Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Sanders

Amendment No. 14: Page 85, Line 3, after the dollar amount

insert (``increased by $1,000,000, decreased by

$1,000,000'').

Offered By: Mr. Sanders

Amendment No. 20: At the end of the bill, before the short

title, insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, I want to call the nation's attention to the exemplary work done by the staff of the Department of Veterans Affairs Clinic in Bennington, Vermont. Recently, the Federal Executive Association gave its ``Federal Employee of the Year Award'' to the entire Bennington VA Clinic staff.

As the Community Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) housed at the Vermont Veterans Home in Bennington, the facility and its staff serves the primary health care needs of eligible veterans in the region of southwestern Vermont. Over 1800 veterans in Vermont get exceptional medical care from Dr. Peter King and his colleagues in the clinic. As a sign of their remarkable dedication to the health and well-being of veterans, the Bennington VA Clinic was rated among the top ten clinics in the nation in ten of twelve categories. Ranking so highly among the more than 850 community-based VA clinics is a clear indication of the extraordinary work done by the Bennington staff,

Established in 1998, the Bennington VA Clinic affords veterans a single primary care provider to coordinate their care on an ongoing basis. It, along with the Fort Ethan Allen CBOC in Colchester, the CBOC in Rutland, and the CBOC in Littleton, NH (which serves veterans in the St. Johnsbury area), makes primary medical care more accessible to those who cannot always make the long journey to our excellent VA facilities in White River Junction.

We in Vermont are proud both of our veterans, and of the dedicated people who honor them by meeting their medical needs.

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize that two businessmen in Vermont, Steve Birge and Mark Curran, the owners of Black River Produce of Proctorsville, VT, were recently selected runners-up for the National Small Business Person of the Year by the Small Business Administration.

Twenty-five years ago Steve Birge began Black River Produce, today a $27 million produce company, when he saw the poor quality of the produce used in the local restaurant in which he worked. Black River originally delivered fresh, local produce to local restaurants in the Proctorsville area of central Vermont. But after he met Mark Curran (while hitchhiking), the two expanded the company, working with local farmers so that they could supply restaurants with the freshest and most healthful produce available. Today, Black River delivers high- quality produce not only throughout Vermont, but also into parts of western New Hampshire, northern Massachusetts, and eastern New York. It supplies not just restaurants, but grocery stores, schools, hospitals, ski areas, and nursing homes.

Black River Produce has sales of more than $27 million a year, a work force of 100 employees, and a fleet of 30 refrigerated trucks and two tractor trailers.

I salute Black River Produce's commitment to providing its customers with the highest

quality foods. The company distributes high-quality Vermont foods, supporting not only local farmers, but other small businesses such as Grafton Cheese, Cold Hollow Cider Mill, and products from Vermont Butter and Cheese. They are an integral part of the Vermont Fresh Network, which links local farms to local chefs.

Although during out-of-season periods (Vermont, after all, has long winters) Black River distributes produce from out of State, and although it buys fish in Boston, its commitment to local agriculture and local business is noteworthy. In a time when both agribusiness and outsourcing have wrought havoc with traditional American family farms and with American businesses, I salute the remarkable accomplishment of Black River Produce in supporting local access to locally produced foods. Steve Birge and Mark Curran, and their many employees, have shown businesses around the nation that distributing the products from family farms is and can be good business, and that profits can flow both from helping local businesses, and from providing consumers with healthful foods.

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to recognize that two businessmen in Vermont, Steve Birge and Mark Curran, the owners of Black River Produce of Proctorsville, Vermont, were recently selected runners-up for the National Small Business Person of the Year by the Small Business Administration.

Twenty-five years ago Steve Birge began Black River Produce, today a $27 million produce company, when he saw the poor quality of the produce used in the local restaurant in which he worked. Black River originally delivered fresh, local produce to local restaurants in the Proctorsville area of central Vermont. But after he met Mark Curran (while hitchhiking!), the two expanded the company, working with local farmers so that they could supply restaurants with the freshest and most healthful produce available. Today, Black River delivers high- quality produce not only throughout Vermont, but also into parts of western New Hampshire, northern Massachusetts, and eastern New York. It supplies not just restaurants, but grocery stores, schools, hospitals, ski areas, and nursing homes.

Black River Produce has sales of more than $27 million a year, a work force of 100 employees, and a fleet of 30 refrigerated trucks and two tractor trailers.

I salute Black River Produce's commitment to providing its customers with the highest quality foods. The company distributes high-quality Vermont foods, supporting not only local farmers, but other small businesses such as Grafton Cheese, Cold Valley apples, and products from Vermont Butter and Cheese. They are an integral part of the Vermont Fresh Network, which links local farms to local chefs.

Although during out-of-season periods (Vermont, after all, has long winters) Black River distributes produce from out of state, and although it buys fish in Boston, its commitment to local agriculture and local business is noteworthy. In a time when both agribusiness and outsourcing have wrought havoc with traditional American family farms and with American businesses, I salute the remarkable accomplishment of Black River Produce in supporting local access to locally produced foods. Steve Birge and Mark Curran, and their many employees, have shown businesses around the nation that distributing the products from family farms is and can be good business, and that profits can flow both from helping local businesses, and from providing consumers with healthful foods.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and applaud the gentleman for all the good work he is doing for the United States.

Mr. Chairman, no Member in this body disagrees that so long as our troops remain in Iraq, they should have the resources they need in order to protect their lives. We have not done well in this area up to this point, and we must do better.

Further, in my judgment, the Bush administration has done a terrible job in keeping faith with our veterans. This bill makes a start in improving that situation, but we have a very long way to go in that area, especially with regard to veterans health care.

Mr. Chairman, there are a lot of good things in this bill, and there are in my view portions of this bill that are not good and that are very wasteful of taxpayer money.

Most importantly, however, is what is lacking in this legislation, and that is there is no demand in this bill for the President to provide us with an exit strategy from Iraq, a timetable as to how we can get out. Since the war in Iraq began, we have lost 790 men and women, over 4,500 have been wounded; and we are spending billions every month.

Meanwhile, anti-American feelings are growing throughout the Muslim world, breeding more potential terrorists, and we are becoming increasingly isolated from our long-term allies. Significantly, in a recent U.S. Government-sponsored poll, 82 percent of the Iraqi people indicated that they now disapprove of the U.S. and allied military being in their country; 82 percent disapprove. The war in Iraq, in my view, is not helping us in the very difficult struggle against international terrorism. In many ways, it is making a bad situation worse.

