Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her kind words. Yes, I have been on this committee for 14 years, and I am very pleased to see the gentlewoman become the new leader of the Subcommittee on Railroads and already, in this and other ways, is offering excellent leadership. The gentlewoman is going to be tested, because she faces a crisis like no Chair of that committee has faced, with possible loss all together of Amtrak; and I congratulate her for taking hold and having no fear, but then the gentlewoman is known to be fearless.

Mr. Speaker, it is unthinkable that in the post-9/11 era we are leaving large parts of our country with little or no transportation. It began with the airlines, deregulation in the 1980s and, in order to accomplish that, some good things came from it, but some not-so-good things came from it, because they had to pull out of many markets that are not unprofitable, given the deregulation. Even before 9/11, all the airlines were, as it were, in the hospital. Every last one of them, union controlled or not, of large airlines is now in intensive care, to be polite about how badly off they are. So much for the airlines already not serving huge blocks of the country.

West Coast communities and communities in the South are now up in arms as Greyhound is about to pull out of those communities. Because when the Federal Government took over Amtrak, we closed down half of Amtrak. So all they had was Greyhound, and now Greyhound is gone. Yet, I am on the Select Committee on Homeland Security working on security. It looks like there is no way to get out of many communities in the United States of America.

As the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown) knows, we just passed a major transportation bill, finally. Yet, we are systematically starving transportation in our country, and if I can say that about bus and airlines because, after all, they are subsidized.

I am pleased to yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Well, I thank the gentlewoman, and I thank her for reminding us that we have not even passed this bill yet; we are supposed to get to that tomorrow. And we are 17 months late in passing this, and there is much to complain about with this bill. Even though the buses have dedicated funding through the highways and the airlines have dedicated funding through the airports, there is no dedicated funding for rail. How did rail get left out?

We are trying to be a great power on the cheap, because I never heard of a great power that did not have first-class rail service. We understand that apparently about airlines; that is why we subsidize the airlines. Particularly in the post-9/11 era, I can tell my colleagues that after the terrible tragedy at the Pentagon, there was really only one way to get out of the District of Columbia. They closed Reagan National Airport for 2 weeks. I do not know how the gentlewoman got home to Jacksonville, because she sure did not get home out of this jurisdiction.

Amazing.

Yes.

The gentlewoman has documented the point I think dramatically, even involving the Members of this body. We cannot afford to leave major cities of the United States dependent on one form of transportation. That is how the Capital of the United States was left. We just heard the gentlewoman from Florida talk about New York being left in the same way. Who would, as the gentlewoman says, want to even risk that?

We are not alone, Madam Chair. Under the gentlewoman's leadership, we are already seeing action in the other body. I was pleased to see that Senator Conrad Burns all the way out in Montana is talking about Amtrak and about saving Amtrak. Six Republicans have already joined him. There is going to be a huge bipartisan effort here. I think we are going to be successful, because there is no recourse. There is no alternative to making sure that we have a national railroad.

The worst part of what the administration is doing is trying to deliberately force Amtrak into bankruptcy.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for making that point, because I hope we do not have to lose it before people understand how much they need it. The notion of bankruptcy, well, there is a bankruptcy of policy, if bankruptcy is all one can think about for a public service that the country cannot do without.

We know that bankruptcy has not done anything for the airlines. We have had several airlines go into bankruptcy. They go, they come out, but because they are a public service, they have to go a certain number of places. And guess what? They need some kind of subsidy, and they certainly have gotten some, even though we have required them to operate as businesses.

We used to require the railroads to operate as businesses; but beginning in 1971, the Congress understood that the business model did not work for railroads. It does not work for railroads anywhere in the United States. Yet that is what we have here: bankruptcy. Because policy is being determined by ideology, the ideology that says that if the private sector cannot do it, then maybe we do not need it, and that is why the gentlewoman's point is so important.

Somebody needs to get up and tell the Congress and tell the administration that they do need it. It is not ideology that should decide whether the Nation is going to have railroads; it is old fashioned American pragmatism. We took them over, eliminating half of the lines in 1971, because the private sector said, hey, there is no profit in this. What makes us think there is profit in it now, when even we do not want to give a subsidy that would be required of us as a public body.

I want to alert Members here. They may think that we are talking about the Amtrak that they see here every day; you know, the Amtrak that goes to Pennsylvania Railroad, the Amtrak of Union Station. I am talking about the Amtrak that exists in 46 States, I say to the gentlewoman. That is the Amtrak I am talking about. The Amtrak that affects each and every Member of the House and Senate. I think we ought to alert Members what we are really talking about. We are talking about the national network that we call Amtrak that, in fact, serves the entire United States. If Amtrak were an airline, it would be the eighth largest airline in the United States.

The thing that most gets me about what it is that the administration apparently says it wants to do, and here I am quoting what Secretary Norm Mineta said when the President's budget came over here, that they want to change funding responsibilities to the States on a 50-50 match. Give me a break. Hey, if the Federal Government cannot stand these costs, are we serious that the States, which are now facing huge Medicaid costs, huge shifts of the Federal budget to them, huge effects of the tax cuts, are going to now be able to pick up Amtrak and keep it going?

This is a scandal and a scandal that we must break before it goes any further. If they think that this is like the ordinary bankruptcy where a company comes in and picks up the pieces on the cheap, yes, you can pick up the pieces on the cheap, but can you run a railroad. I think what we now know is that you cannot run a railroad without subsidy.

We will not be the first country in the world to run it without subsidy, and the reason they talk about 50-50 with the States is they know that the private sector cannot run it without a subsidy, so they want to shift the costs of the subsidy to the private sector. Watch out, everybody in the House. They are coming your way, and we have to keep the costs where the tax base is broadest, here in the House, not on the tax bases of each and every State which are having a hard enough time keeping their own transportation going.

I think that is an awfully important point to make. With that supermajority it does not seem to me that the administration can succeed in eliminating Amtrak if we do our work here in the Congress. They talk about leaving the commuter rail lines there. Well, it is interesting to hear the railroad administration say that they are unable and unqualified to help operate those rail lines. I am not sure what the administration is after there. Of course, those are the parts of Amtrak that people use to get back and forth to work.

This is not very well thought out. It seems to me, if you took about 5 minutes thinking about it, you would have to come up with another solution. In fact, let us assume that I think the best way to come to grips with what the administration is seeking to do, let us assume that they got their way and somehow or another they went into bankruptcy and some company came and picked it up on the cheap, nothing resembling the present coverage could possibly survive. I mean, some private person, because you have a bottom line, you have stockholders, would do what you got to do, and he would pick off the most profitable, there is a tiny part that is profitable maybe between Boston and New York and say, the rest of you are on your own. You would have one corridor or so railroad. Nothing resembling the kind of coverage that we have now would be possible.

I do want to point out something because as a lawyer, I got interested when I learned something from my staff. I said, wait a minute, I have to look into this. There are so many impossible missions we have given Amtrak. They have modernized and done a very good job of doing that.

