Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, 2 months ago, I had an occasion to give a commencement speech in the rural part of my District. And after the speech, a woman walked up to me; she had tears in her eyes, and I assumed that she was crying about the graduation of her child that day, but she walked up to me and she looked at me and she said, Mr. Davis, I have a husband who serves in the Army National Guard. He has been in Iraq for 2 months now, has been in the Middle East for about a year, and every morning I get up and I turn my television on CNN, and I see that another American life has been lost, and for a span of a few seconds my heart jumps up into my throat, and I wonder until I see the name.

When I spoke to that lady, Mr. Chairman, I could not talk with her about the geopolitics of our commitment in Iraq. I could not talk with her about whether or not it was right or wrong for us to engage this conflict because I do not think that she terribly cared. She, like so many other Americans, though, was searching for a solution to this conflict.

I would like to be able to say to her that if her family and her husband are asked to sacrifice, that the sacrifice is not just limited to the middle ranks of this country. I would like to be able to say, as the ranking member of this committee said earlier, that if some are asked to pay any price or bear any burden that that will include some of the wealthiest Americans whose taxes have been cut in the last several months.

I will vote against this supplemental as it currently stands for a very simple reason. It is unfair to ask families like that of the woman that I encountered in Perry County, Alabama, to sacrifice, when we cannot even ask families who are earning over $300,000 to forego a tax cut that most of them never really sought.

This is a time when we have to decide the direction of our foreign policy, but our foreign policy has to be consistent with our values. Our values, and it ought to be the values of the Bush administration as well, do not dictate that we ask sacrifice of only some people. They dictate that we ask sacrifice of those who can most afford to pay it, and I urge my colleagues to vote against this resolution unless the administration can provide a means to pay for it.

Mr. Speaker, let me compliment my colleague, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris) as the primary sponsor of this bill and let me compliment the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Ney) for his leadership on this issue. Let me extend compliments as well to the ranking member of the subcommittee, who is present here today, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), who is not here.

We do a lot of things in this institution, Mr. Speaker. We argue about a lot of issues, but every now and then we manage to find something we agree on. Every now and then we manage to find something that has enormous bipartisan appeal. And that is how we have arrived at H.R. 1276. Whether it is in the district of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) or my district or the district of the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris), wherever you go in this country, the American dream is very much expressed in terms of whether or not people have a chance to own a home.

As the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Ney) said earlier, for the overwhelming majority of people in this country of ours, the only tool of wealth they will ever have, the only significant assets they will ever have is a home. We can talk about all the indices of community engagement, from whether you vote to whether or not you mow your lawn, to whether or not you participate in your neighborhood

association. The greatest correlator of community engagement is home ownership.

We look at our economy in the last 2 years, and all of us on both sides of the aisle would agree, if you take out the housing boom, if you somehow remove that from our economy, we would be deep in the throes of a 2\1/2\-year recession now.

This is very important work, and it is a compliment to the leadership on both sides of the aisle that this bill has made its way to the floor. And it is a compliment to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) that we have arrived at a consensus here today.

I want to make a few basic points. We have a lot of unfinished work on the housing front. No one on our side of the aisle would suggest that this is all that needs to be done. No one on our side on the aisle would suggest that the $200 million is the only commitment of resources that we ought to make. But rest assured that this $200 million commitment will result in over 40,000 low-income families receiving help in buying homes.

I can say briefly in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, as I travel around my district, we regularly do home ownership events, we regularly do housing events; and I always enjoy seeing the spark that I see in people's faces when they have a chance to finally become home owners. I enjoy seeing the spark when they know they are going to finally realize their piece of the American dream.

We have made this bill better. It was a good bill. We have made it a better bill. We have made the formula for calculating downpayment assistance a fair and better formula. We will address the unfinished aspects of this bill related to credit counseling. We will more forward on those fronts.

I encourage my colleagues, as I know they will today, to vote overwhelmingly for the American Dream Downpayment Act. I am proud to be one of the original sponsors of this bill, and I again compliment my friend from Florida for her leadership on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank my friend and colleague from Hawaii for his passion on this issue and for reminding us that in the United States the face of rural America is not simply Southern or Western, it can even be Pacific at times.

Let me begin, first of all, by saying or by reiterating something that my friend from Arkansas said, I do not think that any of us on this side of the aisle believe that any of our able colleagues on the other side want to do violence to the interests of rural America or do not care about what goes on in the heartland of America or in the rural parts of our country. We are not having a debate about intent today or a debate about goals today, but we are having a debate about making a system that will work.

