Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise against the Republican bill that kills Medicare and fails to provide affordable prescription coverage to the elderly and people with disabilities.

Mr. Speaker, once upon a time in 1989, a group of very angry seniors chased their Congressman, the powerful chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, into his car because they wanted him to know that they did not like the catastrophic health care bill.

This happens to be the picture that appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune in August of 1989. This was a bill that passed this body with overwhelming bipartisan support and all of the national senior citizens organizations supported the bill. There was only one problem. No one had checked in with rank-and-file seniors around the country who sat down with their calculators and they figured out what the benefit would be that they would get and how much it would cost them, and they did not like the answer.

Now, I show you this photo not to revive the debate on catastrophic because within a couple of months the bill was repealed, something very unusual and usually very difficult. I show you this photo as a friendly warning. If you pass H.R. 1 tonight, you better also go out and buy some running shoes because senior citizens are too smart to be fooled by Republican speeches or anybody else's speeches. They will figure out on their own what this bill does, which is, as the current chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means hopes, destroy Medicare as we know it.

Seniors will get out their calculators and figure it out.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) for yielding me time.

Again, this is just a warning, a friendly warning to you that if you pass H.R. 1 tonight, you better also go out and get your running shoes because the seniors are too smart to be fooled by your proposal. And you can trash Medicare all you want. You can call it an outdated program, antiquated; but I do not know who you are talking to.

I do believe that you love your mothers, but it is obvious to me that you do not call them enough. You do not go to senior centers enough. Not the ones I have gone to in my 5 years as director of the State Council of Senior Citizens. Seniors love their Medicare. The only thing they do not like is that it does not cover prescription drugs. And that is why if you are smart or out of shape and not able to be chased by seniors, you will vote for the Rangel-Dingell substitute.

The Democratic substitute is what seniors have been asking for and what every politician has been promising them, an understandable, defined, dependable Medicare prescription drug benefit. It has all the features of Medicare that our seniors know and love, a set premium, no copayments.

Vote for the substitute or start running.

It is obvious that the Republicans cannot do two important things at one time. Remember the 12 million children whose tax credit was dumped from the tax bill to make room for millionaires, including 1 million children of families in the military?

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Republican leader announced that they were just too busy. He said, We have a problem with simple logistics. That is why we cannot take care of the 12 million children.

He was referring to how busy the Republicans are steamrolling through a bill that turns Medicare into a voucher program, throws money at HMOs, lets drug companies continue to gouge, and leaves seniors with thousands of dollars in drug bills. The majority leader, the President, and everybody in this body knows that we could resolve the child tax credit issue in a matter of hours. All that has to happen is for the Republican leadership to stop holding these children hostage, demanding a ransom of $82 billion unpaid-for tax package. All it takes is for the House to accept the Senate bill, as a majority of the House voted to do. All it would take would be for President Bush to interrupt his whirlwind fund-raising tour long enough to demand immediate enactment of the Senate bill. Surely we can find a couple of hours here so that 12 million children are not left behind.

Mr. Speaker, once upon a time, in 1989, there was a bill that had passed the United States Congress and was signed into law called the catastrophic health care bill, and it had bipartisan support, and all of the national organizations of senior citizens supported that legislation, and it was supposed to provide catastrophic coverage to senior citizens for health care.

One problem, no one had really checked with rank and file senior citizens to find out if they wanted this legislation that caused them to have the highest effective tax rate of any Americans, to pay for benefits that they thought simply were not worth it. In other words, the senior citizens sat down with their calculators and figured out they were not interested in this legislation that had passed.

This is a photo that appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune in August of 1989. Here we see some senior citizens who are clearly very angry, with signs surrounding an automobile in which was the chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means. These senior citizens were not exactly in a friendly mood and were telling this chairman in no uncertain terms that they wanted the repeal of the catastrophic health care bill.

It was not very long afterwards that this sparked a rebellion of senior citizens across the country, and in a rare occurrence in this body the catastrophic health care bill was repealed.