Mr. Speaker, I am introducing today on Read Across America Day the Universal Pre-Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 2005 (Universal Pre-K) to begin the process of providing universal, public school pre-kindergarten education for every child, regardless of income. The bill is meant to fill the gaping hole in the President's No Child Left Behind law, which requires elementary and secondary school children to meet more rigorous standards while ignoring the preschool years which can best prepare them to do so. My bill would provide a breakthrough in elementary school education by taking a step at the federal level to provide initial funding and, using such funding, to encourage school districts themselves to add a grade to elementary schooling at age four as an option for every child.

I often read to kids on Read Across America Day. However, symbolic actions won't do as we blithely let the most fertile years for reading go by while we wonder why we can't teach Johnny to read. As the President presses No Child Left Behind into high schools, my bill asks him to begin at the beginning of a child's education.

The Universal Pre-K Act responds both to the huge and growing needs of parents for educational childcare and to the new science showing that a child's brain development, which sets the stage for lifelong learning, begins much earlier than previously believed. However, parents who need childcare for their pre-K age children are rarely able to afford the stimulating educational environment necessary to ensure optimal brain development. Universal Pre-K would be a part of school systems, adding a new grade for 4-year-olds similar to 5-year-old kindergarten programs now routinely available in the United States. Norton said that the bill would eliminate some of the major shortcomings of the uneven commercial day care now available and would assure qualified teachers and safe facilities.

Because of decades of refusal by Congress to approve the large sums necessary for universal health coverage, the Universal Pre-K Act encourages school districts across the United States to apply to the Department of Education for grants to establish 4-year-old kindergartens. Grants funded under Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) would be available to school systems which agree in turn to use the experience acquired with the federal funding provided by my bill to then move forward, where possible, to phase in 4-year old kindergartens for all children in the school district in regular classrooms with teachers equivalent to those in other grades as part of their annual school district budgets.

The success of high quality Head Start and other pre-kindergarten programs combined

with new scientific evidence concerning the importance of brain development in the early years virtually mandate the expansion of early childhood education to all of our children. Traditionally, early learning programs have been available only to the affluent and to lower income families in programs such as Head Start. My bill provides a practiced way to gradually move to universal pre-school education. The goal of the Universal Pre-K Act is to bring the benefits of educational pre-K within reach of the great majority of American working poor, lower middle class, and middle class families, most of whom have been left out.

In a letter to Congress last term opposing private school vouchers, City Council Member Kathy Patterson suggested that instead of vouchers, Congress should fund a number of unfunded D.C. public school priorities, including pre-K education for all 4-year old children. She said that although universal 4-year old pre-K was a top D.C. priority, the city has been able to provide this schooling to only half of its children from local tax revenue.

Compare the cost of day care, most of it offered today with an inadequate educational emphasis, at an average cost of $6,171 per year to the cost of in-state tuition at the University of Virginia, which costs $6,785 per year. Yet, more than 60% of mothers with children under age six work. That proportion is rapidly increasing as more mothers enter the labor force, including mothers leaving welfare, who also have no long term access to child care.

Considering the staggering cost of daycare, the inaccessibility of early education, and the opportunity earlier education offers to improve a child's chances in life, four-year-old kindergarten is overdue. The absence of viable options for working families demands our immediate attention.

Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the gentleman yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, there are many problems with this bill. I choose to focus on the Scott amendment because it involves a matter in what I think I can safely say is my personal confidence.

I have heard title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act called out here repeatedly. It was my great privilege to enforce

title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and I have an obligation to step forward to plead with my friends on the other side to make this a bipartisan bill, because its chances of becoming so at least on this matter should be great.

In fact, it is such a good idea to have faith-based organizations involved in the programs of the Federal Government that we have been doing it for decades with billions of dollars to show for it. There may be some ways, I will be the first to say, there are some ways in which this could be strengthened and expanded. But I do not know whose idea it was to allow religious organizations to discriminate. I do not think it could possibly have been the idea of the faith-based communities themselves. I do not believe that churches and synagogues and mosques are stepping forward to say, Even though we have an extraordinary ability to hire only our own folks, we want to make sure we use public dollars to hire only our co-religious partners.

If the language is kept as it is, we will have the first nullification, the first repeal, of civil rights laws since they were initially passed 40 years ago. To our credit, we have steadily built those laws into legislation that came after it, and, yes, into the Workforce Investment Act. We are required to do that. Title VI requires us to do that, the 14th amendment requires us to do that. It required us to do so when the Workforce Investment Act was passed, and it requires us to do so now.

Essentially what the bill states now is that you can hire only Lutherans or Muslims with your own money, and you can hire only Catholics and Jews with the people's money. That is a huge departure from everything that is built into title VII.

I was Chair of the agency and brought forward religious discrimination guidelines. We worked very hard to strengthen the law against religious discrimination and went the extra mile because of the free exercise clause. Thus, today religious organizations, a church or synagogue, for example, can do what no union or business can do. It cannot only use its money to hire its religious members in religious positions; it can use its own money to hire even their own members in secular positions. This is the maximum in religious freedom that is allowed under the Constitution.

Now, if you want to take on public responsibilities, I cannot understand why anybody would say you would not want to spend that money in accordance with the public responsibility in each and every respect. That is how it has always been done. Why the departure now?

If you want public dollars, do so in accordance with public law. That law requires no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion. It would be a horrible setback to now come forward and say that you can in fact discriminate on the basis of religion, of all things. And that is what you would be doing, because, as everybody knows, race and religious identity track one another very, very closely.

Today, when black people go to Catholic Charities or to Lutheran Services they see people of every race and color working there. And do you know what? I have not heard these organizations and the many other faith-based organizations complain that in order to serve my African American community, they sometimes reach out and find black people who are not Catholic and who are not Lutheran, because they do not ask what they are.

We have resisted pressures in this House for repeal of affirmative action, for repeal of goals. Surely we can resist the role back to the bad old days of religious discrimination and a violation of title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Mr. Speaker, this bill has an unusual origin. The Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, for himself and the members of the trial court, visited my office to request that the annex under construction for the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Building be named for senior U.S. District Court Judge William B. Bryant. Judge Bryant was unaware of the desires and actions of his colleagues, who unanimously agreed to request that the annex be named for the judge. It is rare that Congress names a courthouse or an annex for a judge who has served in that court and even more rare for a judge who is still sitting. However, I am grateful that the House understood the unique importance of Judge Bryant and passed the bill last year. Unfortunately, the bill was stopped in committee in the Senate because of the reluctance to name a building for a seated judge. However, because Judge Bryant richly and uniquely deserves this honor, I have added a section declaring the effective date to be when the judge no longer holds the position. We must pursue this compromise to get the bill through the Senate. We will celebrate this remarkable historic judge and invite him to witness the honor when the bill passes.

Judge Bryant's colleagues, who know his work and his temperament best, have found a particularly appropriate way for our city and our country to celebrate the life and accomplishments of a great judge. I know Judge Bryant personally, I know his reputation in this city, and in the law profession. I know that the request to name the annex for Judge Bryant reflects deep respect for his unusually distinguished life at the bar.

Judge Bryant began his career in private practice in the segregated Washington of the 1940s and 50s, when African American lawyers were barred from membership in the District of Columbia Bar Association and from using the bar law library. He established his legal reputation as a partner in the legendary African-American law firm of Houston, Bryant and Gardner and taught at Howard University Law School. His reputation as an extraordinary trial lawyer led to his appointment as the first black assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. He rose to become the first African American to serve as Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court whose members now ask that the annex be named for Judge Bryant.

