Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask permission to claim the time of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Black Caucus has been in the forefront of the fight to preserve the filibuster, a much-used, indeed used more against African Americans than any others. We do not want to see and will not stand to see the rules changed when it could now be used to protect us from judges who would overturn our rights.

We have supported the idea of a compromise, if one could be found; but I come to the floor this evening to say that we are horrified to hear of a possible compromise involving two judges that would be most unacceptable to the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who unanimously oppose elimination of the filibuster and unanimously oppose these two judges: Attorney General William Pryor, who would be nominated to the 11th Circuit; and Janice Rogers Brown, who would be nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Briefly, Attorney General Pryor in this year when we are starting the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act would simply be totally unacceptable to us and we think to most Americans. This is a man who sought to repeal the critical section of the Voting Rights Act, who has indicated that some rights now protected by the Constitution should be regarded as social disputes and essentially has indicated that some of these rights now protected by the Constitution should indeed be left to the States. This is a man who belongs perhaps on the Supreme Court in the 19th century, not today.

We are particularly insulted that President Bush would resubmit the name of Janice Rogers Brown. Has he done so because she is African American and somehow he believes that for that reason people will go easy on her and not look at what in fact she has stood for? We regard her nomination as nothing short of insulting. When she was first nominated to the California Supreme Court, the signal from the California Association of Black Lawyers who opposed her nomination was that her appointment could be detrimental, as they put it, to black America with nothing short of, as they put it, far reaching circumstances for generations to come. How right they proved to be. When she was renominated to the California Supreme Court, 20 of the 23 members of the California bar found her to be not qualified because of the way she inserted her personal opinions, her personal views, into her judicial opinions.

Janice Rogers Brown and the rule of law are strangers. She has no regard for precedent. How else to explain a ruling of hers where she found that racially derogatory on-the-job speech was unconstitutional even though the Supreme Court long ago found that such speech is not protected by title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Why did she find herself in dissent reaching this conclusion?

I recite the cases because you hear that these judges are extreme. We mean to make you understand, hopefully, what we mean by extreme. Proposition 209 passed, an anti-affirmative action proposition, passed in California. The judge who was on her side of the case, the Chief Justice, Ronald George, also appointed by Governor Pete Wilson, said when he read her concurrence, remember, concurrence with him, that the concurrence raised ``a serious distortion of history,'' indicating that it would be widely and correctly viewed as presenting an unfair and inaccurate caricature of affirmative action programs. When a judge on your side appointed by the same Governor as you characterizes your agreement with him in this way, is he not telling the Senate something it must listen to?

Here is a woman who found that black women in a case involving a prosecution where the prosecution may have used racial preemptory challenges found that black women are not a cognizable group. Again, she has often found herself in dissent even from her own Republican colleagues.

We do not need this woman on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals where she would bring her views that ``the New Deal was the triumph of our own socialist revolution'' to Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of the comprehensive Voting Opportunity and Technology Enhancement Rights Act of 2005 (H.R. 533), introduced by Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers. Rep. Conyers' new bill amends and improves the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), enacted after the chaos of the 2000 presidential election. Congressman Conyers has done the Nation an important service by systematically reviewing HAVA (including conducting his own hearings here and elsewhere in the country) against the actual experience of the 2004 elections.

The three amendments to HAVA that I introduce today similarly arose out of my own experience during the 2004 elections here in the District of Columbia and campaigning in other parts of the country during the 2004 presidential elections. The first, Section 303A, is an amendment that responds to long lines throughout the country, which may have deterred significant numbers of voters. This amendment to HAVA would require states to permit counties or other subdivisions upon request to begin voting prior to the scheduled date of an election. During the recent election, some subdivisions had voting machines that were modern and plentiful, while other jurisdictions in the same state were burdened with scarce and out-of-date machines, resulting in long lines. In the pivotal state of Ohio, which determined the outcome of the close 2004 presidential election, the controversy was deepened by reports that lines were particularly long in counties where there were large minority populations compared with largely white counties.

One reason for the difference is that in many states, voting machines are purchased by counties or other subdivisions. Differences in income levels, tax bases and other issues often result in large disparities within the same state in the availability of machines. Small changes in the day voting begins can help eliminate these disparities and the lines that can discourage the exercise of the right to vote, without the often significant capital investment in new equipment.

Section 2 of my bill adds a section to HAVA that responds to calls to my office concerning absentee ballots which inadvertently did not include postage, or had insufficient postage. This section requires officials to accept such absentee ballots. Postage mistakes may be made depending on the number of issues on the ballot and the resulting size and weight of the envelope containing the ballot. The cost to authorities, if any, is de minimis. There should be no doubt that such ballots should be counted.

Section 3 amends HAVA to eliminate the confusion when first-time or infrequent voters or others go to incorrect voting sites or when the usual voting site has been changed. To encourage voting, voters registered anywhere in the state could cast a provisional ballot and have it counted and verified. However, voters would be told the correct polling site to allow the option of going to the correct site and thereby avoiding any doubt that their ballots would be counted.

The 2000 presidential election was a calamity of such historic proportions that it cast doubt on the validity of the election of the President of the United States and led to the enactment of HAVA. The continuing problems in the 2004 elections were serious, unacceptable, and controversial. Although that election also was close, it did not have the razor thin margin of 2000 that delayed certification and settlement of the final result through a Supreme Court decision. However, the 2004 elections were another close call that yielded bitter controversy. Congress must be willing to learn from our continuing experience to make improvements in protecting the right to vote as they are needed. My bill simply uses the experience from my own district and elsewhere to contribute to this effort.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding me time, and I thank him and I thank the gentleman from Nevada for bringing this resolution in support of charter schools to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, charter schools are one of the most innovative developments in the history of public education in our country, and they came from the bottom up. They have not developed out of State governments or the like. They have come from searches within jurisdictions for all alternative public schools, and this is what they are.

