Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to extend my deepest mahalo and aloha to Master Sergeant Dennis Takeshita of Hawai`i as he retires from an illustrious career spanning 37 years of tireless and dedicated service to our country.

Master Sergeant Takeshita's service to our great nation began in 1966, when he received a commission in the United States Air Force Reserve upon graduation from the University of Hawai`i, and went on to serve on active duty until 1972. Shortly after his discharge, Master Sergeant Takeshita joined the Hawai`i Air National Guard and served for 30 more years, earning numerous citations and awards for his professionalism and service.

Throughout his long career, he served in the Vietnam Conflict, the Kosovo Campaign, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Noble Eagle, and Operation Joint Forge. He also served the people of Hawai`i both during and after Hurricane Iniki, which ravaged the Island of Kaua`i and parts of O`ahu, earning him the Humanitarian Service Medal.

Of course, as with all great men, he owes a debt of gratitude to those who supported and nurtured him throughout his life. Master Sergeant Takeshita's father, Lawrence K. Takeshita, his mother, Frances M. Takeshita, his daughter Alison and son Brian have been there to lend their support. They are immensely proud of him and his successes during his military career.

Serving one's country is a selfless act. I commend Master Sergeant Takeshita on his commitment to our country. His patriotism, loyalty and courageous leadership are the embodiment of the Air Force Core Values. And, of course, his island home is deeply proud of him.

I close by saying to Master Sergeant Takeshita: aloha, on a well- deserved retirement, and I wish you the very best on your future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join my colleagues in the introduction of our proposed Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act, a bill that will address the glaring disparities in health care of our minority populations.

While significant advances in health care have been made, it has been empirically demonstrated that minority populations disproportionately lack access to quality health care. For example, minority groups are less likely to

have health insurance and are less likely to receive appropriate health care services. These communities are also significantly underrepresented in our health care workforce.

I am fully committed to the elimination of racial and ethnic disparities in health care access, quality, and in our health care workforce, because we all deserve equal treatment when it comes to our health. Additionally, a full investment in health care will improve the economic well-being of our Nation.

For these reasons, I am an original cosponsor of the Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act. This bill will reduce racial and ethnic disparities and improve the health care for minority communities by: expanding health care coverage, removing language and cultural barriers, improving workforce diversity, improving data collection, creating and funding programs that reduce health disparities, promoting agency accountability, and strengthening our health institutions that already serve our minority populations.

I am grateful that one vital component of this bill recognizes the late Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink by creating a Health and Gender Research Fellowship program in her name. This fellowship program, which will examine and research gender and health disparities, is an appropriate tribute to someone who is so well remembered for her work in education policy and known for her beliefs in social and economic justice.

I commend the work of the Democratic Leadership in both chambers not only to bring the issue of health care disparities to light, but to address this national concern firmly and directly. I further appreciate the leadership's willingness to work with the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Native American Caucus to ensure that our respective communities are included in this legislation. I especially appreciated the opportunity to assist in efforts to ensure that Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were specifically included.

As the Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act will provide true health benefits for all, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the 26 votes I missed during the period October 29th through October 31st due to my participation in an official Congressional delegation to Iraq approved by you. Although I regret these missed votes, there is no question that that trip was indispensable to a more complete understanding of our intervention in Iraq.

I wish to state for the Record how I would have voted on these 26 votes.

On rollcall votes 580, 584, 585, 588, 589, and 590, motions to adjourn, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall vote 581, approval of the journal, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 576, passage of H.R. 1720, the Veterans Health Care Facilities Capital Improvement Act, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 577, passage of H.R. 1516, the National Cemetery Expansion Act of 2003, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 578, passage of H.R. 3365, the Fallen Patriots Tax Relief Act, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 579, passage of H. Res. 414, to encourage the People's Republic of China to fulfill its commitments under international trade agreements, support the United States manufacturing sector, and establish monetary and financial market reforms, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 582, passage of H. Con. Res. 291, expressing deep gratitude for the valor and commitment of the members of the United States Armed Forces who were deployed in Operation Restore Hope to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Somalia in 1993, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 583, passage of H.J. Res. 75, making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2004, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall 584, on ordering the previous question on H. Res. 422, providing for consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2115, FAA Reauthorization Act, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall vote 587, on passage of H. Res. 422, providing for consideration of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2115, FAA Reauthorization Act, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall vote 591, motion to recommit the conference report to accompany H.R. 2115, FAA Reauthorization Act, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 592, passage of H.R. 2115, FAA Reauthorization Act, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall 593, passage of H. Res. 409, repudiating anti-Semitic remarks expressed by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 594, motion to recommit the conference report to accompany H.R. 2691, the FY2004 Department of Interior Appropriations Act, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 595, passage of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2691, the FY2004 Department of Interior Appropriations Act, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall 596, passage of H. Con. Res 302, expressing a sense of Congress welcoming President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to the United States on October 31, 2003, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 597, on agreeing to H. Res. 421, waiving a requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII with respect to consideration of certain resolutions reported from the Committee on Rules (martial law for consideration of H.R. 3289, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations), I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall vote 598, the Johnson motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2003, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 599, the Davis motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act, I would have voted ``aye.''

On rollcall vote 600, motion to recommit with instructions H.R. 3289, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense and for the Reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan for FY2004, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall vote 601, agreeing to the conference report to accompany H.R. 3289, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense and Reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to confirm my position on these important votes during my necessary absence.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3214, the Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act of 2003, and urge my colleagues to vote in support of final passage of this vital legislation.

Recently, my Honolulu Police Department received a grant from the U.S. Justice Department to cover the costs of conducting DNA analysis on backlogged cases, many of which are sexual assault crimes. While I am sure that we are all grateful for funding such as this, we must recognize that much more must be done, on a broader, more coordinated basis, to take full advantage of the legitimate uses of DNA evidence in criminal justice.

As an original cosponsor of H.R. 3214, I believe that this bill will bring a far better measure of justice to both victims and accuseds. It will also provide desperately needed support and resources for our local law enforcement efforts.

H.R. 3214 establishes new procedures for DNA testing for Federal inmates, and authorizes $5 million in grants over 6 years to help States defray the costs of post-conviction DNA testing. In addition, $755 million is authorized to help decrease the backlog of more than 300,000 rape kits, and more than $500 million is provided for grant programs to improve the capacity of federal, state and local crime labs to conduct DNA analyses, train criminal justice personnel in how to use DNA evidence, and promote the use of DNA technology to identify missing persons.

I commend the work of the members of the Committee on the Judiciary, especially Chairman Sensenbrenner and Ranking Member Conyers, who worked together in a true bipartisan fashion to develop the legislation and bring it to the floor in such a swift manner. Your efforts yielded broad support as H.R. 3214 has 249 cosponsors, which includes 69 Republicans, 179 Democrats, and 1 Independent.

Again, I urge my colleagues to support final passage of H.R. 3214.

Mr. Speaker, this week we recognize the 51st anniversary of the detonation by our country of the world's first thermonuclear device at Enewetak Atoll in today's Republic of the Marshall Islands. And as we pause to remember that event, it is also an opportune time for us to recall both the contributions of the people of Enewetak and other atolls of the Marshalls to the security of our country and world, and the difficult legacy which that and subsequent tests have left to their residents and so many others.

This story was told so well last year in an article in the Honolulu Weekly by Honolulu journalist Bev Keever entitled ``Fallout: Enewetak Atoll, 50 Years Ago This Week.'' Subsequently recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists (Hawaii Chapter) for this work, Ms. Keever reminds us about the human impact of ``Mike,'' as the device was known, and counsels us to remember this legacy as we address crucial foreign policy challenges today and the future.

The text of Ms. Keever's article follows:

Fallout: Enewetak Atoll, 50 Years Ago This Week

(By Bev Keever)

[From the Honolulu Weekly, Oct. 30, 2002]

National and media anniversaries of signal events like

Sept. 11 help to form the collective memory that, over time

and across generations, shapes what a society remembers--or

what it forgets.

An anniversary that serves as a news peg for journalists

re-ignites powerful emotional connections for those who lived

through the event, communication scholar Jill Edy writes, and

may be even more influential for those who did not live

through the event because it ``creates a world they never

experienced.'' Even more important, Edy notes, anniversary

journalism ``impacts whether we remember our past at all.''

An un-remembered part of the U.S. past occurred 50 years

ago on Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands, some 3,000

miles west of Honolulu. On Nov. 1, 1952, at 7:15 a.m., the

U.S. government detonated the world's first thermonuclear

device, code-named ``Mike,'' the most powerful man-made

explosion in history up to that time. In layperson's terms,

it was the prototype for the ``hydrogen bomb.''