Particularly for his representation of criminal defendants, Judge Bryant was admired as one of the city's best and most respected lawyers. Among his many notable cases is the landmark Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449 (1957), where the Supreme Court ruled that an arrested person must be promptly brought before a judicial officer.

Judge Bryant graduated from D.C. public schools, Howard University and Howard Law School, where he was first in his class. After graduation, Judge Bryant served as chief research assistant to Dr. Ralphe Bunche when Bunche worked with Gunnar Myrdal, the famous Swedish economist, in his studies of American racial issues. Judge Bryant served in the U.S. Army during World War II and was honorably discharged as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1947. Judge Bryant, who is 93, took senior status in 1982. He raised a family but, as Chief Judge Thomas Hogan wrote, ``lost his beloved wife, Astaire and now lives alone--with this court and the law as the center of his life.''

This unusual request from all the judges of the court gives our bill great credibility. I am grateful to the judges of our U.S. District Court here for their thoughtful proposal that honors a Washingtonian of historic proportions. I very much appreciate the many efforts of Senator Patrick Leahy to get the bill through the Senate last year and for agreeing once again to be the lead sponsor of this bill. The residents of this city, the court that Judge Bryant has served so well, and the members of the bar here join me in our hope to get the bill passed this year.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and I thank him for his leadership in coming forward during this whole month of February when the whole Nation is invited to think about the history of African Americans and about their present effort to obtain first-class citizenship.

I was just at the White House, perhaps last week, it was when the President had a commemoration built around the new African American Museum, approved by the House and the Senate, something that African Americans have been trying to get ever since Civil War soldiers in Washington, D.C. asked for a museum. I want to just say how much I appreciate that the House and the Senate now have agreed that the Congress will pay for 50 percent, and we will raise money, we in the public, Americans of every background, for this museum here in the District of Columbia to commemorate the history, the very long history, a history as long as the history of the Nation itself, of African Americans in our country who were central to building the Nation as we know it, were critical to building its great economic might, and have been late because of the tragic history of our country in claiming the benefits and the rewards that most Americans are used to obtaining within a generation or two of coming to this country.

To the gentleman from New York, from Brooklyn in particular, a very distinguished member of a number committees, the Committee on Government Reform, on which I serve; and especially the Committee on Education and the Workforce, in which his long service has helped in many benefits in education that are remarkably important not only to African Americans but to our country, I say to him that I recognize that we began with a theme about the Niagara Movement.

Some may wonder about the Niagara Movement, which in a real sense started the 20th century movement for equal rights, the forerunner of the NAACP. A number of Washingtonians

were at that first call. I just celebrated the life of one of them, Mary Church Terrell, a woman who in her eighties was picketing out in front of public accommodations, yes, here in the Nation's Capital, a southern city which was as segregated as any part of the South, picketing to open ordinary accommodations. This woman was the first member of any Board of Education in the United States; a very distinguished history, and one of only two women who put out the call for African Americans to come from around the country to talk about what they should do as the 20th century dawned to eliminate racism and discrimination in our country.

I want to note the extraordinary two works of Dr. David Levering Lewis, a historian who has won the Pulitzer Prize for his volumes on the life on W.E.B. Du Bois. This is the intellectual father of the civil rights movement, the first black to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a man who in many ways was responsible for what remains the intellectual underpinning of black aspiration in America.

This is an extraordinary work. I have just finished Volume 1 and am just beginning Volume 2. He had a very long life, died on the day that the March on Washington gathered here in his late nineties. So no wonder it took two volumes. But it was his remarkable life, a life that in a real sense takes us on a journey of 20th century America for what blacks have encountered and how their effort to obtain equality in our country has proceeded. I recommend it to anyone who is interested not only in serious history but in wonderful writing and in events that in a real sense help us understand a lot of what is happening today. It is extraordinary work, which is why I think it won the Pulitzer Prize in the first place.

The second black to graduate from Harvard with a Ph.D. was one far less well known than W.E.B. Du Bois, whose name is so closely associated with the NAACP. He worked for the NAACP for ``The Crisis,'' their publication, for decades. He was central to its formation.

But less well known is the second black person to graduate from Harvard, Carter G. Woodson. As Dr. Du Bois was the intellectual father of the NAACP and of the Civil Rights Movement, Carter G. Woodson was the man who discovered black history at a time when almost no publisher would even publish works, even serious works like his own, about African American history, and now he is regarded by his peers as one of America's great historians. Carter G. Woodson proceeded right here in the District of Columbia to do his own work in a brownstone located in the historic Shaw area, organizing his own organization, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which continues to this day; his own presses.

When I was a youngster going to segregated schools in the District of Columbia, there was a Negro history bulletin that came every other week. So he somehow managed to do on-the-ground education of ordinary blacks like us in the schools, and to do some of the most important writing of history, in the professional sense, that has ever been done. He started the whole effort to not rewrite but to write American history.

People have to understand that much of American history as it described African Americans could only be called defamatory. Not only did it not bring out the contributions of African Americans, it defamed African Americans, built in the prejudices and discrimination of the larger society. It took a great intellectual like Carter G. Woodson to begin the process of undoing that.

Now we have Ph.Ds from all the great universities. We see some of them on television telling the story of African American life in the many documentaries, for example, that are being shown.

The gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) mentioned that the Capitol was built by slave labor. I want to reinforce that. The Capitol was built, yes, by slave and free labor, and there were also immigrant labor who contributed to it. But this House and the Senate passed a resolution indicating that we should find some way to take note of the fact that this very place where we now stand, we owe to the labor of free and enslaved blacks. Some of the enslaved blacks were simply brought here to work by their masters. The masters were paid; the slaves were not.

Some, frankly, were runaway slaves. My own great grandfather who came to Washington in the 1850s was a runaway slave. He did not work on the Capitol, but he certainly worked on the streets of D.C., because one could work on the streets. They were building D.C., and they did not ask them who they were unless the master came and found them, and under the Fugitive Slave Law, he could take them back. So that was always a real risk. But working on the Capitol, I am sure those were, as it were, well-documented slaves.

But, Mr. Speaker, until now the legislation which requires a task force to be formed to make sure that this commemoration takes place has not been formed. I know that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) has sent a letter to the Speaker, simply reminding him of that, because I am sure that that must be an oversight.

But the Visitors Center is about to be completed and the time to take care of this is when we are under construction. If I may express my own opinion, nobody wants, or at least I do not want, a statue of some slave in the Capitol. That is not what we are after. Some kind of tasteful reminder of this place and how it came to be has by statute been mandated, and I simply draw to the attention of both sides of the aisle that we have not done the start-up work to getting the appropriate kind of memorial of some kind built.

I mean, I think of the Vietnam Memorial. Nobody, when they thought there was going to be a Vietnam Memorial, ever envisioned that it would be that wall that now is a virtual place of worship.

It does not have any soldiers on it; it is just a wall with some names on it. In the District of Columbia, we have a Civil War memorial. It is the first memorial to the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who actually served in the Civil War. What it has are a listing of all those names. They served in the Navy and the Army. We got those names by working with Howard University, and there they are.