I think this should serve as a warning to all of my colleagues. Check with the senior citizens. You can sit here all day and all night and say the problem is that Medicare is outdated, that it is antiquated or you can say what the Chairman of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means of today said, To those who say that the bill proposed by the Republicans would end Medicare as we know it, our answer is we certainly hope so. Seniors listen: We certainly hope so.

Mr. Speaker, I hope the seniors are listening. Old fashioned Medicare is not very good, says the chairman, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

You better check with those seniors, because what they tell us is they like Medicare. They want Medicare. The only thing wrong with Medicare is that it does not cover enough, like prescription drugs, but what they like about it is that it is a known benefit, it is a known premium, and it is there for them when they need it.

Another word that is used all the time is choice. We are going to give senior citizens choices now. Well, I have to tell my colleagues, in all the years that I was the executive director of the Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens and in all the years that I was in the State legislature and now in Congress, never has a senior citizen come up to me and said, Congresswoman, what I want is a choice of HMOs, a choice of insurance companies, send me those brochures so I can pick, tell those insurance agents to get me on the phone so they can pitch their insurance company to me.

Seniors want the kind of choice they get under Medicare, a choice of doctors, a choice of hospitals, a choice of specialists. That is the kind of choices that they want.

In fact, the only choice under this Republican bill is the choice that HMOs and insurers get, not senior citizens, because private drug plans, HMOs, get to choose what premiums to charge. There is no uniform benefit of premium under Medicare.

Private drug plans get to choose the copayments that they will charge. Private drug plans get to choose what pharmacies are in their network. They get to choose what drugs are covered. So if you want to give the HMOs and the insurance companies that kind of choice, then this bill is for you, but if you want to give senior citizens what they really want, then you are going to expand Medicare the way the Democrats have proposed, by giving them a prescription drug benefit under Medicare that they can count on, that they know what the premium is.

This legislation that is passed in the House is going to do exactly what the chairman said. It is going to destroy Medicare. It will be the end of Medicare. That is what happens in 2010 with this bill. So if you do not want to be chased down the street, then all of us better say no to the Republican bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule which would adopt a Motion to Go to Conference on H.R. 1308, The All-American Tax Relief Act of 2003. Here we go again. President Bush and the House Republican leadership are once again showing their contempt for working families that are struggling to make ends meet in our sluggish economy. This rule is a shameful effort to deny assistance to the 6.5 million families and their 12 million children who earn between $10,500 to $26,000 a year. Nearly 674,000 children and 378,000 families, or one in four children back in my home state of Illinois, would have qualified for this aid Nationwide, one million of these kids are the children of veterans or active members of the armed forces. Is this how the Republican leaderships and the Bush Administration wish to repay the brave men and women who have put their lives on the line to serve their country? We should defeat this rule and immediately adopt the Senate- passed legislation which would provide immediate aid to these hard working families.

Just a few weeks ago, President Bush and Republican leaders passed another job killing tax bill that provided even more tax cuts for millionaires. Behind closed doors, Vice President Cheney and Republican leaders in Congress deliberately left millions of children behind to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and tax dodging corporations. This was not an accident or an oversight. A House Ways and Means Committee spokesperson confessed, ``Adjustments had to be made.'' Of course, no adjustments had to be made to the nearly $604,000 tax break recieved by Vice President Cheney or the $332,000 given to Treasury Secretary John Snow. In fact, the total tax savings for President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the Cabinet could be up to $3.2 million. The Bush Administration showed their true colors. This callous decision outraged the American public. People all around the country demanded fairness.

The United States Senate was shamed into passing a Democratic proposal to provide those low-income families with their well-deserved child tax credit that was removed in a secret deal by Vice President Cheney. Instead of doing the right thing and passing the Senate bill, the House Republican leadership is trying to pass another budget busting $82 billion tax bill that will increase our growing national debt. When President Bush took office we had a $5.6 trillion ten-year surplus. We now have a $2 trillion deficit over the same period of time. According to CBO, the President's tax cut not the war on terrorism accounts for the growth in deficit.

