Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, one hundred and forty years ago, this Nation established the foundation with which it could advance freedom and equality for all of its people.

On December 6, 1865, the required 27 of the then 36 states ratified the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution. The 13th Amendment states that ``neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States.''

This profound declaration completed the abolition of slavery which had begun with President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The 13th Amendment marked the official end of the institution of slavery and signified a turning point in America.

The 13th Amendment is the very bedrock on which all of our civil rights laws and protections stand. The 13th Amendment led to the 14th Amendment of 1868 which provides equal protection under the law to all citizens and clarified that African Americans are citizens. Today, the 13th Amendment has led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965--a protection that we are now in the process of re-authorizing.

As we commemorate the 140th anniversary of the 13th Amendment, we must appreciate the principles that the 13th Amendment has advanced-- these principles of freedom and equality. However, on this anniversary, this nation must pledge to eradicate from society those ills that hinder us from continuing the legacy of the 13th Amendment.

Today, 1 in 9 African Americans cannot find a job; 1 in 5 African Americans is uninsured; and 1 in 4 African Americans lives in poverty. These statistics are simply unacceptable.

Let us mark the 140th anniversary of the 13th Amendment with a commitment to eliminate these social and economic inequalities.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak on behalf of the earthquake which occurred in Kashmir. On October 8th, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake hit Pakistan, India, Afghanistan. So far, Over 80,000 have perished and three million are homeless. Over half of those who lost their lives were school aged children who were attending school. It is evident a generation of Pakistani's no longer exist. I am concerned that tens of thousands will also soon perish from weather, disease, and malnutrition.

Our President, who campaigned as a compassionate conservative, has been wholly inadequate in his response to the crisis in Pakistan. The United Nations has asked for $550 million in emergency aid. Although, we have given only $40 million while our generous citizens have given more than $50 million in relief aid. To date, we have only pledged $150 million for reconstruction when the World Bank estimates Pakistan needs $5.2 Billion. Our government can do much better.

Last week, the President instructed 5 Fortune 500 CEOs to fundraise for the disaster. This should help. However, we need to show our allies that the U.S. will help them in their time of need. If we are serious about the welfare of the Muslim world and our ally, Pakistan; then we will pledge significantly in the upcoming donor conference this weekend in Islamabad, Pakistan. We proved our great generosity after Tsunami; we need to show it again.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding to me. This is a proud, especially pleasing evening for me. There has been so much outpouring of affection and respect and understanding of the contribution of Rosa Louise Parks that I am absolutely amazed by it and flattered by it.

Here is a woman who was, true, honored during her lifetime in many unusual ways; but it seems to me, and I think the leaders here on the floor tonight are especially cognizant of them, I know that they were all at one or more of the memorial services. First of all, she had three in three different States, in which Presidents, past Presidents, members of the Federal Government and religious leaders of all faiths came together.

I must say, I have been astounded by the outpouring of affection and recognition for her contributions. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney) for the incredible devotion and dedication he has put behind the resolution that we are taking up tonight. I appreciate it so much.

We, of course, appreciate the author, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson), because his father played such a critical role in the development of the civil rights movement and its continuation. He has a story that I never ask him to repeat too much, because I was the one that introduced Reverend Jesse Jackson to Dr. Martin Luther King in Chicago. I had no idea of the momentous consequences that were going to flow from that.

The fact of the matter is that Rosa Parks had no idea that the consequences of her determination to end this form of segregation, which she despised so much, was going to have the consequences that flowed from it, namely, that it would bring Martin Luther King, Jr., into the picture and re-create the modern civil rights movement.

I am very pleased to be here. I wanted to just close by thanking all of the Members of Congress and the other body who came to the memorial service. I see everyone on the floor here attended that service in Detroit at Greater Grace Church, where we had a tremendous turnout, just as there was in Washington D.C., not only at the church, but at the rotunda itself, and even before that in Montgomery, Alabama.

I have been so renewed in my faith in my civil rights struggle by the way the Members of the Congress, through many other legislative acts, and now this one, have responded to this great person who will now take her place in history in a way that I think will keep the memory of her contributions to the civil rights movement alive.