It is a fact, and it is an eventuality under the bill that the Republican leadership so narrowly pushed through this body, that over a period of time, the prescription drug benefit, that all of us want and have endorsed in some sense, will be phased out and delivered through the private sector in significant parts of our country. Now, that sounds, from a technical standpoint, like a worthy enough aspiration. I have heard my colleagues on the other side defend that kind of a world in terms of the market choices it will open up. I have heard them defend that kind of a world in terms of the choices it will generate for the consumers, for senior consumers.

The reality, as so many of us on this side of the aisle know, is this: We can travel to those places in west Alabama, whole places in the rural parts of our country where you simply do not have a private provider network that is capable or available to carry this burden. So when we are talking about expanding market choices, what a wonderful thing it would be if those market choices would be available all around this country.

Our seniors are looking to us desperately for leadership on this issue. Our seniors are desperately looking to us to give them a benefit, but not just any benefit. They want one that is fair, and one that is workable, and one that is available all around America.

I am genuinely amazed that a lot of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are willing to have us move into a system where, at best, we can trust the vagaries of the market to provide this benefit for our seniors. I talk as I move around my district to far too many seniors who are having to spend significant chunks of their limited, disposable income on prescription drugs. I run into too many seniors who are having to self-medicate, who are told that they have to take medicine for a certain number of days, and they chop the pills up to extend the timetable. All Members can cite those stories.

What a tragedy it would be if we had a huge ceremony and a huge fanfare, and the President stood up and said we had passed a prescription drug benefit bill, and then within 6 or 7 years from now, our seniors living in rural America saw what they expected to be a Cadillac turned out to be a much smaller, less efficient and less effective vehicle.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this motion not because I think the folks on the other side of the aisle have a different set of values, but because I think they misunderstand the market that we have and the choices that will be left to our seniors.

I want to address one other point several of my colleagues make. There has been a lot of talk that we are fixing the rural problem because we are addressing the disparities in the reimbursement formulas; and I compliment the other side of the aisle for recognizing that the reimbursement formulas in Medicare have disadvantaged our rural areas, but I will make a very basic point here. If the Republican leadership of this body were serious about fixing the reimbursement formula, it could do it tomorrow. Just as we came to the floor in record time last week to speak to the court that ruled on the Do-Not- Call Registry, we could come to this floor in record time to pass a stand-alone bill that fixes the unfair reimbursement formulas.

Right now, the reimbursement formula fix is being held hostage to the completion of this bill. It is nothing more than a bargaining chip at this point to try to bring conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans to the table, and we ought to expose that for what it is. If the leadership were serious about fixing this problem, it should be done tomorrow as a stand-alone piece of legislation. Let us address the hard and serious problem of getting a prescription drug benefit, but let us address, in a separate context, the very real problem of disparities in this formula that burden so many of our areas.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

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

Mr. Speaker, periodically when I go back to my district, one of the questions I get most frequently asked is, why do we keep turning on our C-SPAN television in the afternoon and hearing this debate on the child tax credit? Why do we keep seeing these motions brought to the floor?

I suppose the best answer that I can give, Mr. Speaker, the best answer I can give my colleagues is a very simple one. The reason that this side of the aisle continues to press this issue, the reason that this side of the aisle continues to implore our colleagues to act is because more than any other issue, any other debate we have encountered this year, this question speaks to the fundamental difference between our parties.

We continue to make these points because it speaks for, frankly, why we stand on the Democratic side as opposed to the Republican side. And while we may do this every few days, it is always helpful to look at the history of how we got here.

Late in the evening of the night that the Republican-inspired tax cut passed this body, there was a relentless effort to get inside the $350 billion number, and for all of the efforts of all of the geniuses that we have on the other side and all of the efforts that were expended on getting inside this limit, there were $3.5 billion outside of $350 billion.

One would wonder, if you had to save $3.5 billion at the last minute of a long debate, where would you turn? You might turn to the various corporations who are using offshore accounts in the Bahamas. You might turn to people who are earning over a million dollars a year and getting a tax cut. You might turn to some of the obvious examples of waste and fraud that could have been found. But rather than turn to any of those places, the Republican leadership decided to literally reach into the pockets of families earning between $10,000 and $26,000 a year, the very weakest people in our society.

We have learned just in the last few weeks that the number of children living in poverty has grown by 1 million in the last year. We have learned in just the last few weeks that after a decade of people moving from poverty to the middle class, that the trend is now in the other direction. Every single month, different numbers of families fall below the statistical line that separates deprivation in this country from some measure of success.

