Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, it is interesting. I have a button on my television that, if you click it, you can convert everything that you hear to Spanish so that people can hear American Idol and Desperate Housewives, and my English-only friends on the other side have not so much as lodged an objection to that button on my TV. They don't have a problem translating what goes across the dial every night. It is more than passing strange that they are troubled by making the ballot accessible, when our televisions are accessible.

My friends from Georgia have said it very well. This is about American citizens. You can't vote unless you are an American citizen. If you are an American citizen, we all have a stake in removing the obvious impediments toward voting, and what do we gain in terms of high ground by objecting to some of our fellow citizens having all the tools that they need to translate the choice of the elections? How do we justify televisions translating, and ballots not being translated?

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the recognition. I have an amendment at the desk which is a repetition of a bipartisan amendment that was brought to the floor of the House a year ago, and it has to deal with the HOPE VI housing program. Many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle have seen their districts benefit from HOPE VI.

It is a program that was launched under the George Herbert Walker Bush administration. In fact, its chief architect was former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp. It is a program which has been in place for 16 years now, and it has literally changed the face of public housing in numerous communities around our country.

I have seen it happen three times in Birmingham, Alabama and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Abandoned, near dilapidated public housing projects, which had been given up, have now been turned into mixed- income developments. And whole communities of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, which had been squandered, are now on the road toward economic revitalization and recovery.

That has been the story of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. It has been a story that has spread all over this country.

When we brought this amendment to the floor last year, no less than 59 Republicans joined in support of it with 188 Democrats, one of the strongest levels of bipartisan support that any amendment has commanded. I simply ask the House to do essentially what it has done before.

The President attempted to zero out funding. The committee has not added funding. We propose to add $30 million from the Administration and Management Fund to the Working Capital Fund. The reason, Mr. Chairman, that it goes in the Working Capital Fund is we have a reauthorization issue around HOPE VI. As of September 30, the program will have lapsed. It is our full expectation that it will be extended.

There has been a unanimous voice vote in the Financial Services Committee to reauthorize it, and there has been strong support on the other side of the Capitol in the Senate to reauthorize it. What we simply want to do is make sure that when the program is reauthorized, that the money is being held so these projects can go forward. $30 million is a very conservative amount of money.

The average HOPE VI project is indeed around 20 or $30 million. But what this commitment of resources will do is to in effect preserve the HOPE VI program and effectuate the intent of the Financial Services Committee that HOPE VI be reauthorized.

Let me thank someone who is not in the Chamber at this point, my colleague from Florida, Congresswoman Katherine Harris. She worked very hard to bring this amendment to the floor last year. She has worked very hard to give us support for it tonight. I certainly thank her for her bipartisan commitment.

But it is a very simple statement, Mr. Chairman. If we value a future for public housing, if we want to transform the lives of these communities, this is a small nominal amount in a massive Federal budget of $3.7 trillion. It is literally a drop in the bucket, but it is a very meaningful drop in the bucket for many families who are living in urban centers all around this country.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris) and thank her for her outstanding work on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Let me put several things in perspective. Mr. Watt made the obvious point that these projects take awhile to succeed. Therefore if we stop the funding flow, it will make it impossible for commitments to be made that have been kept.

Observation number two, we need this appropriation of funds to effectuate the intent of Congress. The committee that has jurisdiction over HOPE VI, the Financial Services Committee, has voted unanimously on a voice vote to reauthorize HOPE VI.

The Senate has expressed or manifested the same plan to reauthorize HOPE VI. If we don't put funding forward, the clear-cut congressional intent will be undercut in this instance.

Third of all, there is a strong, clear congressional intent from the last several budget cycles. Four times in a row now, the administration has tried to zero out HOPE VI. Every single time Congress has put it back.

The Senate had put $100 million back last year. The House, in a strong bipartisan vote, put $60 million back. We anticipate the Senate will put another significant amount back into this budget.

The next point, talk to the people who have seen this work on the ground. The League of Cities, a bipartisan collection of mayors and leaders of municipalities, has endorsed this amendment. They are an eloquent testament to the fact that HOPE VI revitalizes neighborhoods.

The National Home Builders, a strong bipartisan group, has given its endorsement to this amendment. They have a statement it meets important private sector and public sector goals.

We don't have to look very far other than the quotes of some of our own colleagues. Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania, a Republican the last time I checked, this ``project will be a catalyst for the revitalization of the entire community and it will serve as a model of what public housing can and should be, a path to homeownership for its residents.''

Fred Upton, a Republican from Saint Joseph, Michigan: ``This is tremendous news for the Benton Harbor community. It is another example of folks from the local State and Federal levels coming together for the betterment of Benton Harbor.''

Anne Northup, our colleague from Louisville, a Republican: ``A HOPE VI grant, great news for Louisville, a major investment in the downtown neighborhood.''

My good friend and our colleague, Chip Pickering from Mississippi, a Republican the last time I checked: ``The full range of this project will not only improve the lives of the residents in

my district, but also their children for years to come. The HOPE VI grant represents a significant investment to the overall economic development and renewal of the East Mississippi region.''

Our colleague from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), a Republican the last time I checked, talks about the wonderful collaboration of the Stamford Housing Authority, the Fairfield Resident Council and the City of Stamford to make this project a reality.

There is an overwhelming statement from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle about the utility of HOPE VI. So for this body to fail to pass this Davis-Harris amendment will not only be in contradiction of what we say in our press releases, it would be in contradiction of what the U.S. Senate seeks to do and would be in contradiction of what we do with our own votes.