I again express my thanks to the author of this resolution, Mr. Jackson, and the leaders, both the chairman and the ranking member of the subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to announce the introduction of a resolution honoring the late Shirley Horn, a great jazz vocalist who passed away on October 20. For those of you who did not follow her career, Shirley Horn was one of this country's musical and cultural greats.

The resolution speaks for itself, but I would like to highlight some aspects of her life. She was born in the Nation's capital in 1934 and started her musical career as a young child on her grandmother's piano. She continued to study music at Howard University and was invited to attend the prestigious Juilliard School in New York.

She recorded over two dozen albums and was lauded with numerous honors, including being elected into the Lionel Hampton Jazz Hall of Fame, receiving Grammy Awards, an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music, and receiving the 2003 Jazz at Lincoln Center Award.

Importantly, Ms. Horn never forgot her background. She was dedicated to the Washington, DC community and, as a result, earned the Mayor's Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline.

I would like to express my deepest sympathies to her family and express to them that her passing is a loss to all of us.

Mr. Chairman, the legislation under consideration today represents a vast improvement over the version of the bill as originally introduced.

Thanks to the hard work and commitment of Democratic members on the committee, it now offers grants to state courts so that they can make meaningful enhancements to courtroom safety and security. It provides the US Marshals Service with an additional $100 million, over the course of the next five years, to increase ongoing investigations and expand the protective services it currently offers to members of the federal judiciary. And it authorizes the Attorney General to establish a grant program for states to establish threat assessment databases.

Even with these valuable improvements, however, the bill still suffers from two fatal flaws. Specifically, its inclusion of 16 new mandatory minimum sentences and its establishment of one new death penalty eligible offense.

Mandatory minimums have been studied extensively and have been proven to be ineffective in preventing crime. They also have been proven to distort the sentencing process, and waste valuable taxpayer money.

With more than 2.1 million Americans currently in jail or prison-- roughly quadruple the number individuals incarcerated in 1985--it's hard to see how anyone can continue with such a deeply flawed strategy.

Today, this country incarcerates its citizens at a rate 14 times that of Japan, 8 times the rate of France and 6 times the rate of Canada.

We spend an estimated $40 billion a year to imprison criminal offenders, we choose to build prisons over schools and we fail to provide inmates released from prison with the necessary tools and assistance for a successful re-entry into society.

Thanks to mandatory minimum sentences, almost 10 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons are serving life sentences, an increase of 83 percent from 1992. In two states alone, New York and California, almost 20 percent of inmates are serving life sentences.

We've also noted the numerous problems that exist with regard to the death penalty. Namely, that all of the available evidence clearly demonstrates that the current system is flawed, defendants rarely receive adequate legal representation and that its application is racially discriminatory .

There are now over 100 Americans that have been sentenced to death, only later to be exonerated. Proving that many of the people convicted and sentenced to death are actually innocent.

In the end, the few grants that this bill purports to offer in the area of witness protection and court security can't make up for its two fatal flaws.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Rebuild Lives and Families Re-Entry Enhancement Act of 2005. This legislation will be the next important step in establishing policy to help the men and women emerging from our Nation's prisons and jails re-integrate into society and rebuild their lives.

While our national crime rates have fallen over the last decade, we have seen an unprecedented explosion in our prison and jail populations. Over 2 million prisoners are now held in Federal and State prisons and local jails. Each year, approximately 650,000 people return to their communities following a prison or jail sentence, resulting in more than 6.7 million under some form of criminal justice supervision.

Re-entry refers to the return of incarcerated individuals from America's jails and prisons to the community and their re-integration into society. There is a pressing need to provide these individuals with the education and training necessary to obtain and hold onto steady jobs, undergo drug treatment, and get medical and mental health services. However, they are confronted with the ``prison after imprisonment''--a plethora of seemingly endless obstacles and impediments which stymie successful re-integration into society. These obstacles have substantially contributed to the historically high rate of recidivism, with two-thirds of returning prisoners having been rearrested for new crimes within 3 years.