For all of the differences and all of the debates that we have on this floor, I can confidently say that my party would never reach into the pockets of the most vulnerable families in this country to satisfy a $350 billion tax cut number. We need to, and frankly it is nothing less than shameful, Mr. Speaker, that in the last months we have not managed to, find a way to make this simple, corrective step.

We have heard some on the other side of the aisle say, well, why give a tax credit to families earning between $10- and $26,000 a year or why expand the tax credit for them? A lot of them do not pay taxes, we have heard. Or a lot of them do not pay a lot of taxes. The reality is, of course, these individuals do pay State income taxes and in many of our States in this time of tough budget woes, those individual State tax burdens are rising.

We also know, frankly, that there has never been any controversy around the child tax credit applying to low-wage-earning families. There has never been any controversy over whether the original $600 credit applied. The controversy over this credit arose only when the majority needed to save $3.5 billion.

It is interesting that the President wants to fix this. It is striking that the U.S. Senate has voted almost unanimously to fix it, but for some reason, the Republican leadership in the House continues to be unmoved on this question. To put the cynicism in some context, H.R. 1308, the bill that was brought to this floor that purports to fix the gap in the child tax credit does not even allow the tax credit to kick in for these families until sometime next year.

There is another basic point, Mr. Speaker. We are experiencing a stagnant, slow, jobless recovery. We are experiencing a recovery where companies are saving costs by cutting back on health insurance and laying off workers. It is a very stale recovery for a lot of our people.

So the President talks about stimulus. The President talks about providing a jolt to this economy. What better way to put some life in this economy, what better way to put some energy and some spending power into this economy than by giving this credit to families who are struggling by the margins every single day to survive, the families earning between $10- and $26,000? If stimulus is the rationale for this tax cut, there is no reason that this credit should not be extended to these families.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly look forward to this debate today. I certainly invite my colleagues to finally do the right and simple thing, to spend $3.5 billion to fix a problem of fundamental fairness.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I certainly agree with my friend from Minnesota that we need to correct the disparity of military families being left out of this relief. We need to correct all the omissions regarding military families, and for that reason this motion to instruct would provide coverage for families of military personnel serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat zones as an essential and critical of part this conference report.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) whose district includes so many families who would be deeply affected by this motion to instruct and who has been such a consistent advocate for children living in poverty in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop). The gentleman from Georgia has distinguished himself in this institution not just as a voice for fiscal prudence and fiscal sanity as a conservative Democrat, but he has also distinguished himself as a distinguished advocate for the families who are left behind in this country. His district, like mine, includes large numbers of rural families and large pockets of children living in poverty.

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

I think we may just simply have a factual disagreement between my friend from Minnesota and myself. The motion to instruct would include those families.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) who has so often come to the well of this House to speak on behalf of our party and to speak on behalf of families in need in this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, we do have these debates every few days; and nothing new, frankly, has been said over the course of the last 4 months. That is depressing, in some sense; but I think, again, it speaks to the very fundamental difference between our parties.

No one has yet to come to the well of this House, and today only one speaker even bothered to come down to debate this issue from the other side; no one has yet to come to the well of this House from the Republican side of the aisle to explain why we leave behind families earning between $10,000 and $26,000 when it would not cost us more than $3.5 billion. No one has explained why we leave out of a stimulus package the families who are most in need of having their economic fortune stimulated.

The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is exactly right. The very leadership that brought this bill to the floor, and actually, to be perfectly correct about it, it is not a bill. The Republican leadership, rather than actually bringing a bill to the floor, brought a rule to the floor and invoked a rare procedural maneuver to take this measure directly to conference, rather than to bring it forward as a bill. Putting that aside, the very leadership that brought this rule to the floor announced a day beforehand that the child tax credit was dead. That had no intent, they have no intent, and they will have no intent to ever create this expanded relief for the families in our country who are working so hard.

I close on this note, Mr. Speaker. We wonder sometimes why so few low-income people participate in the voting process in this country. We wonder sometimes why so many low-income families feel left out and feel locked out. We wonder why they feel disengaged. When we have our town hall meetings, they do not even bother to come. We have an answer to that question with the way this issue has been

handled: because these individuals who are locked out of so many things in life turn on their television and they hear that tax relief is being passed for millionaires, they hear that tax relief is being passed for the owners of large corporations, and they hear that wider and broader and additional tax relief is contemplated. Yet they hear that they are not worthy of additional relief at all. They are told, as some of my colleagues on the other side have said, that they are welfare cases who really do not contribute to the system and really do not pay taxes anyway, so why get any kind of benefit.

