Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, on Tuesday, March 6, 2007, I was attending to personal family matters in the District. Consequently, I missed Rollcall votes No. 121, ``Honoring the life and achievements of the late Dr. John Garang de Mabior,'' and Rollcall vote No. 122, ``Supporting the goals of International Womens Day.''

If present, I would have voted ``aye'' on both matters.

Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to join my 30-something colleagues, Mr. Meek and Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Meek, you started talking about the travesty that was revealed by The Washington Post just before last weekend about what is going on at Walter Reed Medical Center and the campus and its facilities.

I had the privilege of going to visit our men and women that are at Walter Reed who have come back from Iraq injured. Almost every soldier I met with was an amputee and went through a devastating experience, devastating injury. But the ward that they take you through, like this article says, is spit-polished and brand-spanking clean. There is not a shadow of what is described in this third-party validator, which is how we refer to our information that we bring out here to demonstrate the facts.

I want to read just a paragraph from the article. I want to highlight some of the things, and we have been joined by our good friend Mr. Altmire from Pennsylvania.

This article hit me like a ton of bricks: ``Life beyond the hospital bed,'' and this is what is going on at Walter Reed that is not what they show us as Members of Congress and that they show the President and Vice President about what is going on at Walter Reed. ``Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands, most of them off post, to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical record keeping databases. The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should,'' and it goes on.

That is just unbelievable. A mountain of red tape and bureaucracy is what our troops come back to the United States to and have to deal with. I thought we well established after 9/11 that interoperability and communication between systems was an obstacle that was intolerable.

How could we allow this to happen and just let our veterans, who fought for us so valiantly, and the analogy I will make is while our troops might not come home, and thank good they are not coming home to the same reaction as our Vietnam veterans came home to, how is this not as bad? It is actually worse, in a way, because instead of just having to suffer the wrath of their fellow Americans, which was a travesty and certainly hurtful and harmful, instead they come home and suffer the wrath of their government, the benign wrath of their government. ``Benign'' meaning not specifically intended to harm, but it is like death by a thousand cuts.

Thank you. That is a very important and valid point.

I want to read a quote, and that quote is this: ``So let's get something straight right now. To point out that our military has been overextended, taken for granted and neglected, that is no criticism of the military, that is a criticism of the President and Vice President and their record of neglect.''

Who do you think said that? I will tell you who said that, George W. Bush, as a candidate, said that on November 3, 2000, in an interview on

On that point, just to focus on the National Guard and how correct you are about how they are being treated versus what they signed up for, there are now 14,000 National Guard troops being deployed earlier than they were originally scheduled to meet the demands of the President's proposed plans to escalate the war.

National Guard and Army units are being called up sooner than previously scheduled, and that is even though some of these units do not have the equipment that they need. They do not have the training, and some of them are having to go over there foregoing the training.

Mr. Meek and I are going to be meeting with our general, who is in charge of our National Guard in Florida very soon. I just saw the request today, and I am looking forward to meeting with him. I met with him in my district in Florida as well last year, and the conversations that I have had with him and with others about the condition of the equipment, not just the condition of the equipment that is going over

there, but what happens to the equipment once it comes back because we are not replacing the equipment and sending them new equipment after it has been through 5, 6 years of an Iraq War.

So the equipment that they are working on and that they are utilizing has been through war literally. I mean, we are not making sure that they have the equipment that they need. We are sending them over there two, three and four times now.

When I went to Walter Reed a couple of weeks ago, every single guy I met had been through three tours, three. One of the guys I met, his little boy was there, and literally his dad had been on three tours. His little boy was six, which means that this dad missed half of his child's life already, half. I mean, that is just inexcusable. That is not what our volunteers sign up for. I mean, even if you signed up for the regular standing Army, it is unreasonable to expect that they would have to have that kind of pressure, physical, mental, emotional pressure put on them as well as their families, especially in the middle of the situation in a war that we are involved in under dubious circumstances to begin with.

I do not know if Mr. Meek wants to jump in here now, but he is still sitting so I imagine not. So I will go back to Mr. Murphy.

I want to follow up on what you are saying and emphasize and demonstrate what we are doing to our best, and I do mean doing to our best and brightest once they have come back. You have been an eloquent champion of our veterans.

I think it is important to recall a private conversation that you and I had on the floor during the run-up to the adoption of the supplemental. It happens that I am a member of the whip team, and you were my assignment that day. I had an opportunity to talk to you about whether we could count on your support for the supplemental and how important it was.

Your answer, which was the appropriate answer, was, well, Debbie, the answer is no, unless you can assure me that there was an increase for veterans health care. Because at that moment, I could not assure you because I did not have the information at my fingertips, I had to get back to you and was proud to be able to report that we did provide a significant increase that we were able to bump up beyond the continuing resolution significantly the health care we are providing to our veterans. But it is to your constituents' credit and the veterans that you represent that you do that.

But let us just go through some facts that we know. The percentage of Army servicemembers receiving medical retirement and permanent disability benefits back in 2001 was 10 percent. The percentage of the same Army servicemembers receiving medical retirement and permanent disability benefits in 2005 down to 3 percent. Army Reservists receiving medical retirement and permanent disability in 2001, 16 percent; same group in 2005, 5 percent.

Let us go to the case backlog at the Veterans Administration on new benefit claims in fiscal year 2006. 400,000-case backup. This is from the Army Times, third party validator. Average length of time veterans wait before receiving monthly benefits, 6 months to 2 years. That was in the Los Angeles Times.

The number of soldiers at Walter Reed navigating the medical and physical evaluation process since 2001 has doubled. The average length of time it takes for Army soldiers to convalesce and go through the military medical and physical evaluations, nine to 15\1/2\ months.

The increase in the Army's physical disability caseload since 2001, 80 percent. The number of veterans from the global war on terror expected to enter the military and veterans health care systems in the coming years, 700,000. And I will just read the quote again from Candidate Bush: ``So let's get something straight right now. To point out that our military has been overextended, taken for granted, and neglected, that's no criticism of the military; that is the criticism of a President and a Vice President and their record of neglect.''

Well, it sure is. And these statistics from the time that this President has been in the office are evidence of that.

I would be happy to yield to one of the three gentlemen here.

If the gentleman would yield for a question. It is somewhat rhetorical, but if you know the answer, feel free to tell me what it is. Do you know what percentage of the troops that are over in Iraq that we will have as a Nation once Great Britain pulls out?

Thank you. Just to quickly help close us out,

the bottom line is that our veterans come home and face devastating treatment from their government. We have outlined that tonight. We send them over there with equipment that in many cases is faulty. We are not adequately preparing them and giving them enough time to be well trained to do their best over there. And they are doing their level best given the assignment that we give them. We are not providing them with the resources, and we are not providing them with the equipment. And, fortunately, we have a Democratic Congress now that is not going to give this President a blank check any longer, not going to let him run roughshod over our duty to be a check and balance on the administration. And that is what the 30-something Working Group is designed to outline. We are going to make sure that we get the message out and that we help our colleagues and anyone who might also hear this conversation between us understand what is really going on.

Mr. Murphy, I would yield to you to give out the Web site and Mr. Meek for closing.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to bring it back down a notch for a minute.

On Tuesday, I had the privilege to spend time with some of our Nation's finest. I traveled to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and talked with some of our soldiers who dedicated their lives to protect our Nation and gave their hearts, souls and bodies to the cause of freedom.

As I was driving out to the hospital, I reflected upon the changes in Iraq in the year-and-a-half since my first visit to Walter Reed. During that visit, IED was not a regular part of the American vocabulary, Mr. Speaker. Fatalities were shocking. The mounting death toll was disturbing.

