Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I move a call of the House.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 1464, which commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security and affirms our alliance with Japan and commitment to peace and prosperity for the U.S. and Japan, as well as the Asia-Pacific region.

The U.S.-Japan Alliance, rooted in our shared values and democratic ideals, provides a climate of stability for East Asia that has enabled all nations of the region to develop and prosper. I do believe the time has come to rethink our large military footprint near Okinawa. The Japanese are our partners and allies; a large military presence within their country is likely seen by a younger generation as unnecessary and unwelcome.

The U.S. and Japan should enhance regional cooperation in the Asia- Pacific region. We should work together to respond to natural disasters and to provide humanitarian relief in the region. We must make efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. We must deepen our cooperation and strengthen our Alliance.

As the Treaty marks its 50th Anniversary, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution to recommit ourselves to further build a strong and cohesive U.S.-Japanese Alliance.

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

Ladies and gentlemen of the House, this is the most disturbing debate that I have engaged in in the 111th Congress. And to hear what I've already heard from one of the most distinguished members of this Judiciary Committee is a little bit dismaying to me. Let me say this. I'll answer one of his questions. What does the bill do? And I agree, I'd love 4 hours. Perhaps we'll be debating this bill after the vote, regardless of its outcome.

This bill rolls back the decision--the blatant decision--of Citizens United in the Supreme Court by using the three tools that the Court said that we could do to make their decision different. First, we can increase disclosure; two, we can require disclaimer requirements on advertisements; and, three, we can limit foreign influence in our elections. One, two, three.

The danger of the Citizens United decision, the most shocking decision I have read in the Supreme Court in many, many years, is the threat of

groups who attack candidates for office without ever having to tell people which corporations are bankrolling these ads. This is what the DISCLOSE Act, the bill on the floor, is designed to prevent. This bill permits some long-established advocacy groups to forego some of the new disclosure requirements. But if these groups take more than 15 percent of their money from corporations, then all the requirements of the DISCLOSE Act kick in and they have to stand by their ads, just like candidates do.

In Citizens United, Justice Stevens, who argued with much more persuasive reasoning his position in this case, dissenting, said this: ``The Constitution does, in fact, permit numerous `restrictions on the speech of some in order to prevent a few from drowning out the many; for example, restrictions on ballot access and on legislators' floor time.''

He stated that corporations are categorically different from individuals. Here's what he said: ``In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters.''

And then he closed with this sentence: ``Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.''

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

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to Jared Polis of Colorado, a great member of our committee.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), the distinguished subcommittee chairman on Courts and Competition.

Could the gentleman spare us a couple minutes?

I am very pleased now to yield 1 minute to the distinguished senior member of the Judiciary Committee, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.

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

Members of the House, I have been on the Judiciary Committee longer than anyone in the House of Representatives. Save one other court decision, there has been no decision that they have ever rendered that I have considered more abhorrent and more onerous than the results that will flow from this measure of the Citizens United decision. I say that because what we are doing is a matter of whether corporate control of the body politic now goes completely and totally without any halt or reservation whatsoever.

So, please, support this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 1369, which recognizes the significance of National Caribbean-American Heritage Month. Since June of 2006, the White House has issued an annual proclamation recognizing June as the national Caribbean-American Heritage Month. Caribbean's have made important contributions in all facets of American life from the arts to athletics, science and service.

Actors Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte and Journalist Malcolm Gladwell are Caribbean-Americans who have achieved greatness in their careers as well as in their communities as humanitarians and activists.

Mr. Poitier, Mr. Belafonte, and Mr. Gladwell have not only paved the way for their fellow Caribbean-Americans, but also for many other Americans who aspire to be musicians, journalists, actors and agents of change. For the past 50 years, Poitier has been an example to all Americans because of the work he did to help break down barriers in film and cinema. Poitier was recently awarded the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom because of his post-Hollywood activities. Belafonte has earned the title ``King of Calypso'' for popularizing Caribbean style music. Belafonte was also recently awarded the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil and Human Rights Award for his lifelong efforts for equality and justice. Malcolm Gladwell is a best-selling author who TIME magazine recognized in 2005 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. His works have shown us the importance of looking at life with a critical eye and finding the small factors that have large consequences in our lives.

