Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, we need to put sanity back into the Nation's fiscal policies, and this Republican budget just does not do that. In fact, we continue with their policies to fill the pockets of the defense contractors while leaving only pennies for nearly every other priority of this country.

That is why I offered an amendment to the budget that would trim $60 billion in waste from the Pentagon budget, not a single penny, by the way, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and put these savings to work on behalf of the people and programs that truly strengthen America.

By cutting outdated and unused weapon systems that were designed to fight the Cold War, relics that have no place in today's modern military, we could invest in our national priorities, like education. We could be rebuilding and modernizing our public schools, or we could be making up for the President and the Republican Congress's $55 billion of underfunding for No Child Left Behind.

The savings would also be spread to homeland security, cutting the deficit, a skilled and educated workforce, healthy children, less dependence on fossil fuels, better fire departments, scientific progress, and less debt. That is what makes America strong and safe.

Enough is enough, Mr. Chairman. It is time we invested in our kids and their education, not in Cold War relics. Vote against the Republican budget.

Mr. Speaker, last month the House surprised us all by unanimously agreeing to an amendment to the Iraq supplemental spending bill declaring that the United States has ``no intentions of maintaining a permanent military presence in Iraq.''

Who knew this Republican-controlled Congress would make such a positive statement?

The lead authors of the amendment were my colleagues and the Progressive Caucus co-Chair, Representative Barbara Lee from California and Representative Tom Allen from Maine, both of whom have been instrumental in demanding that the United States not maintain any permanent military bases in Iraq.

Unfortunately, however, some people working inside the Bush administration are doing their very best to make sure that last month's efforts will be for naught.

One of the senior spokespersons at the U.S.-led coalition headquarters actually in Iraq had this to say about our lasting presence there: ``The current plan is to reduce the coalition footprint into six coalition bases, four of which are operated by the United States.''

So there you have it. The administration is not even hiding the fact that we are planning on maintaining four permanent bases on Iraqi soil, something they bureaucratically call ``the coalition footprint.''

This appallingly casual reference to what the rest of us call an occupation is deeply insulting. Anyone who has heard the President tell the American people that we will leave as soon as Iraq is secure and we won't stay a single day longer should be equally offended, because the evidence on the ground suggests that this statement is deeply misleading.

Mr. Speaker, last fall I traveled to Iraq as a part of an official congressional delegation. I visited the Green Zone and the Balad military base, and I had the privilege of meeting with our soldiers serving overseas.

There were two powerful lessons that I took away from my visit. First, I saw that the troops stationed in Iraq are the very best that America has to offer. They are brave, they are intelligent, they are loyal, loyal to their country, to their mission and to each other. They are profoundly committed to this mission, even those who told me privately that they do not support the policy that underlies it.

The second lesson I learned in Iraq is that the perception among the military generals on the ground is that we will be there for a very long time. The military bases that we are building are like little cities. They have their own restaurants, supermarkets, and even their own gyms, theaters and bus routes. The troops deserve no less during their stay in Iraq, but our stay there must be for the short term. Our troops need to come home to their communities and these bases must be given over to the Iraqis.

The U.S. has already spent $280 million to construct the four biggest bases in Iraq, and the supplemental spending bill that the House passed in March provides nearly $200 million more to enlarge these bases. This is the real Iraq policy, not those phony platitudes and nicely worded sound bites about standing down when the Iraqis stand up, platitudes that President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld want the people to believe.

In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush administration's intention all along was to secure a lasting foothold in the Middle East. Forget all that stuff that you heard about going to war because Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which we all know wasn't true. Forget about Saddam Hussein's supposed ties to al Qaeda. We know that wasn't true either. And forget about freeing the Iraqi people from the thumb of a brutal dictator. My guess is that right now most Iraqis feel brutalized after more

than 3 years of a preemptive war that now the President charges was about democratization.

The real rationale for going to war in Iraq is much more sinister and much more dangerous to our long-term foreign policy. It has become clear that the U.S. needs to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home. Our soldiers need this, their families and loved ones back home need this, and of course the Iraqi people need this. But in order to truly end the occupation, we need to leave no lasting American presence in our place. That means no coalition footprint, nothing even close. That means bringing our troops home and giving Iraq back to the Iraqis.

