Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 735) to ensure States receive adoption incentive payments for fiscal year 2008 in accordance with the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and exclude extraneous material on this bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, last fall, Congress passed bipartisan legislation that provided broad improvements to our Nation's child welfare system. The legislation, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, won unanimous approval in both the House and Senate last fall and was signed into law a short time later.

The landmark legislation represented the most significant reform in the child welfare system in over a decade.

Among the provisions of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act was the reauthorization and improvement of the Adoption Incentives Program. To encourage and reward States for increasing the number of children who are able to leave the public foster care system for a safe, permanent and loving adopted home, Congress established the Adoption Incentives Program in 1997 as part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. The Adoption Incentives Program provides States with financial incentives for increasing, above a certain specific baseline, the number of adoptive families for children in foster care, particularly for those with disabilities or with other special needs or for older youth.

The bill under consideration, the Protecting Incentives for the Adoption of Children with Special Needs Act of 2009, will ensure that the improvements made to the Adoption Incentives Program last fall are implemented as Congress intended.

The bipartisan bill eliminates a restriction that was inadvertently placed in the Adoption Incentives Program by the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009. The Omnibus Appropriations Act included a provision that required the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, to pay adoption incentive payments awarded for fiscal year 2008 in the same manner as they were awarded in the previous years. The provision was prior to the changes being made to the program of the Fostering Connections for Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.

The bill before us simply eliminates the provision included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act, thereby allowing HHS to base upcoming award payments on the new criteria established by last fall's bipartisan child welfare legislation. Removing the inadvertent provision will ensure that the newly reauthorized and improved Adoption Incentives Program is operated as intended by Congress.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, on the occasion of the honoring of his lifetime achievement by one of Seattle's historic organizations and keeper of the arts, the Rainier Club, the people of the State of Washington hold up as a national inspiration the work of one of the world's most distinguished authors, Seattle's own Dr. Charles Johnson.

Dr. Johnson made the journey to Seattle from Long Island in 1976 to teach at the University of Washington. He noted in Smithsonian Magazine in 2008 that Seattle is ``an ideal environment for nurturing innovation, individualism and the creative spirit.'' It is in this setting that Dr. Johnson has made a uniquely rich array of contributions to the arts and letters, and became one of his generation's most distinguished African American authors.

While his works are too numerous to list, Madam Speaker, Dr. Johnson counts among his literary gems four novels, Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage, and Dreamer; as well as short stories, screenplays, aesthetics, comic art, and King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. His awards and honors are as abundant as they are approbative.

Dr. Johnson noted in Seattle's Post-Intelligencer on April 27, 2007 that American society is threatened by a ``diminished literary culture,'' the cure for which is ``the experience of complex, well- wrought, visionary books that challenge our assumptions, our intellectual laziness, and transform as well as deepen our perceptions of the world and ourselves.'' While he probably intended otherwise, this describes Dr. Johnson's own pivotal role in our literary ethos, as his works consistently have challenged readers' assumptions and intellectual laziness while transforming and deepening our world view and our self-knowledge.

Dr. Johnson's influence is international, but it is our honor that his presence is local to Washington State's 7th Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, for the first time in 15 years we have a real chance to solve America's health care crisis. The stars are aligning as has never been seen before. The American people want a solution, American business needs a solution to stay competitive and retain their best employees, segments of the health care industry, such as doctors, want a solution, and the President and the Congress have started a dialogue. Yet despite all those positive signs, we must not make the mistake of believing a solution is at hand or that it will come easily.

As a nation we stand at a crossroads, either sweeping reform or sweeping this crisis under the rug with another Band-Aid. We have to translate the national dialogue into legislation that makes access to affordable health care coverage what it must be in a free and Democratic society, a right and not a privilege.

There are lot of pieces to that puzzle and some are more readily solved more than others. In fact, I think some early victories might help instill confidence in the American people. Let me give you an example.

When I graduated from medical school, I was $500 in debt after my entire medical education. Today, the average medical student is well over $100,000 in debt. When you are underwater by that much money, you are forced to make decisions based on debt service, not on public service. Across America, from inner-cities to rural communities, we are woefully short of primary doctors. And as long as new doctors have to chase high paying jobs to pay off their debt, we are going to remain short staffed in these underserved areas in our country.

Today I am introducing legislation that would offer scholarships that would pay for most all of tuition for medical students in public colleges if they will apply their medical training in underserved areas when they graduate; an even exchange, one year of tuition for one year of service.

The American Medical Association says there were 45,000 students enrolled last year in public medical colleges and the mean cost of tuition was $20,000. For a total investment of less than $1 billion per year, my legislation would provide a workforce so that every American can have access to affordable health care wherever they live. The scholarships would be accessible to a medical student enrolled full time and in good academic standing at a public institution.

Imagine the positive impact that we would have if we empowered new doctors to serve their country and the highest ideals of their profession instead of serving their debt load. It is important to make the financial commitment at the beginning of medical school so that students can study areas that are related to primary care.

Anyone who knows me knows I have long advocated a universal health care system, providing a minimum set of benefits for everyone. But we cannot get universal coverage or any interim step on the way to universal coverage without addressing, and reducing, the cost of health care education for our doctors.

We could make a significant impact by lowering the cost of the health care workforce if my bill were accepted. But we would do something else. There are a lot of talented young people who don't have the financial means to go to medical school and fear a crushing debt burden even if they qualify. By removing that mountain of debt, we could use that rock to build a foundation for a permanent solution.

We can solve America's health care problem and we can do it before the end of this year, but this is a first step that must happen. We must think about the workforce that will provide that universal access to everyone in the country. We cannot continue with the present funding of health care education and expect that we are going to have the people to provide the primary care, to do the wellness care, to do the prevention. They will all go into high-paid specialties to pay off their debt.

This bill is a step that we must take, and it is one where we can make a step forward for all the people in this country.

Madam Speaker, I was unable to vote on H.J. Res. 38. Had I been able to vote, I would have voted ``aye'' on this resolution and ``no'' on the motion to recommit.

Well, I have to commend you for coming out here and talking about the defense budget.

There's a lot of talk in Congress about entitlements. When we talk about entitlements, people think, oh, you mean Medicare and you mean welfare and you mean Social Security and all these things, but there is, in fact, a defense entitlement in this country. It's as though the Defense Department is entitled to get more and more money every year. And anything anybody can think up for a new defense system, we wind it up, whether it makes any sense or not.