We ought to recognize as elected officials, Mr. Speaker, that we cannot leave people out of the system and expect them to continue to have faith in the system. That may be a small cost to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, because a lot of these folks are not a big part of their voter base, but they are part of the America that we have. This party that I speak for today will always be proud to speak for these families, because the kids in this country who live in families earning at the edge of the poverty line and slightly above it, they cannot come to this city and have fly-in week. They cannot hold $50,000 fund-raisers. They cannot hold thousand-dollar-a-head events. Somebody has to speak for them. Somebody has to take the time to come to this floor to speak for their needs and advocate for their cause. The ones of us who do that represent the Democratic Party in America, and those of us on this side of the aisle will always be proud to be part of the party that speaks for those who have been left behind, who lack any other voice.

So with that said, I urge my colleagues to vote for this motion to instruct and to finally fix this fundamental unfairness in what was purported to be a tax fairness bill earlier this year.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, subject to rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 1308, the child tax credit bill.

The form of the motion is as follows:

Mr. Davis of Alabama moves that the managers on the part of

the House in the conference on the disagreeing votes of the

two Houses on the House amendment to the Senate amendment to

H.R. 1308 be instructed as follows:

1. The House conferees shall be instructed to include in

the conference report the provision of the Senate amendment

(not included in the House amendment) that provides immediate

payments to taxpayers receiving an additional credit by

reason of the bill in the same manner as other taxpayers were

entitled to immediate payments under the Jobs and Growth Tax

Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.

2. The House conferees shall be instructed to include in

the conference report the provision of the Senate amendment

(not included in the House amendment) that provides families

of military personnel serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other

combat zones a child credit based on the earnings of the

individuals serving in the combat zone.

3. The House conferees shall be instructed to include in

the conference report all of the other provisions of the

Senate amendment and shall not report back a conference

report that includes additional tax benefits not offset by

other provisions.

4. To the maximum extent possible within the scope of

conference, the House conferees shall be instructed to

include in the conference report other tax benefits for

military personnel and the families of the astronauts who

died in the Columbia disaster.

5. The House conferees shall, as soon as practicable after

the adoption of this motion, meet in open session with the

Senate conferees and the House conferees shall file a

conference report consistent with the preceeding provisions

of this instruction, not later than the second legislative

day after adoption of this motion.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his compliments and for yielding time to me today.

I want to begin with the comments of my good friend from New Jersey because I think that they reflect a fundamental divide on how our two parties look at this issue. The gentleman from New Jersey is 100 percent correct when he says that the Medicare plan being contemplated would theoretically allow a choice for seniors. He is 100 percent correct when he says that seniors would have the ability to elect between a private managed care plan and Medicare. He is 100 percent correct about the theory and about what is written in this plan. But I come from the Seventh District of Alabama where a significant number of our seniors live in a world very different from a lot of the people who sit in this body. A lot of the seniors in my district live in a space where they are illiterate. They live in a space where they are not able to interpret the difference between a plan A and a plan B. They have trouble navigating every single aspect of their daily lives. Some of them cannot even fully understand their own prescriptions, but yet it is true they will have a theoretical choice as to which plan is better for their interests.

One thing that I would hope that this whole body would agree on, Mr. Speaker, is that we do not need to provide a benefit that some people in this society will enjoy but that other people will not enjoy because of their station and place in life. I care, as I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle care deeply, about the seniors who do not have the education, who do not have the background to make the kinds of choices that they will need to make. The problem with this plan, unless it is fixed and made better by the Kind motion, is that it will force our seniors to have to make a fundamental choice, and if they choose wrong, they could find themselves without adequate coverage.

There is a deeper problem. Only 19 percent of the seniors in rural America live in an area that has access to a ready managed care plan; less than 20 percent. When the seniors who are listening tonight or the seniors who follow this debate hear that we are passing a prescription drug benefit, they imagine that it is something that will be executed, they imagine that it is something that can be implemented in a way that favors and is fair to them. They do not know about the maze of choice that is in front of them. We can talk all we want in a theoretical sense about the values of choice in our society. We can talk all we want in a theoretical sense about letting our seniors and letting the market combine to make good, efficient choices. This is not always an efficient world.

There is no dispute in this Chamber that after the next several years, a significant number of seniors would potentially be left out of this plan. That is something that the Kind motion would fix. That may sound to some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle like paternalism, but a lot of the seniors who live in my district do not want to have to navigate their own way for this set of choices. They do not see it as paternalism, they see it as government lending a helping hand to them.

