Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be here and join the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).

Space is important to the future of our country. We are a Nation of pioneers. We are a Nation of explorers. We lead the world in science and technology. Everywhere I go as I travel around the United States, I see images at schools, at universities, and in airports of our space program. Frequently I will see pictures or images of the Shuttle or of our Apollo pioneers; and the reason for that I think is obvious. It is in our blood, it is in our nature.

Indeed, the gentleman mentioned I am a physician and practiced medicine for 15 years before I was elected, and I still see patients once a month at the VA clinic in my congressional district; and I always marvel at the daily application of space technology, spin-off technologies directly from our Shuttle program, from our Apollo program, even from some of our unmanned probes.

I have a contractor in my congressional district who has taken the NASA coolant technology used to cool the systems in these planetary probes that we use and has placed it in car and home air conditioner units and believes he can improve the efficiency of these air conditioner units by as much as 15 percent. The potential savings in electricity demand from a product like that, if it is able to yield its full potential, could be in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars over a period of just a few years. As a matter of fact, if this product proved to be as useful as he believes it may be, it could potentially pay for the space program several times over.

Of course, as I was referring to earlier, as a physician we use space technology in many of our imaging modalities, like MRI scanning and CAT scanning. We use space technology in a lot of our pacemaker capabilities, these implantable defibrillators. Indeed, even the prosthetic devices, such as artificial limbs, some of the materials science that goes into those devices are actually spin-off benefits of the space program.

So I rise today to join my colleagues in speaking out in support of the national space initiative that I think President Bush so eloquently laid out in his speech at NASA headquarters several months ago.

It is really critical that we move ahead with this agenda, because one of the problems that I found within NASA from virtually the moment of my arrival is there was not really a clear agenda of where NASA was going. NASA had a very clear agenda when John F. Kennedy originally articulated it, I believe he was at Rice University, if I am not mistaken, in his famous speech, ``We go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard,'' and NASA had a clear agenda of getting a man on the moon. But since that time it has been a little unclear.

Now the President has laid out very clearly an agenda, and I want to underscore for all my colleagues in the

House of Representatives and the other body, this is an affordable agenda. Some people have ridiculed this as costing $1 trillion and being impossible to do.

But with the tragic loss of Columbia, I think it has been clear and obvious to everyone that, for our manned space flight program to continue, we need to come up with a replacement for the space shuttle in the years ahead. We cannot continue to rely on this system. It has been a great system, but it is down now, it could go down again in the future, and when it goes down, we are dependent on the Russians for the support and service of the Space Station.

So the President has laid out I think an affordable initiative to come up with a replacement vehicle for the space shuttle, but this vehicle would not just go and from low earth orbit, like the space shuttle does, but it would have the flexibility to be able to go back to the moon, to go on to Mars, and it can support the Space Station in the years ahead.

Importantly included in this vision as well is the priority of reorienting the Space Station research. There have been a lot of people who have questioned what the purpose of the Space Station is, and the President has clearly put forward in his national initiative the vision of saying that we are going to focus the Space Station research on answering a lot of these questions about biological sciences in terms of how people live and work in space.

As a physician, I know a fair amount about this. If you look at people who go up to the Space Station and spend 3 or 6 months there, when they come back, they frequently have problems standing up in the gravitational field of the Earth, they have problems with anemia, there are problems with bone loss, there are problems with blood loss, actually, something called the hemoglobin hematocrit decline in the setting of a prolonged space exposure. So we need a better understanding of that if we are ever to go to Mars and if we are ever to go beyond Mars and if we are going to create a permanent presence in space, such as on the moon.

Now, the President's vision does call for going back to the moon and going on to Mars, but he lays out an initiative I think in a way that calls for international cooperation, so that this would be something that is affordable.

The most important thing that I want to say tonight in this dialogue with my colleagues here is that some Members of the House of Representatives have criticized the budget request from the President as it relates to NASA and feel that we should not go to Mars, and therefore we need to reduce this budget request. But I just want to underscore the bulk of the President's request is to get the shuttle flying again and to complete construction of the Space Station.

To say we want to cut NASA now is to basically to say, well, we do not want to fly the shuttle again, and we do not want to complete the Space Station construction. I do not think in any way there is a majority of colleagues here in this body who are saying that we do not want to do those things.

So we need to put the resources behind NASA, I think, so that they can move ahead with getting the shuttle flying again safely and getting the Space Station completed. We have international partners.

If the gentleman would yield on that, there is another interesting aspect of that, and I think it is really an unmeasurable return on the investment.