Now, if you look at the wars that we've been involved in or the military actions that we've been involved in, they have not been standard wars where tanks are facing tanks or machine guns; it has been mostly counterinsurgency, guerrilla-type events. And we continue to spend huge amounts of money on a variety of weapons that simply don't deal with what the country is facing today. And I think that the most egregious example of this was when the last administration decided that Iran was a problem; therefore, we have to have a missile defense system in Europe against Iran. So we went to the Czech Government, we leaned on them. They said, okay, you can have a tracking station here. And we went to the Poles and said, we're going to put missiles right on the border with Russia.

Now, first of all, they've made Iran into a boogyman. And they began to create a defense, and suddenly we're selling and we're putting all this stuff out there, and lo and behold, the Russians don't like it. Now, is that any surprise? If you were a sovereign country and somebody came and put missiles right on your border, how can you possibly think that that wouldn't be responded to by the Russians?

The next thing we know, they go into Georgia. And everybody's all up in arms and saying, oh, my goodness, my goodness, what are they doing going into Georgia? Well, if you go on a pretext to go into Iraq and attack Iraq, the Russians say, look, we went into a next-door neighbor that asked for our help. You went 9,000 miles to a place that wasn't asking for it.

So the military use of our power, in my view, has been greatly exaggerated in its real importance. What we need today is soft power.

I was just in Iraq, and I think that President Obama, one of the things that will be his toughest jobs is to get back control of reconstruction from the military. We fill the military budget with all this money and expect them to go out and build sewer systems and water systems and all these other things.

That's not what the military's job is. That should be the job of USAID and the State Department, and it shouldn't be done by soldiers.

Now, as long as we inflate the military budget and don't put the money over into the areas where it's really needed, we are not going to change the political climate in these countries. Whether you are talking about Iraq or whether you are talking about Afghanistan or a lot of places, you can talk about Pakistan, what we do is we give them a lot of money from the military budget to buy military equipment from the United States.

And, in my view, in the long run, we are not safer. The question is, are we developing a system that makes us secure? And just having tanks everywhere and Humvees and all this kind of stuff does not make us safer.

What should be done with our money is to look at what's happening to these countries who are economically being destroyed by this world economic situation and dealing with helping them reconstruct their country. Now, the irony of being in Iraq this weekend was realizing that we were rebuilding things that we bombed and destroyed. The question comes to your mind, well, what did we get out of that except a lot of destruction and a lot of ways to spend money in this country?

The Inspector General was out there on the trip with us, and here we have military colonels, you have got a colonel that was just sentenced to 9 years in a Federal penitentiary for taking a $7 million bribe in Iraq. Another colonel and his wife and his sister-in-law were taking bribes and running them through their church, trying to hide them by washing them through the church that they belonged to.

This is what is needed in oversight and a clear plan for what we are trying to do with our money. We have thrown money away endlessly. Talk about waste, fraud and abuse, the military, in my view, is as ripe for an investigation as any part of government. Before we expand the budget, we ought to look at and have investigations, as Harry Truman did, after the Second World War. He made his reputation on looking at the misexpenditure of money in the Second World War, and that's what ought to be going on now.

We are simply bloating the budget around issues that do not make us more secure and make us, actually, more enemies in the world. For that reason I think your examination, the Progressive Caucus examination of the budget is extremely important.

I think that this is an issue, obviously, people, as you point out, have jobs. People make a living making war machinery. But there have to be other things they can make, maybe things related to green energy, or there's a lot of other places that the workers in this country, with all their creativity, could be put to work rather than simply building more and more arms to sell around the world and for us to use in various situations.

We are talking about leaving Iraq. But one of the soldiers said to me, if we are getting ready to leave Iraq, why are we still building buildings like that one over there, what are we building for?

It is a really good question. I mean, if you listen to the soldiers, they can see that lots of money is being spent wastefully. There is a tower, a control tower for an airport in Iraq. We spent $14 billion building a control tower for a field where there are two helicopters, two helicopters.

Now, you ask yourself, what was that tower built for and why was it built there? And these kinds of questions aren't being asked, and I think that's why it's important that the budget that the Progressive Caucus is putting out is really raising a whole series of issues, and I think that the members of the caucus, of the larger Democratic Caucus, should think long and hard about how much money is put into the military budget.

At a time when we need things all across this country in terms of health and infrastructure and education, all these issues are going to be sacrificed to the defense entitlement. And Members have to ask themselves are we going to continue to feed the military monster or are we going to take some of it away and deal with the domestic problems of Americans today. So I thank you for the opportunity to talk about it, and I think the American people should be listening and thinking about what makes sense, what makes us safer?

I served in the military, so I am not against war. I am not some kind of a crazy peacenik that thinks you never go to war.

I served during the Vietnam era. I took care of casualties, so I know there is no glory in war, and I know what happens to those casualties when they come back to the United States. We are creating, by this war, a lot of costs in the future that no one is willing really to talk about. They said today in the newspaper that there may be as many as 300,000 brain injuries from this war.

And you think about what that's going to mean as we try to deal with

those veterans over the next 30 or 40 years. These kids are 20, 30 years old. They are going to live to 70, so we are looking at least to 40 years, and that is a cost that's built into this kind of behavior.

I think it really has to be carefully examined, and I think that Barack Obama is correct in bringing as many of those troops home. I think he should bring them all home, but he is talking about bringing 100,000 home and leaving 50,000 over there. I don't know what for. Is that just kind of for them to sit around and if something happens somewhere they will go jump out and do something?

They said they are going to be for training police and training the Army, 50,000 advisers? It doesn't make sense. So thank you for raising this issue. I think it's important that you take an hour tonight and talk about it.

If I could ask a question?

I can't quite read that bottom figure. Is that $60 billion?

Well, I think it's obvious that one of the things that President Obama faces is the fact that this country has used its military might all over the world for the last 7 years and lost its moral authority by issues like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and a variety of other things. And it is clear, and it was Hubert Humphrey, from your home State and actually was mayor of your city, who said that a country will be judged by how it deals with those in the twilight of life and those at the dawn of life, the children and the old people.

Right. You know the quote.

A guy from Minnesota should know it.