While the administration fails to get the message, I think that our colleagues in this body tonight will get the message. I urge passage of this bipartisan amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, this is a very simple issue. We have ongoing litigation in the courts. There are hearings being held. There is discovery being conducted. And most of us who have conservative impulses on both sides of the aisle think the Constitution means something and the separation of powers means something, and the courts ought to finish their process.

For the executive branch to come in and take a side in this dispute is disrespectful to the balance of power in the Constitution. There is a dispute that is going on that may have merit on both sides, but let the litigation play itself out. If this can happen in this instance, there is no possible controversy involving the Army Corps of Engineers where there is not a possibility of the executive branch inserting itself in the judicial. That is why I stand in strong opposition to the Deal amendment today, and I urge my colleagues to follow course.

Mr. Chairman, a minute gives me time to make one essential point: mark the time as 9:15 tonight, the first time anyone has mentioned that 3 hours ago the President of the United States signed a $70 billion increase to the deficit that was enacted by this body 1 week ago, and it returns to your fundamental point about candor.

This document levels with the American people and the choices it makes, the CBC document. The document in opposition it us tonight and the RSC document do not level with the American people, because how do you defend a document on the grounds of fiscal austerity and add $70 billion to the deficit? It is the wrong set of choices, and it masks a retreat from all kinds of commitments, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, this has been one of those periodic weeks where a lot of people in the country turn on the television and they look at this institution and they wonder if we live in another world.

They see us, or at least one of us, going down the hallway giving high-fives the day after announcing the end of a career in disgrace, they hear us obsessing on all kinds of things that do not matter to the American people, and then they hear this budget debate. And they hear the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle), for whom I have a great deal of respect, announce that under his budget everyone in America is a winner.

They must wonder if we live in the same world because I wonder if the 13.5 million American families on Medicaid who have to pay more money under last year's budget, and more money under this year's budget to go to the doctor, really think they are winners.

I wonder if the veterans who have served our country who are looking at cuts in years 2 through 5 under Mr. Nussle's budget think they are winners.

I wonder if the Guard and Reservists who still will not get a fully funded TRICARE program think they are winners.

I wonder if the 45 million uninsured that Mr. Moran talked about think they are winners.

I wonder if the 13.5 million children living in poverty think they are winners.

The reality is under this budget proposed by the chairman's mark, some people win under this budget: people who have already been winning and who have been winning for a very long time. People who need a little bit of generosity and have counted on a little bit of help from this city are not winners at all.

I remember the first year I stood in this Chamber as a relatively new Member when the President of the United States stood in the well and gave his State of the Union. The one thing I remember this President saying is this President and this Congress will not leave for other generations and for other Congresses, I wonder as the President stood here it occurred to him that all these problems that plague this country involving the old, the sick, the poor and the young, did he mean for us to leave those problems for another Congress and another generation, because the budget of Mr. Nussle does that. It leaves all of these problems unaddressed by the richest country in the world, and I think it makes this budget so fundamentally wrong.

Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend from South Carolina, and I would say to Mr. Nussle, you could have had 35 or 40 of us on this side of the aisle if you had done one thing, if you had combined some of these cuts with some retreat on these tax cuts, not getting rid of them all together, not getting rid of them in their whole, but simply pulling some of them back for the wealthiest Americans. You could have had 35 or 40 of us. You left it on the table, and it is one of the last things you could have done in your chairmanship.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) for what you and Mr. Spratt and Mr. Scott and so many others do.

Mr. Moran, Mr. Scott, one of the helpful things about these colloquies and these special orders at the end of the day is that they have enormous nutritional content for people who really want to understand the budget issues. They expose some of the argument that happens on the floor.

As you know, when we have our full-fledged budget debate, we match each other in bits of 1 minute, 2 minutes, and it is hard to get clarity in 1- and 2-minute exchanges. These kinds of conversations allow for a lot more light to be shed.

And one of the points that you have made, that my friend from Virginia has made, and others have made, is exactly how fundamentally unserious the administration is about restraining spending. That is the point we ought to make over and over again, Madam Speaker, because when people hear these budget debates, they often think that folks on our side of the aisle are enamored with spending, they think the people on the other side of the aisle are resistant to it.

Well, you cannot be serious about spending cuts when you pass a reconciliation package that cuts spending

by about $45 billion, and then you push just as hard for revenue cuts, for tax cuts to the tune of $70 billion. That is a simple matter of math and arithmetic. You cannot be fundamentally serious about spending cuts when your administration has presided over the largest rise in discretionary spending in the last 10 years for a variety of programs.

So the American people ought to understand, this is not an argument about who wants to spend more and who wants to spend less. It is an argument about a far different set of issues. That is what we value and what we prioritize.

As so many have pointed out during all of these debates, Mr. Moran, the reconciliation packets that passed a few weeks ago, the budget that we will debate in committee next week will not make much of a dent in the deficit when all is said and done. But it will wreak havoc with a lot of families in this country.

Just a few weeks ago, this body thought it was so important to start this session of Congress out by passing a bill, a reconciliation package, that will mean that 13 million working poor and poor families will have to dig deeper in their pockets to go to the doctor.

This House thought it was so vitally important to open this session of Congress by passing a package of cuts that took the heart out of the Federal Government's efforts to collect child support, that took the guts out of a program that the administration said was one of the best performing programs in the government.

And you will see it again and we will see it again in committee next week. You will see a budget that does very little to rein in spending, when all is said and done, but yet will have a disproportionate impact when it does make cuts on the people who are struggling in our communities right now. And that is what the people ought to understand this debate to be about.

We can do all kinds of things, cut spending that will attract support from both sides of the aisle. We can do all kinds of things to rein in the deficit that would attract support from all sides of the aisle. But every choice that the administration and the majority have made has been aimed at one set of people, the weaker people, the older people, the younger people, the people who are struggling to get by. And it is just wrong to put them in isolation. It is wrong to make them bear the brunt of these kind of cuts.