Madam Speaker, when you have a budget like this Republican budget, a budget where those who have the least are being forced to live on even less, less help with student aid, less protection for children's health, less food assistance and less child care, less support of prescription drugs, less funding for home heating, less protection to ensure a place to live and a job that pays a livable wage, when you have a budget like this, women and children are the most impacted because women and their families are the poorest of the poor in this country of much.

Stop this injustice. Vote ``no'' on this Republican budget.

Mr. Speaker, with this Congress blindly passing each and every one of the President's requests for more money for the war in Iraq, which is soon to exceed $300 billion in total costs, the time is long overdue for a little common sense about how we spend the American people's money.

Earlier this month I introduced new legislation, the Common Sense Budget Act of 2006, legislation that puts some sanity back into the Nation's fiscal policy. This bill already has the support of more than 35 cosponsors.

It is beyond dispute that this administration, in tandem with the Republican Congress, has been, to put it mildly, less than fiscally responsible. And are they spending on the neediest Americans, those who need a hand up quite often just to make it from one day to the next? No, of course not. Instead, they fattened up the Pentagon and lavished wealthy special interests with subsidies and tax breaks.

Last fall's budget debate actually exposed the staggering hypocrisy of it all because the very same congressional majority that is responsible for the fiscal decadence of the last several years suddenly started lecturing about thrift and responsibility. They were shocked, shocked, that spending had been going on around here.

Federal money for Katrina reconstruction, they decided, had to be offset by budget cuts. Deficit spending is okay, apparently, when it comes to upper-bracket tax cuts, but not for poor people whose homes are under water.

Well, guess what they chose to cut. The social safety net: Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, students loans, and on and on. Just the kinds of programs that saved my life and my children's lives when I was a single mom on welfare 35 years ago. To help people on the gulf coast who lost everything, they took from the people who have virtually nothing. That is your Republican fiscal policy in a nutshell.

Well, enough of that. It is time we invested more in our people and less in our defense contractors. My CommonSense Budget Act would trim $60 billion in waste from the Pentagon budget and put it to work on behalf of the people and the programs that truly strengthen America. The money would be distributed as follows: $5 billion a year for homeland security to make up for funding shortfalls in emergency preparedness, infrastructure upgrades, and grants for first responders; $10 billion each year for energy independence, to kick the imported oil habit that we have in this Nation by investing in efficient, renewable energy sources; $5 billion devoted to putting a dent in the $8.2 trillion national debt; and for children's health care, $10 billion annually to provide health care coverage for the millions of uninsured American children; $10 billion over 12 years to rebuild and modernize every public K-12 school in this country; $5 billion a year to retrain 250,000 Americans who have lost their jobs because of foreign trade; medical research, $2 billion a year to restore recent cuts to the National Institutes of Health budget; and $13 billion a year in humanitarian assistance that allows poor nations to feed 6 million children who are at risk of dying from starvation every year, to end global hunger.

The money is there to make an extraordinary difference in people's lives. We just need to challenge the entrenched interests and take on the sacred cows.

General Larry Korb worked with the Progressive Caucus and me to draft this model alternative, and Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and the organization Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities also helped make the introduction of this bill possible.

There are models of good corporate citizenship, you see, businesses that understand that the return on these investments will benefit the entire society: a skilled workforce, healthy children, modern schools, fewer fossil fuels, better fire departments, scientific progress, less debt. These socially responsible businesses understand what makes America strong and safe, and it is not a bloated Pentagon budget that continues to invest in Cold War.

Mr. Chairman, the bill before us is mistitled the College Access and Opportunity Act. It ought to be called the Reducing College Access and Missed Opportunity Act.

Last month, the Republican Congress passed and the President signed a $12 billion cut in student aid, the largest student aid cut in history. This raid on student aid made college more expensive for low- and middle-income students at the very time a college education is more critical than ever for young men and young women throughout our entire country. Today, Congress is finishing the raid on student aid. This bill is a missed opportunity to make college more affordable.

Democrats have offered an alternative that would lower interest rates on student loans, increase Pell Grants, help colleges hit by the gulf coast hurricanes to rebuild and recover, and boost college participation rates for minority students. If history is any guide, however, the Republican House will reject this alternative, because like President Bush they value tax cuts

for the wealthiest Americans over assisting low- and middle-income Americans in their quest for a college education.