This bill is a gimmick. It is a delay tactic. The Republican leadership knows that this price tag is unacceptable to many in the Senate. No wonder the House Republican leadership is not even allowing members of the people's house an opportunity to offer any amendments today. If they allowed amendments we might pass child care tax credit for the 12 million children of the working class who have been sacrificed to make room for the Bush class. This begs the question, why do President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and House Republicans have so much contempt for working families?

The House Republican Leadership opposes the Senate bill because the lower income hard working families do not deserve a tax cut, they say, because they do not pay taxes. That is a lie and an insult to the millions who are teacher aids, home heath care workers, and child care providers. They pay sales tax, they pay excise taxes, they pay taxes on gasoline, and they pay a payroll tax, they pay taxes for which there is never a cut, never a special break. These are also the same families that struggle to pay their rent and provide for their children. We should help these families immediately.

Put the interests of working families before the needs of the Bush class. Vote instead for hard working families. Defeat this rule.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1115, the so-called Class Action Fairness Act. This bill is actually unfair to consumers because it would make it more difficult, more expensive, and more time-consuming for Americans with legitimate claims to access justice in class-action lawsuits. Instead, this bill rewards corporate wrongdoers and companies that fail to avoid dangerous practices and refuse to remove faulty products from store shelves.

Class action suits are an invaluable asset to consumers and all who engage in business of any kind. No one is immune from potentially being treated unfairly, being discriminated against, being taken advantage of, or being cheated. However, those who are victims are often those with no voice and no resources to fight back. But class action suits allow them to join with hundreds of others who have suffered the same harm and, together, become a strong voice for justice. In many cases, class action lawsuits are the only way that those who have been harmed can be heard and have their day in court.

Unfortunately, this bill would make most class action suits and the empowerment they provide to consumers a thing of the past. We've seen this bill repeatedly in the past, and we're seeing it again today because the Republicans will stop at nothing to protect their big money corporate supporters--those who get them elected--from being held accountable for their actions. This is especially evident in the bill before us today which goes further than the Republican class action bills of the past by making the legislation retroactive! If passed, this bill would apply to pending class actions, including the cases against Enron and WorldCom for financial fraud, Dow Chemical for environmental damage, Wal-Mart for employment discrimination, and Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott Laboratories and others for autism and other neurological damage.

This bill would change the rules midstream. While a class action has been filed against Enron by retirees, this class has yet to be certified. Under this bill, Enron for the first time would be given the opportunity to make an immediate appeal of any court decision granting class certification. The result could be a hold on all proceedings, including investigations to make discoveries of evidence, while the appeal was pending. This is an unwarranted, expensive, and wasteful use of time, and all while Enron retirees sit and wait for a decision regarding their retirement funds. This is not compassionate and not fair.

This bill looks the other way as workers are taken advantage of by big corporations, as patients are abused by HMOs, and as the environment continues to suffer damage from big polluters. In such a claim, it is critical that people have access to justice. This bill takes away that access and protects those who will continue to do harm. Republicans are committing fraud against the American people by proposing this bill, and I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 1115.

Mr. Speaker, it is stunning to me that whenever Democrats stand up on behalf of working families that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle start shaking their finger and saying, oh, the tax-and-spend Democrats. It is really amazing and takes an incredible amount of nerve for the Republicans to still want to wear that jacket of fiscal responsibility and to invoke it when we start talking about working families like this.

Let us remember that the President was handed a $5 trillion surplus, surpluses as far as the eye could see. That is gone, blew that; and now we are at about a, according to the former Secretary, they are charging about a $4 trillion projected deficit, a debt, on top of that, and in a very short time we are almost $1 trillion in deficit. That means more money spent than we have brought in.