This Medicare program that we have heard denounced tonight as being a ``big government program,'' that we have heard denounced tonight as being another example of ``rampant government,'' it happens to be an important part of the social safety net that we have in this country. The question is, do we tighten that net and make it stronger or do we allow significant gaps to form in that net?

As I moved around my rural district during the month of August, so many seniors said to me, Mr. Davis, I would rather have no plan than a plan that I don't understand and a plan that I won't benefit from. So many seniors said, I would rather see you all in the ivory towers in Washington, D.C., do nothing than do something that leaves me worse off. Those are the people that I want to speak to tonight, and those are the people I want to speak for tonight because we have to make sure that this is a plan that would be available to all of the seniors in this country who need it.

We can talk all we want about appropriating more money in the House bill for rural hospitals. We still do not give enough. The Senate does far better. Until we address the root of these unfair choices, we will leave our rural seniors worse off. So I support this motion tonight. I will close on this basic point. Most of us in our campaigns in 2002 endorsed the idea of a prescription drug benefit. Most of us go back to our districts and we brag about the fact that we support it. A lot of our friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle are touting that fact in their campaign ads. A lot of our seniors remember just 15 years ago when this body purported to pass a catastrophic health benefit plan that did everything but provide adequate coverage, that did everything but improve their conditions in life. It may be that this part of the session is running to a close, it may be that the clock is ticking, but the nature of what the people elect us to do is to make hard choices. The nature of what the people elect us to do is to make adequate choices. And, yes, sometimes as paternalistic as our

friends may think it is, they sometimes elect us to make choices that will affect their lives.

So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote for this motion to close an unfortunate, but critical, gap that exists between our rural seniors and urban seniors.

Mr. Speaker, in February of this year, I joined with individuals from the President's Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area for dinner at the home of two of its members, Charlie Cerf and Cynthia Dunbar.

On that occasion, I learned a great deal about the activities of this particular Affiliate of the National ACLU, and I met and talked with its President, Geoffrey Aronow. I found him to be a person who is very committed to preserving and protecting civil liberties. I understand that Mr. Aronow recently retired from his position as President, and I believe it is important that we pause, acknowledge his dedicated service and thank him for his untiring and selfless work in behalf of the cause of defending our Constitution.

These are indeed difficult times, times that challenge us in many ways, puzzling and unpredictable times. Mr. Aronow's presidency spanned the months and now years since the events of September 11th, 2001. I have come to learn that, through it all, he has been steadfast, unwavering, unequivocal and unambiguous in his words as well as his deeds when matters of the Bill of Rights are at stake. He appreciates that the legal experience in America is enriched and venerated by citizens and non-citizens alike because our history is one of fierce defense of the liberties guaranteed by the first Ten Amendments.

Mr. Speaker, America is not great due to our advanced technology, our many resources or our military might. Those things make us strong. They do not make us great. America is great because of citizens like Geoffrey Aronow, the best and the brightest we have to offer, the most noble, those of unparalleled integrity. He deserves our appreciation for a job well done.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Norton amendment. There has been a lot of conversation today about whether this $10 million somehow takes money away from the public school system. There has been a lot of discussion about whether making an investment in vouchers drains resources away. I think that is the wrong focus, with all due respect to some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, because regardless of whether we are taking money away from one pot and putting it into another, let us make no mistake about something that we are doing: We are taking and subtracting credibility from the public school system.

If we have a vouchers game anyplace in this country, we are implicitly saying to that community that the public school system is not good enough. What is the consequence of saying that? I happen to have come primarily from the public school system in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama. There are some of us who remember a time in this country when the public school system had a very unique role. It was, number one, the one instrument that we had that brought people together from different classes and different walks of life. You could have someone who was the son of a CEO at a bank sitting next to someone who came from the wrong side of the railroad tracks. The public school was once a civic institution in this country.

For a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this debate, that kind of civic pride in our schools has been drained away. For a variety of reasons, we have lost confidence in the public school system in this country; but the challenge is what do we do about it.

The proponents of vouchers tell us we can simply give people a chance to opt out. The proponents of vouchers say we can simply allow people to walk away from the system and that we can treat our public schools like a failed Wal-Mart or a failed BP or a failed Shell gas station; if it closes down, people can go someplace else.

Mr. Chairman, I would submit we are a stronger and a better country if we continue and we sustain our exclusive public investment in a public education system. I do not think that we can drain away a commitment from the vast public purpose of education in this country without having an enormous consequence to where we stand as a Nation.