Mr. Chairman, those are not the values of the American people, and I encourage my colleagues to reject the Republican raid on student aid and to support the Democratic alternative because we have to keep in mind that these students are the very future of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order.

Mr. Speaker, for a President whose party controls both Houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and, of course, the White House bully pulpit itself, George W. Bush has certainly had an awful lot of explaining to do lately.

With all the power at his disposal, starting with a knee-jerk legislature all too ready to follow his lead, lock, stock and barrel, the President should not have to constantly redefine his mission and America's. That is exactly what he has done and what he is doing.

Before the war, he offered only a strained rationale as to why we needed to attack Iraq. First, it was getting rid of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Then the rationale was deposing a dictator who provided refuge to al Qaeda, and finally, it became spreading liberty throughout the Middle East.

Once things started to turn south, President Bush redefined what he meant when he declared ``an end to major combat operations'' only a year into the war. Now he is redefining what it means to be in a civil war.

Mr. Speaker, let us be perfectly clear. Iraq is not in danger of falling into a civil war. The country is in the very throes of a civil war conflict as we speak. Some people have this false notion that an Iraqi civil war would resemble two sides fighting and fighting it out with antiquated rifles in a field that looks kind of like Gettysburg.

Unfortunately, the sectarian violence that currently plagues Iraq is pretty similar in appearance and scope to the Lebanese civil war fought in the 1970s and 1980s. Then, like now, religion was manipulated to encourage fighting among different sects. Alliances shift rapidly so that no one ever really knows who is on their side and who is not; and worst of all, innocents are killed on a nearly daily basis as a result of the infighting.

As if the failure to acknowledge what is really happening in Iraq was not bad enough, only a week ago, the President attempted his most strained leap of logic yet. During a press conference, which, by the way, after 6 years in office he is finally conducting with regularity, the President stated that American military forces would remain in Iraq until 2009, at the earliest, that another President would have to end it.

After initially implying that the war would not cost much and would not take long to fight, the President needs to explain to the American people why the decision to bring our troops home from Iraq will, as he says, ``be decided by future Presidents.''

Mr. Speaker, given the current instability in Iraq, which 150,000 brave U.S. troops who have not been able to quell after more than 3 years of war, why in the world would we plan on American forces remaining in Iraq until 2009? It

seems like the President is trying, yet again, to redefine the mission to his satisfaction.

Well, you cannot redefine the facts, Mr. Speaker. There is no way to paper over the hundreds of Iraqi civilians who are being brutally murdered in sectarian violence. There is no way to disguise the nearly 2,500 American troops who have lost their lives in this war or the over 15,000 who have been forever injured.

Yet, none of these tragic losses have made either the United States or Iraq safer from the threat of terrorism. The tragic irony is that the war has actually made Iraq a haven for international terrorism.

It is time for the President to stop trying to redefine reality. It is time to define something constructive for the American people. It is time we plan how we will bring our troops home.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor David Mitchell of Pt. Reyes Station, California, who recently retired after 30 years as the editor and publisher of the Point Reyes Light. The Light has covered community activities, misdeeds, and controversies in the rural small towns of West Marin since 1975.

Dave earned a degree in journalism at Stanford University and worked at various small papers before buying the Light with his former wife Cathy. After the couple split up in 1981, Dave sold the paper and worked for the San Francisco Examiner for several years before getting the paper back due to payment default.

Described as everything from ``intelligent, scrappy, and folksy'' to ``controversial, opinionated, and hard-headed,'' Dave always presented the news in a lively, personal manner and encouraged his readers to participate through letters and columns. He considered himself a muckraker and determinedly pursued deceit and corruption where he saw it. In 1979 he and Cathy won a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of the Synanon cult.

West Marin has changed during Dave's tenure, and the Light chronicled issues such as politics, immigration (even sending reporters to the Azores, Italy, and Jalisco, Mexico, where many were from), relations between Point Reyes National Seashore and the community, and the struggles of ranchers to remain viable as the towns became more gentrified. The paper was always challenged financially as Dave used an inheritance to subsidize it, and he sometimes suffered from severe burn-out as he worked long hours to keep both the finances and the news activities in line. After achieving financial stability, he sold the paper in November, 2005, to Robert Plotkin who made a commitment to maintain its community focus.

