Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller) in presenting these 3 bills that honor three men who have served us with all they had to give in Iraq. I am particularly honored to do so because the District of Columbia has lost more men already in Iraq than many States all without voting representation in this House or in the Senate. So it is with special pride that I speak for myself and for all whom I represent in honoring these three men who gave their lives for all of us.

As a member of the House Committee on Government Reform, I am pleased to join my colleague in consideration of H.R. 3536, legislation naming a postal facility in Malden, Illinois after Staff Sergeant Lincoln Hollinsaid. This measure was introduced by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller) on November 19, 2003 and unanimously reported by our committee on February 12, 2004.

H.R. 3536 enjoys the support and co-sponsorship of the entire Illinois delegation.

Army Staff Sergeant Lincoln D. Hollinsaid was a soldier from Malden, Illinois, who was killed on April 7, 2003 in an Iraq grenade attack.

Lincoln Hollinsaid graduated from the local high school in Malden, Princeton High, and worked a short while at a local construction company before enlisting in the U.S. Army. As an Army engineer, Staff Sergeant Hollinsaid served on the Army's Third Infantry Division. He was assigned to the B company, 11th Engineer Battalion, in Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Because of his interest in serving in combat, Hollinsaid transferred from a California training post to the Third Infantry Division in Georgia. Sadly, at age 27, this staff sergeant was killed when the crane he was driving was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. He is survived by his parents, Dan and Nancy, and two brothers, Adam and Kevin.

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague for seeking to honor the memory of a fallen soldier. I urge swift passage of this bill.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Committee on Government Reform, I am pleased to join my colleague in the consideration of H.R. 3537, legislation naming a postal facility in Manhattan, Illinois after Private Shawn Pahnke. This measure was introduced by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller) on November 19, 2003, and unanimously reported by our committee on February 12, 2004.

H.R. 3537 enjoys the support and co-sponsorship of the entire Illinois delegation.

Army Private Shawn D. Pahnke was a soldier from Shelbyville, Indiana, who was killed by enemy fire in Baghdad on June 16, 2003. Shawn Pahnke grew up in Manhattan, Illinois and graduated from Lincoln Way High School in New Lenox, Illinois. Continuing his family's tradition of military service, Shawn's father was a Vietnam veteran and his grandfather served in World War II, Shawn enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Freidberg, Germany.

Sadly, at age 27, Private Pahnke was patrolling in a Humvee with other soldiers from his unit when he was hit by a sniper's bullet. He is survived by his wife, baby son, Dean, his parents and two older brothers. He was buried with honors and received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague for seeking to honor the memory of a fallen soldier. I urge the swift passage of this bill.

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

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

As a member of the Committee on Government Reform, I am pleased and proud to join my colleague in the consideration of H.R. 3538, legislation naming a postal facility in Saint Anne, Illinois, after Captain Ryan Beaupre. The measure was introduced by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller) on November 19, 2003, and unanimously reported by our committee on February 12, 2004. H.R. 3538 enjoys the support and cosponsorship of the entire Illinois delegation.

Marine Captain Ryan Beaupre was a soldier and a pilot from Saint Anne, Illinois, who was killed in a helicopter crash in Kuwait on March 21, 2003.

Ryan Beaupre grew up in Saint Anne. He graduated from Bishop MacNamara High School in Kankakee, Illinois, and graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, with honors in 1995 and joined the Marine Corps in 1995 and was based at Camp Pendleton, California.

Sadly, at age 30, Captain Beaupre's CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed, killing eight British and four U.S. Marines. He is survived by his parents, a brother, and two sisters.

Mr. Speaker, I note that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a former Member of Congress and a committee colleague, has commissioned two memorials to honor Illinois servicemembers who have lost their lives during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Captain Beaupre, Staff Sergeant Hollinsaid, and Private Pahnke will be among the servicemembers honored. The memorials will be displayed in the State capitol rotunda in Springfield, Illinois, and the James R. Thompson center in Chicago.

Again, I commend my colleague for seeking to honor the memory of a fallen soldier and urge the swift passage of this bill.