The time is long overdue for President Bush to develop an exit strategy as to when the Iraqi people will really be allowed to govern themselves. It is not good enough for the U.S. to install Iraqi figureheads who do not have the support or confidence of the Iraqi people. The President must also tell us when the U.N. and the international community will be helping rebuild Iraq. That should not only be the burden of our soldiers and our taxpayers. President Bush must do all that he can to internationalize the transition situation.

Lastly, Mr. Chairman, and most importantly, the President must begin to tell us when American troops will begin coming home. We have lost 790 men and women already, 4,500 have been wounded, many thousands of Iraqi men, women and children are dead. We need an exit strategy to get our troops home as soon as feasible.

Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize today a woman who is, at one and the same time, exceptional and representative. Bonnie Gainer has served with great dedication as director of the Rutland County Women's Network. Originally the Battered Women's Shelter, this organization has been a mainstay for women who seek counsel, help, and often a safe haven, from abusive relationships.

Bonnie Gainer is exceptional in both the depth of her commitment to women in need, and her ability to organize both staff and community so that those women can find the support and assistance that they all too often desperately require. But in another sense, she is representative: all across Rutland, all across Vermont, all across this nation, women respond and have been responding to the inhospitable condition in which too many of their sisters live.

Physical and mental abuse is, tragically, widespread in America. It is not limited to women, of course, but with Greater frequency than most can imagine wives, girlfriends and daughters find themselves trapped in difficult

and dangerous relationships. It is both a point of pride--in the good work they do--and despair--that the number is so large--that I report that the Women's Network has sheltered women in Rutland for 1087 bed- nights in the past three months alone.

For a decade and a half Bonnie Gainer has led the effort to provide a haven and an alternative to women who are abused. She has been a bulwark in the community, a truly essential resource for hundreds and hundreds of women. She is a remarkable woman, and I salute her, and the many, many other women who support each other in times of desperate need.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk today about an essential element in our national life, America's credit unions. They are one of the most vital, one of the most democratic, institutions in America, and yet time and again credit unions are overlooked and even ignored by the mainstream media. But I know, as tens of millions across the Nation know, that credit unions are healthy, thriving, and essential to the prosperity of the Nation and the well-being of millions of families.

The principle behind credit unions is simple. A group of people join together to pool some of their resources; in turn, those resources are available as low-cost loans to the members of the group. Without the need to make a profit, without heavy advertising costs, without huge bonus packages to corporate executives, credit unions can provide loans at rates lower than other financial institutions. And they also can provide loans to those who might otherwise be turned away from conventional banking institutions.

Credit unions are cooperatively owned by those who deposit money in them, not by `investors' who want to make a profit from loaning money. They are democratic, owned and run by their members. And anyone who makes a deposit is a member.

Although the concept of coming together to pool resources dates back to ancient times, the modern credit union movement began in the mid- nineteenth century, when economic depression, massive crop failures, and especially harsh winters created horrendous conditions for rural and working people in Europe. The first credit union dates from 1850 in Germany. Quickly, the idea spread across Europe.

In 1901, in Quebec, the Canadian province neighboring my State of Vermont, the first credit union in North America was established by Alphonse Desjardins in a town called Levis. It was called La Caisse Populaire de Levis, and like its European counterparts it made credit available to all sorts of people who could not get loans from banks: small farmers, working families, and renters who had no collateral.

In 1908, inspired by that model, the first credit union in the United States was founded. Parishioners of St. Mary's Church in New Hampshire, Vermont's neighbor to the east, formed the first U.S. credit union, with help from Desjardins. (Today, St. Mary's Bank is still a credit union and still vital, with more than $450 million in assets.)

In 1909 Edward Filene, a progressive businessman whose department stores are still prominent in the Northeast--one is located in Burlington, Vermont--helped develop and enact the Massachusetts Credit Union Act. Many states followed Massachusetts in passing similar legislation. By 1930 there were 32 states with credit union laws, and there were a total of 1,100 credit unions nationwide.

The depression, of course, made credit more important than ever to hard-pressed working people. In 1934, the Congress passed the Federal Credit Union Act. When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the law in 1934, he said its purpose would be ``to make more available to people of small means credit for provident purposes through a national system of cooperative credit.''

Credit unions grew and flourished. By 1960 more than 6 million people were members at one or more of over 10,000 federal credit unions.

I was proud to be an original sponsor, and to work side-by-side with credit unions and their members during a long and contentious struggle in 1998. We were successful in that fight, and passed the law that preserved the right of consumers to join credit unions. So, credit union membership remained open to many millions of Americans.

Today, I am pleased to report, credit unions are stronger than ever, and serving more people than ever. There are over 12,000 credit

unions in existence today. They have $316 billion in assets--and they serve 70 million people in our nation.

The credit union movement's long and great history of making credit available to people of small means has been based on the same central idea from the outset. Credit unions enable everyday people to band together for the common good, allowing them to make basic financial services available through not-for-profit and democratic means.

In our day, unhappily, tragically, the conditions that led to the beginning of the credit union movement in Germany more than a century- and-a-half ago still exist. Families, even with two and three workers in a household, even with people holding multiple jobs, often cannot pay their bills, their health care, their pharmaceutical costs.

Our economy is booming--but only for some. Corporate profits are up, productivity is up and stock prices are relatively high. The wealthiest people in our country have never had it so good. The richest one percent of our population now owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent, and the typical CEO of a major corporation now earns over 300 times more than the average worker.

But workers across the country are often working longer hours for lower wages than they earned twenty-five years ago. Thirty percent of our workers earn poverty or near-poverty wages. In fact, low-wage American workers are now the lowest paid in the industrialized world. One out of every five children in America now lives in poverty, compared to one out of seven twenty-five years ago. Thirty-four million Americans live in hunger or in families so poor that parents skip meals so their children can eat.

Ordinary Americans are struggling. They need allies like the credit union movement.

Meanwhile, the for-profit financial services industry has left many ordinary Americans behind. Mergers have led to larger institutions serving higher-end customers, the loss of local ownership and control, less competition, higher fees, and the lack of life-line financial services to moderate- and low-income consumers.

There are 20 million American adults who do not have checking or savings accounts. Some have been priced out by high fees. Others simply can't get small loans from banks. When their cars break down, they borrow the money to fix them from wherever they can--like payday loans. Banks often think that the best way for working people to get a loan is to draw heavily on their credit cards--cards that often charge hefty monthly penalty fees on top of close to thirty percent interest rates!

So America's credit unions are just as vital today as they were when Desjardins helped organize that first credit union in New Hampshire.

Yet even though credit unions serve seventy million people--perhaps because they serve seventy million people--they are under attack by the for-profit financial establishment.