It is true that we are 13th in the industrialized world in math and science scores. We rank number 15 in civic scores. The problem is that we are not making the kind of investment, either in terms of resources or in terms of community commitment, in our public schools that they deserve. Make no mistake about it, if we endorse this back door, if we open up this back door to vouchers, we are degrading and we are cheapening our public schools.

I have heard a lot of attacks from the other side of the aisle about how bad the public school system is in D.C., and I would venture that a lot of the speakers, if they were asked the systems in their cities, would probably come forward and launch the same kind of attacks. The families of this country are listening. The people who are struggling to teach in our schools may be busy right now, but they hear about these kinds of debates. And we ought to understand something: Teaching is an enormously honorable profession. Public education is an enormously honorable civic endeavor. But you do not walk away from civic endeavors, you do not create a private back channel to civic endeavors.

I urge my colleagues to support the Norton amendment because it is a very important symbol. I agree with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bell) that

this is an effort, it is the beginning of a slow effort to introduce vouchers into the public mainstream. It will be D.C. today. Next year, it will be a request that we have 5 target cities around the country, and then it will be a request that we have 10 target States around the country. This is very much where the administration wants to go.

The problem is that I am not prepared to abandon our public school system until we have made a stronger and better commitment. As one of the speakers on this side said earlier, only 7 percent of the money that goes into education comes from this budget and this appropriations process. We cannot let this system go anywhere in our country until we have done more and made a stronger and better commitment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues to oppose vouchers for D.C. and to keep the credibility of the D.C. school system intact and to keep the civic institution intact.

Mr. Chairman, let me, first of all, compliment the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) and the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez) for their leadership on this issue. Let me dwell for a moment on the 185,000 families that my colleague from New York alluded to earlier.

At a time when unemployment in this country is rising, at a time when poverty is rising in major parts of this country, it strikes me that this, frankly, is the kind of program that we ought to be investing more into, and not less.

Section 8 has a bipartisan history. There was a time, Mr. Chairman, when many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle firmly embraced this program as an example of the public sector and the private sector combining together.

In so many ways in this budget, particularly in the area of housing, we are dismantling tools, we are deconstructing tools that we ought to be putting more behind. I am deeply concerned about that. Just 3 weeks ago in my district, we held a Section 8 event and we drew in, in Birmingham, Alabama on a Wednesday night, 250 people to come out because they were concerned about the changes in this program.

Now, I compliment the leadership of the subcommittee for not doing the block-granting that the President wanted to do, and I compliment them for putting more money behind this program than what the President wanted to provide. But as I looked into the faces of those 250 people who came out, it was clear to me that they need this kind of program. They need it to be well-funded. A number of them, close to 1,000 of them in the State of Alabama, stand to lose their funding under this budget. That is a very cruel signal for us to send these hard-working Americans who are not getting the child tax credit check today that they ought to be getting, and who are facing so much economic anxiety and insecurity right now.

This bill is flawed in so many ways, Mr. Chairman, because it makes the wrong set of investments, it chooses the wrong set of priorities. So many of us in this House regularly talk about extending opportunity. This is a means of extending opportunity, because when we give people a chance at housing, when we give people a chance to have the spark of homeownership, this is a huge benefit to them.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) for their eloquence and the insight they bring to so many Americans who are outside this Chamber tonight, and for being consistent and direct voices for so many people in this country who do not have a voice.

The gentleman from Maine (Mr. Michaud) pointed out that 1 week from now a large number of people in this country will receive the first installment on the child tax credit. They will go to their mailboxes as we prepare to go to recess; they will reach in and find a check that they can use in August. But in the Seventh Congressional District of Alabama, a significant number of people will reach into that mailbox and they will not find anything. 40,000 families in my district have heard something about a child tax credit. They do not necessarily know what we are debating about and who is supposed to get it, but they have heard something about a child tax credit. They are going to reach in their mailboxes next week and they will not see it. These 40,000 families in my district and their counterparts all around this country of ours will wonder just why it is that when we are cutting taxes in this country, when we are saying that it is imperative that we cut taxes in this country, they will not understand why they have been left out.

We stand here tonight on behalf of those 40,000 people who live in my district and their counterparts all around this country, and I think we should ask ourselves some very basic questions. When we lose touch with the people who do the work in this country, when we lose touch with the people who use their hands to earn a living, we have changed the kind of America that we are.

Whether Members fully understand it or not, and I think most do, this is a country that was built on the sweat and tears of people who do not have a lot of resources and who have needs. I will tell Members that so many economists agree that the recovery that we hope for, if it is to happen, will be built on the backs of the people who use their hands. They are the ones that we advocate for tonight.