Because of their fame, Mr. Poitier, Mr. Belafonte and Mr. Gladwell have been properly recognized on multiple occasions; but it is imperative that we recognize the Caribbean-American Community as a whole because the diversity and talent they bring to the United States enriches and strengthens our country.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 546 recognizing the historical significance of Juneteenth Independence Day. On June 19th, 1865 Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This news was declared two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Because the slaves spent two years unnecessarily enslaved, this day had been declared a holiday; Juneteenth is the oldest holiday in the United States commemorating the ending of slavery. The Juneteenth holiday is a day where peoples of all races can reflect on the evils and suffering of slavery and recognize the contributions that African Americans have made to society since Juneteenth.

When I first came to this body, these were the same issues that my constituents and the African American community at-large faced. As we commemorate Juneteenth, there will be celebrations, but I hope there will also be reflections. Even today, the vestiges of slavery still impose the cycle of poverty on the descendants of the freedmen. As time has passed, many have said the free market would take care of these people, but it is clear that it has left them behind. As we commemorate today, we must not forget to pursue the unfinished business of equality that emancipation began so long ago.

Mr. Chair, today I rise in strong support of Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010. Small businesses are the engine of economic growth where nearly two out of three jobs are created. A recent study found that 39 percent of small businesses were struggling to access credit. Today's legislation will address this issue by providing capital to community banks who will lend to these job creating small businesses.

The Small Business Lending Fund Act would establish a $30 billion fund to lend to small businesses looking to hire and expand their operations by providing additional capital to community banks. Today's legislation will also create the State Small Business Credit Initiative that would partner with state based programs to lend up to $20 billion in new lending. This is critical because many state-based programs are being forced to slash funding due to severe budget shortfalls.

Mr. Chair, small businesses will be the catalyst to bring America out of this severe recession. Providing assistance to our small businesses is a necessary and urgent priority. I urge my colleagues to support today's legislation.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5072, the ``FHA Reform Act of 2010.'' This bill will make essential reforms that are needed to strengthen the financial footing of the Federal Housing Administration, which helps provide mortgage insurance to expand homeownership opportunities for thousands of Americans each year.

Passage of H.R. 5072 will enhance the FHA's authority to crack down on fraudulent lenders and those who violate their loan requirements. Clearly, the time has come for the federal government to provide much needed oversight of unscrupulous participants in the mortgage lending industry.

FHA has helped 37 million Americans buy homes since 1934, and is filling a vital role in the nation's economy by providing crucial mortgage insurance at a time when the private sector has pulled back from the mortgage market. Because of the ``FHA Reform Act of 2010,'' FHA will be able to put itself on strong financial footing so that it can continue providing American families with the necessary financial backing to become home owners--the foundation of the American dream.

H.R. 5072 also requires the FHA to improve its internal reporting systems to better manage risk and to provide transparent data to the public and Congress. This includes better monitoring of early defaults and claims, tracking mortgage information by loan servicer, and requiring a Government Accountability Office study on FHA. These kinds of reforms will make the FHA a more efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable program in the long run, and hopefully allow more families to become homeowners.

The bill is supported by a range of organizations including the National Urban League, the National Association of Realtors, the National Council of La Raza, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and the National Association of Home Builders.

I encourage my colleagues to support the bill.

Madam Speaker, just before Congress left for the Memorial Day recess, we passed and sent to the President H.R. 5330, the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act of 2004 Extension Act, and the President has just signed it into law. As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and sponsor of this legislation, I would like to emphasize a few points about its importance.

The antitrust laws have been described as the Magna Carta of free enterprise. They are a safeguard that protects the vitality of the free market by preventing its becoming concentrated in too few hands. Just as importantly, they protect consumers from unscrupulous businesses that would conspire among themselves or illegally leverage market power to charge artificially high prices and deny meaningful choice.

The worst kinds of antitrust offenses, conspiracies by competitors to organize into cartels to cheat the marketplace of fair competition, are rightly condemned and subject to high criminal fines and prison sentences.

Treble damages in private rights of action are also an essential element of vigorous antitrust enforcement. They not only compensate consumers for harm they suffer from illegal anticompetitive activity, they also create a powerful incentive for other market participants to refrain from engaging in anticompetitive activity in the future.