But the fact is that that is the essence of what the government is about. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are basic documents that say it is our responsibility to protect the life and liberty of the American people and allow them to develop themselves to the fullest extent possible. And there is a point at which when we don't educate our children and when we don't take care of their health care, when we're the only industrialized country on the face of the Earth that doesn't have universal access to health care, you have to ask yourself how many guns do we need? How many bombers? I mean I would like to take a few of those off there and use them as financing for extending the health care system to everybody in this country. It wouldn't take very much out of this budget. But it would, in fact, make us a safer country and make us a morally responsible government to deal with the problems of our people.

For us not to do that, for us not to do in energy what needs to be done, in the long run it doesn't make any difference how many nuclear weapons we have. If global warming causes the oceans to rise and all these other things begin to happen, nuclear weapons aren't any good to shoot at polar bears or at whatever. I don't know. We'll have this stockpile of weapons, and some day people will come along a thousand years from now and say, I wonder what they were planning to do with all those weapons? They built them and they sat here and rotted. And that's really what's happening.

I really think that making a sensible and reasonable defense system is important. But we have gone way over the top, as has been suggested by some of these weapons systems that people were imagining something. I mean this whole business of Star Wars, it started with Reagan. I mean he said, well, you know, suppose they get up there in the sky and they start shooting rockets down on us. We've got to have this missile defense. And we are spending money even today on that stuff, and it makes no sense whatsoever.

If you look around the world and ask yourself are we really threatened by the Iranians? Are we really threatened by the Pakistanis? Are we really threatened by the Chinese? The Chinese have got so many problems of their own. But we continue to build weapons as though they were sitting over there just about to launch off into attacking us, and it could be nothing further from the truth. Chinese families want food and housing and an education for their kids and a health care system and a government that makes peace and makes a decent life for the people. They're not looking to attack us. But yet we continue to build weapons systems.

In fact, I think in some cases the military industrial complex was sad when the Berlin Wall fell because they had nothing to justify this stuff. And they've been scrambling around to justify it ever since, trying to find somebody to be afraid of. When, in fact, what we ought to be doing is building a peaceful world and dealing with our own problems at home and the problems of AIDS and hunger and disease around the rest of the world. If we would spend our money on those things, we would have much more peace than we will have building these weapons that are on the chart next to you. There's no security in that kind of continued----

If you spend a dollar in a school educating a kid who then does better in the world and gets a job and makes money and pays taxes and contributes to the society, you've created something. When you build a nuclear weapon and put it on a shelf somewhere, you have developed nothing. It just sits there. Or you build a tank or you build a Humvee.

You have to ask yourself why do we keep building more and more and more? And, in fact, there's a curious thing about Iraq. Having been over there, it reminds me, we have 150,000 soldiers over there and we also have 150,000 contractors. Now, if a soldier is paid $50,000 and a contractor is paid $100,000, why isn't it more sensible to hire another soldier than to hire a contractor for twice the money? And that's going on all over Iraq, in fact, all over the world. We are contracting things out that ought to be done by our own soldiers and would be done in a much more reasonable and cost-efficient way. So if you look at this budget, there are a million places where you can find places to save money if you care about that.

I think that is the whole thing that we have not seriously looked at for the last 7 years. We have been spending, spending, spending. We've had budget after budget, supplemental budgets. They come in and say we need another $30 billion. We need another $70 billion. We're going to use $50 billion for reconstruction. We're going to use this. But no oversight. They've been putting that money out there, but nobody has been actually looking. And that's why you get control towers, as I said, built out in the desert for $14 million and nobody says to themselves, gee, what's that about? Who did that? Well, it was a contractor. You know, I don't know if it was KBR or which one of the contractors, but we let a contract to somebody to build a very sophisticated control tower. And we talk about the ``bridge to nowhere'' in our infrastructure. We complain if somebody puts a piece in the budget for a bridge somewhere. We put military things out like that and we don't even ask a question.

One of the interesting things, I am standing here listening to this, and, I don't know, as people are sitting at home listening to this and wondering about all this, this is a sacred cow that we are never supposed to look at. That is why we don't discuss the defense budget, because people are afraid if you talk about it and talk about reducing it at all, you are not a patriot. That is the accusation that is made immediately.

But what happens in the Defense Department is they say, well, you know, we would like to build a submarine, so this year we will put $1 million into the budget and sign a contract to build a submarine in the next 2 years. So the next budget comes along and here is a contract already signed, and the next $10 billion goes into the budget, and the next year it is ten more. And that kind of sort of sneaking it in under the door without people actually seeing what is being committed to, that is how this missile defense stuff and all that is done, incrementally. Nobody ever sees the long-term cost of what we are doing and what it is going to mean in terms of what isn't available for the things that this society needs.

The minute anybody raises it and says, why are we doing this, somebody says, well, you don't care about the safety of this country. That couldn't be further from the truth for any one of the four of us. But in fact people will say it and they will think that somehow if you cut one dime out of the defense budget, the whole country suddenly is going to be cowering in the corner and the world is going to be threatening us. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Madam Speaker, tonight, the President will address an expectant country in a joint session of Congress, and will give the American people a report on the progress that he has made and intends to make in the near future. The key word here is ``progress.''

In barely a month, President Obama has shown us that he can walk the talk. The stimulus package the President signed into law will take America down a road that we did not see in the last administration. It is one that governs from the center, focused on the average American-- the average person who gets up in the morning, gets to work at 8 o'clock, works until 5 o'clock and goes home and takes care of his family, maybe coaches baseball, maybe is a single mother who goes home, picks her kids up at daycare and goes home and takes care of them for the evening, but it is focused on the average American.

Now, in the last 8 years, these people have either been left behind or have been thrown overboard by the last administration in its rush to open America's purse, wallet, whatever you want--bank vaults--to their friends. The economic disaster that President Obama is facing and will talk about to the American people today and tonight was really there, waiting on the desk when he got to the Oval Office. He didn't bring it with him. He didn't have very much to do with creating it. He was only in the Senate a short time. It was presented to him by the last administration, and he has now, in just 1 month, given us a recovery plan that helps the American people. Above all, I believe the President strikes a very delicate balance and walks a very fine, thin tightrope between economic recovery and economic disaster.