A lot of people as they come home listen to these debates and listen to these arguments; and, frankly, they do not understand a lot of the technical terms that we use. They do not know what a motion to recommit is or what a suspension is, but they do understand what it means to be ignored. They understand what it means to be left out.

We believe on this side of the aisle, just as those Members on the other side of the aisle believe, in this democracy of ours; and we believe that this is a very special, God-blessed experiment that we have built in this country, but we will not be all that we can be when we leave out some of our people.

Sometimes back in my district I quote someone whose name is not very well-remembered now, an Italian poet called Dante, and he said something that I think speaks as well as anything I have ever heard as to what separates this side of the aisle from the other side: ``The Lord does not weigh the sins of the kind and the cruel-hearted on the same scale. I would rather have the occasional errors of a government acting in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.''

It may very well be that this tax cut that we seek, if it is passed, will give somebody somewhere who does not deserve this credit some money. It may very well be. It may very well be that some person who is not a hard-working person will benefit from this credit; but I will tell Members that I, and so many other Americans, would rather do a little too much if we have to than be indifferent towards people who face a lot of indifference in their lives.

I know from the gentleman from Maine's background, as much as anyone in this Chamber, that he knows what it means to work for a living. I come from, as do you, the wrong side of the tracks. I was literally born next to the railroad tracks in Montgomery, Alabama. So many people who come from the neighborhoods that we lived in are the ones who would benefit from this credit. They are the ones who feel that we are turning a deaf ear to them when they see us sit here day after day dealing with this obscure issue and that obscure issue, but they cannot see us coming to grips with the real problems in their lives.

So as I prepare to close tonight, I hope that this whole Chamber will appreciate that when you leave out a significant chunk of the people in your country, when Members turn a deaf ear to them, we cannot expect them to fully believe in the American Dream. I am troubled when a significant number of people in this country are told that the American Dream is not there for them. We would do well to remember the impact of what we do. We would do well to recognize that when we leave people out, we tell them, in effect, that they do not matter; you tell them, in effect, that they do not have value. That is not the kind of democracy that we have built. It is not the kind of country that we have built, and we ought to rise up in a bipartisan way and pass this motion. We should do what the Senate has done, do what the President says we ought to do, and give relief to the families that need it.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support and to offer an amendment that will correct a discrepancy and a disparity that has been overlooked in this bill, Mr. Chairman.

Let me begin by, first of all, thanking the very able ranking member of this subcommittee, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for her cooperation and her assistance. Let me thank my good friend, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), as well and a number of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have worked on this issue during the last several months.

Mr. Chairman, 17 Members of this institution are honored to represent 1890 Land Grant Colleges. 1890 Land Grant Colleges are historically black colleges and universities that have played an enormously significant role in the life of the South, in particular in the last 100 years. These institutions, that include in my State Tuskegee Alabama University and Alabama A&M University, not only reach an underserved part of the population, but they have been vehicles for launching leadership all over this country.

In the President's budget that was submitted, there was a discrepancy in the way these schools are treated and the way that 1862 Land Grant Colleges are treated. While I certainly take the chairman's admonition that if all of us who wanted to add a dollar here and a dollar there were to come to the floor, we would be here all day, I think that all of us would recognize that we have some fundamental obligations to treat like institutions in the same manner.

This particular budget essentially leaves level funding for 1862 Land Grants, which happen to be predominantly white institutions. Funding is slashed by five times that amount for 1890 Land Grants. I am not here to point a finger, Mr. Chairman, or to cast aspersions. I simply identify this discrepancy as something that we should fix.

A number of people ask, what is the impact of a cut that seems relatively small, about 3 percent? That has to be measured I think in the individual life of these institutions. Seventeen of them stand to lose $200,000 to $300,000 a school. In Tuskegee, Alabama, a $200,000 cut at Tuskegee University weakens the ability of that school to do enormously important work. A $200,000 cut at Alabama A&M University weakens the ability of that school to do enormously important work.

While so many programs have had to bear the brunt of the budget ax, we ought to make sure that it is administered in a fair and evenhanded manner.

So I ask my colleagues to support this amendment and to restore $3.5 million, a fraction of a $3 trillion plus budget, to bring back these 1890s to parallel treatment with 1862s in this budget. This is an act of bipartisanship on our part.

I want to thank someone who is not here today, who is touring a base in his State, my good friend and one of the ablest colleagues that we have in this institution, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays). He has worked on this issue since the budget process. I want to also thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter), our colleague on the Committee on Appropriations.

