Floor Statements

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise tonight in support of H.R. 2210, the School Readiness Act, legislation that will improve the Federal Head Start program by increasing its focus on academics and helping to close the readiness gap. We believe that the bill that we have before us will close the readiness gap that exists between Head Start graduates and their more affluent peers.

I want to thank the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform and the author of this bill, for his dedication on behalf of disadvantaged children. We would not be here today without his hard work.

The measure before us reflects a consensus agreement amongst Members of this House who believe that disadvantaged children in our country are getting the best this Nation can possibly give them. In opposing our efforts to strengthen Head Start, my friends on the other side of the aisle have repeatedly said, ``If it ain't broke, don't fix it,'' but the evidence suggests this is a system that badly needs fixing.

Too many studies show Head Start children are entering kindergarten behind their peers. Improving school readiness standards for Head Start grantees in all States will help close this readiness gap.

Worse, in many parts of the country, Head Start centers are not getting the job done. Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows most Head Start grantees across the country are actually falling far short of Federal standards, the very standards that the congressional Democrats say would be undermined by the School Readiness Act.

In fiscal year 2002, a total of 559 Head Start grantees were reviewed. Only 9 percent were found to be in compliance, 9 percent, with our Head Start performance standards. The remaining 509 grantees, 91 percent, had one or more areas of noncompliance.

In fiscal year 2001, nearly 600 Head Start grantees were reviewed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Only 11 percent of those grantees were found to be in compliance with all Head Start performance standards; 89 percent were out of compliance.

These statistics are nothing short of shocking, and I would ask my friends on both sides of the aisle, do not our children deserve better? We think they do.

The measure before us meets the President's goal to strengthen the overall quality of Head Start, especially the academic standards, by emphasizing cognitive development and the results of scientifically based research. It requires all new Head Start teachers to have at least an associate degree by 2005 and half of all Head Start teachers nationwide to have a bachelor's degree by 2008. It restores civil rights protections to faith-based organizations, removing barriers that discourage some of America's most talented and compassionate groups from providing services to children in need.

It gives up to eight States with an existing commitment to early childhood education the opportunity to coordinate Head Start with their own preschool programs; and we recognize that offering highly qualified States the opportunity to coordinate programs will result in better outcomes for parents and children than what Head Start serves today.

The bill guarantees that children in these demonstration States have access to pre-kindergarten programs that are at least as strong, if not stronger, than what is currently offered by Head Start. States are required to have strong standards for school readiness already in place to increase their already substantial funding of early childhood education and maintain or improve all comprehensive services, including health, nutrition and parental involvement.

The bill ensures that no State or local funds can be supplanted and that all Head Start funds must be spent on Head Start uses.

Additionally, the bill increases authorized funding for Head Start by more than $202 million for the upcoming year, as originally proposed, while setting specific spending levels for the remaining spending years of the bill. It also includes a 5-year hold harmless that guarantees funding for all Head Start centers in the pilot States, instead of the 3 years that were originally proposed.

I am grateful to everyone who played a part in helping us to reach this agreement, and I do believe it has helped pave the way for this legislation that could dramatically improve school readiness for disadvantaged children.

In his remarks on Head Start earlier this month, President Bush said, Head Start is ``working okay. We want better than 'okay' in America. We want excellence.'' The children in Head Start deserve the very best that this Nation can give them, nothing less.

Mr. Chairman, these reforms will not dismantle the Head Start program as some of my colleagues have claimed, and I am sure will claim as the evening goes on. They will strengthen the Head Start program. This debate is about protecting children, not about protecting turf. Instead of clinging jealously to the status quo, these lobbyists should join us in bringing real improvement to the Head Start system that needs to do better for our children.

I want to urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' tonight on H.R. 2210.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the author of the bill and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy).

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, as we progress through the conference, I do intend to explore this issue further. Quality research relies on valid and reliable data, and I believe that we must have quality research to drive the real improvements that are necessary in Head Start. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) is a leader on these issues, and I appreciate his interest and his advice on this matter.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for his commitment to these quality programs and look forward to continuing to work with him as we move this bill through the conference.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave), a member of our committee.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), a member of our committee and a real leader on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the author of the bill and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of our time.

Mr. Chairman, if we look at the proposal that we have before us, in title I, the main part of the program, there is quite a bit of unanimity about the changes that need to be made to help improve Head Start if, in fact, we are going to improve the futures for many poor children in America. I think there is a recognition that more of an education component to Head Start is absolutely necessary.

And so if we look at title I of the bill, there is no amount of disagreement over it. The real disagreement is over title II which would set up an eight-State demonstration program, only for the States who have made big commitments to early childhood development, only States that would agree to meet or exceed Federal standards, only for States that are willing to make a big commitment and are already doing it, and they will have to add more money. And if that is not enough, we guarantee that the local grantees that are there today in those eight States will continue to receive their money for 5 years.

How anybody could ever refer to this as a block grant is beyond me.

Why are we doing this? Very simply this: Some States are making big commitments to help poor kids, and if they are able to take their pre- kindergarten programs, their early childhood development programs, their child care programs, they can work with poor children in their States and their families to create a more seamless system to help prepare children for school.

Why should we not see if it works? Why should we not take the chance to help these children? Because I do believe that some States will be better able to prepare these children to be ready for school.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment and any attempt to deny organizations their long-standing civil rights protections. The amendment before us is a direct attack on faith-based service providers seeking to participate in the Head Start program, where they can make a valuable difference in the lives of disadvantaged children.

Make no mistake, the amendment before us would not only be stripping faith-based organizations of their rights, but worse, will eliminate an entire category of potential Head Start

service providers simply because they choose to maintain their legally protected right to make staffing decisions consistent with their organizational character and with the protections provided them under title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

This debate must be understood in real terms. Let us take the Catholic church, for example. Often these churches have strong roots in the community and a vast network of volunteers and employees who work together to make a difference for those who need a helping hand. They participate in many activities that are not about religion, but simply about making a difference in the lives of those in need. These organizations are a natural choice to participate in the Head Start program. After all, the infrastructure is in place, the members of the community already consider church a resource for social services, and workers are ready and willing to take in these needy children and give them the comprehensive support they need to get ready to enter school.

So what is the catch? Catholic churches have a tendency to hire Catholics. The Supreme Court does not see a problem with this. In fact, the Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the right of religious organizations to be religious and make staffing decisions based on that decision. There is no debate about that right. Until today, that is, when we consider this amendment that would make it illegal for these churches to continue to hire Catholics if they choose to participate in the Head Start program.

That is what we are talking about here, a double standard applying only to faith-based organizations, which tells them that they cannot serve disadvantaged children in Head Start unless they relinquish their identity, especially when it comes to hiring.

Faith-based organizations are a priceless national resource, providing help and hope to communities across America. And by their very nature, faith-based organizations often reach out to those in need when others may turn a blind eye. Improving lives is all in a day's work for faith-based organizations. That is why the President has called on Congress to level the playing field when these compassionate service providers are seeking to play a role in Federal initiatives like the Head Start program, to serve those who need our help.

Mr. Chairman, I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat this amendment. We should not ask religious groups to forfeit their religious character and identity as a condition of participating in Head Start. If we have discourage faith-based organizations from participating, we will be giving Head Start children less than we are capable of giving them. I think we must stand firm to protected the civil rights exemption for faith-based organizations so they can do their good works and community all across the Nation.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), a member of our committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter), a new member of our committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder), a former member of our committee.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time.

I think there are is some misunderstanding. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act says that religious organizations can discriminate in their hiring based on religion. That is what it says.

Look at Federal laws that provide grants to community-based organizations. Some of those require these organizations to give up their title VII protections, like the Head Start program we have before us. We have other programs, dozens of them, where they can maintain their title VII protections, and as I have told the Members on the other side over the last several months, as we bring these reauthorizations through our committee, like the Workforce Investment Act, like Head Start, I am going to provide some consistency.

President Clinton signed five programs into law that allowed faith- based organizations to have their title VII exemption with Federal funds, and all we want to do is to say if you take Federal funds and you provide Head Start services, you do not have to give up your title VII protections that are granted to you, plain and simple.