It is not a wall; it is another kind of an edifice. But it is, by the way, the only one of its kind, the only memorial to African Americans who fought for their own freedom and for one Nation, indivisible, at a time when they were not free, because when you entered the armed services, and talk about some volunteer soldiers, these were real volunteer soldiers, they did not give you your freedom in return. In order to recruit you, they did not say, You serve us, you are free. You were still a slave.

These are men who fought for their country at a time when we were in danger of becoming at least two countries. At the very least, let us begin here in the Capitol by remembering those who were black, some of them not free, who helped build the very place where we meet every week.

Mr. Speaker, I do note that during this African American History Month, Black History Month, we just lost two great Americans, Shirley Chisholm and Ossie Davis. These were one-of-a-kind historic figures; Shirley Chisholm not only because she was first, but she was first in many ways.

She was first in what she was willing to do to break barriers, the first African American woman elected to Congress, the first to run for President of the United States. I was in Florida at her funeral. She will be remembered. Indeed, she will never be forgotten.

She said she did not want to be remembered for being first. Shirley Chisholm understood what was important. She believed that you have to do something in order to be remembered. To many of us, her being the first black woman to come to Congress was doing a whole lot. For her it was not doing a whole lot. But her record in this House is an indication that it was.

But I think we would all do well to remember that before she died she did not even want to be remembered for what she is most likely to be remembered for, and that is being first to have the guts to run for President and being the first to become a Member of the House of Representatives itself.

As a woman, I count myself and the 22 other African American women who have come since as her living legacy. None of us had to encounter what she encountered, which was a House with

nobody in it that looked like her. She deserves to be remembered for what she did for our country, for what she did for African Americans.

I do want to say about Ossie Davis, because I am still, as I was when he was alive, awed by his multiple gifts, it is very hard for me to understand people who have more than one gift. Most of us do not have even one. But here is a man who died nearing 90, therefore who lived through the worst days of segregation, and somehow or the other was able to press himself to bring his gifts out.

Those gifts were across the board. Those gifts were the gift of language, his gift as an actor, his gift as a producer, his gift as a leader of the civil rights movement, his gift in letters and in arts, and his gift as a playwright. Heavens, would that any of us, even those who are just being born black, be able to do in their lives as well even one of those things Ossie Davis will be remembered for.

We remember people in Black History Month precisely because they encourage us to do better, because they did it against far greater odds.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to say a word during this shooting war about the role of African Americans in the United States military, because if there is any moment to remember them and if there is any time to remember those who now serve, it is now.

I have just come from a hearing this morning on the treatment of the National Guard and Reserve when it comes to their health care. My congratulations to the chairman of the committee who called the hearing, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform. This is not the first hearing he has had on this matter.

Mr. Speaker, the hearing was called because members of the National Guard and Reserve have complained about being treated as, for lack of a better word, I will call it second-class soldiers. They are not regularly enlisted soldiers. They are soldiers who are citizen soldiers, called forward in numbers we have never seen before. Almost 50 percent of the troops in Iraq are National Guard and Reserve.

When they are injured, they are not treated as enlisted people are treated. They are sent and held at medical hold companies, and these are scandalously underserved companies where they could not get medical treatment. The hearings have helped to focus on this and provide some improvements.

But what made me think of them to today is the history of disproportionate service by African Americans in the armed services of the United States ever since the war that created our country, the Revolutionary War. This urge to serve, often, perhaps most often, as volunteers, it does seem to me we should note during this Black History Month.

Dr. David Lewis in his volume begins to describe African Americans coming back after World War I. After you fought that kind of war, World War I, you kind of get your gumption, and even though the majority of African Americans lived in the South, we do note that that is when you had the great decade of lynchings, because so many of these African American soldiers came back, particularly to the South in the United States, and assumed that they should act like first-class citizens.

It was perhaps the most shameful decade of our country, and certainly the treatment of these World War I veterans was perhaps the most shameful chapter in American history because of the upsurge of lynchings, many of them men just released from a war that is still very much debated, World War I, where people still try to find out why we were there, why did it happen. It resulted in all the aftermath. Woodrow Wilson tried to make sure, though, that such a war never happened again, and World War II was brought about in part because of the failings of World War I.

I want to note the extraordinary over-representation of blacks in the Reserve and National Guard. Many of them, like so many volunteers in the Army today, are there first to serve their country, and, secondly, because they do not have the same economic rights that my son, that your son and your children have, and service in the volunteer Army is a way to go to college, a way to get a job. Any treatment of them other than first-class treatment in a war like this, a very controversial war, is very much to be criticized until we do much better.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, may I say that among those who are serving in this war are young men and women from the District of Columbia, the same as those who have served our country in every war since the Revolutionary War, and, if I may say so, very specifically in disproportionate numbers. For example, in the Vietnam War the District lost more men than did 10 States, and yet this is a city.

I have gone to a number of funerals; I have gone to Arlington National Cemetery. And just as the first from the District of Columbia served without a vote, so today not only do my constituents serve their country without a vote. They pay taxes, second per capita in the United States, without a vote.

That is bad enough, Mr. Speaker. But on top of that, to go to war without a vote, where your Member cannot vote one way or the other, and yet you volunteer for war, it seems to me that that ought to call to question whether or not the people of the District of Columbia ought to have equal representation in the Congress of the United States.

There is a young man working in my office, his name is Emory Kosh, and he spent a year on the front lines in Iraq. When he came back, somebody told him I was looking for staff assistants. He came and I was pleased to hire him. I must tell you, I congratulate the armed services and I congratulate his parents, because he has been such an excellent worker.

The armed services has done a great deal for African Americans because it was the best and continues to be the best equal employment opportunity employer in the United States.

But this young man stepped forward just as the Congress opened with two of his buddies from the District of Columbia who had graduated from high school here, and they asked for a meeting with the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert) and our leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), simply to ask for the return of the vote in the Committee of the Whole to the District, a vote that I won in the 103rd Congress and which was taken back from me when the Congress changed hands.

They came to say, if I may paraphrase them, it would be a first step toward voting rights, and they came because they were about to see what we saw January 30, with the people of Iraq getting the very voting rights in their parliament that these three young men, who were just back from Iraq, did not have.

So they used the occasion to remind the Congress that they were proud to serve, they would serve again, they were volunteers, but that our country had an obligation to them and their families and that was to allow them the same representation, the same equality in the Congress that interestingly they felt they had in the armed forces of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I draw that to your attention during Black History Month because I want my colleagues to understand that not all of this is history. In the District of Columbia now I am talking about a majority black population, about 60/40 black. But for 150 years the majority here was white. It is because the Congress of the United States has exercised an undemocratic proprietary sense of this city to intervene into its local affairs and to deny the citizens of this city the same rights that you insist upon for your citizens.

Remember that during Black History Month. Remember that black people in the District of Columbia, white people in the District of Columbia, anybody in the District of Columbia, because they live in the capital of their country, the proud capital of their country, are least proud of not having the same rights, particularly when Emory Kosh and other young men and women find themselves this very day in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all over the world serving their country in our name.