Today, huge corporate banks are hard at work lobbying Congress to tax credit unions. Unscrupulously, the banking lobby has even questioned the safety and soundness of credit unions. They hammer away and hammer away at their theme: ``It is not fair that credit unions are not taxed. They get a federal subsidy.'' Yet it is the banks, with their multi- million dollar CEO's, their rising profits, and their rising ATM surcharges, that come before Congress to ask for huge bailouts for bad overseas investments. When the banks say that credit unions should pay a billion a year in taxes, they conveniently forget to mention that privately owned banks have received hundreds of billions in taxpayer support in the last fifteen years, ranging from outright bailouts of failed domestic banks to underwriting of their losses abroad.

Credit unions are tax exempt for good reasons, and not because anyone is doing them a special favor. Credit unions are tax-exempt because they are not-for-profit institutions. And under federal law, and rightly in my view, non-profits are exempt from taxes: churches, hospitals, libraries, universities--and credit unions.

For almost all of the past century, credit unions brought people together, allowed them to share their resources, and served the financial needs of their members in good times and bad.

It is my belief that credit unions and their members have the potential to be an even more important economic, social and political force in our country in the decades ahead. In a nation facing forces that threaten to rip our economic well-being apart--downsizing, outsourcing, shipping jobs abroad--credit unions remind us that we can work together for the common good. They show us, day after day, that it is not necessary to incorporate the profit motive into every aspect of American life. In fact, credit unions show us how, if profits are not involved, people can come together to help themselves, sustain themselves, and create healthy communities.

I never make excuses for the fact that I am a strong supporter of credit unions. I want to see credit unions grow and flourish because I believe credit unions are good for the working people of Vermont and good for America.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to share with you some information regarding an outstanding program in my State that helps schools save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in energy costs, while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pollutants.

Since 1993, the Vermont Superintendents Association's School Energy Management Program has assisted Vermont schools with the implementation of cost-effective energy choices and efficiency measures.

Energy cost savings realized by the more than 125 public and private schools which the School Energy Management Program has assisted now exceed an estimated $950,000 annually. A significant proportion of these annual savings is due to the 23 public schools which utilize biomass wood chips for all or part of their heating requirements.

The concept of the School Energy Management Program was developed by the Vermont Department of Public Service in 1993 and the Vermont Superintendents Association agreed to host the program. The program is supported by the Federal Government via various grant funds; the Vermont Department of Public Service; the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation; the Vermont Department of Education; Efficiency Vermont, the statewide electric efficiency utility; the Montpelier-based Biomass Energy Resource Center; the Vermont Department of Health; the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust's School Management Resource Center; the state's electric and natural gas utilities; and private architectural and engineering firms.

Participation in the program is voluntary and core consulting and assessment services of the School Energy Management Program have traditionally been provided to schools at no direct cost to Vermont school district taxpayers and with no compensation or ``shared savings'' demands. The program takes pride in ``saving real taxpayers real money'' for the long term, while improving the educational environment for Vermont students and saving energy.

The program works to accomplish on-site energy assessments and provide energy conservation consulting services to schools. The program's work is not limited to one energy source or type. It includes: biomass heating, including ongoing support to the 23 Vermont public schools which now utilize biomass wood chip heating systems; electric energy efficiency; advice concerning electric, natural gas, propane, and fuel oil water and space heating fuel choices; and school kitchen equipment efficiency.

One of the program's most remarkable components is the development of wood chip heating systems, an environmentally sound energy choice saving money for Vermont schools and Vermont taxpayers. These systems provide many benefits to Vermont schools and set an excellent example for schools and public buildings in Vermont and across the country.

Wood chip heating can provide significant cost savings to many schools: Vermont schools currently save over $366,000 in fuel costs annually by utilizing wood chip heat.

More than 10 percent of public school students in Vermont currently attend wood heated schools and in Vermont there are now 23 public schools which use wood chips for heat and two more schools will start using wood chips for heat in late 2004.

Wood chips are a renewable source of energy, currently saving Vermont schools over 720,000 gallons of fossil fuel annually by utilizing wood chip heat.

Wood chip utilization recycles carbon that already exists in the natural carbon cycle; therefore no new carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere from this biomass energy source.

Wood chips are supplied from Vermont and the adjacent region; hence money spent on wood chips stays in the local economy and supports jobs in the area's forest products industry.

For buildings 50,000 sq. ft. and larger, fuel cost savings likely more than offset capital financing costs combined with additional maintenance staff time requirements; hence, in many cases, a system can ``pay for itself'' in 5 to 10 years.

I enthusiastically commend the Vermont Superintendents Association's School Energy Management Program for setting an excellent example for school systems and other public and private facilities throughout Vermont and across the country. Mr. Speaker, it is my intention to introduce legislation to encourage schools across the country to take advantage of their innovative, environmentally sound and cost-effective heating and energy solutions. It is imperative that American schools save money on energy costs for their taxpayers, help improve environmental conditions related to heat and energy production, and help support their local job markets in the process.

Mr. Speaker, as the only independent in the House of Representatives, not a Democrat, not a Republican, I want to take this opportunity to share some ideas that many Americans may not get a chance to hear very often. One of the concerns and one of the most important issues that I think is facing this country is increased corporate control over the media and the fact that fewer and fewer large corporations control what we see, what we hear and what we read.

What concerns me about that is not just that, for example, the Disney Corporation has just announced that it will not distribute Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. They will not distribute that as had been previously arranged, because it is apparently too critical of President Bush and that it also might endanger some tax breaks that the Disney Corporation gets in Florida through President Bush's brother, the governor, there. That concerns me. That is not my major concern.

And it is not just that recently, as I think most Americans know, Sinclair Broadcasting, a right-wing company, decided that it would not carry Ted Koppel and Nightline's sensitive and respectful tribute to the over 700 young men and women who have been killed in Iraq, because somehow Sinclair believed that that was too political, too antiwar. Apparently it is not appropriate for the American people to actually see the face of war and the men and women who have died in that war.

But that is not my major concern about corporate control over the media and it is not just that when we turn on commercial talk radio, what we hear almost always, and with few exceptions, is the fact that there are extreme right-wing voices out there who pound away at right- wing themes and despite the fact that our Nation is almost equally politically divided, for millions of Americans, their only option on talk radio is one right-wing extremist after another. That is a concern, but not my major concern.