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

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

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

The Detroit Shocks proved they were the best team in the league last September when they came from behind and knocked out the two-time defending champions the Los Angeles Sparks before the league's largest crowd in history, with a score of 83 to 78.

The Shocks started the game with a 14-point lead, but the Sparks kept coming back. With less than a minute left in the game, Deanna Nolan nailed a three-pointer from the corner and gave the Shocks a 75-73 lead. Then Cheryl Ford hit three free throws and it was a four-point lead with 43 seconds left.

Just when you thought the Shocks had it all wrapped up, the Sparks made a comeback, twice. But the Shocks pulled out a win, and a franchise that was down and out a year before was accepting the Women's National Basketball Association championship.

Head Coach Bill Laimbeer and his staff of Laurie Byrd, Pamela McGee, and Korie Hlede provided strong leadership and solid coaching. This has resulted in a basketball team that is hard working and dominates on the basketball court.

The Women's National Basketball Association and the Detroit Shocks exemplify the highest standards of sportsmanship and success, and as such, have encouraged girls and women across the country to participate in professional sports. I congratulate them on a well-deserved win and urge the passage of this resolution.

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

On November 23, 2003, the San Jose Earthquakes thrilled a sellout crowd of soccer fans with a 4 to 2 Major League Soccer victory over the Chicago Fire. The Earthquakes earned their second Major League Soccer Cup in 3 years and became only the second major league team to win multiple titles. My hometown team, D.C. United, has won the Cup three times in its 8-year history.

Major League Soccer could not have asked for a better and more exciting game for its network-televised event. The San Jose Earthquakes and the Chicago Fire scored six goals combined, breaking the Major League Soccer Cup championship match scoring record.

San Jose midfielder Ronnie Ekelund scored in the fifth minute of play, tying Eduardo Hurtado for the fastest goal scored in a Major League Soccer Cup championship. Jeff Agoos won his second Major League Soccer Cup as captain of the San Jose Earthquakes and his fifth Major League Soccer Cup overall. San Jose forward Landon Donovan, who has been named United States National Team Player of the Year twice, scored two goals and two shots in the championship match, earning the Honda Major League Soccer Cup Most Valuable Player Award.

Major league soccer was created in 1996 as a professional American soccer league to build on the base of popularity generated during the World Cup Finals held in the United States in 1994. Major League Soccer has aptly and skillfully filled the void that resulted when the North American League played its last game in 1984, and it has done so with teams like the San Jose Earthquakes that play with zeal and love for the game.

The sellout crowd at The Home Depot Center for the 2003 Major League Soccer Cup is a testament to the growing popularity of soccer and all those who play the game.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda), who is the author of this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have left a hearing to come to the floor to congratulate the gentlewoman from California for coming forward with a bill that does what the great majority of the American people want to see us do today.

Is the point here to penalize crimes against pregnant women or to give personhood to the fetus? I think the majority would say it is time this Congress got around to recognizing that when, in fact, a violent crime is committed against a pregnant woman, that is a crime against the family, and we should have done something about it long ago.

But what we are doing here with the bill that is on the floor is forcing some Members to vote against the bill, a bill that would otherwise have nearly universal approval in this House. It reminds me of the years it took us to pass the Violence Against Women Act because we nitpicked at it, at this, that, and the other. And it must have been 6 or 7 years before the Violence Against Women Act passed in the face of rising violence against women.

We are doing the very same thing with crimes against pregnant women. It is a terrible act to commit a violent crime against a pregnant woman. We should not leave this place unless we come to an agreement on, in fact, dealing with that crime and that crime alone.

What the majority is trying to do here I want to say to them I do not think they can constitutionally do anyway. The majority cannot confer personhood on a fetus in the face of Roe v. Wade. They can keep coming to the floor all they want to, but I do not think that they can successfully do that by statute. But we can keep a substitute that is critically important from coming out of the Congress by insisting on conferring personhood against the will of the majority of people, of the majority of the United States, who support the common-sense approach to choice.