I urge my colleagues to defeat the gentlewoman's amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), a member of our committee.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the author of the bill, and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of our time.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the author of this bill, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the subcommittee chairman, for the brilliant job that he did with the subcommittee to bring this bill together and to bring it to this point.

Also, I want to thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) for all of his efforts, and all of the members of our committee who have worked hard and come together from the right wing to the more moderate wing to help craft a bill that will help poor children get a better start in life.

I also want to thank the staff of the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), including Sara Rittling and Paul Leonard. I want to thank the committee staff: Kate Houston, Amanda Farris, Melanie Looney, Julian Baer, Parker Hamilton, Krisann Pearce, Dave Schnittger, Jo-Marie St. Martin, and Sally Lovejoy and others who were so helpful in putting this bill together.

Head Start has done a lot for a lot of children all across the country. There is not one Member in this room, not one, who does not believe that Head Start cannot be improved.

Now, the question is, how do we improve it? In title I of the bill, there is basic agreement on the changes that will bring a more academic component to Head Start.

The big issue was over title II, the eight-State pilot project. We have heard it called a block grant, we have heard it described as the dismantling of Head Start. Please. There are some States out there who are doing magnificent things, and to give them the opportunity to better coordinate Head Start with their own pre-kindergarten programs, their own early childhood development programs, their own child care programs, States can, in fact, provide a comprehensive package that we believe could be of great help to poor children and their parents in terms of helping improve this program.

And to just say ``no,'' we are not going to try it, we are never going to go there, frankly, is not fair. It is not fair to the 3- and 4-year-olds in America who need our help.

So we have in this bill this eight-state demonstration project, but only for those States who would hold themselves to high standards, only those States who will make a big commitment to early childhood development, and only States who really want to take this project on.

I believe that we have got a good bill before us. I want to ask my colleagues to reject the Miller substitute and to vote ``yes'' on final passage.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers), the gentleman who has led our efforts with Members on both sides of the aisle to help seasonal migrant workers.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the dean of our Ohio delegation, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), for yielding me this time. Let me thank the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) and the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Regula) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) for their efforts in bringing this bill to the floor today. We all know this is a difficult bill. There are a lot of competing interests in this bill, and it is never easy; but they have done a good job.

There has been a lot of discussion here about the fact that this ought to be bigger. But not only did we, the Congress, support a tax cut for the American people, we also supported a $20 billion increase in discretionary spending. And the fact is, we are spending more. Our job as Members of Congress is to make decisions, decisions about where the resources that we get from our taxpayers, where those resources ought to go. For a while, in the late 1990s, revenues were flowing to the Federal Government at unprecedented rates, and we did not have to make as difficult choices as we do today, given the fact that we are in a recession and given the fact that we have been the subject of a serious terrorist attack. So we are making decisions.

But when it comes to the education issues that we fund in this bill, we all know when we passed the No Child Left Behind Act that we were going to make a serious commitment to improve all of America's schools, especially the neediest of America's schools. We know the problems that are there; and in a bipartisan way, this House and this Congress and the President worked to put in place a reform effort. And for the first time in the 37 years that the Federal Government has been involved in our local schools, we have all States in compliance with the Federal law. This never happened before. All 50 States have set their accountability plans to Washington and all 50 States, and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have had their plans approved. This is a major accomplishment on the part of the Congress and the administration to start the accountability process in a serious way.

We also said when we passed that bill that we would increase our funding to our local schools. Under the bill we have before us, title I gets $666 million in new money. Now, this is in addition to the money that we have given over the last 3 years. If we look at the last 3 years under President Bush, the increases in title I were greater than the increases in title I during 7 years of President Clinton.

Now, we can argue about whether it is enough, whether it is too much; but the fact is that we stepped up to the plate to help the neediest of our students, because title I money goes to poor children and goes to poor schools. I think that we have done our job, and we need to stay at it. We need to keep working to increase these amounts. But we have to understand that this $666 million increase is on top of the

$1.2 billion increase last year and a $1.3 billion increase the year before.

Let us talk about special needs children, individuals with disabilities and education. Since 1995, the Congress has increased our grants to local schools by 300 percent. In this bill we add another $1 billion of funding to help meet our commitments. Now, we can have a partisan debate about who is doing the most for education, but when Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, the Federal commitment to IDEA was 5 percent of the cost, 5 percent. With the passage of this bill, we will be up to 18.7 percent of the cost of IDEA, and it is based on a much greater number of special ed children today than what we were talking about in 1995, a 300 percent increase.

Also in the bill that we have before us, we move the reading grant for Reading First and Early Reading to $1.15 billion. Now, this is again a 300 percent increase over where we were just 3 years ago in terms of our commitment to help children in kindergarten through third grade and even younger in the earlier grant money to help them have a chance at being able to read by the end of the third grade.

Charter schools in this bill will get an increase of $71.5 million, another significant increase, made up of $220 million of money for start-up and planning for new charter schools, and $75 million worth of facility money, which will be leveraged into over $200 million worth of money to help plan facilities. There is another $885 million in this bill, an increase, to do Pell grants.

We all know, especially the speaker that spoke before, of the increasing challenge that this Congress has to meet our commitments under the Higher Education Act, to provide more access for the neediest of our students who are able and want to go to college. The more we work to increase access, the harder it becomes because the cost of tuition and fees at our colleges and universities continues to outstrip inflation by a rate of two to three times the inflation rate, causing us increasing problems. As we reauthorize the Higher Education Act, as we go through the balance of this year and next, we will continue to look at what we can do to ensure that the children have better access.

Head Start gets an increase here of $148 million of new money. But overall, spending on discretionary education programs in this bill increases by $2.3 billion. Mr. Chairman, $2.3 billion, that is real money on top of the money we are spending, bringing the total to some $55.4 billion that we are committing in this bill to discretionary education programs. This does not include the cost of student loans and mandatory spending programs, but $55.4 billion worth of discretionary money. I just think that if we look at over the last 3 years since President Bush has taken office, that is an increase of $13.2 billion of real money, trying to help improve our schools and to ensure that every child in America gets a chance at a good education, because without one, they will have no chance at a shot at the American Dream. We need to support this bill.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment before us is unnecessary and potentially harmful. Simply put, it would restrict the Mine Safety and Health Administration's ability to protect miners from coal dust exposure until October 2004.

The proposed amendment is unnecessary because the Agency has already moved to suspend regulatory action on these rules until testing of revolutionary coal dust monitoring technology is completed. As a result, this amendment is not only needless, but could work to delay improved coal dust rules for perhaps several years to come, and I think it must be rejected. To do otherwise would be a great disservice to the miners these rules are designed to protect without any logical purpose.

Let us look at the facts. On June 24, 2003, the Agency suspended its proposed rule in this area. The reason for the delay is clear. The first field test of new coal dust monitoring technology, called personal dust monitors, showed genuine promise, so much so that the PDMs could represent a potential revolution in monitoring miners' exposure to coal dust, and MSHA concluded that additional tests should be conducted before moving forward on this proposed rule.

This is more than lip service. This appropriations bill already provides $250,000 to purchase 25 additional PDMs for testing in underground mines, and this additional testing is supported by both the mining industry and the miners' union. Most importantly, I have been assured that until the testing provides sufficient, reliable information in this area, no further regulatory action is to be taken.

The Agency's actions are reasonable and prudent because significant portions of the coal dust rules could be affected if PDMs prove to be as effective as early tests might indicate. This testing will take time, and that is why the Agency will not move forward with this testing until they have more reliable data.

Unfortunately, the amendment would prevent MSHA from acting on this issue and could have the unintended consequence of delaying a new rule that would utilize PDMs to their fullest potential.

So for these reasons I would hope Members would join me in rejecting this amendment. The Agency has suspended its proposed rule to implement further testing of PDMs, and this should be more than adequate to address any concern over the implementation of these new devices.

Mr. Chairman, I know we do two things here: we do politics, and we do public policy. The fact is that MSHA has suspended and/or withdrawn the regulation, and the gentleman's amendment says that MSHA cannot promulgate a new regulation until October of 2004. The hope is that these new personal dust monitors, this new technology will in fact continue to show the successes that it has so that MSHA can continue with the regulatory efforts and to get their new technology into the workplace as soon as possible.