My major concern when I talk about corporate control over the media is that while we get inundated every single day by stories of Michael Jackson or Kobe Bryant or Martha Stewart or Britney Spears or a host of other celebrities, what we do not hear about much in the media and what we do not hear much about on the floor of Congress is the reality of what is happening to the middle class of this country, what is happening to ordinary working people. That, in fact, is the most important issue that we should all be talking about. It is the most important issue that the media should be focusing on and that Congress should be discussing.

So let me talk a little bit about some of those issues today, not about Michael Jackson, not about Britney Spears, but about what is happening to the middle class of this country.

Mr. Speaker, let me be very blunt. The United States of America today is rapidly on its way to becoming three separate Nations, not one Nation, but three separate Nations. One part of that Nation is an increasingly wealthy elite composed of a small number of people with incredible wealth and economic and political power; a small number of people, tremendous wealth, tremendous power.

Then we have the second part of America, the largest part, which is the middle class, the vast majority of our people; and that middle class tragically is shrinking, getting smaller. It is a middle class where the average American worker is now working longer hours for lower wages; and that is what is happening to the middle class.

And then the third segment of our society are those people at the bottom, and that is a growing number of Americans who are living today in abject poverty, barely keeping their heads above water, barely paying the bills that they need in order to survive. And those are the three Americas: a handful of great wealth, great power; a shrinking middle class; and more and more people who are living in poverty.

Mr. Speaker, there has always been a wealthy elite in this country. That is not new, and there has always been in this country and in every country a gap between the rich and the poor; but the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in this country have not been seen since the 1920s. In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian Nation with a growing and expanding middle class, we are becoming a Nation with by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction.

Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The CEOs of the largest corporations in America today earn more than 500 times what their employees are making. While workers are being squeezed, while workers are being forced to pay more and more for health insurance, while their pensions are being cut back and promises made to them being swept back under the rug, while retiree benefits are being cut, while workers' jobs in this country are being sent abroad, the CEOs of the largest corporations make out like bandits. Their allegiance is not to their employees; it is not to the American people. It is to their own bottom line.

I am not just talking about the crooks who ran Enron, WorldCom or Arthur Andersen, all of those companies. I am talking about the highly respected CEOs, like the retired head of General Electric, Jack Welch, who, when he retired in 2000, received $123 million in compensation, and $10 million a year in pension for the rest of his life; and he did that after throwing many, many thousands of American workers out on the streets as he moved his plants abroad.

And I am talking about people like Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, who received $366 million in compensation while slashing the pensions of his employees. And I am talking about Charles A. Heimbold, Jr., of Bristol-Myers Squibb, who received almost $75 million in 2001 while helping to make it impossible for many seniors in this country to pay the outrageously high prices that his company and other companies are charging for prescription drugs.

Mr. Speaker, today this Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families who constitute 1/100th of 1 percent of our population receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in this country; 1/100th of 1 percent earn

almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States.

New data from the Congressional Budget Office show that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 1979 to 2000. In other words, what we are seeing is movement in the wrong direction. The gap is so wide that the wealthiest 1 percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent.

According to data from the Congressional Budget Office between 1973 and 2000, the average real income, inflation accounted for income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent and the income of the top 1/100th of 1 percent rose by 599 percent. Middle class shrinking, people working longer hours for lower wages, the very, very wealthiest people in this country seeing huge increases in their income.

Mr. Speaker, in my view, growing income and wealth inequality is not what America is supposed to be about. A Nation in which so few have so much and so many have so little is not what America is supposed to be about.

Mr. Speaker, it is increasingly common to see people in our country in today's economy work not at just one job but at two jobs, and occasionally it is not uncommon to see American workers have three jobs. Is that what this global economy in which we were promised so much is supposed to be about?

When some of us were growing up, the expectation for the middle class was that one worker in a family could work 40 hours a week and earn enough income to pay the family's bills. One worker, 40 hours a week. Well, in my State of Vermont and all over this country, it is increasingly uncommon when that occurs. In my State and all over America, the vast majority of married couples have both husband and wife out in the workforce. Sometimes that is the way they want it to be, but more often than not it is the way it has to be because inadequate wages and inadequate income require two breadwinners to work incredibly long hours in order to pay the family's bills. And then with husband and wife out working, we wonder and we are surprised when kids do not get the attention that they need and when kids get into trouble. Well, we should not wonder too much as to why that happens.

Mr. Speaker, in terms of what is happening to the middle class, we have lost over 2.6 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years; and with 8.4 million workers unemployed, unemployment today is at 5.7 percent officially. In real truth, however, the unemployment numbers are much higher than that because there are a lot of unemployed and underemployed people who do not fall within the official unemployment statistics. These are the people who are working part-time because they cannot find full-time jobs, and those numbers are soaring. We have seen an increase of 300,000 part-time jobs just last month. And there are people who are not counted as part of the unemployment statistics because they have given up looking for work when they are located in high unemployment areas.

Furthermore, there are millions of people today who are counted as employed, but are working at jobs that are far below their educational levels and their skill levels; but they also count as part of those people who are employed.

Now, when we talk about unemployment and we talk about the economy, one of the more important points to be made is that since the beginning of the Bush administration we have lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs in our country; 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. That is an issue that I want to spend a moment on because what is happening in manufacturing today is a disaster for this country and bodes very, very poorly for our future.

The bottom line is, and Congress must finally recognize this, that our trade policies are failing. They are failing. NAFTA has failed, our membership in the WTO has failed; and perhaps above all, permanent normal trade relations with China, PNTR with China, has failed. The time is now, and it is long overdue for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up to editorial writers all over this country, all of whom have told us year after year after year how wonderful unfettered free trade would be.

Well, they were wrong. The answer is in. They were wrong. These people told us that unfettered free trade would create new jobs. Instead, we have lost millions of jobs, and we have run up a record- breaking trade deficit. They told us that unfettered free trade would improve the standard of living of the middle class; they were wrong. Real wages have gone down or have stagnated for millions of American workers.

Let us be very clear. The decline of manufacturing is one of the reasons why our middle class is shrinking and why wages for middle- class workers are in decline. When we talk about the loss of almost 3 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years, we should appreciate that the vast majority of that job loss has taken place in manufacturing. Further, the collapse of manufacturing is one of the reasons that real inflation accounted for wages have declined.

Today, American workers in the private sector are earning 8 percent less than they were in 1973. Now, just think for a moment, just for one moment let us take a look at this rather incredible piece of information. Every American knows that in the last 30 years there has been an explosion in technology. We all know what computers have done. We know what e-mail has done; we know what faxes and cell phone and satellite communications have done. We know what robotics in factories has done. In other words, we are a much more productive Nation than we were 30 years ago, and almost every worker in our economy is producing more.