The number of pregnant women who have been murdered has been grossly underreported because they are reported as murders. It is time we did something about it. This is a separate offense. It is a separate criminal offense. It does what needs to be done. I congratulate the gentlewoman for getting us to where we need to be today, justice for women, finally, on violence against those who are pregnant.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski) for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the three gentlemen who have preceded me in speaking, because what they have done is herculean. They have worked together in a bipartisan manner to try to get a bill for this House. I thought they were being wonderfully ambitious to try to get it this month; and I think

this House should be very grateful to them because they are having to contend with something that is very, very difficult.

There are three different figures here, Mr. Speaker. Our committee wants $375 billion, the Senate has come forward with $318 billion, and the administration has come forward with $256 billion. And these three gentlemen are trying to find some way to thread this needle and get us all through it. I want to thank them for it.

I do want to say that you would think that this was taxpayers' money. When you think about these different figures, the average person would not believe that this money is in trust to be spent on exactly what we are here on the floor getting an extension for, on mass transportation, on roads, on infrastructure. What we have got is a seminal decision waiting for us.

The best case for going full way with the House bill, of course, is the failure of the recovery to generate any jobs. We cannot go on this way without having to pay a price for it.

The difference in the figures bothers me. The gentleman from the other body, Mr. Inhofe, has indicated that if the full figure that our committee wants is not forthcoming, and I am here using his words, cutting the costs would cause more problems than it would solve because the committee's allocation of funds among the States would be in jeopardy.

This money does not go flinging all around. It goes to States desperately in need of it now, particularly given the huge funding problems the States are having across the board. He is talking about a figure that is less than our figure of $318 million, that the problem would go to the formula itself. So everybody would look to get a lot less money than they need if we cannot agree upon a formula that in fact uses the trust fund for what people paid at the pump to have it used for.

We would not be in this situation if we had passed the $50 billion bill where we came forward last year with $50 billion paid for bill, ready to go, projects in every Members' districts ready to go, sitting on the table, cannot go for lack of funds. That bill never made it to the floor. What jobs are flowing are flowing only anemically, left over from the old transportation bills.

I do not have any doubt that this bill will pass. I have come to the floor to speak about the bill that the gentlemen have been working on, a bill we must have, a bill that is adequately funded, a bill that will use the Highway Trust Fund for the purposes we have collected those funds for.

We must go forward, not backwards. If you need a reason besides the state of your own economy and your own State, think about drugs, think about jobs and the failure of our economy to recover.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this afternoon to inform this body that, for the first time in the history of the United States, our country has been found guilty of a major human rights violation.

The Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, a body in which we proudly participate, a body which we helped to finance, has made public its finding today after an 11-year investigation. I would like to quote what the Commission found.

``The commission concludes that the State,'' meaning the United States, ``has failed to justify the denials of the petitioners of the effective representation in their Federal Government and, consequently, that the petitioners have been denied an effective right to participate in their government, directly or through freely chosen representatives and in general conditions of equality, contrary to Articles XX and II of the American Declaration'' of rights of man.

The Commission was referring to the denial of voting representation in the Congress of the United States to the residents of the capital of the United States who are second per capita in the Federal income taxes they pay to support their government and who have fought and died in every war, fought and died, since the Revolutionary War, since the establishment of our government.

This ruling comes at a very important time in our history because we have not only declared that democracy and democratic principles must be universal, we have invaded another country. We are, as I speak, around the world proclaiming that each and every government must give full democracy, equal democracy to all the people of that government.

This government does not do that for the people of the District of Columbia, and an international body for the first time has so found. The international body, the Commission on Human Rights of the OAS, enjoys great prestige. We cannot say that this is not a body that does not enjoy our respect, and it is a body in which we have proudly participated.

The United States defended fully, and its defense was found wanting. We have every reason to desire the full confidence of the world. We need the world with us as we fight against terrorists bent on destroying us. We have lost much of that confidence because of the invasion of Iraq. We have rallied around our troops in Iraq and around our country because our country is at war. But our country now needs the world more than the world needs our country.