Mr. Speaker, David Mitchell has provided a vital service to West Marin as well as setting high standards for community newspapers. I know he will continue as a fixture on the local scene and maintain his passion for the issues he championed.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution to honor Dr. I. King Jordan.

Dr. Jordan is retiring as Gallaudet University's president at the end of this year, having become our Nation's first deaf university president where he has served since 1988, the first deaf individual to be the president of any higher education institution.

Dr. Jordan is both an accomplished, respected educator and a personal friend. During his tenure at Gallaudet, he has been an able, caring leader, propelling the university forward and advocating for deaf students. Among his accomplishments are Gallaudet's first-ever capital campaign, a campaign that supported construction of the state-of-the- art Student Academic Center on campus. He also paved the way for an increase in scholarships and academic programs, and he established a fellows program to provide support for deaf college graduates to complete their terminal degrees and become faculty members.

Dr. Jordan has been a strong advocate for individuals with disabilities all around the world. His testimony to Congress played a critical role in the passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

I am proud to have had a chance to work with Dr. Jordan these past years, most recently as one of the three Members of Congress who sit on Gallaudet's board: Congressman LaHood, Senator McCain, and myself. We have experienced a career of accomplishments for Gallaudet's students under Dr. Jordan's leadership. They are a testament to his inspirational words, words he spoke in 1988. He said: ``Deaf people can do anything, except hear.''

I wish Dr. Jordan much happiness in his retirement as he looks forward to traveling with his wife, Linda, spending more time with his family. But believe me, his compassion, his vision, and his service will be greatly missed.

Madam Speaker, with today marking the 17th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island, this seems like an appropriate opportunity to discuss the dangers posed by nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

As I have said from this floor many, many times before, I believe there is no greater national imperative than to bring our troops home from Iraq. But the end of the war must also be the beginning of some fresh and creative thinking about national security.

We are in a desperate need, a need for new strategies for keeping America safe. Last summer, Madam Speaker, I introduced the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty Commitments Act. The concept behind the bill is very simple, and it is a really good starting point. America must keep its word and live up to the agreements it has made to reduce our nuclear arsenal. But we need to go even further.

So along with the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Friends for Peace, and WAND, I have developed a plan called SMART Security. SMART stands for sensible, multilateral, American response to terrorism, which seeks peaceful and diplomatic solutions to international conflict. SMART addresses a range of issues including energy independence, democracy building, and global poverty. But at its core is a renewed commitment to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

SMART calls on the United States to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and to do it with strong diplomacy, with enhanced weapons regimes and regional security arrangements. Under SMART, we would set an example for the rest of the world by renouncing nuclear testing and development of new nuclear weapons. SMART would redouble our commitment to the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program which has been successful in reducing nuclear stockpiles and securing nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.

SMART would stop the sale and transfer of weapons to regimes involved in human rights abuses, and it would ensure that highly enriched uranium is stored only in secure locations.

Mr. Speaker, at just the moment that we need to be vigilant about nuclear proliferation, the Bush administration is asking Congress to give its approval to his dangerous and misguided nuclear energy deal with India. Here he is agreeing to share sensitive nuclear technologies with a nation that was testing nuclear weapons as recently as 1998. He would essentially reward India for its refusal to sign the nonproliferation treaty, feeding the nuclear appetite of a nation that has failed to show the responsibility expected of a nuclear state.

What message does the India pact send to Iran and North Korea? What leverage do we have with these countries to give up their nuclear ambitions, especially since, despite the threats they represent, they have done actually nothing to violate their treaty obligations?

If this India agreement were ratified, how would we deal with India's neighbor and rival Pakistan, which is likely to demand the same nuclear concessions from the United States and which has a dishonorable history of sharing nuclear technology with rogue actors?

Mr. Speaker, there is a cruel irony to the U.S. nuclear policy. While we happily share nuclear technology with countries that have not always handled it responsibly, and while we continue to pursue a large and expensive nuclear arsenal of our own, we are fighting a bloody and expensive war over a nuclear weapon that never even existed. Remember, we are only in Iraq because our so-called leaders looked us in the eye and said there would be a mushroom cloud over American cities unless we sent our troops off to die.

It is time for a 180-day degree turn in our thinking about these issues. It is time we stopped equating security with aggression. It is time we rejected the doctrine of preemption, instead of reaffirming it as the Bush administration did recently. It is time we got SMART about national security.