They like to talk about the war: Oh, we had to spend all that money on homeland security. And indeed, we did, but let us remember that most of that deficit is caused because we are giving tax cuts to the wealthiest.

Now the excuse is, well, this family, the Johnstons who make only $19,000, they do not deserve a tax cut, they say, because they do not pay tax. Hello, these are people who are paying a payroll tax. They pay sales tax, they pay excise taxes, like taxes on the gasoline they buy to get to their jobs, and they pay a payroll tax.

Think for a minute. What are the only taxes that have not been reduced? We are not talking about dividend taxes, most of the people who clip coupons, the taxes that they pay. We are not talking about the taxes on high incomes. We are talking about the taxes that everyday working people pay. That is what we are trying to do with the child tax credit, for families like that, so that they can take it and buy formula or baby food for this baby, so that they can provide for her. And that is what we are trying to do.

My colleagues notice this family is not smiling, but I want to show them the face of some people who are, in fact, smiling. Why are they smiling? A report by the Committee on Government Reform minority staff on the tax bill found that Treasury Secretary Snow's estimated dividend and capital tax savings is between $331,000 and $842,000. That is a 1- year tax cut. No wonder he is smiling.

Secretary Evans could see between $68,000 and $595,000 in tax savings.

Vice President Cheney, who is not in the picture but is probably smiling at some undisclosed location, will reap $116,000 a year from the dividend capital gains provisions in the tax cut. In fact, the total tax savings for President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the Cabinet could be up to $3.2 million. If I were a member of the Cabinet, I would probably be smiling, too.

In my State, 674,000 children and 378,000 families are not smiling. Nearly 1 in 4 families in Illinois were left behind. Now, of course, they say if we take care of them we are just tax-and-spend. Tell me that we do not have enough money when we are giving tax breaks like that to not only the wealthiest in the private sector but these individuals who are serving us now as members of the Cabinet.

Behind closed doors in final negotiations of the tax cut bill for millionaires, the White House and Republican leaders exterminated the child tax credit provision that would have helped families like the Johnstons and others making between $10,500 and $26,625. That is the people that we are talking about, people who in their lifetime it will take years and years and years to earn what these individuals will get in 1 year in a tax cut. By eliminating that provision, Republicans were guaranteeing that millionaires like Secretary Snow and Secretary Evans get their full tax cut.

It did not take long for the American people to find out that their neighbors and their friends got the short end of the Republican tax cut stick, and that is why the United States Senate was shamed into passing a Democratic proposal to provide those low-income families with their well-deserved child tax credit that was removed in a secret deal by Vice President Cheney.

They passed a restoration of the tax cut for those lower-income families, working families by, 94-2. But what are we hearing on this side? Majority Leader DeLay said, ``It ain't going to happen.'' Well, I want to say that I think it ought to happen, I think it will happen, and we need to make it happen.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez) for her eloquent statement on behalf of the people who are left out of the Republican tax cut bill and the people who like the Narvaez family in my district are working hard every single day. This is Maria Narvaez and her daughters Alma and Elia. She has another daughter too. She is standing in front of a community organization called Family Matters in my district and all of us would hope that to every Member of Congress that families really do matter.

To Ms. Narvaez, they really do. She works also in a day care center taking care of other people's children, and for all of her full-time work she earns $20,000. When the tax cut bill passed the Senate originally, it had a refundable tax credit. She would have gotten up to another $400, which may not mean much to some people, but could mean a lot to Maria and her daughters and her son, who are pictured there. She would have taken that money and

gone right out and maybe paid a few bills or bought some extra food for the family or some clothes. Money would have gone directly into the economy and would have helped to create more jobs and stimulate growth.

But instead, what the House Republicans said is that she and her family are just simply not wealthy enough to have a tax cut because in the dead of night what happened to that Senate provision that would have given her a tax cut that would have given her a rebate, Vice President Cheney went in and said, wait a minute, and he helped negotiate this, the bill that was passed goes too high. It spends too much money. So somebody is going to have to be cut out. And in the dark of night, in a secret negotiating deal, it was families like the Narvaez family who were cut out.