I cannot imagine anything that would go further to restore the waning confidence of the world in our leadership then for the Congress, for the administration to reach out and say to the people who live here, you are entitled to no fewer rights than any other American citizens.

Even as our country decided when I was a child going to segregated schools in the Nation's capital, no less that we could apply our own self-corrective and, indeed, integrate those schools and declare discriminatory practice off limits in our country, so we can take this last remaining scar on our democracy and wipe it from us. We simply must do it now.

The shame of having a violation of human rights declared upon us even as we have a long list of violators that we publish every year cannot be long-standing. This country has always stepped up to correct its own problems. This is a problem that stares in the face of the Congress of the United States every day that we open for business and meet because the 600,000 people who live here do not have a vote on this floor and have no senators who represent them.

This country, our people would not stand for this anywhere in the world; and if I may say so, our people do not stand for it now. Polls show they do not even know it, that the American people think that the people who live in their Nation's capital have the same rights that they do. Shame on us that they do not.

I ask the Congress of the United States to, in fact, adhere to the decision of the Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States and grant full and equal voting rights in the Congress of the United States to the people of the District of Columbia.

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

How can we possibly pass the Community Services Block Grant to aid the poor, and leave the people who are being made poor by the jobless recovery with nothing?

I agree with the gentleman from Arizona who said the remedy for this is jobs. Why do you think we are on the floor? Because this economy has not been forthcoming with jobs. Some of us cosponsored a bill for a $50 billion program for jobs creation, almost all of this in terrorism infrastructure. That never made it to the floor. That was paid for, ready to go, terrorism projects infrastructure. So what are we left with?

We have got to do something for those who do not have the jobs that the economy has not provided. Look, something very different has happened to our economy. This global economy is different. We do not understand it, but we do understand the unemployed. We have got to do something about the long-term unemployed. That is who we are talking about. And the way to do it is to make these benefits available to these people who comprise the largest number of people losing their unemployment in 30 years.

It provides a stimulus to the local community in which they live, where the businesses are going out of business as well because the people do not have jobs. We get 2 bangs for the buck. It is time to make it up to these people whom we left with no benefits when we went home for Christmas.

Mr. Speaker, today when regrettably when almost half of high school students report having had sexual intercourse, I want Members to consider the following: How would a court likely react when an 18-year-old star high school athlete, a student from a very disadvantaged background, manages a 3.9 average, 1200 on his SATs, full scholarship from Vanderbilt, is accused by a female acquaintance of rape after having sex with a girl less than 3 years younger. Now color the boy black and the girl white, and Members may not be surprised that Marcus Dixon received 10 years for this teen sex violation.

To the credit of the State of Georgia, the State amended its law almost 10 years ago to deal with sex between teens and made statutory rape a misdemeanor. The prosecutor, however, wanted a conviction very badly here because he piled on six different charges, most of them involving forcible rape, and an additional charge of aggravated child molestation which is reserved for very heinous crimes.

The jury had to contend with two very different versions. He said that she suggested please, let us not go to my house, my father is a racist and he has beaten me for less. She said she was a virgin and he raped her on a table. The jury apparently believed this was one more example of consensual teen sex by virtue of the fact that they convicted only for the misdemeanor rape charge. However, they left the aggregated child molestation charge because of testimony that she was a virgin, therefore bled, therefore had been injured; and he, therefore, was guilty of child molestation causing injury. For that injury, literally millions of teenage boys would be in jail as I speak.

That is where Marcus Dixon is, but many on the jury are dumbfounded because they believed that Marcus would walk out of court with a misdemeanor statutory rape conviction with the white couple who adopted him from his crack-addicted mother. The case is on appeal.

Male black, female white, harsh sentence, sound familiar? Consider if the girl had been black and the boy white, can Members imagine a 10- year sentence? Suppose both had been of the same race, can Members imagine a 10-year sentence?

The villain here is not only an overzealous prosecutor who treats teen sex as a sexual predator case and disregards Marcus' achievement in overcoming the kind of severe deprivation most of us have never had.