So as we move through this budget debate next week and over the next several weeks, I hope the American people understand, it is not an argument about cutting spending, it is an argument about what we value. It is an argument about what we prioritize. And finally it is an argument about who we give value to.

We know who the administration and our friends on the other side of the aisle often value. They often value people who are doing rather well in this society and they often reward that. They do not put a lot of value in some of the people who are living in my district, which happens to be the fifth poorest district in the United States. They do not put a lot of value in their needs.

So if you believe in a better way of looking at the American people, if you believe in a more principled way of understanding that everyone should count and not just some people, you will vote against this budget, you will reject this budget. And that is the kind of debate that we ought to be having in the next several weeks.

So, Mr. Moran, I thank you for your leadership. Mr. Scott, I thank you for your leadership, and I yield back.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am always pleased to see you and Mr. Ryan and Ms. Wasserman Schultz lend your eloquence on these issues.

Let me make a couple of points. You touched on something enormously important about the President's commitment to more competitiveness in the economy and the strengthening of our workforce. You and I remember, we both came one Congress ago. We came here in January, 2003, and I remember the President's first State of the Union. He was standing not far from where we stand now. And the only line, frankly, I recall from that speech was a rather memorable one.

He said that this Congress should not put off what future Congresses would do and this generation should not put off for future generations what it could do for itself. That sounded good. It sounded like a bold President saying that we have real opportunities today if we are daring. Well, you look several budgets later. You have a verbal commitment to make the economy stronger. You have a pattern of cutting student loans and making them harder to get, and by the way, changing the eligibility outside the budget process in the dead of night in a way that it is not even debated by this Congress.

You have a promise of more effort to make the country competitive. You see reductions every year in workforce development programs. You see promises every year to strengthen our schools, and you see continued cuts in all of the educational programs in this country or so many of them, and the outright elimination of many of those programs. In fact, almost half of the title items in No Child Left Behind are gone with the wind now as we approach reauthorization.

And you see a promise by this President to make America stronger; but it appears, Mr. Meek, that making America stronger does not include making our workers stronger and creating

more fair, stronger conditions for them.

As I said in the last hour, that is what this debate is about. It is not about cutting spending. You are not serious about cutting spending when you say, I am going to cut $45 billion and then cut taxes another $70 billion. The math works against you on that.

You are not serious about cutting spending when you have had the greatest level of discretionary spending increase in the last 10 years, in the last several budgets. You are not serious about those things. What we have is an administration and a Congress that, frankly, is not somewhat serious about cutting spending. They are very serious about changing the definition of what we owe each other as Americans.

They want to move us away from a world where we feel connected and obligated to each other across all kinds of lines, and they want to more or less move us to a place where you have got to take care of yourself.

These 13 million families on Medicaid who have got to dig deeper in their pocket now to go to the doctor, well, we have decided that it is such an important proposition that poor people pay more for health care that we rammed that into the budget reconciliation several weeks ago, or they rammed it in.

They think it is so important to spend less money on child support that they rammed that into the reconciliation package several months ago. It goes on and on. But the question is what exactly do we think we owe each other as Americans.

There are some people and some of them sit on the other side of the aisle who believe that we owe each other very little. There are some of us who believe that we can be no stronger than some of our people who are weak and who are hurting through no fault of their own.

There are a lot of kids in this country who will be pushed off Medicaid because of this reconciliation bill a few weeks ago. There are a lot of kids in this country who will not get the doctor visits they need because the Federal Government changed them the Medicare rules a few weeks ago. Those kids are blameless. They did not ask to be born into families under Medicaid or the distressed communities they live in.

So it is very much a matter of priorities and values and choices, but as I close out, I want to make one other point.

You talked about the importance of candor with the American people and the importance of leveling with the American people, not promising you are cutting and spending when you are actually causing the deficit to go up. You talked about the importance of not pretending that you are not taking people off programs, but in fact, you are moving them off programs.

I do not know if your office has been like mine in the last week. I have received so many phone calls from people wondering why their government cannot be more straight with them on what is going on with our ports right now. So many people have called our office and they are wondering exactly why we do not have a stronger shipping industry in the United States, why we have not built stronger port operators in this United States and why we have to keep delegating this stuff out. They hear all the procedural stuff about the 45-day review period, but really, what they wonder is why in the world are we doing a $6 billion deal with a country that helped launder money for the people who attacked our towers, a country that is a very strong and vociferous opponent of our strongest ally in the region, why are we doing business with a country that does not follow any of the rules that we said we want for good trading partners.

It is interesting. It is as if the administration's policy on this issue is completely unconnected to common sense and, frankly, completely unconnected from values because one value would be if you want to do business with the United States, well, maybe you need to do better in terms of your human rights policies; if you want to do business with the United States, maybe you need strong money laundering laws so people cannot pervert your system and finance terrorists; if you want to do business with the United States, maybe you need to be far stronger than this country has shown itself to be on the question of freedom around the world.

These are the values the President talks about every time he stands up there and does a State of the Union. He talks about exporting democracy. He talks about we are this great beacon of democratic freedom. He talks about countries all over the world that are not up to our standard. If that is the case, what signal are we sending?

The last point I want to make is the President wanted to know what signal are we sending to our friends in the Arab world if we do not do this deal. The question is, what signal are we sending if we do it? Here is the signal. The signal is you can fall short of every value and standard that we have in this country, and we will pick you up on the back end and we can make a good enough deal with you.