So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, to make a very important statement about the worth and the value of these colleges that play such a significant role.

Offered By: Mr. Davis of Alabama

Amendment No. 2: Page 3, line 9, after the dollar amount,

insert ``(reduced by $3,500,000)''.

Page 11, line 13, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $2,000,000)''.

Page 13, line 5, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $2,000,000)''.

Page 13, line 23, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,500,000)''.

Page 14, line 14, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,500,000)''.

Mr. Speaker, I do not want this debate to end without adding my voice in support of the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, to a number of people around the country it is approximately 15 minutes after 6 in the East, about a quarter after 5 in my neck of the woods in central Alabama; and a lot of people are coming home right now from working on the assembly lines, a lot of people are coming from working in the nursing homes and the places where hard work is done in this country, and a lot of them picked up their children from Head Start.

A lot of them are coming home now, and they are watching this debate, and they are asking a very basic question: Why is this House even assessing the question of Head Start? Why is this House even talking about dismantling Head Start, when in their own lives they see this program has been so enormously successful?

There is an old maxim that if something is not broke, you do not fix it; and the perspective of a large number of people I represent in Birmingham, Alabama, and Selma and Tuscaloosa and in all of the rural counties in my State is that this has been a part of the War on Poverty that has endured. This program, which was launched in the 1960s, has endured, it has survived, and it has notably commanded bipartisan support.

As I talk to friends of mine on the other side of the aisle, particularly friends of mine who have served in State legislatures, a good many of them away from this floor will express that this is a program that has been successful.

So many people wonder why, as we talk about reform, as we talk about changing the educational system in this country, why we are targeting this particular program; and I will make three basic points to follow up on what my very able colleagues from Maryland and California said earlier.

The first one is that this program has been an enormously effective holistic program. It has been a program that has helped not simply make children more literate, but has frankly helped to make children better young men and women, better equipped to participate in school, better equipped to live in their communities.

It is not simply a reading program, it is not simply a literacy program, and to try to limit it or to cabinet it to just those areas deprives the program of some of its potential.

Another very basic point, as we talk about block granting this program even for just eight states, we know the reality of block grants has been that as the programs devolved to the States, the States are often unconstrained in how they spend the money. They are often unconstrained in their vision of how the money should be spent.

I know in my State of Alabama we are facing enormous budget consequences now, and in the States most of us represent our States are fiscally struggling. They are not asking for more programs to be put on their plate from an administrative or financing standpoint. If anything, they want

more help from Washington, D.C., not more requirement that they administer particular programs that are being transferred from Washington.

A third point: we often talk about representing the interests of people whose voices are not heard in our society. It is crystal clear to me that among the most unrepresented people that we have are the children who are living in poverty and the children who are living in families that are standing at the edge of economic security.

Just one week ago, this House failed to pass a child tax credit, a manageable child tax credit bill that would have helped a lot of those families. It would be a shame if next week or in the weeks to come that we decided that we were going to attack those families in just one more little way, by changing this program that has benefited so many of them.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, when this issue comes on the floor, when we begin to talk as a body about Head Start, I hope that we understand it has been a success, and I hope we understand that so many families in districts like mine around this country look to this program; and we ought to be finding a way to preserve it, we ought to be finding a way to help connect with these children, because if we lose them, as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) said so well a few minutes ago, we are losing a potential talent base that we have not discovered. We are losing people that have the chance to do an enormous amount in their lives.

We need to be nurturing them, helping them; and this program has been an example of what government can do at its best. There are some of us in this body, Mr. Speaker, who still believe that government has a high and noble purpose. Not that it is the only answer, but that it can do something to touch and connect with the lives of people who have been left behind.

Mr. Speaker, one of our esteemed colleagues on the other side of the aisle is very fond of beginning his speeches by saying that nothing underscores more the difference between our two parties than whatever we are debating that day. And I happen to agree with him on this issue, Mr. Speaker.

I have only been here for 4 months, and I have heard a lot of debate in this Chamber, but I say this very candidly: My party would not have reached into the pockets of hardworking Americans to get to a $350 billion cutoff number. My party would not leave veterans out of a package that purports to help people. And my party would not have to depend on a procedural maneuver to get votes to pass a tax credit for working families.

There are very fundamental differences between our parties and they are very much on display today. I urge all of my colleagues in this Chamber to understand that the very people who are steamrolling this particular bill through this Chamber today in the form of a rule vowed to kill it just several days ago. That would be very powerful proof if we had a jury and we had a trial here.

The very people that are pushing this measure today vowed several days ago that it would not be.