Given the fact that productivity is expanding and increasing, that technology is exploding, what common sense might suggest is that workers today would be working fewer hours and earning more money because of the increase in productivity. But the reality is exactly the opposite. Why is it that in 1973, the average American worker, in inflation accounted for wages, made $14.09 per hour, while in 1998, 15 years later, he or she made only $12.70 per hour, a significant decline in real wages? And that is, to my mind, one of the most important economic issues that we have to deal with, productivity going up, technology exploding, and yet the real wages for millions of American workers is declining and the middle class is shrinking.

Let us be honest and acknowledge that manufacturing in this country today is in a state of collapse. In the last 3 years, we have lost 16 percent of all manufacturing jobs, 16 percent in the last 3 years, and we are back to levels that were last seen in the 1950s, early 1950s. We only have 14.3 million manufacturing jobs.

And, Mr. Speaker, here is the tragedy. People would not be all that upset if when we lost manufacturing jobs, if the new jobs that were created were paying as much or more as the manufacturing jobs that we lost. But the fact of the matter is that when we are losing manufacturing jobs, we are losing jobs that pay in almost every instance a living wage. In Vermont manufacturing, for example, pays over $42,000 a year. That is a good wage and those jobs often have good benefits. And what is happening now is that the new jobs that are being created which are replacing the old jobs that we are losing are paying significantly lower wages with significantly lower benefits than the manufacturing jobs that we have lost.

According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, the new jobs being created in America on average pay 21 percent less than the jobs we are losing. So despite what some politicians and what corporate leaders might tell us, the trend is not toward better-paying jobs. The trend is toward lower-paying jobs with fewer benefits.

When we talk about the economy not only for the current generation, but for our children and for our grandchildren, the key question that we should be asking is what kind of new jobs will be created in the future? Will these jobs be good paying? Will they be challenging jobs that a well-educated American population can jump into with enthusiasm? Are those the kinds of jobs that will be available for our kids and for our grandchildren, or is it,

in fact, going to be something very different? Because when we talk about the future of America, to a large degree that is what we are talking about. What kinds of new jobs will be created in the future?

In that regard, the Bureau of Labor Statistics every 2 years does an important study forecasting the top ten occupations that will have the largest job growth in a 10-year period. In this case, the Bureau's forecast which was released on February 11, 2004, covers the years 2002 through 2012, a 10-year period.

And let me quote from Business Week Magazine as to what the results of that study showed: ``According to a forecast released February 11 by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, a large share of new jobs will be in occupations that don't require a lot of education and pay below average.'' And pay below average. Those are the jobs, the newly created jobs, that our children and our grandchildren will be looking forward to receiving, jobs that require minimal education and pay low wages. The fastest growing of all of those jobs will be for medical assistance, nursing aides, orderlies and attendants, jobs that require nothing more and ``moderate on-the-job training.''

So the key point here is that instead of creating an economy where future generations will be challenged with jobs that require good education, good skills, the new jobs that are being created will require high school degrees. They will be low wage. They will have minimal benefits. In fact, of the ten occupations pinpointed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of them require only a high school degree; two require college degrees; and one an associate's degree, a 2-year education in college.

And that is an issue, in my view, that we should be paying a great deal of attention to because, Mr. Speaker, it tells us that a profound lie is being perpetrated on the American people. It tells us that unless we fundamentally change our public policies and do that very quickly, the middle class will continue to shrink and the jobs being created for the coming generations will be, by and large, low-wage and unskilled work, and that, in my view, is not what we want the future of America to be.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the economy and when we talk about trade and manufacturing, let us remember that in the year 2003, the United States had a $500 billion trade deficit, $500 billion record- breaking trade deficit. In 2003, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, China, was over $120 billion and that number, trade deficit with China, is projected to increase in future years. In recent years that deficit has gone up and up and up. In 1990, it was $11.5 billion; in 2001, it was $83 billion; 2002, $103 billion; in 2003, it was $120 billion.

The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow to $330 billion in 5 years, and that means, of course, that we are importing more and more and the gap between what we are importing and what we are exporting is growing wider and wider.

Mr. Speaker, our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent-paying jobs, it is squeezing wages. Many employers are making it very clear that if workers do not accept cuts in their health care coverage or do not take cuts in wages that they will be moving their operations to China, to Mexico, to India, or to other developing countries. Today, wage growth is the slowest in 40 years. Millions and millions of Americans are working incredibly long hours, and yet they are not making anything more than they made a year ago.

One of the sectors of our economy, and we do not talk about this too much, where people are being hurt the most is among young workers without a college education. Not everybody goes to college. For entry level workers without a college level education, the real wages that they have received dropped by over 28 percent from 1979 to 1997, which are the latest figures that I have seen. And the drop for women during that period was only 18 percent. And the reason for that is quite clear.

Twenty-five or 30 years ago, if someone did not go to college, and most people did not, what they would have been able to do is to go out and get a job in manufacturing, and millions of workers did just that. And with those wages and with those benefits, people without a college degree were able to enjoy a middle class life-style. They were able to take care in an adequate way for their kids. They were able to save up so that their kids could have a better life than they did.

But all of that is changing now, and when young people leave high school and do not go to college, the job opportunities for them are most often very limited. There are jobs available at McDonald's, at Wal-Mart, at service industry jobs like that, but unfortunately those jobs pay low wages and do not allow people to earn a middle class income.

Mr. Speaker, what is happening to our economy today can be best illustrated by the fact that not so many years ago, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and workers in General Motors earned and still earn a living wage somewhere around $26 an hour with very strong benefits and with a strong union to represent their needs. Today, in contrast, our largest employer, private employer, is Wal- Mart, and that is what has happened to the American economy. We have gone from a General Motors economy where people produce real products, earn good wages with good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy where people earn low wages and minimal benefits.

Today Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 an hour or $13,861 annual. These are wages, paid by the largest employer in America, that are below the poverty level. And that is what the American economy is about today. The largest employer in America, Wal-Mart, pays its workers below- poverty wages. In fact, many of these workers qualify for the Federal Food Stamp program, which means that Wal-Mart is being directly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.

Obviously Wal-Mart is not the only company receiving welfare from the taxpayers of this country, but they are the largest. Wal-Mart has been sued by 27 States for not paying the overtime pay their workers are entitled to. And not so long ago, Federal agents raided their headquarters, and 60 of their stores across the country, arresting 300 illegal workers in 21 States. Wal-Mart is vehemently anti-union and will do everything that it can to make sure that workers in a Wal-Mart store do not have the rights to collectively bargain.