How do you deal with it as it's going downhill? How do you arrest it? It's like being in the mountains. In western Washington, we have mountains. People are up, climbing mountains, and one of the first things you have to learn to do when climbing mountains where there is snow is learn how to do an arrest. You're sliding down a glacier. What do you do to stop yourself from falling? The first thing you've got to learn to do is put that ice ax in and hold. Now, the President is working on that sort of problem. We are sliding down--and have been since September--very abruptly, and he has got to bring this slide to a halt and then start the climb and get us back up on our feet and start back on the climb.

There are those who say we ought to throw the banking institutions overboard because of their unrestrained practices. Maybe we're going to have to nationalize banks. One doesn't know exactly what is going to be necessary, but the President has begun to show that he is willing to make the tough decisions that have to be done. There are some who say the average American does not benefit. I've had calls. I've had people come up to me and say, ``I pay my bills. I do everything right. I didn't go out and borrow a lot of money, and it looks to me like the only people who are getting any benefit out of this are people who made wild, crazy decisions, like bankers. Why am I not getting something?''

But people do count in this administration--finally. The UI benefits will help those who have lost their jobs. There is a payroll deduction that goes into the average person's pocket, and there is going to be, finally, some oversight in governing on behalf of the American people, overall, returning America to the American people.

It took 96 months to destroy our economy. Remember where Mr. Bush came in. There was a burgeoning surplus. We argued in 2000 about whether we would pay down the national debt too fast. That's where we were. He had a plan. He didn't tell us what his plan was, but it was not only to not pay down the debt but to build it up dramatically in the period that followed. This President who has now come into office has said we're going to stop that, and we're going to change what's going on.

A New York Times editorial today reminds us that the other side of this body remains intent on working against American workers. The Governor of Mississippi and the Governor of Louisiana say, ``We don't want that unemployment money for our part-time workers.'' There is clearly some rethinking that has got to be done on behalf of this body in terms of what is going on in this country. Part-time workers are entitled to the unemployment insurance they paid in.

The American people want a solution, and if the Republicans choose to ignore that, the American people have made it clear already that they can return to the voting booth and enforce their will.

[From the New York Times, Feb. 24, 2009]

What Part of `Stimulus' Don't They Get?

Imagine yourself jobless and struggling to feed your family

while the governor of your state threatens to reject tens of

millions of dollars in federal aid earmarked for the

unemployed. That is precisely what is happening in poverty-

ridden states like Louisiana and Mississippi where Republican

governors are threatening to turn away federal

aid rather than expand access to unemployment insurance

programs in ways that many other states did a long time ago.

What makes these bad decisions worse is that they are

little more than political posturing by rising Republican

stars, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Mark

Sanford of South Carolina. This behavior reinforces the

disturbing conclusion that the Republican Party seems more

interested in ideological warfare than in working on policies

that get the country back on track.

Fortunately, as President Obama prepares for his first

address to Congress on Tuesday evening, voters of both

parties have noticed. About three-quarters of those polled in

a recent New York Times/CBS News survey--including more than

60 percent of Republicans--said Mr. Obama has been trying to

work with Republicans. And 63 percent said Republicans in

Congress opposed the stimulus package primarily for political

reasons, not because they thought it would be bad for the

economy. It should be sobering news for Republicans that

about 8 in 10 said the party should be working in a

bipartisan way.

The Republican Party's attacks on the unemployment

insurance portion of the stimulus package are a perfect

example. States that accept the stimulus money aimed at the

unemployed are required to abide by new federal rules that

extend unemployment protections to low-income workers and

others who were often shorted or shut out of compensation.

This law did not just materialize out of nowhere. It codified

positive changes that have already taken place in at least

half the states.

To qualify for the first one-third of federal aid, the

states need to fix arcane eligibility requirements that

exclude far too many low-income workers. To qualify for the

rest of the aid, states have to choose from a menu of options

that include extending benefits to part-time workers or those

who leave their jobs for urgent family reasons, like domestic

violence or gravely ill children.

Data from the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit

group, show that 19 states qualify for some of the federal

financing and that a dozen others would become eligible by

making one or two policy changes. Unemployed workers are

worst off in the Deep South, where relatively few people are

eligible to receive payments. Louisiana, Mississippi and

Texas stand out.

The governors are blowing smoke when they suggest that the

federal unemployment aid would lead directly to new state

taxes. No one knows what the economic climate will be when

the federal aid has been used up several years from now. But

by dumping billions of dollars into shrinking state

unemployment funds, which puts money into the hands of people

who spend it immediately on food and shelter, the stimulus

could help the states through the recession and into a time

when unemployment trust funds can be replenished. In other

words, the stimulus could make a tax increase less likely.

But even if new taxes are required at some point, the new

federal standards would protect more unemployed workers than

ever before and bring states like Louisiana, Mississippi and

Texas into the 21st century.

Governors like Mr. Jindal should be worrying about how to

end this recession while helping constituents feed and house

their families--not about finding ways to revive tired

election-year arguments about big spending versus small

government.

Mr. Speaker, this is not the first time America has faced an economic crisis, but it may be the first time that one entire political party will sit on the sidelines with their arms crossed, their fists clenched, and their rhetoric numb to the suffering being experienced by millions of Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

The American people are waiting and watching, and we will be judged not by the volume of the rhetoric but by the boldness of our actions. And we have plan, and it's rooted in one fundamental tenet: America once again belongs to Americans.

And this Congress and this President will respond to the needs of the people with programs and promises that can and will get America moving again.

Another 600,000 Americans lost their jobs in January. Overall, 4 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last year, the last year of the Bush administration.

This legislation extends unemployment benefits to keep people with their heads above water while they look for a job, and this legislation provides incentives for States to modernize their unemployment system to meet the demands of the American people in the 21st century.

FDR included unemployment insurance in the New Deal 70 years ago, at a time when women typically stayed at home to raise a family and part- time jobs didn't exist. We are offering a new deal for a new century. This legislation will help working moms and dads. It will help States make the adjustments that one would like them to make to better respond to their people.

This legislation adds $100 a month to the UI benefit, but before some on the other side jump up and shout ``moral hazard,'' know this. The average UI benefit check does not even reach the

poverty level. We offer a helping hand while you offer rhetoric. For instance, every dollar we provide in UI provides $1.64 in economic impact.

I urge you to vote for H.R. 1.