One of the things I have been most intrigued by when I talk to teachers, and I have had conversations with teachers from all over this country on this issue, as many people know, we have a problem with not enough young people going into math and sciences. If you go to many of our colleges and universities, the bulk of the graduate students are foreigners.

If you talk to our teachers in our schools, they will tell you the thing that gets people most motivated to study math and science, young kids, what excites young kids in the third grade and the fourth grade and the sixth grade to really hunker down and study math and science, more than any other subject, it is the space program. When you take the science teaching, math teaching, and apply it to the space program, the teachers tell me it gets them excited.

How do you put a price tag on that? How do you measure that? You are talking about our competitiveness. Where are we creating jobs? We are creating jobs in the technology arenas. But if we are losing ground on technology because our young people are not studying those fields, then that can affect our whole economy. And how do you put a dollar value on that?

I think the gentleman is absolutely right, and he said it best, we cannot afford not to invest in NASA. It is one of the wisest investments that we can make in this body, because it is an investment in our future.

I would be very happy to yield to the majority leader. I am so pleased for the support the gentleman has supplied NASA over the years. It is great to have the gentleman with us.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time.

I rise in opposition to this amendment. I was on active duty in the Army medical corps when this policy was put in place by the Reagan administration, and it was very well received by the medical personnel in the corps.

The reason it was very well received is because most medical professionals do not want to have anything to do with abortion procedures. They recognize them for what they are. They are very brutal acts. Even those who are pro-choice will say, I am pro-choice, but I would never do an abortion.

When I was on active duty, this was very well received by the troops in the medical department, and I think it would be a mistake to overturn this policy. Vote against the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I, along with many of my colleagues, had the opportunity to view the photographs of the prisoner abuses in Iraq this past week, and I have had many of my constituents calling me and questioning me about these issues. I certainly agree with all of those who express outrage to see this kind of abuse going on, perpetrated by Americans. However, I disagree strongly with many of those who look at these recent developments and assert we should never have gone into Iraq in the first place, considering these great problems that are developing over there.

I continue to feel very strongly the President did the right thing in using force against Iraq, and that Iraq was a serious threat from a terrorist perspective. And I think Tony Blair expressed this most clearly and most succinctly when he addressed the House of Representatives and the Senate in joint session right in this very Chamber. The reason we went into Iraq was because if you ever had the joining of weapons of mass destruction with the terrorist elements of al Qaeda, instead of 3,000 dead, as we had on September 11, we could have 30,000 or 300,000 killed.

We went into Iraq for the right reasons. And to those who would say that the war in Iraq is unwinnable, I would assert that we have won the war in Iraq. The challenge that we face today is winning the peace. And clearly winning that peace is critically important.

By taking the war against terror into the Middle East, there are many of our detractors, supporters of totalitarian regimes in that part of the world who would like to see us fail in establishing democracy in Iraq and would like to see some sort of totalitarian regime reemerge in that country.

I will say this. If we cut and run as some people are proposing, there will be tens of thousands of Iraqis who will die unnecessarily. I was in Iraq in November of last year, and many Iraqis are cooperating with us. They want to see a democratic institution established that can govern their country, and many of those people will be imprisoned, tortured, and executed if we see a regime resume in Iraq similar to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Now, many are questioning as to how this could have happened and are raising questions about Americans' character. How could it be that Americans are guilty of these kinds of terrible things? And, indeed, many of our detractors in the Middle East are trying to assert that we are no different from Saddam and his henchmen in that they torture people, and here we were, torturing people.

I think if we look at the brutal execution that we saw recently where an American was executed in front of video cameras, we can clearly see there is a difference between us and them.

The American people are rightly outraged, and they demand these abuses stop and that investigations be conducted. Well, in reality, the U.S. military responded appropriately months ago when they recognized this problem. Investigations have been underway for a while, and the abuses stopped long ago. Indeed, all we are seeing right now is a media and public reaction because the photographs were made available.

The American people are good people, the American people are a moral people, and we are reacting appropriately. The perpetrators of these deeds will be brought to justice. Indeed, as I understand it, court marshals are underway almost now as we speak. The real question is why could a small few be driven to such terrible deeds? And that is a legitimate question for us to ask.

Clearly, one important thing is a breakdown of command and control of authority, and we need to seriously investigate what happened here with the brigade commanders and the company commanders. How did we have breakdowns in our military intelligence operations where standard Geneva Conventions were ignored? But those investigations were underway, and we will find out. And that is how America is different. That will play out in the eyes of the public.