The Department of Justice Antitrust Division's corporate leniency program has worked well in exposing illegal price-fixing cartels and bringing them to justice. Starting in 1993, the corporate leniency program created incentives for participants in illegal price-fixing cartels--provided that they weren't the ringleader--to come forward and expose the cartel, in exchange for amnesty from criminal prosecution. Although the program was achieving success, the Antitrust Division recognized that the treble damages, as well as the joint and several liability overall, to which amnesty applicants would be exposed in related private actions was limiting the effectiveness of the program. The party that was coming forward to expose the cartel could potentially even be left paying damages for the entire cartel.

The Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act was passed in 2004 to address these concerns, by limiting the civil liability of amnesty applicants to their share of the legal responsibility, while leaving the other cartel participants subject to joint and several liability. In this way, Congress sought to balance the need for strong incentives to uncover harmful, sometimes multi-billion-dollar price- fixing cartels, without lessening the total amount of damages that would be available to the victims in private civil actions.

By some measures, the 2004 changes have been effective. Since those changes were made, the Antitrust Division has prosecuted some of the biggest cartels ever detected, collecting more than $5 billion in criminal fines.

However, concerns have arisen that some cartel members who have taken advantage of the leniency program may be abusing the civil liability relief by failing to cooperate fully and in a timely manner with the cartel's victims in their civil actions. In reauthorizing the Act for another 10 years, we are making some clarifying amendments to ensure that the benefits to the Department of Justice's criminal cartel enforcement program do not come at the expense of the victims.

One of the amendments revises the timely cooperation requirement. In the original Act, Section 213(c) signaled the importance of timely cooperation with civil claimants, but specifically required it only in a very narrow set of prosecutions. This legislation revises section 213(c) to make it clear that this timely cooperation requirement applies in all cases where amnesty is being sought under the leniency program.

The legislation also creates a new Section 213(d) that clarifies the necessary balance between public and private pursuit of price-fixing cartels. The Department of Justice will frequently ask the court to stay related civil claims in order to build its criminal case against the rest of the cartel. These stays can sometimes last a year, or even longer. As the Act makes clear, the judicious granting of these stays is, and remains, fully in keeping with the purposes of the Act. We have added a new section 213(d) to clarify that the obligation for timely cooperation with civil claimants does not take effect until after the stay is lifted, but that, once it is lifted, then the amnesty applicant must cooperate in a prompt and timely fashion.

Section 213(d) does not include a reference to the 213(b)(3) requirement to make available witnesses for deposition or testimony, in recognition of the fact that, even after the stay is lifted generally, there may be remaining sensitivities that, for a time, may make it problematic for certain witnesses to provide interviews, depositions, or trial testimony in connection with the private litigation without disrupting or harming the ongoing criminal investigation. The omission of this reference from section 213(d) is not intended to discount the importance of cooperation with civil claimants in this regard; rather, it reflects that these aspects of cooperation with civil claimants may be more disruptive to the ongoing criminal investigation. Subject to the additional temporary delays that the Antitrust Division may request on a case-by-case basis, the timely cooperation requirement also applies to witness availability. We expect that the Antitrust Division and the courts will be appropriately sensitive to the needs and rights of private claimants in this regard as well.

We are also commissioning a study by the Government Accountability Office to consider other possible ways to improve the efficacy of the Act, including, but not limited to, adding qui tam and whistleblower protection provisions.

We believe these improvements further promote vigorous antitrust enforcement for the protection of American consumers and free-market competition.

Madam Speaker, I rise tonight in support of the ``Hoh Indian Tribe Safe Homelands Act.'' This act declares that 37 acres of land within Olympic National Park is held in trust by the United States for the benefit of the Hoh Indian Tribe, a federally recognized tribe.

The Hoh Tribe has demonstrated a compelling need to add lands to its existing Reservation to provide a safe area in which to construct housing and other facilities for its members. The present reservation area is in a tsunami zone and prone to major flooding. Additionally, Federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have limited authority to assist the tribe with housing and other improvements and services due to the dangerous and unsustainable location of the reservation.

I applaud Chairman Rahall for his diligence in transferring this land to the Hoh Indian Tribe to enable them to live with a sense of stability and without fear of flooding.

I encourage my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. Speaker, on June 8, 2010, I regret that I was not present to vote on H.R. 1061 and H. Res. 518.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on both bills.

Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank one of the most dedicated and productive members of the Judiciary Committee staff for her service to the House, Renata Strause. For 3\1/ 2\ years, Renata has worked with exceptional dedication and drive for the Judiciary Committee, and I rise to commend her for her achievements.

After graduating from high school in Lancaster, PA, Renata began her professional career before attending college when she worked for a year as a legislative aide to State Representative P. Michael Sturla in the Pennsylvania State General Assembly. After putting together the first annual Lancaster Legislative Weekend, Renata matriculated at Oberlin College in Ohio during the Fall of 2002.

She earned her bachelor's degree in politics from Oberlin, where she cochaired the College Democrats' club, competed as a finalist for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, received several departmental prizes for her academic work, and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She immersed herself fully in the political life of Oberlin, Ohio as well-- working on city ballot initiatives for education, city council races, and get-out-the-vote efforts during several elections. During her summer and winter breaks, she also worked at the Pennsylvania Department of Education and served as Congressional candidate Lois Herr's deputy campaign manager during the 2004 election cycle in Lancaster County.

Following graduation, Renata came to Washington to work at the political consulting firm of Evans & Katz. Managing the daily operations of the Washington office, Renata represented clients before the Federal Election Commission, helped coordinate fundraising for several House and Senate candidates, and prepared electoral compliance reports for the firm.

At the beginning of the 110th Congress, Renata joined the Judiciary Committee staff and became an invaluable member of the committee's oversight team. She took on an incalculable number of tasks, staffing Members of the committee and myself on administration oversight issues, voter suppression, executive branch accountability, gaming issues, health care, and most recently the committee's work on the liability issues related to the Gulf Coast oil disaster. She has been instrumental to the committee's investigative work on Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, including the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys and the resultant Contempt of Congress resolutions on the House Floor. She also worked on large portions of the committee's comprehensive staff report on the previous administration: Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to Presidency of George W Bush.

Renata is leaving the committee and Washington to attend Yale Law School this fall. On behalf of the Judiciary Committee, its staff, and this distinguished body, I would like to thank her for her exemplary work, generosity, sense of humor, and boundless energy. She will be sorely missed as a colleague and friend, but we wish her the best of luck and extend to her our deepest gratitude for her service.

Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in strong support of the American Jobs, Closing Tax Loopholes and Preventing Outsourcing Act. We cannot afford to ignore the job crisis any longer. I believe today's legislation will help Americans struggling with this recession by funding summer jobs programs, assisting the unemployed, extending transportation funding, bringing justice to black farmers and closing tax loopholes for Wall Street managers. Additionally, it includes critical measures to address and prevent federal disasters, including the devastating oil spill in the Gulf and coal mining accidents.

Today's legislation would offer support to those who are most in need by extending unemployment benefits such as unemployment compensation through November 2010. Moreover, the bill extends the Emergency Contingency Fund which provides funds to states to help for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), aid to needy families, subsidized employment programs. The American Jobs Act will stop the 21 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursements that doctors were scheduled to see on June 1st 2010. This legislation would also address unemployment by allowing local Workforce Investment Boards to expand successful summer jobs programs which would provide over 300,000 jobs for those ages 14 to 24. It is important to give our youth the opportunity to gain essential skills in order to be competitive in our globalized economy.

I am disappointed the COBRA six month extension was removed from the bill as well as a six-month extension on Medicaid matching rates that would offer addition help to states with high levels of unemployment. Removal of these provisions will put many families at risk during these hard economic times.

As we recover from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the American Jobs Act will force Wall Street fund managers to pay their fair share on taxes carried interest and capital gains. Currently, investment fund managers such as those who work in private equity and hedge funds only pay 15 percent tax on carried interest, while the average small business owner pays significantly higher rates. During the run up to the financial crisis many hedge funds engaged in speculative derivatives and other toxic assets which pushed our economy to the brink of a depression. The Jobs Act will force them to pay their fair share and bring lost billions in revenue to the Treasury. Lastly, the bill ends loopholes that encourage firms to claim foreign tax credits with respect to foreign taxes paid on income in order to ship jobs abroad.