In the District of Columbia, we think of the charter schools as an alternative public school system because there are so many of them. We have 43 charter schools in this one city alone, and that is the largest number of charter schools per capita in the United States.

Why are there so many charter schools? We feel strongly in the District of Columbia that public money must go to public schools, and it is understood that here and throughout the United States public schools which have to take every child are often overcrowded and underfunded, have had a very tough time making up for what particularly the most disadvantaged children do not bring to school. As a result, public schools in many jurisdictions show low scores for children in those schools.

What is a parent to do? What parents increasingly do is look for a public alternative to their public schools. They want better schools, but the public is very clear that it wants public money for public schools. If we have any doubt about that, remember that even this House has never voted a voucher bill for, nor has the Senate, anywhere except for the District of Columbia where

you can undemocratically do anything you want to do, but for everybody else they have listened to what people say and that is, yeah, we will punish you if one dime goes to anything but a publicly accountable public school.

Looking for a way to deal with the fact that, yes, many public schools do not show the progress they should, it seems to me we have to look to the paradigm that the public itself has created, and those are charter schools. There is no better place to begin than in the District of Columbia where people have simply voted with their feet. When they did not like their school, they have gone to a nearby charter school.

They have advantages. They are not the advantage discussed in this resolution, where it says, whereas charter schools improve students' achievement. That is very controversial. I do not know whether they do or not. All I know is that there are studies that say that they do and studies that say they do not.

I want to say to my goods friends on the other side who are with me in support of charter schools, our case does not rest on that. If my colleagues understood how difficult it was to deal with education in the inner city, they would understand that the fact that they come so close ought to be enough; that parents want them as an alternative; that they are small; that they are flexible; that they are in their neighborhoods; that sometimes they are specialized. That is enough.

We have got a long way to go before we find the elixir for bringing particularly disadvantaged children to where they should be; but if we just look at what some of these schools in the District of Columbia, like just by some of their names, District of Columbia Bilingual School, that is totally a bilingual charter school.

The SEED school, this is the first public live-in school in the District of Columbia. These children do not go home during the week. They do not go home at night. So they have money from us per capita from the school budget, and they raise other money; and these children actually live in a public charter school like a boarding school.

There is the Marriott Hospitality Public Charter High School, where children, besides learning the general high school curriculum, also prepare themselves to go into the hospitality field, which is the most important industry in this region.

Here is another one, the Washington Mathematics, Science and Technology School. And these are some of the reasons that parents have, in fact, sometimes chosen alternative schools here in the District of Columbia: the public school test scores are better. They are better and systematically better, but my colleagues do not see me here saying public schools are better because their scores are better.

The fact is that each kind of school has broad benefits that parents have chosen and both kinds of schools are accountable to parents and to the public for the dollars spent.

I do believe that they stimulate competition, unlike private schools which do not stimulate any competition at all. Private schools in the District of Columbia, which can take whatever children they want to or not, are no competition for the District of Columbia; but if there is a charter school in one's neighborhood, the principal will look to see what that charter school is doing.

The superintendent today has announced a plan because there are a few charter schools that are very good and they must take every child, but there are a few charter schools that are very good about actually pairing those charter schools with some charter schools in their neighborhood which are not doing as well.

With No Child Left Behind we have a problem we are seeing all over the country. You have got to find yourself a better school. Well, guess what. Those schools are all full so there is no place to transfer now. Everybody ought to wish for charter schools because there is a publicly accountable school with a public dollar that perhaps one can transfer to. They are opening fast, but not fast enough for us here.

There is no real substitute in any civilized society for a public school system; but particularly when parents are not satisfied with their public schools, it does seem to me that charter schools offer the alternative and the only alternative we ought to fund.

The District received the first Federal funds, first funds from this Congress for charter schools. That was when Speaker Gingrich was here. He knew that he profoundly opposed school vouchers. He worked with me on charter school funding for the District of Columbia. That paved the way for charter school funding which is now available to every State in the Union.

We had mothers who went to schools with private school vouchers. The vouchers that this Congress mandated be paid for in the District of Columbia were fully paid for by private funds, but we said you do not have to pay for them. You have been raising money every year; we will pay for them. So we simply transferred public funds for the private funds which have been sending these same children to school.

Well, the mothers came to me who had been going to school on the private funds, and I said you are my folks and I understand why you are looking for alternative schools. Tell me more. I wanted them to know why I opposed vouchers from public funds for private schools; and I was amazed at how many of them said, Congresswoman, we wanted to go to a charter school, but they were all full. So, look, we wanted a better school, and that is why they chose and were pleased to get these vouchers.

Well, of course, I argued since charter schools are what the people of District of Columbia want, if you have got any extra money, Congress, please give it to us for charter schools. We said, oh, no, you are the District of Columbia; we can experiment on you. We can do anything undemocratically to do what we want to do, and we will do some undemocratic things to you that our people would punish us for doing if we did it to them.

So now our folks are still hungry for even more charter schools, and we have got people going to private schools as well.

I am going to put in the Record what our charter schools have done because each year we have a climbing up. This is how people vote. They vote with their feet. This is what a market system is about. Ask people what they want. This is what democracy is. Ask people what they want, and they will choose what they want. Do not impose on them what you want.

In our city, since most of our Catholic schools which would be the alternative schools in the Northwest and most of our most deprived children are in the Southeast, the first year of the vouchers, we had most of the children in middle class and better schools, thank you very much. Then there was an outcry, which I can see, whether they can do any better this time. I can tell my colleagues it is very much harder to do better if you are from a very disadvantaged neighborhood in far Southeast and there is a Catholic school over here in this part of town and you have got a voucher to go there. That is not going to work in the District.

What will work in the District is what the people in the District have embraced, and that is, if there is to be an alternative, let it be a publicly accountable school.

The District of Columbia, unlike many jurisdictions, has absolutely eliminated charter schools that were not doing what they were supposed to do.

So we know what to do when they work. We know what to do when they do not work.