But under the gentleman's amendment, MSHA would be prohibited until October, 2004, from proceeding. I do not think that is in the right light. I think what we are seeing here is some coal politics on the floor of the House. I think it is unfortunate. This is commonsense policy coming from MSHA. We ought to congratulate them for the wisdom in suspending what they were going to do to look at this new technology. But if it works, why would we want to wait until October of 2004 to implement it? I would urge my colleagues to reject the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

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

This amendment is a sad attempt to return to the days of spending billions and billions of dollars and getting nothing in return. Since 1965, the Federal Government has spent over $300 billion in K through 12 education programs, and what have the results been? Zero. Nothing. And we worked in a bipartisan way on both sides of the aisle to bring real accountability to our schools to ensure that no child was left behind, and the agreement we made was that we would provide sufficient funding to put this into effect and we have. We can look at the $1.2 billion increase in title I two years ago, the $1.3 billion increase last year, the $666 million increase this year.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), a former Member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the time that we have remaining.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment that we have before us is not about providing additional resources for our schools; it is about providing excuses for those who do not want to be accountable for our children to learn. To call this a No Child Left Behind unfunded mandate strikes me as strange, because this year, this year we will spend $24.2 billion of taxpayer money to help needy students around the country. And what No Child Left Behind says is that if we are going to continue to invest these massive amounts of money to help needy students, we ought to expect some results. After all, do children not deserve to learn?

As I said before, IDEA special ed funding has increased 300 percent over the last 7 years. Title I spending has increased 200 percent over the last 7 years. And if we look at the increases over the current fiscal year and the last 2 fiscal years, since President Bush took office, those increases in title I over the last 3 years were more than what we saw under 7 years of President Clinton's title I increases.

So for people to suggest that we are not meeting our obligation to our local schools, I think is not being quite fair and honest with the facts.

The fact is, since President Bush was elected, Congress has increased funding for elementary education, elementary and secondary education $13.2 billion. This is real money. So I would say to my colleagues, No Child Left Behind is the last really serious attempt that is ever going to be made to ensure that all kids get a chance at a decent education in America.

We have blinked. We have blinked. We have blinked. We have had excuses. We have had excuses, and we have had more excuses why we cannot educate all of our kids. And I just want to remind my colleagues of one point: It is not the child's fault whose parents they were born to or that they lost the lucky lottery of life in terms of what community they have grown up in. And I believe that we, as a society, owe them a chance at a decent education.

We know all kids can learn. The problem is that today not all kids have the opportunity to learn, and No Child Left Behind makes that commitment, and the necessary resources are there to implement the law, and we should stand up for the kids and vote against this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, we have known for years that the Fair Labor Standards Act regulations governing overtime are confusing and out of date. Moreover, millions of low-wage workers who should be earning overtime pay currently are not. Now, these regulations which have not been substantially changed in 54 years are complex, confusing, and make it next to impossible for workers to know whether they are entitled to overtime, for employers to know how to pay their employees, and for the Labor Department to enforce these workplace regulations. They simply do not meet the needs of today's 21st century workforce.

The Department has undertaken an important effort to update these complex, decades-old regulations that define overtime exemptions for white-collar employees in the administrative, executive and professional employee classification. They should be commended for their efforts thus far.

Let us be clear. The proposed DOL regulations will provide additional protections to low-income workers and ensure that they are entitled to overtime pay. It is unacceptable that today's outdated regulations require someone earning as little as $8,060 a year to qualify as a white-collar employee and, therefore, prevent them from receiving overtime pay. The proposed changes would raise that level from $8,060 to $22,100 annually, and ensure that anyone earning less than $22,100 a year would automatically be entitled to overtime. Lower-income workers deserve these protections, and the DOL suggestions would help provide them.

These regulations would guarantee overtime to an additional 1.3 million low-wage workers, mostly women and minorities, and strengthen the protections for an additional 10.7 million workers. And for the first time in decades, 20 percent of the lowest-paid workers would be guaranteed to get overtime pay.

Now, these are proposed regulations that are under review, and the Department has reviewed and received 80,000 comments about their proposal. Any efforts to highjack this process before the Department can consider and evaluate these comments, frankly, is very premature.

Unfortunately, the amendment will only worsen the confusion of current wage and hour laws where employers, workers and even the Department of Labor simply cannot accurately determine which employees are exempt and which are not. The only winners under this amendment are the trial lawyers who have lined their pockets with their ``gotcha'' class action lawsuits.

The biggest problem to the amendment might be that the Miller-Obey amendment creates a double standard for employees and leads to fundamental unfairness: Under the amendment, two workers who do the same job would be treated differently. The employee who gets hired yesterday gets paid one rate and for the same job. The worker who gets hired tomorrow gets classified under a different system. You cannot have two people working side by side being paid and treated differently under the law, and that is what would happen under the amendment that we have before us.

Some have even attempted to paint these regulations as an attack on workers, falsely claiming that it will eliminate overtime pay, but nothing could be further from the truth. This in no way would affect the overtime rights of millions of Americans who do nonoffice emergency work.

Mr. Chairman, I want to suggest to my colleagues that we should oppose this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, let me remind everyone, this is to protect the rights of workers and to clarify a labor law that has not been changed in 54 years, and under the amendment offered by my good friend from California (Mr. George Miller), remember, we would create a double standard for employees. Those who do the same job, but if you were hired the day before this bill takes effect, you are grandfathered. If you are hired the day after, you are not grandfathered, and so you would have two employees sitting side by side in a cubicle doing the same identical work being treated differently under the law. I do not think that is what this Congress wants.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank my good friend from North Carolina for yielding me time.

I rise today in support of the rule for H.R. 2211, the Ready to Teach Act. I believe this is a fair rule that allows for the thorough consideration of a measure that I believe will make a real difference in the lives of teachers and students alike.

I first would like to applaud the efforts of my colleague from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), a new member on our committee, who has been a real leader in the effort to strengthen the programs that are training the teachers of tomorrow. His leadership on this bill is providing us with an opportunity to help teachers become highly qualified and ready to teach when they enter the classroom.

H.R. 2211, the Ready to Teach Act, seeks to meet the call of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act to place a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by the 2005-2006 school year. Congress has embraced that goal, realizing the critical role that highly qualified teachers play in the successful education of our Nation's children.

That is why under No Child Left Behind we have provided significant new resources to help teachers become highly qualified. In fact, in the first year of No Child Left Behind alone, we increased grants for teacher-quality funding by 35 percent. And the funding increases keep oncoming. We have provided the resources, and the bill before us today will build upon that commitment by providing real reforms.

There is a good reason why we are moving forward with this bill and why it has received broad bipartisan support. The fact is teacher training programs are suffering from a serious lack of accountability that is posing a real threat as we seek to place highly qualified teachers in classrooms across the Nation.

The No Child Left Behind Act is about supporting the Nation's schoolteachers, and to do that we need to ensure that the programs preparing them for the classroom are fulfilling their obligation to give them the skills to meet the highly qualified standards in No Child Left Behind. That is what this bill will do; it will ensure that teacher training programs are meeting the obligation that they have to teachers to ensure that they are ready to teach.

The Ready to Teach Act will strengthen teacher-training programs, making improvements to ensure that the teachers of tomorrow are highly qualified and prepared to meet the needs of American students. The bill is designed to align teacher-training programs with the high standards of accountability and results provided for in No Child Left Behind.

The No Child Left Behind Act focuses on three key objectives, accountability, flexibility and effectiveness, to improve the quality of these programs.

The first objective, accountability, is essential if we are to gauge the effectiveness of the programs training our teachers. While current higher-education law contains some annual reporting requirements, these reporting measures have proven ineffective in measuring the true quality of teacher-preparation programs. In fact, the current requirements have often been manipulated, leaving data skewed and often irrelevant.

The Ready to Teach Act includes accountability provisions that will strengthen these reporting requirements and hold teacher preparation programs accountable for providing accurate, useful information about the effectiveness of their programs.

I am particularly pleased that the bill before us recognizes that flexibility should exist in methods used for training highly qualified teachers, and, for that reason, would allow funds to be used for innovative methods in teacher-preparation programs such as charter colleges of education, which can provide an alternative gateway for teachers to become highly qualified.

