledge, students learn valuable life skills, such as personal budgeting, critical thinking, and the importance of saving and investing.

Hilliard Lyons underwrites participation with a $50,000 annual gift. As a result, participation in the Stock Market Game in Kentucky rose 46 percent in 2005, the largest of any State. In all, more than 9,000 students in 220 schools in Kentucky participated in the game. At one school, Campbell County Middle School near Cincinnati, 650 students participated at once. Math teacher Faye Smith deserves congratulations for that effort.

I would like to express my gratitude to the Kentucky Council on Economic Education and Hilliard Lyons for advancing economic education. Exposing youth to the concepts and practices that undergird our economy will aid them personally and professionally. Knowing how the economy works is important to the success of our nation. I commend the Kentucky Council on Economic Education and Hilliard Lyons for their interest in and dedication to economic education, which is vital to the continued prosperity and well-being of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and our Nation.

Mr. Chairman, I speak against this amendment. You know, I think all of us want the same thing. We want to make sure that affordable housing is available to as many American families as possible.

In 1999 we changed the rules, and we made every community live by a certain number of units, not how far they could stretch those dollars. And our costs exploded. In fact, in the HUD budget the section 8 voucher program went from 33 percent of the HUD budget to over 50 percent of the HUD budget.

Now, if you believe that the Federal Government has unlimited dollars, that wouldn't worry you. But if you believe that we live in a time where we have to measure every dollar and spend it carefully, you begin to ask what we could do better. Let me reiterate. It went from 33 percent of the HUD budget to 51 percent, but it didn't include one additional voucher. Not one additional American family was able to have a voucher based on those increases in costs. And let me say that the dollars were significant, too. We increased the dollars by over 50 percent in the section 8 program, and still not one additional American family was able to be served by a section 8 voucher. The changes that we are making today are going to allow every community to take the dollars that they have and to use them more effectively and more efficiently so that we can begin to use the section 8 which are already an enormous part of our budget to serve more American families in the future. The idea is to help Americans get into the units that their family wants to get into, maybe near where

they work, maybe near where their family is that can help them watch their children, maybe into a private housing unit where the budget just makes up the difference in the voucher, so that they can live where they want and become independent American families based on the section 8, and not just the 9,000 families that we have in Louisville, Kentucky today but hopefully many more in the future due to these reforms.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize the career and service of the Reverend Bob Russell, who is retiring this month after forty years of ministry at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Throughout his time at Southeast, Rev. Russell has worked diligently to follow his faith in God wherever it might lead him. His contribution to the Louisville community is unparalleled and his impact on individual lives is immeasurable.

As a young man in Pennsylvania, Rev. Russell dreamed of coaching high school basketball. However, life would hold a different plan for him. During his senior year of high school, he felt a call into ministry. He enrolled in a seminary, graduating from Cincinnati Bible Seminary in 1965.

On June 12, 1966, Rev. Russell delivered his first sermon as pastor of a nascent Southeast Christian Church. Only four years prior, Southeast was founded with seventy-seven charter members. At the time of Rev. Russell's arrival, the church had reached a membership of 120. Within two years of his first sermon, the church had more than doubled to nearly 300 members. On Easter Sunday 1976, the church hosted 1,000 worshippers for the first time. Fourteen years later in 1990, 10,000 people worshipped at Southeast on Easter Sunday. And the church set its current record of 29,424 on Easter weekend 2004 over the course of five services.

Rev. Russell's career is not, measured solely by explosive church growth, but by the many ways the church under his leadership has expanded to meet the needs of our community. The church reaches its community through ministries in counseling, disaster relief, and prison support, among others. The Southeast Outlook newspaper began publication in 1995. Rev. Russell can also be heard nationally on his syndicated radio program, The Living Word.

Throughout his career of four decades in ministry, Rev. Bob Russell has strived to follow his faith in God and live a life of service to the Louisville community. We as a city have been blessed to have Rev. Russell among us for so many years. His loyalty to God, his family, his church, and our city has not gone unnoticed. Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my gratitude for Rev. Russell and congratulate him on a lifetime in ministry and service that will continue to touch Louisville even after his retirement.