The villain also is mandatory minimums. For minor drug offenses, we have put a generation of young black men in jail and left the black community with 70 percent of its children with no fathers and destroyed the black family. Let us be clear: We must do much more to teach our children to abstain from sex, but it is also time to teach prosecutors fairness and equal application of the law and to teach ourselves the injustice of mandatory minimums.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to thank the chairman and all who have worked so hard on this bill and have been delayed for so long.

I rise to take strong exception to putting this bill once again in jeopardy by reinserting anti-choice language, language that was agreed upon in a bipartisan fashion and that again would put this bill in jeopardy.

As I understand the anti-choice movement, and I respect them for the view which I believe is sincere, the movement disavows violence. Each and every time there is violence in their name, the movement is clear that violence shall not occur in their name. And not only do I not have any reason to doubt them, I have every reason to believe they are sincere.

Why in the world then would we want to take out the bipartisan Hatch- Schumer language that was agreed upon and do so unilaterally? After all, the point of this bill is to remedy the abuse of the bankruptcy laws. Is it not an abuse to avoid a lawful judgment of a court of law rendered through imposition of fines after finding that a party had, for example, committed violence? Would anybody condone going into bankruptcy in order to avoid that lawful judgment? I see no reason why anybody would want to sign up for that, much less jeopardize this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say at the beginning of this session we have gotten to the point where bipartisan compromise does not matter anymore in this House. We know conference reports do not matter. We know that Democrats did not even get to conference. But the notion that Mr. Schumer and Mr. Hatch could reach a compromise on something as controversial in its underlying content as choice and then have that torn up by the House should be unthinkable. I do not think Mr. Hatch would have agreed to it, and as I understood it, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) agreed to it, that it was a kind of compromise. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), all of them agreed that this was what should be done to get the bill through. Why throw it in their face and in our face by taking that compromise out of the bill? This used to be known as breaking one's word; and one thing I thought good politicians, let alone ethical men and women, never did was to

break their word. This is a breaking of the word. I ask them to reconsider. Please let us begin this session, 2004, bright. Let us not go back to the bad old days of 2003.

Mr. Speaker, the denial of voting rights to people in the District of Columbia who pay their

taxes every day and are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all around the world is finally sparking national attention, and even more important, it is sparking bills in the Congress. And bills not only from me and my side of the aisle, but I am pleased to note from my Republican friends.

Several Members are considering or have already put in bills to give voting rights for the residents of the District of Columbia, and all of these are Republican bills and worth noting on this floor. On behalf of the people of the District of Columbia, I want to express my appreciation for these Members who have come forward with their own bills.

The first national interest comes, of course, from our ``First in the Nation'' primary. It was nonbinding, but that did not much matter. People came out in double the numbers they came out in the 2000 Presidential primary. And they came out because the primary was in part to cast a personal protest vote against paying taxes without representation here in the House, no representation in the Senate whatsoever, and yet serving as we have in our Armed Forces since our Nation was established, all without representation. Today, we are once again disproportionately represented in our Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bills, however, are not about protest. They are about a remedy. I am still gathering signatures, and am grateful to Members who have signed on to my No Taxation Without Representation Act, and I will continue to do so. Indeed, this bill got out of committee in the Senate a couple of years ago, and I certainly have not given up on it. But I do want to come to the floor this afternoon to say I welcome bills, especially the bills by my Republican friends, and I am very encouraged and will continue to work with them until we get a bill that everybody can agree upon.

My own bill, of course, would give representation in the House and the Senate for the District of Columbia. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), Chair of the Committee on Government Reform, which has oversight for the District of Columbia, is considering a bill that would have a House-only seat.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) has long favored and often in the past put in bills for voting rights. His is a retrocession bill. D.C. would return to the State of Maryland, that is to say, if Maryland agreed, with Congress maintaining control over the Federal enclave.

And now the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) has come forward with a bill that treats the District, for purposes of voting rights only, as Maryland citizens. District residents could vote in Maryland, could run for the Maryland Senate seats. We would remain an independent jurisdiction and there would be no retrocession.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) has represented that he is considering a statehood bill. The problem with that, and I appreciate his interest, is that we had a vote on statehood in 1993, but the District had a grave financial problem and had to give back State costs, so we do not presently qualify to become a State.