It is not history, Mr. Speaker, it is here and now; and we must take action here and now to make it history, to make it yesterday, just as slavery was yesterday, just as Jim Crow in the Nation's Capital was yesterday, just as the segregated schools I went to in the Nation's Capital were yesterday.

Let us make unequal representation in the Congress of the United States

yesterday, make it history, for black, white, Hispanic and people of every background who live in the District of Columbia, who live in their Nation's Capital.

Mr. Chairman, I will be managing this bill; but before my opening remarks, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), and we are fortunate that the ranking member of the full committee has come on to the floor.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I sympathize with the gentlewoman from Michigan that she cannot get her State to do what she believes is the right thing for her State to do. I caution those from the States that the Federal Government is not the place to get the States to take appropriate action. Watch out when you open up that can of worms.

Mr. Chairman, the ink is not just damp; it is wet on perhaps the most important legislation we passed in the last half century, the bipartisan national security or 9/11 law; and H.R. 418, H.R. 368 come along right after to overturn the law.

Why is this bill here? To hear some who have preceded me, you would think the 9/11 Commission just left this out. What were they thinking?

What they were thinking is that this is a Federal Republic, and they tried to deal with the fact that we were dealing with a State function and that the Federal Government was moving in on a State function that we have had nothing to do with before. That is difficult to do.

So what did they say we should do? The 9/11 bill required just the kind of thoughtful rulemaking process that this issue needs to keep us from stepping all over each other and getting into needless controversy so that you bring people to the table and get a workable compromise. Under the process in the bill, the States must be at the table.

Remember, those are the entities that are mandated to carry out these procedures. This is an unfunded mandate, so they must pay for these procedures. So you say, let us bring you in. You are in disagreement, some of you are like Michigan, some are like other States, but let us sit down and figure it out. If you cannot, then we will have to work out a compromise in the Department of Homeland Security.

I thought that is the way we did things in this country, Mr. Chairman. I thought that the other side of the aisle extols federalism all the time; yes, even in hard times; and, yes, even when you are dealing with hard issues like terrorism.

So what is happening now? The Select Committee on Homeland Security, and I am on the committee, is establishing a committee that includes State officials, representatives of State driver's license agencies, and of course officials from the Department of Homeland Security so that the Federal Government is at the table big foot, big time, not to worry, we are covered, we are final here. So why shut the States out all together? Why not listen to the 9/11 Commission and say let us try to reconcile as much as this before we fly off the handle?

The issue is not about what to do. Let us concede, Mr. Chairman, straight up that something must be done. That is the procedure provided for in the 9/11 bill passed just 2 months ago. We must do something. What to do; how to do it. The bill lays out how to do it. By September 2005, this committee, under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security, will provide recommendations, a detailed assessment of the costs and the benefits of its proposals.

By June 2006, a proposed regulation based on the committee's recommendations, with such changes as should occur by December 2006, the Federal agencies will accept only new licenses that conform with these minimum standards.

What is wrong with that procedure? What is wrong with that procedure? It is difficult to find fault with that kind of careful procedure in a Federal republic, especially when you consider the supremacy clause and that the Congress of the United States can overturn regulations. So what are you afraid of, since in fact the ball stops when it comes to a matter of national security with the Federal Government?

Why are we trying to shut the States out? Why are those who speak up for the States whenever it suits their fancy putting down the States now? I do not agree with everything that is happening in the States; I just do not believe we should pass a piece of regulation that says you are not in this, except you better pay for it and you better do what it takes to enforce it within 3 years, although experts tell us it will take a dozen years for them to even begin to get through competently what it is we are asking them to do.

What is mandated is a negotiated rulemaking process that incorporates the practical issues that nobody in this Congress knows anything about, the issues that the States pass. It is a reckless bill. It would literally undo the 9/11 legislation and mandate on this issue.

I am asking that we come to an agreement before we vote down our own States on how to proceed, regardless of where you stand. Experts are telling us that it will be a dozen years before the States begin to even come

into mild conformance with this bill, and yet there will be hearings by the Members who are on this very floor criticizing the States and calling them before them to explain why illegals are still getting licenses in their States. How dare they do what we knew they could do in the first place.

So I hope you will keep the States at the negotiating table and join the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures in rejecting these bills and retaining the far more thoughtful rulemaking process Congress has just passed as part of the historic 9/11 Intelligence Reform legislation.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to make a point of correction. What we

are doing today is not mandated by the 9/11 Commission, nor is it mandated by the law we passed. It is contrary to the law we passed. It is mandated by the fact that we held up the law we passed and it was promised to two chairmen.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

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

I just want to say to the chairman that I could not agree more that the 9/11 Commission mandated secure identification standards by the Federal Government, and that is exactly what the 9/11 bill provides after rulemaking with the States at the table. What is being proposed is a unilateral process.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva).

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

Mr. Chairman, my good friend alluded to the support of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, and I include for the Record their letter indicating that they oppose both bills that are before us.

National Governors Association, and American Association

of Motor Vehicle Administrators,

February 8, 2005.

Hon. J. Dennis Hastert,

Speaker, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Thomas DeLay,

Majority Leader, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Nancy Pelosi,

Minority Leader, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Speaker, Representative DeLay and Representative

Pelosi: We write to express our opposition to Title II of

H.R. 418, the ``Improved Security For Driver's Licenses and

Personal Identification Cards'' provision, and H.R. 368, the

``Driver's License Security and Modernization Act''. While

Governors and motor vehicle administrators share your concern

for increasing the security and integrity of the driver's

license and State identification processes, we firmly believe

that the driver's license and ID card provisions of the

Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004

offer the best course for meeting those goals.

The ``Driver's Licenses and Personal Identification Cards''

provision in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 provides a

workable framework for developing meaningful standards to

increase reliability and security of driver's licenses and ID

cards. This framework calls for input from State elected

officials and motor vehicle administrators in the regulatory

process, protects State eligibility criteria, and retains the

flexibility necessary to incorporate best practices from

around the States. We have begun to work with the U.S.

Department of Transportation to develop the minimum

standards, which must be completed in 18 months pursuant to

the Intelligence Reform Act.

We commend Chairman Sensenbrenner and Chairman Davis for

their commitment to driver's license integrity; however, both

H.R. 418 and H.R. 368 would impose technological standards

and verification procedures on States, many of which are

beyond the current capacity of even the Federal government.

Moreover, the cost of implementing such standards and

verification procedures for the 220 million driver's licenses

issued by States represents a massive unfunded Federal

mandate.

Our States have made great strides since the September 11,

2001 terrorists attacks to enhance the security processes and

requirements for receiving a valid driver's license and ID

card. The framework in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004

will allow us to work cooperatively with the Federal

government to develop and implement achievable standards to

prevent document fraud and other illegal activity related to

the issuance of driver's licenses and ID cards.

We urge you to allow the provisions in the Intelligence

Reform Act of 2004 to work. Governors and motor vehicle

administrators are committed to this process because it will

allow us to develop mutually agreed-upon standards that can

truly help create a more secure America.

Sincerely,

Raymond C. Scheppach,

Executive Director, National Governors Association.