Mr. Speaker, there is a saying that what goes around comes around. And the Republicans have adopted this as their mantra for their response to the American economic problem. Republican President Herbert Hoover presided over the Great Depression and stood by while millions of Americans stood in soup lines and unemployment lines. It produced Hoovervilles across the land, a kind of how-to guide on what not to do during an economic crisis.

Today, Republicans are replaying the same old movie, responding in the same old way. And they offer America the same old outcome. Hooverville is the model community of the Republican plan to solve America's economic crisis. You won't need a mortgage in a Republican Hooverville because the town is already bankrupt. You don't need a stimulus package to revive the economy in a Hooverville because it is a Republican-planned community, and they have planned for soup lines and unemployment lines. And you won't see light at the end of the tunnel in Hooverville, because they drove the economy into the ditch over the last 8 long years. And they offer an economic plan to drive it deeper.

What goes around comes around. And Hooverville is right around the corner. Republicans offer America an economic blueprint called ``Hooverville.'' It didn't work the last time, and it won't work this time.

Mr. Speaker, I'm honored to join my friend and colleague, Representative John Lewis, himself a legendary civil rights leader, in strongly supporting H. Res. 134 and in carrying a message of hope to an upcoming trip to India.

There is so much that we can learn from the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi's principle of ``satyagraha,'' nonviolent resistance, inspired change for the better throughout the world and particularly in the United States. As Dr. King said in a radio address in India in 1959 on this trip, ``the spirit of Gandhi is so much stronger today than some people believe.'' That statement is even truer today.

These two people changed their countries and the world for the better. And the world today would benefit from a new Dr. King or a new Gandhi. They taught us that violence begets violence. As Gandhi once said, ``An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'' No one doubts that there are serious problems in the world today, violence in the Middle East and many other places, the AIDS pandemic and extreme poverty where 1 billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. Missiles will not solve these crises. But people can, people of good will with courage and character, people like Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. We need them now more than ever. And this resolution and this upcoming trip by the Congress to India will honor their contributions to mankind and rekindle their spirit to seek peace by living in peace.

I urge my colleagues to support H. Res 134.

You know, first, I want to say that I want to commend you, Keith, for bringing this issue of the real vision we need at a time like this. People are looking out there and feeling pretty bummed out by an awful lot of what is going on. Yet, America has been able to rise above things like this in the past, and we are going to do it again.

One of the issues the last time we had this kind of mess--in 1932-- that we didn't get done, was health care for everybody. Now, when you lose your job, that is bad enough. Not to have money to send your kids to college, just to barely pay the mortgage and maybe keep some food on the table, keep the car running, and that is all, and suddenly not be able to take your kids to the doctor when you're sick is a horrible feeling as a parent because your kids look to you to take care of them. They haven't got anybody else.

And so what we did today on SCHIP was really the beginning of the vision of what needs to be happening for all Americans because today we were talking about 8 million kids in this country that don't have health insurance, and we took care of 4 million of them, but we didn't talk about the 40-some million adults who don't have health insurance, many of whom are being added to the roles every day as they lose their insurance when they lose their job.

Now, in this country we have always said the market will take care of them; that people can go out and buy their own health insurance, and the insurance companies will have some kind of plan. But it flat is not true. When you lose your job, the likelihood of you being able to find an insurance policy that you can afford and still pay your mortgage and still pay some money for food and run the car and a few things, is absolutely zero.

I mean, in the State of Washington, the highest paid unemployed person gets $518 a week. That is $2,000 a month. Now that is a very slim group of people. Most people are getting the average in the State of Washington--$360 a week. So that is a little over $1,200, $1,300, $1,400 a month to live on. And to be able to buy a policy that can cover the problems of your family is almost nonexistent.

So what I am here to talk about is the fact that this country needs a national health insurance. Buried in this economic recovery package are the seeds of beginning that process. What we have said is if you are losing your job--and we have a program today called COBRA. I don't know what it stands for. It's some acronym in the government. But what it means is when you lose your job, you can keep your health insurance in the company you work for if you can pay the premium.

You have to pay the premium plus 2 percent. So you have to pay 102 percent of the premium, right. So here you are, unemployed, and you get out there and you're supposed to come up with the money to pay 102 percent of the premium. Most people can't do it.

So in this bill we made it possible. We put money in there for us to pay 65 percent of the premium for people who have lost their job and are eligible to take advantage of staying in their company plan under the COBRA program.

It's the first step because the people that are losing their jobs--if you think about it, if you're 65, you're taken care of. You have got Medicare. But if you're below 65, you're really dependent on where your employment is or how rich you are. Most people are getting their health insurance through their employment.

Well, between 55 and 65 is when the wheels start falling off your wagon. When you're 30, you're never going to be sick. You're going to be able to do anything you want in your life. When you get to 50, maybe a little high blood pressure, a little arthritis. Things start to happen to people. It's just at that point they lose their job. They are absolutely uncovered.

So this provision buried in this $900- or $800-some-odd-billion is the first step toward dealing with the problem of people who are under 65 and not children. We took care of most of the children today, and we have taken care of the seniors, but we have got this whole other group of people between the ages of 18 and 65 who it's a lottery--where do you work, who covers you.

We really need a single-payer health care system, in my view. People immediately say, oh, no, no. You're talking about Canada, you're talking about Great Britain.

Sure.

Absolutely. It's ridiculous that we are the only industrialized country who have never figured out how to do this. And I am going to enter into the Record an article from the New Yorker Magazine by Atul Gawande, who is a doctor and a medical writer, about the process by which we are going to get to a plan. Let me just lay it out for you. I think people out there ought to be thinking about it.

Every country in the industrialized world has a different plan. None of the plans are the same. Germany started in 1883. The Prime Minister at that point was worried about the social disruption and said, Let's give them some health care benefits. So they got started on this process, and it's been going since 1883, through two world wars, the German system.

The German system is different than ours would be. The French system, the British system, the Canadian system. The Canadian system started in British Colombia in Saskatchewan, one of the central provinces of the country. Different circumstances.

In British Colombia, the doctors said we can't take care of these old people in the hospitals. We have got to start a health insurance plan. So they started the BC health program.

Saskatchewan, they had a socialist government in that province at that point. They started the system, and it gradually spread all across Canada, and finally at the end they put together an umbrella that sort of tied it all together.

Now, Great Britain started in a different way. Great Britain started in the middle of the Second World War. They realized they had to have healthy people. So the government built hospitals, the government hired the doctors. It was all government everything. And that is their system. Every system comes in a different way.