Mr. Speaker, a recent study indicated that for every Wal-Mart superstore that employed 200 workers, taxpayers were subsidizing their low-paid workers to the tune of $420,000 per year, which equates to about $2,100 per employee. In other words, we have the absurd situation that many of the employees at Wal-Mart need Federal help in order to keep their families alive, whether it is food stamps, whether it is health care for their children or for themselves, whether it is subsidized housing. So you have the taxpayers of this country pouring huge amounts of money into subsidizing Wal-Mart's employees.

Meanwhile, and what an irony this is, five out of the 10 wealthiest people in America are in the Walton family, the family that owns Wal- Mart. They are each worth, each one of the five, are worth $20 billion each, collectively $100 billion. And last year the Walton family of Wal-Mart saw an $8.5 billion increase in their wealth. So what you have is one of the richest families in America growing much richer. We are seeing Wal-Mart workers earning subsistence wages, and you are seeing the taxpayers of this country forced to subsidize those workers because they cannot earn a living wage in Wal-Mart.

What an outrage. One of the richest families in America sees a huge increase in their wealth, and they need Federal help in order to keep their workers alive. This is something that should not continue to go on.

That, Mr. Speaker, is what the transformation of the American economy is all about. We have gone from an economy where workers used to work producing real products, making middle-class wages with good benefits, to a Wal-Mart-style economy where our largest employer pays workers poverty wages with minimal benefits, and, in the process, has a huge turnover.

Incredibly, since 1989, 98 percent of the new jobs created in the United States have been in the service sector,

where on average workers earn substantially less than they do in manufacturing.

Mr. Speaker, before I talk about China and my great concerns about our current trade relations with China, let me say a few words about the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. That is an agreement, as you know, that the President wants to expand into a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas.

In 1994, the United States had a $2.4 billion trade surplus with Mexico. That was pre-NAFTA. Today, 10 years later, we have a $36 billion trade deficit with Mexico, one of the results of NAFTA. Through the end of 2002, the United States lost over 879,000 jobs as a result of NAFTA, jobs that formerly existed and were eliminated, as well as those created in other countries instead of here as a result of the growing U.S. trade deficit. Nearly 80 percent of those job losses were in manufacturing industries.

Now, some people, they think, well, if NAFTA was bad for the United States in terms of job loss, then it must have been good for our friends in Mexico and Mexican workers. Well, guess again. NAFTA has been a disaster for the poor and working people of Mexico.

Since 1994, when NAFTA went into existence, the number of people classified as poor or extremely poor has risen from 62 million to 69 million out of a population of 100 million. Since 1994, Mexico's agricultural sector has lost well over 1 million jobs, and NAFTA has played a major role in decimating rural employment on farms in Mexico.

Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in hindsight, it did not take a genius to predict that unfettered free trade with countries like China would be a disaster. In all honesty, if we check the Congressional Record, what is happening now in terms of trade and its impacts on American workers is precisely what many of us predicted would happen.

Why should we be surprised about what is happening? With educated, hard-working Chinese workers available at 20 cents an hour or 30 cents an hour or 40 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of bringing their Chinese-made products back into the United States tariff-free, why would American multinational corporations not shut down their plants in this country and move to China? Why would they not?

Essentially, the trade agreement we established with China says to them, throw American workers out on the street. Go to China; hire cheap labor and bring your product back here. That is what many of us predicted over the years when the debate about most favored nation status with China was taking place; and that, of course, is precisely what has occurred.

Mr. Speaker, General Electric, as we all know, is one of the largest corporations in America. Here is what their CEO, a gentleman named Jeffrey Immelt, had to say about China at a GE investor meeting on December 6, 2002, a year and a half ago. This is Mr. Immelt, CEO of GE: ``When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there.'' This is what he is saying to GE plant managers.

Then he continues: ``I am a nut on China. Our sourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive.''

What Mr. Immelt is saying is, frankly, what almost every CEO of a major corporation in America is saying, and they are saying, see you, American workers. We are out of here. We do not have to pay you a living wage. We are going to China.

China, for CEOs of American corporations, is a wonderful, wonderful place to do business. Do they have to worry about democratic rights in China? Of course not. If workers stand up for their rights, they go to jail. If workers try to form a union, they go to jail. There are virtually no environmental protection regulations in China, a very polluted country. So for corporations like General Electric, China becomes a wonderful place to work, and that is why they are moving there as fast as they can.

Should anybody in this country be surprised that Motorola, another major corporation in America, eliminated almost 43,000 jobs in this country in 2001, while investing $3.4 billion in China? Who is shocked that General Electric has thrown hundreds of thousands of American workers out on the street, while investing billions in China? Boeing, another great American corporation, has laid off 135,000 American workers, while it has increased outsource design work to China, Russia, and Japan.

In the last 30 years, General Motors has shrunk their U.S. workforce by over 250,000. IBM has signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 3 years. Honeywell is going to China. Ethan Allen Furniture is going to China. And on and on it goes. In fact, the exception to the rule is that company that says, we are going to grow jobs in the United States of America.

In terms of General Motors, just a few months ago that company announced plans to increase by 20-fold, 20 times, the number of auto parts it buys from China and uses in the U.S., Europe, Mexico, elsewhere, a 20-fold increase. According to the Detroit Free Press, ``GM, the world's largest auto maker, will more than double the number of parts it buys in China for cars it makes there, going from $2.8 billion for Chinese parts to $6 billion annually.''

There are people who believe that that move might be the beginning of the end for auto manufacturing in the United States and all of those decent-paying jobs that exist there.

Mr. Speaker, one of the most distressing aspects of this entire discussion regarding our economy is the degree to which the Bush administration has sold out the needs of American workers. Let me quote from a recent report written by Mr. Gregory Mankiw, the President's Chief Economic Advisor. Here is the man who is the President's major adviser on economic issues. Here is what he says on page 25 of the report that he sent to Congress: ``When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it, rather than produce it domestically.''

In case you did not fully get it, let me read it again: ``When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it, rather than to produce it domestically.''

Let us think for a moment what Mr. Mankiw, the President's Chief Economic Adviser, has just told the workers of the United States. What he has said is that companies should throw you out on the street because they can produce cheaper in China and in other countries, where wages are a fraction of the price that they in the United States of America. That is what companies should do. That is what the President's Chief Economic Adviser is telling corporations: go abroad, if you can produce cheaper.

What is wrong with that? Well, what happens to the many millions of American workers who lose their jobs? Well, apparently the President's economic adviser and the President himself are not worried too much about that. They are more worried about corporate profits and the ability of companies to produce with workers who are paid 30 cents an hour.