The bill takes the important step of recognizing that individuals seeking to

enter the teaching profession often have varied backgrounds; and by creating flexible approaches that step outside the box, these individuals can become highly qualified teachers through training programs as unique as their own individual experiences.

H.R. 2211 ensures that program effectiveness can accurately be measured and places a strong focus on the effectiveness of teacher preparation and a renewed emphasis on the skills needed to meet the highly qualified standard found in No Child Left Behind.

The use of advanced technology in the classroom, rigorous academic content standards, scientifically-based research, and challenging student academic standards are all principles that this bill will follow.

I would like to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. The gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member; the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the chairman of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness; and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), the ranking member of the subcommittee, are all to be commended for their bipartisan effort in moving this legislation forward. They have put together a bipartisan bill that makes common- sense changes to Title II of the Higher Education Act to help improve our Nation's teachers.

With that, I urge my colleagues to support the rule and to support the underlying bill today.

Mr. Speaker, let me thank my colleague for his warm words, especially that word ``young'' that he mentioned. And I appreciate the work that we have done together, especially when it comes to the needs of special needs children in our schools and the teachers who teach them.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the rule for H.R. 438, the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act. The rule is necessary to allow the House to pass this bill in a timely manner and get the necessary support for our teachers.

I would first like to commend my colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), for his leadership on this important bill that embodies the President's efforts to help needy schools retain and recruit highly qualified teachers.

H.R. 438 will provide teachers of subjects facing critical shortages with an important financial incentive to commit to teaching in high- needs schools for at least 5 years. The importance of highly qualified teachers cannot be overstated. That is why in January of 2002 President Bush signed into law the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, which calls for a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by the 2005- 2006 school year. We are standing behind that goal, providing significant financial resources to help teachers become highly qualified.

The fact is in the first year of No Child Left Behind, as I stated earlier, Congress provided a 35 percent increase in teacher quality grants, and the funding increases are continuing, and so it is this Congress's commitment to meeting the needs of our Nation's schoolteachers. That is why this bill is before us today and why it is so important. We are building upon the financial commitment made in No Child Left Behind to provide our teachers with yet another tool that will help them make a difference in their classrooms all across our country.

The Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act increases the total amount of loan forgiveness for teachers now provided for in the Higher Education Act to a maximum of $17,500 for elementary and secondary teachers in math, science or special education who commit to teaching in a needy school for 5 years. Now, we know that there is critical need for these teachers, and we should concentrate on helping fill that need, and there is no debate on the critical shortages facing schools across the country in these specific subject areas. We need to do all we can to encourage highly qualified professionals to enter the teaching field and for those now in the field to stay.

Teaching can be a difficult, but always rewarding career. Teaching in high-needs schools often brings additional challenges. Despite the challenges, we also know how vital these teachers are to the future of these poor children.

H.R. 438 provides for the right incentive for motivated, talented and qualified students to not only enter the teaching field, but to also provide them with a long-term commitment to these high-needs schools in which they are teaching and, more importantly, to the students that they are teaching.

The rule also provides for an amendment offered by my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), and myself, which we will support. The amendment will assist in improving the very foundation of a child's education by supporting highly qualified, State-certified reading specialists, and while staying within the budget parameters set forth in this bill. The other important part of the amendment is that it does not reduce the number of schools in which a teacher may teach and be eligible for loan forgiveness. And I support this amendment, and I want to urge my colleagues to do so as well.

What I would ask my colleagues not to do is this: We are all going to do what we can to support our teachers, particularly teachers in subjects facing the greatest shortages. The bill before us today gives us an opportunity to do that. But I have friends on both sides of the aisle who want to extend this limited loan forgiveness to many other categories of teachers. However, to do so while remaining within the constraints of the funds that we have available, they propose to dramatically diminish the number of schools eligible for participation by increasing the required poverty level of the eligible schools. So in other words, what would happen is we would cover more teachers, but we would cover much, much fewer numbers of high-poverty schools. The poverty levels in these proposals were increased in some cases to 45, 50 and even 65 percent, and by doing this, the number of eligible schools does, in fact, dramatically decline.

We have addressed these proposals both during the subcommittee and during the full committee consideration of this bill. And I said in the committee and I will say now, we are here to make difficult decisions, and this is one of them. All teachers are very important, but we cannot at this time address the needs of every teacher. We have critical and documented shortages in the subject matters addressed by this bill, and those must be the priorities.

We have heard these numbers before. Let me refer to this chart here: 67 percent vacancies in special education, 70 percent vacancies in math, 61 percent vacancies in biology and life sciences, 51 percent vacancies in physical science teachers; and according to the Center for the Study of Teaching Policy, almost 57 percent of public school teachers are teaching physical science without a major or minor in the fields in which they are teaching.

This bill addresses the dramatic needs for highly qualified teachers facing our Nation's schools today, a need that should not be lost in trying to be helpful to a broader array of teachers. We should be reminded that this loan forgiveness that we have before us today, increasing it to $17,500, is for math, science and special education teachers. This does not change the current program that for all teachers, new teachers going to Title I schools, they already receive a $5,000 loan forgiveness if they committed to the 5 years in a Title I school. But for math, science and special education where we have the real need, we are trying to move the loan forgiveness to $17,500 to attract much more highly qualified teachers to these schools and to get a commitment that they be there for 5 years.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to support the rule today and to support the underlying bill.

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

H.R. 2211, the Ready to Teach Act of 2003, which was reported by the Committee on Education and the Workforce on June 10 by a bipartisan voice vote, complements the No Child Left Behind Act and will help improve the quality and accountability of our Nation's teacher preparation programs.

No Child Left Behind set a lofty, but achievable, goal of placing a highly qualified teacher in every public school classroom by the 2005- 2006 school year. We can all agree that a highly qualified teacher plays a pivotal role in the successful education of our Nation's children, and those children deserve nothing less. Congress has kept our word to increase funding to help ensure teachers can become highly qualified. In fact, we increased funding for teacher quality grants by 35 percent in the first year of No Child Left Behind alone, and the increases are continuing. We are providing the resources, and this bill will build on that effort by supporting our teachers with real reforms.

There is a serious problem when the programs charged with training the teachers of tomorrow are not meeting that goal, and that is exactly what we are facing today. Everyone here will agree that highly qualified teachers prepared to meet the challenges of the classroom and fulfill the needs of our students are essential if we are going to succeed with education reform in America. Yet the Nation's teacher- training programs suffer from serious lack of accountability, and this time it is the teachers who are being left behind.

The bill before us today takes important steps to ensure that teacher-training programs are in fact giving perspective teachers the skills and knowledge they need to meet the highly qualified standard in No Child Left Behind. Let us be clear on this point: this bill is about supporting our teachers. We are expecting a lot from them, and they deserve to have access to high quality training programs that ensure that when they step into the classroom they are truly ready to teach.

This legislation makes several improvements to title II of the Higher Education Act to ensure that teacher-training programs are providing perspective teachers with the skills they need to be highly qualified and ready to teach when they enter the classroom. This bill is about helping teachers, pure and simple, giving them the tools and training they need to meet the needs of our Nation's students.

H.R. 2211 authorizes competitively awarded grants under the Higher Education Act to increase the quality of our teaching force by improving the preparation of perspective teachers and enhancing teacher professional development activities. We want to hold teacher- preparation programs accountable for preparing highly qualified teachers and recruit highly qualified individuals, including minorities and individuals from other occupations, into the teaching force.

The Ready to Teach Act ensures that program effectiveness can accurately be measured and places a renewed emphasis on the skills needed to meet the ``highly qualified'' standard found in No Child Left Behind, such as the use of advanced technology in the classroom, vigorous academic content knowledge, scientifically based research and challenging State student academic standards.

Under this legislation, funds can also be used to recruit individuals, and specifically minorities, into the teaching profession. The committee adopted a bipartisan amendment offered by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) to authorize grants for the creation of Centers of Excellence at high quality, minority-serving institutions.

In general, those Centers of Excellence will help increase teacher recruitment and make institutional improvements to teacher-preparation programs at minority-serving institutions. Grants under this program will be competitively awarded to high quality teacher preparation programs at eligible institutions, which include historically black colleges and universities,

Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges or universities, Alaska native-serving institutions, or native Hawaiian- serving institutions.