This legislation is designed to assist high-risk, high-need offenders who have served their prison sentences, but who pose the greatest risk of re-offending upon release because they lack the education, job skills, stable family or living arrangements, and the substance abuse treatment and other mental and medical health services they need to successfully re-integrate into society. Title I of the bill reauthorizes and enhances our early adult and juvenile re-entry programs to broaden the availability of critical ex-offender services, while Title II addresses the substantive Federal barriers to successful re-entry. Both titles include provisions requiring that the funded programs be rigorously evaluated and the results widely disseminated, so that re-entry programs can be modified as needed, to ensure that recidivism is reduced and public safety enhanced.

A recent study by Peter D. Hart Research Associates reveals that Americans strongly favor rehabilitation and re-entry programs as the best method of insuring public safety. With this changing paradigm in public opinion, the opportunity is ripe to sensibly reassess the role and impact of criminal justice policies. This legislation translates this emerging public perception into balanced policies and procedures which dismantle the structural impediments to successful re-integration into society.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the measure before us today, the Private Property Rights Act of 2005. I am pleased to join with my chairman, Mr. Sensenbrenner; the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters); and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) in support of this measure.

This legislation was introduced in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo in June of this year, which shocked most Americans because if State and local governments can transfer property from one private owner to another based on a judgment which will produce the most taxes and jobs, then, in essence, no one's property is safe. Increasingly, governments across the country are taking private property for public use in the name of ``economic development.'' Under the guise of economic development, private property is being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as the new owner will use the property in a way that the government deems more beneficial to the public.

In fact, in Detroit, Michigan, we have faced the same kinds of issues that arose in the Kelo case. The infamous Poletown decision in the Michigan Supreme Court in 1981 allowed the City of Detroit to bulldoze an entire neighborhood, complete with 1,000 or more residences, 600 or more businesses, and numerous churches in order to give the property to General Motors for an automobile plant. This case set a precedent, both in Michigan and across the country, for widespread abuse of the power of eminent domain. In Detroit, eminent domain was subsequently used to make way for casinos.

Fortunately, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed its decision. Citizens in most other States, though, have not been afforded the same protection and have witnessed an increase in takings for economic development that has been rationalized in Kelo. As a result, a Federal legislative response to Kelo is warranted; and today I am pleased to say that we take up a response with friends on both sides of the aisle.

This act before us now will afford our citizens greater protections against governments' forced takings for private development. First, the State and local government will not be able to any longer exploit eminent domain for private development without consequence. Second, a more traditional view of public use is advanced so that we protect property interests as well as meet contemporary challenges. Third, we set an example for States and cities as to how our citizens' property rights must be protected.

Our measure before us is clear and states in no uncertain terms that State and local governments will lose economic development funding if they take someone's home or business for private commercial development.

Homeowners can also bring suit against those States and cities that want to continue violating their property rights. We are making the financial gains that come with replacing residential areas with commercial districts less attractive.

This legislation advances a more traditional view of public use. By restricting the use of eminent domain powers for economic development, we reserve those powers for projects that have traditionally been considered public use.

We can justify a State or city's takings when the taking is for a road, a school, a public utility, but we cannot agree with a State or city's takings when it is done for private uses like condominiums and shopping malls.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the committee for yielding me this time.

This is an unusual note to end the debate on a very important subject like this, because the last amendment from my friend from North Carolina is to strike everything in the bill except the sense of Congress provisions expressing support for property rights. Well, that is a vote on the bill. Why do we not just have a vote on final passage and skip this? Because that is what this is.

And I would like to emphasize the fact that the people, the citizens, are in support of this amendment. I am proud that we have the civil rights organizations supporting me and not my friend from North Carolina. The NAACP is not known to take issues against the majority of ordinary people. That is what it was founded on. We support the NAACP in everything. Here is the thing. Here is the point. The NAACP says, support this bill, and my friend and I, who support the NAACP, tells me, let us have a vote before final passage that strikes every blooming thing from the bill.

I yield briefly to my friend from North Carolina, contrary to my best instincts.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman, but this is an unusual division.