Now, this is the administration that said it built a foreign policy based on our best moral values. Those moral values appear to be watered down to the way to do a deal, have we got a deal for you, and that is wrong. It has upset people all over this country. It does tie into this debate about the deficit because I think people are wondering who is it we are trying to help; why are we not standing up more for our people who need help and why are we not being more candid about what we are doing.

I really predict to you, as I close today, I think when we come back here after the elections in November, I think that our side of the House will be the side that has got more people. I think the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) will honor us by being the first female Speaker of the House. I am being stronger convinced that you will be the new chair of the subcommittee that you serve on so ably as ranking member, and Mr. Ryan and I will get to move up the dais, too, because I think the American people are getting this. They are getting that the side that says it is strong and says it is serious is neither as strong nor as serious as they have said.

People are really smart. They are smart in my district and yours and all over the country, and I think that what we will see is a change in the politics of this country, a change in the leadership of the House. I welcome it when we stand up here next year crafting the budget, and it will matter. The Democratic alternative we are putting together right now, it will really matter next year because we are going to be in the majority, and we will be crafting a budget and sending it to the President and saying, Mr. President, we dare you to veto a stronger commitment to education and health care and growing our economy; we dare you to veto a stronger commitment to strengthening working families. I would be happy to. He has not vetoed anything in 6 years.

Madam Speaker, let me follow up on what my friend from Ohio just said.

This PAYGO rule you talk about, we call it PAYGO for various reasons. Really, it is the be-like-the-American-family rule. Every family I know,

yours, mine, every other one, has to decide, if we are going to go out and buy some new things, we better make some more money or we better pull into our savings. All this rule says is if you are going to have new spending, you have got to pay for it. You can do it one of two ways, with spending cuts by making changes in the marginal rate or changes in revenue. That is the honesty stuff, that is the candor stuff.

The reality is, why would anybody not want to do that? If you are a fiscal conservative, why would you not want to go to a world that says let us just be no better or worse than the American family?

So this is an argument, once again, about whether we follow the same rules and the same principles that people follow all around the country.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. All of my colleague's points are so powerful that they inspire other thoughts and ideas

that just want to tumble out of you. So let me go back a little bit to what you were saying, because you make a very important point.

I think there has been an interesting flip between where our party was at one point and where the Republicans are at this point. We are all fairly young guys. This is a little bit before our time, but we hit a zone as a party in the 1970s and 1980s where we would make decisions as a party and sometimes they would not be smart decisions. But we, frankly, couldn't and wouldn't defend them.

We would just say to the American people and some folks in our party would say to the American people, you know what, trust us. We have the facts, we are diligent, we know what is right, we have more information than you do, so you ought to just trust us. And, frankly, Mr. Meek, that didn't work terribly well as a strategy for our party and people started to lose confidence in us. And they started to think, well, we put you there, so you have to tell us more, you have to level with us more.

Now, what have we seen in the last several weeks, essentially, when everybody all over the country is saying, why can't we find a country that doesn't have a history of terrorist ties to help police our ports, pretty simple question? What do they say? They say, trust us. They say we have got the facts, we have got information you don't have, we know more than you do, let us do our jobs. Trust us.

And they have said it before. They say it with these budgets. They say, yes, there is a lot of stuff in here nobody understands, and they bring them to the floor and we get a few hours to look at it. But they say, trust us, we have the information, we have the facts and we know what is right for the American people.

And I am sure a lot of folks are probably thinking right now that they did that back in March 2003, and they said, no, you don't have all the intel, you don't have all the evidence, but we do. Trust us and we will get us in and out of this war real quick. And if you doubt that, well, trust us.

This ``just trust us'' politics took us from having, what was the number we had, it was 292, was the maximum we got to. We had 292 seats here at one point, but we lapsed into the ``just trust us'' politics and now we are down to 203.

Well, I think now they are the ``just trust us'' folks, and they have started to move down the scale in the numbers, and I think they are going to be moving from around 231 to about 208 or 209 or so in not too long.

The American people put us here. We get whatever little authority we derive from the Constitution and from them. So we do owe them candor, we do owe them explanations, we do owe them a sense of direction. It is not enough to say, just trust us, is it?

Actually 1,000, Mr. Meek.

Mr. Speaker, a number of us believe that there is no finer orator in the House than my friend from Indiana who runs the Republican Study Committee. I wish he were still here because I was struck by some words he used.

He said that this was the toughest budget since Reagan. He said that we were in very tough times and this budget was laden with tough choices.

Where my good friend and my very eloquent friend from Indiana was mistaken is who are we tough on. If this was truly the toughest budget in 20 years, if it had sacrifice all across the board, there would be support for it from the more conservative Members on this side of the aisle. If this were truly a budget that made tough choices and directed those choices at all of our people and not some of our people, there would be significant support for it from the conservative side of this aisle.

There is a reason why there is not. Because it is not tough on everybody.

The average person, Mr. Speaker, earning over $1 million a year, the people who will benefit so handsomely from the President's tax cuts, will get a tax cut this April 15 of $103,000. You could lower that number to $90,000, Mr. Speaker, and recoup every single Medicaid cut that is made.

And I am sure my friends on the other side will say, well, yes, we need to cut Medicaid. Understand who goes on Medicaid. It is not the people who are sitting in this Chamber or our families. It is people who are crushed at the poverty line or near the poverty line. They are the ones whose wages have been frozen. This budget would make them, 13 million of them, pay more than they do today for the cost of Medicare. And it is projected it would put 60,000 of them off the Medicaid rolls all together.

The one word we have not heard in this debate, and it ought to inform it, is not just the word ``tough'' but the word ``fair.''

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding to me. That cut was from $103,000 to $90,000.