We are asking for voting representation because every citizen qualifies for representation in her legislature. As long as the Federal Government takes the money of the people I represent every April 15, as long as we have men and women fighting and dying abroad, and today especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is simply intolerable for there to be unequal representation.

For my constituents, this is a pure and simple question of disparate treatment, inequality of treatment and discrimination. At a time when we are insisting on democracy not only in Iraq but everywhere we see, everywhere we go in the world, at some point people are going to point their fingers right at us and say, ``Why do you not give the same democracy to the people who live closest to you, the people of your own Nation's capital?'' To that, our only answer can be,''Duh?''

We do not have any answer. The fact that I have colleagues on the other side of the aisle, three of them, who have come forward with their own bills says to me that there is a gathering consensus that we can, in fact, move forward with a bill.

I am not going to abandon my bill at the moment. Ultimately all of these bills will come together, and I have no doubt that together we can find the solution to the last remaining and most intolerable scar on our democracy.

My thanks, finally and once again, to my colleagues, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) for yielding to me. I particularly thank him for this Special Order and for the emphasis this Special Order has taken as I was watching it. I want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), for focusing on his charts and his very lucid explication on what is happening, particularly to baby boomers who are the retirees, many of whom have begun, those who are 62, already begun to take their benefits.

The reason I value what is happening on the floor is that discussions of deficits quickly go off into the arcane about economics and the rest. And I, of course, applaud those who call attention to what deficits do to slowing economic growth, through raising interest rates, to crowding private investment. But I must say to the average American, until the interest rate goes up on his or her car, there may be little understanding of what that means. I am very concerned with what it means in particular for the baby boomers who seem to me are in dire risk because of the President's budget which is not even out yet. It is already controversial.

CBO's projections, as I understand them, do not even take into account at least two huge items that are almost inevitably going to be before us. One is the alternative minimum tax and another is, of course, the President's very explicit statement when he was right before us last week that he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. We do not even include that in your projections. They were not even looking at the real possibilities here assuming that what the President wishes for tax cuts, in fact, does happen.

We, of course, are looking at the worst deficit in our history. My good friends on the other side tell us, well, it is really because of spending. If they would only stop spending, things would be okay.

I have looked at the figures since 2001 and 9/11. Each year, 90 percent or more of the spending has been for defense and homeland security. In 2001, 95 percent of the funding increases were for defense and homeland security; 93 percent in 2002; 90 percent in 2003; 90 percent in 2004. It is not the spending, as they say, stupid. It is the tax cuts. And we have got to come to grips with that and face that reality if we want to do something about it.

Mr. Speaker, the baby boomers are those people who were born in 1946 or begin with those people born in 1946. They will begin to collect reduced Social Security payments in 2008 at 62 because you can do that. These same baby boomers are going to qualify for Medicare benefits when they get to be 65 in 2011. We already know what is happening to Medicare costs. They are rising so fast they have become an unbelievable figure.

What concerns me most is, what we are going to do now that we have already eaten up the surplus that we were putting into Social Security and Medicare trust funds. What are we going to do? We know that the Medicare bill says what we will do is, the Congress at a certain point in time will have to look at whether or not to cut benefits or to raise taxes.

Assuming we are in the same Congress we are in now, and I pray we are not, then, of course, what this Congress would look to do is to cut benefits. That would be a historic first. Therefore, when one begins to talk about the deficit, I have come to the floor to say that I think the Congressional Black Caucus tonight has put the emphasis where it belongs. Let us put it on some real bodies, the people who will suffer, the baby boomers who are already almost upon us.

For the moment, let us think of what the President already has proposed, the first step towards privatizing Social Security, which really sinks the whole thing and makes it impossible to even talk about where younger workers would be allowed to redirect part of their payroll taxes out of the Social Security trust funds and they themselves deal with private accounts. We have got to put all of this on the table and have an honest discussion about it.