Here I am supporting many of my friends on the other side of the aisle, but we have this unusual division here. What I am saying is that the concept of not using private takings for private use should not be allowed. We know that casinos benefit from these takings. We know that hotels and private developments benefit. And all I am saying, and I thought that everybody would mostly agree with this in the Congress, is that that is wrong. That is a misuse. That is an abuse.

So let us be careful. Let us control this. Let us not overdo it, but let us support the measure of 4128, which tries to finally answer what happened to us in Detroit. Our experience was that we had thousands of residences, businesses, and churches that were taken to develop an automobile plant. That is not what my idea of an eminent domain should be about. That is all we are saying here. It is not that complicated.

Now, I am not pitting somebody's intellectual abilities at the local level versus the national level or who is more dedicated. I am dealing with a Supreme Court case that has forced us into this action. This measure would not have been here if the Supreme Court had not given us one of the most shocking rulings that just came out this year. So I urge that not only my friend from North Carolina's amendment be rejected but that this bill be supported on final passage.

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) encouraged that we take a minute to speak today about the draconian budget cuts that are coming out of the Budget Committee recommendation.

I am going to include in my statement that of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) who did what I think was so very appropriate and timely. He tied in the fact that we have just honored the first woman in American history to lie in honor in the Rotunda, and yet we may be seriously dishonoring her memory by cutting school lunch programs, student aid, Medicaid, health care programs, and it seems to me that we ought to try to reconcile these.

Statement by Congressman Chet Edwards on the Deficit Reduction Act of

2005 House Budget Committee/November 3, 2005

Yesterday, we honored Rosa Parks as the first woman in

American history to lie in state in the rotunda of our

nation's Capitol. Yet, today, the House leadership and this

Committee dishonors all that she stood for by cutting child

support, by cutting 40,000 children off of school lunch

programs and by robbing billions of dollars from student

financial aid and health care programs for low-income

families.

Rosa Parks didn't just fight for a seat on a bus. She

fought for fairness for every American and to see that every

child has a chance to reach his or her highest God-given

potential. This bill is an attack upon those high principles.

The mean-spirited cuts in this bill will hurt decent, hard-

working American families who are doing their best to help

their children have a better life. And, why? So, that people

making a million dollars a year in dividend income can keep

every penny of their recently passed $220,000 annual tax

break. Where is the fairness in that?

If this is compassionate conservatism, where is the

compassion?

If this is a faith-based program, what major religion

preaches the values of taking the most from those who have

the least while asking nothing from those who have the most?

This budget makes a mockery of the American values of

fairness and shared sacrifice during time of war.

Rosa Parks understood that actions speak far louder than

words. We in Congress should truly honor her life and spirit

by standing up against this bill.

I thank the gentleman very much for yielding.

Saturday, Montgomery, Alabama, St. Paul AME Church. Sunday, St. Paul AME Church, 10:30, Montgomery, Alabama. Lying in honor at the Rotunda, Capitol, Sunday, from 6:00 p.m. to 9 a.m., which is what we are going to be looking into very shortly. And then Monday, services in Washington, D.C., at the Metropolitan AME Church; Tuesday, Detroit, where her body lies in state at the Wright African American Museum; with a service Wednesday, November 2, at 11 a.m.

It would be a 2- to 3-hour service, and we are trying to arrange military craft. We are talking with the Pentagon right now. The Speaker's Office has been very cooperative on this, and we are hoping that there would be a plane for Members to leave here from Washington to Detroit, and back to Washington.

I just wanted to indicate we expect to be back by 6 o'clock. That is our goal.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the floor leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald), for her kindness and her leadership; and I, of course, am very proud that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers) is leading this concurrent resolution on the other side of the aisle.

I am happy to also see my colleague, the honorable gentlewoman from Detroit, Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick) and, of course, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson), and many others here on the floor.

Both leaders on both sides of the aisle have aptly described the phenomenal career, activities, and legacy that Rosa Parks leaves behind. It is only my task to tell my colleagues as the one who knows her better than anybody in the Congress about the indomitable spirit of Rosa Louise Parks, that is to say, that there were two parts to Rosa Louise Parks.