I am pleased to see the spread of charter schools. I believe that every district has to decide for itself. In this region, for example, in Maryland and Virginia, where Republicans have the majority of the Congress, they cannot even get charter schools, and yet there are hundreds of thousands of poor Hispanic and black children who might decide that was a good alternative for them, not to mention the children elsewhere in those States, but they cannot even get charter schools, which are publicly accountable charter schools to be embraced in their districts. That is how much people in their districts want every public dollar to go to the public school system.

When I argued that on this floor, they said, who do you think you are, somebody voted by the people or the

District of Columbia? Well, we were not, but we are going to tell you what to do with your schools. Well, we have led the way on what to do if your schools do not work. Designed, publicly accountable schools, which parents agree should be the alternative that they want.

This is still America. This is still a democracy. Nothing is felt more deeply than who decides how a person's child will be educated. It was wrong for this Congress to decide for us rather than to decide on the alternative you now come to the floor to embrace.

Mr. Speaker, I very much thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, Saturday, April 23rd, marks the culmination of Youth Pride Month in Washington, DC with our Ninth Annual Youth Pride Day.

Youth Pride Day occurs every April in Washington, DC. It is the annual celebration for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) young people, which has brought over 15,000 youth together since its start in 1997. The celebration has grown from just 900 participants in 1997 to over 2,500 young people last year. Youth Pride Day has evolved from a single day into a series of events which now make April Youth Pride Month. These events include a prom, poetry readings, a film screening, an awards reception, and, on Saturday, the First Annual DC Youth Pride College Fair, the nation's largest LGBT college fair as well as Youth Pride Day itself.

The Youth Pride Alliance sponsors Youth Pride Day. The Alliance was founded in 1996, and its mission is to celebrate the dignity and courage of all young people as they discover their identities as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or straight.

The Alliance challenges society to stop hate, violence, fear, isolation, and denial as it reminds us that LGBT youth in our nation's Armed Forces, do so under the policy of ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'' While they have sworn to defend the United States with their lives, they must suffer the hate, fear, isolation, and denial this demonstrably untenable policy engenders.

We, who live in our nation's capital, feel a special affinity to any group that has been denied the full rights and privileges of United States citizenship most Americans consider their birthrights. I remind the House that Washingtonians, who pay the second highest taxes in America, do so without full voting representation.

I ask this House to join with me in welcoming all those attending Youth Pride Day.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the House for a joyful moment.

On the front page of the Washington Post today is a very large picture of children of the District of Columbia and one of their teachers, who was entertained yesterday by President Bush at the White House to celebrate the fact that he has been named Teacher of the Year, the oldest and most prestigious award for teachers in our country.

This is a young man who teaches at Sousa Junior High School in Washington, D.C. Jason Kamras is his name. He is a math teacher who graduated from Princeton University. What does he think to do with his life? Come to the District of Columbia to teach disadvantaged children in our elementary and middle schools.

He began teaching in 1996. He took 2 years out because he thought he ought to go and get an education degree, and he went and got a master's degree in education, but came right back to the District of Columbia to teach math at Sousa.

Typical of the way this young man approached his job is the student he first met when he was in middle school at Sousa. His name was Wendell Jefferson. He said, Wendell, you keep trying; you will do well. Wendell Jefferson went on to high school. When he got to high school, no longer under the care of Mr. Kamras, Mr. Kamras tutored him in math. Wendell Jefferson is now studying electrical engineering at Morehouse College.

This story is perhaps emblematic of the way this young man approaches teaching. He lobbied his principal for double the time for students in math, with two teachers for each student. He redesigned the curriculum using technologies so as to adjust the curriculum to all learning styles. He took to heart this notion that every child can learn, those words which have become such a cliche, a cliche because we all know them to be true, but we do not know always how to unlock what makes them true.

In his first year, using his new curriculum, these children went from 80 percent below basic to 40 percent below basic. Something happened to almost 40 percent of them when they got a teacher who homed in on their individual needs. Now, we are talking about a school where all but 40 of about 380 students qualify for the reduced price lunch. It tells us something of the poverty level of the students.

Actually, the District of Columbia public schools look a lot like every big public school, except the Members of Congress see this one up close. We are very pleased to have a new superintendent, Mr. Janey, who is in the process of restructuring our public schools, but of course, the most basic restructuring of schools has to do, first, with the children in those schools, how the schools are restructured so that they are child-oriented and how are they restructured so as to understand the most important adult in each child's life during the school day is the teacher. Somehow or the other this young man, fresh out of college, understood that.

He works from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. according to his principal. My mother was a schoolteacher, so I want to say that those long hours are fairly typical of how teachers operate. They do not do it at school. They are working that hard because of the hours they put in at home in preparing to teach.

But for Mr. Kamras, teaching in a big city school system was much more difficult than it was for my mother when she taught when I was a child because of the concentration of poverty in big cities today. This city was a much larger city, 200,000 people more than it has today, and it was far more mixed economically. Then, of course, people began to move to larger quarters in the suburbs leaving concentrations of poverty here. We have lots of middle-class people in the District, I am pleased to say, but we have large concentrations of poverty, and this is reflected in the scores.

The fact that Jason Kamras was able not only to reach the children, but to reach the measurement, which I think is the right measurement; there is no way to get around the fact that test scores are the only way to know for sure that children are progressing. I wish there were a better way. I wish there were a more objective way, but that is it.

This teacher has somehow made these test scores go up.

Mr. Speaker, I do want to quote something that he said, because it tells something of his world view. He said, ``My intense desire to see my school excel comes not only from an unwavering belief that all students deserve an excellent education, but also the unique role Sousa played in the civil rights movement.''

This young man's world view gives him a sense that justice in the classroom must be done because he believes in justice in our country for African Americans, and he has brought it to bear right here in the public schools of the District of Columbia.

I know you would want to, Mr. Speaker, congratulate him; I know this House would want to congratulate him. We take great pride in his achievement today, and we thank the President of the United States for honoring him.

Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the article I referred to earlier in my remarks:

[From the Washington Post]

A D.C. Teacher's Day in the Rose Garden

Math Innovator Is First From City to Be Declared Best in Nation

(By Manny Fernandez and V. Dion Haynes)

The sixth-graders were hunched over their desks behind the

metal-screened windows of the middle school--still digesting

the difference between similes and metaphors--as the

limousine carrying their school's best teacher pulled up to

the northwest gate of the White House yesterday.

Welcomed at the gate, Jason Kamras made his way up the

driveway flanked with red tulips and walked into a limelight

that falls sparingly on the weathered urban school where he

has taught math for close to a decade.

``My children simply want the opportunity to pursue their

dreams,'' Kamras said as he stood in the Rose Garden beside

the president and first lady.

The ceremony recognized Kamras, 31, as the National Teacher

of the Year. He is the first winner from a D.C. public school

in the contest's 53-year history.

``He's usually at work at 7 a.m., and he rarely leaves

before 7 p.m.,'' President Bush said as bright sunshine

streamed down on those who gathered for the event. Kamras

receives great joy, Bush told them, ``when a student

proclaims, `Mr. Kamras, I get it.' ''

Kamras smiled.

At that moment--six miles and a world away--students in

Room 120 at John Philip Sousa Middle School had their rulers

out, drawing rectangles, some of them quiet and studious,

others loud and distracted.

Sousa sits at the edge of a park east of the Anacostia

River, on the poorer side of Washington's dividing line

between the haves and the have-nots.

With its tall chimney, the 50-year-old, red-brick building

looks more like a factory than a school.

The white flag pole has no flag, and a sign near the

entrance declares that firearms are banned within 500 feet.

Two women were shot to death down the street several years

ago, and the metal detector that students walk through each

morning has turned up several knives.

All but 40 of the roughly 380 students qualify for a free

or reduced-price lunch, a commonly used indicator of poverty.

A year ago, 46 percent of the students scored ``below basic''

on reading tests, and 73 percent scored below basic in math.

Kamras said he doesn't dwell on the negative. His focus is

on the faces in his classroom.

``They inspire me every day with their intelligence,

creativity and humor,'' he said in the Rose Garden yesterday.

Teachers ``can and do make a dramatic difference in their

lives every day.''

He was fresh out of Princeton almost nine years ago, and

the middle school was showing signs of age, when he first

laid eyes on it.

Sousa's principal, William Lipscomb, had fetched him from

the Minnesota Avenue Metro station in Northeast, and the two

men immediately found common ground.

``We both are from New York and we instantly bonded on

that,'' Kamras said.

Two sixth-grade teachers, Carol Taylor and Elaine Stewart,

supplied Kamras with construction paper for his classroom and

a bit of an introduction to the school.

``Some of the things they raised were the lack of

resources. They talked about the socioeconomic challenges

that some students at Sousa face,'' Kamras recalled in an

interview this week. ``Some students here have encountered

violence personally.''

But from the start, he said, he was determined to ``never

use the negative factors as predictors of ability or

potential.''

During his first year of teaching, Kamras said, he sought

to get to ``know the students as individuals, taking the time

to learn who they are, what they care about, what their needs

are as learners.''

Kamras made bridging the inequities in staffing and other

resources between urban and suburban schools a priority. He

got creative. He brought a cookie with colorful frosting to

class to illustrate circumference, diameter and radius. He

took his students to outings at the Lincoln and Jefferson

memorials and made time after school to encourage their

hobbies. He encouraged his students to take photographs of

community life, and their prints were put on display in city

offices at Judiciary Square and other places in the city.

And he played chess with student Wendall Jefferson once a

week. ``He would routinely defeat me, and I was trying my

hardest,'' Kamras said.

During those games he learned about the student and his

family, and he sought to inspire him to ``focus in class and

tap into the fullness of his potential.''

``I think I was learning as a first year teacher how to

engage students and bring their natural love . . . for their

hobbies into the classroom,'' Kamras recalled. ``I wanted to

use that as a catalyst.''

Jefferson graduated from Sousa in 1999 as valedictorian,

and Kamras regularly tutored him in math and science when he

went on to high school. Now Jefferson is studying electrical

engineering at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He is the first

in his family to go to college.

``He said, `Wendall, you have great potential,' '' recalled

Jefferson, 20, who attended the Rose Garden ceremony

yesterday. ``I said, `I'm destined to do great things.' He

said, `Always keep that dream.' ''

Kamras began ``early bird'' advanced math classes before

the regular school day began, working to prepare students for

the standardized test known as the Stanford 9.

He also came up with an idea that doubled the amount of

math instruction by providing two teachers--teaching separate

classes--for every student. The program was started for

seventh-graders and then expanded to other grades.

``Our Stanford 9 scores went from approximately 80 percent

below basic to 40 percent below basic in one year,'' he said.

Though the program continues in other grades, it was

discontinued for seventh-graders because there weren't enough

qualified teachers.

Kamras said he steadfastly refused to let ``negative

factors shape my perspective.''

At the White House, Kamras, who with his boyish looks could

have been mistaken for a student all dressed up, heard Bush

say, ``Your students are fortunate to have you in their

lives.''

He shook hands with Bush and--holding his teaching award, a

glass apple on a plaque--posed for photos with the president

and first lady Laura Bush.

Next year, he plans to travel the country to promote

innovative teaching techniques. He's taking today and

tomorrow off. But he plans on being back in the classroom, as

usual, first thing Monday morning.

Mr. Speaker, today I am pleased to join my House colleague Rosa DeLauro and Senator Hillary Clinton as original cosponsors of the Paycheck Fairness Act and Senator Tom Harkin as an original cosponsor of the Fair Pay Act. The Equal Pay Act has been a highly successful civil rights statute, but it is creaky with age and to be useful, it must be amended to meet the changed economy in which it must now to do its work. The Fair Pay Act also amends the EPA but it picks up where the EPA leaves off.