I thank my good friends who have come to the floor tonight for beginning that very honest discussion.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding; and I thank him, above all, for his leadership in affording the opportunity for members of the Congressional Black Caucus and

other Members to come forward with this so-called ``prerebuttal.'' I am going to speak on one subject instead of on the many subjects that concern me likely to be raised this evening, because this subject is at the center of black misery today. Instead of calling it a prerebuttal, I literally mean it as friendly advise because the subject is the cause of so much chaos in the African American community, and that subject is jobs.

The President got 10 percent of the black vote the last time, something under 10 percent; and there are various figures about how much he proposes to get this time. What the President has got to understand about the African American community is that it is the most bottom line community in the United States, that is to say, it votes its bottom line because it has no choice, because it is further behind in our country because of historic circumstances of which we are all aware. The indication of just how bottom line the black community is, is switch from the Republican Party, the so-called party that freed the slaves, to the Democratic Party when the bottom line was whether or not you could get a job or had enough to eat, and those are the issues that are central to the African American community today.

Yet, I expect the President to boast of the economy. He stands before his economy today, his economy, his economy after almost 4 years. But our response to the President is borrowed from 8 years ago. It is not the economy, Mr. President, it is not the economy, and I will not say ``stupid.'' It is not the economy, Mr. President. It is jobs. There is no such thing as a recovery without jobs. Whatever happens on Wall Street will be irrelevant to the average American if there is joblessness and fear of joblessness; and that is what continues to grip our country, despite improvement in the stock market. Any doubt about that may have vanished yesterday when Iowa, the preeminent antiwar State, according to the responses to the Democratic primary, said as its residents left the polls that jobs was the number one issue. Half of the American people indicate they are worse off than when this President took office. Jobs and the lack of health care, which is in our country attached to jobs, is the reason for that sentiment from the American people. And if half of the American people say they were worse off, I can assure my colleagues that the majority of African Americans would answer they are worse off to that question.

This Congress left town this time, the latest in memory; but they left, but they did not leave before they made sure that the pharmaceutical companies had theirs in the Medicare bill, and they certainly did not leave until the tax cuts for the wealthy were secure. But they left a country at 9 percent unemployment.

For African Americans, that represents a 20 percent increase since this President took office. We have some befores and afters to compare here in recent history, because there was a 48 percent decline in unemployment while President Clinton was in office. Yet Congress left town without any jobs program and with virtually no discussion on this floor of a jobs program. I understand the President is likely to talk about a retraining program this evening.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to have to say a few words about what we need more, that is a jobs program, not a retraining program. And I want to have something to say about how we can get there, by the way, with no increase in the deficit.

Congress left town without even any extension of unemployment benefits even though it was just before Christmas. Merry Christmas, America. Congress left town without increasing the minimum wage at all even though average income has decreased every year for the last 2 years. Congress left town with the child tax credit for the 6 million of the poorest Americans not there. Everyone else but the poorest even though the poverty rate in our country is up 3 years in a row.

Congress left town with a provision in the omnibus bill to reduce overtime for 8 million people. You know, for many of these people this is the difference between a low wage existence and a living wage: To work for it; you work overtime and you will get it.

Now, African Americans knew better than to get used to the Clinton economy. For a while we did hold some hope that this two-for-one, that is to say we had always have twice as much unemployment as white people, would somehow disappear, we held that hope because I can tell you here in this city even African American men getting out of jail could often find a job because then employers were looking for workers.

Today, Mr. Speaker, workers are searching endlessly for jobs. And the reason the unemployment rate does not look any worse than it does is because so many millions have dropped out of even looking any longer. I do not expect an economy like the economy of the late 1990s. And that is not the comparison I would make or the standard I would hold this President to. But I do not expect what we have seen, that black unemployment would increase faster than any period for the last 20 years.

I do not expect a month like October, for example, when blacks absorbed all of the unemployment. They were the only part of the population where unemployment grew. That kind of disproportion is not only heartless, it is immoral. And in the face of that, surely we can do more than talk about retraining. We can talk about an honest-to- goodness jobs program of the kind we have always had in times of recession.