One was her calm, respectful, dignified exterior. She was a very humble woman. She always spoke in a very calm voice. I can say I have never seen her angry or in a debate mode in her life. She has never gotten into any argument, and I use this analogy as carefully as I can, but she reminds me of what I think Mother Teresa was like. I mean, she had her own sphere of serenity; and yet, at the same time, there were three things that she was extremely deeply connected and committed to.

One, she was a very religious person and she did not wear her religion on her sleeve, that is to say, she did not quote from the Bible or make religious references; but she was deeply committed to her African Methodist Episcopal church, and one of the services will be in Montgomery, Alabama.

The other matter that was very deeply held was her fierce opposition to segregation, and she could not have suspected that that deep opposition would lead her to be the main participant in a Federal case that went up to the United States Supreme Court and dealt the death blow not only to segregation, to the bus system in Montgomery, but it dealt a death blow to the segregated systems that existed as a way of life in many places in the United States. That, plus the Brown v. Board of Education decision the year earlier was the death knell.

It has already been observed that as humble as she was, it is hard to remember that she was an activist. She was not a person hoping that something good would happen. She was the first member to join the Montgomery chapter of NAACP, and she went through training classes, and so without any premeditation, no coordination with lawyers or civil rights organizations, and I have talked with her about this, that was the thing on everybody's mind in Detroit, is that it was not a matter of her feet being tired that day after a long day's work as a seamstress in this department store, but what happened inside her, the result of her belief system, her commitment to justice, led her that day to once again refuse to give up her seat and go to the back of the bus.

They begged her, please, lady, you do not know what you are getting into because you are going to get arrested and prosecuted today; and as a matter of fact, I think she did know fully that she was taking her life, her safety into her own hands.

As a result of this, not only did she break down segregation, she earned her title, as has been referred to, as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement because it was she that brought in this 26-year-old Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., who quickly began to organize the total support that was coming up to Rosa Parks.

So what happened then, of course, is a matter of history. She came to Detroit, not because she wanted to. She came because she was driven out of Montgomery, Alabama. How differently history would have been had she been able to stay there, because even though I had met her before I came to Congress, we put our arms around her, but there was some nervousness about who was Rosa Parks. She did not put out press releases. She did not organize. She was just always there and always willing to help.

What finally happened is that this Member of Congress said, as a result of the first time I ever ran for anything, I said if I can win a seat to the highest legislative body in this land, the first person I am going to ask to join my staff would be Rosa Louise Parks. She did not ask me for a job. I was honored to have her, and I do not mind telling my colleagues, she was a celebrity staffer. More people came to visit Rosa Parks in my congressional office than came to visit Congressman John Conyers, and I am so proud of her.

There are many things that we can talk about that I am going to be putting into writing and that we will be observing, but I want to thank the leadership of this Congress who have distinguished themselves.

We got complete cooperation from the majority leader in the Senate, the minority leader in the Senate, Senator Obama, Senators Levin and Stabenow and many others in the other body; but it was in the House of Representatives that the Speaker of the House joined immediately with the Congressional Black Caucus's request for transportation and for the privilege of having this be the first woman to ever be honored by her remains being on display in the rotunda of the Capitol of the United States.

I am so proud of my colleagues and all who have made what was a very difficult set of arrangements between Montgomery, Washington, DC, and Detroit possible. I am in the debt of the gentlewoman from California who has admirably brought this resolution to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the ``Federal Disaster Profiteering Prevention Act of 2005,'' legislation that imposes tough new criminal and civil penalties on would-be profiteers who intentionally overcharge the Federal Government for the provision of goods or services tendered in response to a presidentially declared major disaster or emergency. I am joined by Representatives Emanuel, DeFazio, Grijalva, Hinchey, Kilpatrick, Serrano, McDermott, Maloney and Sanders.