It is not just her. I talked to a mother of a Marine yesterday. I had breakfast with her. And she was telling me, he is in Iraq right now but she was telling me that when she went to visit him at his base there was a church nearby that had a big box in front of it and she said what is that box? And that is for donations of clothing for the military families. Understand that I am not talking about the generals and I am not talking about the people that are sitting at the Pentagon. I am talking about the young men and women, the privates, the privates first class who are over in Iraq who are risking their lives every day, some of them losing their lives, and we do not know how many have been injured in that war, those people also have been cut out of this bill, and this is what the majority leader said. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority leader, said there are a lot of other things that are more important; and what that must mean is that it is more important to give an average of $90,000 tax cut to millionaires, and it is more important to pass a tax dividend cut, the taxes we pay on dividends, to cut that, than to ensure families who are making less than $26,000 to have a few extra dollars to spend on their families.

And the reality is that if Congress does not act by the end of June, 6.5 million low-income families will not receive their refund checks at the same time as the middle-class families do. So we are under a time frame here. It is not something that we can just chat about. Who does benefit then from the tax cut bill? Let us talk about who actually gets a benefit. Vice President Cheney who negotiated that deal that cut this family out will reap about $116,000 a year from the dividend and capital gains provisions in the tax bill. Maria will have to work about 10 years in order to have an income that equals the 1-year tax cut that the Vice President will get, and that is not the only thing. John Snow, the Secretary of the Treasury, will get in 1 year a tax cut about $332,000.

She will have to work 16 years to get that. Let us talk about fairness here. Let us talk about what is good for the economy and good for families. Let us do what the Senate did when they fixed it. Let us give a tax cut to working families.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S.J. Res. 8, a resolution to raise awareness and encourage prevention of sexual assault. There is no crime that is more personal, more intrusive, or more painful than rape, and it must be a priority of this Congress and this Administration to work toward an end to this violence. Unfortunately, while this resolution is a nice demonstration of sympathy and support from the Congress, it is woefully inadequate. While I strongly support its passage,

the Republican Leadership should allow the House to consider legislation to provide real relief to victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. It is my hope that this resolution will be followed by consideration of H.R. 1267, the Domestic Violence Screening, Treatment, and Protection Act; H.R. 1046, the Debbie Smith Act dealing with the DNA evidence backlog; H.R. 394, the Violence Against Women Civil Rights Restoration Act; and many others.

We have come a long way in the last 30 years since women started speaking up and speaking out against sexual assault. We are now better able to treat rape victims in emergency rooms; law enforcement has access to tools to teach them how to respond to the crime of sexual assault; and there are social and mental health services available to women who are survivors of rape. I am grateful for this progress.

However, as we've raised awareness of this violence, we have also learned that it reaches far deeper into every aspect of our society than we wanted to admit or acknowledge. It is far more likely that perpetrators know their victims and aren't just strangers in the bushes. And women aren't the only victims--one in 33 men have been victims of rape or attempted rape. Furthermore, teens are twice as likely as any other age group to be victims of crime--nearly one-third of all sexual assault victims are raped between the ages of 12 and 17, and one in five girls becomes a victim of violence in dating relationships.

We've also heard a lot this year about women at the Air Force Academy who have been victims of sexual assault. It is a disgrace that so many women have been re-victimized and silenced as a result of our military's reaction to these violent crimes. We must work hard to change the culture in every branch and at every level of the military from one that accepts violence against women to one that condemns such violence and treats victims, and all women, with respect and equality. But what we haven't heard much about is that men in the military are also victims of sexual assault. A special report appeared in January 2003 and revealed that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs began collecting nationwide data on the extent to which men have been sexually traumatized in the armed services. The preliminary results are that nearly 22,500 male veterans--more than one of every 100 former soldiers, sailors and airmen treated by the VA--reported being sexually traumatized by peers or superiors during their military careers. This once again shows that sexual violence is about humiliation, degradation, and control.