Mr. Chairman, as we work to place highly qualified teachers in classrooms across the Nation, I am particularly pleased that the Ready to Teach Act allows for innovative programs that provide alternative options to traditional teacher-training programs. Proposals outlined in this bill, such as charter colleges of education, provide a much-needed alternative route to training highly qualified and effective teachers.

H.R. 2211 authorizes States to use funds to set up charter colleges of education that function in a manner similar to elementary and secondary charter schools, except that they would prepare highly qualified teachers in a higher-education setting. Charter colleges of education would exchange flexibility in meeting State requirements for institutional commitments to produce results-based outcomes for teacher-education graduates, measured based on increased student academic achievement.

This bill takes the important step of recognizing that individuals seeking to enter the teaching profession often have varied backgrounds; and by creating a more flexible approach that steps outside the box, these individuals can become highly qualified teachers through training programs as unique as their own individual experiences.

H.R. 2211 will also hold teacher-preparation programs accountable for preparing highly qualified teachers. While current higher-education law contains annual reporting requirements, these reporting measures have often proven ineffective in measuring the true quality of teacher- preparation programs. In fact, the current requirements have often been manipulated, leaving data skewed and often irrelevant. The Ready to Teach Act includes accountability provisions that will strengthen the reporting measures and hold teacher-preparation programs accountable for providing accurate and useful information.

I would like to thank a new member of our committee, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), the author of this bill, for his work on the Ready to Teach Act. I would also like to commend my colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member; the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) of the subcommittee; and his ranking member, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), for their bipartisan effort on this bill. They have put together a bipartisan bill that makes commonsense changes to title II of the Higher Education Act to help improve the quality of our Nation's teachers.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the underlying bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, let me again congratulate my friend from Michigan. This is a bipartisan bill that has been worked on with Members on both sides of the aisle to try to address the serious needs that we have in our teacher preparation programs as outlined in title II of the Higher Education Act. But as a side note, I need to respond to my colleague from Michigan when it comes to the issue of funding the Federal Government's role in education.

We can look at this as a glass half empty, or we can look at it as a glass half full. Federal education spending over the last 3 fiscal years has gone from $28 billion for elementary and secondary programs to $35.7 billion for these same programs, including almost $400 million to pay for the development and implementation of the testing requirements under No Child Left Behind.

We can look at title I. It has been increased almost 200 percent over the last 6 years. We can look at the last 6 years of special education funding having risen 300 percent.

So when Members come to the floor of the House and suggest that we are not meeting our commitments, I have no choice but to stand up and say, let us be honest. We are doing our share.

Could we do more? Of course, we could do more.

But as I told my colleagues one day, I was elected to come to Congress and make decisions; I was not elected to be Santa Claus, and today is not Christmas. As we get through the appropriations process, we are going to continue to work at the appropriate funding levels for these education programs. But, today, we have a bipartisan bill that will help improve the quality of our Nation's teachers and those who seek to be teachers, and we have to continue to work together to meet this important goal.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), the author of this bill, who spent an awful lot of time as a school board member, a State legislator, and now as a Member of Congress, developing teacher-training programs to help meet the needs of our Nation's teachers.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger), a senior member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns), a former college professor.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Select Education.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), and Members on both sides of the aisle for their work. I especially want to thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), a new member of our committee and new Member of Congress, for his authorship of the underlying bill.

We all know that one of the real keys to ensuring every child in America gets a chance at a good education is to ensure that every child has a highly qualified teacher in their classroom. There has been much effort around the country at improving the quality of teacher preparation programs. What we try to do in the bill we have before us today is to strengthen those programs and to bring greater accountability for those programs that need a little more oversight than they are getting today.

The goal here is to take young people and others outside of the profession and put them through rigorous programs that will benefit them and their students when they are in the classroom. There are just too many programs today around the country that are doing not as well as they could in terms of preparing teachers for tomorrow.

There has been a lot of discussion here about funding, because later on today the House is expected to take up the Labor-HHS appropriation bill, which includes the funding for education. As I said earlier, 2 to 3 years ago we were spending $28 billion a year on elementary and secondary education programs. Today we are spending $35.7 billion per year. Most of the money to fund primary and secondary education comes from State governments, local governments, and property taxes. The Federal Government's role is focused on helping needier students have a better chance at the same kind of education than our children received.

We are doing our share. Could we be doing more? Absolutely, we could be doing more. But we are here, as I said before, to make decisions, and I do think that we are meeting our commitments under No Child Left Behind. I do again suggest to all of our Members that this is a good underlying bipartisan bill, so let us support it.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 2211.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 2211, the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections and conforming changes to the bill.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 309, I call up the bill (H.R. 438) to increase the amount of student loans that may be forgiven for teachers in mathematics, science, and special education, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 438.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 438, the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act of 2003. I congratulate my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Columbia, South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), for introducing this bipartisan legislation and shepherding it through the committee process.

H.R. 438 is simple in its purpose and structure, but monumental in its potential to improve the lives of our Nation's students. The bill before us provides for increased loan forgiveness for highly qualified math, science, and special education teachers teaching in high-need schools. These teachers must agree to teach for 5 consecutive years in schools that many of our disadvantaged students attend.

In January of 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, the bipartisan kindergarten through 12th grade education reform package that, for the first time, demands accountability and results in exchange for the billions of Federal dollars invested in the education of our

Nation's students. In No Child Left Behind, we call for a highly qualified teacher in every public school by the 2005-2006 school year. We have been providing resources to meet that goal and, in fact, a 35 percent increase in funding for teacher quality grants in the first year of No Child Left Behind, and the funding increases continue to come.

Now, with the bill before us today, we are building on that unequivocal financial commitment by increasing the loan forgiveness for teachers we need the most: in our high-needs schools. It is just one more way that this Congress is showing unwavering support for the Nation's schoolteachers.

Mr. Speaker, I think we can all agree that there are few more important issues in this country than education of our Nation's children. More importantly, we want our children to be taught by caring, committed, and educated professionals. This bill will enable high-need elementary and secondary schools to attract highly qualified teachers and get the best and brightest into our classrooms.

H.R. 438 will provide up to $17,500 in loan forgiveness for math, science, and special education teachers. These particular subject areas are facing extreme shortages, and our children are the ones who are suffering because of it. We must address this crisis in our classrooms. We recognize that teachers often face the greatest financial hardships in their early years of their career, and, for that reason, these teachers will begin to receive this assistance after the second year of teaching service is completed, which will continue annually through the completion of the required 5 years. This is yet one more way we are trying to assist teachers by reducing the financial burdens and in providing a more effective incentive for these much-needed teachers to remain in our poorer schools.

Mr. Speaker, a lack of highly qualified math, science, and special education teachers leaves our schools with large vacancies and shortchanges our children, and the success of our Nation depends on being able to compete in a global economy, and by providing a quality education to all of our children is where this must begin.

The National Science Foundation Director, Rita Colwell, said, ``The lack of competitiveness of U.S. K-12 students has much larger ramifications than simply providing enough mathematicians and scientists for laboratories.'' And I will continue, ``In these technological times, general scientific and mathematical literacy is crucial to the entire workforce and has implications for our economy into the future.''

We must continue our efforts to recruit and retain the best and brightest into the field, and, more importantly, in high-need subject areas. H.R. 438 provides the right incentive for students to enter teaching and for those who are currently teaching to stay.

I am particularly pleased that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have worked closely with us to craft an amendment that recognizes a fundamental role that reading plays in a child's education. As the President has said, reading is the new civil right, and for that reason I am happy to support the amendment offered by our ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) that will include highly qualified State-certified reading specialists among those eligible for the increase in loan forgiveness. By recognizing that reading is the foundation of all other learning, this amendment will strengthen our efforts to improve results for students.

In addition, I strongly support this amendment because, despite the increased costs, it remains within our budget parameters without reducing the number of schools eligible that are eligible to receive this incentive. This is the key. It expands this vital resource without reducing opportunities for schools, which I think is the biggest downfall to other amendments that could have been offered to this bill today.

I want to urge my colleagues to support H.R. 438. A vote for this bill is a vote to support our Nation's students and our teachers, and H.R. 438 tells each and every one of them that their education, their future and the future of our country are vitally important, and that this Congress stands behind them.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the support of the ranking member of the subcommittee on the bill we have before us today, but once again we get into this other issue, and that is education funding.