Huge changes in the economy and the workplace have occurred since the EPA was passed, and most important is the emergence of a highly educated workforce of women with even 75 percent of women with small children working for pay. However, women are vastly underused because of employer steering and because of deeply rooted wage stereotypes that result in pay according to gender and not according to the skills, efforts, responsibilities and working conditions necessary to do the job. We introduce the Fair Pay Act because the pay problems of most women today stem mainly from this sex segregation in the jobs that women and men do. Two-thirds of white women, and three quarters of African American women work in just three areas: sales and clerical, service and factory jobs. Only a combination of more aggressive strategies can break through the ancient societal habits present throughout human time the world over as well as the employer steering of women into women's jobs that is as old as paid employment itself.

The FPA recognizes that if men and women are doing comparable work, they should be paid a comparable wage. If a woman is an emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, for example, she should be paid no less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one sex. If a woman is a social worker, a traditionally female occupation, she should earn no less than a probation officer, a traditionally male job, simply because of the gender associated with each of these jobs.

The FPA, like the EPA, will not tamper with the market system. As with the EPA, the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove discrimination. She must show that the reason for the disparity is sex or race discrimination, not legitimate market factors. Corrections to achieve comparable pay for men and women are not radical or unprecedented. State employees in almost half the state governments, in red and blue states, have already demonstrated that you can eliminate the part of the pay gap that is due to discrimination. Twenty states have adjusted wages for women, state employees, raising pay for teachers, nurses, clerical workers, librarians, and other female dominated-jobs that paid less than men with comparable jobs. Minnesota, for example, implemented a pay equity plan when they found that similarly skilled female jobs paid 20% less than male jobs. There often will be some portion of the gap that is traceable to market conditions, but twenty states have shown that you can tackle the discrimination gap without interfering with the free market system. The states generally have closed the discrimination gap over a period of four or five years at a one-time cost no more than 3 to 4 percent of payroll.

In addition, routinely, many women workers achieve pay equity through collective bargaining. And countless employers on their own see women shifting out of vital female dominated occupations, and the resulting effects of the shortage of workers, see the unfairness to women, and are raising women's wages with pay equity adjustments. Unequal pay has been built into the way women have been treated since Adam and Eve. To dislodge such deep seated and pervasive treatment, we must go to the source, the female occupations where pay now identifies with gender and always has.

The Paycheck Fairness Act is important simply to meet our obligation to keep existing legislation current. It simply updates the 42-year old Equal Pay Act. Recently, I thought we were seeing progress when the census reported that black college educated women actually earned more than white college-educated women, although the overall the wage gap for black women, at 65 percent, remains considerably larger than the gap for white women.

No explanation was offered for the progress for black women but other data and information suggest that even when women seem to catch up it may not be what we had in mind. I suspect that African American women are represented disproportionately among the 50% of all multiple job holders who are women. I am certain that this progress for African American women also tells a tragic story. The decline in marriageable black men, eaten alive by ghetto life, also means that many college educated black women are likely to be single with no need for even the short time-out for children white women often take that affects their wages.

The best case for a strong and updated EPA occurred here in the Congress in 2003, when the women custodians in the House and Senate won an EPA case after showing that women workers were paid a dollar less for doing the same and similar work as men. Had they not been represented by their union they would have had an almost impossible task using the rules for bringing and sustaining an EPA class action. The FPA simply modernizes the EPA the first of the great civil rights statutes of the 1960s to bring it in line with later passed civil rights statutes. Because I enforced the EPA as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I know all too well the several ways that this historic legislation needs a 21st century make-over.

We file these two bills today to say start with the Fair Pay Act or start with the Paycheck Fairness Act. Start where you like, but Congress should be ashamed to let another year go by while working families lose more than 200 billion annually--more than $4,000 per family--because even considering education, age, hours worked and location, women are paid less than they are worth. Let's start this year to make pay worthy of the American women we have asked to go to work.

Mr. Speaker, I have the distinct honor and pleasure of representing America's oldest, continuously operational gay and lesbian rights organization: the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, D.C. (GLAA). GLAA is a Washington, DC institution in the vanguard of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered civil rights movement. For 34-years, GLAA has remained a tenacious, persistent, and most importantly, respected, advocate for lesbians and gays.

Since 1971, GLAA has fought to improve District government services to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) communities, especially for those services provided by the Metropolitan Police Department, the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, the Department of Health and the Office of Human Rights. In every election year GLAA educates District voters by rating candidates for Mayor, Council, and Board of Education. GLAA outspokenly advocates safe and affirming schools for gay and lesbian youth. GLAA vigorously lobbies this body to defend gay families from undemocratic and discriminatory amendments to the District's budget.

On April 20, GLAA will hold its 34th Anniversary Reception honoring the recipients of its Distinguished Service Awards for 2005: recently retired Whitman-Walker Clinic executive director Cornelius Baker; the fundraising charity Brother, Help Thyself Inc.; D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp; Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King; and lesbian cultural trailblazer Jane Troxell.

GLAA's 34-year fight to secure all the birthrights enjoyed by Americans for the LGBT residents of Washington, D.C. is more poignant as United States citizens living in our nation's capital, who have served honorably in every American war, including the present war in Iraq, are taxed without representation. GLAA's open and forthright advocacy reminds us that LGBT soldiers, who have sworn to protect our country with their lives, must serve in silence, without the open support of their chosen families and communities, neither asking nor telling.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the National Association of Black and White Men Together (NABWMT), a gay, multiracial, multicultural organization committed to fostering supportive environments wherein racial and cultural barriers can be overcome and the goal of human equality realized, on the occasion of its 25th Anniversary which it will celebrate this Friday evening, April 15th, with a reception in the Rayburn House Office Building Foyer.