We must commit ourselves to ending violence against women this month and every month. We must fully fund all Violence Against Women Act programs. We must speak up when we hear people speak about sexual violence in a dismissive or harmful way. We must educate our sons to be nonviolent and to treat women with respect. I believe that if we commit ourselves, we can end violence against women. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to vote for S.J. Res. 8.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 925, a bill to designate a U.S. Post Office in Chicago, IL the ``Cesar Chavez Post Office.'' I can think of no one more deserving of such an honor than the great civil rights leader, Cesar Chavez. I want to commend my colleague, Representative Gutierrez, for his leadership in bringing this legislation before the House and I am proud to join him as an original cosponsor.

Cesar Chavez was an organizer, an activist, a protestor, a farm worker, a peace-lover, a father, and a son. Raised in a family of farm workers forced to migrate throughout the Southwest, Chavez was led by his compassion, his ability to inspire others to action, and

his deep sense of fairness and equality to organize and establish what is today the United Farmworkers of America. Because of his efforts, many farm workers today enjoy higher pay, family health coverage, pension benefits, and other contract protections. While we still have a long way to go in giving farm workers the fair pay and healthy work conditions they deserve, Cesar Chavez laid the foundation toward accomplishing those important goals.

Cesar Chavez understood what it took to create a movement and he dedicated every part of his life to setting an example and leading the way. As a child and young man, he experienced firsthand the harsh working conditions of farm workers--the long hours, poverty wages, harassment, and abuse--as well as the limited access to education and health care. Understanding and addressing the roots of the problem, Chavez was able to make a lasting and significant impact. He conducted voter registration drives and campaigns against racial and economic discrimination. He led boycotts and pickets and hunger strikes. His nonviolent methods echoed those of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. He showed us all how critical it is to organize people, to unify them for a cause, and to help them believe in themselves and their ability to make a difference.

Cesar Chavez continues to be an example for us today. He taught us that ``Si se puede,'' or ``Yes we can.'' We can--and we must--help those with no voice, help those who are discriminated against, help those who are taken advantage of, and help those who live in poverty and are struggling to survive. If Cesar Chavez were alive today, I am sure he would still be leading the fight for fairness and equality for workers and their families. We must not let his legacy die; we must not let his great strides forward become giant steps backward. We must continue to work for what is right. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that today I am reintroducing the Inclusive Home Design Act. I want to thank my colleagues Barbara Lee and Louise Slaughter for joining me today as original cosponsors of this legislation. I hope that all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join us. I also want to thank my friend Marca Bristow of Access Living for her dedication and outstanding leadership. Finally, I want to offer my gratitude to all of the architects and community leaders who worked with me to craft this legislation. The Inclusive Home Design Act will greatly increase the number of homes that are accessible to people with disabilities. It is supported by the Paralyzed Veterans of America and countless other national and local disabilities rights organizations.

The Inclusive Home Design Act requires all newly-built single family homes receiving federal funds to meet three specific standards: an accessible route, or ``zero step,'' into the home, "32" clearance doorways on the main level, and one wheel chair accessible bathroom. These nationally mandated standards for homes built with federal dollars will close a major loophole in our current housing laws.

Under current law, 95 percent of federally supported homes do not have to meet any accessibility standard. This creates unnecessary barriers for disabled veterans and other people with mobility impairments. It defies logic to build new homes that block people out when it's so easy and cheap to build new homes that let people in. Many states and localities have already incorporated visitability standards. This list includes Naperville, Bollingbrook, and Champagne, Illinois, Atlanta, Vermont, Texas, Kansas, Arizona and others. Also the United Kingdom passed a law in March 1998 mandating that every new home become accessible. A federal law will build on the momentum that has already been created here and abroad.