Now, we all know about 90 percent of the funds for primary and secondary education, K-12, come from State and local sources. Federal Government's role has been to go in and help high-poverty schools and students who come from high-poverty neighborhoods. And if you look at the funding levels from fiscal year 2001, we spent $28 billion in K-12 funding. If you are look at fiscal year 2003, some 2 years later, you will see that we are spending $35.7 billion. Now, that is a great example of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.

I think most Members on both sides of the aisle believe that we have done more than anyone could ever have expected the Federal Government to do in terms of increasing our funding for K-12 education programs so that we can meet our commitment to leave no child behind. We are doing our share. Unfortunately, the States are having great difficulty with their budgets, and some are having to cut education programs that they would rather not. But we cannot make up for the shortfalls and the problems that the States are having. We are doing our share. I am sure they will find a way to do theirs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the subcommittee chairman, the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness.

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

Another wonderful example of let us let the perfect become the enemy of the good. The President in his proposal, and Senator Graham when he was a former House Member, made it clear that the focus here was to look at high-poverty schools and look at the basics, math, science and special education.

In committee, and I am sure on the floor today, we are going to hear calls

for, well, this is a good bill but: but we need loan forgiveness for Head Start teachers; we need loan forgiveness for librarians; we need loan forgiveness for reading teachers, and the list went on and on and on. If we were to have done all of those, one, we would have not the budget to do it or, secondly, so few schools would qualify that maybe one out of 10 schools under this bill would actually get some help.

Our job is to make decisions, and what we are trying to do here is to focus in on the highest needs in our poorest schools.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), our good friend and a member of the committee and the author of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I just want to take a moment to thank the gentleman from Michigan and his colleague, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), before all of our colleagues, because these two scientists, who happen to both sit on our committee, have been relentless in their efforts to get Congress to fund math and science education; and whether it be in the bill that we have before us for title I schools or in broader programs that affect teachers in other schools, these two gentlemen have really, relentless does not even begin to describe their tenacity in ensuring that Congress steps up to what is needed to help math and science education in all of our schools. I just want to say thanks.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the time in opposition, even though I am not opposed to the amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, let me congratulate my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member of our committee, on our ability to put this amendment together and bring it to the floor. As we were looking at the loan forgiveness bill and the budget we were given to work with it, we realized in committee that we had a little more room, and so the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and I had a discussion about these reading specialists.

They do provide a very important service in many of our poorer schools in terms of helping students to read, helping to train those others who teach reading, and I do think it is an important addition to the bill.

As the President said the other day and has said on a number of occasions, reading is the new civil right, a quote given to him by a lady on the campaign trail at one time. We all know if you cannot read, trying to learn any subject, trying to function in our society is not going to happen.

When we look at the test scores that the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) referred to several minutes ago, they are basically flat. We have a real serious problem in many of our schools because kids are not being taught to read. Now this is somewhat incomprehensible to many of us; but we are engaged with our kids, or in the case of the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), his grandchildren. We are working with our kids, exposing them to books and exposing them to reading. Unfortunately, many kids in America are not being exposed. Their parents have two jobs, or a single parent having to work. The extra focus that we put into No Child Left Behind on increasing the amount of funds available to target kindergarten through third graders is critical if we are serious about leaving no child behind. I congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) on his amendment, and urge my colleagues to adopt it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), a former chairman of the school board of the State of Georgia.

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

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

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 283, I call up the bill (H.R. 660) to amend title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to improve access and choice for entrepreneurs with small businesses with respect to medical care for their employees, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

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

Madam Speaker, the most pressing crisis that we face in health care today is the number of Americans who lack basic health insurance benefits. It is a problem that can be illustrated by just a few numbers, so let us just look at the facts.

Today, 41 million Americans are uninsured. This problem is not going to go away, and we have a responsibility to confront it. With health care costs continuing to rise sharply across the country, more and more employers and workers are sharing the burden of increased premiums. Employer-based health insurance premiums leaped an average of 15 percent in 2003, the largest increase in at least a decade, according to a study just released June 11 by the Center for Studying Health System Change. We know that for every 1 percent increase in coverage, additional price increase, 300,000 more people lose their health insurance, according to a 1999 study by the Lewin Group, a national health care and human services consulting firm.

The second number is 60. Sixty is the percentage of the 41 million uninsured Americans who either work for a small business or who are dependent upon someone who does. So let us remember, there are 60 percent of the uninsured where they or one of their dependents works every day for a company that likely does not offer health insurance. Many of these Americans work for small employers who cannot afford to purchase quality health insurance benefits for their workers. Notably, the 2002 Census Bureau statistics show that employer-sponsored health care coverage has declined because small businesses with less than 25 workers have been forced to drop coverage because of rising health care costs. These small employers are denied the ability to purchase quality health benefits that compare with the coverage that large, multi-State corporations and unions have been offering to their workers for decades.

The last number is $130 billion. Yes, $130 billion is the cost to the American economy every year of poor health and premature deaths amongst those 41 million Americans who lack basic health insurance coverage, according to a study released just this week by the Institute of Medicine. Madam Speaker, $130 billion a year of additional costs to our society and disproportionately aimed at the 41 million Americans that do not have any health insurance.

The implications of these numbers are tragic, not just for employers who cannot afford the high cost of health insurance, but the millions of uninsured families who are being denied access to quality care. Clearly, we need to focus on providing affordable health care to the uninsured as well as ensure that employers who provide health benefits to their employees are not forced to drop coverage because of rising premiums and high administrative costs.

The Small Business Health Fairness Act, which we have on the floor today, responds to this problem and can help reduce the high cost of health insurance for small businesses and uninsured working families. By creating association health plans, which would be strictly regulated by the Department of Labor, small businesses could pool their resources and increase their bargaining power with benefit providers, which will allow them to negotiate better rates and purchase quality health care at a lower cost.

President Bush addressed this point directly last year during his speech at the Women's Entrepreneurship Summit when he said, ``Small businesses will be able to pool together and spread their risk across a large employee base.

It makes no sense in America to isolate small businesses as little health care islands unto themselves. We must have association health plans.

Well, the President is right, and we should help level this playing field so that small businesses can afford to offer the kind of quality coverage that large companies and unions do across America today.

Importantly, the bill gives AHPs the freedom from costly State mandates because small businesses deserve to be treated in the same fashions as corporations like GM and UPS, and unions who receive the same exemption so that they can offer high quality plans and benefits to their workers. Clearly, State health care mandates are useless to families who do not have the health care coverage in the first place. And if you do not have health care coverage, State mandates requiring health plans to offer specific benefits to those they cover do you and your family no good at all.

Let us be clear on the protections this bill provides workers, however, because it includes strong safeguards to protect workers. In fact, the solvency standards in the bill go far beyond what is required any single employer plan or labor union plan under law. And despite the bipartisan nature of this bill, some misinformation has been spread about the bill that I would like to take a moment to correct.

The measure protects against cherrypicking because we make clear that the AHPs must comply with the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, which prohibits group health plans from excluding or charging a higher rate to high-risk individuals with a high-claims experience.

Under our bill, sick or high-risk groups or individuals cannot be denied coverage. In addition, AHPs cannot charge higher rates for employers with sicker individuals within the plan, except to the extent already allowed by State law based on where the employer is located.

The bill also contains strict requirements under which only bona fide professional and trade associations can sponsor an association health plan, and therefore does not allow sham association plans set up by health insurance companies to go out and do what some did over the next decade or so. These organizations must be established for purposes other than providing health insurance and they have to be in existence for at least 3 years prior to the passage of this bill.

This campaign of disinformation belies not just the need for the bill, but the bipartisan support behind it. Not only is it strongly supported by the President of the United States, President Bush and Secretary Chao at the Department of Labor, but it has more than 160 bipartisan co-sponsors, including my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson), the subcommittee chairman; the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher), the former member of our committee, now on the Committee on Energy and Commerce; or the Democrat member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dooley); and the Democrat member, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).