One need not look beyond the ongoing reconstruction efforts in Iraq and the current controversy surrounding Halliburton to understand the need for such legislation. To date, Halliburton has been accused of overcharging the Federal Government by more than $1.4 billion in ``questionable'' and ``unsupported'' reconstruction costs. Nearly two- thirds of these costs have been characterized as ``questionable'' because, according to government auditors, they are ``unreasonable in amount'' and ``exceed that which would be incurred by a prudent person.'' Such costs include, but are in no way limited to, $617,000 in overpriced and double-billed soft drinks; $152,000 in movie rental charges; $1.5 million in excessive tailoring and seamstress charges; and over $560,000 in unnecessary heavy equipment charges.

The ``Federal Disaster Profiteering Prevention Act of 2005'' is designed to prevent such acts from occurring in the future. It achieves this objective by cracking down on anyone who, in a matter involving a contract with the Federal Government, develops a ``scheme or artifice to defraud the United States.'' The civil penalties associated with a violation of this prohibition are the greater of $1 million dollars or triple the gross profits or received proceeds.

The potential for additional future abuse of the Federal contracting and procurement process is quite clear. According to recent press reports, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers already have awarded at least seven no-bid contracts to several politically well connected firms, including Halliburton. For example, Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, is currently repairing damaged naval facilities under a $500 million Defense Department contract. Additionally, no-bid housing contracts have been awarded to the Fluor Corp, a major Republican Party donor, and to the Shaw Group, a client of the lobbying and consulting firm run by friend of the president and former FEMA chief Joe Allbaugh. With such large sums being spent in this manner, it's more important than ever that we send a clear message that we will not tolerate the overcharging of our government during times of federal emergencies.

I am hopeful that Congress can move quickly to enact this worthwhile and timely legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Alabama (Mr. Davis) whose district I had the pleasure of being in, and with him, only a few days ago.

Mr. Speaker, this is a sad moment for me. The truth of the matter is that we have known that Mrs. Rosa Louise Parks had been in poor health; that frequently we would ask, how is she doing this week? Is she any better? How are things going? And now that this moment has come 2 days ago, we still cannot accept this reality of this dear, powerful, gentle lady going to her reward after 92 years of being with us on this Earth.

She has been regarded as an ordinary person, as an example of what an ordinary person can do in our system. But I am not convinced that she is an ordinary person, because I have seen her at very close range. The fact of the matter is I believe she is an extremely extraordinary person because of these two qualities. First of all, she was a gentle lady. She was soft-spoken. She had never in the years I have known her ever raised her voice in anger. She did not debate anyone. She was a very mild-mannered person. She never sought the limelight. She never, ever issued a press release. She never sought awards or commendations. Yet she received more than most people do in this world that we live in.

So that was this one aspect of her, but there was another. There was inside her forged a set of principles of which two were very prominent in terms of my analysis here this evening. One, she was a very religious woman. She attended church with great regularity, but, more than that, she worked in the church. She helped out. She was there during the week. And combined with her religious convictions was this fierce antipathy to segregation. And I do not know how many people we can think of that combine these two kinds of characteristics, soft spoken and humble, and yet fiercely prepared, in a nonviolent way, to fight segregation.

So she came to this activity not as something that she just happened to get into or that she moved one day, she did something different; she had always been an activist in Alabama. She was a member of the NAACP, she was always the first to sign the membership card, and it is hard to remember that this could be the case, but in the 1940s, being a member of the NAACP in the South, and publicly acknowledging it, was a very daring and courageous move in and of itself.

She subscribed to the theory of nonviolence. So when, on December 1, 1955, she decided that she would not give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, some thought that was the first time that she had ever done it. But to the contrary, previously she had refused to give up her seat, but she was ordered off the bus. She had never been arrested. And so this time they told her, you will be arrested, you are going to be arrested.

And she said, I am not giving up my seat. You can do whatever you want. And so we marched into this great history.

Now, I wanted to point out that she was the one that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., into the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., was at that time 26 years old, and he was called in to come after she had been arrested; and it was decided that everyone was going to boycott the buses as a result.

And so it is ironic that she had this role in addition to restarting the civil rights movement in America. She brought in the person who would ultimately lead it at the same time.

I am sure Dr. King may not have been thinking about his future and his destiny, and I am sure that Mrs. Parks could not anticipate what this one move was going to mean. And so I am very happy to tell you that I had the opportunity to meet her, to know her before she came to Detroit, and what a blessing it was to find out that she ultimately with her husband left Montgomery.

Why? Because she wanted to go somewhere else? No. She was fired from her job. She was black-balled. She could not get employment. And she and her husband and family were receiving death threats regularly. So they decided to relocate with relatives that were in Detroit, and so it was my good fortune to be able to get to know her.

She joined in my campaign. I said, the first person I am going to ask to be on my congressional staff when I get elected would be Rosa Parks. And I asked her to join my staff. She did not ask me for a job. I asked her to please come and join me, and it was a great source of pleasure and delight that she was a minor celebrity.

People came to my office to see not the Congressman on a constituent basis, but merely to get a picture of Rosa Parks or get a signature or ask if they could talk with her, and she was as accommodating with them as she was with everybody else.

She was a confidante I was able to connect up. The biggest legislative challenge in my very first year was the passage, the consideration and passage of the Voter Rights Act of 1965. And here she was right in the middle of that, working with the likes of Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young and Fred Shuttleworth, and of course Dr. Martin Luther King, and many other of the great names that were around that original group that started the civil rights movement, the modern civil rights movement as we know it.

She had a great passion for young people, and she and her husband formed the Raymond and Rosa Parks Foundation which still exists today and which she and her husband and staff trained young people, and then they went visiting the major civil rights sites throughout the South, so that they could get the flavor of what was going on, and what happened and when it transpired.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I see in the firmament of the great trilogy of leaders of freedom and justice, Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Louise Parks.

When Nelson Mandella came to Detroit and found out that Rosa Parks had come out to join him in welcoming him as he came out of 27 years of imprisonment, he began a chant for Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks. And here were these two great icons, both well aware of each other and their contributions. So it is with some pride that I have had the privilege of associating my congressional career with both Dr. King and Rosa Louise Parks.

And this Special Order will continue the discussion that has already begun to take place about all of the roles, the contributions, the feelings, the legacy of Rosa Parks; and that is how I think she will be remembered, as this gentle person with the determination of steel.

So it is with great pleasure that I yield now to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased now to recognize the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to recognize the gentlewoman from Oakland, California (Ms. Lee).

What a beautiful remembrance of a great lady. I am sure the gentlewoman is one of the few people in Congress that have a written communication from Mrs. Parks. I congratulate the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for her kind remarks and remembrances of Rosa Parks; and now, Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, a veteran member of the North Carolina bar and member of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) for his eloquent statement.

Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald), who has been a strong supporter of civil rights, affirmative action, and the Voter Rights Act.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald) for those remembrances, and we had no idea that she and Rosa Parks had so much in common.

Mr. Speaker, that concludes our list of people that wanted to speak tonight. The celebrations of her life and legacy go on, though we will be observing memorial activities in Montgomery, Alabama; in the Nation's capital; and in Detroit, Michigan, as well. I want to thank you for the privilege of allowing me and other Members to come forward this evening for this round of tributes to the life and legacy of Rosa Louise Parks.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to announce the passing of Rosa Louise Parks yesterday evening, and I would like to announce that we have already prepared a Special Order immediately following the business tomorrow, and we invite all of the Members on both sides of the aisle to attend.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask for the Speaker to call for a moment of silence in memory of Rosa Louise Parks.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) for his discussion, a very important one that I am very pleased to associate myself with.

I rise to use this part of the Special Order to discuss the health care crisis in America, the uninsured, and the need for universal health care. It strikes me as unacceptable that America remains the only country among the developed nations that still does not have a universal health care system. It is time for this body, the Congress, to pass a universal health care bill now.

The biggest problem in this country is that our health care is run like a business; and the profits of private health insurance companies, health maintenance organizations, and pharmaceutical companies are more important than whether or not working families and senior citizens and small businesses in this country and their employees have access to affordable and high-quality health care.

So I rise to discuss this serious health care crisis and the fact that it can no longer be ignored. It is my belief that the time has come now for bold and decisive leadership by the Congress to address the growing crisis of the uninsured, the skyrocketing costs of private health insurance which is hurting working families, and non-working families all over this country.

How many more horror stories must we read in the newspapers across the country, day after day, that painfully describe the plight of the uninsured and the underinsured before we act to pass universal health care legislation that guarantees once and for all that all of us, all Americans, regardless of income, employment, regional demographics, or race have access to the highest quality health care possible.

Recently, in The New York Times, op-ed writers are reminding us and calling for national health insurance that covers everybody, everybody in, nobody out, as the best way to solve the crisis of the uninsured. In an October 17 New York time op-ed, which highlighted the plight of uninsured workers in America, that article pointed out that 9,000 Wal- Mart workers needed public insurance in Wisconsin alone. And the op-ed concluded with the notion that the problem of uninsured cries out for a Federal solution and that Washington lawmakers have done nothing to solve the larger problem, the crying need for national health insurance.

Polls reveal that the majority of the American people support the concept of universal health care. The majority of American people support universal health care, yet we have failed to pass health care legislation. According to a recent Kaiser Foundation poll, 64 percent of Americans favor expanding Medicare to all Americans. A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates on July 14 through August 5 of 2003 nationwide. And cities across the country, Boston, Pittsburgh, New York, and Detroit, have sponsored universal health care hearings where hundreds of citizens are demanding from their Members of Congress that they fight for passage of universal health care legislation because they are tired of the high cost of private health insurance, and being uninsured, sick, or broke due to our profit health care system is no longer something that they can deal with.

So on behalf of the 49 other Members of the House of Representatives, the gentleman from New York included, I am proud to say, we are happy to propose and set forth for examination and discussion House Resolution 676 that supports the idea and how we get to a national universal health insurance that allows everyone to be covered no matter where they are from, no matter what their illness. We want to put an end to a system which really is so threadbare that we cannot fix it up any more. There is no more mending that we can do. There are no more ways we can patch it up.

We have now come to the point in time where not only the people but a number of our friends in the labor movement are supporting universal health care. Twelve international labor unions and individual local unions across the country now support single-payer universal health insurance. This includes the United Automobile Workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the United Steelworkers of America, Service Employees International Union, SCIU, and the National Education Association.

Well, it is this cold-blooded bottom-line economic business approach to health care that makes us rank number 37 among the nations in the world when they examine how this health care is being delivered. The fact of the matter is that you cannot ration health care if you want a strong nation.

If you really need to go to the doctor, if you really need treatment now before it becomes worse or uncorrectable or fatal, as the gentleman suggests, we cannot send out an arbitrary amount of money because we are doing other things in the world or we are building new weapons of mass destruction or we are doing anything else. We have to have a health insurance system that is flexible to the needs of the people.

And one of the first things that we would come to, I say to the gentleman, is that we are catching up to people who have needed ample health care for a long time. One of the great things about health insurance, at least our program, is that health insurance would be working in a preventive mode; that when you get sick and get well, you will then be treated and you will come back for annual checkups and you will actually reduce the cost of providing the American citizens with health care.

So it is incredibly important that this debate start here and now. And I have been told that other Members of the Congress were talking about this subject today, so I will be anxiously reviewing their comments so that we can continue a broad discussion of this matter.

Right now there are 45.8 million people with no insurance. They are not underinsured, they have none whatsoever. And then there are any number of million who have insurance but they are underinsured. They do not know that what they may go to see their doctor about is not covered in their plan until they find out the hard way.

So I want everyone in our body to know that this is the beginning of a discussion that I am prepared to deal with on every issue, every aspect, because we want to make it clear that this is not just something for some group of people. This is going to benefit our economy. Goodness knows General Motors and Ford and Daimler Chrysler in Detroit all are struggling with the legacy costs that they have to carry because we have an employer-based system. And many of our automotive competitors have national health insurance systems, so they do not have to carry those additional costs.

So this is the beginning of a discussion that we will welcome as many as would join in as we sort these issues out and move toward the time when America will enjoy a universal health coverage system that cares for everybody in this country, from shore to

shore. And I want to thank the gentleman for participating in this discussion, and I yield back to him.