Linda R. Lewis,

President and CEO, American Association of Motor Vehicle

Administrators.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

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

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield the last 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time; and I hasten to add, he did not mean that I was 87 years old, but he is right that I regard myself as a good friend of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and if I may say so, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are the most remarkable couple in the history of arts and letters in the United States, ever; and now we have lost one half of that couple, and America across this land mourns the passing of a great artist.

Mr. Speaker, Ossie Davis was a renaissance man. A renaissance man is not a Jack of All Trades. One definition says: a man who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and the sciences.

The notion of the renaissance man comes from the great Renaissance era, the Italian Renaissance, the English Renaissance. Out of the English Renaissance came such new talents as William Shakespeare.

Ossie Davis merits the title Renaissance man. There is no area of the arts in which he did not excel, and he did not start with the arts. He insisted upon being a man of his time and a man of his race. To have been a renaissance man in your time, no matter who you were, whatever your advantages, is to live up to an impossible standard, but to have been born in the worst years of segregation and lynching and mob violence in our country, in the South of the United States and to have risen to be a man of letters and of the arts who, of course, most recently was honored with the greatest honors of our country at the Kennedy Center is to give new meaning to the very words Renaissance man.

Who are the men who are understood to be Renaissance men? To give my

colleagues a cross-section of them, Leonardo Da Vinci, Paul Robeson, Thomas Jefferson.

We use that word when we think of men whose talents are so broad and so wide, as evidenced in the works they have produced, that there is no other word for them. We cannot simply call them an artist. We cannot simply call them a producer. We cannot simply call them a playwright. We cannot simply call them a stage actor. Because they are all those things.

And then, of course, to have been the kind of artist who understood that without compromising his art he could become a leader in the greatest revolution of our time, the civil rights revolution, is to have set a standard that all of us must admire.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that this resolution has come from the whole House, and I ask the whole House to join me and the country in celebrating the fact that Ossie Davis proves that if you let a man's talent shine, he will overcome whatever you have to throw up and whatever you have to throw out.

We are blessed, we are honored that a renaissance man of his immense talent lived among us and gave so much of his talent to his country and to his world.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I thank him for always standing first and foremost for human rights here and around the world. I am not surprised that he would come forward with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) with this well- deserved and important resolution.

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing more gratifying to the American people than seeing people vote, and especially people vote for the first time. I feel what is happening in Iraq with great and moving nostalgia because it reminds me of the first African Americans who voted after the Civil War. It reminds me that this is the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and what it meant for people in Alabama and Georgia to come to the polls for the first time. There is unanimous applause for the people of Iraq who risked their lives to come to the polls. They did not just vote. Many of them knew they were risking life and limb to vote.

They know, however, and we know where the risk was greatest, and that risk was greatest on the Armed Forces of the United States and their allies who made this right possible.

Mr. Speaker, I come forward to say that no people in our country more appreciate that vote on January 30 than the people in the District of Columbia. In the District of Columbia, lives were lost for the vote in Iraq. But these residents are the progeny of 2 centuries of District residents who have gone to war without a vote. Three of these young men who were on the frontlines in Iraq came to the House as the House opened and asked for the same vote for their families and for the residents of the District of Columbia as their service has given to the people of Iraq. They asked to start with the Committee of the Whole where we had the right to vote but the right was taken from us when the majority changed.

Listen to one of the young men: ``Two of my friends and I earlier this month asked for the return of the House vote of the Committee of the Whole our city won during the 103rd Congress . . . Think of what American leaders and citizens would say if one party were to nullify the legitimate vote of another party after the elections in Iraq.''

They asked to see the Speaker; the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), leader of the Democrats. She saw him. The Speaker and a member of his staff were unable to see him. Senator Lieberman and I have reintroduced the No Taxation Without Representation Act.

Let me leave you with the words, finally, of one of these young men.

``I was prepared in Iraq for whatever came, including service in a border breach squad charged with clearing mines and anything else that got in the way to prepare the first troops to cross the border. That was my duty and I would do it again. However, our country also has an important obligation to those who serve and to other citizens. One of the most important obligations is to ensure every citizen that his representative will have a chance to vote before that citizen goes to war for his country.''

The third young man: ``My father served in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam and I am proud to follow him by serving my country in the same manner. I want equal treatment at home. I want the same voting representation in the House and Senate as other soldiers and as the Iraqi people have in their elections this month.''

Out of the mouths of young residents of the District of Columbia who are on the frontline. I will insert their statements and a statement concerning their service from the Washington Post in the Record.

Statement of Emory Kosh

First, my thanks to Congresswoman Norton and Senator

Lieberman for re-introducing the No Taxation Without

Representation Act. I also want to thank Mr. Shallal for his

moving words addressed to men and women like me who served in

Iraq and to D.C. residents. During the year I spent in Iraq,

I met and spoke with many Iraqi citizens, but Mr. Shallal is

the first Iraqi American I have met. His words have special

meaning to me and I thank him.

When I watch television and see people in Iraq and here in

the United States preparing

to vote in the Iraq elections for voting representation, I

think of my time in their country. I am proud that I had some

role in the voting rights Iraqis will get there on Sunday.

For that reason, I deeply appreciate that Mr. Shallal has

come not only to thank us, but to join us in the fight for

the same voting representation here in the Nation's capital.

Two of my friends and I earlier this month asked for the

return of the House vote in the Committee of the Whole our

city won during the 103rd Congress that was taken from us

when control of the Congress changed hands. Think of what

American leaders and citizens would say if one party were to

nullify the legitimate vote of another party after the

elections in Iraq. Our vote in the Committee of the Whole

represented the first step toward the goal of D.C. residents

as expressed in the No Taxation Without Representation Act.

We didn't intend to stop there when we asked that this first

step be taken, and we won't stop now. We will work with the

Congresswoman, the Senator, Mr. Shallal and our fellow

citizens until the full voting rights we fought for in Iraq

are also available here in our hometown.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) for her initiative. Millions of Americans want to know what the truth is. Because of the gentlewoman's leadership, we are trying to get those facts out here today.

Yes, I was chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Carter.

The gentlewoman from New York and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) have been talking about the issue of race and gender.

Let us be clear, this argument is a nullity. Under the Constitution of the United States, government benefits may not be distributed taking race and sex into account. The courts have spoken on that. So if there are racial disparities or gender disparities, they are off the table constitutionally. Race is a suspect classification, and I do not want to get technical, which means you can only use race if there is no other way to accomplish the purpose.

What is the purpose we are trying to accomplish here? Does the other side want to make sure that black men who have lower incomes than others get what? Privatize what little income they have, take it out of their meager earnings for private accounts? Are you going to give them more money because they die early? Come on. Let me hear what you are going to do to make up for the fact that black men die early, and leave aside health, because that is very clear. You cannot do it in any way, and maybe if you are on the Committee on Ways and Means you have not looked at the Constitution, but some of us have. We cannot put race and sex on the table under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and under the equal protection clause of the United States.

I do want to say how we got into this crisis. Do we forget that the Republicans inherited a Social Security Trust Fund that was in surplus? Why are we here? Do you forget the days of the lockbox when Clinton- Gore said do not touch Social Security, we have a surplus, put the money in the lockbox and we will never have to worry about Social Security?