To compare the United States to Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime, where this was business as usual, indeed it was official policy of the regime, is just totally inaccurate and totally distorted.

What struck me most about viewing these photos was the simple fact that many of these photos were pornographic. How could it come to pass that American servicemen and women are perpetrating these kinds of acts and recording them all on camera? Certainly we need to ask those questions in this country today. But I do not think we can escape asking the question of whether or not this is an impact of all the availability of pornography in our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, we have too much pornography in this country, and this body needs to act more and our court system needs to act more to try to stop it. We need to ask the questions of how could a small few carry out such morally reprehensible deeds.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Yes, I do confess to being a doctor. I practiced medicine for 15 years before I was elected to the House of Representatives. I still see patients. I see them once a month. I want to address the issue in this rule of medical malpractice reform. A lot of people when they debate the issues surrounding the need for medical malpractice reform and reining in all of these plaintiffs' attorneys who are advertising on television, a lot of focus is on the size of the judgments and the costs, the legal fees associated with this system. But the real burden on our health care system is the high cost of defensive medicine.

What is defensive medicine? I can tell you exactly what defensive medicine is because I practiced it for 15 years. I spent daily between $300 and $3,000 a day unnecessarily. Primary care providers, they do not like to talk about this because it gets them in trouble with their insurance companies, not with their medical malpractice insurance companies but with the Blue Cross/Blue Shields and the Aetnas. The executives of those companies, if they hear doctors saying that they are spending money unnecessarily, they get very upset and they try to clamp down on it.

But how does it work? You come in and you have a headache, you have just lost your job or you have got problems at home. You order a CAT scan, anyway, just because you are worried that you might miss something. And you see the next patient and you are worried about this. Some of you may listen to me and say, oh, this is just rhetoric, this is just hot air. This has been studied scientifically. They studied it in California. They studied it before and after the medical malpractice reforms went through. They discovered that just in the Medicare plan alone that for one diagnosis of heart disease, we are probably spending in excess of $600 million a year unnecessarily just within Medicare, just within one disease, because of defensive medicine.

They passed medical malpractice reform in California. They looked at a reduction in costs with no increased incidence of complications, what we call morbidity and mortality. In other words, quality stayed the same and costs went down. The only way to explain that, the researchers said, is a reduction in defensive medicine. What does this mean? This means if you want to save Medicare money so we can afford prescription drugs, pass medical malpractice reform. If you want to reduce the number of uninsured, pass medical malpractice reform. If you want to reduce the cost of health insurance for American businesses so they can be more competitive in the international marketplace, pass medical malpractice reform.

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the author of this resolution, my friend from Massachusetts, the ranking member and the chairman for bringing it forward. I went through 4 years of medical school residency, internship, and never saw a case of autism. I came from a large family on both sides, my mother and father, and never saw a case of autism.

I was quite surprised when a physician friend of mine told me about 5 years ago, 6 years ago now, that his son had been diagnosed with autism. Then I discovered that Dan Marino had a son with autism; Doug Flutie, whose parents live in my district, had a son with autism. Then all I can say is the more I started looking into this, the more and more concerned I began to become. A disease that was virtually unheard of, estimated at one in 10,000. I met with people in California. They were coming up with estimates of one in 500, one in 600. I met with the CDC. I asked them what was going on. There was some controversy at the time 4 or 5 years ago because the diagnostic tools, the diagnostic and statistical manual had been changed such that maybe we were diagnosing more of it, but the incidence was not really up. Anyway, the CDC to its credit did the necessary research and concluded that the incidence of this disease had skyrocketed from being a rare, unheard of condition to one in 166, predominantly affecting boys.

What has been particularly concerning to me is reports that I was receiving. Unlike the description that the gentleman from Pennsylvania was offering of a child in the nursery, the baby that you take home that has autism that just never seemed right, we were getting more and more of these reports where my baby was speaking and now is no longer speaking, my baby was reacting and looking at me and is no longer reacting and looking at me. This is a very, very serious crisis. I think the previous speakers have been very eloquent in pointing out the huge costs to our society. I am very glad they brought this forward because it brings public attention to this issue, and it brings the attention of this body to this issue.

One of the main reasons why we need to try to address this and we need to move aggressively on this is that we have been battling Parkinson's disease and breast cancer and all of these terrible conditions for years and years, and we have a pretty good idea of what causes them. It is very hard to address the cause. We do not even know what causes this disease in these kids. We may discover that this condition is totally avoidable. We may discover that it is reversible. I am very pleased that the gentleman from Massachusetts put some language in there on early intervention services as children are diagnosed because what I am now hearing more and more is parents are saying, I got my kid in therapy or we did this or we did that and he is doing much, much better.