Mike unleashed a yield of 10.4 megatons, an explosive force

693 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that had

annihilated Hiroshima in 1945 and the fourth most powerful

``shot'' of the 1,054 acknowledged nuclear tests in U.S.

history. Ushering in the thermonuclear era, the Mike shot

raised to a new level the capacity for mass destruction that

had been inaugurated by humans with atomic weapons only seven

years earlier. Because of this new dimension in the power of

nuclear weapons, President Eisenhower observed in 1956,

``Humanity has now achieved, for the first time in its

history, the power to end its history.''

The Mike shot was controversial. Debate raged within the

scientific community over detonating the so-called super

bomb. One camp warned that the atmospheric chain-reaction

from the thermonuclear explosion would immolate the entire

planet, University of Hawai`i's environmental coordinator

John Harrison reports. Calling such fears farfetched, those

in the second camp, led by influential physicist Edward

Teller, prevailed. The public was not told in advance about

the shot for fear that it would influence the presidential

election held just three days before. Sixteen days after the

Mike shot, U.S. officials announced a thermonuclear

experiment, but provided no details.

Mike was a proto-bomb; in fact, it was more like a

building, Harrison explains as he studies a sepia-toned

photograph of the cylindrical Mike device, about 20 feet in

height and 8 to 10 feet in diameter. Weighing 82 tons and

standing vertically like the shiny innards of a giant thermos

bottle, the cylinder dwarfs a scrawny, shirtless man sitting

in a chair, elbows cocked on his knees and staring at the

ground on Elugelab island, Enewetak atoll. The cylinder is

attached to large tubes to keep its contents of hydrogen

fuel, liquid deuteride, refrigerated below its

boiling point of minus 417.37 degrees Fahrenheit.

More than 11,000 civilians and servicemen worked on or near

Enewetak to prepare for the blast. They left Enewetak by ship

before the Mike device was remotely detonated from 30 miles

away. The energy from the splitting of atoms with heavy

nuclei like plutonium produced temperatures on the order of

those at the core of the sun that were necessary to kick-

start the fusion of the liquid deuteride with other

lightweight hydrogen nuclei. This fusion produced even

greater energy, so much that, as physicist Kosta Tsipis

writes, ``An exploding nuclear weapon is a miniature,

instantaneous sun.''

The Mike test vaporized the island of Elugelab. Researcher

Leona Marshall Libby wrote at the time that Mike's detonation

created a fireball that swooshed outward and upward for three

miles in diameter and turned millions of gallons of lagoon

water to steam. It left behind a 1.2-mile-wide crater and a

deeply fractured reef platform. Harrison notes that in the

aftermath of a subsequent, adjacent thermonuclear test--the

Koa shot in 1958--the weakened seaward wall of the reef next

to the Mike crater cleaved away and plummeted into the ocean

depths.

Epiphany of a ``Nuclear Holocaust''

Harrison, who lived at Enewetak for five years beginning in

1978 while serving as a UH administrator and senior research

scientist there, says the destructiveness of the Mike shot

defies human comprehension. He recalls the scores of times he

guided his outboard motorboat across segments of the choppy

aquamarine waters of Enewetak's 388-acre lagoon encircled by

the 42 coral islands so pristine and lovely ``they are God's

gift to the entire world.'' His boat would slice into the

shallower turquoise waters that overlay the close-in reefs

and ``then all of a sudden into the deeper, more cloudy

waters that delineated or that filled this enormous, enormous

round circle that was the Mike crater.''

Each time Harrison made that journey, he says, ``it changed

my life.'' He would struggle to understand the cataclysm of

that instant that had transformed an island into a massive

hole in the reef. ``Then and now and to the day I die,'' he

says, ``I could not, I cannot and I will never wrap my mind

around the significance of that.

``There is no way that the mind can grasp that amount of

force,'' he elaborates. ``We have nothing to compare it

with.'' Even so, once in the middle of the Mike crater, he

sensed that he had experienced ``the ultimate epiphany of

what a nuclear holocaust is all about.''

A rare snapshot of the havoc caused by the Mike shot is

provided by a survey made of Enewetak by a scientific

research team from the University of Washington and written

up in a report archived by Harrison. The greatest

radioactivity in fish was found to be concentrated in the

digestive tract, followed by the liver and muscle; in rats

and some birds radioactivity was concentrated in bones. Even

algae that had been scrubbed with a brush and detergent

retained ``specks'' of fallout, the report says, indicating

most of the ``radioactivity is actually present within the

alga.'' Lastly, spotlighting the significance of color in

absorbing the heat of the fireball, the team notes, ``Birds

with dark-colored feathers were burned more severely than

were the white fairy terns.''

A 1978 study of 476 Enewetak rats by environmental

scientists from Bowling Green State University, M. Temme and

W. B. Jackson, noted possible genetic effects caused by

radiation. They hypothesized that radiation effects may have

caused deformations in an important inherited marker of some

rats--the ridge of the roof of the mouth. The scientists

described these ridges as exemplifying ``expressions of genes

affecting development.'' Since 1978, Jackson told Honolulu

Weekly, follow-up studies have supported the notion of

possible radiation-induced genetic effects.

Hiding 8,580 Hiroshima-size bombings in 16 years

Most of the atmospheric testing on the U.S. side was

conducted in the Pacific, but the full extent of these tests

has become clear only in the past decade with the lifting of

official secrecy. Only in December 1993 did the U.S. release

information about the yield of 44 of the 66 U.S. nuclear

weapons tests in the Marshall Islands.

In 1994, the most recent and comprehensive list of all

1,054 U.S. nuclear weapons tests worldwide was made public,

allowing scholars to calculate for the first time the full

extent of the entire U.S. nuclear testing program that ceased

in 1992. These documents show that nearly three-quarters of

the yield of all 1,054 U.S. nuclear tests worldwide occurred

during only 82 tests conducted in the U.S.-administered

Pacific Islands or over Pacific waters during the 16 years of

the U.S. Pacific nuclear testing between 1946 to 1962.

This prolonged secrecy, even beyond the collapse of the

Soviet Union, hid for decades the yield of Pacific tests,

which amounted to at least 128,704 kilotons--a destructive

force equal to detonations of 8,580 Hiroshima-size bombs.

The atolls of Bikini, Enewetak and Johnston, plus Pacific

waters, served as sites for nuclear weapons experiments far

too powerful and unpredictable to be conducted on the U.S.

Mainland. The yield of what The New York Times described as

the mightiest nuclear explosion within the continental United

States, which was the explosion of the first hydrogen device

in Nevada in 1962, was less than 1 percent of the magnitude

of the most powerful Pacific test, later disclosed as the 15-

megaton Bravo shot of 1954. In serving as sites for such

immense infernos, these Pacific atolls and their people

sacrificed enormously for U.S. superpower status. And, they

contributed to the global restraint--and the retreat from

overt nuclear hostilities during decades of the most

dangerous political confrontation in history, the Cold War.

Recent revelations regarding the Cuban missile crisis are

chillingly reflective of that nuclear brink.

Ten months after the Mike detonation, in August 1953, U.S.

officials detected the first Soviet hydrogen explosion and

announced the event to the world. The Eisenhower

administration then set up a deliberate policy to confuse the

public about the escalating order of magnitude between atomic

and thermonuclear weapons, Jonathan Weisgall writes in his

pathbreaking book, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at

Bikini Atoll (U.S. Naval Institute; 1994). ``Keep them

confused,'' Eisenhower told the Atomic Energy Commission.

``Leave `thermonuclear' out of press releases and speeches.

Also `fusion' and `hydrogen.''' The agency complied. Only

decades later, in 1979, did the public learn of this

obfuscation.

Six months after the Soviet H-bomb, on March 1, 1954, U.S.

bomb-makers caught up by unleashing from Bikini atoll the

country's first deliverable hydrogen weapon, code-named

Bravo. Its 15 megatonnage made it nearly one-and-a-half times

the yield of the Mike shot. Bravo was the most powerful U.S.

bomb ever detonated, equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima-sized

bombs, according to U.S. government documents released in

1994. Weisgall observes, ``Hiroshima paled in comparison to

Bravo, which represented as revolutionary an advance in

explosive power over the atomic bomb as the atomic bomb had

over the conventional weapons of World War II.''

Nuclear Victimization of ``our own people''

Bravo also introduced the word fallout to everyday language

worldwide when snow-like radioactive particles dusted 236

residents of nearby Rongelap island, 28 U.S. servicemen and

23 crewmen on a Japanese fishing trawler. In fact, the

thermonuclear era produced radioactive components and fallout

that encircled the globe, settling silently from the heavens.

Beginning particularly with the Mike shot, ``the chemical

signature of our bones changed,'' Harrison told Honolulu

Weekly. The atmospheric weapons tests that proliferated in

scale with the Mike shot dispersed radioactive forms of

iodine, cesium, strontium and other elements. As a result,

Harrison notes, all organisms, including humans, carry the

watermark of the nuclear era woven into their tissues.