Over the years, Mr. Speaker, advocates of unfettered free trade have tried to gloss over the bad news about the decline in factory employment by promising us that a new high-tech economy was in the making.

In other words, American workers, do not worry. Yes, it is true you are going to lose jobs. In auto manufacturing, in steel, in textiles, in footwear, in almost every industry, you are going to lose those blue collar jobs. But you do not have to worry about that, because there is a new high-tech economy that is being developed, an information technology. You do not have to work in those loud, noisy factories. You and your kids are going to be able to have those wonderful jobs, high- paying jobs in quiet offices, and all you have to do is learn how to master the computer and become an expert in information technology, and those great jobs will be there for you and your kids.

We have heard that mantra over and over and over again: yes, we lose blue collar; but we are going to gain high-paying white collar jobs. We do not have to worry about that old economy any more. We have got a new economy coming.

Well, I think that many Americans are beginning to catch on that the people who told us that are dead wrong in

terms of the future of this country; that in fact not only have we lost and we will continue to lose good-paying blue collar manufacturing jobs, we are now at the cusp of beginning to lose millions of even better-paying white collar information technology jobs.

In 2003, the estimate is that the United States lost 234,000 information technology jobs. Many of them ended up in India, which saw a gain of over 152,000 information technology jobs.

When Americans argue with the phone company as to whether or not they are being ripped off, more often than not, they are going to be talking to somebody in India. When you are trying to figure out how to get your computer working again, as often as not you are going to be talking to somebody not in New York, not in L.A., but in India.

One of the new areas where information technology jobs are leaving the United States is in tax preparation. Tax experts say that Indian Chartered Accountants, and that is India's equivalent to our CPA, certified professional accountants will prepare 150,000 to 200,000 returns this year, up to 20,0000 something returns in 2003. In other words, so long as there is a skilled worker behind a computer, and there clearly are skilled workers in India, China, the former Soviet Union countries, they are prepared and will and can do the work that Americans used to do at a fraction of the wages that Americans have earned.

Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and development, and outsourcing in China. Recently, Intel Corporation Chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China. In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has our unfettered free trade cost us much of our textile industry, footwear industry, steel, tool and dye industry, electronics, furniture, as well as many, many other industries, it is now going to cost us, unless we change it, millions of high-tech jobs as well, and the future of our economy.

Lou Dobbs who, in my view, has done an excellent job on CNN talking about this issue, reported on a recent University of California at Berkeley study warning that as many as 14 million white collar jobs in the United States could be shipped overseas to India, China, and other countries, representing 11 percent of all U.S. employees. These jobs include over 2.8 million computer and math professionals with average salaries of over $60,000 a year, and over 2.1 million business and financial service support jobs with average annual salaries of over $52,000. And what the University of California at Berkeley study showed is that there is ``A ferocious new wave of outsourcing of white collar jobs'' which is sweeping across America. And we know why American companies will be going to India and elsewhere, because the wages are a fraction of what they are in this country.

In the U.S., a telephone operator earns $12.57 an hour; in India, less than a dollar an hour. A payroll clerk in the U.S. averages over $15 an hour, while in India, it is less than $2 an hour. An accountant in the U.S. makes over $23 an hour, while in India that wage is between $6 and $15 an hour.

Jobs most vulnerable to this new wave of outsourcing the researchers tell us include medical transcription services, stock market research for financial firms, customer service call centers, legal online database research, payroll and other back-office activities.

Mr. Speaker, last month, I held a town meeting in Montpelier, Vermont dealing with the issue of outsourcing, and we had many, many hundreds of workers who came to that meeting and a number of them were employed by National Life, an insurance company in Montpelier, and these workers felt betrayed, sold out by the fact that National Life had now outsourced a number of jobs from that company which were going to India. In fact, some of these workers were being asked to train their Indian counterparts.

Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear on this issue. The United States needs to have a strong and positive relationship with countries like China and India. I am not antiChinese; I have a lot of respect for the Chinese people. And I am not antiIndian; I have a lot of respect for the people of India. I am an internationalist. In fact, it is my view that not only the United States, but every other industrialized country on earth has a moral obligation to do everything that we can to address the terrible poverty that exists all over this world, where 1 billion people are living on less than a dollar a day, where children are dying of preventable diseases, where people do not have access to clean water, where people cannot get affordable prescription drugs and die of preventable diseases.

The United States has a moral obligation to work with those countries to improve their health care systems, their educational systems, their infrastructures, to do everything that we can to improve the standard of living of those people. But, Mr. Speaker, we do not have to destroy the middle class of this country and wipe out millions of decent-paying jobs to help poor people abroad. We can and should help poor people, but we do not have to destroy what is best in our economy.

Mr. Speaker, the issue here is whether we continue to be engaged in a race to the bottom where American wages and the quality of our jobs and our working conditions goes down, down, down, or whether we are asking poor people in the world to see their wages and working conditions go up, up, and up. And unfortunately, we are moving today in the wrong direction.

Mr. Speaker, by definition, a sensible and fair trade agreement works for both sides, not just for one. Trade is a good thing. It is a good thing when it benefits both parties. The New York Yankees do not engage in free trade by exchanging their top ballplayer for a third-string, minor leaguer. They do not say, hey, we are opening up our roster, you can take anybody you want, you give us anybody you want, because hey, that is what free trade is about. They trade for equal value. Every time we go shopping and every time we buy a product, we are trading money for a product, equal value. And that is what we have to do in terms of our overall trade policy.

Trade is good when it works for America and it works for the other country. It is not good when it throws American workers out on the street, when it lowers wages, and when the only beneficiaries of it are the CEOs of large corporations who make huge compensation packages, earn huge compensation packages at the expense of American workers.

Mr. Speaker, in order to address some of these problems, I have introduced two pieces of legislation that would move us forward in protecting the middle class of this country and the decent-paying jobs that we have. The first bill that I have introduced is H.R. 3228 which would repeal once and for all permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. It will acknowledge finally that our current trade policies with that country, with China are a failure and that we need a new beginning. I am happy to say that this tripartisan legislation has garnered well over 50 cosponsors, including 14 Republicans. So we are beginning to move forward in a tripartisan way to establish positive trade relations with China and not one that is costing us huge-paying jobs.

The second piece of legislation that I have introduced, H.R. 3888, will end corporate welfare for those corporations who are laying off American workers and moving to China and other low-wage countries.