Now, the United States in 2009 is not going to have Canada, it's not going to have Great Britain, it's not going to have France, it's not going to have anybody else. It's going to have an American system designed by this Congress, with the leadership of President Obama, that deals with the problems as they are today in this country.

Sure.

There's another piece. I have got to say I am excited because I was just down at the White House and the President just signed SCHIP. He gave a wonderful speech before he signed the bill, and said, This is just a start. We are going to take some more steps.

It's exciting to have somebody leading. And a part of what he has asked us to do in this economic recovery bill is begin the IT buildup that we need in our health care system. When you go to a doctor, and I practiced medicine for 20 years, so I wrote all my stuff out. And if you went to see a doctor somewhere else across the country, there's no way that doctor would know what I had done for you or what I might have prescribed for you, or anything else.

But if we have an electronic system that is protected so privacy is protected--I mean you have got to protect people's privacy. But if you get sick in Minneapolis--or St. Paul, I guess more like it--and you then come to Seattle, the doctor who sees you in Seattle doesn't know anything, because if you don't remember what the medications are or what the x-rays showed or anything else, there's no way he is going to know it.

But with the money that is invested in this economic recovery package for medical technology, for IT work, intellectual properties, you are making it possible for a doctor in Seattle to sit down at his computer with the numbers that Mr. Ellison would give him and find out what went on with him when he was treated in St. Paul.

Sure.

You know, I have got to admit, it brought a tear to my eye when he talked in his speech about the fact that when your kids look at you, they expect you to be able to take care of them. And if you haven't got health insurance, then you're caught between a kid that has got a problem and, Can I fill the prescription? Or, If I go and get a big hospital bill with my kid, how am I going to deal with that?

It is a terrible feeling. I remember once when my daughter was in the hospital and she was in the ICU, and you are sitting there wondering if your child is going to make it or not. It is a scary kind of thing as a parent. And to see the President talk about it and say we are going to fix this was really very exciting. And I think that, although I was here in 1993 when we tried it with Mrs. Clinton and at that time business was opposed to us and the medical profession was opposed to us and some labor unions were opposed, and it was really tough going.

Things have changed today. Business wants to have a change, the medical professions want to have a change, and labor unions. And I think it is not going to come quickly and easily, because the status quo is always hard to change in a country. But I bring this article, and I am going to put it in the Record, because I want people to read it and realize that it is absolutely possible for us to make a major change, not just tinkering around the edges, but to really make a change that will make it possible to take away from all of us any fear that we are ever going to be economically destroyed, as Mr. Johnson says, or that we are going to be not able to be taken care of when we are sick, just on a human basis.

You are going to hear people say it is too much, it is too big, we can't do it. But all you have to do is look back at what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1932, when he came into office, with 25 percent unemployment in this country, and he sat down with his people and he said, ``We have got to have Social Security because old people don't have any money to live on when they get old. We don't have any money for poor people, so we are going to have a welfare program. We don't have any money for workers when they lose their jobs, so we are going to have unemployment insurance. And we don't have any money for kids that get dropped off in orphanages because their parents can't take care of them, so we are going to put together a foster care program.'' That was all done in 1935, in the Social Security Act of 1935. It was a huge step forward. And we have a progressive message for this country that we can do that again.

Even in the midst of our darkest hours with all the banks and foreclosures and all this stuff, if we think small, we are going to do small; but if we do and we think big, we can actually get some major steps forward. And

I think the American people are ready to listen to this. I think that they have listened to the fiscal conservatives say, ``We are going to be a fiscal conservative; we are going to waste $1 trillion on a war, and we are going to run the banks into the ditch and we are going to bail them out,'' people are tired of hearing that. I fly home on the planes, and the flight attendants say to me, ``My tax money is going to bail out those guys. I want my tax money to go for things that will help me and my family and all the Americans.''

And I think that the progressive message, its time is now. So I really commend you guys for coming down here and doing this. I have to run off, but I will come back another night and work with you.

You go back and you look at history; and I was reading something just today in the Smithsonian magazine. Do you realize that the land grant colleges, the universities in this country were started in the middle of the civil war by Abraham Lincoln? I mean, the country is in chaos, people are dying everywhere. All this is going on, and he said, ``We have to think about the future. We are going to start land grant universities. We are going to give them.'' And every State has one. I am sure Georgia has one, I am sure Minnesota has one. We have got one. Washington State University was created, the idea was created in the middle of the war. The National Science Foundation was created by Abraham Lincoln in the middle of the war.

In these times of the deepest darkest stuff, you have to make long- term investments and think about where we are going in the future. And this bill is filled with it in terms of the health care and in terms of the alternative energy things. Those are changes that are not going to be on the table next Wednesday; they are going to be affecting us in 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years, but our kids are going to be better off and our country will be better off because we got back up on the road and started thinking long term.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the SCHIP reauthorization legislation and want to thank the Speaker, Ms. Pelosi, for her leadership in bringing this bill to the floor. H.R. 2 clearly says that change has arrived for our country and our children.

Instead of the veto pen that was used last year by the outgoing President to deny health care to children, our new President will sign this legislation and, in so doing, will write a new chapter in America's commitment to our children and our future.

H.R. 2 is a real down payment on our efforts to ensure universal access to affordable health care for all Americans. It builds on successful models that have expanded access to millions of children nationwide.

Health care should be a right, not a privilege for the rich in America. This legislation affirms the commitment of a new Congress to serve all the people, not merely those who have the means to pay any price for health care while the Nation pays a steep price by not covering its children.

H.R. 2 represents an additional 4 million children that will have access to health care, and it will provide access to preventive health care, and this alone means America will raise healthier children who grow to become healthier and more productive adults.

The American people have spoken. They want a more compassionate response to our Nation's problems. Today, we are voting with our heads and our hearts to do just that. This is not about ideology or party. It is about providing health care to children. H.R. 2 represents real change.

I am proud of my own State that took the lead before SCHIP was put in place in 1994. Three years before the enactment of SCHIP, Washington State expanded coverage to children up to 200 percent of the Federal poverty line. That was a huge commitment, and clearly, my State took the lead. As a result, we have fewer children uninsured, we have a healthier population, and more integrated primary care. It's a commitment that worked for us in our State, and it recognizes that what worked for Washington State will work across the country.