The Mike shot marked an acceleration of the man-made

proliferation and escalation of weapons of mass destruction.

The ensuing nuclear age transformed the planet and

its inhabitants. As award-winning journalist Eileen

Welsome writes in her book, The Plutonium Files: America's

Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War (Dial Press;

1999): ``The radioactive debris found its way into

starfish, shellfish and seaweed. It covered alfalfa fields

in upstate New York, wheat fields in North Dakota, corn in

Iowa. It seeped into the bodies of honeybees and birds,

human fetuses and growing children. The atom had split the

world into `preatomic' and `postatomic' species.''

Moreover, the ``postatomic'' species must live with the

effects of the nuclear age for generations and centuries to

come. Environmental radioactivity derived from some nuclear

weapons components like plutonium will persist for up to

500,000 years and may be hazardous to humans for at least

half that time.

Fallout and other residual radioactivity from atmospheric

nuclear testing conducted by all nations have caused or will

cause through infinity an estimated 3 million cancer

fatalities, researchers Arjun Makhijani and Stephen I.

Schwartz wrote in the monumental study, Atomic Audit

(Brookings Institution; 1998). That number of casualties is

nearly five times the 617,389 U.S. servicemen killed in World

War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf

War combined.

In 1980, a congressional oversight committee report titled

``The Forgotten Guinea Pigs'' concluded, ``The greatest irony

of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that the only

victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our

own people.'' The House report included in its conclusion--

but only in an obscure footnote--mention of Pacific

Islanders, whose ancestral homelands had sustained the most

U.S. nuclear firepower.

A 33-year exile

U.S. Pacific nuclear testing that began in July 1946

required U.S. officials to evacuate 170 Bikinians and 142

Enewetakese, thus transforming them into so-called ``nuclear

nomads,'' which the Bikinians remain today.

The Enewetakese, when evacuated from their homeland in

December 1947, were told by a senior official, Capt. John

P.W. Vest, that they would be able to return to their atoll

within three to five years. Instead, for the next 33 years

they were exiled on the smaller, desolate Ujelang atoll, 150

miles to the southwest.

Other official U.S. commitments made then are contained in

documents once classified as top secret that Honolulu

attorney Davor Pevec now uses in representing the islanders.

The Enewetakese ``will be accorded

all rights which are the normal constitutional rights of the

citizens under the Constitution, but will be dealt with as

wards of the United States for whom this country has special

responsibilities,'' according to a memorandum from the Atomic

Energy Commission attached to President Truman's Directive of

Nov. 25, 1947, to the Secretary of Defense.

The 142 Enewetakese (and their descendants) on Ujelang

suffered greatly because of logistical problems, inclement

weather, bureaucratic negligence and the island's desolation.

Even the Department of Interior, in a letter dated Jan. 13,

1978, acknowledged that during their 33-year exile on Ujelang

the Enewetakese ``have suffered grave deprivations, including

periods of near starvation.''

An anthropologist who lived among them on Ujelang and spoke

Marshallese, Laurence M. Carucci, wrote that the stories of

this period told to him over and over by elders focused on

famine and hunger, near starvation and death from illness,

poor fishing conditions, epidemics of polio and measles

and rat infestation.

One Enewetak woman in her 40s told Carucci in 1978 about

these difficult days. She described the stomachs of children

as being ``stuck out like they were bloated and you would

never think they were hungry,'' but in fact they were. Then,

she continued: ``They would get hot fevers, then cold chills;

hot fevers, then cold and sweaty. And then, in just a moment,

they would be gone. Dead, they would never move again. Their

life was gone. And, in those days, the wailing across the

village was constant.''

Their hardship was so severe that in 1969 they commandeered

a supply ship and demanded they be returned home. Their

ancestral atoll was too contaminated with radioactivity for

their return, but the U.S. government did begin an extensive

cleanup and rehabilitation so that on Oct. 1, 1980, some

islanders returned home.

Upon their return, they found a far different atoll, a far

different Enewetak. The Mike shot and 42 other detonations

had devastated Enewetak so severely that more than half of

the land and pockets of the lagoon today remain contaminated

by radiation. The islanders who do reside there cannot live

off of much of their land and must rely on imported food.

Moonscaping Enewetak

The Mike shot was the eighth of 43 nuclear weapons tests at

Enewetak that transformed a placid atoll into a moonscape.

The Enewetak people, now numbering 1,500, are still pleading

with the U.S. government for $386 million in land and

hardship damages and other compensation awarded to them by an

official tribunal established by the U.S. and Marshallese

governments. This panel ruled in April 2000 that after

serving as Ground Zero for 43 weapons tests and receiving

fallout from other shots, the Enewetak atoll: Was

uninhabitable on 49 percent of its original land mass, or

949.8 acres of 1,919.49 acres; was habitable on only 43

percent of its land area, or 815.33 acres; was vaporized by 8

percent, or 154.36 acres.

The lingering effects of U.S. Pacific nuclear tests are

visible today in the numerous kinds of cancers and other

diseases and the degraded homelands that are determined by an

official panel established by the U.S. and Marshallese

governments to result from the U.S. experiments of decades

ago. Compensation for these damages is paid for from a $150

million trust fund that is now too depleted to pay fully

current personal and property claims. Since 1946, researchers

write in Atomic Audit, the U.S. government has paid at least

$759 million in nuclear-related compensation to the

Marshallese. But medical, cleanup and resettlement costs

continue to mount, and Marshallese want more U.S. funding.

The Marshallese prospects for immediate help from U.S.

officials in Washington seem dim, congressional sources in

Washington, D.C., told the Weekly. Enewetak's $386 million in

land claims is not included in the budget Congress is

considering for the fiscal year that began this Oct. 1. Nor

are funds for a medical program that in 2001 ceased to

address Marshallese health needs that have been urgent enough

to warrant sending a six-person delegation to Washington last

month to plead with congressional leaders and staff.

Provisions of the Compact of Free Association set to expire

next year are being negotiated with the Bush administration,

but any agreement must then be acted on by Congress, which is

soon to adjourn. Arguing that U.S. assistance provided in

past agreements is ``manifestly inadequate,'' Marshallese

officials in September 2000 petitioned Congress for increased

U.S. medical and other assistance to meet the mounting costs

of damages to persons and property presumed to be caused by

U.S. nuclear testing. That petition is still being studied by

the Bush administration, and no congressional measure on it

is pending.

from crater to crypt

Much of the plutonium-contaminated soil removed in the

operation to clean up Enewetak was dumped into one of the

atoll's smaller craters on Runit island. This crater was

created May 5, 1958, during the 18-kiloton test shot code-

named Cactus. The crater, 30 feet deep and 350 feet wide, was

filled with about 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and

other materials and then entombed beneath a dome of 358

concrete panels, each 18 inches thick. Researchers in

``Atomic Audit'' report that the unprecedented job, completed

in 1980, took three years and about $239 million.

Soon afterward, a delegation from the National Academy of

Sciences inspected the dome and, John Harrison recalls,

issued a report noting the inadequacies of the dome,

specifically that the predicted longevity of the containment

structure was at best 300 years. Yet, the plutonium-laced

debris encased in the dome will remain radioactive for

500,000 years and hazardous to humans for at least half that

time.

The Runit island entombment is of special interest because

a nuclear-waste crypt is now being finished 800 miles from

Honolulu to bury plutonium-laced materials under a cap of

coral soil at Johnston Island, where four failed nuclear-

tipped missile shots in 1962 showered the atoll and waters

with radioactive debris.

From test site to dump site, the Runit island crypt eerily

symbolizes the legacy of the thermonuclear age that has

caused the Marshallese to suffer disproportionately in

adverse health, environmental and cultural conditions.

The 50th anniversary of the Mike shot and its aftermath

begs for reflection from a nation so riveted on a purported

nuclear threat in the Middle East and North Korea that it

ignores the era of mass destruction introduced by the United

States on Enewetak with the world's first thermonuclear

explosion.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce the compassionate Visitor Visa Act, a bill to facilitate the temporary admission into our country of nonimmigrant aliens, who present no security risk, in times of family emergency for close relatives that are United States citizens or legal permanent residents.

Mr. Speaker, each of us tries to make the best decisions we can on the national and international issues of our day. But each of us is also committed to helping those we serve with their individual concerns, where the rubber of our national policies meets the road of everyday life. And those of us who represent communities of proud immigrants maintaining close ties to their homelands know that a large, growing, and increasingly difficult and frustrating portion of our casework is devoted to immigration.

In my own case, these issues involve citizens and legal residents with ties to the countries of Asia and the Pacific, the Philippines foremost among them (my district has more Filipino-Americans than any other congressional district in our country.) And of the related immigration concerns my constituents have sought my assistance with, none have been more difficult and heartwrenching than those involving the efforts of families to be reunited in time of family emergency.