I also support the American Jobs Act because it provides funds for critical transportation projects in Michigan and across the country by allocating over four billion dollars to the popular Build America Bonds initiative. Lauded as one of the most successful parts of the Recovery Act, the Build America Bonds are bonds with tax exemption on interest. The extension of this initiative will allow for the construction of new schools, roads, environmental projects, public safety facilities, and government housing projects. Furthermore, Michigan historically has been a donor state in transportation funding, sending more money to the federal government than it receives in transportation dollars. The American Jobs legislation addresses an inequity in the funding of surface transportation projects.

I am also pleased the American Jobs Act contains a provision that will help resolve the discrimination claims brought by African American farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the original Pigford litigation, many potential plaintiffs were unable to timely file their lawsuits due to a failure to give adequate notice of the claims period, barring the claims of as many as 70,000 farmers. In Sec. 14012 of the 2008 Farm Bill, Congress authorized ``late-filing'' Pigford v. Glickman claimants who were denied a ``determination on the merits'' of their claims a cause of action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to seek such a determination. On February 18, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the USDA had reached a global settlement of these claims with the Pigford claimants. That settlement, however, was predicated on the appropriation of $1.15 billion by Congress to pay the claims and costs. With this legislation, we appropriate the funds that will lead to a final resolution of the claims brought by this class of Black farmers more than a decade ago, ending a shameful chapter in the history of USDA and paving the way for the resolution of the claims brought by other minority farmers.

Today's legislation seeks to address deficiencies we have seen in the federal response to preventing and addressing disasters. While the long-term effects of the oil spill in the Gulf are still unknown, analysts estimate that costs could exceed $14 billion. By increasing the amount that the oil companies pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, there will be more funds to assist individuals, businesses and communities so that they are not left uncompensated for damages. This bill also extends the National Flood Insurance Program and provides measures to increase mine safety.

Mr. Speaker, I hear from constituents every day whose unemployment benefits are running out and do not know how to pay their mortgage, utilities or food. We must keep safety nets available so that our fellow Americans do not go hungry. Extending these lifelines necessitates the use of emergency spending. The unemployment rate in Detroit is alarmingly high, 27.9 percent which means nearly 254,465 unemployed people in the city. There needs to be a sense of urgency in this chamber on job creation and specifically full employment, where every American worker who wants a job would have the opportunity to do so. I believe that investing in our greatest resource, the American worker, should not be a partisan issue. Today's legislation is a good first step but much more is required to help America recover from this Great Recession. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on providing jobs for every American.

Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 5136, the ``National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011.'' As with most omnibus pieces of legislation, there are many provisions I support, as well as those I do not. Unfortunately, the improvements to our military policy do little to blunt the effect of the wasteful billions authorized for military spending, which continue to feed the military-industrial complex and the ever-growing imperial overstretch of our military around the world.

I do want to briefly acknowledge a few of the provisions I supported in this bill. First, I am heartened that an amendment I offered with my colleague, Representative Geoff Davis of Kentucky, was adopted by the House. Our amendment builds on our bipartisan resolution, H. Con. Res. 94, and would instruct the Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary of State, to submit a report to Congress assessing the strategic benefits of the successful negotiation of a ``rules of the road'' Incidents At Sea naval agreement including the United States and Iran. I believe such an agreement would reduce tensions in the region and help prevent accidental war. I am heartened that the Defense Department and State Department will officially address this critical issue.

Additionally, I want to acknowledge the good work of Representatives Schakowsky, McGovern, Hinchey, and Moran. Together, we successfully offered an amendment that would empower the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to improve its oversight and take steps to deny federal funding to private security contractors responsible for the deaths of Afghan civilians. For far too long, mercenaries like Blackwater have acted with impunity in the theaters of war, committing human rights atrocities and soiling the good name of the American people. With the adoption of this amendment, we are hopefully moving closer to finally putting these reckless soldiers of fortune out of business.

Unfortunately, this authorization does not do nearly enough to properly reorient our national security posture to earn my vote. As with past defense budgets, it spends too much on war, outdated Cold War weapons systems, and nuclear weaponry.

The American people cannot afford the $159.3 billion provided in this bill to fund our ``overseas contingency operations''--the Orwellian term for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--with our economy struggling to escape recession and with so many families torn apart by long deployments, debilitating battlefield wounds, and heart-wrenching premature deaths. Continuing to fund our wars simply continues to compound the mistakes of the previous administration and I, in good conscience, cannot support a bill that continues us down this path of folly which has, to date, cost us the lives of 1,000 young men and women in Afghanistan and nearly $1 trillion in war spending since 2001.