Today, there are insurgent attacks almost every day. Iraq has descended into a deadly civil war, and almost every American has become familiar with the term IED and the deadly impact they have on the young men and women that we send to fight for us in this war.

The terms of war that my good friend from Indiana so well knows, the casualties, death, kidnappings, injuries, helicopter crashes, bombs, amputations, good-byes, sorrow and pain have all become commonplace.

We hear that another helicopter was shot down or that three more soldiers died today in Iraq, and soon enough we become numb to the true impact that

this war is having on our troops and their families.

These young men and women represent true honor, courage and selflessness. They also represent the incalculable cost of the war, the price tag that is not mentioned, the lives, limbs, hopes and dreams.

They are soldiers like a young man I met Tuesday who was travelling on foot with his convey when an IED exploded, and as he put it, blew him up. He had served in Iraq twice before, and on his third tour of duty, Mr. Speaker, he became a double amputee, lost his arm and leg. Clearly, his total experience will change him completely.

Another young soldier was spending time with his family when I visited. He has a 6-year-old little boy who talked to me excitedly about how his daddy was finally going to come home forever after August. He, too, had two previous tours and fell severely ill this third time. Amazingly, this soldier hopes to go over and finish his tour with his company when he is better.

As a mom of 7-year-old twins, my first thought when meeting this delightful little boy was that his dad had missed half his life so far, half his life. I could not help but worry that if we do not get it right soon in Iraq it will not be long before this little boy and my twins will be part of this conflict.

And finally, there are soldiers like the young man who shared so much with me and who sincerely explained to me that he was actually glad that he was badly injured, as opposed to his gunner, because his gunner had a wife and kids and he did not want his buddy's family to have to look into his eyes like that. He told me he wants to run for office one day, and our Nation will be better for it.

America's future depends upon this generation of Americans, but while they fight to protect our country, they are depending on us to protect them. They are counting on us, the United States Congress and this President, to have a plan, a strategy that gets us somewhere and to help get them home and not endlessly commit their lives and their families' lives to this war.

So, Mr. Speaker, today I join an overwhelming majority of the American people, a bipartisan majority of Congress and some of the President's own military leaders to raise my voice and to be the voice of the constituents, the thousands of people who I represent in the 20th district of Florida, against escalating this war in Iraq.

But more importantly, I raise my voice for my generation and for all the little boys and girls in America whose mommies and daddies are in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for this country and for freedom.

This President owes the American people, but more importantly, these brave troops, a strategy that makes sense, that will do the job and that will help get them home. The President's policy fails that 6-year- old little boy with a heart of gold and a smile that lights up the room who only wants his daddy to come home forever.

I support this resolution because the explanation the President has given the American people is not good enough. I cannot help but think about the way this war is affecting not only my generation, Mr. Speaker, but the generations following mine. They, too, recognize the sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are facing.

Students from two schools in my district, Nob Hill Elementary and Silver Ridge Elementary, made Valentine's Day cards for the soldiers, and I got a chance to deliver them Tuesday during my visit to Walter Reed. One of these cards reads, the one right here: ``Thank you for protecting our country and me. You're the best. I would never have had the guts to fight with guns anyways. You are my hero. Forever and ever. Get well very, very soon.''

These young children recognize the service and sacrifice that these warriors are making. As Members of Congress, we owe them no less.

It is our responsibility to provide for the common defense, and that includes vigorous debate, informed discussion and responsible public policy.

I support this resolution because it does just that, and Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution because the gentleman from Indiana knows better.

It does not require words to question patriotism. We have had plenty of implication throughout this debate on this floor on the other side of the aisle, and death by a thousand cuts is the same as direct words. It is irresponsible and unconscionable that the other side of the aisle has questioned the patriotism of the Members who disagree.

It is Congress' job to disagree. It is our role in the system of checks and balances, as our Founding Fathers envisioned them, unfortunately a role that was absent for the last 12 years.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank you for yielding.

I was just taking my opportunity. You have had more than 45 minutes to an hour of your own time to discuss your own view, and each us would like that same opportunity. It is 12:40 in the morning. So I appreciate you yielding.

I can tell you, as I just mentioned in my remarks, that it does not require express words. By implication, there are many Members on your side of the aisle who have questioned the patriotism of any of us who disagree with the President's policy. The President's policy is inappropriate, and it is Congress' role to question to engage in vigorous oversight. That is a role that was absent for the last 12 years, and that is why the American people elected Democrats to lead this chamber on November 7 and move this country in a new direction, which unfortunately you have neglected to do.

You collectively.

Would the gentlewoman yield?

Does the gentleman not understand that when words are used, that they don't actually have to be exact words to suggest a particular opinion on the part of the Member? And do you really think that it is beyond question that any of the Members on your side of the aisle as they engaged in this discussion and debate did not question the patriotism of our Members? I mean, me thinks thou dost protest too much, as the gentleman stated earlier. I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I was unavoidably detained for roll-call vote No. 85, on agreeing to the Rogers amendment to H.R. 547, at 4:01 p.m. on February 8, 2007.

If present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank both of my good friends from Florida, Mr. Keller and Mr. Meek. It is my privilege to join with my colleagues in honoring the life and legacy of the Diaz-Balart family, and particularly Rafael Diaz-Balart, who distinguished himself not just in the Cuban House of Representatives, but by becoming a wonderful citizen of the United States of America and contributing his subsequent generations of his family to the history of the State of Florida and to the United States by lending his two grandsons to the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, across this country we have a wonderful history of naming institutions like law centers after our giants, and Florida is no exception. The Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University is named after a Florida giant. The University of Florida Law Center, the Holland Building, is named after a Florida giant. And now the law center at Florida International University will be named after a Cuban-American, a Florida giant, Rafael Diaz-Balart, and it is my privilege to join my colleagues in honoring his legacy and his life today.

Thank you so much to my good friend from Ohio. What is more baffling is that it is bad enough that the President is, in this proposed budget, asking for more tax cuts for the wealthiest few, but what is more disheartening, deflating, insulting is that he is doing it on the backs of Medicaid recipients and Medicare beneficiaries.

There is a $252 billion Medicare cut, a net $28 billion Medicaid cut in this budget. Yet still there are billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. I mean, how do you stand behind a podium at a press conference, how do you hold up this big, thick, hulking document and say that this is a representation of your values, of our country's values?

Tax cuts for the wealthy and slashing health care for those who need it most and who can least afford it. I just honestly wonder every single day who raised these people. What were they talking about around their dinner table? It was obviously a different conversation than what was discussed around my dinner table.

I come from not a poor background, not a wealthy background, but you know, I ate every night, we woke up and ate breakfast every day. Because I was comfortable in that regard and because my family was able to provide for us, we were taught around that dinner table that you took care of and gave back. In the Jewish religion, it is called Tikkun Olam. You give back to the community and help people who can least afford it, and this budget is the antithesis of that. This is give to the people who can best afford it and do it and take from the people who can afford it the least.

I guess that is another example of why Democrats were successful across this country. Why both of my colleagues were successful in defeating Republican incumbents because the message was clear and they wanted a new direction.

Speaking of S-CHIP, the children's health insurance program, there is actually a proposal in this budget document that narrows who would be eligible for the children's health insurance program.

Right now, I think the eligibility is twice that of the poverty level, and Secretary Leavitt just signed off on a formula that would narrow those children who could potentially be eligible for children's health insurance, I mean, at a time in our country when people are struggling to afford health care, when we have more and more people, especially children join the ranks of the uninsured, which means when you are sick, they cannot afford to go to the doctor and they use our emergency rooms as primary health care. Like I said, where are their values coming from?