Thirty million dollars was the commitment we made. H.R. 2 rewards States like Washington who knew early on that providing quality affordable health care to children was a sound, humane investment, but also, it expands a successful program to cover more uninsured children and working families.

The present economic difficulties in this country are going to make this program even more important than they've ever been in the past. This bill provides greater flexibility and will allow States to meet the needs of low-income working families.

I'm grateful also that this legislation includes important access for legal immigrant children who are currently denied coverage, children who are born in the United States and are U.S. legal citizens. In Washington State, we have provided coverage for these children, but the State is doing this alone without the full partnership of the Federal Government. H.R. 2 corrects this error and will allow Washington State to maintain coverage for more than 3,000 children.

Madam Speaker, we need to do the right thing. Providing universal coverage for children is an objective that we should all support. This legislation takes us one step closer to meeting this goal. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Pennsylvania (Mrs. Dahlkemper).

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra) 1\1/2\ minutes.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Perriello).

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an extra 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I listened to fiscal conservatives rail against this bill, and I think about an article I read in this morning's Washington Post. Over in Arlington, which is just across the river, they have a clinic where people go who don't have health insurance and hope that their number is drawn from a lottery so that they can get to see a doctor. Our health care system is in serious problems, from the seniors all the way down to the young people in this country.

Now, this bill says to the States, here's some additional money for you to expand coverage to your youngsters. Through no fault of their own, they're born into a home where there is no way to pay for health care. And we are giving the States, in this time of economic collapse brought on by the fiscal conservatives in this body, who said that we could spend and spend and spend, and never have to meet the day of reckoning, the people who are now going to suffer from that will be women and children.

Children have nobody to speak for them but us. And for us to put that money out there and give them the opportunity to have health care is humane in the very strongest sense of that word.

How anybody could vote against this, I have no idea, after you've wasted a trillion dollars on a war in Iraq, and have the real estate industry totally out of control, and then you say to the children, you can't see a doctor. What kind of body is this if we don't take care of children?

I yield the remaining 3 minutes of my time to Mr. Waxman.

Mr. Chairman, every day and every corner of this Nation, and every sector of this economy, the casualties keep mounting. Seventy-five thousand people lost their jobs yesterday, at Alcoa, Boeing, Caterpillar, Home Depot, Intel, Microsoft, Pfizer, Sprint, Texas Instruments and many small businesses. Over 11 million Americans have already lost their jobs, the highest level in 25 years, and every major economist says it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Behind every number is a personal story of an American family struggling to cope with and survive this economic crisis. Behind every story is an American who deserves our help, who has earned our help on the job and has every right to expect Congress to act with all deliberate speed. We must not let them down.

Helping these Americans while they look for work is not only the right thing to do for them, it is the only thing we can do in our economy. Unemployment insurance is one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus, because jobless Americans have little choice but to spend the money that's given them.

Every unemployment insurance dollar spent returns an economic impact of $1.64. That's the kind of significant return on investment that will help America restart its economic engine. This recovery engine responds to rising unemployment with a historic level of assistance. It provides $27 billion for a program of extended benefits. For the first time ever, this legislation provides financial incentives for States to modernize their unemployment insurance programs and increase access to benefits.

For the first time ever, this legislation provides a Federal supplement to increase unemployment benefits by an extra $100 a month for the next year, and, again for the first time, we will provide assistance to unemployed workers who are trying to afford health care coverage. The primary goal of this legislation is to create jobs, but we must also help the unemployed as those jobs are being created, and this measure does just that. By voting for this bill, we are standing up for the American people and standing alongside the American people right where we belong.

I urge support for this critically important legislation.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support for SCHIP reauthorization legislation, and I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for her leadership in bringing this bill to the floor as the first bill.

H.R. 2 clearly says that change has arrived for our country and our children. Instead of a veto pen that was used last year by the outgoing President to deny health care to children, our new President will sign this legislation and in so doing to begin a new chapter in America's commitment to its children and our future.

H.R. 2 is a real down payment on our efforts to get universal access to affordable health care for all Americans. It builds on a successful model that has expanded access to millions of children nationwide.

Health care should be a right, not a privilege for the rich in America. This legislation affirms the commitment of the new Congress to serve all the people, not merely those with means who can pay any price for health care while the Nation pays a steep price for not covering its children. H.R. 2 represents an additional 4 million children who will get health care.

It's time to act, now.

H.R. 2 means an additional 4 million children will have access to health care. It will provide access to preventive health care and this alone means America will raise healthier children who will grow to become healthier and more productive adults.

The American people have spoken. They want a more compassionate response to our Nation's problems. Today, we are voting with our heads and hearts to do just that. This is not about ideology or party. It is about providing health care to children. H.R. 2 represents real change.

l am proud to represent a State that took the lead on expanded access for children. In 1994, 3 years before the enactment of the original SCHIP, Washington State expanded access to children up to 200 percent of the Federal poverty level.

This was a huge commitment and clearly my State took the lead. As a result we have fewer children uninsured. We have a healthier population and more integrated primary care. It's a commitment that worked for all of us in the State.

H.R. 2 recognizes Washington State's efforts and includes language that will allow the State to access a more than $30 million to maintain this commitment. H.R. 2 rewards States like Washington who knew early on

that providing quality affordable health care to children was a sound and humane investment.

H.R. 2 will also allow Washington State to expand our successful program to cover more uninsured children in working families. The bill provides greater flexibility and will allow the State to meet the needs of our low income working families.

I am also grateful that this legislation includes important access for legal immigrant children who are currently denied coverage-- children who are born in the U.S. and are legal U.S. citizens. In Washington State we have provided coverage for these children. But the State is doing this alone without the full partnership of the Federal Government. H.R. 2 corrects this error and will allow Washington State to maintain coverage for more than 3,000 children.

Madam Speaker, we need to do the right thing. Providing universal coverage for children is an objective that we should all support. This legislation takes us one step closer to meeting this goal. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the chairman for his dedication to this issue and pushing it at all the meetings so we finally got it on the floor one last time.

For the last 2 weeks we have been talking about Wall Street, but it is time to turn our attention to Main Street, to all the decent, hardworking people who play by the rules but lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Our economy has lost jobs for the last 9 months in a row, including 10 million Americans now unemployed and unable to find work. Today we got the figures and found out last month the economy lost 159,000 jobs. That is the biggest 1-month job loss in more than 5 years. In my home State of Washington, the unemployment rate has increased by nearly 30 percent over just the last 5 months.