It is still a tax cut, and it would yield approximately $2.6 billion, enough to recoup the Medicaid cuts.

And I make that point, Mr. Ford, simply because last night we heard the President tell us that we are all bound together in this long twilight struggle against terrorists around the world. And if we are all bound together to face terrorists around the world, it is very interesting that a day later we sever a lot of those bonds when it comes to whether we care about education or whether we care about health care.

The President had it right last night. Either we are connected to each other or we are not. And that is where this budget is so wrong.

In 10 seconds, for the 13 million families who will have to pay more money for health care, that is a cut. Because that is less money they can use on food that now they are having to use on health care. And these are the poorest people in our country, Mr. Putnam.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Conyers for yielding to me. Mr. Conyers, you mentioned that I was born in Montgomery. Coretta Scott King was born in Marion, which is in the heart of my Congressional District. I am honored to stand here today as the person who still represents some of her family in the State of Alabama.

I only met her once as a younger Member of this institution and as someone who was not around to participate in the glorious days of the movement. I only met her once, at a Congressional Black Caucus in 2002. And I was a little bit in awe of her, Mr. Conyers, because when you grow up in the State of Alabama, Coretta Scott King is a heroine, and she has a very, very special place all over this country.

There are two things I want to say about her today. When she was born in Marion in 1929, she could not have conceived, her parents could not have conceived, and as she grew into young womanhood, she could not have conceived that the person who represented her City of Marion would one day be an African American. That would not have crossed her mind.

And when she formed her partnership with Martin Luther King, they had all kinds of dreams for this country. I wonder if they ever anticipated that they would accomplish the things that they did, the holiday, the King Center, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. They were big dreamers, but I do not know if they could even have seen those things.

So that is the first aspect of Coretta Scott King that we are to acknowledge today, that she had an opportunity to see her South and her country transformed in ways that were inconceivable, and she lived to see it. She lived to tell about it. She lived to appreciate it and to breathe it.

The second point that I want to make is, every time I saw her on television as a young man, every time I saw her, I was always struck by the power of her quiet dignity, and I mention that, Mr. Speaker, because we live in an age where sometimes our side thinks we have to outshout the other side, they think they have to outshout our side.

What this wonderful women appreciated is that there is a power and a force to quiet, persuasive argument. And she kept updating the legacy. In the 1980s it meant arguing against apartheid, and then arguing against the ugly rise of southern conservatism. It meant in the 1990s arguing for fair welfare policies. In the early 21st century it meant arguing for more enlightened policy around the world. She kept updating the legacy, and as she kept updating the legacy she freshened it and she put her own touch on it.

I conclude with just that observation. My colleague from Ohio was so right. My colleague from the District was so right. This woman was not a backstage figure, she was a co-anchor and a co-pillar of this movement.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Colorado for yielding.

Let me first begin by congratulating my friend from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) for what he has done in the last several years, and I thank my friend from New Jersey for letting me walk just a short stem of this path with you. You asked me a couple of years ago to join you as the lead Democratic sponsor on this bill, but let the record very clearly reflect that way before that this was a cause of yours. It was something you believed in very strongly, and I thank you for your persistence, and I thank you for your courage on this issue.

Let me just say a couple of things. First of all, I want to thank our colleagues in the Senate. As the gentleman from New Jersey just said, initially, there was a reluctance to move this bill in the Senate, not because of any doubts about the substance of the bill. This bill has been the classic example of uncontroversial legislation, but there were some in the Senate who believed that this bill should not be given a vote unless the stem cell bill was given a vote.

I understood the force of their argument. I voted for the stem cell bill on

this side. I understood the political analysis they were making, but every now and then, this Chamber gets to do something that shines beyond politics. Every now and then, this Chamber gets to find something that we can give the American people that does not admit to a liberal or conservative or Democrat or Republican level, and in the last 24 hours, that happened.

So I thank Senator Harkin and I thank Senator Reid for deciding to take the politics out of this issue, on our side of the aisle, Democratic side. I thank them for letting this bill come to a vote, and this is a good Christmas present to give to many families around this country who have the tragedy of sickle cell anemia, who have the tragedy of diabetes in their family and who count on some look to science to improve it.

The final point that I will make, I will pick up on what my friend, the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), said. I happen to think that God gave us the power of genius for a reason. God gave us the power of genius to somehow close the gap between this imperfect world and what we could be. This is an example of that power of genius being used to save lives.

I agree with her that stem cell research is an example of the power of genius. So I simply say in conclusion, this is what happens when we find a paradigm, a way of talking about issues that cuts us out of the crisscross of politics.

This is good legislation. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for working with me on it and urge the Members of this House to pass it.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) for yielding. Let me thank my colleague from the State of Alabama (Mr. Rogers) for introducing this resolution and for his comments on the floor today. And let me thank the leadership for bringing the resolution to the floor in such a timely and expeditious fashion.

We have just finished a month-long commemorative period around Rosa Parks. Mr. Speaker, we started with the events after her death and we, in effect, culminate, at least the Congress's part of this culmination today with this resolution. And between last week, the President signed a resolution that will allow Rosa Parks to take her rightful place in Statuary Hall. And as we end this commemorative period, I simply want to make a couple of observations about what it is that we honor. The first is that we honor a community today.

The countless anonymous number of African Americans who lived in Montgomery in 1955 included my mother and grandmother, included numerous other people who made their statement to history, and it is a statement that has lasted and will last for all time by the very act of perseverance.

My grandmother used to always tell the story that the hardest time of the boycott was in the summer, because in Montgomery it never gets very cold, but it can get very hot. And in the summer, a lot of black people in 1955 did not have a lot of money and they could not afford air conditioning in the car. They could not afford to fix the air conditioning, so the carpools could be very uncomfortable.