Just actually if you are momentarily at a loss, I have the privilege of sitting on the House Appropriations Committee, as does Mr. Ryan, and we will have a

chance to take this document apart pretty carefully, one of the things that I was reviewing as we received this today was just the continuous example that this administration provides in representing a policy in one way and doing something completely different.

I mean, we have to be careful about the words we choose when we are on the House floor referring to the President, but I will point you to the section of the proposed budget that talks about how we finally are including at least some portion of the war budget inside the budget, instead of doing it all as emergency supplemental funding. So we have to give the President credit for at least including a portion of that in the budget.

However, he actually does not have any funding for the war, assumes no funding for the war past the end of 2008. There is no funding in his proposed budget for 2009. I think probably everyone in this country would like nothing more than for us to be completely finished in this war in Iraq by that point, but that is not the track that we are on and it is not the track that the President has suggested that we are going to be on.

So, there is a certain lack of clarity in terms of the distinction between what his budget represents and his rhetoric. They are not matching each other, and I think people see through that. We are fortunately now running this institution. So, through our accountability process, we can show the disparity between what the budget represents and what the actual policy implementation is.

Mr. Ryan, naturally we should cut it.

That brings me back to my, you know, sort of private thoughts, when reviewing the budget proposal, and the changes in the SCHIP program formula, where are their values, where are their priorities? If you lay out the choices they had, they choose covering the formula and covering fewer kids.

Perhaps it is that President Bush's daughters are grown now, or that they have always had health care coverage or that he grew up in a family that maybe didn't understand need. But there is something desperately wrong with the priorities and the values of this administration in terms of the direction they are moving in this country.

That is why, at least fortunately now, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Altmire, Mr. Murphy, we have some balance. We have the ability to exert Congress' role as a check and balance. We have the 30-something Working Group that can come to the floor each night and talk about those issues, talk about what is important to the American people, and the way we want to continue to move this country in the new direction that our constituents have asked for.

Mr. Altmire, I want to tell a little story because I am really pleased that you raised this issue, and that you have been the champion of ensuring that we don't, as we move through what is an unfortunate but necessary situation with this continuing resolution, I want to tell anyone listening a little story about an exchange that you and I had the other day on the House floor.

I have the privilege of serving as a Chief Deputy Whip for the House Democratic Caucus, and you are one of my assignments. We divide the House Democratic Caucus members up into groups, and you are included among the Members that I am typically engaged in lobbying. And when I approached you about whether you were going to be supportive of the continuing resolution that we voted on today, your immediate response, which was the right one, was, well, not if we are cutting money for veterans. And I was really proud that you did that and that you were absolutely not going to move forward on your support for the continuing resolution unless you were able to get the information that you needed to ensure that, in fact, not only were we not cutting funding for veterans but, we in fact, increased funding for veterans. And so the notation in your hometown paper was apt and appropriate, and I commend you for your advocacy because that is what this is all about.

The new direction that the American people demanded, that they chose on November 7 included selecting people like you to send to Washington to make sure that when there was no one standing up, we certainly were all standing up united as a minority; but that there were not enough people in this body standing up for veterans. On the contrary, as you just outlined through the charts in a chronological way, the Republicans and the Republican administration were doing the opposite, were actually making it more difficult for veterans to get the services that they need and that they were entitled to and that they deserved through their patriotism and devotion to this country. So I commend you on that.

We were in a situation in adopting the continuing resolution today that was the result of the mess, as you said, that the Republicans handed us. I mean, how irresponsible to just not complete nine of the 11 appropriations bills. I sit on the House Appropriations Committee now. I am just at the beginning of that process, but it is mind boggling to me, how, really, I mean, the Constitution says the only thing we have to do, the only thing Congress has to do is pass the budget. And they didn't do it. They didn't do it because it is hard. It is difficult. You have to make tough decisions. And you know, right up in front of an election, where they were struggling as it was, they didn't want to make those difficult decisions. And we have a lot of our Members, some in tough districts that are going to have to go home and have to answer some difficult questions, because obviously, you know, we didn't like everything that we had to do. But if we didn't go forward and try to get to the 2008 budgetary process and make sure we could do right by the people in this country, then we would have been in an even worse mess.

So kudos to you for standing up for veterans and for adding another voice on their behalf where there wasn't one before.

And if the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) wanted to jump in I would be happy to yield to him.

Mr. Altmire, let me just jump in while the gentleman from Florida is listening, because one of the things I think it is important to point out is when we talk in the language of government, it is difficult for regular folks to understand what we are saying. So we are talking about the CR, the continuing resolution, the terminology that we deal with on a daily basis. But that is not what sort of every day folks understand.

And the continuing resolution, it is important to point out, is the budget, the Federal budget that keeps the lights on. And people will recall a number of years ago when the Republican Congress decided that, in retaliation for who knows what, because they couldn't get the Clinton administration to agree to what they wanted, because they thought that brinksmanship was the most appropriate strategy, they shut the government down. People were furloughed. Government programs that were vitally important to different constituencies around the country came to a halt.

What we have done is, and Chairman Obey has been the champion of this. What we have done is, not only have we made sure that that doesn't happen, because brinksmanship and engaging in irresponsible actions like that make no sense, we have made some difficult decisions. But we haven't made irrational decisions that would be harmful to people.

For example, we could have passed a continuing resolution that simply adopted the 2006 spending levels, the same spending levels that we had in 2006 and just moved forward. But that would have resulted, as you pointed out for veterans, in some cuts. And in our discussion on the floor the other day, you pointed out that unless there were increases, essentially, because of inflation, because of the adjustments in cost of living that are necessary, and because there are simply more people, more service men and women who are in need, we would not have had the money we needed to meet the needs of veterans.

But beyond that, let me just talk about what, because our good friends on the other side of the aisle are, of course, being critical that we didn't just pass a straight continuing resolution. Let's talk about what that would have done. Essentially, that would have jeopardized our national security. If we did that, if we simply passed the same level budget that we adopted in 2006, that would have resulted in thousands of layoffs, cuts for health care workers, cuts for members of the Armed Forces, cuts for veterans.

For example, the Food Safety and Inspection Service would face a month of furloughs. Can you imagine a month of furloughs in the Food Safety and Inspection Service? That means that we could end up with rotting meat in supermarkets and people potentially buying them. Or let's not use language that is too strong. Questionable meat. I mean, if we don't make sure that we have our food inspected, then we are going to jeopardize people's health. That would have also resulted in the closure of 6,000 meat processing plants that could not have been inspected.

The Federal Judiciary would have had to fire 2,500 workers. The Small Business Administration, and Mr. Meek, this is incredibly important to our area because how often we face natural disasters through hurricanes. But the Small Business Administration's disaster loan assistance program, which provides back up for FEMA's individual assistance program, that would have been run dry by the end of February.

Now, given how many people are still suffering from the aftermath of Katrina and Rita and Wilma and the other hurricanes and the other natural disasters that have hit around this country, I just cannot imagine what the consequences would have been. Actually, I can imagine what the consequences would have been for millions of Americans.

So we struck a balance here. We were being fiscally responsible, but at the same time, not hanging Americans out to dry without regard for their well-being. And that is what the Democratic Caucus's approach always is. You have to think about the fact that all of the decisions that we make here, Mr. Altmire and Mr. Murphy and Mr. Meek, affect real people.