Today we face a simple choice: Are we going to help these workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, or are we going to sit on the sideline and watch them suffer? This bill says we can and we must help.

The legislation provides another 7 weeks of extended unemployment benefits in every State, plus an additional 13 weeks in high unemployment States who have more than 6 percent. This assistance will not cost a penny, because it really comes from the unemployment trust funds that we have already collected.

Our economy has lost 760,000 jobs this year, nearly 1 million more workers have joined the ranks of unemployment since Congress provided the last extension of unemployment benefits in June, and the number of States with high unemployment has doubled. If we don't act today, nearly 800,000 Americans will exhaust their benefits in the next few weeks. Even if you don't care about how these people feed their families, at least consider how much the economy will deteriorate if they stop buying goods and services.

I strongly urge a ``yes'' vote to extend unemployment benefits for people who are suffering in this country.

I reserve my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Sutton).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Hirono).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Madam Speaker, could we know the time that is available?

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Madam Speaker, does the gentleman have other speakers?

I don't have any either, so if you're ready to close, go ahead.

I have no additional speakers.

It has been a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Weller. I know I am not supposed to speak to another Member on the floor, but I just did anyway.

I would ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to let Mr. Emanuel say 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to the time I have left?

Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to say it has been a pleasure to work with Jerry Weller. On a committee like this where you have contentious issues, he has been a great supporter as we have worked on child welfare issues and on foster children issues and unemployment issues, and it has been a real pleasure. I hope I get a ranking member to replace you that is half as good as you were.

I think that this bill that is out here may be in my view a little bit late. I wanted to put an amendment on the bailout bill that included the stimulus package, because I really think that we should be doing more for people on Main Street.

I think the people at home are angry in many respects because they think we don't understand the pain of what the average citizen in this country is feeling, and they feel like we are giving help to some people that perhaps don't deserve it or don't need it or whatever, and we are ignoring the people who really needed it.

The acceptance by the leadership of putting this bill up here at the end, I am pleased by that. I only hope that the Senate is listening because, Madam Speaker, some of those people are going to go home to States that we just saw mapped that are red. That means they have more than 6 percent unemployed. We have 19 States in this country where there is more than 6 percent unemployment.

For people to go out and run for reelection and say I didn't have time to stay and pass an unemployment bill wouldn't seem to me like a good campaign strategy. So I hope that this will become legislation that passes this House, the other House, and is ultimately signed by the President.

The people who lose their jobs in this country are real people. They are people who go to work every day, and one day they come in, like those who had a meeting in Seattle yesterday where they told the 4,300 people who are working at Washington Mutual that they will find out whether they have their job on the 1st of December. They are going to get their Christmas present by decision of the folks who bought Washington Mutual as to whether they are employed or not. No fault of theirs. Those are real people for whom this bill is a little bit of help to get them over, hopefully, a chasm so that they can reach the other side and get another job.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote for this bill. It is a piece of legislation that I am sure the Senate is going to want to deal with.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, on Thursday morning, the morning after the Senate passed a very different bailout bill, two things happened: The filings for new unemployment benefits hit a 7-year high, and a number of telephones melted in my congressional office as my constituents called in their opinions. By the thousands, the people in the Seventh Congressional District are absolutely enraged by what the Senate put over here.

Senate Republicans blocked Senate Democrats from legislation that delivers for Main Street. Senate Republicans demanded the pot be sweetened, but they left out the millions of Americans who can't find a job and are running out of benefits. And they left out a lot of other Americans, too.

With economic times getting rougher by the day, Senate Republicans have no problem telling the American people you've got to go it alone.

Last week, the House passed on a strong bipartisan vote a stimulus package that would help Main Street, but Senate Republicans said no. They were willing to help Wall Street, but looked the other way for Main Street.

One caller said they were stunned that the Senate included a call for the Securities and Exchange Commission to alter a fundamental way assets are valued. It's called mark-to-market accounting, and let me quote an NPR report.

The Council of Institutional Investors and the CFA Institute oppose a suspension of mark-to-market--also known as ``fair value''--accounting because, in their opinion, the rule offers investors transparency.

In other words, suspending the rule is letting the fox into the henhouse.

The other day I voted in favor of the House bailout bill because I trusted Democratic leaders who worked tirelessly to represent Main Street. I still do, but Senate Republicans changed all that.

When Republicans force a bill that ignores the plight of regular Americans but includes so-called sweeteners, that is not worthy of support.

When Republicans force a bill that slips in more earmark spending, that's not worthy of support.

When Republicans force a bill through that includes an accounting gimmick, that is not worthy of support.

The Senate dug an enormous ditch alongside Main Street, and they want the House to drive into it. That is exactly what the President has driven this economy into over the last 7 years.

When Senate Republicans set the agenda, that's just another way of saying they are following the orders of the President who long ago lost all the trust of the American people.

That is not how we are going to restore the trust with the American people. And that is why I voted against the Senate Republican bailout.

There is no question that we need a rescue plan, but the Senate has just made matters worse, and that is pretty hard to do in this economy. Government has a role to play in calming the markets and addressing the economic crisis, but the more we learn, the more convinced I am the latest Senate plan is taking us in the wrong direction.

There are two models that have worked and which would serve as the foundation blocks that we can build upon in a short period of time to produce a plan that Americans could trust and believe in. During the Depression, President Roosevelt developed a Home Loan Housing Corporation that stabilized the housing market and helped homeowners work through the foreclosures. More recently, in the 1990s, Sweden stepped in and assumed temporary control of the financial system, cleaned up the mess, and then got out.

There are models available that we can use to quickly produce a solution that the American people will actually believe in because they will understand it and it will be transparent. The amendment from the Senate was to make it more un-transparent. There is a credit crisis in the United States to be sure, but there is no question today that there is also a trust crisis in America, every bit as damaging and debilitating.

We cannot solve the first crisis before we address the second. Since the current administration precipitated this, we should be focused on rebuilding a new foundation for a new administration to restore the faith and trust of the American people as we work to restore the trust and credit of our financial system.

Since the current administration precipitated this, we should be focused on building a foundation for a new administration to restore the faith and trust of the American people as we work to restore the trust and credit of our financial system.