NABWMT began in September, 1980 with an advertisement its founder, the late Michael G. Smith, placed in The Advocate. From this small advertisement NABWMT has grown into a national 501(c)(3) organization with headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA and local chapters in the major cities of the United States, including Washington, DC.

The national and the local chapter engage in educational, political, cultural and social activities as a means of dealing with racism, sexism, homophobia, HIV -AIDS discrimination, and other inequities. Among the more prominent of these activities are the Discrimination Response System, a model program which, I am proud to note, the DC Chapter created, and the widely presented Multi-Racial, Multi-Cultural Workshop.

In the 1980's, local chapters initiated AIDS education and prevention programs that, in 1988, resulted in a million dollar grant from the Centers for Disease Control, which made the NABWMT the first openly gay organization to receive federal funds to conduct a nation-wide HIV education program. From this grant NABWMT created the National Task Force on AIDS Prevention. In 1992 the National Task Force became a separate entity which conducted trainings and workshops for every active chapter in NABWMT. The Task Force created HIV/AIDS educational models that community-based organizations, health departments, and activists used throughout the United States and in countries from New Zealand to South Africa.

I ask the House to join me in congratulating the National Association of Black and White Men Together on its silver anniversary.

Mr. Speaker, today, Senate Government Affairs Chair Susan Collins, Ranking Member Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator George Voinovich, Senator Daniel Akaka, Senator Mary Landrieu, House Government Reform Committee Chair Tom Davis, Ranking Member Henry Waxman and I introduce H.R. 1629, the District of Columbia Budget Autonomy Act of 2005, which passed the Senate in the last Congress, but did not pass the House. It marked the most significant change in self- government since the Home Rule Act was passed in 1973. Instead, Congress continues to essentially use the same oversight process it has used since the District was created as a functioning city more than 200 years ago. The partial budget autonomy in this bill would be a major step to improve the efficiency of the congressional appropriations process and a historic step toward full self-government for the District of Columbia.

Our bill starts as a compromise that is less than what the District and every local jurisdiction is entitled to in the management of its local funds. As important as this bill is, it is not the self-contained and more efficient procedure used by every state and locality in our country. The District's budget would still come to the Congress, but it would be discharged after 30 calendar days. This step would take the city a great distance toward functional budget autonomy and away from a congressional process that adds large dollar costs to running the city, and incalculable waste and inefficiency directly traceable to the congressional appropriations process.

Our bill would significantly streamline and untangle the process. It also would eliminate the most inefficient and demeaning impediment to the local control every other jurisdiction enjoys, in requiring that the budget of the local jurisdiction be enacted by the District and the Congress as Congress enacts the budgets of federal agencies, such as the Interior Department and the Labor Department.

For most of my service in Congress, the enactment requirement has usually kept the District from having a local annual budget with which to operate and manage the city for months at a time. The requirement of our bill

that the D.C. budget become operative after 30 calendar days would have large effects on everything from the District's bond rating to its ability to more efficiently manage every function of the D.C. government.

The irony is that the Congress almost never changes the District's locally raised core budget in any case. Even at its most intrusive, Congress has realized that when it comes to the complexities of budget decisions for city agencies, Congress is in foreign territory. This is only one of the reasons that I think members of the House and Senate have been open to the change we propose. I appreciate the support this approach already has received in the Senate.

For years Congress saw the D.C. budget wreck the larger appropriation process for the country. Too often the District appropriation, by far the smallest of all of the appropriations, has been the largest impediment to the entire appropriation process and a major cause of delay. I am especially grateful for the way that Chairman Bill Young worked with me to remove obstacles and often to rescue the D.C. budget altogether. I expect that my good friend, Jerry Lewis, our new appropriations chair who has often been helpful to me and the city, will want to see the District come smoothly through the process as well. Speaker Dennis Hastert and former Speaker Newt Gingrich both have become involved as a last resort, when only they could rescue the locally raised budget from lengthy delays. I very much appreciate that they have always responded when I have asked for their help.

However, the local balanced budget of a great city should not need extraordinary action by House speakers or full appropriation chairs. Despite a national economy that has left states and local jurisdictions on their knees, in recent years the District has balanced its budget without raising taxes and without using its cash reserve funds. Because the Mayor and the City Council have been cautious and conservative in their management of city finances and operations, the District has avoided the budget problems that plague many jurisdictions today.

After more than 200 years of unchanged procedures here in the Congress, the city's record today and the bill we are considering today should be the beginning of improvement of congressional processes in aid of greater efficiency for the D.C. government. Even full city autonomy over its local budget would not deprive the Congress of the right to make changes by legislation.

Congressional enactment of the Home Rule Act after a century of struggle was a major breakthrough. However, Congress has made no major step toward self-government since 1973. Surely the place to begin is with the city's own budget. Today must mark a long awaited step toward equal citizenship and equal treatment by the Congress. At the very least, the District is owed a Congressional response in kind to the very substantial improvements the city has made in its finances and operations for six years. The way to begin is by matching the District's greater efficiency in managing its finances and operations with the same in our own processes. The way to begin is with budget autonomy.

Mr. Speaker, the entire bipartisan regional House delegation of the national capital region introduces today the Fair Federal Compensation Act of 2005 to address the District of Columbia's structural imbalance. The original co-sponsors are: Government Reform Committee Chair Tom Davis, Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Frank Wolf, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, Former Congressional Black Caucus Chair Elijah Cummings and Representatives Jim Moran, Chris Van Hollen, and Albert Wynn. Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan has authorized me to say that he suports this bill as well.

D.C. residents and businesses are proud of eight straight years of balanced budgets that pay for the operations of our government. Yet, residents and Congress probably know little about the city's structural imbalance, which according to the GAO, is entirely from federal sources. However, D.C. taxpayers and Congress are paying for this imbalance in millions of dollars in taxes and interest. Residents and businesses pay to cover a structural imbalance caused by federal mandates and requirements with higher local taxes and the highest debt load in the nation. Our bill will help the Congress and city residents understand what the structural imbalance is and how it affects taxpayers and the D.C. government.