I have often thought over the time I have served in the Congress and in the State Legislature in Florida, in Florida, and I am not sure how far your State capital is in Connecticut from your home, Mr. Murphy, but Tallahassee is 450 miles from where I live. And I served in the State Legislature for 12 years. Mr. Meek, I think, served in the State Legislature for 10, between the House and the Senate. It is so easy, I mean, we are obviously even further away from our homes, I certainly am. But you are pretty far from your homes, too, making decisions in Washington. And it could be argued that it would be so easy to make decisions in a vacuum here. The people we affect, whose decisions that we make, who we affect, they can't come in this Chamber. They are not in the room with us. The folks in the gallery are that are watching, but it would be so easy to just forget that every decision, every vote, every time we put our card in that slot and our name lights up on the board ``yea'' or ``nay,'' the decision we make affects a human being.

But you become desensitized to it. There is a danger that you could become desensitized to it. Certainly the Republican side of the aisle became desensitized to it. For years and years, they didn't think about the results, they didn't think about the consequences. Well, that is the balance the Democrats strike. Pragmatism with a healthy dose of thoughtfulness and compassion. That is what it is all about.

Unless the gentleman from Pennsylvania knows, I do know that we got an average of 62 Republicans to vote with the Democrats on the Six-in-'06 agenda on making sure that the Federal Government can negotiate for lower prices for the Medicare part D prescription drug plan; making sure that we fully implement the 9/11 Commission Report; making sure that we repeal the subsidies to the oil industry; making sure that we do the job that the people sent us here to do and that they spoke so strongly about through their vote on November 7. An average of 62 Republicans voted with us on each of those items.

You know, just the way you are going back and forth on the Republican's response to the process, you know, it is just really, gosh, I can't say what comes to mind. It is galling. It really is galling that they do have nerve to talk about process.

Because just in my 2 years of experience, and certainly two wrongs don't make a wrong, but there is no second wrong here. I mean, in my experience in the last 2 years, and Mr. Ryan and Mr. Meek, you have had more experience and more lengthy experience than I and Mr. Altmire and Mr. Murphy have had, but I recall votes being held open for 40 minutes to several hours to twist enough arms to get the votes. We, of course, haven't had to do that because not only do we get all of our Members to vote for our legislation, but we get a good chunk if not, and in one case, a majority of theirs.

I remember being shut out, completely shut out on every major question over the last 2 years, no amendments allowed, no commentary except in a token way. And now they are whining about process?

You know, the small point I wanted to make, and Mr. Altmire, you are a dad, you have young kids; I am a mom, I have young kids; Mr. Meek has young kids, and some day Mr. Murphy and Mr. Ryan, I am sure you will have young kids too.

But you know, when your kids whine at you and complain about something that you know is just their immaturity, their wishing something could be the case, but when they get a little older they will realize that they were wrong? That is what this is.

It is nerve is what it is. It is just pure unadulterated nerve. The American people see through this. They don't have any substance to talk about. They can only whine about process.

I think they should have their say. I really do. Going forward, when we hear legislation and get into the regular order, we have markups in committee hearings and legislation that Members file, we will do that. But we are still cleaning up their mess.

The Six in '06 agenda is an agenda of the major issues that the American people voted for us to come here and do that we offered as amendments.

We offered the minimum wage, we offered fully implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, and through all of the other procedural attempts we made within the confines of their limiting us, we offered repealing the subsidies to the oil industry.

We offered legislation and amendments that would have the student loan interest rate and make higher education access more affordable. And they said no. They said no, no, no, over and over and over again.

Sorry, now it is our turn. It is time to implement the agenda that the American people asked us to. It is time to clean up their mess.

Mr. Ryan, going forward, I am all for what Speaker Pelosi has said that we will do, which is give them the most bipartisan House of Representatives that history has ever seen. But the mess has to be cleaned up before we can do that.

If the gentleman would yield, I would like to interject on that point.

Because the funny thing, ironically funny, about what you are talking about, where we have an average of 62 Republicans supporting the Six in '06 agenda and 57 supporting the continuing resolutions appropriations bill today, the last 2 years, our experience, Mr. Ryan's, Mr. Meek's and my experience, is watching the Republican leadership wrench our colleagues's arms behind their back; and, in many cases, new Members replaced those Members. Those Members caved. Those Members either didn't vote their conscience.

We used to talk about, in the 30-something hour, about how it seemed they checked their consciences and their beliefs and their constituents' beliefs at the door. They would come here and allow themselves to be influenced by their leadership and vote differently in some cases than they publicly said they would vote.

I think that actually happened with your predecessor, Mr. Murphy.

Two things that we did not mention that were also part of the Six in '06 agenda were ethics reform and the PAYGO rules. Mr. Altmire, I know you have been a supporter of both of those things.

We had a culture of corruption hanging over this institution and over this Capitol, and we were able to adopt some ethics rules that make sure that we can restore the American people's confidence in their government again. That is what our freshman class on the Democratic side ran on. One of the issues that they ran on was making sure that they could inspire their constituents to believe in what we are doing here again.

I think your comments are a good segue to where we should close which is that the Congress has now finally reasserted our constitutional role to be a check, a check and a balance over the other branches of government, particularly over the executive branch in which that authority and oversight was completely ceded over the last 12 years.

I sit on the House Judiciary Committee. We had an oversight committee today on the presidential signing statement where the President, this President in particular more than any other President combined, has issued signing statements, his opinion and his interpretation of legislation which is really the judicial branch's responsibility, that he would just choose not to implement or implement in the way that he wanted to, a particular section of law, wholly inappropriate.

Congress is back in our appropriate role, and I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania to talk about our Web site, but first to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, the 30 Something Working Group appreciates the hour granted to us by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Thank you to my good friend from Youngstown, Ohio.

You know, your comments sort of bring to mind that our good friends on the other side of the aisle want to have their cake and eat it, too. They were the ones responsible for putting us in this situation where we have to adopt a continuing resolution that is essentially continuation funding that in order to put a finger in the dike and make sure that things don't get any worse and that we can begin the process for the 2008 budget and getting our fiscal house in order. It was them that only were able to pass two out of all of the spending bills that were in their hopper. It was them that left us this mess.

And now, you know, you will see over the next couple of days, Mr. Murphy, our good friends on the other side of

the aisle actually stand up and criticize their own budget, which is what the CR is. They will try to put our colleagues on our side of the aisle who were just elected, who, you know, campaigned against fiscal irresponsibility in a box and make it seem like somehow this continuing resolution is what we crafted when we are in a situation where it is shut down the government or pass the simplest, most effective way of getting us across the finish line so that we can move on and really address the concerns that we talked about during our 30-Something hours in the 109th Congress, which was that we are in the worst financial shape that we have been in in decades, that we have a foreign debt that is more combined than any of the 42 previous presidents combined.

And yet they will try to have their cake and eat it, too, criticize us on their budget that we are going to have to continue but, at the same time, not claim responsibility for it. It is really going to be shocking.

So it is something that I think it is important that we talk about and that we lay out there. Because, you know, this process, the appropriations process is one of the most inside baseball, nitty- gritty, intricate things that we do, and there are Members that have been here for years, and I am just, as a new member of the Appropriations Committee, you know, even though I am chairing a subcommittee, I still have a significant learning curve. So explaining it to the people that we represent, while they are watching it all unfold on TV, is really somewhat difficult. So it is critical that people understand that.

I actually talked to some of our colleagues on the floor tonight when we were talking about the CR and, you know, all lamenting that we are not able to craft a bill that we would all love to support with the increases that the veterans deserve and the increases that are deserving in education, that are critical in terms of education and health care and health and human services and housing. I mean, those are all programs that Democrats have campaigned on and fought for. But because we have colleagues that spent like drunken sailors, that had no regard for the fiscal house that we are now charged with putting back in order, we find ourselves having to cinch the belt as tight as possible just so that we can get through and start making things right.

I think each of our colleagues, particularly the freshmen like you, Mr. Murphy, are going to have an important task of going back to your constituents and explaining that we have got to be responsible here first. Give us an opportunity to get through the mess that we were left and then we can really show you what we can do.

Be happy to yield.

What we talked about night after night here and what our colleagues and our leadership have all talked about, we have all been singing off the same song sheet, that we have to make sure that we handle the Federal budget just like folks struggle in America to handle their household budget every single day, not to spend more than you take in.

There are families all across America, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Meek, Mr. Ryan, that have to make really difficult decisions. Would they like to go and buy a new wardrobe for their children? Would they like to get the car completely overhauled? Definitely important and certainly would improve their quality of life, but they can't make those decisions if the money is not coming in in order to cover those expenses.

So at a certain point, if you don't stop the bleeding, if you don't make those fiscally difficult decisions, then it just gets worse.

We could have been, you know, we could have played right into their hands, which is, I am sure, what they expected us to do, which was what they always accused us of being tax-and-spend liberals and that we were going to just give away the store and that we were going to satisfy every interest group that is in the column of supporters that we have.

But, instead, what we did is we stuck to our principles. We stuck to what we talked about was important to the American people, not spending more than you take in and particularly not caving to what would be politically expedient, which was the tax cuts, as you referred to, Mr. Murphy, for people who don't need them.

Because what they like to conveniently leave out is that they only count, you know, there are only certain things that they count in the ledger. They only count the things in the ledger that are actually things you can put down as I spent this much money on this particular program. But they fail to actually account for the tax cuts that pull money out off the ledger, which makes it so that there is not that revenue available to fund the needs, and that adds to the deficit itself.

They also don't include Social Security and Medicare when it comes to the whole appropriation process. All of that is off budget. They don't like to count the supplemental bills that they pass. All of that is off budget.

So it is just, you know, we are going to get back to being up front and honest with the American people in our budgeting process, and we are going to get our fiscal house in order.

We are going to be the Congress.

I see Mr. Meek is ready to jump in here. But we are going to be the Congress and exercise our role, our accountability, our oversight, and be the legislative branch instead of the administration lap dog. Because that is what this body was for the last 6 years certainly. When President Clinton was in office, it was the opposite. It was, let's see what we can do to torture the administration and make it impossible for them to get what they wanted done and wanted to accomplish.

Then, of course, President Bush comes into office and it is like they all lost their hands. They lost their hands, they checked their brains at the Chamber door, and it was whatever this administration wanted.

And there is a new leadership in this institution and 32 new Members, all of whom came here to step up to the plate and ask the difficult questions and exercise this body's constitutional role, constitutional authority granted to us by the Founding Fathers, which hopefully at some point our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will remember as well.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Thank you, and it is. The other day I walked into the Chamber, Mr. Murphy, from that end of the room, and I noticed that there is a really huge, huge dictionary on the Republican's side of the Chamber which, quite honestly, it doesn't appear has gotten that much use on their side of the aisle, because words like accountability and oversight and checks and balances, and the things that have been with us through American history, maybe they tore the pages out that had those definitions or maybe they just chose to ignore them or just skipped over those pages when they were using it because, obviously we have a dictionary on the floor for a reason, but now, Mr. Meek, just in great detail went over the number of different hearings that we will be engaging in to exercise the oversight and the accountability that the American people badly are seeking that has just been nonexistent.

And, Mr. Meek, I want to touch just quickly on one particular bit of oversight that we are going to be engaging in on Wednesday. I have the privilege of sitting on the House Judiciary Committee, and we will be holding our first hearing of the 110th Congress on Presidential signing statements. Now, that is something that we really haven't had a chance to talk about too much on the floor during 30-something, but I would like to explore it down the road a little bit, especially after we hold this hearing.

Most of the American people, I think, don't realize that what this President

has done, and other Presidents, many Presidents have exercised this option, the constitutionality of which I think is somewhat troubling. But this President has used Presidential signing statements more than any other Presidents combined. He has added more than 700 signing statements to legislation that we have adopted in both Houses of Congress. And what he does is he adds a note essentially to the bottom of the bill or to the margin of the bill next to a section that he doesn't agree with and he says: ``I either reserve the right to not enforce this section or to interpret this section in this way.'' I mean, literally taking authority for the executive branch that I believe the Founding Fathers didn't envision. I mean, he did that with the PATRIOT Act, he did that with a number of significant pieces of legislation, Mr. Meek, and it is really, really troubling.

The executive branch in the Constitution does not have the right to interpret legislation. That is not their job. It is the Judiciary's responsibility to interpret legislation; it is the administration's job to execute what is laid before them by the Congress. Now, he certainly has the right to veto legislation that he doesn't agree with, but he doesn't have a line item veto; he doesn't have a line item veto in the budget, and he can't X out a portion of a bill that he doesn't like. And we are going to be holding a hearing on Wednesday, and we will have the Department of Justice representatives there to question very carefully where they think they get this legislative authority, and reassert Congress's role in oversight in this one area and in many others, as you detailed.

I guess we are in the wrapping-it-up stage, because that is when the Web site chart comes out. I will be happy to yield to our good friend and freshman colleague, the gentleman from Connecticut.

Actually, not to be the teacher exercising oversight over the freshman, but probably give out our e-mail address, too, so people know where they can contact us.

And then she looked at me.

Thank you so much to our colleague, the gentlewoman from Florida, Congresswoman Brown. And I am so pleased to join my 30-Something colleagues here this afternoon, our newest 30- Something colleague from Connecticut Chris Murphy. With our new-found responsibility, I have been a little tied up the last couple times we have had this Special Order hour, so I am really pleased to be able to be with you. And we have some fresh blood and some new dynamics that we will engage in. It will be really fun to work with you and banter a little bit.

But I will tell you that this being the day after the President's State of the Union Address, Mr. Murphy, I was particularly disturbed listening to the President. The privilege that we have here in this House, and it was yours for the first time last night, and I remember 2 years ago, I am just 2 years ahead of you in this process, and I remember the feeling that I had sitting in this Chamber and the awesome responsibility that I felt on my shoulders being this far from the President and having the chance to listen to him deliver that address, and the expectation that I had as a representative of my constituents, that the expectation that he would say something more than words.

And last year, if you recall, you were in your State legislature when he delivered last year's State of the Union. He talked about the need to end America's addiction to foreign oil, and subsequently that turned out to just be words because he ended up proposing in his budget, and they actually enacted, a cut in the energy legislation, that this Republican leadership that is no longer in charge here, they actually cut the funding to alternative energy, exploring alternative energy resources.

Now, last night he says the same thing in a different way. And we are just to the point, why should we expect that there is meaning and action coming down the pipe behind the words?

On the war in Iraq, I know I have heard from my constituents, and it is just shocking that after the response from the voters on November 7, that this President would not get the message that the American people were sending him. They want a new direction. They want to move the troops from a combat focus to a training focus, get the Iraqi troops to stand up on their own so that that country can take care of itself. So it is just shocking the lack of understanding of his priorities and where he is on the issues that are most important to people.

On health care, the health care priorities. There are 47 million people in this country, 3\1/2\ million in Florida, that don't have health insurance. And his solution to that problem is a tax deduction, a tiny tax deduction that he thinks will spur people who benefit from it to take that money and buy health insurance. That just shows a callous indifference. And you are an expert in health care; that was your focus. That shows a callous indifference to what the problems that the uninsured and underinsured are really facing.