The proposed legislation is based on the concept of Visitability, an affordable, sustainable and inclusive design approach for integrating basic accessibility features into all newly built homes and housing. Architects and builders will have latitude in how they comply with the act. For example, the zero step entrance can be placed at the front, side, or back of the home. The accessible route can even go through an attached garage.

When homes are accessible, it benefits not only today's disability community, but also all of us who are friends and family members of people with disabilities. Often, the prohibitive cost of making an existing home accessible deprives seniors of their independence and pushes them into nursing homes. It generally costs thousands of dollars for a homeowner to retrofit their home. However, on average experts estimate that it only costs $300 to $400 to add visitability features into a new home. In addition, the zero step entrance requirements can be waived if the terrain makes compliance impractical.

By making new homes accessible, we guarantee that many seniors can age at home instead of moving into expensive assisted living facilities. This will save taxpayer money and it will help improve the quality of life of our senior citizens. As the population becomes older, this will become more important. Fifty-eight percent of people over eighty years old suffer from physical impairments. In 2000, there were 30.5 million people between 65-84 years old. This number will grow to 47 million by 2020. Today, over 4.3 million individuals are over 85. By 2020, this number is projected to grow to 6.8 million. There is no question that the Inclusive Home Design Act will enable many of our seniors to remain at home.

Homes that meet visitability standards are essential for people with disabilities and sensible because 3 out of 10 people will face a disability before they are 67, practical, and cost effective. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation, the Inclusive Home Design Act, into law.

Mr. Speaker, it seems as if we have hit a nerve here. We are supposedly talking about a bill that would make it easier to get checks, and the Republicans are clearly embarrassed that there is a whole lot of people, in fact 12 million children, whose families are not going to get checks. They know darn well that that provision that would have sent the check was in the legislation in the Senate, and in a late-night deal that money was taken out.

Here is one of the families. They live in my district. It is Maria, that is the mom, Alma and Elia Narvaez. They are not going to get a check. They are one of the 6.8 million families that thought they were going to get one, but they are not. Along with them, as has been pointed out, there are going to be a million children whose families were going to get checks of people in the military, our young men and women who went off to serve, the low-level private first class. They are not going to get a check.

So it is not just an uproar from this side of the aisle; there is an uproar going on in the country right now.

We read about it in the press, and we hear about it from our constituents. So who is getting the money?

They are talking about it only goes to taxpayers and ask these people if they pay taxes, but who is getting the money?

Well, let us look at the Bush cabinet. We are talking about Treasury Secretary John Snow. He was the CEO of the CSX Corporation, a corporation that paid no Federal income tax in 2001, 2000, and 1998. Do Members know how much he is going to get in a tax break? He is going to get $330,000 a year in dividend capital gains tax cuts. That is more than Maria Narvaez makes in 16 years. That is his tax cut for 1 year, what she makes in 16 years.

Think about it another way, what the Secretary of the Treasury gets, $330,000 in 1 year in a tax break, 1,000 families could get a check. Members decide what is fair.

Mr. Speaker, today I choose to vote present on H. Con. Res. 177. I support our brave soldiers who served or are currently serving in the war against terrorism.

Whether they are in Iraq, In Afghanistan, or here at home, I praise our courageous men and women for risking their lives to defend our country and our freedom. However, I believe that the war on Iraq was unnecessary. I cannot vote in favor of a resolution that commends the President for putting American soldiers' lives in harm's way because of bad policy and misguided decision making.

I will continue to support efforts that support our troops, their families, and our veterans. Each one of them is an American hero and each one of them makes me proud to be an American.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today for my annual statement in opposition to this bill. Republicans say they are for smaller government. In reality, they want to make government just small enough to fit inside our bedroom.

This bill forces government to step between pregnant mothers and their doctors, interfering with the doctor's ability to make the safest and healthiest decisions for the mother, never mind that this bill is certifiably unconstitutional.

Proponents of this bill should be ashamed to go home to their wives, their daughters, nieces, sisters, and women constituents and explain to them why they voted for a bill that not only blatantly disregards their health, but tries to claim that it is not an issue; explain to them why they voted for a bill that would criminalize the behavior of their doctors, who acted in their best interests, because the law said that their health did not matter.