It is time we protected America, not by invading other nations, but by relying on the very best of American values: our desire for peace, our capacity for global leadership, and our compassion for the people of the world.

Every single Member of Congress should be able to support this amendment, unless, of course, the goal is to have permanent presence in Iraq. We can demonstrate to the Iraqi people that we won't occupy their country indefinitely by voting ``yes'' today.

In fact, the Iraqi insurgency is largely incited by the very fact that after 3 full years of war, we show no intention of leaving. Our military presence must end. We must bring our troops home. We must give Iraq back to the Iraqi people. And in so doing, no permanent bases and no control over their oil.

Mr. Chairman, ending the war and helping the Iraqi people get back on their feet is absolutely possible, and it must start now. We can start this process by making a strong statement that the United States of America has no plan to maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq.

I urge all of my colleagues vote for the Lee-Allen amendment.

Madam Speaker, this weekend will mark the third anniversary of the Iraq war, and I am still

wondering, more importantly the majority of the American people are wondering, why we went there, and what we are still doing there.

Remember, we were told this was going to be a walk in the park, in and out in a flash. A few thousand troops and a few million dollars, no sweat. Well, now it has been 3 years, and if we are not out by the end of this year, 2006, our troops will have been fighting in Iraq longer than their grandparents fought in World War II.

More than 2,300 Americans dead; tens of thousands wounded; tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians killed; over a quarter billion dollars spent, and for what? So we can lose all stature and credibility around the world? So we can give rise to an insurgency that shows no signs of abating? So we can inspire even greater hatred of the United States among violent jihadists in the Muslim world? Or so we can throw gasoline on the fire of sectarian strife in Iraq and further ignite a civil war?

Yesterday's Washington Post reports at least 86 bodies found in Iraq, many of them in a mass grave, many of them having been strangled or tortured. And today the biggest air offensive since the beginning of this mistake.

When is enough enough, Madam Speaker? How many more Presidential speeches? How many more half-baked platitudes about the march of freedom?

Just two days ago at George Washington University, the President said: ``The work ahead in Iraq is hard.'' But it was his administration that assured us 3 years ago of just the opposite, that this was going to be easy. ``We will complete the mission,'' he said yesterday. But in May 2003, he was declaring ``mission accomplished,'' in fact, draping an aircraft carrier with those very words.

The real tragedy is that our Nation will be living with this disastrous fallout from this war for generations. The money we have spent on this war is money we do not have and will not have for investments in our people, their health care, their education, their retirement, their job training, and, yes, their security.

The unspeakable, despicable acts of torture that took place at Abu Ghraib have robbed us of our moral authority. The very foundations of freedom have been threatened by the PATRIOT Act and the President's defiance of the rule of law on domestic surveillance.

The trumped-up weapons of mass destruction intelligence and the fabrication about an Iraqi link to 9/11 have damaged the trust between America and its leaders, trust that is critical to a thriving democracy.

And on a very basic human level, what about men and women who come back from Iraq shattered by the experience? Even if they make it home with all of their limbs functioning and intact, what about the psychological demons that come home with them?

These brave patriots need medical help if they are going to lead a productive civilian life, but according to a recent study by the military, they are not getting it.

Although one-third of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are seeking mental health services, the great majority of those who are diagnosed with psychiatric problems are going untreated.

A lot of damage has been done, Madam Speaker, and there is a lot of work ahead: work to repair our troops, our principles, and our reputation. But there is one thing we could do right now to stem the tide, to contain the damage, to literally stop the bleeding. We could and we should bring our troops home now.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of turn.

Mr. Speaker, there haven't been any front-page articles in the newspapers about it. Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report haven't covered it either. And the big news channels are pretty much silent.

But the fact that a group of courageous Iraqi women came to the United

States last week to tell their stories is nothing short of remarkable. To get here, they had to brave the treacherous 500-mile stretch from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan. Then they had to clear U.S. Customs, no easy undertaking, and fly from Amman to New York.

The stories they shared when they visited the Halls of Congress were both strikingly sad and extremely valuable. But you wouldn't know it unless you had met with them personally, because the American media has hardly reported a single word they said.

Too often in this Chamber we have heard that the media isn't doing a good enough job of covering the war in Iraq. Well, you know what? They are right. The media isn't doing a good enough job. The media isn't reporting about the destroyed hospitals, roads and schools, not to mention the shattered lives, shattered lives throughout Iraq.

