Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, and I thank them all for being here tonight to stand up for our Nation's veterans.

Our troops in Iraq are being funded at the rate of about $1 billion every 2\1/2\ or 3 days, $1 billion every 2\1/2\ or 3 days. We want our troops to have the best. We want our troops to have everything they need for success in Iraq. But if we have the money to send our troops to war, we must have the money for them when they come back from war, and that is all we are saying here tonight.

What we are saying is for 2\1/2\ or 3 days of that war in Iraq, we can fund everything that our veterans need this coming year. That is the amount of money that has been subtracted by the Republicans in their budget, $25 billion over the next decade.

We have the money. It is a question of the will. We have the resources. It is a question of our priorities. And, ladies and gentlemen, it is time to call the names and take the prisoners of those who are hurting our veterans.

You hear on Memorial Day and on Veterans Day the words of support, but watch what they do when they come and vote. Watch what they do when they vote on the budget. Watch what they do when they vote on the appropriations. Watch what they do when they take your future away from you. Watch the procedural votes. Watch us, ladies and gentlemen. Because if you just take the words, everybody here supports you, but the money ain't there to make it happen.

Let me say a couple of things that the Republican budget takes away if it goes through. As we heard earlier, a co-payment for a month's worth of prescription drugs, the drugs that you need to survive, is going to double, more than double, from $7 to $15. We are going to charge enrollment fees to veterans who are in ``a higher priority'' but who are veterans and who deserve the treatment, and we can give it to them. We are going to cut 5,000 nursing home beds so only those veterans with the worst kind of disability will be able to be cared for.

We will abandon our goal of eliminating homelessness amongst our veterans. Every evening, Madam Speaker, 250,000 of our Nation's veterans are on the streets. Can the Members imagine that as a way to pay back what they have given to our country? They are homeless, and we do not seem to have the resources to change it. We give the program $20 million a year, $20 million a year. That is nothing in the context of our budget.

Disabled veterans, disabled veterans will be cut from care if this budget goes through. The Montgomery GI bill, which helps our education of our veterans, will not be funded. VA home loans will not be funded. Markers and flags for deceased veterans will not be funded.

This is hypocrisy, ladies and gentlemen, hypocrisy that comes from saying we are for the veterans and not providing the money.

Madam Speaker and the gentlewoman from California, right now there are 200,000 veterans who have waited more than 6 months for their first appointment. Veterans will die while they are waiting for that first appointment, and yet we say we cannot do anything. Let us resolve to change this.

I ask all the veterans, when we consider the appropriations, come to Washington, surround the Capitol, camp out, bivouac, and do not leave this place until we pass a budget that is worthy of you.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to voice my concern about the budget resolution before use today. As a Member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, I am especially concerned about the amount of funding included in the budget resolution for our Nation's veterans.

This Republican budget is woefully short of what is needed, and I urge my colleagues to support the Democratic budget alternative. Our alternative provides $32 billion more than the Republican budget over the next 10 years for veterans. This means providing $17 billion more for veterans' health care and rejecting the Republican cut of $15 billion for mandatory veterans' programs, programs like service- connected disability compensation, pensions, survivors' benefits, vocational rehabilitation, educational and burial benefits. I cannot imagine even thinking about cuts to compensation for our disabled veterans!

The Democratic budget is supported by the authors of the Independent Budget, a budget created by veterans' service organizations who are on the front lines and in a position to know exactly what is needed. They call the Democratic alternative ``a solid step forward in meeting the very real needs of veterans''.

This morning I attended the joint Senate and House VA Committee hearing, where we heard views on the budget from the Vietnam Veterans of America, the American Ex-Prisoners of War, the Military Officers Association of American, and AMVETS. I must report that for much of the hearing, there were only two Members present to receive the veterans testimony.

On the day following the beginning of the war with Iraq, it is hard to believe that most of the Members of the VA Committee were too busy to attend this hearing about funding for our veterans' programs. Perhaps our Republican colleagues were reworking their original budget resolution, working to respond to the outcries from veterans and the public about their original budget resolution. But the final result before us today is still woefully inadequate.

Mr. Chairman, as we send our young men and women to war in Iraq, certain to result in disability for some young Americans, we unfortunately are simultaneously sending the message that Congress is not concerned about their future as veterans! This is unconscionable.

Why does the Republican budget proposal fail to fund veterans programs at the level recommended by the Independent Budget? I am sad that it is largely because Congress is poised to give a tax break to the wealthiest Americans.