I was inspired by a passage in the President's new National Security Strategy, which was released today. It spoke of another path towards securing our homeland and brokering peace around the world. It simply and eloquently stated:

The freedom that America stands for includes freedom from

want. Basic human

rights cannot thrive in places where human beings do not have

access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they

need to survive.

Those are powerful words and they speak to a universal truth: When we love and care for one another, we do not need to rely on nuclear weapons, Virginia-class submarines, or other tools of destruction to secure ourselves and our families. We don't need to invest 26.5 million in ``counter-ideology initiatives,'' when our national policy is to export hope and dignity instead of Predator drone missiles. The death of a family member and the humiliation associated with a night raid is what radicalizes someone to the point where they seek to harm the American people. We can and we must stop these destructive practices if we hope to win over our brothers and sisters in the Muslim world.

I have unending faith in the ability of the American people to change our country's course when needed. I believe that they can stand up and say ``no'' to our nation being perpetually at war. I believe that they can say no to spending more on defense than all the other nations of the world combined, especially when people in Detroit and Hamtramck and Dearborn still need a job that pays a decent wage. I hope my fellow Members will join me in opposing this bill, so that we can inspire the American people to pursue another, better path.

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

Madam Speaker, on May 26, 2010, I was called away on personal business. I regret that I was not present to vote for H. Res. 1347, H. Res. 1385, H. Res. 1316 and H. Res. 1169. Had I been present, I would have cast a ``yea'' on all of these votes.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to express my support for designation of May 2010 as Mental Health Month. Designating May 2010 as Mental Health Month in America is a much needed step to help bring attention to the various challenges that the mentally ill face on a day to day basis which include not having access to appropriate medical care, affordable housing, job opportunities, and over-all economic security.

More than 57,000,000 people in the United States suffer from mental illness. Approximately 1 in 5 children and adolescents has a diagnosable mental disorder. A quarter of the members of the United States Armed Forces suffer from psychological or neurological injuries sustained from combat, including major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Tragically, more than half of all prison and jail inmates suffer from mental illness. It is also the leading cause of disability in the America. In 2005, over 32,000 individuals died by suicide in the United States, nearly twice the rate of homicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among youth between the ages of 15 and 24. In 2004, individuals age 65 and older comprised only 12.4 percent of the population, but accounted for 16.6 percent of all suicides.

Sadly, there are too many Americans with serious mental illness who do not have access to high quality and long-term mental health treatment, and fall through the cracks of our fragmented and underfunded mental health system. This is because the U.S. does not yet have a comprehensive and effective federal mental health system that can provide a single standard of high quality mental health treatment for all of our Nation's mentally ill--regardless of one's income or employment status.

The uninsured, underinsured, or Americans with low-incomes often receive their mental health services in emergency rooms, or in hospitals where they are ``stabilized,'' and then released with little or no follow-up care, medication, or housing services. This creates a ``revolving door'' cycle of hospitalizations, homelessness, unemployment, arrests, and incarceration that is the result of having an underfunded mental health system where mental health professionals do not have the optimal resources they need to provide medically appropriate care for the mentally ill and their families.

Many of our Nation's mentally ill become homeless, or are forced to live with family members or friends, because they can not afford housing due to skimpy Social Security Disability Checks, or the inability to maintain employment. Clearly, America must have a robust Federal affordable housing and employment program for the mentally ill, so those with mental illnesses have access to affordable housing, a job, and the respect and dignity that goes with being self-sufficient and productive.

Tragically, there are many uninsured or underinsured mentally ill Americans who can not afford to take medications for such debilitating illnesses as bipolar manic depression. This creates untold stress on families and friends who must deal with the unpredictable

and often inappropriate behaviors of the mentally ill who can become a danger to themselves or others if they do not take their medication on a regular basis.

I also urge my colleagues to support H.R. 676, ``The United States National Health Care Act,'' which would create a universal health care system where all mental health services would be fully covered, and there would be optimal funding for mental health facilities so the mentally ill could receive the long term and appropriate care needed to get well, and have a better quality of life.