This bill is not about late-term abortion or even a so-called ``partial-birth abortion'' procedure, which has no medical definition in this bill. This bill is about banning safe abortion procedures that sometimes are the safest method of previability, second-trimester abortions.

For us to be true to the Constitution, to be true to the sentiments of equality and freedom, women must have control over their bodies. Instead, proponents of this bill, including the Bush administration, are using this bill as part of a broader agenda to take away a woman's constitutionally guaranteed right to choose.

This assault on a woman's right to control her body and her health must stop. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 760.

Mr. Speaker, meet the Narvaez family. Maria Guadalupe Narvaez and her two daughters, Alma and Elia. Maria also has a son.

Ms. Narvaez works very hard to take care of her children. As a day care teacher at the Howard Area Community Center in Chicago, which is my District, she takes good care of other people's children, too. She cares for other people's children as if they were her own. In this picture, she is standing in front of a sign at Family Matters, a community organization in my District that helps hardworking families with a variety of services.

Sadly, the Narvaez family does not matter much to the Republican leadership. For those of us on this side of the aisle, though, her family does matter. So, too, do the families of the 12 million other children who were tossed aside by the Republican tax bill negotiators.

About 1 million of those 12 million children who were left out live with parents who are serving on active military duty, our veterans, or who have spouses serving in the Armed Forces, the very people that this House today earlier paid verbal tribute to, even as they were dumped from the tax cut bill. By the way, the tax credit we are talking about, this refundable tax credit was started in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Those children would have benefited in 2003 from the child tax credit provisions that the Republicans stripped from their bill in order to provide even more giveaways to millionaires.

Denying Ms. Narvaez and her three children and our heroic families from their child tax credit is unfair. It is mean-spirited and it is bad for the economy. After all, Mrs. Narvaez is not likely to invest her money in Bermuda tax havens. If the Republicans had given her the child tax credit she deserves, she would be buying shoes and clothes and other necessities for her children from local businesses. The money would have gone straight into circulation, helping the economy and creating jobs.

The Narvaez family matters to me. If it were up to me, they would get the child tax credit that they need and deserve. Unfortunately, the decision was not up to me. Maria and Alma and Elia were not ignored by accident. They were deliberately and callously determined to be unimportant.

They were included. They had been in the tax bill that was in the United States Senate until it became clear that the tax cuts had gone too high. So instead of saying, okay, well, what can we do to bring that dollar figure down, maybe we ought to slightly reduce the tax break that we give to millionaires; oh, no, this is the family that they decided to go after and millions of others like them.

The Republican leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), yesterday made it perfectly clear what his priorities and values were. He said very succinctly, ``There are a lot of other things that are more important.'' According to him, low income children do not deserve to be a priority because their families pay little or no income taxes, even if they work every day, even if they are good and productive members of their community, and even though they do pay taxes. They pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes.

Families matter to Democrats, including families living in the majority leader's District, that he and his party and his President have so shamefully, or should I say shamelessly, chosen to leave behind.

So what is more important to the majority Republican leader? How about providing tax breaks to special interests and to members of the Bush cabinet. Treasury Secretary John Snow was the CEO of CSX Corporation, a corporation that paid no Federal income taxes, zero, in 2001, 2000 and 1998. John Snow would get at least $330,000 a year in dividend and capital gains tax cuts, more than Maria Guadalupe Narvaez would earn in 16 years at her current salary. That is how much his tax break is worth.

Most Americans think it is wrong to allow big companies to avoid taxes by stashing profits in offshore tax havens, but to the Republican leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), it is more important to protect corporate tax evaders than to provide a little relief, a little help to Alma, Elia and Maria.

The Republicans took care of those who they cared about most and tossed aside those they do not care about at all. It is time for us to change the priorities of this country and give this deserving family the help that they need and want.