Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 3151 and H.R. 3583.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday was December 7, known as the Day of Infamy, so named by the great President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mr. Speaker, I suggest this evening that this day is a kind of day of infamy for this House, particularly with the passage of this conference report. This conference report contains within it so many violations of basic democracy in this House that this day will not soon be forgotten, which is why I make the analogy that I did.

The conference report leaves many victims in its wake. Let me name just a few of them. It is a 50/50 country. But if you were not of the majority party, if you are among the independents, you had little participation in this final product. Or if you happened to live in the wrong State or the wrong district, even though it might be closely held, you will look long and hard before finding your place in this conference report.

And help you, help you if you are in the low or middle classes of our country because you have been sacrificed time and time again in this report to big corporations, to wealthy Americans. If you are among the millions of what I call the disfavored elderly who will get little or no help from the prescription drug Medicare bill, you will not find yourselves among the bills we have passed this year on prescription drugs. The most unfortunate of you are the long-term unemployed. Unbelievably, this is the second Christmas Congress has gone home to leave the long-term unemployed with no relief to face the Christmas and the new year with a

rough, rather than a happy, holiday. I do not know how the House could have done that, at least for these long-term unemployed.

But the victims, Mr. Speaker, are also in this body and in the Senate. The Republicans themselves are going to have to face the music when they go home to face the 8 million who will lose their overtime pay and be informed of it just in time for Christmas. It is going to be some Christmas for them. This Republican House voted decisively to eliminate their overtime pay, but they must have heard from them because when it came time for the motion to instruct, all of a sudden we had a majority with us against the provision to eliminate overtime pay. What happened? Their own majority reversed them. So now they have got to go back home and try to say, I was for you, but I am in the party that was against you. How do you explain that?

On the Senate side, there are any number of provisions, which is why this conference report is likely to go nowhere before Christmas. Let me just pluck one analogous example. The Senate has surely heard from the American people on vouchers. They just did not have the votes to do anything on D.C. vouchers. Why? Because everybody's school district is being cut because of 3 years of a poor economy under this President. Because our promise to fund disabled children is an unkept promise of the decades. Because our promise to fund No Child Left Behind is $9 billion in the hole. The Senate was not about to vote for any D.C. vouchers. What happened? Passed one House, never passed the other, pops up in this bill. You think that is democracy? If it happened only one time to one or two bills, that would be one thing. Sprinkled throughout, this bill is just strewn with this kind of undemocratic authoritarian dealing, more typical of countries that we criticize. But the villain in this piece has seldom been spoken of because it is not only the Republican majority, Mr. Speaker; it is the Republican President. We do not see his face here, but we have felt his big footprint, his one-man approach to this bill; and he has offended many members of both parties, especially in the Senate.

I predict this day that this bill will not get through the other body. I do not think the Senate is about to bless a bill that imposes the will of one man of the majority on the House and the Senate alike. This term we have changed the very character of this House. We need to come back no longer seeking comity and bipartisanship. We need to make the goal of the House to return to its ancient democratic traditions.

Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the Anacostia Watershed Initiative Act of 2003. I am very pleased to be joined on the bill by several of my colleagues from the Washington region--Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Wynn, Mr. Moran, and Mr. Van Hollen.

Although the beautiful Potomac, a river we also love, gets most of the attention in this region, it is the Anacostia that flows closest to the Congress and to the neighborhoods of the city and region. The Anacostia flows just 2,000 yards from the majestic Capitol Dome. The wastewater from the Capitol complex flows into the river when the ancient D.C. sewer system--built over the last century and a half-- overflows on rainy days. The polluted runoff from congressional and federal parking lots and the fertilizers and pesticides from our magnificent lawns and gardens go into the Anacostia on those days as well. Many Members of Congress maintain a home in the Anacostia watershed. It is a sad fact that more than 30 years after the passage of the Clean Water Act, the Anacostia, despite its proximity to the Congress, remains badly contaminated with fecal bacteria, toxic chemicals, heavy metals, and many other pollutants. Contact with the water of the Anacostia isn't safe for human beings, there are official warnings not to eat fish caught in the river, and according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more than half of the bottom-feeding brown bullheads in the river have cancerous tumors caused by chemicals.

We're simply not doing a good job of taking care of our home river. The Anacostia has no treatment plants and very few small industrial sites. Federal agencies are the biggest polluters of the river. Nearly all of its pollution enters the river from public streets, storm drains, and sewers. These public systems--particularly the District's combined sewer--are old and inadequate and should have been upgraded years ago.

One of the many challenges in cleaning up the Anacostia is that five- sixths of the land area that contributes polluted water to it is within the state of Maryland, about a sixth of the total is owned and managed by the federal government. The residents of the District of Columbia especially feel the effects of the pollution. The result of that geography is that neither the District of Columbia nor any other single jurisdiction can achieve the cleanup of the river by itself. If we are to envision the day that the Anacostia can be a real asset for the entire Washington region extraordinary cooperation among the federal, state, and local governments will be required.