Another thing that made the summer uncomfortable was that the boys were out of school, so the little boys who wanted to stand on the side of the road and jeer the boycotters and the blacks of that community, they had nothing else to do during June and July and August. So she always said the summer was the worst time.

But what made that community so special is that it persevered, and that community chose dignity over comfort. The comfortable thing would have been to end the boycott after making a symbolic statement. The comfortable thing would have been to end the boycott because of the strain of carrying it forward. The dignified thing was to keep going and to keep asserting their rights. So we honor their community today.

And we do one other thing that is worth noting. We recognize that this history is not simply a story of black people of one race triumphing in this country as a story of us triumphing together, because in 1955, a white person in Montgomery, Alabama was not free either because a white person in Montgomery, Alabama had to build a code of conduct around not what was in his or her heart, but around what was written in the city ordinance. A white person in the south was not free in 1955 because he or she was bound by the color code of prejudice and the legal code of segregation.

Well, all of a sudden, after this assertion of dignity, white people became free too, to have a mindset, to have a sentiment that was not simply based on prejudice. So here we stand 50 years later with an appropriately uncontroversial resolution, with southern Democrats and southern Republicans standing together to offer it.

But the final thing that I say today, Mr. Speaker, is as we end this commemorative period and we put the statute in the hall and we pass the resolutions and we close this year down, we close the 50th anniversary down, it is not enough to honor this legacy by passing resolutions. And as we move into the second half of the 109th Congress, may we honor it by being true to this spirit. May we honor it by being true to the notion that there are no marginalized people in this country. If we marginalize and leave behind people, we somehow sacrifice all of our dignity. May we honor Rosa Parks by remembering that all of us have a place. If we are to have a country that is true, there is an agenda and there is a space for every one of God's children. If we can honor that, then Rosa Parks will have left a legacy that will endure for the ages and one that will lift the spirits and the imaginations of all kind of people all over this globe.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) for yielding.

I am honored as always to be here with my colleague from Florida and my colleague from Ohio to talk about what is an enormously important vote on the floor of the House this week. I thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) at the outset for exposing one of the great myths behind this vote. As you know, there is a requirement that when we introduce bills in the House that we label the legislation, that we give it a title that is supposed to be roughly descriptive of the purpose of the bill. So we are told, well, this is a deficit reduction act, and I thank the gentlewoman for laying bare that myth.

When we finish with the tax cuts that are still being contemplated, dividend tax cuts, for example, in the next several weeks, and we do the simple math, our deficit will be worse than it is today.

This is not a Deficit Reduction Act. Something very different is at stake. This is not about cutting spending, it is not about saving the government money; it is about a different set of values being in the saddle.

All of us who are here have been in the Congress fairly recently. Mr. Ryan, Mr. Meek and I came here in 2003, and you joined us this year. We all came with this notion that we stood for a particular set of values about government. One of the values that we most deeply believe in is the idea of obligation, of strong people to weak people, of people who are in one place in society, being related and connected to people in a very different place in society.

A lot of us ran on that, a lot of us talked about that. As strongly as we believe in our party, we hope that those just aren't partisan values. We hope that those are values that are shared all across this aisle, in the center, left and the right, the Democratic and the Republican side.

But what is sad about this week is that a very different set of values are now in the saddle. You touched on some of them, but they are very much worth underscoring: 300,000 families in this country who are getting food stamps. If the majority has its way, those 300,000 people will lose their food stamps, not because they have committed fraud, not because their income status has changed in the last several years, not because they have been shown to not need food stamps but simply because a different set of values are in the saddle.

You talked about, or you touched upon the question of child support. If the majority has its way, the Federal Government will walk away from a bipartisan commitment to help States go out and find deadbeat dads and enforce the laws that require people who have children to be responsible for them. We will see a party that styles itself as the party of family values walk away from that commitment. Again, it is not because of saving money, it is because a different set of values are in the saddle.

You talked about Medicaid. For the first time, if the majority has its way, working-class and poor families will have to pay a premium and a copay for their children, who are very poor, to go to the doctor. When we came here, both parties believed that if you are very poor in this society, then your kids are entitled to health care, and, yes, that is a social obligation that we owe to people who are struggling. Now a different set of values are in the saddle, and we are told they have to make a copay.

You touched on another basic matter. People who are legal immigrants, not illegal, not people who violate some immigration law to come here, but all those people who come here, played by the rules and have been naturalized as U.S. citizens, but have not yet shared in the bounty and prosperity of this country. Right now, most of them are allowed to receive food stamps.

If the majority has its way, 20- to 30,000 of those people who are eligible will lose that eligibility, again, not to save money, but because a different set of values are in the saddle.

To make a basic point about the food stamps provision in this reconciliation bill, $800,000, the 300,000 families will be shaved off the food stamp rolls, that adds up to about $844 million. $840 million in a $3.7 trillion discretionary budget is about one-sixteenth of 1 percent. That is worth almost nothing to the U.S. Treasury, but it is the margin of survival that means almost everything to these families.

We could go on, issue after issue. The value of the money that will be saved will be offset by tax cuts or is altogether insignificant. But the impact of those cuts is devastating to people who are watching us right now.

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely concur with that point. There are two points that we will have to make constantly over the next 48 hours. This is not just about altruism. I wish that we could convince our friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle just by saying it is wrong to single out the children of poor people for sacrifice. I wish we could convince them that this budget just has the wrong set of priorities on moral grounds.

The reality is there is another equally compelling set of arguments we will have to appeal to, and it is the notion of our own economic self-interest. We already are a country where the gap between skilled and unskilled workers is a high one. We are already a country where the gap between children who are successful and children who are underperforming is a high one.