Who deserves to receive the benefits of the national treasury-- America's disabled veterans or America's millionaires?

I urge my colleagues to reject this budget resolution.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, I rise today to pay tribute to Jack H. Buckles on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

Jack was born in Watagua, Tennessee on March 12, 1923. He was raised in a strong Democrat family of eight sons and two daughters. Following the outbreak of World War II, Jack enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served aboard LCT 666, making numerous landings of soldiers and equipment on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. After being honorably discharged at the end of the war, Jack returned to his home in Tennessee, where he became the first member of his family to attend college. On August 18, 1947, he married Billie Roberta Leonard. Shortly after his marriage, Jack became a journeyman steamfitter, working on numerous Tennessee Valley Authority construction projects. In 1959, Jack moved his family to Frederick, Maryland.

Jack joined the Steamfitters Union 602 in Washington D.C., where he served for more than 35 years with professionalism and commitment. Recognized for his exceptional skill in his craft, Jack was identified as one of the pool of select union members assigned to duties at the White House and other highly sensitive federal job sites. He supported the expansion of the medical and pension plans for the rank and file which today is recognized as one of the model union programs in the building trades in the District of Columbia.

A long time resident of Frederick, Maryland, Jack has proven himself to be a pillar of his community, a strong leader in his church and active in numerous community and service organizations. A life long Democrat, Jack has devoted himself to working for the advancement of the Democrat Party and Democrat candidates at the local and state level. He has been a member of the Christian Church of Frederick for more than 30 years, where he was selected by the congregation to serve as a Church Deacon.

Jack considers his family as his greatest achievement. A loving husband of over 55 years to Billie R. Buckles, they have one son, a daughter, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great admiration that I recognize Jack H. Buckles before this body of Congress and this nation today. His contributions to his community, his church, and his family have been immeasurably beneficial in the lives of many.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) for his leadership on something that is so important to America, and that is, the Museum and Library Services Act.

As my colleague has pointed out, this bill authorizes $245 million in Federal assistance for museums and libraries in the coming fiscal year and additional funds all the way through the end of this decade.

A civilized society, Mr. Speaker, must include cultural enrichment, and it is one of the responsibilities of our government to support that aspect of our civilization. We get what we pay for. Thanks to our museums and libraries, our citizens become well-rounded individuals, and our children are encouraged to become the best that they can be.

Let me highlight for a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, a few of the success stories that come out from the Library Services and Technology Act, which is a part of the Museum and Library Services Act, in my home State of California.

The Infopeople project provides training and computers for local libraries, assuring public access to the Internet in 530 of our State's 765 public libraries.

The University of California in San Diego is assisting over 100 libraries and cultural institutions to recover from natural and man- made disasters.

The County of Los Angeles Public Library is training college students to assist with the library's Summer Reading Program for Children, providing work experience for students while helping open the door to reading for over 30,000 of our children.

The Family Literacy Program provides programs and books for infants and children.

The Oceanside Public Library in San Diego County provides health information from a mobile vehicle funded through this Act.

From my own congressional district, in the city of National City, one of the poorest cities in California, but blessed with a great city librarian, Anne Campbell, this city has funded a large community computer center in the National City Public Library. Over 50,000 residents each year have access to electronic information, software programs, Internet and training. Residents are working on job resumes, e-mailing a loved one aboard a Navy ship, running a business, preparing reports for school and 1,000 other uses that we know that the Internet can provide.

Currently, a grant from this Act provides Web page design training for high school students, with real life experiences designing Web sites for local businesses and nonprofit organizations. From the first class, already two students have been hired permanently to continue to update these Web sites. So the digital divide of which we hear a lot has been narrowed in National City because of the LSTA.

We can go on for a long time about the stories. These are just a few, but they would not be possible without our investment in our Nation's libraries.

I urge support of this legislation, and I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce H.R. 963, legislation to rename the Southeastern Post Office, in San Diego, California, the ``Cesar E. Chavez Post Office.''

In San Diego, as well as across the Nation, the name Cesar Chavez symbolizes dignity, admiration, and devotion to equality and human rights. This man dedicated his life to ameliorating human rights in our country. In the 1950s and 60s, when minorities were given little or no respect or rights, Cesar Chavez cleared the path for equality.

In the early 1950s, after fighting in World War II, Chavez began his involvement in battling racial and economic discrimination against Chicanos. As his attention and personal interest focused on the poor working conditions of farm workers, he realized that his dream was to start an organization to aid these workers.