This is the purpose of the Anacostia Watershed Initiative Act of 2003. The bill that my colleagues and I are introducing today would bring together federal, state, District of Columbia and other local governments in a joint approach to cleaning up the river. It would set up a mechanism to develop, fund, and implement a 10-year Comprehensive Action Plan for the Anacostia watershed that would address both the District's outdated and inadequate combined sewer system and the runoff from federal facilities and other properties in Maryland. It would involve all the major players in a truly unified approach to cleaning up the home river of Congress.

This legislation has broad support, not only among members of congress, but from state and local officials, environmentalists, and the business community. With regional colleagues as original co- sponsors, I will work hard for the passage of the Anacostia Watershed Initiative Act of 2003 and know that our colleagues in the other body will work for it there, too. I urge all members of the House to join me in creating a Congressional home river that we can be truly proud of.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Michigan, for yielding me this time and for his assistance on this bill.

I strongly support the many provisions of H.R. 3521, but I rise to speak particularly about the D.C. tax incentives because the Members of this body have seen what these tax incentives have done with their own eyes. They have seen the District of Columbia rise from the dust with the amount of building we see downtown and in the neighborhoods, and that is due in no small part to the tax incentives that are in this extender.

I want to thank the Speaker, who has worked with me to assure me that these tax incentives would be extended. He promised me 2 years ago. He has continued to say this is going to happen. I appreciate that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) have kept on this. I know there were some difficulties. And I particularly appreciate my good friend, the ranking member in the minority, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel).

I appreciate that the tax incentives have been so effective that the President actually put them in his budget. I think it is because these tax incentives are the essence of how bipartisan tax work can help revive our Nation's Capital. The District had difficulty in the 1990s, the way New York and Philadelphia did. They had States, we did not, and I thought it was more important to get the businesses and the residents to revive the city than to keep asking the Congress for money. And, in fact, these tax incentives have recouped many times over for the Treasury.

There is a $5,000 homebuyer credit if you buy a house in the District of Columbia. This has reversed the flight from the District of Columbia, and we have seen a 50 percent increase in homebuying over the last 5 years. Many of them are staff from the House and Senate who are always talking to me about it. According to the studies, the majority of this homebuyer energy comes from the tax credit and not only from increased employment and declining mortgage rates.

There is a wage credit, which has been an incentive for many employers to remain in our city, and particularly for our tourist industry. There is the EZ Bonds that have brought us retail businesses of the kind that used to flee from the District, like K Mart. The zero capital gains can be seen in the $200 million Gallery Place development downtown.

So I, therefore, want to thank my colleagues for all this bill has done for our City, and I strongly urge its passage.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) for his graciousness and for yielding to me. I want to first offer my gratitude to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson) who had to get us all together and work very closely with us so that we could achieve agreement on this bill, agreement that would be accepted by the other body as well. That took some skill.

I need to compliment and thank my good friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette), the chair of the Transportation subcommittee which has jurisdiction over this bill, the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management, because his patience and graciousness were important here, as well as in not insisting that we have yet another hearing on the bill but move forward rapidly so that the bill could be approved during this session.

But, of course, no one deserves more credit for what we do tonight than my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis), whom I knew as a colleague in another life, a colleague in a life in which he was held in just the high esteem that he is held in this body, and that says something. So it is perfectly fitting that the major sponsor of this bill would be the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis). Who would have thought 40 years ago that he or I would be here or that there would ever be such a bill.

It is a great tribute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) that when he first came to the Congress and was a part of the Committee on Transportation and the subcommittee that has jurisdiction that this is one of the first bills that he authored. So for him, this is a stellar moment. In a real sense what we do tonight is to pick up the baton. It has been dropped over and over again for 100 years. There have been many tries in both Houses. And what is important about what we do tonight is that we brought both Houses together.

I remember being on the committee when we passed the bill, guided it to the floor, thought we had the work done. Tonight, we know we have the work done because we know both Houses approved this bill.

Why an African American museum? I do want to say a word about that. Because there might be museums, perhaps should be museums for many, many kinds of people who have come to our shores. And I take nothing from them when I say that I hope that they attain some such recognition in our city. But no one can doubt that there is no American story without telling the story of African Americans in this country who came to this country as it was being founded, as it was being born, before it was a Nation.

We cannot understand the greatness of our Nation without understanding what our country has overcome. We can know that we can do anything if we come to grips with where we were, understand it, and see where we have come to. We are a Nation who started with original sin, with slavery, and then progressed only to discrimination under law.

And what makes this story so important for us, and for Americans of every background, is to look at the history and where it has brought us. If we start even in this city, the city of my birth, and see the end of slavery, the establishment of the Freeman's Bureau and Howard University named for a Civil War general, but then look at the sad history of this city, the Capital of the United States, where I went to segregated schools and had public accommodations that were segregated. But then look to the poor people's campaign and the march on Washington and the triumph of true Americanism,

this story needs to be told. Because when we get discouraged about not being all we want to be, we need to go to an African American museum and see from whence we came.

Finally, let me say that my own constituents, the people of the District of Columbia, this majority African American city have been in true Thanksgiving that we would get to this day. I commend the Presidential commission consisting of many citizens from across the Nation, including citizens of this town that have worked single- handedly for this bill. But for the people who live here, who consider themselves the guardians of the city's museums and monuments, this is a very special day. We promise to indeed be a guardian of this museum, to work closely with my good friends the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), with all of those who have supported us on this bill, so we can raise the funds now that we have an obligation in writing, in this bill, from our country to, in fact, realize this bill so that we can all be at the groundbreaking. I thank both gentlemen again for their leadership on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be cosponsor of H.R. 3491, a bill to establish within the Smithsonian complex the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The most important new national museum in decades as we take this giant step to making the museum a reality, praise and thanks must be extended to Congressman John Lewis, my friend who introduced this bill when he was first elected to Congress and before I was elected to Congress.

My strong support for this bill has several sources. I have been a cosponsor of the museum bill since my first term in Congress in 1991. I have been a member of the Transportation Subcommittee that often considered the museum bill during the several years when the museum was repeatedly debated and voted. The House passed the museum bill during the 103rd Congress only to have Senator Jesse Helms stop it in the Senate. I represent the District of Columbia whose residents consider themselves the guardians of our memorials, a city with a majority African-American population that has watched and waited from the front row for the promised museum. I am a fourth generation Washingtonian with what I must admit is a personal stake that I trace to my great grandfather, Richard Holmes, who walked away from slavery in Virginia long before the Civil War to start a new life and a family in the District, where my family has long awaited the museum. Finally, I am an African-American who joins millions of blacks and people of every color and background that have asked for the promise of an African American museum to be kept.

This bill is a good bill. It lists four sites for the location of the museum. I am pleased to see the working relationships between the Smithsonian and the National Capitol Planning Commission (NCPC) are preserved. The bill provides that the Board of Regents will consult with not only the NCPC and the Commission on Fine Arts, but also the Chair and Vice Chair of the Presidential Commission, and further the Chair of the Commission's Site Subcommittee. The appropriate Congressional Committees will also be consulted regarding the final site selection. The bill also provides for a 50/50 split in cost sharing for the museum, 50% of the cost to be paid by the federal government and 50% to come from the private sector. Finally, the bill authorizes $17m in FY04 for the Smithsonian to carry out its duties under the Act and such sums as are necessary for each fiscal year thereafter.

This bill is especially appreciated, considering that in one form or another this subject has been before Congress for nearly 100 years. Civil War veterans first raised the idea of a memorial as they sought recognition for their service to their country in all its wars and for their ancestors because the country's large population of slaves, free blacks and their descendants were instrumental in building our nation. Colonel Charles Young, the highest ranking African American officer and the third black graduate of West Point asked Congress in 1919 for ``a memorial to the Negro dead and that that memorial be the thing for which these Negroes gave their lives--liberty, justice, equal opportunities and educational facilities, the suppression of lynching by making it a federal crime [and] the abolition of jimcrow [sic] cars.'' No one can doubt that the case for the museum has long ago been made. It was accepted and recognized by Congress as a worthy project, including a $50,000 appropriation even in 1929, at a time when racial segregation was the law of the land.

Much work has been done, and much work lies ahead of us, but passage of this bill will be a giant step forward to placing African American history in its appropriate place in our Nation's story. Mr. Speaker I would like to quote from the museum's mission statement:

``The National Museum of African American History and Culture will give voice to the centrality of the African American experience and will make it possible for all people to understand the depth, complexity, and promise of the American experience. The museum will serve as a national forum for collaboration with educational and cultural institutions in the continuing quest for freedom, truth, and human dignity.''

H.R. 3491 is a historic bill. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill.

Mr. Speaker, funeral services were held for the first elected Mayor of the District of Columbia in the 20th century, Mayor Walter E. Washington, on Saturday, November 1, 2003. The funeral had the full trappings of a state funeral that Mayor Washington deserved. He lay in state at the John A. Wilson Building (the District Building) on Friday, October 31. Following memorial services, which took place at the Washington National Cathedral, Mayor Washington's coffin, draped with the District of Columbia flag, was carried through the city on a large fire truck, passing through neighborhoods associated with his life in our city, including LeDroit Park, where he lived, Howard University, where he attended undergraduate and law school, and the City Museum which he helped to found. He was laid to rest at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery.

I paid tribute to Mayor Washington in remarks last week and also placed in the Record a Washington Post editorial and a personal tribute from Post editorial writer, Colbert King. Howard University Law School Professor J. Clay Smith, Jr., who served with me when I chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has asked me to share with the House his reflections to the faculty and students of the law school concerning Mayor Washington. I am pleased to submit his remarks for the Record.

In Memory of Walter E. Washington 1915-2003

(By Professor J. Clay Smith, Jr.)

Dear Faculty and Students:

I pause today to share with you just a bit of information

about one of our most esteemed graduate, the Honorable Walter

E. Washington.

Many of our students attend law school because they are

interested in politics or public service. For nearly 140

years our law school has produced several leading political

figures in the Nation and beyond. One of our graduates, the

Honorable Walter E. Washington, class of 1938, died this

week. Why is his life important to us? He was a graduate of

Howard University School of Law, who is an example of what

our students can do to make the world a better place. It is

an opportunity for us to reflect, even for a moment and

consider why we came to Howard Law School and the aspirations

that directed us to enter the profession of law or to teach.

Walter Washington was a friend of many people in Washington

and abroad. He was graduated during a period when life was

hard, but his spirit to achieve was strong and his

determination unstoppable. There was little if any

scholarship money when Walter Washington entered the law

school. His generation worked their way through school, but

they studied long hours at night into the morning sun.

Washington, like so many of the students of his generation,

were guided by their law teachers, yet they also brought with

them seeds planted for the future from their high schools,

colleges, families, and friends.

Washington was a graduated from Howard University and its

law school. I was honored to know him personally, but not as

much as I would have like to have known the depth of his

extraordinary intellect and perseverance in his early years.

Many people knew of him very early in his life and most must

have predicted that he would be successful in his calling to

the law. But he stretched beyond the law to the political

arena and in 1973, he was first appointed by President

Johnson as Mayor-Commissioner of the District of Columbia

becoming the first African American Mayor in a large city in

the Nation. He was subsequently elected as Mayor of

Washington, DC in 1974. As a recent law graduate, I remember

his election well because he was a graduate of the very law

school that I attended. It made me proud of our school and

caused me to respect him all these years even as an outsider

to the life that he lived, except for the past 7 years during

which I got to know him in more professional surroundings.

I bring this message to the faculty and more importantly to

our students as an example of what students are capable of

becoming and how we influence them in the ways each of us

teach and inspire them, even students who may not see the

value or the power of their intellects that will rest upon

recognition of their own worth and accountability. Walter

Washington loved his law school and the friends that he made

during his matriculation at Howard University. In so many

ways, Mayor Washington's life is like so many of our

graduates who placed or left marks in the sand that will not

and cannot be brushed away. Mayor Washington will be

remembered not only by the wonderful articles that appear in

today's newspaper (Washington Post Oct. 28, 2003), he is to

be studied by our students as an exemplar of what (you) can

become. As for us who teach, I hope that from time to time we

remind our students that what we do here at the law school is

to help mold them toward law so that they can lead as Walter

E. Washington and so many others of our graduates have done

to secure the democracy, to find answers to secure the poor,

to create better housing, to be honored by the people as

leaders from the law school of its first Dean, John Mercer

Langston.

Nevertheless, to achieve these wonderful levels, giants

like Washington, to hear him tell it, meant that a 100%

effort was required in the study of law. Greatness may be

defined in many ways, our law school has graduated many great

people, and many more will come and leave this law school

that will and who have prepared themselves to be leaders and

successful lawyers in communities they will serve. Mayor

Washington was one of such students. He will be missed, but

he has left with us, particularly our law school, seeds that

will grow many others like him.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce a public safety bill for the second week in a row. My current bill would reauthorize the successful Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program that has used federal funds to help put more cops on the streets and to fund community policing. Like a similar Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Joseph Biden, Jr. (D-DE) and almost 50 other Senators, my bill seeks to head off the shut down of the COPS program, as forecast by the President's 2004 fiscal year budget, which severely cut COPS and critical community policing projects. Last week, I introduced the Crime Victims Assistance Act of 2003 to provide enhanced rights and protections for victims of federal crimes. This bill also has been introduced in the Senate.

As a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, I have watched police departments here and across the country pressed increasingly into protecting the homeland from potential terrorism. Our police need funding and support from the federal government now more than ever if they also are to continue to focus on the indispensable everyday duties of protecting their communities from street violence and other crime. My bill would provide funding to help police departments put more officers on the beat, purchase high-tech crime fighting tools and technology such as patrol car cameras, pay overtime devoted to community policing and homeland security, and reimburse officers for college or graduate school. Also, my bill would help the U.S. Attorney's office hire more community prosecutors who interact closely with the people they serve. The District of Columbia has been a pioneer in community prosecution, which links prosecutors to specific police districts and neighborhoods.

Recent studies show that COPS grants played a critical role in the crime drop of the nineties. Now with cities like the District experiencing alarming criminal activity, police departments need all the help they can get to find real solutions for handling the heavy double burden of balancing the securing of citizens from terrorism along with protecting them from violence and other crime in their neighborhoods.

Since it was created in the 1994 Crime bill, COPS has awarded more than $8 billion to police departments to hire or re-deploy almost 120,000 community police officers across the country. In FY 2003, the COPS office awarded $635 million in grants nationwide, and almost $7.5 million to the District, $3 million for Metropolitan Police Department homeland security overtime. In September, I announced a $750,000 grant for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to hire 10 new Metro officers who will perform community policing and homeland security functions. Many other jurisdictions received similar grants.

My bill will fund the COPS program through 2009. A key change would authorize a new, permanent COPS Overtime Program.

I urge my colleagues to continue to reauthorize the COPS program.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Second Baptist Church, the second oldest African American Baptist congregation in the District of Columbia, as it prepares to celebrate its 155th anniversary on Sunday, November 16, 2003, and its designation as a historic landmark in the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites by the Historic Preservation Review Board.

History has documented the critical role African American churches have played not only as places of spiritual fortification, but also as centers of political activism, and neighborhood preservation. Second Baptist Church is a shining example of these functions.

Second Baptist Church, located at 816 3rd Street, NW., is a longstanding anchor of a changing neighborhood north of H Street and west of North Capitol Street. Founded in 1848, Second Baptist Church was started 14 years before slaves in the District of Columbia were freed.

The church was erected in 1894 and designed by prominent Washington architect, Appleton P. Clark, Jr. Second Baptist Church represents a revival of the early phase of Gothic church architecture, but rendered in late Victorian fashion. The beautiful rose window, square towers and rusticated limestone on a granite base are suggestive of Romanesque.

Second Baptist Church began when seven members of the First Colored Baptist Church, now Nineteenth Baptist Church, left to organize the Second Colored Baptist Church of Washington City, District of Columbia.

Second Baptist Church served as a station on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War and the preceding years. It was one of the few Negro churches in Washington, D.C. that had a black minister prior to President Lincoln's Inauguration.

Second Baptist Church is considered the ``Mother Church'' for the Baptist community because from it Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in NW; Mt. Olive Baptist Church in NW; Rehoboth Baptist Church in SW; Central Baptist Church (later disbanded); St. Paul Baptist Church in Bladensburg, MD; Ebenezer and First Baptist in Takoma Park, MD were formed.

During the course of its 155 years, Second Baptist Church has had only 15 pastors: Licentiate H.H. Butler--1848; Rev. Jeremiah Asher-- 1849; Rev. Gustavus Brown--1850; Rev. Henry Butler--1853; Rev. Sandy Alexander--1856; Rev. Caleb Woodward--1861; Rev. John Mays (Maze)-- 1864; Rev. Sandy Alexander--1865; Rev. Chauncey Leonard--1868; Rev. John Gaines--1869; Rev. Madison Gaskins--1871; Rev. William Bishop Johnson--1883; Rev. Dr. J.L.S. Hollowman--1917; Rev. Smalls Bartley-- 1971; and Rev. Dr. James E. Terrell--1997 to the present.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to join me in saluting Rev. James E. Terrell, and the congregation of Second Baptist Church in the District of Columbia on the occasion of its 155th anniversary, November 16, 2003.

Mr. Speaker, I arise today to inform the House of the passing of the first Mayor of the District of Columbia in the 20th century. Some members will remember Walter Washington's service or will know him by reputation because no mayor here or, I dare say, elsewhere has enjoyed more respect from this body. Mayor Washington enjoyed the same bipartisan admiration from the two presidents during his tenure, Lyndon Johnson, who appointed Mr. Washington the District's first mayor in 1968 and Richard Nixon who signed the Home Rule Act in 1973 giving the District its current home rule status, complete with an elected mayor and city council.

The conventional wisdom is that home rule for the District depended upon Mayor Washington's performance as appointed mayor. Few would disagree. If home rule was past due then, more than 150 years after the city's founding, surely full self-government, democracy and congressional voting representation are shamefully tardy in coming to the city's approximately 600,000 residents today. Mayor Washington, who did more than any person to bring self-government to the District, deserved to see its full realization before his death. Home rule happened because people made it happen, with Walter Washington as the leader. Freedom and democracy for an entire city is a lot to have on one man's shoulders, but Walter Washington carried the burden easily. His gifts were spectacularly broad--deep integrity and ability that won him enormous professional respect as well as personal and political skills that evoked affection from the people. That combination amounts to the sum total of what it takes to lead. Few leaders have it all. Walter Washington did.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that in addition to my own statement at the time of Mayor Washington's death, I be allowed to place in the Record a Washington Post editorial and a personal tribute from Post editorial writer, Colbert King, who was a close friend of Walter Washington and who served on the Senate staff when Mr. Washington was mayor.

I ask the entire House to join me in paying tribute to a man of historic stature in the District of Columbia and in offering the profound respect and condolences of the House of Representatives to Mayor Washington's wife Mary and his family.

Norton Says Passing of Walter Washington Marks End of Home Rule Era

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released

the following statement on the passing of Mayor Walter E.

Washington.

``The era of home rule ended today with the passing of

Walter Washington. Mayor Washington simultaneously shaped the

office of mayor and the practice of home rule governance for

a city that had lived without democracy for a hundred years.

The District has a strong mayor form of government in no

small part because his service as appointed mayor

demonstrated that a mayor could lead this city as mayors of

other big cities did. His service is significant for far more

than the office he held, however; President Lyndon Johnson

appointed Walter Washington our first mayor because he wanted

a man of great character and ability to pave the way for an

elected mayor. The people of the District returned the

compliment by electing Walter Washington our first elected

mayor. Residents realized he had the ``right stuff' to be

mayor--not only outstanding ability and integrity but also

the indispensable political skills and common touch that make

people want to follow the lead of an elected official. That

combination of gifts proved mighty useful during the 1968

riots. The mayor was legendary for his way with the President

and the Congress, but Walter Washington was appreciated in

this town not only because he could talk to power but because

he talked equally well to the powerless.

``People who missed his years as mayor often got some sense

of his political gifts on the public occasions when his

extraordinary wit was in full form as it remained throughout

Walter's life.

``With the passing of Mayor Washington, the home rule era

he shaped also passes. Perhaps, almost 30 years after Walter

Washington was first elected, Congress will now understand

that a new era of full democracy, independence and voting

rights is overdue.

``Mrs. Mary Cornelia Washington, Walter's daughter,

Bennetta Jules-Rosette and his family have my condolences and

the sympathy of the city who loved him.''

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

I can identify with the frustration of the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) because you really did do your job. You have gotten a good bipartisan bill out of committee, and I know it because up close there were things that both chairmen worked with me on together.

Their bipartisan bill did not have privatization. It is really hard to find out who are the folks that are for privatization because you will not find them in the committee, and you will not find them in the House and the Senate, and that is who I thought we were. This breaks my heart because both chairmen worked so closely with me to get changes in this bill that I wanted and some of them were controversial. An example is the slots, very controversial.

I did not get all I wanted, but instead of the proposed 36, it is down to 20 and we worked together to get that. I worked with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) and the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) because general aviation here had not been reimbursed and everybody else had been reimbursed. They said we will work with you and they did. There is $100 million in here for the small airports that were not reimbursed the way the big airlines were.

D.C. was hit especially hard because we are not open yet. They worked with me on that and there is language in there instructing the Department of Homeland Security to develop and implement a plan to open to general aviation, including charters, to the airports so that they can come in.

They worked with them on language to get airplanes here, state-of- the-art airplanes that take more passengers, but they are quieter and more fuel efficient. My only regret in this bill for myself is that the Metropolitan Airport Authority has to come here to ask for grant funds that everybody else gets automatically. Having all of that good stuff and it is full of other good stuff for the entire country in here, the chairman did not want privatization here. We have privatization messing up the bill and causing a huge controversy in this House.

First, the small airports will be the guinea pigs. The poor 69 airports they have come and screamed to high heaven. Many of us were nervous because we thought after the guinea pigs the rest of us would follow. The problem, I want to say to my good friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), is once the language is bare, it leaves the impression, and I think that most of us have the impression, that anything can be privatized now. It leaves the impression that instead of improving the bill, we have gone from bad to worse.

I know what we went through with security guards. If we believe that security guards are inherently governmental, and that is the language here, we surely have corrupted the concept if air traffic controllers are not governmental. 9/11 changed everything. It is a bright line. We are not willing to risk anything in the air.

We are no longer willing to risk anything in the air. I would defy the other side to stand up when I am through and give me an example of something that is inherently governmental if air traffic controllers are not. After 9/11 we would not leave anything to chance in the air space of our country, and the problem with the private sector is they are in the business of making money. They have got to cut corners if it gets tight. This bill fails the indispensable test of guarding our air space as we promised in the post-9/11 period.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Crime Victims Assistance Act of 2003 to benefit victims of crime here and throughout the country during a period when crime has increased as well as to help the police resolve more crimes. I commend the authors of the original bill introduced in the Senate by Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy, Minority Leader Tom Daschle, and Senators Jon Corzine, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Tim Johnson, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, Patty Murray and Charles Schumer. The bill will provide enhanced rights and protections for victims of federal crimes and will assist victims of state crimes with grant programs designed to promote compliance with state victims rights laws. The bill requires that victims concerns be incorporated into decision-making throughout the proceedings. I have changed the Senate bill only to assure the safety of those who have a personal relationship (family or other) with the victim.

This bill is an alternative to the constitutional amendment approach proposed by some in the Congress. As a lawyer who specialized in constitutional matters early in my legal career, I am confident that the improved rights and benefits that victims justifiably seek are well within existing congressional authority to grant through the legislative process. The protracted constitutional process simply puts the most arduous, lengthy and, in this case, unnecessary process in the path toward the rights and funds crime victims need now.

The bill would be particularly valuable in the District and in other jurisdictions where many crimes, including state crimes are processed through the federal courts. Among the provisions that would benefit the District and many other jurisdictions is a section that protects victims from repeat offenders. The bill requires consultation with a victim prior to a detention hearing in order to obtain information that can be presented to the court on the issue of any threat that the suspected offender may pose to the safety of the victim. The bill also requires greater notification to the victim in case of the release, escape, parole or furlough of the offender.

There have been many reports of victim reluctance to testify out of fear of harm to a victim or her family. Understandable reluctance by a victim to expose herself to further victimization must be met with strong laws, concrete assistance and services, or crime will not be deterred.

I urge my colleagues to quickly bring relief and reassurance to victims of federal and state crimes by enacting the Crime Victims Assistance Act of 2003.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands for yielding me this time and the chairman who is managing the bill on the other side, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Saxton), for their good and hard work on this bill and for bringing it to the floor before the deadline.

I appreciate that this bill was authorized in 1996 and that the Congress understood it to be an important matter, that Martin Luther King, who has been honored all over the world, has never been sufficiently honored until he is honored by the Congress of the United States in the Nation's capital. Site selection and other processes on the memorial, however, were not completed until the year 2000. So although authorized in 1996, the Congress is aware that the District has the most elaborate process for monuments in the country. You do not hear me complaining. I am a strong supporter of those processes. It is one Mall; it is priceless. We already are in danger of filling it up and not paying enough attention to it. I am working on a conservancy bill because it is deteriorating. We have to make sure that everything that goes on that Mall which is, after all, our real crown jewel, goes through each and every process and is exactly right.

And so it took some time to find the right space on the Mall. We do not just put things anywhere on the Mall anymore. This is a plot of land meant to last in perpetuity. It is already greatly endangered. But if you do not know precisely where the memorial is going to go until almost 4 years after Congress has authorized it, it is very difficult to do all of the fundraising because it is when the site is chosen that people recognize that the monument is going to happen and they come forward more easily to, in fact, contribute. It eases the process tremendously after that point.

I want to commend Alpha Phi Alpha for what they have done so far. It is herculean to do what they have done. It is a $100 million memorial, no Federal funds, one lone fraternity, the fraternity that Martin Luther King himself belonged to. They have the entire burden of raising the funds for this memorial. This bill will help them to continue the process; yet it is only 3 more years.

I believe every Member of this body and of the other body appreciates the singular place of Martin Luther King in our country's history. His reconciling, nonviolent approach was critical. Otherwise, we need only look around the world and we need only consider that we had legal discrimination in this country for 100 years after the Civil War to appreciate what this man did. All over the world in order to settle such disputes there are conflagrations going on. As I speak, in our country we have still not gotten over the Civil War. We are much further along the way, however, after the nonviolent revolution that began in the 1960s. The man most responsible for the character of that revolution is Martin Luther King, Jr., himself. It loses the Congress nothing and gives it much to simply extend the time for Alpha Phi Alpha to gather the funds necessary for a memorial for this great American.

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

Mr. Speaker, first I want to commend the chair of the subcommittee for the several hearings he had with great profit on the bill before us today and with the way he conducted those hearings so as to bring out many new ideas that have improved this bill. I rise, therefore, in support of H.R. 2535 as amended by the manager's amendment, a bill to reauthorize the program authorized by the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965.

This bill will reauthorize the Economic Development Administration for 5 years and provide authorization for sufficient funding levels to carry out its statutory obligations to provide economic opportunities in distressed areas of our country. This bill is of great importance to many struggling rural communities in our country and has very strong bipartisan support in this body.

The bill being considered this morning authorizes some new concepts, such as performance grants, and reinforces some tried and true approaches, such as ensuring economic development proceeds with close cooperation between local governments and Federal partners. One of the new concepts is the authorization of a performance grant program. Under this new program, grantees that meet or exceed goals for projects scheduled, jobs creation and financial leverage will be eligible for a performance grant of up to 10 percent of the project grant.

Further, for purposes of this act, the grantee can consider the proceeds as local funds to meet the non-Federal share requirements of this or other economic development acts. This is a new and innovative approach to rewarding high performance and provides the grantees with a tangible asset for future use. This will, we think, bring important new efficiencies to a program where there was already great efficiency according to many who testified.

The bill also authorizes the Secretary to make grants for projects to expand, redevelop or reuse brownfields sites. This is a much needed authority for major industrial sites.

I also appreciate the consideration the committee gave to my own interest in university centers and the expertise and resources they can bring to small and disadvantaged communities, just as they are well known to bring such advantages to big cities. Report language will highlight the committee's intent that the EDA should consider increasing the number of university centers. With the increase in authorized sums, I hope new university centers will become a reality.

Most of the districts that will benefit from this bill are rural communities, some of them very small, some of them larger communities. Many communities wanted to be a part of this bill because of its long history of promoting economic development and leveraging private resources, where otherwise that would be very difficult. Although, I represent a highly-urbanized district, I certainly know firsthand the singular importance of economic development, the benefits associated with economic opportunities that are created with a strong, vibrant economic development program and, of course, the persistent need for funding to transform ideas into reality.