It is noteworthy and significant that Republicans and Democrats alike are joining together to deal with the crisis affecting more than 41 million uninsured Americans. Uninsured workers deserve the security of knowing that health care is not just a dream but a reality for them and for their families. This bill can help make that happen.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds. What we want to do in this bill is to give small employers the same advantages in the marketplace that large companies and unions have today. And that is the real secret behind this. Why can they not go out as a group and design a plan that would meet their needs just like a big company can for their employees?

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher), the author of this bill and someone who has worked on it for many, many years.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 660.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. VELAZQUEZ).

(Ms. VELAZQUEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

The foundation of our health insurance market in the United States is employer-provided coverage set up through ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. It covers 150 million American lives. We are trying to allow small employers who belong to statewide associations, national associations, the opportunity to band together to create an insurance policy that will benefit not only the small business but, more importantly, their employees.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).

Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, this bill does have broad bipartisan support. I am happy to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dooley), one of my good friends and colleagues on the Committee on Agriculture.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. We could look at the problem of the 41 million Americans through many different lenses, and we could talk about solutions. We believe that we are bringing a solution here where we are showing the glass half full.

My colleagues on the other side want to look at this solution as a glass that is half empty. The fact is that 41 million Americans have no health insurance, and we in this Congress, over the last decade, have talked about it and talked about it and talked about it. As a matter of fact, we brought this bill to the floor on two occasions before today, and unfortunately the other body did not see fit to move the legislation. But we are not going to quit because if we do not help these 41 million Americans who have no health insurance, guess what, they are going to continue to get sicker. They are going to end up getting treatment later in their illness, and they are going to continue to pile up massive amounts of healthcare debt that by and large they do not pay for, those who purchase health insurance pay for in terms of higher fees.

We have heard all of the discussion about the fact that we do not mandate this coverage and mandate this coverage.

The reason that we have the crisis in many States is because they have mandated every coverage known to man be stipulated in each of the policies, whether they need the coverage or not. Large employer plans do not have mandates other than two small mandates that are in ERISA. Neither did the union plans. They cover virtually all of these diseases and all of these treatments because that is what their employees want. We know that bare-bones policies do not work because employers do not buy them and their employees do not want them. And if we look at the best plans in America, they happen to be large employer plans, union plans that cover broad healthcare coverage and those employees love those plans.

Why would we not allow small businesses to come together, and whether it is through the Ohio Chamber of Commerce or the National Restaurant Association or the Lumbermen's Association, or how about the Farm Bureau, why would we not allow them to allow their members to come together where they could offer them a package of healthcare plans? Maybe it is one or two, maybe it is four or five potential plans that their members would get to choose from.

Take the issue of farmers, I have got a lot of farmers in my district. They are independent contractors. Their ability to go out and buy health insurance on not on their own is about zero unless they wants to pay $1,000 to $2,000 a month. If they were allowed to come together with other farmers around Ohio, other farmers around the country, guess what? They would get much better coverage than they are getting today at far less cost, and why should we not give them the opportunity to do this?

So I say to my colleagues as we end the general debate today, this is a good bill. It has strong bipartisan support, and I urge my colleagues to support the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I am opposed to the gentleman's amendment and claim the time in opposition.

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

Mr. Speaker, instead of embracing this bipartisan bill like many of their colleagues, some House Democrats have, instead, offered a substitute that is really no alternative at all.

Their plan does nothing to address one of the real issues that is really at the heart of this debate, and that is cost. In fact, it takes us exactly in the wrong direction of where we are trying to going, raising costs for small businesses and imposing with new mandates on employers. Instead of relying on competition that AHPs would provide, thereby lowering costs, their alternative could drive small employers out of business altogether.

Moreover, the substitute comes with a $50 billion price tag establishing a complex new Federal program that includes health care subsidies for certain small businesses and some workers who work in small businesses. It would establish a national Government-subsidized health care plan that attempts to model itself after the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, but instead imposes a new mandate such as requiring small employers to pay 50 percent of their premiums for employees.

However, unlike the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan that is exempt from costly State mandates and regulations, coverage offered under this substitute would subject this plan to the more than 1,500 State mandates that make up about 15 percent of the rising cost of health insurance. In addition, in order to qualify, the substitute imposes new mandates on employer plans. For example, the substitute mandates that employers provide health care coverage to every employee who has been employed for at least 3 months.

In addition, it mandates that employers pay 50 percent of the cost of health care premiums for employees and that they cover all dependents of their workers. Well meaning, but in the end, these mandates will prohibit employers from proceeding. Self-employed individuals, however, are not covered by the substitute and would receive no benefits.

So let us make clear this fact. Small businesses today have the highest health care premiums of any other group. Premiums increased this year by at least 15 percent, the highest increase in a decade. And premiums are even higher for small businesses that see increases of 40 to 50 percent a year as employers continue to get out of small group activities and States. In fact, the increase in the uninsured this year, now 41 million Americans, was made up entirely of small business workers who lost their health care coverage because their employers could not afford to continue to provide this benefit.

So in answer to this, the substitute proposes to raise the cost to those small employers by adding new coverage requirements and subjecting it to more than 1,500 State mandates. And then we are going to spend $50 billion worth of Federal taxpayers' money to subsidize this coverage.

In contrast, AHPs use the strengths of the employer-based system that cover about 150 million American lives today, and we rely on the private market. The benefits of competition, the economies of scales that are enjoyed by large unions and large companies all across the country to help lower costs and to provide better coverage for their workers.

AHPs allow small businesses to access the benefits of ERISA that are currently offered to large employers and unions. ERISA exempts large employers and unions from State mandates so that they are able to offer a quality benefit package from one coast to another or in just several adjoining States.

This uniformity reduces the cost so that more of the health care dollar that they are spending can actually go to benefits for their employees, and the lowering of the administrative costs also allows these companies and unions to offer more benefits to their members.

Through ERISA, employers and unions are able to offer benefits that best fit the needs of their employees. Their small business counterparts deserve the same opportunity to craft benefit packages that are both high quality and affordable.

The substitute would offer employers a difficult Hobson's choice: Meet these conditions, which may strap a business to the point of going under; or face limited and costly alternatives to health care coverage; or they can just do what they do today, offer no health care coverage to their employees.

Instead of making it possible for small businesses to access more affordable coverage, their coverage options will actually be more expensive, and then we are going to finance it with higher taxes.

While AHP legislation would be implemented quickly, the Democrat substitute might take years to get up and running because we are going to require the Department of Labor to design this, then to figure out how they are going to sell it, and then figure out how they are going to parcel out the $50 billion. If the appropriation does not go through, then you have got a plan with no financing behind it at all.

So, let me make myself clear, if I have not already: I believe our Nation's employer-sponsored health care system is a huge American success story. Employers provide coverage for the vast majority of our Nation's population, and almost 150 million Americans have coverage through ERISA.

The Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Department of Labor through our oversight of ERISA have jurisdiction over employer- sponsored health care, and I support the employer-based system to address the problem of the uninsured.

However, the way that the substitute does that is not by building on our strengths to offer really good plans. The mandates in their bill will basically say to small employers, you either offer the best health care plan in the entire market that is possible to your employees, or you get no help at all.

I think the strengths of the current system are good, and I think building on those by allowing Association Healthcare Plans will, in fact, work.

This bill is being supported by our nation's small business associations. The NIFB, the National Retail Association, the National Association of Wholesale Distributors, the National Association of Homebuilders, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others strongly support this bill, and the same groups oppose the substitute that we have before us.

So I hope Members will join me in offering assistance to our Nation's small businesses by supporting the underlying bill, and I ask my colleagues to reject the substitute we have before us.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good colleague for yielding me this time.

We have heard about these studies today; and the gentleman knows that is the study, or at least has heard me say that the study done by Mercer is very similar to the study done by the Congressional Budget Office, and they are both flawed. They are very flawed. They do not take into account the fact that we have anti-cherrypicking language in the bill, and they assume in their studies that cherrypicking would be allowed.

Secondly, they assume that there would not be any difference in the administrative fees for running the plan. The fact is that we have studies that show that up to 8 million of the uninsured would have access to affordable, quality health insurance.

Let me also point out exactly what our bill does. The gentleman from New Jersey just said in the State of New Jersey, for a single person to buy a

health insurance plan is about $6,000 and family coverage is about $12,000. The average cost for a large employer for the cost of their health insurance is about $3,300 for a single person and about $5,500 for a family.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. Speaker, I made some phone calls to find several plans that were both in the same area.