And previously, the attitude was there is nothing one can do for them

and it is basically almost like a terminal situation. Just institutionalization is all that can be done. And now, lo and behold, we are finding with early intervention these kids can become much more manageable. They can be taught. They can develop learning skills, reading, writing. So it is a much more positive outlook.

Regarding the issue that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) was bringing up about mercury in the vaccines, the implication there, I think the science is not really in on this. It is really inconclusive, but minimally what I think we need to do is what the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) and myself are recommending, and that is get the mercury out of all the childhood vaccines. It is a toxic substance, and whether it is implicated or not in the autism, I think there is evidence to suggest it may be, that minimally we should not take any chances with little kids. We should not be exposing them unnecessarily to mercury. And therefore pass our legislation to get the mercury out.

Again, I congratulate the gentleman from Massachusetts on this. We need more research. And let me just close by saying NIH and CDC have significantly increased their funding. They have been responding. I think NIH funding for autism research is up four-fold in the last 6 years, and the Secretary and the folks at NIH need to be commended for that, and I certainly commend them. But we need to do more because we may discover ultimately in the end this is a preventable condition and that we can allow thousands of children the opportunity to escape ever being affected by the disease in the first place, and we obviously need to do more in terms of treating the kids that have it. I thank the chairman for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, my vote on H.R. 4181 was not recorded. I would ask that the Record reflect that as a cosponsor of H.R. 4181 the record should reflect that I should have been recorded as voting ``aye'' on final passage.

Mr. Speaker, I was with the Governor of Texas yesterday, and we called the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) at M.D. Anderson, and he asked that I rise tonight and thank Members on both sides of the aisle for your letters and prayers. He specifically asked me to thank all Members for the support that you have been providing him. He is doing well. He made a good recovery from his surgery. He is beginning his chemotherapy and radiation, and he asked that I extend his thanks to each and every Member.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

I rise to speak about the NASA component in the budget. The NASA money is not specifically spelled out; but within the overall context of science and technology, there is level funding in this budget.

I would just like my colleagues to get a good understanding of a couple of simple facts as it relates to NASA, particularly as we move through the appropriations process. Aerospace products lead on our positive balance of payments. The investment that we have made for decades in aerospace technology is resulting in a tremendous amount of jobs and a positive balance of payments.

In 2004 dollars, here is where NASA's budget was in 1991, and this is what happened during the previous administration. We actually saw a 30 percent decline in NASA's budget. What this current administration is proposing, and some people have been ridiculing the President's initiative, is to just try to get some slight growth out of NASA, recognizing the tremendous importance of this as well not only for our balance of payments but our national security. And I just want my colleagues to know in this House that if we reduce NASA below the President's budget request, it is going to come out of the shuttle returning to flight and getting the Space Station program back on track. This is not money to go to Mars. There was never money in this project to go to Mars. This is to get the shuttle flying again, and this is to get the program through its construction phase to completion.

I am a conservative. I feel very strongly that we should have a balanced budget. It was one of the things I fought when I came here, and I am going to work to try to get our country back on track for a balanced budget. But NASA already paid. When we were dramatically increasing education spending and many other Departments, the NASA budget was going down and down.

I think this President correctly recognizes the tremendous value of the investment in aerospace research, and we need to continue the President's initiative on space.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I was unable to be present for today's votes. Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on the following resolutions: H. Res. 519--Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives with respect to the earthquake that occurred in San Luis Obispo County, CA, on December 22, 2003 (Representative Thomas); H. Res. 392--Congratulating the Detroit Shock for winning the 2003 Women's National Basketball Association championship (Representative Conyers); and H. Res. 475--Congratulating the San Jose Earthquakes for winning the 2003 Major League Soccer Cup (Representative Honda).

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 35, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Let me just commend my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), for the outstanding job I think he just did laying out many of the issues that have surrounded this debate. I agree with the gentleman, it is high time that we adopt the position that exists in 29 States; and I believe ultimately that most States will adopt this statute.

I also want to commend the gentleman from Indiana for his advocacy regarding the fence in Israel. I think that is a very, very important issue. The gentleman's resolution that he is trying to bring forward I think is very timely and very important. The fence in Israel is preventing hundreds of these suicide bombers from getting into Israel and killing people; and I think it is a tragedy, as the gentleman from Indiana does, that that case is before that court in Europe, and the Israelis are doing the right thing.