We had enough to pay for Social Security and then a surplus. What happened to it, my friends? George Bush and the Republicans came to power and they decided they had a use for the funds in the lockbox and they unlocked it, and they distributed it in disproportionate amounts to the very rich who do not need to even think about Social Security. They distributed it in a war, a controversial war from which they cannot extricate themselves. And to have had the nerve to quote President Clinton talking about the crisis. Indeed he was. He said, over and over again, we are going to have a crisis if you get into this lockbox, and he had hardly gotten out of Washington then George Bush was picking the lock. They got us into this crisis, and they want to make it worse because they want to privatize Social Security. The only way to do that is take more money, this time not from the surplus because they have used that up, but from deficit spending. This is not even ancient history. It is history that many Members of this House have lived.

Finally, let me say a word on race and gender. I know that the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) said he was only putting it on the table. Thank goodness the 14th amendment keeps us from putting certain kinds of things on the table. You cannot say to somebody, because you are black, I think you are going to live a little less long and so, I am not sure what the remedy is, by the way, but I am going to do something to you for that reason. And women, wait a minute, you live too long, so I am not sure what I am going to do to you.

Let us hear what their proposal is. Are you going to take back their Social Security? Reduce their Social Security? Any of those things, my friends, is unconstitutional under the equal protection clause. They should be taken off the table. You threw it out there, and you expect us not to respond.

Finally, let me say this. One of the reasons why women and people of color embrace Social Security so much is because, in fact, they get disproportionately from Social Security. Because their wages are lower and because the Social Security system is progressive, they pull from Social Security disproportionate amounts given what they, in fact, contributed to Social Security, because this is not a one-on-one system, what you give to the system, you get back. This is a progressive tax system, so you get back disproportionately. I do think it is important to get into some of these details so that, in fact, people can understand why we must oppose the privatization of Social Security. You can bank on this, Democrats who gave us Social Security are not going to be present at the funeral of Social Security. We are here this year to save it for the American people. I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership on this very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, we honor all who serve our country in the military. However, the men and women of the District of Columbia who volunteer for military service are entitled to special honors. D.C. residents who serve today are the most recent in a long line of citizens of the District who have fought and died for our country, although they did not have the same democratic rights as their fellow citizens and fellow soldiers.

I ask the House of Representatives to honor the residents of the District of Columbia who have served in every war since the Revolutionary War of 1775, by recognizing three young men today who served in the Iraqi War, Marcus Gray, Emory Kosh, and Isaac Lewis. We also honor members of the military from the District, including the D.C. National Guard, who have served or are serving in Afghanistan and throughout the world, especially those who have lost their lives.

Specialists Gray, Kosh and Lewis were members of the U.S. Army Reserves, 299th Engineer Company and part of the first wave of soldiers who entered Iraq in March 2003.

The three graduates of Ballou, Eastern, and Dunbar High Schools in the District were working or in college when they were called to serve. They spent nearly a year in Iraq exposed to great danger. Two of the three may be redeployed this year.

Just as these three soldiers stepped forward without hesitation to go overseas in time of war, they step forward now to speak for the cause of democracy at home. These three men welcome the enthusiasm of many Iraqis as they prepare to elect voting representatives to their national legislature on January 30. All three know that the coming elections in Iraq and the successful elections held in Afghanistan in October were made possible by the service and sacrifices of the members of their company, and other coalition troops, the great majority of whom were American citizen soldiers, and members of today's volunteer military.

Today these three young men ask that their hometown be afforded the same voting representation that their service will help bring to Iraq. They do not expect to have the same voting representation tomorrow that they will see in Iraq on January 30th. However, the people of the nation's capital could get a vote as the 109th Congress convenes on January 4th for its new session. By rule of the House, the Congress could put the District on the path to full voting rights.

During the 103rd Congress, the District of Columbia had a vote on most House business by rule of the House and by vote of the House, as affirmed by the federal courts. With the change of controlling parties in the 104th Congress, this vote was withdrawn. Our country and most democracies would find the withdrawal of voting rights intolerable anywhere in the world. Eliminating a vote fairly won is also unacceptable here. As we are reminded time and again, all countries must meet the same standard--Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States, as well.

Specialists Gray, Kosh, and Lewis and their families are tax paying citizens of the United States and of the capital of our nation, but they have given more than most of us. They are soldiers who have gone to war for our country. I ask the House to honor their service and to heed their call for voting representation in this House. I also ask unanimous consent to place in the record their own words petitioning their government for voting representation.

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

If we are the democracy we say we are, we must show it today by taking on the astonishing problems in our national system of elections that can no longer be blinked away. Ohio's often brazen irregularities bring forward this debate, but the Buckeye State is only the poster child for the nationwide system of voting that has been discredited in the eyes of millions of voters. I watched the long lines nationwide and here in the District with both exhilaration and pain, exhilaration that finally we were getting what we asked for, with so much enthusiasm for voting that people were standing in line the way they do for million dollar lottery tickets; pain that long lines would surely discourage many voters, particularly first-time voters, people of color, young people, and many others who wanted to believe that voting could matter in their lives. The long lines in the District were especially poignant because citizens were waiting for hours to vote for a Member of Congress who herself could not cast a vote for them in this House.

Ohio's close and contentious vote speaks for the country about virtually all the problems of the last election, from voting machine access to voting intimidation and the absence of national standards for the basics. It will take time and bipartisan determination to make us proud of our elections. Until then, one reform could begin the process of restoring confidence in our elections. If all else fails, voting machines, polling place controversy, confused or partisan election officials, a provisional ballot that, if valid, will count, can help heal voting flaws until we enact a real cure. We have got a failsafe for almost everything else, from bullet proof vests to backups for computers. Let us fix our system this year, including with failsafes for voting to save our democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my remarks to the glowing ones we have heard regarding the untimely passing of our dear colleague, Bob Matsui. To have known Bob Matsui is to be heartbroken by his death. I believe that our Republican colleagues would agree. Especially for Democrats, however, the loss is profoundly felt three times over. First, there was the man whose human dimensions of kindness, consideration, and friendly persuasion made him instantly likeable and one of the most admired and respected members across the political spectrum. Second, there was the successful party leader, who had just completed his term as a hugely successful chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And third, there was the Democratic seer of social security whom we were depending upon to lead us through the coming crucial social security debate, one of the several subjects whose byzantine complexities Bob had mastered as third ranking on the Ways and Means Committee. Congress and the country could not afford to lose even one of these three Bob Matsuis. Now, sadly we have lost all three. As we mourn the loss of one of the country's most effective public servants, we celebrate our good fortune that Bob Matsui gave his life to public service.

Mr. Speaker, I represent the people of the Nation's capital, perhaps the most conspicuous target for global terrorism in the world. I support S. 2845, the National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. 1 could not afford to do otherwise. Nor can other Members, whatever their opinions of the considerable shortcomings of this bill. The controversy over S. 2845 and its many flaws have obscured the overriding reason for the bill in the first place. After an impressive, exhaustive investigation, the 9/11 Commission, which deserves the credit for the seminal document from which the bill derives, said that prevention of the 9/11 tragedy had been possible. ``There were specific points of vulnerability in the plot and opportunities to disrupt it,'' according to the 9/11 Commission Report (p. 8). Various intelligence agencies each had parts of vital information about the imminence of an attack, but they rarely communicated and never collaborated.