Yet what bothers me most about the most recent period is there has been no particular American conversation about the disproportionate effect of joblessness on African Americans. We used to always talk about it. We used to talk about there is twice as much unemployment for African Americans, the effect that was having, having to reach down and do something about it. We ought to go back and read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Because African American unemployment has become the invisible unemployment.

I indicated earlier that I was not talking about something we could not do something about. The Democrats introduced the Rebuild America Act of 2003. We could have given America a quick start in this jobless recovery with a provision of jobs in areas where they are most needed and where the country most needs work without increasing the deficit because this bill, a $50 billion bill was paid for. It would have had an extraordinary effect, particularly before Christmas, because many of these jobs would have been in manufacturing and construction, and that is where the ripple effect is in areas like retailing, for example, where blacks are found often disproportionately.

But what did we do? Instead of looking at the Rebuild America Act, we went home. This act was focused on manufacturing and that is where the President is in trouble and where the Congress is in trouble, and on construction where the country is in trouble, where he is in trouble.

We could have relieved our national infrastructure deficit with this $50 billion bill that would cover every aspect of our own infrastructure. Now, I was particularly interested in this because I am on the Permanent Select Committee on Homeland Security and because I fret daily about the deficits in infrastructure and what that does to security. For example, I want aviation. We have shored up some of airline security, but rail security, for example, is just out there. Amtrak, your Union Stations around the country and the lines that go in between them with tracks that invite mischief.

There was something in this bill for every district. For example, there were several things in there that would have helped my district, $500 million for pending work items, for rehabilitation of Federal buildings. Pending work items that they cannot get to. And the interesting thing about this bill was that everything it was directed at were projects ready to go. Projects on the table waiting for the money to lift them up so that they could put people to work and deal with ailing infrastructure in our country.

The average length of unemployment today is more than 20 weeks. This is the longest period of unemployment in 20 years. Mr. Speaker, this President must speak directly to jobs, to the fear of jobs, to the loss of unemployment insurance with jobs or else he has given

us nothing that essential to reviving the domestic economy of our country.

Yeah, we got the slogan for tonight. It is not ``It Is the Economy, Stupid''; it is jobs. And not ``stupid,'' I respect our President. It is jobs. It is not the economy, Mr. President; it is jobs, Mr. President.

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

Mr. Speaker, this morning's news talks about the elections in Russia. At the same time it speaks about elections, it talks about the steady erosion of democratic freedoms embodied in these elections, and it says there is mounting national and international criticism of those elections because of the denial of democracy as defined by free societies, which is because of the heavy hand of the Putin majority.

We are blind if we do not see analogous denials of democracy American-style wrapped up in this omnibus bill. Is it democracy when, for the first time, we hold open votes unconscionably long, pressure Members, it has been alleged illegally, with threats or

bribes until you win what the vote shows you had already lost? We have done that at least a half a dozen times, ranging from 25 minutes to 3 hours.

Is it democracy when you reverse the votes of the House, as we have done on the overtime provision?

Is it democracy when we have one-party conferences, locking out the other party?

Is it democracy when there are in this bill, a major bill, provisions for which there have been no votes at all? Like the D.C. voucher provision, there was no vote in the Senate because they had no votes. The ultimate abuse is they removed the few routine accountability provisions that by voice vote did get in the bill for D.C. vouchers. One was that teachers have to have a college degree.

Is it democracy when you lard the bill with Republican pork, defunding the No Child Left Behind bill while your own school districts are screaming because they have had to cut their own school funding?

I must say, if we pass this bill, it will be an appropriate way to end this session, because this entire session has been a monument, as this bill is, to the denial of democracy.

In this session, Mr. Speaker, we have crossed the line. We have crossed the line between the kind of contentiousness that has gone on for 200 years in this House to one-party rule in the people's House. The way to begin to remedy this, and we must remedy this now, we must not carry this procedure, this way of conducting business, into the next year; the way to remedy this outrage is to vote against this bill.