The fact is, that is exactly what this bill does. It allows small employers to band together to get themselves into a larger pool to design their own plan so that they can, in fact, offer better coverage at lower cost to their employees.

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

Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the 15 percent reduction is only the reduction in the administrative costs of running the plan. When you begin to look at what pooling and larger pools will do, it brings the costs down significantly.

Mr. Speaker, we believe that the average reduction for a small employer would be somewhere between 15 and 30 percent.

I do, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), a member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman referred to his ability to offer a package under ERISA to your 220 employees on the business you managed, but what about those 900 real estate agents that work as independent contractors for this company, who had to go out and fight on their own, day in and day out, to get a policy for themselves or for their family? And under this bill, if I am correct, the National Association of Realtors or the Georgia Realtor Association could offer a group plan to their real estate agents which would bring their costs down substantially.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Bend, Indiana (Mr. Chocola).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), a member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations, the gentleman who shepherded this bill through our committee.

(Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. Speaker, we have 41 million Americans who do not have health insurance. As I said before, Congress has been talking about this for a decade. And while the underlying bill will not solve the entire problem, it will help in addressing the needs of the uninsured.

As we heard before, some 60 percent either work for or have a dependent who works for a business, and so they have jobs. We are not talking about the poor here, because the poor get covered by Medicaid. We are talking about people who go to work every day, but they happen to work in an industry that maybe does not traditionally cover health insurance, or they work for a small employer who just cannot afford it because they are locked in a small State insurance pool.

We know what the cost of health insurance and these increases do. It creates more uninsured. In the Wall Street Journal today, CALPERS, the country's largest health plan, is set to increase premiums on an average of 17 percent for the next year, a 17 percent increase from the largest health care plan in the country. It is time that we step up and take action.

The underlying bill will in fact help small businesses create more coverage for more people. Small businesses. And who are small businesses? How about the dry cleaner down the street or the convenience store? How about the farmers in America today who have to go fend for themselves as an individual in the marketplace? They may be by themselves, maybe just family coverage. How about the real estate agents we talked about before, independent contractors, and others who may be self-employed that have to go fight to get insurance in very small risk pools in many States? If we allow them to come together with large State associations, national associations, and to group themselves, they can have real coverage for a much more reasonable cost.

This is the right thing to do today, to help those who pay high premiums; and it is also the right thing to do to help those who have no insurance at all. Those plans that are out there covered under ERISA are the Cadillac of plans in the country. Why not let small employers have the same advantage.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, the underlying bill seeks to address the needs of 41 million Americans who have no health insurance. What the motion to recommit does is essentially mandate coverage on association health care plans. If you have no health insurance, a mandate will do you no good. What we seek to do with the underlying bill is to cover more people. Sixty percent of the people who are uninsured either work in a small business or have a relative that works in a small business. What we are trying to do here is level the playing field so that small businesses can buy health insurance for their employees just like large companies and unions can do today.

Under ERISA, there are but several small mandates. We do not mandate every coverage. But if you ask employees of large companies and you ask employees and members of large unions, they will tell you that they have the best health care plans in America. These large plans in our country have great benefits. They cover virtually all the illnesses and all the diseases that are there. But they are allowed to design one benefit issue for each of these mandates that covers all 50 States. It may not read the same in every particular State. What we are trying to do with the underlying bill is to give small businesses the same advantage in the marketplace that big businesses have today.

I would urge my colleagues at this hour, reject the motion to recommit and vote for the final passage of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the Senate bill (S. 1276) to improve the manner in which the Corporation for National and Community Service approves, and records obligations relating to national service positions, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me this time.

I thank both him and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) and many others for their efforts in bringing us here, and I rise today in support of the conference report to S. 342, the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003. This conference report reauthorizes the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act and related programs and acts. The conference report represents, I think, our efforts and commitment to once again ensure that programs aimed at the prevention of child abuse and neglect are strengthened and continue to serve vulnerable children.

When this process began, we wanted to ensure that the final bill reflected our strong belief that every child in America deserves the security of being part of a safe, permanent, and caring family. And I am pleased to say that the conference report that we have before us does just that. It aims to improve program implementation, making enhancements to current law to ensure that States have the necessary resources and flexibility to properly address the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This conference report retains language to ensure that children are protected from abuse and neglect through best practice prevention and treatment services. And, importantly, it continues to reflect our belief that we can help achieve this goal by maintaining resources for adoption opportunities, identifying and addressing the needs of abandoned infants, and ensuring that resources continue to be available to promote family violence prevention activities. This conference report also retains language to address the problem of child abandonment and abuse with effective solutions that make a real difference in the lives of children.

In addition, this conference report continues to appropriately address issues regarding child protective services across the United States by enhancing training for personnel, requiring more effective partnerships between child protective services and private and community-based organizations, and improving public education on the children protection system. This conference report enjoys a strong bipartisan support and is widely supported throughout the child abuse prevention and family violence prevention communities. I want to thank all the conferees from both the House and the Senate for their efforts in getting us to this point.

I especially want to thank the Select Education Subcommittee chairman (Chairman Hoekstra) for his leadership and dedication to the completion of this conference report; the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood); the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa); the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis); and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), my friend and the ranking member of our committee.

I wish to thank Senator Gregg, the Chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Senator Kennedy, the ranking member, and Senator Dodd for their assistance in finalizing and helping us bring this legislation forward today.

I also want to thank the staff for their hard work and their dedication, especially Krisann Pearce, Pam Davidson, Kate Houston, Holli Traud, Alexa Marrero, and Jo-Marie St. Martin of

my committee staff; Ruth Friedman with the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), Ricardo Martinez with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa), Rebecca Hunt with the staff of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), Judy Borger and Matt Haggerty with the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood), and the counsel from the minority side, Mort Zuckerman, whom I see in the Chamber. They have all worked in an especially close way to help bring us here today.

So I want to urge my colleagues to support the conference report to S. 342, and thank them for all of their hard work.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Con. Res. 162, honoring the City of Dayton, Ohio for its Inventing Flight celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of powered flight.

In addition to commending Dayton's efforts this year, efforts which actually began back in 1989, we would be remiss if we neglected to pay tribute to the dedication Dayton, the Miami Valley community, and the military and civilian personnel at Wright Patterson Air Force Base have shown in both preserving Wilbur and Orville Wright's legacy and advancing the dream of human flight.

One hundred years ago, the Wright Brothers made Ohio the ``Birthplace of Aviation.'' It was in their bicycle shop in Dayton, now part of the Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, that the Wright Brothers researched and designed the first successful, heavier-than-air, manned, powered aircraft. It was there in Dayton, on the Huffman Flying Prairie, where the brothers learned to fly--where they learned to control and maneuver their aircraft.

Today, the tradition of the Wright Brothers lives on in the Dayton community. Engineers, scientists, and inventors continue to research, develop, and test the latest advances in airpower at the Wright Patterson Air Force laboratories. At the Air Force Institute of Technology, they learn the technical skills to build the aircraft of the future. At the United States Air Force Museum, three hangars attest to the commitment the community has to preserve the history of the Air Force and its contributions to the advancement of powered flight.

July 3, 2003 marks the beginning of the month-long Inventing Flight activities, transforming Dayton into an international hub of aviation entertainment. The Centennial Celebration, the largest public centennial event in Ohio celebrating the first powered flight, is one of only four nationwide events endorsed as a full partner by the United States Centennial of Flight Commission. The Centennial Celebration includes the Dayton Air Show at the Dayton International Airport. This year's show will include an unprecedented joint appearance by all three North American jet demonstration teams: the Air Force Thunderbirds, the Navy Blue Angels, and the Canadian Forces Snowbirds.

I am proud to represent communities working so tirelessly to preserve and promote powered fight, a community where the Wright Brothers lived, dreamed, invented, and perfected man's first powered aircraft. In Dayton, the legacy of aviation is celebrated for its critical contributions to the economy, to business and personal travel, and to our military. I salute Dayton' legacy and extend an invitation to everyone throughout our country to visit this city and all of the Southwest Ohio and to join the celebration where Imagination Takes Flight.