You are probably familiar with the death spiral created by insurance companies where they cordoned off the people who are the most sick. Some States have adopted guaranteed-issue policies and modified community rating like we did in Florida so that there were only a few things that were taken into consideration when rates were set. But for the most part that is not what people are able to get when buying health insurance. So the sickest of the sick get cordoned off into a group; that group is priced out of the market, and then they don't have the ability to afford that health insurance.

A simple tax deduction is not going to make health insurance accessible and affordable for that group of people. It is just unbelievable, Mr. Murphy. And I fail to understand why this President only seems to keep his own counsel. It is just really unbelievable.

So I will yield to you or to Mr. Meek, but that was my feeling and my reaction in listening last night. And when I talked to our radio stations in south Florida this morning, I know the feedback that our radio hosts were getting was similar.

Will the gentleman yield for 1 second on that point? Because on the health care issue specifically, the gentlewoman from Florida talked about being supportive of universal health care. And, I mean, I am supportive of expanding access to health care to everyone as well. But our good friends on the other side

of the aisle like to use that as a bogeyman for us and imply that that means socialized medicine, and that we want to implement this single- payer system that is going to be government top-down health care.

There are ways to expand access to health care to large populations, to almost everybody who is uninsured, and then we only have to work hard towards ensuring that last phase of the population. We can expand access to health care for all children by expanding the SCHIP program. We can expand access to health care to more older Americans by simply expanding the Medicare program and letting people from 50 to 64 years old buy into that program. Those are bills that were filed when we were in the minority and that will be filed again and that we will have an opportunity to able to pursue now that we are past the 100-hour agenda. So just you having come just out of the State legislature and being a health care expert, I would just love to hear your thoughts about that.

Thank you so much. One of the things that I think is important for the Members and other folks to know is we did this 30-something hour night after night in the minority for the last several years, and we want folks to know that we are not just shutting down and becoming complacent and resting on our laurels now that we are in the majority because there continues to be a need for accountability, as the State of the Union address demonstrated last night.

We are going to assert Congress's oversight role, reestablish the system of checks and balances that was totally absent the last number of years. We are going to use the 30-something Working Group forum to be able to do that and also talk about what Democrats are going to do, implement our agenda, talk about the priorities of the American people.

I am so thrilled that we have expanded our ranks and that we have an opportunity to interact and dialogue with you. I can tell you that on election night on November 7, I was cheering very loud that you were coming to join us in the 110th.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield to Mr. Murphy and he is going to give the Web site out and we will be ready to shut down.

Please.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 39, the Wasserman Schultz-Stearns resolution commending the University of Florida Fighting Gators for their victory in the 2006 Bowl Championship Series and for winning the national college football title.

Madam Speaker, after a hard-fought football season, the Florida Gators proved victorious on January 8 with a dazzling 41-14 triumph over the Ohio State University Buckeyes.

While many critics expressed doubt about the Gators' chances for victory, Florida's Congressional Delegation and all of the students, alumni and friends in the Gator Nation stood by the Orange and Blue.

Led by senior quarterback Chris Leak, the MVP of the game, and Florida's impenetrable defense, Florida Gators dominated the game when the stakes were the highest.

This season, as Florida's football program celebrated its 100th anniversary, the University of Florida made history by winning national titles in both men's basketball and football in the same season.

Congressman Stearns and I would like to extend special congratulations to Florida's head coach, Urban Meyer, who trained this football team to be the best in the country.

The Florida players, coaches, faculty, students and alumni all pulled together with hard work and dedication to help the team win. All of the student athletes are shining stars for the University, and deserve our highest praise.

The Gator Nation's academic reputation is stellar, our sports teams are number one, and our fans are like none other.

Madam Speaker, it is great to be a Florida Gator.

Thank you, Mr. Delahunt.

To the gentleman from Ohio.

No, we really don't.

Thank you. And I want to go back to the minimum wage for just a second, because this is the second day now that we have had the opportunity to watch Speaker Pelosi preside over our legislation that is passing out of the House of Representatives with the speed that we want, which should demonstrate to the American people that we share their priorities.

Yesterday was H.R. 1. Today was H.R. 2. And one of the things that, combined with the Six in 2006 agenda and our commitment to move this country in a new direction, that she committed to on our behalf was bipartisanship and making sure that this is the most inclusive bipartisan House of Representatives in history. And what I thought was the most emblematic of that and that was really telling of the difference between the way we are running this institution versus the way the Republican leadership ran it is that I looked up on that board with the vote tally at the end, and this is the first opportunity that we have had in the time that I have been here, in 10 years, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller) indicated, the first opportunity we have had to have a straight up-or-down, clean vote on the minimum wage. The first chance.

Before, we had to go through all this rigmarole and shenanigans, and we had to do motions to recommit and use procedural moves in both the Appropriations Committee and on this floor to get remotely close to a vote on the minimum wage. And you know how in the last Congress, in the 109th, when we would come on the floor as the 30-Something Working Group and we would lament the antics of the Republican leadership and the arm-twisting that they did, and even on those procedural motions where we were trying to get a vote even close to the minimum wage, they would wrench the arms of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle behind their backs and make them vote ``no.''

Well, what was the vote today? That vote on H.R. 2, on the minimum wage, there were 201 Members more that voted ``yes'' than voted ``no''. There was a 201 vote difference. Now, we have fewer than a 201 vote margin here. We are in the majority, but our majority is about 30 or 32. It is not 201. So look at what bipartisanship and inclusiveness does. And when you are finally allowed a free vote, a straight up-or- down vote on the American people's priorities, we had a huge bipartisan margin to increase the minimum wage. And that is beautiful. That is what democracy is all about.

Now, without violating rules and directly addressing the Speaker, it is so refreshing to see my good friend from Florida in the Chair tonight, and that is about as close as I will come to naming the gentleman from Florida, but I really was so gratified to watch us begin to go through the Six in 2006 agenda and finally deal with the priorities of the American people.

Lastly, Mr. Delahunt, I want to thank you for your kind words. The thing that makes me so humble and proud and excited about the opportunity that I have to chair a subcommittee in appropriations is, if you recall, Speaker Pelosi last week, when she took the gavel from the gentleman from Ohio, she talked about how she was able to bust through the marble ceiling. And the wonderful thing about Speaker Pelosi is that when she did it, like the leader that she is, she took other people with her. She didn't just bust through it for herself. Her busting through the marble ceiling gave so many of us, the diversity of this caucus, an opportunity to be a participant in making the world a better place for the American people.

And hope.

I hate when that happens.

On the edge of our seat.

Thank you to my good friend.

Before you are excused, though, I do want to tell you, you were so kind in your words about the three of us and you have been so helpful to us over the last 2 years and joining us here night after night on the floor. But, quite honestly, I really want to commend you on your eloquence and your commitment on this issue in particular. You have been one of the key leaders of the Out of Iraq Caucus. You have kept this caucus focused on those issues that are incredibly important.

As my good friend, the gentleman from Florida, indicated in his remarks earlier, one of the major reasons that we were returned to the majority of this institution is because of how strongly people feel about the situation with the war in Iraq. And so thank you very much for helping with that effort.

With that having been said, one of the things that I think that is going to be important in about an hour from now for the American people to note when the President makes his remarks to the Nation is that what we heard the President say repeatedly, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Meek, over and over again over the last several years, was that his strategy was going to be tied to the advice from his military leaders; that he was going to listen to the generals; that he was going to take a page from their book, take their lead, use whatever expression is applicable.