Consider the following real-life examples from my own district experience:

A U.S. citizen mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness. She wanted to see her daughter, a Philippine citizen, from whom she had been separated for 15 years, one last time. Her daughter had remained in the Philippines by choice with her husband and children when the rest of the family emigrated to the U.S. She had no desire to emigrate and was willing to travel to see her dying mother without her husband and children. Nonetheless, she was denied a temporary nonimmigrant visa to say a final farewell and to attend her mother's funeral because she was not able to demonstrate affirmatively that she would in fact return to the Philippines.

A terminally ill U.S. citizen had not seen any of her siblings for more than 20 years and wanted to see just one of them one last time. Her sister applied for a nonimmigrant visa to be able to visit and care for her sibling in her final days. Similarly, she was going to leave her own husband and young children behind in the Philippines. Her visa application was denied, the reason cited being that because her husband's income was modest and she was not employed, the assumption was the she would not return to the Philippines.

Madam Speaker, these are compelling stories of a well-intentioned immigration policy gone very wrong.

Let me first say that the problem these stories graphically illustrate and the solution my bill offers have nothing to do with preserving our homeland security. The reason for the rejection of these applicants was in no way related to any assessment of their security risk. They were subject to a security review like other applicants, and nothing in the compassionate Visa Act would alter that. All of that stands as it is and as it should be. (I will comment that resources to process security reviews in a timely and efficient manner are woefully inadequate to meet demand, but that is another discussion.)

The reason lies instead in the application of the presumption clause in current immigration law. In practice, applicants for nonimmigrant visas are presumed to be at risk of defaulting on their visas and remaining in our country illegally unless they can affirmatively prove that they will return to their countries. In the cases above, the applicants provided documentation to overcome this presumption and demonstrate they had every reason to return to their country of origin: they maintained homes, businesses, bank accounts, and would leave other family members, often children, behind, but to no avail.

We can and should have an in-depth debate about whether this policy, in theory and practice, is wise or fair across-the-board as to all nonimmigrant visa applicants, but this bill does not engage in that larger picture. What the Compassionate Visa Act does say, however, is that the presumption clause, as applied to close family members, who are not security risks, of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents that are seriously ill or who have died, is wrong and should be changed.

Opponents of the bill may argue that the results would be to detract from homeland security and enhance the default rate on nonimmigrant visas. First, for the third time, nothing in this bill changes or compromises procedures designed to identify and weed out security threats, so that cannot be used as an excuse to avoid the focus of this bill. Second, this bill does not say that consular officers cannot consider evidence of applicants' willingness to honor visa terms and return to their countries, but it does say that the deck won't be virtually impossibly stacked against them from the get-go. And third, this bill applies only in the narrow case of an applicant whose close family member has a serious illness or has died or has some other similar family emergency, as demonstrated by proof to the satisfaction of the immigration officers. Frankly, I don't accept that changing the presumption clause will increase the default rate.

Madam Speaker, this is the right thing to do, and we should do it.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 1.

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

Mr. Speaker, by my calendar, we now have 16 days until the October 17th deadline announced by the President and the Senate majority leader for completing the pending conference on the so-called Medicare reform bill. And still before this House, before this Chamber and the Senate and the country the unanswered question, in my mind, is: Does the current administration and does the congressional majority really care about health care for the American people?

Now, I know a lot of people around here really care about a lot of people around here that make a lot of money off of health care. And I know that a lot of people around here really care about spending money on a lot of things other than health care. I have seen that in my time here in Congress. And I have certainly heard a lot of talk, a lot of talk about health care. I have certainly heard a lot of talk about Medicare. But the question is: Do they really care? What do their actions demonstrate? Do they care about the people at the end of this food chain?

It is a long food chain from the halls of this Congress through the Federal Government and out through the health care community and down into the communities where people live, work and get sick. Do they really care about the people at the end? All of us do not just want affordable and available health care; we need it, and it has to be available and affordable.

When we look at where the people of our country live, who most want and most need health care, and when we look at where the assistance of our Federal Government should go, it is in the rural areas of our country, our small cities, our small towns, our hamlets, our isolated outposts, out where people live away from these urban centers where we live and do our work. And the reasons for that need are well documented, and I do not think anybody else has to tell us any more.

We all know why health care is so important to the rural areas of our country. First of all, we have less available preventive care throughout life, so when people get sick younger, they get sick worse in the rural part of our country. In the rural parts of our country today and down the road, people are older than in the urban parts of our country; they need health care more.

In the rural parts of our country people have lower incomes, higher unemployment, and when we have lower income and higher unemployment, health care suffers.

In the rural parts of our country, it always has been true that there has been less access to medical care and specialization, and that is getting worse.

Finally, in the rural parts of our country, there is simply less availability and coverage of health care insurance.

These are not just abstract thoughts. We can read about these in Federal reports. We can debate them here in Congress, but let us talk about real America, what happens out there in these communities, and let me talk about my community, the community that I represent, because I represent rural Hawaii. I do not represent downtown Honolulu. I represent the rural parts of my State, islands all of them, islands that are rural, islands with small cities, small towns, hamlets and outposts every bit as rural as the rest of our rural country, every bit as prone to all of these problems. They may have different names, but the concerns are the same.

Let me give my colleagues just a couple of examples of areas of my District which are just like any part of our country in terms of health care. Let us talk about the Hamakua Coast on the island of Hawaii, my home. The Hamakua Coast is about as rural as one can get in Hawaii. It is an agricultural-based economy. Its largest crop, sugar, failed along that coast 10, 15, 20 years ago. And these small towns now have people that grew up in the sugar industry and are trying to make a go of small business in agriculture in those small towns, small towns like Pepeekeo and Papaikou, Laupahoehoe, Paauilo, Honokaa, and their problem is health care.

Let us take West Hawaii, the other side of the same island, a part of my Hawaii that has some most of the rural areas of our whole State, North

Kohala, Ocean View down in South Kona and Kau. They want those rural communities to survive. West Hawaii used to have a surgeon that qualified for Medicare reimbursements. That surgeon is no longer there. There is no surgeon in West Hawaii at the moment for Medicare people.

So when I walk into the coffee shops, when I walk into the small family stores and small post offices of my district, when I go into the bon dances that are so much a part of our culture during the summer, and I sit down, and I talk to my constituents, and I ask them what is on their mind, they say health care, health care and health care.

This is not an abstract thought. They are scared about the availability of health care. They are scared about the availability of prescription drugs. They are scared about chronic disease and chronic illnesses and their ability to be able to take care of their medical needs. They are scared about long-term care, and their children are scared for their parents.

These are the realities of rural America. The availability of physicians in this part of my district is significant in the example that it shows for what is happening in rural health care. There are about two physicians per 1,000 in urban Honolulu, but if one gets out there into the rest of the communities in my district, the percentage drops well below one, down to 0.1 in communities like Molokai.

Let us talk about Molokai, because that is another good example. The island of Molokai, about as rural as one can get in America, an island, an island of 7,000 people living on it. They cannot hop a bus or a train or a boat to get to some critical access hospital when they have medical care. They have to fly, and flying is expensive. Thousands of dollars are being spent.

Hawaii is no different from the rest of rural America. I fly over rural America almost every weekend. I look down. I have been across it myself, and I look out, and I see places just like my rural Hawaii. They are their own islands. They may not be surrounded by water, but they are islands of isolation, islands of small towns, small hamlets, the prairie towns of the great plains, the mountain hamlets of the Sierra, the Rockies or Appalachia. This is our heartland, and they are scared about health care.

In rural America, health care is not an abstract thought either. It is a Federal program, Medicare. Health care in rural America is Medicare. For seniors in rural America, it is Medicare. For the disabled in rural America, it is Medicare, and because in rural America it is health care and health care is Medicare, as Medicare goes, so goes rural America.

If we do not have available and affordable medical coverage through Medicare, we have no rural America. If we do not have adequate reimbursements, no doctors, no hospitals, no clinics in rural America, we have no rural America. If we do not have adequate prescription coverage for our seniors and disabled that live in rural America through Medicare, we have no rural America.

So one of the things that it is incredibly important to realize is that the debate about Medicare is not just about Medicare. The debate about Medicare is not just about health care. The debate about America is about maintaining rural America. We have to take care of the needs of rural America, whether they are economic needs, where the manufacturing base is shrinking or whether they are land use needs, where the agricultural base is shrinking, and whether they are health care needs, where the needs are diminishing. That is the reality of Medicare.

H.R. 1, the Medicare Reform Bill, passed this House by a single vote. Like most of my colleagues on this sides of the aisle, I voted no on that bill, primarily because that bill did not help rural America. That bill did not do the job for rural America that we wanted it to do, and in fact, that bill hurt rural America, and I voted no. The motion before us today simply says this: Put your money where your mouth is.