Mr. Speaker, it is not acceptable to me that taxpayers of this country are providing tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to the same exact companies who are saying to American workers, bye- bye, we are off to China. That is an insult to our working people and an insult to the taxpayers of this country.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 10 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, May 10, 2004, at noon.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a resident of Vermont, Kathy Francis. I am not the first to recognize her merits. She has already been honored by the Vermont Foster and Adoptive Family Association as the Vermont Social Worker of the Year. In a week she will be recognized by the National Foster and Adoptive Families Association as National Social Worker of the Year.

We all know that our nation's future lies with its children. The young of today will be the adults of tomorrow. But being young is not always an easy or comfortable position: many children in America are at risk, and need adults--parents, relatives; teachers, social workers, families--to support and guide them.

Perhaps most at risk are those without birth parents. And it is toward these children that Kathy Francis has made a major, ongoing commitment. A child protective social worker for Vermont's Social and Rehabilitative Services Department for the past ten years, Kathy has worked overtime, and with great dedication, to make sure that the children she serves, and the families they are placed with, have support of every kind. That these children will move forward to live rich and productive lives, and that the families they live with will surround them with support and love (and will receive love in return), has much to do

with Kathy's ardor, perseverance and devotion to these Vermont children.

She is profoundly deserving of being honored Social Worker of the Year, and Vermont is greatly proud of her.

Mr. Speaker, we live in a nation in which the mass media are so obsessed with the antics of celebrities like Michael Jackson and Donald Trump that we often forget that courage and heroism are all around us, that for many of our friends and neighbors each day is a difficult but victorious struggle against tough conditions.

I want to talk today about Donna Covais, a Vermont woman who represents what is best in American daily life. Seven years ago, Donna began to lose her sight as a result of diabetic retinopathy. A year later, she was blind. Of course, she was afflicted by despair: who wouldn't be, in those conditions?

But she did not succumb to that despair. Formerly a florist, she began taking courses at the Community College of Vermont, and through the intercession of a local business, Gardener's Supply Company, she was encouraged to begin, even though blind, a garden. What a success her foray into gardening has been! Blindness has not impeded her from making the world bloom--or from playing a vital role in our social community.

Donna Covais has won a local prize for the best use of gardening space in Burlington. She has drawn upon her experience and made a gardening video for the Vermont Association for the Blind. She has traveled to Virginia to speak before the American Horticultural Therapy Association. Donna has recently completed her degree program in horticultural therapy at Johnson State College; she's even done a practicum in the world beyond the safe harbors of college classrooms, at Essex High School in Vermont. A wife, a mother, a gardener, Donna has not let physical disability stand in the way of living a rich and fulfilling life, and giving much to the community in which she lives.

I began by saying that many of our friends and neighbors struggle with adversity and triumph over it. Let me conclude by pointing out that not only Donna, but her husband Joe, has been the master of his fate. For Joe too has suffered first deteriorating vision and then blindness, as was the case with Donna. Joe too has had to remake his life, which he has done by earning first a B.A. in psychology and the then an M.A.: he is now teaching Psychology at the Community College of Vermont, and is interested in counseling disturbed adolescents. He will be particularly qualified to bring them proof that facing life with courage, determination, and an openness toward the future can really work. Donna and Joe Covais are examples, I believe, of what is best in America and the American spirit, and I commend them for the example they have provided to all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the players of the University of Vermont Men's Basketball Team, and their coach, Tom Brennan, on an extraordinary basketball season.

It is certainly worthy of both recognition and celebration when a team finishes a tough schedule with over 20 wins--UVM went 22-9 on the year--and wins its conference championship. UVM lost its first game in the NCAA tournament to Connecticut, but there is no disgrace in losing to the only team which never lost a game in the entire tournament, for UConn was the eventual champion of the collegiate Division I basketball.

And it is certainly worth acknowledging the excitement that the team evoked all over the state of Vermont; our state is very proud of the wonderful record of this year's glorious team, and of both the men's and women's basketball teams at the University of Vermont in recent years. And the state is very proud as well that Vermont's own Taylor Coppenrath was selected to the AP All-America Team, as an honorable mention.

But what the people of Vermont are most proud of, and I include myself in their number, is that this basketball team not only played well on the basketball court, they worked hard and learned well in the classrooms and laboratories that are the heart of our state university. College is, after all, primarily about academics and not athletics.

At a time when the nation, and the NCAA as well, is deeply concerned that many athletes competing in major sports at Division I schools are not graduating from college, when there is widespread concern that often the educational mission of universities is put aside in the interest of athletic success, the men's basketball team in Vermont reminded us all that education and athletics can go together.

Of the 64 teams in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball tournament, only the University of Vermont had 8 of its players with a grade point average of 3.0 or better. The Catamounts had the best GPA of any team in the 65-team NCAA tournament.

The team's dual achievement--succeeding at the highest level in both athletics and academics--makes Vermont proud, and serves, I believe, as an example to the nation.

Our congratulations go to the members of the 2003-2004 University of Vermont Men's Basketball Team: T.J. Sorrentine, Jack Phelan, Kyle Cieplicki (of Shelburne, VT), Martin Klimes, Mike Goia, Taylor Coppenrath (of West Barnet, VT), David Hehn, Germain Njila, Alex Jensen, Corey Sullivan, Matt Hanson, Scotty Jones and Matt Sheftic (of Essex Junction, VT). And to those who helped them succeed on the court and off: Tom Brennan, head coach; Jesse Agel, associate head coach; Pat Filien, assistant coach; Jeff Rush, assistant coach; Chris Poulin, athletic trainer/strength coach; Reza Mohamed and Amarildo Barbosa, student managers; and Ryan Gore, student athletic trainer.

Mr. Speaker, I am saddened by the degree to which the Republican Leadership has turned this resolution into a partisan political defense of President Bush's view of the war in Iraq. Instead of commending and thanking the men and women in our Armed Forces who are serving so bravely in Iraq, a resolution that would have probably been passed unanimously, this resolution re-writes history and justifies a war that need not have been fought. Yes. Saddam was a terrible dictator, but getting rid of him was not the reason why President Bush told us we had to go to war. The American people were told that we had to invade Iraq because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be used against us, something which turned out not to be true. It is particularly outrageous that, in order to spin the war in as positive light as possible, this resolution does not say one word about our gratitude to the over 560 families who have lost a loved one in Iraq--including six Vermont families--or the over 2,800 soldiers who have been injured. What must these families be thinking when the sacrifice of their loved ones are not even acknowledged in this resolution? If Congressional Republicans really want to say thanks to the troops they should adequately fund veterans' benefits, increase military pay and provide the money to buy the body armor and other equipment our troops need. But using the sacrifice of our troops for partisan political advantage is something that I cannot support.