But I guess he was just kidding, or maybe he was just saying that he meant that until he wasn't hearing what he wanted to hear. Because at the point that his belief in the direction that we should be going in Iraq departed or parted company with the advice of his military leadership, that is the point that he decided to stop listening to them. We have now shifted the military leadership in Iraq. And I certainly realize that, particularly in a democracy, there is going to be a wide range of opinions even among military leaders. But the current military leadership that President Bush has brought in does support the strategy and the direction that he is planning on taking America tonight and in this war on Iraq. And it is just astonishing that this continues the pattern of this administration, where they ask their questions, or make statements and pursue a goal, an agenda and surround themselves only with people who agree with them.

I just, one of the things that I know we are going to hear from the President tonight is a caution that victory, if we achieve it, won't be similar to other military victories. He will talk about, as opposed to the Mission Accomplished banner that was emblazoned over his head on the deck of a battleship, he will caution us tonight apparently that that is not what victory will look like if we ever achieve it in Iraq.

It will not be perfect, and that the outcome will not be traditional. Well, it sure will not. It is hard to imagine that we are ever going to achieve a semblance of victory. One of the things that we intend on doing as Democrats and aggressively doing is holding this administration accountable. The question has been asked repeatedly by commentators and by our friends on the other side of the aisle.

There has been a question mark about whether or not Democrats will have the nerve to actually address the issue of funding these additional troops. And Speaker Pelosi has talked about how we absolutely are committed and will continue to be supportive with funding and every other measure of support for the troops that are there.

There is no question we would never pull the rug out from under the troops that are there fighting on behalf of America and fighting on behalf of democracy. But we absolutely should question this strategy, which is completely contrary to the goals and desires of the American people, and which is contrary to the advice of the military leadership.

There is no question, I believe there is no question about Democrats' nerve; no question about whether we plan on holding the administration accountable, which hasn't occurred in years. There has been, like you said, no opportunity to question the administration's choices and direction on Iraq; no opportunity to actually cast a vote on whether this new direction would receive and was worthy of funding.

I truly believe that is an opportunity that we will be having and that we should have and that we should accept, because the American people elected us to make bold decisions and make sure that we can move this country in a new direction, domestically and in terms of our foreign and military policy. I look forward to finally being able to reassert this institution, the United States House of Representatives' role in the system of checks and balances, because the unitary philosophy the executive branch in this administration supports is wholly contrary to the Constitution.

That is right.

I know our good friend from Rhode Island wants to talk about H.R. 3, which we will be considering tomorrow. But the Iraq Study Group, which you briefly touched on a few minutes ago. It is amazing how that just almost has faded into oblivion; that their recommendations, the number of months they worked, the expertise that was put together, led by former Secretary of State Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton, very well respected.

Nowhere in their recommendations, am I right, was there an escalation of troops. Was there any indication in the Iraq Study Group, who arguably is the finest group of experts that could have been put together to make recommendations, nowhere in there was an escalation of troops. At least from what I noticed, and you can correct me if I am wrong, the President essentially just dismissed their recommendation and moved on and went in the direction that he chose to go.

I would like to take this opportunity to yield to my good friend, to our good friend, the gentleman from Rhode Island, because we are dealing with an important piece of legislation tomorrow that has already been put on the President's desk once. And as part of the new direction for our Six in 2006 agenda, we are going to put it on his desk again, because maybe he will get it right a second time.

We want to thank the people in the chamber for listening, and encourage people to come to our Web site www.speaker.gov/30something, and we also look forward to having a graphic so we don't all have to make sure we remember the Web site. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the University of Florida Gators for winning the Bowl Championship Series National Football title last night.

After a hard fought season, the Gators proved victorious last night with a dazzling 41-14 triumph over the Ohio State University Buckeyes. I want to extend special congratulations to Florida's head coach, Urban Meyer, who trained this football team to be the best in the country. All of the athletes are shining stars for the university and deserve our highest praise.

Last night, the University of Florida made history by winning national titles in both men's basketball and football in the same season. Florida's academic reputation is stellar, our sports teams are number one and our fans are like none other. Mr. Speaker, it is great to be a Florida Gator. Congratulations to the students, faculty, alumni, and friends of the University of Florida.

I have just one thing left to say, Mr. Speaker, and that is: Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar. All for the Gators, stand up and holler. Go Gators!

Thank you so much. We are all Gators today. It is a Gator Nation. And we were just thrilled that the fighting Gator football team came to play yesterday, dominated Mr. Ryan's team, although Mr. Ryan went to Youngstown; so he is not technically a Buckeye, but I guess anyone who hails from the State of Ohio is a Buckeye. And we enjoyed showing the Buckeyes that we belonged in that game, and we are just very proud of our Florida Gators.

We will give him that.

Thank you so much to my good friend, Mr. Meek, and it is so wonderful to be with my good friends in the 30-Something Working Group. We spent so many nights here talking about the need for us to move this country in a new direction, a new direction for America. That is what, Mr. Speaker, you and others talked about during the campaign. We went out and talked about making sure that we could increase the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years; have the student loan interest rate; fully implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations; make sure that we repeal the energy industry subsidies that they don't need because they are the most profitable industry in the entire world so that we can truly fund alternative energy resources; eliminate the prohibition against negotiating for lower prescription drug prices; and putting the stem cell research bill on the President's desk once again; and making sure that we can finally establish some accountability with this administration on the war in Iraq.

At last we will have the opportunity to bring them in and ask them the tough questions that our good friends on the other side of the aisle refused to ask for years.

We had an opportunity as the 30-something Working Group to point out and contrast what we would do in the majority if we were given that opportunity versus what the Republican leadership was doing for the last 12 years. And the American people responded and gave us that opportunity.

Some people might have started at the top of this hour, kind of scratched their head and wondered why we were talking about the University of Florida national championship and the Gators victory, but there is some analogy, all kidding aside.

The Gators showed that they came to play last night when no one expected them to win, when for months people didn't give them any chance of coming out on top and winning the national championship. I think that our victory on November 7 is analogous to that because certainly at the beginning of my first term in Congress 2 years ago, no one gave the Democrats a chance. No one gave us a snowball's chance of reaching the point that we did on November 7 and being able to elect enough Members to truly move this country in a new direction.

In part because of the Members that joined us on the floor each night and our Democratic Caucus colleagues who were so committed to get the message out and talking to their constituents and really appealing to the issues that the American people cared about, as opposed to the special interests and the culture of corruption and the pall that was cast over this Capitol for so long, now we are finally being given that opportunity. It is incredibly important.

One of the most amazing things for me as a woman was that last Thursday we were able to watch history in the making when the gavel was passed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the first woman Speaker in United States history. I had my twin 7-year-olds on the floor that day, and I know you had your children on the floor with you that day, Mr. Meek, but the opportunity for our kids to see, and especially for little girls in America, to see that really anything is possible in America, for that, for us to be able to witness that was just incredible.

And today for us to be able to witness Speaker Pelosi preside over H.R. 1, the passage of H.R. 1, which was the first bill that we adopted in the 100-hours agenda that fully implements the 9/11 Commission agenda. The Republicans minimally implemented those recommendations, and that is why the 9/11 Commission co-chairmen gave them Ds and Fs, because they had not allocated funding on the basis of risk and vulnerabilities. They had not created and rehearsed State and local emergency response plans. They had not addressed the interoperability issues between intelligence agencies and first responders. There were at least 10 items. They have not protected privacy and civil liberties with an oversight function. They have not improved air passenger screening. They were not checking all the cargo. There was no funding or mechanism to check all of the cargo that came through our ports.

H.R. 1 that we adopted today implements that right now. It was a thrill to watch Speaker Pelosi preside over the passage of the first item in our 100-hours agenda.