S. 2845 goes directly at this tragic flaw through personnel and structural reform in two ways. First, the bill creates one overarching and fully accountable official, the director of national intelligence, with the budgetary and oversight authority to compel the communication and cooperation that was missing before 9/11. Second, the bill requires all information and intelligence to be funneled ultimately to a newly established national counterterrorism center instead of remaining scattered in 15 different intelligence agencies, as before 9/11.

There are many other important provisions in the bill less expansive in scope but vital in content that recommend its passage. However, regrettably S. 2845 contains some provisions that do not belong in a bill with this mission, were not recommended by the 9/11 commission, and could not have passed independently. Of particular concern to me, however, are related problems that had nothing to do with 9/11, but also deeply involve intelligence and the judgment of public officials. Our country and our troops are virtually trapped in Iraq today because of an unprecedented invasion. The invasion of Iraq teaches the necessity of assuring that competing information not only reaches but influences the President and that cooperation, consolidation, and coordination do not result in dreaded ``groupthink'' or in disproportionate influence by the new director of national intelligence or any other official. I am not entirely convinced that S. 2845 builds in the necessary checks and balances to assure against reinforcing a President's predispositions. Time and experience inform the Congress. We must be prepared to make changes as they become necessary.

Most disappointing was the weak civil liberties panel that is not in keeping with the concerns in the 9/11 Commission Report about the privacy issues raised by the new centralized intelligence network recommended by the 9/11 Commission. The panel has become a wolf watching the hen house. It has no subpoena power. The members will be totally beholden to the President, at whose pleasure they will serve.

I have been in the Congress long enough to know that allowing an opportunity to pass while we wait for a more perfect bill often means no bill, no bill for years, or no bill until another crisis comes. This bill is already late, delayed by the Bush administration at every turn, but finally delivered at the hands of the 9/11 families and the Commission their energy brought into being. We must seize this opportunity and pass this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor the District's own Ballou Senior High School Marching Band for its recent extraordinary achievement at the Home Depot National Battle of the Bands Competition. The band, numbering 86 members, placed second among eight bands in a competition which included 110 entrants in the initial field. Ballou deserves recognition from the House of Representatives not only because of this notable accomplishment. I ask the Congress to recognize the Ballou Marching Band also because these students, led by their able and devoted band director, Darrell Watson, overcame nearly impossible odds.

The high school is located in one of the city's most disadvantaged and besieged communities. The students have lived with unusual human tragedy, including the fatal shooting of two fellow students this year. Also in 2003, the school was closed for more than a month because of an accidental mercury spill. At the end of the school year, many of the problems of the school were blamed on allegations of poor leadership and the principal was dismissed.

This is not an atmosphere conducive to producing award winning bands. Yet, the Ballou Marching Band's band director and the new principal, Daniel Hudson, persevered. However, talent, intelligence, diligence and dedication could not cover the $70,000 needed to travel to California to compete. The often struggling families of the students, and their inner-city community certainly did not have such funds. Still, the band and their school did not give up. They sought help from the business community, alumni and others. Many were moved by the determination of the students. Among the many contributors who made the trip possible were Federal Express--inspired by a Ballou alumna who was a vice president--Lockheed Martin, Embassy Suites Hotels, and William C. Smith and Company. The outpouring of love and support that the Ballou band received was inspired not only by the need, but by the students' own determination and efforts in doing car washes and selling dinners to earn funds for the trip.

The concrete show of confidence in these children enabled the band's participation and its prize-winning finish. In fact, the competition was razor close, and Ballou almost came away with the top prize. Its reward was a trip to Disneyland and the opportunity to play in the holiday parade. The larger and lasting reward is the sense of accomplishment the students received and the opportunity to broaden their horizons and expectations concerning where hard work and high aspirations can lead. On a visit to the school, I was moved to see the effect of the band's achievements on the entire student body, which gathered to celebrate the band with principal, teachers and staff all present. The band director, Darrell Watson, spoke of the numerous compliments he received, including words of praise concerning the exemplary behavior of the members of the band. Principal Hudson is leading the students to transfer the band's achievement to academic achievement as well for the student body.

I am proud that the band represented the city so well and proud to represent the band, the school, and the community in the Congress of the United States. Last week I wrote to President Bush to ask that the Ballou Band march in the upcoming Inaugural Parade. Considering what the band has achieved and the obstacles the students have overcome, I believe that the band and the school deserve this national recognition. Mr. Speaker, the Ballou Senior High School Marching Band deserves the accolades the band is receiving since returning from California. I ask the House of Representatives to add its own congratulations as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate D.C. United on winning the Major League Soccer Championship Cup on November 14, 2004. D.C. United beat the Kansas City Wizards 3-2 to win its fourth MLS championship in the league's nine-year existence. Alecko Eskandarian scored United's first two goals, leading D.C. to the MLS title. D.C. United has been the District's most successful sports franchise in recent history and has been called the most successful club in MLS history. The team is a metaphor for the extraordinary progress our city itself has made--balanced budgets and surpluses, retaining and attracting homeowners, and a renaissance in economic development throughout the District of Columbia.

The mighty Black and Red recently celebrated their triumph with a victory rally at RFK Stadium, giving more than 1,000 fans an opportunity to get up close and personal with players, pose for pictures and get autographs. During the rally, Mayor Anthony Williams hailed the ``dedication, teamwork and vision'' of the champs, declaring November 17 ``D.C. United Day'' in the nation's capital. Team captain Ryan Nelsen thanked ``the 12th man'', the great fans of D.C. United.

In a season dominated by news about the signing of our big catch, 15 year old soccer phenom Freddy Adu, first-year coach Peter Nowak moved the focus off the media hype and with his team-oriented philosophy steered United to capture its first Cup since 1999. Nowak said, ``They have real attitude and a winning mentality, they're always going to come first and they're always going to be the winners. They shared my vision and they got the cup at the end.''

Giving Adu his ``props,'' however, Freddy became the youngest player ever to win a championship in a major U.S. professional team sport. The unassuming teenager, though, preferred to focus on the team's accomplishments rather than his own.

D.C. United also won championships in 1996 and 1997. Unfortunately, after its 1999 MLS Cup, the team missed the playoffs in 2000, 2001 and 2002. But the road back to the top of the league became painted with hard work, patience and a determined eye toward winning the Cup back.

The team is currently conducting its annual United Holiday Toy Drive benefiting Children's National Medical Center. They invite the public

to bring donated toys to RFK Stadium and receive a free set of signed player cards. The toy drive is just one of the United's four community outreach programs. Kicks for Kids provides 10,000 disadvantaged youth with free game tickets, meal vouchers and promotional items; United donates much-needed items such as youth soccer equipment and school supplies to area non-profit organizations; and team coaches and players run six free children's soccer clinics each year.

Mr. Speaker, I ask Congress to recognize D.C. United for its spirit and excellence on and off the field, as the nation's capital celebrates the Major League Soccer Champions.