At the April hearing on economic development, I mentioned the recent opening of the new Washington Convention Center and the immediate economic effect that it is having on my community and on the residents and community at large, including the entire region. I want to especially thank Chairman Young and Ranking Member Oberstar for their constant and beneficial leadership on this bill. I also extend my personal thanks and congratulations to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) for the interest and attention and expertise in committee he brought to reauthorizing this agency which is so vital to so many rural Americans. I strongly support H.R. 2535 and urge its passage.

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

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

I want to thank the gentleman who has just spoken. I want him to know that I think I would speak for the chair, as well as myself, when I say it was heartbreaking not to have more money for this bill because of the way in which communities came forward and wanted to be included. But we thought that pretty soon you are going to have every community from a rural area in the United States included in this bill, and for good reason. What made it heartbreaking, of course, is that we are not just talking about another bill that will throw some money out here for communities, even hard-pressed communities. What was really so rewarding was to hear experts who had looked at the program testify as to its benefits and its efficiency.

There came a time in the hearings when I wondered if I was hearing a discussion of a Federal program when its efficiencies were being touted the way they were. What the chairman and I did was to work on making these efficiencies even more widespread with new ways to not only measure performance but to reward performance. I do want to say a word about rewarding performance. The incentive portion of

this bill will also mean that the private sector, whose resources get leveraged as well, will understand why this bill is important for their participation, because they understand incentives. The joining of the performance with incentives, which means that some of that actually comes back to you to use, is a model I would like to see in other Federal legislation as well. I regret that there was not more money. I applaud the fact that there is a greater amount than before. I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) for his hard work on this bill.

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

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

I thank the gentleman for moving to restore my time by unanimous consent. And since we do have the time, I want to note how long-lasting this bill has been. I mentioned that it was first authorized in 1965 when the President was Lyndon Johnson. It was a bipartisan bill then, and it remains bipartisan today. And it comes at a time of special need for such a bill.

Since January, 2001, if we look nationwide, the number of unemployed have increased by 50 percent. We know what that means in big cities because of the media in big cities. The effect on small communities is far more serious because they do not have the economic development vehicles in the first place and because those areas by definition have found it harder to attract the vehicles on their own.

The importance of this bill is that it has given the signal to the private sector to come on in, and the bill is so successful because that is exactly what the private sector has done in rural communities where they would not have thought of coming without the Economic Development Act. So these grants are critical to economic development in good times and in poor times. They keep economic development alive very often. And what kind of money are we talking about? The chairman indicated the size of the average grant. When we come on the floor with a bill that authorizes $400 million for fiscal year 2004 and $500 million by the year 2008, we are really talking pocket change for bills that come before this body. And look at what it does. Hundreds of millions more is leveraged from private resources because of this bill.

I am very proud of the work the committee has done, but I am prouder still of what came before us in the form of benefits to rural communities and efficiencies that they had incorporated into their own economic development work.

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

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

To close, I just want to remind Members of what the mission is of this bill that was declared in 1965, to enhance community success in attracting private capital investment and lucrative job opportunities. This is not a classic public works program. What we are providing, Mr. Speaker, is seed money. And the indication of that is worth putting on the record. The average project, EDA project, leverages $10 million in private sector investment for every $1 million in Federal assistance. And I spoke earlier of the efficiency of this program that was presented at hearings. Here is an indication of that: 99 percent, that is 99 percent, which is a rare number on this floor, of EDA infrastructure projects are completed as planned and 91 percent of projects are completed on time. Would that we could say that about some other projects I can think of. I will not even mention the Visitors Center.

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

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. The President himself woke up the American people with his September 7, $87 billion sticker-shock speech. People have already voted. Choose the poll: 59 percent in one, 66 percent in another. The vote is ``no.''

The reason is the President failed to seize the issue, the one issue that could have changed people's minds, that is paying for the war with a tax cut from the top 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans. Instead, he persists in making sacrifice a one-way street, sacrifice for the troops, while the rest of us remain untouched. The President has really touched the American people this time, though, with his $87 billion request. Having almost wrecked the economy with a crippling deficit, this $87 billion will prove our economic denouement.

First, the wreck of our relations with the very allies necessary for our own protection in the war against terrorism. Then, the wreck of the volunteer Army, particularly the loss of many of our weekend warriors from the National Guard and Reserve who never signed up for an indefinite duty in a preemptive war. Every amendment before this body must be paid for except this one.

Mr. Chairman, if we approve this request, the final wreck will be the appropriation power meant to check Presidential power. Our appropriation responsibility in time of war, never a tiger, will become a pussy cat that delivers to the cat in the White House, even without getting its proverbial cup of milk.

Mr. Speaker, I am introducing today the Universal Pre- Kindergarten and Early Childhood Education Act of 2003 (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.

The Universal Pre-K Act responds both to the 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 child care 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. 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 pre-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 should mandate the expansion of early childhood education for 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. 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 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 $6,150 per year. Yet, more than 60 percent 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.