Expanding access to higher education was one of the critical elements, is one of the critical elements of the 100- hours agenda because America is all about opportunity.

Our good friends on the other side of the aisle talk about prosperity and how it is essential to make sure that Americans can continue to prosper, and we absolutely believe that. But there is no denying that prosperity isn't possible in this or any other country without an education.

If you are denied access to education because of the lack of affordability, because you can't pay for it or because your ability to repay a loan is prohibited because the interest rate is so high that you are paying for the rest of your natural life and it takes such a huge chunk of your income that eventually you have to decide not to pursue an education, then prosperity isn't possible.

As you have in this chart, and Mr. Meek is going to talk about minimum wage, we lag behind the world in terms of global education standards. You have thousands of students who will graduate with engineering degrees this year. And look at the difference in numbers: 600,000 engineering degrees in China; 350,000 engineering degrees in India; and 70,000 engineering degrees in the United States of America.

Now, if that isn't an example and evidence of where we need to focus our priorities and make sure that we expand access to higher education so that we can grow that number, then our ability to be competitive globally is severely, severely impacted, and individual's ability to prosper is severely impacted.

If the gentleman will yield, one of the things I wanted to point out is it could ultimately, as we continue to do these 30-something hours, it could be easy to presume now that we are in the majority that we would come here and only talk about the Democrats' agenda and what we are planning to do, and we are going to spend quite a bit of time talking about that during these hours.

But I think it is important that our colleagues and others who might hear us talking tonight understand that the reason that our taking the majority in the Congress was so important, besides our being able to implement an agenda, is the accountability factor.

We are going to come here, now that we are in the majority and control the agenda here, it is absolutely our responsibility because we have the ability to do it to hold this administration accountable, to ask questions, to hold hearings, to bring them here and make sure that they answer questions about their policies that the American people showed us on November 7 they don't agree with.

It is going to be incredibly important in the time that we spend on this floor that we not only talk about our agenda, but what we are doing to make sure that we restore the Congress' role, constitutional role, where we hold the administration accountable and reestablish the system of checks and balances.

Thank you. I think the key word you touched on is balance. That is why I am thrilled, and I know the two of you are as well, to have the opportunity to restore balance and to restore the American people's confidence in their government again.

Because, Mr. Meek and Mr. Ryan, that is one of the things that was a casualty of the last several years, with the headline every other day, every day sometimes, about a colleague of ours on the other side of the aisle being indicted, as Mr. Meek said, or arrested. We have former colleagues in jail. We have lobbyists that inappropriately tried to influence this process that are in jail.

This election, I think, was a reflection of the American people's desire for change and to move in a new direction. And one of the things that Speaker

Pelosi has talked about, and talked about so often in the campaign, is what her speakership and our majority will be about is making this the most bipartisan Congress in the United States history, with the inclusiveness and the participation that Members on both sides of the aisle will have an opportunity to have, and that that is incredibly important.

That extends beyond just the Members here, but extends to the voices of the people that we are serving. The net roots, for example. That is a community that has been so instrumental and so involved in getting the message out about what people in the country care about. I know that the three of us have interacted during our time on the floor here with folks involved in the net roots and they have given voice to so many people exponentially that would not have had the ability to get our message out. It is incredibly important.

Inclusiveness and balance and confidence in government is I think going to be the watch words that will be really the clarion call of our majority, so I really look forward to that opportunity.

I tell you, where we are at this stage of our careers and our lives, I have been in public office now for, gosh, I guess it is 16 years, which is kind of amazing. But it is actually 16 years, and I have spent 4 of those years in the majority in the State House. Mr. Meek, we served a couple years in the majority together in the State House, and that is the last time that I had an opportunity to actually advance an agenda. We definitely spent a lot of time honing our defensive skills, and I think we have gotten pretty good at that and comparing and contrasting. But at the end of the day, most of us, the vast majority of us ran for office in order to make the world better, and now we have that opportunity.

Like you said, Mr. Ryan, we might not always do it right, but it won't be for lack of good intentions and it won't be for lack of trying to stand up for those who have no voice, which I think will be quite a marked contrast compared to, and I hate to directly question the intentions, but compared to the intentions of some over the last few years. That is the most diplomatic way I can put it.

Go Rattlers.

We are all big Gator fans.

I just want to close by saying that I look forward to the opportunity to continuing the balance that we have been trying to strike the last number of years and having the opportunity to implement our agenda, to move this country in a new direction, and begin to establish some real accountability and oversight with this administration.

I look forward to joining you on the floor with the 30-something Working Group and having our new colleagues, the new additions, the new recruits in the 30-something Working Group, which is the freshman class.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Texas's support and want to describe the legislation and tell Members that drowning is the second leading cause of accidental childhood deaths by injury in the United States. It is the number one killer of children under 5 years of age in America, and the number two killer of children under 14 years of age.

Mr. Speaker, 335 children across the Nation drowned in swimming pools or spas in 2002. That is 335 lives that were cut very short because we did not act quickly enough to address this problem.

This legislation is named in memory of Secretary of State James A. Baker's granddaughter, 7-year-old Graeme, who drowned in a spa entrapment accident a number of years ago.

Graeme and the roughly 300 children that died that year due to drain entrapment would be with us today if this commonsense legislation had been law.

The pool and spa safety legislation we are considering will encourage States to pass laws that prevent the tragic and preventable loss of children to accidental drowning.

This legislation provides Federal incentives, not mandates, as the gentleman from Texas indicated, for States, and provides layers of protection and puts obstacles in the path of a child when supervision lapses.

We all know when it comes to making sure that children don't drown in swimming pools that supervision is paramount. But as any parent can tell you, and I am a parent of three, we all know that supervision does lapse. Every year each of us across the country, each of us in our own districts, hear news reports and read the newspaper about tragic incidents that occur in swimming pools year after year.

Mr. Speaker, 65 percent of the drownings that occur in swimming pools occur when a child wanders out the back door of home they are in and drowns in the pool in the backyard; 35 percent of the drownings take place when a child from a neighbor's yard comes into the yard a couple of doors down and drowns in the pool. This is a tragedy that can happen in an instant.

When it comes to suction drain entrapment accidents, what happens is young children are actually pulled under because the suction from a single drain in a spa is so strong that the strength of several men cannot even pull the child off the drain. Children have been disemboweled. There are children that because we don't have dual drains or spa drain covers, which this bill would incentivize, there are children drowning needlessly.

We have to make sure that we put obstacles in the path of children when, through no fault of their own, supervision lapses. I urge Members to vote to protect children from drowning and pass the Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1245, the Gynecologic Cancer Education and Awareness Act, or ``Johanna's Law,'' a bipartisan, common-sense measure that will help save the lives of thousands of American women each year.

Uterine cancer is the most common form of gynecologic cancer, and ovarian cancer is the deadliest. Unlike cervical cancer, there is no reliable early detection screening test for these cancers. This means that 80,000 women will be diagnosed with gynecologic cancers this year, and almost 30,000 will die because their illnesses were detected too late.

Most women don't recognize the symptoms of gynecologic cancers, and many doctors initially misdiagnose them.

Early detection is the key to successful treatment of gynecologic cancers. We must do better. This bill will help save the lives and improve the health of our Nation's mothers, wives and daughters.

Johanna's Law was named for the sister of one of my constituents from Hallandale, Florida, who lost her life to ovarian cancer. I want to congratulate Sheryl Silver and her family for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to saving the lives of millions of American women.

This bill will authorize millions of dollars in desperately needed funds to help raise awareness and increase knowledge about these cancers that will lead to early detection, effective treatment, and saved lives.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join 256 of my colleagues as co-sponsors of this important piece of legislation.