There has been a lot of talk about helping rural America, but talk is cheap. Let us prove it. Do not get me wrong, there are some components in both the House version of Medicare reform and the Senate version of Medicare reform, there are isolated instances of help for rural America in both bills. That is not going to be good enough. As these 16 days tick by to the deadline set by our President and our Senate majority leader, our attention has to turn back to what are the best aspects of each bill for rural America, what are the best aspects of the bill that help the particular problems in rural America, what are the aspects of the bill that provide prescription drug coverage, what are the aspects of the bill that provide adequate reimbursements to hospitals and doctors.

On the island of Molokai, for example, we no longer have long-term care beds. Why? They cannot provide them under the reimbursement rate granted by Medicare. That may seem like an abstract thought, but imagine that a person has grown up their whole life on Molokai, and their family lives there, too, and it comes time for them to be taken care of in their old age, and they have to move islands, they have to leave their home because there is not the coverage available to be helpful to them if they are needy, and their family has to fly back and forth. That is not something we want to sanction.

We want to take the best of these two bills. We want to take the best of these bills on prescription drug coverage. We want to take the best of these bills on not cutting our hospital payments, and that is what this motion says.

This motion which has been brought three times now before this House by my colleagues, and I now bring it here today, simply says let us not talk anymore, let us do it. Let us take the best of these bills that we know will do the job, and let us adopt them in conference because we have the ingredients, right now, to do a good job for rural America. The question is will we do that job for rural America?

So this bill simply says, on prescription drug coverage, let us have a fall-back option. If there is no prescription drug coverage available under Medicare in our rural communities, then there is a fall-back provision on prescription drug coverage, not by the private sector, but by our government.

This motion says let us take the best of both the House and the Senate versions on reimbursing our providers. If we cannot provide basic services in our communities to those in need, there is something wrong, and we need to provide for the adequate reimbursements, and this bill says let us do that, and this bill also says that we need our hospitals, our critical access facilities in our rural areas. We need access in our rural areas.

Again, the example of Hawaii, a State that is an island State, where one cannot simply get to the urban center of Honolulu easily, where people are spending, like I said, thousands of dollars just on transportation needs because these are not available in their districts whether they be Kauai or Molokai or Maui or the Big Island, that we will provide the necessary payments to our hospitals to keep them open at a basic level of service for our rural areas. That is what this motion says, and I think it is pretty simple. It is a matter of priorities.

If our priorities are to ensure the health of our rural economies, our rural lifestyle, which is the heart land not only of our country but of our thinking, of our culture, then we need to protect these rural communities, and health care is the way to protect them.

So let us not avoid this anymore. Let us just vote on this motion, let us give our conferees direct instructions that we collectively care about rural health care and that we intend to follow through and that we will put our money where our mouth is.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, before yielding to my colleagues, I would simply note that as to the last comment made by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) on the bipartisan nature of this conference, I think it is well known within this Congress, and I hope that it is well known outside of this Chamber, that the minority party is not particularly participating in that conference and is

not particularly being consulted. And as a result, we are certainly willing and able to do that in the full glare of publicity before the whole country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry), a person who understands rural communities, understands rural concerns. He lives them.

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

I would simply note, with respect to my colleague's comments, the Department of Health and Human Services under the motion would be required to do certain things; that is correct. The Department would be required to provide the reimbursements that are necessary to preserve rural health care through the hospitals.

I would also note that sometimes the Department does need to be required to do things. One of the principal issues on the Medicare Reform Bill remains whether the Department of Health and Human Services should be required to enter into basic bulk purchasing arrangements to lower the cost of prescription drugs. The bill that came out of this House would have prohibited them from doing that; and clearly, in

this instance, the Department needs to be told to do what every American knows is the right thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis) who totally understands rural America.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).

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

Mr. Speaker, in closing, this has been a good but all-too-short discussion which has highlighted some of the principal differences between the majority and the minority on the issue of Medicare.

I would like to respond to some of the points made by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis). I agree with my colleagues on the minority side that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis) does care about Medicare. In fact, he reminds me of a country doctor, nice, calm, reassuring presence. And if I was the majority party, I would want a nice, calm person to stand up and talk about Medicare, and I have no doubt about his sincerity.

But I will say that in terms of the positions which have been taken by his party, the positions that have been advocated by this administration and the positions that are now pending in Congress, actions speak louder than words. Perception is not reality. We would not be standing here bringing this fourth motion, and we bring this fourth motion because we care about rural America. We care about health care in rural America, and we believe that it is at risk, serious risk right now.

We want people to know that so that in the 16 days remaining before the largest health care reform initiative in decades, if you want to call it reform, comes up to us for a final yes or no vote, the people of this country can weigh in. That is why we keep on bringing this motion and we will keep on bringing this motion.

I want to highlight some of the things that were said here today. First of all, much has been said about affordability. Affordability is a matter of priorities. Affordability is a matter of where you put your money. You ask any rural hospital, rural clinic, any senior living in rural America where they think that the resources of this country should be devoted and they will tell you health care, and they will be right.

So this is a box that the majority has put itself in. It has decided that there are these limits and that is all that we are going to give to this problem and then we are going to live within these limits.

When we on this side say, those limits are not accurate, those limits are not good, they say, well, you are trying to get out of the box. You bet we are trying to get out of that box. That box does not work for America.

Reforming Medicare is one thing. We all agree that Medicare needs reforming. We all agree that Medicare needs fixing, but reforming it should not be destroying it, and that is what is at risk here.

There are good ingredients in both the House and the Senate versions. All we are asking in this motion is to take the best of both the House and the Senate provisions, homogenize them, do not duplicate them. We are not asking for things to be duplicated and run up; we are saying take the best. Guarantee a prescription drug coverage where the private sector is not going to provide it if, in fact, the effort to privatize Medicare is successful. Make sure that our rural areas have basic hospitals.

We do not want a country where everybody has to take a train, plane, boat or other means of transportation to get to some big city that has some big hospital. That is not the answer to health care in this country. That is what we care about.

I would close by saying again that this motion, this issue, is not just about Medicare. It is not just about health care. It is not just about seniors. It is about rural America. And when it is about rural America, it is about the America that we live in and that we want to preserve.

I urge my colleagues to support this motion. It is a simple motion. Just take the best. Do what is necessary for rural America. Put rural America first.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, subject to rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 1, the Medicare prescription drug bill.

The form of the motion is as follows:

Mr. Case moves that the managers on the part of the House

at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses

on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 1 be instructed as

follows:

(1) The House recede to the Senate on the provisions to

guarantee access to prescription drug coverage under section

1860D-13(e) of the Social Security Act, as added by section

101(a) of the Senate amendment.

(2) To reject the provisions of section 501 of the House

bill.

(3) The House recede to the Senate on the following

provisions of the Senate amendment to improve rural health

care:

(A) Section 403 (relating to inpatient hospital adjustment

for low volume hospitals).

(B) Section 404 (relating to medicare disproportionate

share adjustment for rural areas), but with the effective

date applicable under section 401(b) of the House bill.

(C) Section 404A (relating to MedPAC report on medicare

disproportionate share hospital adjustment payments).

(D) The following provisions of section 405 (relating to

critical access hospital improvements):

(i) Subsection (a), but with the effective date applicable

under section 405(f)(4) of the House bill.

(ii) Subsection (b), but with the effective date applicable

under section 405(c)(2) of the House bill.

(iii) Subsections (e), (f), and (g).

(E) Section 414 (relating to rural community hospital

demonstration program).

(F) Section 415 (relating to critical access hospital

improvement demonstration program).

(G) Section 417 (relating to treatment of certain entities

for purposes of payment under the medicare program).

(H) Section 420 (relating to conforming changes relating to

Federally qualified health centers).

(I) Section 420A (relating to increase for hospitals with

disproportionate indigent care revenues).

(J) Section 421 (relating to establishment of floor on

geographic adjustments of payments for physicians' services).

(K) Section 425 (relating to temporary increase for ground

ambulance services), but with the effective date applicable

under the amendment made by section 401(2) of the House bill.

(L) Section 426 (relating to appropriate coverage of air

ambulance services under ambulance fee schedule).

(M) Section 427 (relating to treatment of certain clinical

diagnostic laboratory tests furnished by a sole community

hospital).

(N) Section 428 (relating to improvement in rural health

clinic reimbursement).

(O) Section 444 (relating to GAO study of geographic

differences in payments for physicians' services).

(A) Section 402 (relating to immediate establishment of

uniform standardized amount in rural and small urban areas).

(B) Section 403 (relating to establishment of essential

rural hospital classification).

(C) Subsections (a), (b), (d), and (e) of section 405

(relating to improvements to critical access hospital

program).

(D) Section 416 (relating to revision of labor-related

share of hospital inpatient pps wage index).

(E) Section 417 (relating to medicare incentive payment

program improvements).

(F) Section 504 (relating to wage index classification

reform).

(G) Section 601 (relating to revision of updates for

physician services).

(H) Section 1001 (relating to medical disproportionate

share hospital (DSH) payments).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for giving me some time to talk tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I have been privileged to serve in this great House for about 10 months now and I am thankful that as each day passes that is one day more of experience that I have under my belt to serve my constituents and to listen to people that have been through this for so many years such as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) and so many others.

But I have to state that the more time that goes by in terms of my service in Congress, the more I live in fear that in each one of those days I am taken a little bit farther away from what the person in my district thinks. When people sit around their kitchen table at night, not when they sit here in this Chamber among all of us in this closed atmosphere, but when they are back in my district of Hawaii, when they are back in Honoka'a and Ele'ele and Kahului, and when they look over those 5,000 miles of what is happening here in Washington, D.C. what do they

think? And I live in fear that I am falling out of touch with them the more time that I spend here. And that is really how I feel right now as I listen to this debate. Because I came into this Congress 10 months ago thinking, perhaps naively, that there were certain truths that our Federal Government played by, certain truths about how we handle the people's money, not just today but down the road. I thought we cared about decisions that had an impact, not just now, but down the road. I thought that despite great debate in this Chamber, we actually did care about being good stewards of the people's money. I thought we were all in this together, all of us, all of America, all trying to do the right thing.

It did not occur to me that we were here just to do the bidding of some. And now as I have listened to my colleagues talk about taxes and the Federal budget and the deficit for these 10 months, colleagues on all sides of the aisle, people in the administration, great thinkers, I see indisputable evidence that what was once on the way to being a surplus is now a deficit this year in excess of $500 billion, including the Social Security surplus. We applied that $200 billion already.

Now, I see public debt climbing through the roof, 3.6 and rising. And as I come to the very slow realization that there is no way whatsoever under this approach that we will be able to meet those obligations to Social Security and Medicare when my generation needs it, I have to ask myself what is going on here? What is really going on? How do I explain this? How do I go back into Hawaii and say to them this is what is going on.

I can take disagreement, I can take policy disagreements as long as I know and understand it. I can go back and say, well, there is a dispute between us in Congress and they think this and we think that and this is why. And I can certainly go back and say this is the issue. We all agree and this is why. But this is the worst situation of all, not understanding why something is being pursued.

A few months after we passed hundreds of millions of dollars of tax cuts, we get an obviously underestimated second bill for Iraq and Afghanistan, and there is no adjustment necessary from the administration's perspective, $87 billion on top of $60 billion just a few months ago. But we do not have to adjust our policy on tax cuts. In fact, we want to add more.

The same week we get the bill I read, I hear that all of the sudden we have worked out another deal. This time we are going to cut corporate taxes for corporations that do their work overseas, overseas corporations. What is going on here?

I have been wracking my brain for the possibilities. I have heard that these tax cuts will regenerate the economy, and I think tax cuts can regenerate the economy under some degree if targeted, but across- the-board deep tax cuts that deny us the basic ability to fund the core functions of government upon which an economy is based, do not help economies.

I have heard the economy is picking up. I have heard in a couple of days we are all going to be told good news, the economy is picking up. Guess what? That is already in these figures. We have already assumed 3 percent growth, and by the way, what economy would not pick up if you gave it a steroid infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars in government spending on war and domestically and in tax cuts? The question is not what is going to happen to the economy next week, the question is what is going to happen to the economy down the road when we most need it to balance the books on this terrible deficit?

I have heard we have to reduce government. Of course, we have to reduce government, but by the way, this budget assumes a certain restriction on government. We are already putting it in, and to reduce government to the degree that would be necessary to balance the budget, under this scenario, would mean essentially wiping out all Federal spending other than military, defense-related, and I have heard the deficits do not matter. They are here to stay, let us just get used to them. Does anybody really believe that? People sitting around that kitchen table sure do not believe it, and I do not believe it.

So what is going on here? Why are we doing what we are doing? I am forced to conclude what I do not want to. This is not subject to explanation anywhere in the realm of reasoned thought. There is no reasonable explanation for this policy, and we have got to cross a bridge. There is no reasoned explanation. We expect Congress to be reasoned. This is not reasonable. This is haphazard. This is reckless. This is not about fiscal responsibility. It is not about economic theory, and it is not about taking care of the next generation. This is about helping part of our country now and the heck with the rest of us and the heck with the future.

It reminds me, just in conclusion, somehow I was thinking about this steroids thing, and I was remembering that back in the 1960s, when the Olympic movement suffered from an incredible abuse of substances and people would inject themselves with all kinds of stuff, and they knew at the time that by injecting themselves with these steroids and other substances they knew two things. They knew, number one, it would enhance their performance for the next 1 or 2 years, and they knew that down the road it would harm them and they would die early from these steroids, and some did it and some did not, and why did those people that do it do it? Because they wanted the gold medal next year, and they did not care and that is how I feel. That is what I think we are doing right now. Some people here just want to get through one next year, and they do not care what happens down the road, and that is wrong.

We are all responsible. We can sit here and talk about partisan politics. We can talk about Republicans versus Dems. We can talk about executive versus legislative branch. We can talk about the States, the local counties, and by the way, I think that is a useful exercise because I have heard some State Governors and some local executives who want to defend these policies say, hey, this will help, and by the way, they turn around the next day and criticize the fact that we do not have enough Federal moneys. They are at a loss to figure out how they are going to balance their State budget, and they say, well, everything is okay and then they turn around and say on the other hand, it is not okay, we need your help.

We cannot have it both ways, and I am telling people out there, this problem is all of ours. We cannot do this alone. We have sat here on this floor saying all of this for months now, and the Representative from Texas asked who is listening. I think people are listening, but it is going to take more than listening. It is going to take the people of this country saying this is wrong. It is going to take the people of this country saying, yes, we know, we cannot have it all.

I wish our President would say one thing to me: We need another $87 billion to get ourselves through the next couple of months in Iraq. We are in a pickle. We have got to get out of that pickle. I need your help but we all have to kick in. We cannot afford this next round of tax cuts. We have got to be able to provide for our foreign policy right now. We cannot have it both ways.

I would believe him and I would support him, but I cannot buy the current approach of this administration, designed only to get through another 15 short months, through one more election. That is wrong. People need to wake up and start speaking out against it.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and appreciate his time.

There is no question about it. Certainly, when we did these budget assumptions just some short months ago, when the administration

said that the cost would be $60 billion, maybe a little bit more, the assumption was international cooperation. The assumption was contribution, military assistance, international monetary policy, all of those aspects. Those assumptions were shaky. Those assumptions are part of this $87 billion today and the $87 billion is too low, and the $87 billion is not in these figures that we are talking about. We are assuming more for the $87 billion. We are not even factoring in what might come in the future. This is all part of one ball of wax.

When you run a family budget, you do not take the lowest estimate. When I project my expenses in my family, yeah, there is a temptation, sure, there is a tremendous temptation to take the lowest possible estimate. We all know that that is not responsible. You take a responsible estimate, you add yourselves a little safety factor, and then you go on into the future feeling that you have at least covered reasonable exigencies.

We are not doing that in this budget. We are not doing it, and yet we are still in trouble. That is the dilemma here. We cannot have it both ways. We all know it. We just have to wake up to it.

Mr. Speaker, amidst all of the disagreement and debate on this floor over things like war and deficits, this is a good-news story. I want to start some decades ago recognizing my political mentor, a former Member of this Chamber, my predecessor, Spark Matsunaga, a veteran himself, who went back and tried to determine whether the veterans home loan program, a successful program, was working for Native American veterans living on tribal or trust territory lands. The answer was a resounding ``no.'' The reason was because those lands contained restraints on alienation that are not applicable to other lands. So, therefore, conventional mortgage practices were not working. My predecessor and my current Senator, Daniel Akaka, took up the cause and initiated the legislation which we are now addressing to provide for this program to be applied on trust territory lands, the lands of the indigenous peoples of our country, whether they be in Alaska, in North America or Hawaii or the Pacific Islands.

A very successful program arose, so successful that in the Pacific, in 300 loans granted under this program over the last 10 years, there has been one delinquency out of 300 programs. Three hundred programs, 100 paid in full, 200

being paid in full, one delinquency, a fantastic program that has accomplished its purpose. This is good news. This is good news because we made a mistake and we are coming back to correct it and we all know it. The administration deserves credit for this, the ranking member deserves credit, the Chair deserves credit, the appropriations committee deserves credit. What we are going to do is to take a program that has been successful and continue it. By the way, when you score this program, we are always talking about money, this program, if this bill goes through, will return $1 million to the U.S. Treasury. That is how successful this is. We are not spending money; we are generating money from this program because of the low delinquency rates.

I thank everybody involved. I commend this bill to the Members and urge its expeditious passage.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for his effort tonight, the eighteenth time that the Democrats in this House have tried to do the right thing, the fair thing.

Mr. Speaker, I have been a Member of this House now for 9 months, and I discovered in that 9 months that the issues that I face, the difficult issues that we all face, fall into three categories:

Category number one are the issues that I understand and I agree with, the solutions that are brought forward by this Congress.

Category number two are the issues that I understand, and I disagree with the solutions that are brought forward by this Congress. Those two categories we can all appreciate.

It is category number three that bothers me the most, and that is the category of things that I just do not understand at all, no matter how long I stay on the floor of this House, no matter how long I listen to the arguments, no matter how long I try to understand what is the motivation of somebody for doing or not doing something.

Now, hopefully over time category number three will diminish with the time that I spend in this House. But I have been in this House now for 9 months, and this issue clearly falls into category number three, and I do not think it is ever going to exit category number three until we pass this child tax credit.

I have tried to understand, why are we not passing this? What is the problem? What is the big deal? What is so hard to understand about the fact that we have 12 million kids that are not covered by this credit, that we have families that are not covered by this credit, that we have poor people that are not covered by this credit, that we have soldiers coming back from overseas that are not covered by this credit?

I get letters from my constituents. I try to understand from my constituents and translate for them what is going on in Congress. Sometimes I can translate and say I understand and I agree, and we all agree on this, or I understand and I disagree. But this one throws me for a loop.

Here is just one of those communications, from a gentleman named Peter Gorham in Hawaii. He writes me, ``Dear Representative Case, my wife and I recently adopted two orphans from Kazakhstan. The children are doing well and it is a joy to see them grow stronger every day as they recover from the terrible situation they were in.

``I write you today for this reason: We are shocked to find that our tax refund has been shortchanged by the sudden rescission of the child tax credit. As you know, adoption costs are very high and the Federal tax credits for adoption and the child tax credit are a welcome relief from a portion of these costs. It is a painful blow to take this from a Congress and administration that has prided itself on spoken words of tax reform, when in fact, the results appear to be the opposite. Please accept the responsibility to work for the reform of these egregious tax laws.''

Mr. Gorham, I have no way of explaining to you what we are doing here tonight and what we continue to do, because I do not understand it myself.

Can it be that we do not have the money? That would be a pretty common explanation. Sorry, we cannot apply $3.5 billion to a child tax credit that is fair after we have already spent multi-billions of dollars on a child tax credit for everybody else. Can that be it? Frankly, I am not sure I have heard anybody say that yet, and how could they say it? We just gave away hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts that people that do not need it. We just gave away multi-billions of dollars,

$500 billion now and climbing, in a deficit that does not seem to matter to anybody.

I guess you could say well, why do we not just add another $3.5 billion to the deficit. But we do not appear to be ready to do that.

We seem to be ready to spend another $87 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan that is not even accounted for. And who thinks for one minute that that is the last amount of money we are going to spend in Iraq and Afghanistan? But we cannot spend $3.5 billion on a child tax credit.

What else can it be? Can it be some rationale in our Tax Code that says somehow low income people should not be helped, whereas middle income people should be and higher income people should be? I cannot see that. I have heard the argument made on the floor. I have heard the argument made well, low income people do not pay taxes, and therefore they should not have a credit. I do not buy that argument. I do not understand it, and I do not think anybody else understands it too.

So what is it? What is the explanation? Why are we sitting here again for the eighteenth time trying to pass something that, to me, makes so much sense, that in the context of what we consider, in the context of who we are trying to help, makes so much sense?

When I walk back into my district back in Hawaii and I say, I wish I could explain this to you in a context that you can understand, I cannot do it.

So I am left with this question, so I ask this question, and I come up with this answer, and this is the best I can do for you: Because they do not want to. Because they do not want to.

It is not a matter of affordability, it is not a matter of tax policy, and it is certainly not a matter of caring about the people that are impacted. This issue has risen above all of that, and it is now just about winning. It is about not giving in. It is about maintaining face, as we call it, keeping face, and that is the wrong reason to not do the right thing.

I urge that we pass this motion and end this, and finish this once and for all.

Mr. Speaker, today, I introduce three bills to end a century of closed market cargo shipping to, from and within my isolated home state of Hawaii, as well as the other noncontiguous locations of our country. In doing so, we will break the stranglehold on the economics and peoples of these exposed communities which results from just a few shipping companies controlling the lifeline of commerce upon which our communities absolutely depend.

These bills all amend the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act. That federal law mandates that all cargo shipping between U.S. ports occur exclusively on U.S., not foreign, flagged vessels. (A similar federal law of the same vintage, the Passenger Vessels Services Act, provides the same mandate for cruise line and other passenger transit; the same arguments as drive these three bills apply there, but that is another effort, already commenced through limited Federal exemptions.)

The Jones Act was enacted in a protectionist era under the guise of preserving a strong national merchant marine. But today it is just an anachronism: most of the world's shipping is by way of an international merchant marine functioning in an open, competitive market. And those few U.S. flag cargo lines that remain have maneuvered the Jones Act to develop virtual monopolies over domestic cargo shipping to, from and within our most isolated and exposed locales: our island and offshore states, territories and possessions.

My Hawaii is a classic example. Located almost 2,500 miles off the West Coast, we import well over 90 percent of our life necessities by ocean cargo. There are no doubt plenty of international cargo lines who could and would compete for a share of that market. Yet only two U.S. flag domestic cargo lines--Matson Navigation and CSX Lines (fka Sea- Land)--operate a virtual duopoly over our lifeline.

While they are nominally subject to Federal regulation, the fact of the matter is that cargo prices have gone in only one direction--up, and fast--and it is indisputable that there is no downward market pressure which would otherwise result from meaningful competition. These accelerating cargo prices are not absorbed by the shipping lines, but passed through all the way down the chain, to the transporters, wholesalers, retailers, small businesses, mom-n-pops, and ultimately consumers, of all of the elementals of life, from food, to medical supplies, clothes, housing and virtually all other goods. The result is a crippling drag on an already-challenged economy and the very quality of life in Hawaii.

The broadest, deepest effects of the Jones Act on Hawaii result from its impact on westbound imports. But Hawaii is an export location as well, in key products such as agriculture and livestock. Here the Jones Act also effectively stifles meaningful competition in getting those products to their primary markets on the U.S. Mainland. Because the producers of these products and all that rely for their own livelihood on their successful export have to eat inflated shipping costs, these export industries, which any economist knows are the ultimate key to any economy's prosperity, are also crippled.

Let's take a concrete example: Hawaii's once-prosperous ranching/ cattle industry, which is so key to the economic health and the very lifestyle of so much of the rural Second District which I proudly represent. That industry depends on getting its product, young cattle, to West Coast pens and transportation hubs in a cost-efficient manner.

There are foreign cargo carriers that specialize, through custom cattle ships and overall sensitivity and adjustment to rancher timetables and needs, in such transport, but the Jones Act outright excludes them from the Hawaii-Mainland market. As a result, Hawaii's ranchers are reduced to two crippling, cost magnifying options.

The first is to ship their cargo by foreign carriers to Canada, where they have to go through a myriad of bureaucratic, cost-magnifying gyrations to get their product eventually to their U.S. markets. The second is to beg for the goodwill of the domestic carriers, to whom this is simply a hindrance rather than a major commitment, to ship directly to the West Coast.

And it shows: most of the cattle are first shipped from Hawaii's Neighbor Islands, where the bulk of the cattle industry is located, to Oahu, in small ``cow-tainers'', where they sit for days in Honolulu Harbor awaiting the return to the Mainland of one of the massive cargo ships designed and utilized for quite another purpose. The result (besides associated higher costs): in-harbor cattle waste disposal challenges; higher in-transit cattle mortality; lower-weight cattle delivery to market. That's what happens when you try to squeeze a square peg into a round hole.

These three bills say: enough is enough. The first, H.R. --, the United States Noncontiguous Shipping Open Market Act of 2003, exempts all noncontiguous U.S. locations, including Hawaii, from the Jones Act. (Frankly I question whether we shouldn't outright repeal the Jones Act, but I leave it to my colleagues from the contiguous U.S. to evaluate that option; the consequences are especially acute in the noncontiguous U.S. and that is my focus.) The second, H.R. --, the Hawaii Shipping Open Market Act of 2003, exempts Hawaii. And the third, H.R. --, the Hawaii Agriculture/Livestock Shipping Open Market Act of 2003, exempts Hawaii agriculture and livestock. Essentially, the bills are intended to lay out the options from broad to narrow; we can get into the issue at any level and work our way up or down.

Let me address directly some arguments sometimes offered up by the domestic shippers in defense of the Jones Act: that it contains important labor and environmental protections that would be lost upon repeal. Of course, the exact terms of repeal are up to this Congress and administration, and all three of these bills propose to retain these important protections. Specifically, these bills provide that all foreign shippers operating under Jones Act exemptions must comply with the same labor, environmental, tax, documentation, U.S. locus and other laws as are applicable to non-U.S. flag ships and shippers transiting U.S. waters today.

Mr. Speaker, these long-overdue bills are of the utmost importance to the localities which have long borne the brunt of the Jones Act. Sometimes it is difficult to pierce the veil of longstanding custom and understanding to see what should instead be, but clearly the time for these measures is overdue. I urge their passage.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my heartiest congratulations to Maui Economic Opportunity, Inc. (MEO) on being one of the four agencies nationwide to be awarded the ``Award for Excellence in Community Action'' by the National Community Action Partnership.

This prestigious and coveted award is given to Community Action Agencies that demonstrate their excellence through many programs that improve communities and help people change their lives. I have long known that MEO is one of the best Community Action Agencies in the nation and this award at long last recognizes this fact. MEO's innovative efforts have transformed Maui County residents' lives and have had a lasting impact on the entire community.

I would like to especially recognize MEO's Executive Director, Gladys Baisa, for her commitment to excellence and to the people of Maui County. This award is indicative of Gladys' leadership and also a testament to the staff she has surrounded herself with. I am proud to work closely with Gladys and MEO to make Maui County and the State of Hawaii a better place.

Mahalo nui loa to the MEO board and all of its great staff. Keep up the good work and always know that it is truly appreciated.

Mr. Speaker, Filipino veterans have waited nearly 60 years for Congress to take the first steps to undo an injustice inflicted upon them. I was pleased to see our Nation finally begin to take those steps by passing H.R. 2357.

When the United States asked the Philippines to help America fight the long and difficult battles of World War II, nearly 200,000 Filipinos responded. They responded without hesitation to defend their homeland and to answer the call for help. In return, President Roosevelt promised that Filipino veterans would become U.S. citizens and thus have the same benefits given to all other U.S. veterans. In October 1945 General Omar Bradley, Administrator of the Veterans Administration, reaffirmed that they were to be treated like all other American veterans and would receive full benefits.

Yet, in 1946, the U.S. Congress broke this promise to the Commonwealth Army and the recognized guerrilla forces by enacting the Rescission Act (Public Law 79-301). Congress broke the same promise made to the New Philippine Scouts when it passed the Second Rescission Act (Public Law 79-391). The Rescission Acts stated that the World War II service of Filipinos would not be treated as recognizable military service. These acts took away their benefits.

I am pleased to add my voice to those in this Chamber, both today and for decades past, that want us to face up to this injustice. The legislation (H.R. 2357) passed by the House on July 21, 2003 authorizes the Department of Veterans' Affairs to provide hospital and nursing home care and medical services to certain Filipino World War II veterans of the Philippines Commonwealth Army and former Philippines New Scout veterans who permanently reside in the United States, in the same manner as provided to U.S. veterans. The bill would provide health care benefits to approximately 14,000 Commonwealth Army and New Philippines Scout veterans who are permanent and legal residents of the United States.

I support this legislation, but it is time for this Congress to turn its attention to the approximately 30,000 Commonwealth Army and New Philippines Scout veterans living in the Philippines who served alongside American soldiers, risked their lives during World War II, yet were denied the veterans' benefits that were promised to them. The passage of H.R. 2357 does not release the United States from its moral obligation to provide Filipino veterans, regardless of where they live, the benefits that were unfairly taken away from them in 1946.

Filipino veterans are now in their 70s and 80s, and we lose approximately five Filipino veterans each day. They are in desperate need of health care. It is time for this Congress to do the right thing and provide them with the benefits they earned during the World War II campaigns.

I thank my colleagues for passing H.R. 2357, and urge them to continue to push toward full equity for Filipino veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I join my colleague from Guam, Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo, as an original cosponsor of the Compact-Impact Reimbursement Act, which she is introducing today. This legislation assists Hawaii and other U.S. jurisdictions with costs associated with migration resulting from the Compact of Free Association between the United States and the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The measure is a followup to hearings held by the House Resources and International Relations Committees on renegotiated expiring provisions of the Compact agreement.

At the outset, let me say that I fully support our country's continued recognition of the strategic importance of the Freely Associated States to our national security interests in the Western Pacific Region, and the special relationships our countries have shared based on the U.N. trusteeship system as well as mutual respect and friendship.

It should come as no surprise that my State of Hawaii continues to have great interest in U.S. policy toward these areas given our geographic proximity and close ties in the Pacific, and thus continues its historic support of the Compacts of Free Association. Having said that, however, we continue also our historic concerns with the U.S. Government's administration and coordination of Federal assistance and policy toward Micronesia, and especially the issue of Compact Impact Aid to Hawaii and other affected U.S. jurisdictions.

The Administration has proposed, as part of the renegotiated Compact agreements, $15 million in Compact Impact Aid to be collectively shared by affected U.S. jurisdictions, including Hawaii.

This level of assistance is completely inadequate, given the actual costs that all of our jurisdictions have incurred since 1986. Moreover, the Administration has provided no clear justification on where it even came up with the $15 million figure. In fact, in recent years, the Department of Interior has reported that supportable ``best estimates'' in 1997 for fiscal impact costs in our jurisdictions are over $30 million annually.

While Hawaii has spent more than $100 million on State benefits to FAS citizens since 1986, it has received less than $10 million in Compact Impact Aid from the Federal Government. In 2002 alone, the State of Hawaii estimates that it has spent over $32 million in assistance for FAS citizens, most on educational costs.

I have repeatedly said that since our costs are primarily in the field of education and health care, then other Federal agencies, particularly the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, should be part of an overall Federal and Compact Impact assistance strategy and program. The easiest route, of course, would be to simply increase the Compact proposal of $15 million to at least $35 million in mandatory spending.

Other ways to ameliorate Compact Impact costs include making FAS citizens eligible for key Federal social programs that will offset the costs borne by our jurisdictions and providing our jurisdictions with the clear authority to receive other Federal assistance and make referrals to DOD medical facilities. Today's legislation gives the Administration these other alternatives to providing assistance to our areas.

A section-by-section summary of our proposal is as follows:

the compact-impact reimbursement act

Objective--To amend the Compact of Free Association Act of

1985 (Public Law 99-239) to provide for more adequate

Compact-Impact aid to Guam, the State of Hawaii, the

Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and

American Samoa.

Section 1. Short Title. The Compact-Impact Reimbursement

Act.

Section 2. Appropriations and Medicaid Eligibility.

Increases Compact-Impact aid to $35 million per year to

mitigate impact on Guam, the State of Hawaii, the CNMI, and

American Samoa. Funding would be based on a pro rata formula

reflecting a census, to be conducted no less than every five

years, of citizens of the Freely Associated States (FAS)

living in Guam, the State of Hawaii, the CNMI, and American

Samoa; would provide FAS citizens who migrate to Guam,

Hawaii, the CNMI or American Samoa eligibility for Medicaid.

The Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) for

providing health services would be 100 percent.

Section 3. Food Stamps Eligibility. Would provide FAS

citizens who migrate to Guam, the State of Hawaii, the CNMI

or American Samoa eligibility for the food stamp program

under the Food Stamp Act of 1977.

Section 4. Extension of Communicable Disease Control

Programs to Affected U.S. Jurisdictions. The Compact of Free

Association Act of 1985 would be amended to reauthorize

appropriations for grants to the Governments of the Federated

States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands,

the Republic of Palau, Guam, the State of Hawaii, the CNMI,

and American Samoa. Current law simply authorizes this

assistance for the Federated States of Micronesia.

Section 5. Extends Referral Authority to Affected U.S.

Jurisdictions. Reauthorizes the availability of medical

facilities of the Department of Defense (DoD) for FAS

citizens upon referral by government authorities responsible

for the provision of medical services in the Federated States

of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the

Republic of Palau, Guam, the State of Hawaii,

the CNMI, and American Samoa. Current law only allows use of

DoD facilities for FAS citizens currently referred by the

governments of the Federated States of Micronesia and the

Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Section 6. Authorizes Reconciliation of Medical Referral

Debts. Directs the United States Government to make available

to the governments of Federated States of Micronesia, the

Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau

funds needed to pay obligations incurred for the use of

medical facilities in the United States, including in Guam,

the State of Hawaii, the CNMI, and American Samoa, prior to

October 1, 2003. Under current law, such authorization

applies to debt accrued before September 1, 1985.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate my support and, I believe, the support of my State for the Compacts, but also the great importance of adequate Compact Impact Aid to Hawaii, whether by appropriate general funding or legislation such as this or both.