The goal of the bipartisan bill we introduce today is to prevent another fiscal crisis for our city and to relieve some of the unsustainable load on the D.C. government and on residents and businesses. The structural imbalance is the difference between the cost of D.C. government services and operations and the add-on cost to local taxpayers that otherwise would be carried by the federal government or commuters. According to the GAO, (confirming two other major studies; McKinsey, March 2002 and Brookings, October 2002) the resulting imbalance is exclusively federal and has three sources: federal use of the city's most valuable land; the city's continuing responsibility for many costly state functions; and the commuter tax ban, despite services the District must provide to 200,000 federal employees. The GAO concluded that the only options to relieve the structural imbalance are: to ``change Federal procedures and expand the District's tax base or provide additional financial support and a greater role by the Federal government to help the District maintain fiscal balance.'' The Fair Federal Compensation Act of 2005 we introduce today responds specifically to these GAO findings.

Our bill offsets part, though not all, of the annual structural imbalance--found by the GAO to be between $470 million and up to more than $1.1 billion--by providing for an annual federal contribution of $800 million. Unlike the old federal payment, which remained constant and therefore lost much of its value through inflation, the federal contribution would increase annually. The federal contribution funds would go to a dedicated D.C. infrastructure support fund. The District does not have an operating deficit or imbalance and these federal funds could not be used for operating expenses. The bill provides specific uses only for the non-operating and urgent capital needs that are delayed each year in favor of keeping the D.C. government operating. The federal contribution would be available only for stated infrastructure purposes, such as roads and school construction and repairs, and for reducing the District's debt--the highest in the country. High debt and the interest that results, of course, produce excessive taxes. The bill also would improve the District's investment bond rating and thus reduce our present high interest payments, all charged to taxpayers.

In 1995 Congress carne to grips with the reality that this city's responsibilities assume it is a state, although it lacks a broad state tax base and that the District could no longer be expected to shoulder the full set of state costs. Congress relieved the District of the costs of some but not all state functions and left the unique federal structural impediments described in the GAO report. Nevertheless, the District has made remarkable progress, maintaining balanced budgets and surpluses every year despite adverse national economic conditions and improving city services. The CFO has ominously warned, however, that looking to the out years, the structural imbalance endangers the city's financial future and cannot continue to be carried by the District alone. It would be tragic for Congress to allow the progress that has been made to be retracted because of dangerous and escalating uncompensated federal burdens. The Fair Federal Compensation Act of 2005 would allow the District to avoid great risks, to continue to build fiscal strength, and to relieve D.C. taxpayers ofthis federal structural financial burden.

Mr. Speaker, today, I reintroduce the United States Commission on an Open Society and Security Act, expressing an idea I began working on when the first signs of the closing of parts of our open society appeared after the Oklahoma City bombing tragedy, well before 9/11. This bill has grown more urgent as increasing varieties of security throughout the country have proliferated without any thought about their effect on common freedoms and ordinary access. The bill I introduce today would begin a systematic investigation that takes full account of the importance of maintaining our democratic traditions while responding adequately to the real and substantial threats terrorism poses.

To be useful in accomplishing its difficult mission, the commission would be composed not only of military and security experts, but for the first time, they would be at the same table with experts from such fields as business, architecture, technology, law, city planning, art, engineering, philosophy, history, sociology, and psychology. To date, questions of security most often have been left almost exclusively to security and military experts. They are indispensable participants, but these experts cannot alone resolve all the new and unprecedented issues raised by terrorism in an open society. In order to strike the balance required by our democratic traditions, a cross cutting group needs to be working together at the same table.

For years now before our eyes, parts of our open society have gradually been closed down because of terrorism and fear of terrorism-- whether checkpoints at the Capital even when there are no alerts or applications of technology without regard to their effects on privacy. However, particularly following the unprecedented terrorist attack on our country, Americans have a right to expect additional and increased security adequate to protect citizens against this new frightening threat. People expect government to be committed and smart enough to undertake this awesome new responsibility without depriving them of their personal liberty. These years in our history will long be remembered by the rise of terrorism in the world and in this country. As a result, American society faces new and unprecedented challenges. We must provide ever-higher levels of security for our people and public spaces while maintaining a free and open democratic society. As yet, our country has no systematic process or strategy for meeting these challenges.

When we have been faced with unprecedented and perplexing issues in the past, we have had the good sense to investigate them deeply and to move to resolve them. Examples include the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission), the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (also known as the Silberman Robb Commission) and the Kerner Commission following riotous uprisings that swept American cities in the 1960's and 1970's.

The important difference in the Commission proposed by this bill is that it seeks to act before a crisis in basic freedoms gradually takes hold and becomes entrenched. Because global terrorism is likely to be long lasting, we can not afford to allow the proliferation of security that most often requires no advance civilian oversight or analysis of alternatives and repercussions on freedom and commerce.

With only existing tools and thinking, we have been left to muddle through, using blunt 19th century approaches, such as crude blockades and other denials of access, or risking the right to privacy using applications of the latest technology with little attention to privacy. The threat of terrorism to our democratic society is too serious to be left to ad hoc problem-solving. Such approaches are often as inadequate as they are menacing.

We can do better, but only if we recognize and then come to grips with the complexities associated with maintaining a society of free and open access in a world characterized by unprecedented terrorism. The place to begin is with a high-level presidential commission of wise men and women expert in a broad spectrum of disciplines who can help chart the new course that will be required to protect both our people and our precious democratic institutions and traditions.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to know how to approach this case. Should you approach it as a mother or a member of the family on the opposite side, should you approach it as a member of the House of Representatives, should you try to approach it as a lawyer?

One thing is clear: choosing up sides, where you or I stand on our particular values, clearly will not do. That is why matters of this kind involving families have for more than 200 years been committed to State courts, because we are all over the place, State By State, person by person, on this issue. We are hopelessly divided.