Having been a farm worker himself, he was far too familiar with the inhumane working conditions farm workers were forced to endure. In 1962, he founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), and in 1965, the NFWA joined an AFL-CIO sponsored union boycott against major table and wine grape growers. Through this five year long, successful boycott that rallied millions of supporters, the NFWA merged with the AFL-CIO union and formed the United Farm Workers (UFW).2

From the beginning, the UFW followed the principals of nonviolence practiced by Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He organized peaceful demonstrations to bring attention to the farm worker's conditions. His slogan, Si se puede!, Yes, we can!, became known worldwide.

National attention to the farm workers came in 1968 when Senator Robert Kennedy visited Cesar Chavez in California after Chavez led a 25 day fast. Kennedy was right when he called Cesar ``one of the heroic figures of our time.''

Cesar continued to organize boycotts and strikes around the world against table grape growers in California. His efforts paid off when, in 1975, growers supported then California Governor Jerry Brown's collective bargaining law for farm workers, the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act.

Cesar Chavez is remembered today for his continual efforts and dedication to justice and equality. As Cesar said, ``There are many reasons why a man does what he does. To be himself he must be able to give it all. If a leader cannot give it all, he cannot expect his people to give anything.'' The people of San Diego thank Cesar Chavez for always giving his all.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation that recognizes such an honorable man by naming a San Diego Post Office in his honor.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I do represent the entire California-Mexico border, so I am a border Congressman; and I must say, we have some difficulties with the proposed legislation. The gentlewoman from Ohio, and I am sorry that it had to take someone from the hinterlands to explain to us that this whole issue of NAFTA and NADBank need to be discussed by this body in a far more important way than a bill on suspension that gives us 10 minutes to debate. The gentlewoman is entirely correct. And just because it is only the NADBank that falls within the jurisdiction of the Banking Committee is no reason to limit this House from a fuller discussion. The Banking Committee can in fact go in with other committees and have that discussion. The gentlewoman was absolutely right: jobs have been lost, millions, because of NAFTA.

I live in San Diego, California, a community impacted by NAFTA. Did the community adjustment investment fund or NADBank do anything for our community? No. Is it going to do anything with the proposed reforms? I do not know. But I am very wary.

When NAFTA was passed, there was no infrastructure put in place to realize some of its benefits. For example, in San Diego, California, 3,000 trucks a day now cross the border from Mexico to the United States. There is no highway that takes those 3,000 trucks from the border crossing to the interstate highway system. I have been trying to get it built for the last 10 years. We have a city street that takes those trucks; it is one of the most dangerous roads in America. Has NADBank helped that? No. The environment which NADBank was limited to before these reforms, the maquiladoras which NAFTA brought to the border, hundreds of them, employing thousands of Mexican workers, do not have to abide by any of the environmental rules that we establish. So they end up dumping their toxic materials in the gullies and ravines in Mexico. You know where that ends up? I got 50 million gallons, now millions of gallons in the last few years of raw sewage floating through my district in the Tijuana River to the Pacific Ocean. In Imperial County to the east of San Diego, there are millions of gallons of raw sewage flowing through the New River, then the Alamo River, to the Salton Sea. Did NADBank take care of anything there? Nothing.

Those same maquiladoras brought Mexican workers to the border. What did it pay them? No increase in wages. In fact, wages fell. And do you know what happened when the folks who came to the Maquilas who thought they were going to get high wages and did not? What happened? Illegal immigration to America. Did NADBank do anything to help us with that? Nothing.

Two power plants have just opened up in Mexicali, Mexico, to service the needs of California, power needs. Did they have to follow the environmental rules of our community? No. Can the border patrol stop air pollution? No. Did NADBank help us solve any of that? No.

I agree that the folks who have worked on this, this is a step forward. I do not have any doubts about that. The lower-than-market interest rates which prevented really any loans from being made is absolutely necessary. The expansion of the definition of what projects would be accepted is obviously a very important step forward. But there is a backwards step that you ought to have maybe said something about in your legislation.

As I understand it, the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission, the board of that and the board of NADBank are being merged. BECC was one of the few places where you had any community input, and now we are not going to have any. San Diego and Tijuana had virtually no input. Mexicali and Calexico in Imperial County had no input. El Paso, no input. Brownsville, no input. Where is the community input for the reform bank that you are putting in? We at the border communities, and I will tell you even more the inland communities, if I may say so, need to have input into what is going on with the NADBank. It is not serving our communities. I do not see any step forward that will change that.

Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of Treasury when I asked him a few years ago, and this was in a previous administration, how was NADBank doing, he had no idea. It has been put in a corner somewhere because of an attempt to get a few votes for NAFTA. It was set up to do nothing, and it fulfilled those expectations. I do not see any reforms really that will make NADBank work for America and American workers. I thank the gentlewoman for allowing us to have this debate.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, just quickly, the fact that this legislation does not say anything about the merged boards of BECC and NADBank, you could have said something about it. Just because you did not, do not criticize the fact that this is a backwards step. If you want to move forward, then change that, too. And we need to have the support of the Chair and those who are supporting this bill for some money for the community adjustment investment fund. It has been zeroed out by the administration.

So, yes, there are some reforms here. The question is how much money are we going to give it and how much community input are we going to allow. A report to Congress on a yearly basis does not allow the community input that this board needs.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce H.R. 770, ``Putting the Pedal to the Metal: Accelerating the Energy Independence of America'' Act, legislation creating a broad tax credit for the production of alternative fuel vehicles.

Transportation accounts for about two-thirds of the oil consumption in the United States, and we are 97 percent dependent on oil for our transportation needs. If our nation is going to have a strategy for energy security, that strategy must begin with transportation fuels. As we all learned during the California energy crisis, any strategy for energy security has to be based in alternative sources of production, to ensure that we have we are never again held captive by one company or industry.

When enacted, this legislation will offer a tax credit for every dollar invested by companies towards the production of alternative fuel vehicles. The credit will allow companies to take a credit equal to the percent of investment in the production of alternative fuel vehicles, so if a company spends 40% of their time and expense on producing alternative fuel vehicles, they would receive a 40% credit against its tax burden.

Hopefully, this will spur small companies and large companies alike, to move towards the production of alternative fuel vehicles. This landmark legislation will help break the old cycle of automobile manufacturers failing to sufficiently invest in alternative fuel vehicle technology, because it was not profitable enough.

Many companies, large and small, are already in the business of producing alternative fuel vehicles, such as L3 Research, Inc. in San Diego. L3 Research Inc. has a prototype, the L3 ``Enigma''--a hybrid- electric sports car. This is the world's first hybrid-electric sports car, faster than a Corvette, and it recharges from a common wall outlet. This is the kind of innovative, next-generation, vehicle production that will benefit from this legislation.

During his State of the Union address, President Bush rolled out an initiative to fund the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. While I support this worthy goal, most experts estimate that fuel cell powered vehicles are a generation away.

Mr. Speaker, we don't need to wait many years to support alternative fuel vehicles--it's time to put the pedal to the metal and accelerate the energy independence of America. Pass H.R. 770.

Mr. Speaker and colleagues, I rise today to ask for the support of my colleagues for H.R. 664, ``The Health Care for Filipino World War II Veterans Act.''

Almost 60 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt drafted the soldiers of the Philippines into service in World War II, because the Philippine was a territory of the United States at that time. Fighting side-by-side with soldiers from the United States mainland, the Filipino soldiers were instrumental in the successful outcome of the war. However, shortly after the war's end in 1946, Congress passed the Rescissions Act which took away promised benefits from many of the Filipino veterans and declared that their service was deemed not to be service in the military forces of the United States.

We owe not only a debt of gratitude to these brave veterans, but we owe them recognition as veterans of the United States military. And we owe them the benefits they were promised! Now in their 70s and 80s, they are in desperate need of health care, and approximately five veterans are dying each day.

I have introduced, H.R. 664, with a number of original co-sponsors from both parties, including Congressmembers Simmons, Evans, Cunningham, Pelosi, Issa, Rohrabacher, Abercrombie, Millender-McDonald, Tiahrt, Lofgren, and Scott. This bill would provide access to VA medical facilities for the Filipino veterans who are now living in the United States and would restore the designation of veteran to these brave men.

The Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony Principi, testified in a June 13, 2002 hearing before the VA Health Subcommittee in support of H.R. 4904, the version of this bill in the 107th session. The House of Representatives passed these health care benefits on July 22, 2002 but they were unable to get passed by the Senate before adjournment of last year's session. Senator Inouye has reintroduced a similar bill in the 108th session in the Senate (S. 68).

There is overwhelming support for H.R. 664. We must quickly pass this bill to begin the process of restoring benefits that are deserved by the Filipino World War II veterans.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 18, due to the arrival of my first grandchild, Madeline, I missed the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Stated against:

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 19, due to the arrival of my first grandchild, Madeline, I missed the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''