Getting back to the issue at hand here, I want to really commend my colleague, the gentleman from Missouri, for bringing this very important issue up. I am just going to speak as a doctor. We are going to hear from attorneys. We will hear, perhaps, from philosophers tonight on this issue. I practiced medicine before I came to this body. It was a joy; it was a pleasure practicing medicine. But there were some things that were unpleasant that I had to do. I will not mention them all; but one of them was, of course, the sad business of pronouncing people dead. We would frequently be called in to a hospital room by the staff, by the nurses and asked to assess the patient. The nurse was calling us to make a pronouncement of death. What do we do? Well, we check for a heartbeat; and, in cases where people are brain dead, we check for brain waves.

Well, science tells us that babies have brain waves and beating hearts very early in development. You can detect a beating heart at 17 days and brain waves at 40 days. Now, of course, with new modern technology, we have this new technology called 4-dimensional ultrasound where we can get a 3-D image on tape of a baby in the womb actually moving, and you can actually see them moving their face, opening their eyes, sucking their thumbs, moving around. They have the appearance of a human being, because they are a human being. And obviously, many of us understand that.

When we have one of the tragedies like we have seen and talked about tonight, Laci Peterson and this case in Kentucky is very, very heart- wrenching, and to say there is not a second victim to me defies logic. We desperately need this in Federal law. There have been cases that we have been unable to bring of double murders because we do not have a statute where punishments would have been meted out more significantly if we were able to bring the second murder case. So I think this is very timely legislation. It is very, very important.

I certainly not only commend my colleague, the gentleman from Missouri, for bringing this debate forward tonight, but I want to additionally commend the author of the legislation, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart), a great member who sits on the Committee on the Judiciary, and who has really been an outspoken advocate on this issue and, in particular, she is very knowledgeable about the law. So I am very, very pleased to support the legislation. I thank my good friend. I also want to thank the gentleman for standing up for the principles of our Constitution and seeing to it that the Constitution is properly interpreted in today's context of today's law.

Mr. Speaker, I know many of my constituents will be very pleased with this resolution coming before the House today regarding the Columbia disaster, but this issue has not been the one that my phones have been ringing about. I have heard from many of my constituents who are outraged over the offenses that they were exposed to in the NFL halftime show and many of the commercials.

The NFL has promoted football, and the Super Bowl in particular, as a time for families to gather around the television once a year to see the NFL's best and, indeed, I was doing that myself. I had my 5-year- old son and my teenage daughter. Rather than being one of the NFL's finest hours, it was one of their most offensive.

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue issued a statement following the game calling the halftime show offensive, inappropriate, and embarrassing to the NFL.

Commissioner Tagliabue, when you hired one of the most offensive networks, MTV, to do the halftime show, what did you expect? MTV does not produce programming for family audiences. Indeed, my wife and I recognized that the halftime show was going to be offensive, and we changed the channel for 30 minutes.

Commissioner Tagliabue, wake up.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the crew of Columbia. The names Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon will now forever be linked to the risks and rewards of exploring the frontier. They were all extraordinary people.

Rick Husband. A man of strong faith in God. A man who dreamed of taking part in space travel since his childhood in Amarillo, Texas. A family man, committed to his community. He set the highest of standards for us all.

William McCool. A man who personified excellence in all he did. From San Diego, since the earliest age, he dreamed of flying and followed his dream with an unending fount of energy and skill. While gifted, he never showed any hubris; in fact, he was always humble--something we all could learn from.

Michael Anderson. From Pittsburgh, he had a drive uncommon to most people. He loved science and learning. He followed his passion for science. This led him to NASA and space flight. He knew his responsibility as an astronaut and took every opportunity to talk to schoolchildren about the excitement and value of space exploration.

Kalpana Chawla. She lived a uniquely American life. Born and raised in India, she came to America as an immigrant. She worked hard and studied engineering and science. She became an American citizen and from there became an astronaut. She made her home nation and her adopted nation proud of her in all that she did.

David Brown. Truly a man for all seasons. He was a physician, a Navy pilot, and member of the astronaut corp. Everything he set out to do, he accomplished. He had many other goals he was anxious to accomplish after this mission was completed.

Laurel Clark. A wife. A mother. A physician. An astronaut. She was aware of what a special honor it was to be selected to fly in space. She was thankful for the special opportunity that she had. She lived life to the fullest. She enjoyed scuba diving and flying airplanes. Everything she did, she loved.