Countless Americans have already made decisions like this, over and over again. Countless more have a different view. There are some who, if they had to choose, would side with the husband as the next of kin, because he believes he knows what his wife desired based on what she said to him and believes he would betray her trust if he simply walked away. Who can fail to be sympathetic with him?

Who can fail to be sympathetic with the parents, who almost instinctively have adopted the role of parent? When the mother said today, ``Save my little girl,'' she is not even any more for her a grown woman, the wife of somebody. She is her little girl, and always will be; and I understand that.

There are 50 different States, 51 including the District of Columbia, with wholly different approaches to the same matter. How shall we choose? Which is best in a Federal Republic? To give it to the Congress? To then instruct the Federal courts to violate every rule we have had for 215 years? I hardly think so.

Until today, there was no doubt how finality should be reached in a case like this. My only hope is that somehow this will finally be settled without a three-part constitutional crisis of the kind we are creating here, the crisis at the heart of federalism and the Federal Republic for which we stand, the bedrock of who we are, the State- Federal system, where State issues with State courts are final and our issues are final, except in very narrow circumstances given the limited vision of the Federal Government, of the Founders, or the crisis of separation of powers, which we were barely circuiting here, or the crisis of the constitutional right of privacy. Choose your crisis.

The victims here are real people, however, caught in a dispute of Shakespearean dimensions. The other side thinks that is right, it is life and death. That is what makes it different.

But my friends, never before in countless cases in Federal and State

courts in 215 years, life and death has not made a difference in my own lifetime and in the history of my country as I have read it. I wish that the fact that life and death were at issue had meant that we could go into Federal court every time we disagreed.

Mr. Speaker, today, I am again introducing the Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act, NDECA, as I have done since 1994. I have introduced this bill every year based on a ballot initiative passed by D.C. residents in 1993. NDECA will require the United States to disable and dismantle its nuclear weapons when all other nations possessing nuclear weapons enact laws to do the same. NDECA further provides that when U.S. nuclear weapons are dismantled, the resources used to support nuclear weapon programs would be diverted to our growing human and infrastructure needs, such as housing, health care, Social Security and the environment.

This year's introduction of this bill has special meaning because this is the sixtieth anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only the United States has used an atom bomb, but today the number of nations with this capability has grown dangerously and continues without effective intervention by the Bush administration.

In addition to the economic cost of nuclear weapons, the weapons have increased as a destabilizing force in world affairs. North Korea, at least in part in response to stepped up aggressive talk and U.S. policies, has responded in a dangerously paranoid fashion by announcing that it is expanding its nuclear capabilities and even that it now has a nuclear weapon, although these claims have not been entirely verified. Iran also appears to be pursuing greater nuclear capability and is resisting inspections. India and Pakistan have moved back from the precipice of several years ago but each remains poised with nuclear weapons.

This country must lead the world community in redoubling efforts to push back the new surge of nuclear proliferation. Our country would be better able to dissuade other nations who aspire to become or remain nuclear powers if we ourselves took greater initiative in dismantling our own nuclear weapons program. We moved in the right direction when the Senate ratified the Moscow Treaty in 2003, which provides that by 2012 both the U.S. and Russia will reduce their long-range warheads two thirds from approximately 6,000 warheads each to 2,200. However, the administration has failed to build on this effort. According to a recent study, ``Securing The Bomb: An Agenda for Action'' May 2004; prepared by the Belfer Center, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government: ``Total nuclear-threat reduction spending remains less than one quarter of one percent of the U.S. military budget. Indeed, on average, the Bush administration requests for nuclear-threat reduction spending over FY 2002-2005 have been less, in real terms, than the last Clinton administration request, made long before the 9/11 attacks ever occurred.''

However, the problem today is far more complicated than nuclear disarmament by nation states. The greatest threat today is from inadequately defended and guarded sites in many countries where there is enough material to make nuclear weapons and many opportunities for terrorists to secure nuclear materials. Astonishingly, because of the absence of Presidential leadership, less nuclear material was seized in the 2 years following the 9/11 attacks than in the 2 years immediately preceding the attacks (``Securing The Bomb: An Agenda for Action'', May 2004).

I serve on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee. I know that threats from nuclear proliferation and available nuclear material are more dangerous in the post 9/11 era than at any time since I first introduced this bill in 1994. The way to begin is closing down nuclear capability here and around the world.

With 45 million people still without health insurance, Social Security without the benefits for the huge baby boomer generation, an economy burdened with a dangerous deficit, and millions of Americans pushed back into poverty during the last 4 years, the time has

come to begin the transfer of nuclear weapons funds to urgent domestic needs.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlemen for yielding me time. I begin by thanking the leadership of this committee, which is a real model for bipartisan leadership. They know how to get the job done. I hope the Congress finally follows suit.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to conduct a colloquy with my friend on the other side.

I want to bring the attention of the House to a transportation issue that affects every office of the Senate and the House and every Federal agency. Federal employees are the biggest users of the Metro subway and bus system, accounting for almost 50 percent of rush hour riders. Because Federal employees and the Federal presence itself are scattered throughout the region, the system is indispensable to the daily operations of the Federal Government. More than 300 Federal offices are served by Metro.

The Federal Government has encouraged ever greater use of Metro to help solve the congestion crisis on the roads of this region. Today, 150,000 military and civilian employees here get a Federal subsidy to use the system. Metro's homeland security benefit to the government was dramatically demonstrated when it moved hundreds of thousands of employees on 9/11. However, the large investment of the Federal Government in helping to build this system is at high risk because Metro riders have grown so rapidly, by one-third in just the past 8 years.

The regional delegation needs the Federal Government to do its fair share, beginning with helping to secure additional rail cars necessary to keep up with the astounding growth in ridership driven by Federal employees in the post 9/11 era. I ask that the committee work with me and regional Members from Virginia and Maryland to find ways to help the region bear the burden of expanded Federal use of the system.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman.