Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during considering of House Concurrent Resolution 36, pursuant to House Resolution 59, the Chair may, notwithstanding the operation of the previous question, postpone further consideration of the concurrent resolution to a time designated by the Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 59, I call up the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 36) expressing the continued support of Congress for equal access of military recruiters to institutions of higher education, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, while the men and women of our Armed Forces serve bravely throughout the world, the ability of our U.S. military to recruit highly qualified candidates is being put in jeopardy. As was stated so eloquently by the late Representative Gerald Solomon, barring military recruiters is an intrusion on Federal prerogatives, a slap in the face to our Nation's fine military personnel, and an impediment to sound national security policy.

The legislation bearing his name, the Solomon Amendment, formerly protected the ability of the U.S. military to reach the most highly qualified candidates by denying Federal funding, denying Federal funding to colleges which refused to permit on-campus recruiting by the U.S. military. However, on November 29 of last year, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia overturned this legislation, enabling universities to receive Federal funding despite barring military recruiters from campus.

This decision threatens to severely damage the ability of the military to recruit the highly qualified candidates necessary during a time of war. Harvard Law School and now Yale Law School have already implemented the unjust policy of denying the military access to their campuses for recruiting purposes. Without the threat of lost funding, sadly, many other schools are expected to follow suit. The Department of Defense intends to appeal this ruling, but in the interim the military risks losing access to a vital source of highly qualified recruits. Our desire is to ensure this does not happen.

Under Article I, section 8 of the United States Constitution, Congress has the exclusive power to raise and support armies, provide and maintain a Navy, and make the rules for the Government and regulation of the Armed Forces. Congress has not only the right but the responsibility to use its power to protect the ability of our U.S. military to recruit the best and the brightest young men and women. We cannot be silent while this ability is put in jeopardy.

The citizens of the United States, all citizens of the United States, and I would argue the world, benefit from the protection of the most highly qualified and well-trained military in the world, and I am hopeful our actions today will put an end to the injustice of banning recruiters and will restore the ability of the U.S. military to serve its citizens most effectively.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers), the sponsor of this concurrent resolution and a member of the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), a member of the Committee on Armed Services.

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

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), my colleague on the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the distinguished chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

(Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer), chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

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

In closing, I would just say that we have heard some discussion today about policies of the United States Armed Forces for a long time. Since its inception, there have been special policies applied to our military, the ability to impose nonjudicial punishment, the ability to restrict entry by those who are too tall or too short, the ability to order its members away from home and into combat and into harm's way. But the discussion today is not about those policies and should not be about those policies. The discussion today is about keeping our military, keeping our Armed Forces, the best trained, the best led, the best equipped in the world; and that means we need the ability to recruit the best and the brightest. This is about insisting that our military recruiters have equal access to America's universities and colleges.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution.

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

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

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 House Concurrent Resolution 36, previously passed in this series of votes.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for his leadership on this and so many other issues. It has been a great pleasure to serve with the gentleman from Georgia, and I do have comments about what is truly a world historic event.

It was so exciting on Saturday and Sunday in the United States as we watched the results of the Iraqi elections to see the millions of Iraqis overcoming horrific intimidation to get to the polls and vote. I want to talk about some of that.

In the weeks and months leading up to the January 30 elections in Iraq, we were warned of plans for violent attacks, mass chaos surrounding polling places, and the improbability of any positive outcome. We heard it on the news. We heard it in briefings. And, indeed, we did see the loss of life of Iraqi citizens and members of the international alliance providing support, and we were pained. The reality was grim, but it served to underscore just how important it was to proceed with the January 30 date for legitimate elections in Iraq and the promise, the long-last promise of true freedom for the Iraqi people.

In that recent trip which the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) was discussing, I did have the opportunity and indeed the great pleasure and honor to lead a delegation. Four of my colleagues went with me to visit Afghanistan and Iraq, and it provided us with a better understanding of just how very important, in fact, critical, it was to hold fast to the January 30 date for Iraqi elections. The soldiers that we talked to, the Marines that we talked to, officer and enlisted, Iraqi leadership, the ambassador and his staff all insisted that the elections must go forward on January 30; and the reality of Sunday's success reflects just how true their calls were and how important that lesson was.

Prior to the election, there was a brutal, a brutal campaign of fear and intimidation waged by those who feared a strong and democratic Iraq. After decades of tyranny, a transition to democracy presented a challenge to the predatory environment in which these individuals thrived under Saddam Hussein. These anti-Iraqi forces, the AIF, sought to thwart democracy

in the only way they could, through violence, and this is violence almost unimaginable to us here in the United States, violence and intimidation on a scale which is beyond really our ability to conceive it. These thugs, these insurgents were taking Iraqis and pulling them out of their cars and going to their homes and killing them and killing their families. Absolutely unbelievable.

The amazing thing is, the miraculous thing is, they did not succeed. For the vast majority of Iraqi men and women and the democratic coalition of nations that provided support, of which we are a very proud member, knew the temporary violence that they endured would pale in comparison to the freedom in which these elections offered.

We were in Afghanistan before we were in Iraq, and Afghanistan is an encouraging model despite poor conditions, and Afghanistan is one of the poorest nations on earth. My notes say that they have an ailing infrastructure. That is kind. They have no infrastructure. The success of their democratic elections last fall has generated within the Afghan people a national confidence and the desire to rebuild their nation.

Under the secure protection of a unified and growingly capable national army, Afghan national army, commerce is growing. We were pleased as to see, as we drove through the streets of Kabal, that vendors were lining the streets with their shops and goods were available for sale. It is not like going to a mall, and we are the proud home of the Mall of America in Minnesota, and I guarantee my colleagues that it is nothing like that. These are little ramshackle shacks. But the Iraqis are out there. They are selling goods. Commerce is starting to open up. And that is a wonderful sign of a stable society that is on the rise.

During our discussions, President Karzai, who was very kind to give us of his time on a Friday, a holy day for the Muslims, and he came in on a Friday to meet with us and talk to us about his vision and his dreams and his hopes for his people and his confidence that his country was on the move towards more freedom and prosperity. And I want to say to my colleagues here how grateful that President Karzai was to the American people. He made a point of looking me in the eye and my colleagues and saying, ``I do not think you understand that the American people know how grateful we are in Afghanistan. We know that we would not be a free country on the move to greater democracy without your help.''

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I think that is exactly the point, that in Afghanistan, despite the abject poverty, the lack of infrastructure, the brutality that they lived under for decades, and we forget how brutal the Taliban regime really was and how oppressive, despite those things and despite 7 years of drought, which would be crippling anywhere, we know the pain that we feel in our country when we have years of drought, the country of Afghanistan is just devastated. Even with that, the tribal warlords are coming on board with the new national government. They are turning in their arms, and we saw tanks and armored personnel carriers and missile launchers and weapons of all types that were left over from their conflict with the former Soviet Union being turned in. So if we compare it with Iraq, which is comparatively modern in its infrastructure, it is not what we would accept, but compared to Afghanistan it is striking.

We were flying around in Iraq. We would fly over big power lines, the same kinds that we have here. They just do not exist in Afghanistan. So Iraq with its mighty rivers, the Tigress and the Euphrates, with its extensive oil resources, with an infrastructure which is at least a start, it is in a much better position, going in position, than is in Afghanistan. So all those features and the proximity to a contemporary organized culture has really inspired the Iraqi people to step up and realize their freedom.

As the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) knows, these men and women are more than aware of the dangers that are surrounding their democratic efforts, but they believe that the promise of liberty is a worthy goal. There is a wonderful picture in the newspaper, and I saw it on television, of an Iraqi woman who is looking in the camera and raising her hand in the sign of victory with the ink, the indelible ink, on her finger that shows that she voted. We need to remember that that does not wash off. That is the purpose of the ink. And the ink on her finger identifies her as someone who defied the intimidation and went to the polls.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, that is it exactly, and is that not a beautiful sight? Just her bravery and her determination and that of millions of Iraqis who went to the polls in the face of an unimaginably brutal campaign of intimidation to cast their votes and take this important step towards democracy and taking control of their own destiny.

And part of that taking control of destiny, a subject much discussed of late, is what the Iraqis are doing in taking charge of their own security. We had, as part of our visit to Iraq, the opportunity to visit with General Casey, the American commander there, and with Lieutenant General Petraeus, who is the American general who was the commanding general of the 101st Airborne in the first operation in Iraq and now is the man in charge of training the Iraqi security forces. It is very clear that he understands that they have a big job, but they are making progress, not only based on his accounts but in our discussions with American Marines and soldiers and American commanders, and their growing confidence in the ability of the Iraqi battalions and the Iraqi police who are now being well-trained and well-equipped to step up and start taking responsibility for their security.

We saw it on Election Day, did we not? The Iraqi security forces were at the polling places, and with the help of the American forces and other coalition partners who did some terrific planning going into this election, the elections were held with, yes, some brutal attacks but with an amazingly high degree of security that allowed those millions of Iraqis to go down and vote.

It is fair to say that really strict security measures were imposed for that election day. Traffic was stopped. And that led to some even more amazing stories of some Iraqis walking up to eight miles, eight miles, to vote. And, sadly, most of us are not willing to walk half a mile to vote. We want to get in the car and when we get there, if there is a line, we grumble about it. In fact, I have to admit that on our own Election Day, Vicky and I arrived at the polling place and there was a long line of people and we said, Oh, my gosh, we are going to have to wait a half hour to vote.

Mr. Speaker, I did have the opportunity to vote for myself, so that is encouraging to make one stay in the line. But think about what these Iraqis did, how long they waited and how far they walked and what incredible pressure they were under not to vote, and yet they did. And those some 125,000 trained and equipped Iraqi forces stepped up. They voted themselves, in some very heartwarming stories, voted and then went out and took up their positions to provide security. It really is a wonderful story of a march to freedom.

I think that if I can go back and look at a quote from President Ronald Reagan, who, as my colleague knows, I had the great honor of serving in his first administration, in thinking and talking about a kind of an obstacle to freedom, the Berlin Wall, President Reagan said, ``Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient

hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.'' And I think that that is what we saw in Iraq on Sunday. Freedom was the victor.

The intimidation, the resistance, was not a barrier, it was an obstacle. And it was a tough obstacle, and the Iraqis stepped up to remove that obstacle and go in incredible numbers against incredible odds and start to take charge of their own destiny. As interim Prime Minister Allawi said, their job now is to rebuild their nation and the world is watching. And we are watching, and, frankly, Mr. Speaker, I am proud of what we are watching.

I am proud of what we, the American forces, and our coalition partners and allies have been able to do in working with the Iraqis; and I am just brimming over with pride and with enthusiasm and with optimism and hope for the Iraqi people; and that picture by the gentleman's side I think epitomizes that. I wish that we would not have any partisan rancor that is associated with this. We and free nations around the world ought to be dancing in the streets with joy and moving forward to do what we can to help those people take charge of their own destiny and their own freedom. I have a great deal of optimism.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the efforts of a talented group of young men and women from my hometown of Lakeville, Minnesota.

Over 300 members of the Lakeville High School Panther Band made all Minnesotans proud with their outstanding performance last week in the Presidential Inaugural Parade. The skill and enthusiasm demonstrated by these 10th- through 12th-graders reflected well upon their director, Nathan Earp, and the families, teachers and fellow students who support them.

As a neighbor and a fan of the Marching Panthers, I was proud to watch them go by, and I am proud to pay tribute to them today.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the contributions of Minnesota Commissioner of Veterans Affairs, Jeff Olsen, on the occasion of his retirement.

Jeff Olsen was appointed Commissioner of Veterans Affairs by Governor Ventura in January 2001 and has continued to serve the veterans community proudly. Throughout the past 4 years, Jeff has been a tireless advocate and representative for Minnesota's 450,000 veterans. By working closely with groups such as the Veterans Service Organizations of Minnesota and the Minnesota Association of County Veterans Service Officers, Jeff has remained constantly in touch with the issues of concern to the men and women he represents.

No stranger to those issues himself, Jeff began his career as a member of the United States Army, attached to the United States Armed Forces Courier Service, a joint services mission responsible for the preparation and transportation of top-secret materials throughout the world. This experience has continued to inspire Jeff and motivate him to serve his fellow veterans with honor and respect.

Jeff's dedication to the veterans community will continue to shine through the legacy of his accomplishments. Thank you, Jeff, for the example you have set. Your fellow veterans will miss you. We wish you the best in your next chapter of life.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 163 and urge my colleagues to overwhelmingly reject not only this election year ``scare tactic'' but the increasingly archaic policy of universal conscription.

Since the founding of our nation over two hundred years ago, the U.S. military has reluctantly used conscription to rapidly fill the ranks of an often undermanned and under funded military force in the face of grave national threats. Today, we live in a nation united under a single representative government that has faced and defeated the global threats of fascism and communism. A vital component of these victories was the evolution of the U.S. military from a garrison force, reinforced by conscripts in times of national emergency, to the present-day, all-volunteer military which now ably defends our nation from the deadly violence of international terrorism.

Like a large portion of our population, I am old enough to recall America's last attempt at conscription. More significantly, as a junior officer in the Marine Corps near the end of the Vietnam conflict, I witnessed first-hand many of the unfortunate repercussions of the military draft policy--the migration of a drug culture into the ranks, race riots, and the lack of unit camaraderie that leads to mission success.

I am proud to say that when I finished my 25-year career in the Marine Corps, those problems had completely disappeared or been reduced to statistical insignificance. Today's all-volunteer military, forged in the tragic ``lessons learned'' of Vietnam, has repeatedly demonstrated its professionalism and ability to defend America's national interests. The men and women of this well-educated and well- trained force serve our nation because they choose to do so. Today, we honor their service and ensure their continued success by voting to maintain the best-equipped, best-trained, and all-volunteer, Armed Forces.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 486) recognizing and honoring military unit family support volunteers for their dedicated service to the United States, the Armed Forces, and members of the Armed Forces and their families.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H. Con. Res. 486.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of House Concurrent Resolution 486. This resolution recognizes and honors the men and women behind the unparalleled support structure that serves the families of our service members.

The men and women of the United States Armed Forces face a great challenge each day. We ask our active duty service members and citizen soldiers to provide safety and security at times when these words seem little more than lofty ideals.

We also ask a great deal of the families of these young men and women. For each of the 1.4 million active duty service members and the 875,000 citizen soldiers who have served our Nation since September 11, 2001, someone has been left behind to balance the demands of providing emotional and moral support to their loved ones in the field while maintaining their own spirits and carrying on with their everyday lives. These friends and family members make it possible for our armed service members to carry out their work. But who supports them in their important mission?

Fortunately, military family support volunteers take it upon themselves to do just that. These brave volunteers help shoulder the burden of our military families. They provide a source of strength for the families who stay behind while their loved ones serve far away.

Family support volunteers offer this assistance freely, without asking for pay or recognition. Often the spouses of long-serving members of our Armed Forces, these individuals are motivated by the desire to share their wisdom with families who are new to these trials. Because they have also experienced the anxiety that comes with deployment, they understand better than anyone the struggles that come in times of war.

As a young officer, my family and I benefited from these volunteers. As a senior officer, when I was commanding thousands of Marines and sailors far off in Somalia, I was reassured and they were reassured to know that our families back home were being supported by such volunteers. Now, as a Member of Congress, it is my great honor to join my colleagues in providing the recognition the military unit family support volunteers deserve.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the passage of H. Con. Res. 486.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, only to thank the gentlewoman from California for introducing the resolution. This important resolution is long overdue in order that we recognize the wonderful members of the military family support volunteers.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 630) commending the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers for winning the 2003-2004 National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I National Collegiate Women's Ice Hockey Championship.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 630.

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

Mr. Speaker I rise today in support of House Resolution 630, and I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo), for bringing this resolution forward.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution recognizes the achievement of the University of Minnesota women's hockey team, the Minnesota Golden Gophers for their NCAA Division I championship. The Golden Gophers championship win marked a triumphant end to a remarkable season, winning 30 of 36 games and becoming the only women's team from the University of Minnesota to win an NCAA championship. The Golden Gophers defeated Harvard University by a score of 6 to 2 in the championship game, after defeating Dartmouth College by a score of 5 to 1 in the semi-final game.

In addition to their team victory, five players received individual recognition: Named to the 2003-2004 NCAA All-Tournament team. Head Coach Laura Halldorson was also honored as ``Division I Women's Coach of the Year,'' receiving this distinction for the third time since 1998.

I extend my congratulations to all of the hard-working players, Coach Halldorson and her staff, the great Gopher fans, and the University of Minnesota. I am happy to join my colleagues in honoring the accomplishments of this team, and I wish them continued success. I ask my colleagues to support this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to again thank my colleagues for their kind words today and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo) for bringing this resolution forward. I am very proud to support it and encourage all of my colleagues to support it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to rise and join my colleagues in expressing my love and admiration and respect for President Ronald Reagan. I very much appreciate that here on the House floor last night and today colleagues from both sides of the aisle have stepped up to express their respects. I think that is an important thing. It is an indicator of what a truly great man, a great President, a great leader we had in Ronald Reagan.

Those of us who had the privilege and honor of working closely with President Reagan, and I was very fortunate that in his first months in office I had the position of being his Marine Corps aid and carrying the nuclear football, the codes, traveling with him, and having the opportunity to share some thoughts, it usually was him sharing the thoughts and me listening in rapt attention, but what a wonderful man.

When you were with and near Ronald Reagan, it really was morning in America. I never knew any one of us who worked with him or anyone who was in his presence that could not feel his love for life, his love for our country, his unstoppable optimism. And on the one hand he was, as we have heard many of our colleagues say, friendly, loveable, affable, ready with the joke; and on the other hand he was truly a man of steel.

He had a wonderful vision for America, a vision as he articulated of a city on the hill, a beacon of hope and opportunity for the world. And his resolute determination that we would not continue in the impossible impasse of the Cold War, the very Cold War that necessitated me and my colleagues to carry those nuclear codes; he refused to accept that as inevitable and he set out with the determination that is hard to imagine today, to end that impasse, to win the war, to defeat the Evil Empire. I was proud to serve with him.

I just want to express my love to him and my love to his family.

Mr. Speaker, on this Memorial Day we honor the sacrifices of a new generation of heroes who gave their lives unselfishly for the safety and security of our Nation and our world.

Private Jim Hergott is one of these brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of democracy, freedom, and liberty.

Last July, Private Jim Hergott became the first Minnesotan killed in action in Iraq. A graduate of Shakopee High School, Private Hergott was struck by a sniper while guarding the National Building Museum in Baghdad.

Private Hergott has set an example of service to which few will be called and for which all are grateful. Jim Hergott will be missed, but his contributions endure.

We enjoy the blessings of living in America as a result of men and women throughout our Nation's history who toiled, sacrificed, and struggled to ensure we would have an unparalleled quality of life.

These blessings remain with us today as a result of the men and women who continue to toil, struggle, and sacrifice on our behalf.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Private Hergott and all of the fallen heroes of this generation and those who came before. I ask you to join me in honoring Private Hergott and remembering his fellow heroes to whom we owe so much.

Mr. Speaker, as another member of the Washington Waste Watchers, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight just one example of what we are now learning to be the vast amount of waste throughout our Federal Government. Unfortunately, no Federal agency is immune to this waste, even those that are implementing the Nation's most important Federal programs.

One particularly troubling example of waste is found within the Pell grant program. $336 million in Pell grants were improperly dispersed to applicants that understated their income in 2001. Let me be clear, American taxpayers spent $336 million in Pell grants for applicants that were not eligible.

Not only does this represent a terrible misuse of taxpayer dollars, the expenditure of these funds denies the legitimate financial assistance provided by Pell grants to the thousands of students who truly need and deserve this help.

Mr. Speaker, we belong to a Congress that has brought unprecedented increases in Federal funding to our schools. Yet the administrators in my district continue to ask why have I not seen that money. I should not have to report to the administrators, teachers, and parents in Minnesota that the money they need to provide the quality education our children deserve is not available because it has been wasted by an inattentive Federal bureaucracy.

We have got to put an end to this harmful waste. Unfortunately, some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would prefer to ignore this waste and simply complain about, quote, lack of funding for Pell grants. Rather than crack down on the ineffective bureaucracy responsible for this waste, they would like to create more funds by raising taxes on hard-working American families.

My colleagues and I in the Washington Waste Watchers have a more responsible approach. It begins with eliminating the waste in government spending and creating more efficiency in Federal programs.

The budgets passed by the House Republicans both last year and this year make great progress toward our goal of eliminating waste. Last year's budget led to a report that highlighted between $85 and $100 billion of wasteful spending. This year's budget instructed committees to reduce or eliminate the most egregious examples of waste.

Mr. Speaker, American taxpayers deserve better than to have their hard-earned paychecks squandered by an irresponsible bureaucracy in Washington. I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join us in creating a better Federal Government, not making it bigger through more tax increases, but helping us to expand services for those who truly need them by eliminating the waste.

Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here for some time this evening listening to the discussion and I am struck by the tone. We have had speakers from both sides of the aisle rise to discuss different things. I notice that my colleagues from this side of the aisle have risen to celebrate an anniversary of World War II, to talk about an important economic and trade issue with the developing nation of India, to talk about the tragedy of the pain of unborn children and my colleagues from the other side of the aisle have taken every occasion with every speaker to make outrageous claims and to engage in vicious partisan attacks against the President of the United States and the Republican Party and it saddens me.

But tonight I wish to join my colleagues from this side of the aisle in a celebration. As we celebrate the anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision this week, we have an excellent opportunity to recognize some of the vast improvements made in the quality of education available to America's children over the past 50 years.

In the Brown v. Board of Education case, the doctrine of ``separate but equal'' education for different groups of students was found to produce unequal results and was ruled unconstitutional. On this important anniversary, Mr. Speaker, we are working to ensure another group of students, our special needs children, receive the same high quality education available to every child in Minnesota and America.

Because no two students are the same and no two schools face identical challenges, one of the most important elements in any Federal education law is flexibility. I am pleased to share with my colleagues one of the many ways in which our committee, the Committee on Education and the Workforce, has worked with the Department of Education to enhance that flexibility for our schools. Following implementation of the No Child Left Behind education law, teachers and administrators expressed concern and many of them to me over the last year that special needs children were required to pass the same tests as their non-special needs counterparts. At the same time parents of special needs children expressed concern that exempting their children from testing altogether would eliminate the ability to monitor their progress. To address these competing concerns, the Department of Education issued a rule providing States and school districts with the flexibility to provide alternate tests to determine the adequate yearly progress for children with the most severe disabilities. Under the rule, alternate tests can be administered only to children with the most significant cognitive disabilities, only 1 percent of all students, or about 10 percent of students with disabilities. All other students with disabilities will take either the regular State assessments or assessments aligned with State standards designed to compensate for the child's disability.

Because it prohibits States and schools from excluding students with disabilities from accountability systems, the No Child Left Behind provides parents of these children with something they have never had before, the right to know whether their children are getting the education they deserve, what every parent wants.

I believe we are making great strides toward improving the quality of education available to every child in America. I remain committed to addressing the concerns of parents, teachers and administrators as we seek to not only maintain but to build on this quality. I look forward to continuing the fight to provide the necessary flexibility to accommodate those States and those schools who wish to participate.

Leaving no child behind means leaving no child behind, not ``no child except children with disabilities.'' On this important anniversary, Mr. Speaker, we are living up to that promise.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor my friend and neighbor, Bob Erickson, and to recognize him on the occasion of his retirement from the position of City Administrator for the city of Lakeville, Minnesota.

Over the past 44 years, Bob Erickson has compiled a distinguished record of public service. He has been honored by such groups as

the Dakota Electric Association for his devotion to the people of Minnesota.

During his 15-year tenure as City Administrator, Bob helped transform a sleepy bedroom community into a thriving suburb with thousands of new jobs and thousands of new homes. Lakeville has benefited from his leadership and we owe him our gratitude.

Bob Erickson will be remembered for his undivided devotion to his community and his tireless work to ensure the citizens of Lakeville receive the best possible services from their city government.

The city of Lakeville thanks you, Bob, and so do I.