Ilan Ramon. The first Israeli in space. A dedicated and brave pilot. The son of Holocaust survivor. He is an inspiration to a small, determined nation.

Commander Husband, on the evening before they launched, shared with his crew and their families, his favorite passage from the book of Joshua. This is instructive for all of us as we reflect on this tragedy: ``Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.''

That is where we are as a nation right now. We live in a dangerous world with many challenges facing us. The measure of a truly great nation is one that can face down its challenges on earth and excell and lead the world to a higher level.

That is why we have NASA and why we must recommit ourselves, now more than ever, to the dream and adventure of human space flight that was such a part of the lives of these brave men and women.

How we decided to respond to this tragedy will be judged very closely by many generations that come after us. I am proud to say that the President has risen to the occasion and has charted a bold new exploration initiative. We cannot let future generations down and walk away from our destiny in space. The Columbia 7 will be memorialized by a great, strong, robust return to space by America.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the life and service of Rev. Luther Vincent Laite III. Rev. Laite, a pastor and disabled American veteran of the United States Navy. Rev. Laite died on December 7, 2003, of complications from asbestosis, a disease contracted while serving his country in the U.S. Navy.

Rev. Laite honorably served his country for six years aboard the USS Goldsborough, and was honorably discharged in 1984.

Rev. Laite served as a pastor for 19 years in Brevard County, Florida. At the time of his death, Rev. Laite was the Senior Pastor of Christian Life Family Church of Brevard.

As a result of Luther's belief that churches must be involved in the life of the community, many women and children in need were helped. There was always room at the Laite family table or in the Laite house for those who had no other place to go.

Luther served on the board of the Protestant Ministries of Florida Institute of Technology and was National Director of Life Coalition International, an international pro-life ministry.

Luther is survived by his wife, Patti; seven children, Lydia Baker, Luther V. Laite IV, Audra Laite, Amanda Laite, Jesse Laite, Josiah Laite and Jonathan Laite; grandchildren, Zechariah Baker and Ethan Baker; his loving parents Luther and Peggy Laite and sister Vicky Stites, her children and grandchildren.

Several hundred people from all over the Nation attended the Luther Vincent Laite III memorial service that was held at Truth Revealed Ministries, Palm Bay, Florida, on December 13, 2003. Burial services were held at the Military Cemetery in Bushnell, Florida on December 15, 2003.

As quoted in Matthew 25:21, ``Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your Master's happiness.''

Indeed, Rev. Laite will be remembered by those who loved him as a faithful family man, devoted pastor and loyal friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends. We will all miss him.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to pay tribute to a long-time member of my staff who is retiring this December. Barbara Reynolds has worked for me as my scheduler and executive assistant since I was elected in 1994. Barbara's career on Capitol Hill preceded mine by 13 years. This experience, along with her talent and willingness to accommodate the busy schedule of a Congressman, was invaluable.

Before coming to work on the Hill, Barbara had been a stay-at-home mom, taking care of her two children. She had never really given much thought to getting involved in the political world, but in 1979, at the suggestion of her father-in-law, she handed a resume to a friend at the Republican Policy Committee and, in about a week, landed a job with then-Representative Carlos Moorehead from California. This, however, was not her only job at the time. Barbara often spent her weekends as a professional model--many say she looked just like Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Her modeling took her all over the world as well as provided her with many commercial advertising opportunities. As a result of this, some current House maintenance workers who were around at the time still refer to Barbara as ``Jackie'' when they see her in the halls.

In 1985 Barbara began working for then-Representative and eventual Presidential candidate Jack Kemp. In addition to working in his personal office she also worked on his campaign in New Hampshire.

After working with Jack Kemp, Barbara moved on to work for my Florida colleague, Representative Cliff Stearns in 1988. Barbara spent 6 years working for Representative Stearns where she established her Florida roots.

In 1995 Barbara came to work for me and has worked in my Washington office since my first day in office. I am incredibly grateful for her loyalty to me and my staff. It will be nearly impossible to replace her uplifting spirit. Her presence in my office added a touch of class and style, which are sometimes hard to find in the world of politics.

I, along with her coworkers and others outside my office whose lives she has touched, will miss her presence on Capitol Hill. Barbara Reynolds's retirement is well earned. She plans to pursue her hobby of boating on the Chesapeake with her husband, Bob, as well as continue to be a loving mother and grandmother to her two grown children and to her grandchildren. We all wish her many blessings and much happiness in the years to come.

Thank you Barbara, for your service to my office, the people Florida, and the many others with whom you have worked on Capitol Hill.