We are already a country that builds all kinds of walls between our own people, and that is not good for our economy. It makes us less productive than we ought to be. It makes us less prosperous than we ought to be as a nation. But we can only close these gaps if we empower more of our people.

That is very much what is at stake as we contemplate this vote in the next several days, two different visions.

Mr. Speaker, let me touch on the point the gentlewoman just made about faith. All of us were told different things and were given dictates by our faith. But one very universal view across all denominations that we know is this idea that you do not start sacrifices with the most vulnerable of our people. You do not ask the weakest of our people to be the first to give. You try to bring some moral foundation of equity to all that you do.

Those are notions that ring across every denomination, and indeed nondenominations that still have ethical values in this world. What is striking about this budget reconciliation is that it is the first major government document that I have seen that says, let us ask the first people to sacrifice to be what Matthew would call ``the least of these.'' Let us ask the first people to sacrifice to be the weakest of our people.

This is something that is fundamentally wrong and, again, it is at the heart of this debate. A lot of us in this Chamber would be open to a discussion about fiscal discipline. We would be open to a discussion about budget cuts. We would be open to a discussion about shared responsibility, but only if it ran across all lines. This is as powerful a point as I think we can make in the next several days.

We are not asking our children to sacrifice. We are not asking the children of the people who go to our fund-raisers to sacrifice. We are asking the children of the people who cannot get in our fund-raisers because they cannot give $250 or $1,000 a head. We are asking the children of people who will never walk inside this Chamber or be able to spend a million dollars every 2 years to find a way to get here.

We are asking the people who are doing the work in our country, the people who are waiting on the tables, the people who are driving the trucks, the people who are bearing a lot of the labor. We are saying to them, yes, your children may be on Medicaid, but we can save some money if we pare back our responsibility to them. Yes, your kid may need a student loan, but we can pare back some money. We can save some money if we cut and limit our responsibility to them.

I think that this is wrong.

The final point that I will make before I yield is this one. We have an obligation to talk about this debate in terms of right and wrong this week. This is not simply a matter of different political theories. It is not a matter of different economic theories. It is about a different value set. Some of us who have heard the word ``value'' used so freely in this Chamber, some of us who have heard the word ``value'' used so freely to label and to exclude and to stigmatize, well, this is about values. Even Abraham sacrificed his own children, not the children of others. So that is front and center for this vote.

Mr. Speaker, I will certainly yield to the gentleman from Ohio to discuss something that is on our minds this

week. How can we make this case to our colleagues, because I believe, as all of you believe that our colleagues that are in this Chamber are not hard-hearted, mean or evil people who just want to hurt folks? How do we find some way to make the case to them that what we are on the verge of doing violates every value that we have as Americans and violates every sense of connection that we have?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Congressional Record a special tribute to Mrs. Willie Jean Youngblood in honor of her 90th birthday.

Mrs. Youngblood was born on November 7, 1915 in Bullock County, AL, and was the third of eight children of the late Cleveland and Julia Dennis. She later married Monroe Youngblood, a construction worker, of Bullock County. In search of better opportunities, the couple moved to Birmingham where they raised eight children. Mrs. Youngblood earned a living as a cook at the Thomasine Cafe and a service worker at the historic Tutwiler Hotel.

Mrs. Youngblood was a nurturing mentor for young mothers in her community. The Youngblood home was also the gathering place for many young children in the community, including the current mayor of the city of Birmingham, the Honorable Bernard Kincaid.

While Mrs. Youngblood may not have had an abundance of material wealth, she passed on a wealth of love and hope to her children and her community.

May God bless Mrs. Youngblood and her family on her 90th birthday and for many years to come.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, one of the goals of this bill is to stimulate affordable housing activity on the part of the GSEs in certain categories and areas that traditionally have been underserved, and one of those happens to be the rural portions of America. There have been various goals that have been added that will require the GSEs to be more proactive in their lending in rural America.

The concern that I have with the underlying bill is that the definition of ``rural'' that has been adopted is one that is, number one, very different from the definition that has historically been used by the Congress beginning with the Housing Act of 1949; and, second of all, I think it is one that is unduly restrictive. The new definition would define ``rural'' as being, among other things, nonmetro areas.

As many of us in this Chamber know, ``metro area'' is very broadly defined in this country, and a number of areas that we would all think of as being rural, that we would all view as being within the ambit of this bill, would certainly fall inside metro areas and thus be excluded from the purview of this bill, and would be excluded from the definition of ``rural.''

So what our amendment, which I believe to be noncontroversial, would do would be to return to the traditional definition of ``rural'' that is contained in the Housing Act of 1949. That definition again is one that has long been accepted and long employed by this body.

I should also note, Mr. Chairman, that we would retain some of the changes made in the substantive bill which would talk about micropolitan and tribal trust lands. Those would be included in the new definition, but we would return to the traditional definition that has been employed since 1949.

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

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for his compliments.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for letting me claim the time for my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), who I trust will join us tonight.

Mr. Speaker, several of my colleagues have gathered to honor an individual who was one of the legendary Americans of the last century. She was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most significant people of that century. She was honored by President Clinton as a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she has been honored by numerous organizations all over this world and all over this country. Her name was Rosa Parks. She was, of course, an icon of the South, an icon of the country, and she was called home to her maker just last week.

She will have two memorial services. One we understand will be in Detroit, Michigan next Wednesday, one in Montgomery, Alabama, this coming Sunday. Two communities, Montgomery and Detroit, will do their best to make a statement on behalf of this extraordinary woman; and I thank the House for giving us this hour to speak to her role tonight.

I wanted to begin by hearkening, if I can, back to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954. Montgomery, Alabama, happens to be the city where I was born in 1967, it happens to be the city where my mother was born, and my grandmother came to that city in 1931.

I still remember them telling me what it was like to sit at the back of the bus. As those who know history remember, that was not simply a Montgomery phenomenon; it was a Southern phenomenon. The practice of making black Americans sit in a certain place in the bus, the practice of making them yield their seat was carried on in a number of Southern cities; but I remember hearing the stories about Montgomery.

My mother and my grandmother never liked the stigma of segregation. They were not happy about it. But, like so many people their age and generation, they just took it as being part of the overlay over the land. They just took it as being part of the atmosphere of living in the South. And, like so many other people, they went on about their business, hoping for a better world, but not knowing when or if it would come.

And then all of a sudden this extraordinary woman named Rosa Parks, who was in her mid-40s at that time, decided that she would rise up and say ``no'' to this system of segregation. One day in late 1954, she resisted the order, she resisted the command to get up and to yield her seat. The world has never turned back from that moment. All of a sudden, people like my mother and grandmother were freed. But the interesting thing is that white Americans and white Montgomerians were freed as well, because all of a sudden, from that day forward, or maybe, more accurately, from the day that the moment succeeded and won concessions from the white power structure in Montgomery, we reached a point where people were free to sit together. That might seem like a quaint thing to those of us in 2005, but the sitting together led to talking together, led to reasoning together, and led to people accommodating each other. It led to people one day getting to the point that they could understand and build one solid and one stable community. That was the legacy of Rosa Parks.

As a number of my colleagues will point out tonight, we would do well if we understood exactly why segregation thrived for so long and what it was meant to do. It was never just meant to be a symbol. It was never just meant to be a code of laws; it was meant to be a stigma. It was meant to say to a certain group of people, you are not like the rest of us. You are not like us. You are different. You are worse than we are. It was meant to confer a badge of inferiority. And I think that the hope of segregationists, the hope of the supremacists was that these people who were being stigmatized might slowly but surely lose their confidence and slowly but surely buy into all the myths and all the hatred about them. That is why segregation thrived for so long.

Well, when Rosa Parks stood up by sitting down, when Rosa Parks refused to move, it was a triumph of the human spirit. It was a triumph of all people who yearn for some measure of freedom and dignity in their lives.

I hearken back to the last conversation, Mr. Speaker, the Special Order that happened before this. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle talked about the adventure in Iraq right now and talked about the dawning of freedom in that territory. I am reminded how recent is that experience in this country. As we go around the world speaking on behalf of freedom, I am reminded tonight of how fresh and how recent is that experience here.

I think we ought to speak to another woman: Vivian Malone Jones. Vivian Malone Jones was another trailblazer like Rosa Parks. At the age of 20, she was the first African American to attend the University of Alabama and to stay there, and, at the age of 23, she

was the first African American to graduate. It so happens the incredible irony of history that she died last week at the young age of 63.

I remember going on campus at the University of Alabama just last week to speak at a memorial service for her and to see students, black and white, people from the power structure of Tuscaloosa, people from all over Tuscaloosa gathering together to honor her sacrifice. I am reminded, Mr. Speaker, of a cover of Newsweek Magazine in 1963. It showed Vivian Malone Jones, who was a very beautiful young woman, it showed her standing there on the campus, and beneath her image was the anonymous quote: ``We owe them and we owe ourselves a better country.''

Mr. Speaker, I would submit that the Vivian Malone Joneses and the Rosa Parkses, what made them such icons, what makes them icons to us now, is the fact that they challenged us. They made us believe that we owed them a better country, and they also made us believe that we owed ourselves a better country.

One of the last points that I will make tonight is that there ought to be a challenge in this for us, because not only do we owe their successors a better country, we owe the people who are wounded in America, who are coming back from Iraq, a better country. We owe the people who are working every single day, striving to earn a living and falling just short of the water's edge, we owe them a better country. We owe the children who are sliding into poverty in this country a better country and a better vision. That is what we have to understand.

This legacy of civil rights, this history of individuals rising above oppression and segregation is a long-running theme in human history. The story of people standing up against oppressive systems and asserting their dignity is a long-running theme in human history. It is a theme of courage, and it is a uniquely American theme.

So as I prepare to yield to some of my colleagues tonight, I will simply make these two final points. I am very proud to be from Montgomery, Alabama, very proud to be a son of this modern South, because every day that we build bridges of reconciliation, we pay our own tribute to Rosa Parks. Every day that we find a way to exist across racial lines, every day that we find a way to transcend new boundaries, every day that we find a way to make better the lives of all the people who live in our community, we pay a silent tribute to Rosa Parks and to Vivian Malone Jones, and we ought to remember that.

The final point that I will make is simply, once again, to talk about the power of individual choice. I heard one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about the enormous courage of our soldiers in Iraq, and it is such a thing that inspires us, their courage. Well, there is a common theme between what they do and what Rosa Parks did. It is believing that there is a higher cause that can sustain you, just as our soldiers believe when they get up every morning and face the bunkers and the missiles and the grenades, they believe that there is a higher cause that can sustain them. So did Rosa Parks. When she sat on that bus, she believed that there was something beyond her mortal existence, and that moved her.

The last thing I say today is that our country can be moved if we simply understand the power of individuals asserting their dignity, if we put enough of a foundation beneath them so that they can live their destinies.

With that said, I am very happy to turn over the management of this Special Order to my colleague, John Conyers from Michigan, who employed Rosa Parks for a number of years, someone who was a friend of hers, and someone who has been an advocate for many years now, almost 40 years now, in this Chamber for so many progressive causes.