The media isn't talking about the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians who have been killed over the last 3 years of war and occupation. And they are not telling us that some 50 percent of those killed have been women and children, or that thousands of Iraqis have been unnecessarily detained or have gone missing.

But the women who flew from Amman to New York talked about what is really happening in Iraq, about some of the burdens they bear every day as a result of our politics there.

One of these women was Faiza Al-Araji, a mother of three from Baghdad. Faiza's son, Khalid, was a student at Baghdad University. Last year he was arrested by officials from Iraq's Ministry of the Interior for no apparent reason. He was never charged with a crime and his family was not told about his whereabouts for 3 days. To secure her son's release after Khalid was finally allowed to call home, Faiza had to pay a ransom to the Ministry of the Interior.

As if she hadn't already suffered enough, last year, gunmen put a rifle to Faiza's head and stole her car. When she told a group of American soldiers what had just happened, they told her, There is nothing we can do. When she told her story to the Iraqi police, they told her, I am sorry, my sister, but there is nothing we can do.

Mr. Speaker, we have nearly 150,000 soldiers stationed throughout Iraq, many of them in Baghdad. If they can't keep the Iraqi people safe, and if the local police can't keep them safe, why are we there?

After going through these ordeals, Faiza and her family moved to Amman, Jordan where it is safer. She has dedicated herself to telling the truths about Iraq, the truths that our media isn't telling us.

Mr. Speaker, I would encourage anyone watching tonight to visit Faiza's blog, www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com. Sadly, what Faiza and the rest of the Iraqi women's delegation have revealed is what many of us have suspected for months, that an Iraqi civil war isn't imminent; it is going on right now, right before our very eyes. Shiite and Sunni militias have been fighting each other and targeting innocent civilians for months. Well more than 2,000 people have been killed since the bombing of the famed gold-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra last month. And the situation will not get better until we bring our troops home.

Mr. Speaker, how many more innocent Iraqis, mothers, fathers and their children need to be killed before we realize that our policies in Iraq are not working?

How many more of our troops have to be killed before we bring them home?

Faiza and the rest of the Iraqi delegation know that it is time for our troops to leave. Nearly two-thirds of the American people share this belief. It is time for Congress to catch up.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the Bilingual Broadcasting Foundation, Inc. for establishing KBBF 89.1. This station has served my constituents in Sonoma County for 35 years. KBBF is an example of how local broadcasters can serve and benefit their communities. In an era where media outlets are owned by fewer and fewer corporations, KBBF's voice rings brightly throughout the North Bay.

KBBF was the dream of a few Sonoma State University students who had a vision of establishing a community owned and operated, non- commercial, bilingual, bi-cultural, educational FM radio station that would be committed to social change and advocacy for the poor and would be devoted to meeting the educational, informational, and cultural needs of the Spanish speaking community.

Its founding Board of Directors was far from the Fortune 500. It was made up of people like you and me; a farm worker, a lawyer, a

housewife, a local professor and a college student. No wonder KBBF connects so well to the community it serves.

The first test broadcast of KBBF-FM on March 31, 1973 made radio history by being the first public bi-lingual radio station in the United States. Regular broadcasts began two months later on May 31, 1973.

By 1976 the Bilingual Broadcasting Foundation, Inc. Board of Directors developed a statement of goals consistent with the philosophy of the original founders. In addition to social change and advocacy, the Board charged KBBF with programming goals to coordinate and facilitate efforts to advance the political, social, educational and economic conditions of the Chicano, and Spanish-speaking community and to provide an avenue to develop leadership and creative potential for the youth. The Board of Directors and KBBF have received national recognition from the John F. Kennedy Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for achieving these goals.

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate KBBF 89.1 on its 35th Anniversary for serving my constituents and the nation by being the first bilingual educational FM radio station in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I rise with pleasure to honor my friend Ethel Seiderman who is receiving the Beryl H. Buck Award for Achievement on March 9, 2006, for her embodiment of ``community giving in action.'' This award affirms what the Marin community already knows about her . . . Ethel Seiderman has given tirelessly her entire life.

Ethel's life and work reflect her passion for children and families. She has created innovative programs which have become national models for meeting a broad range of needs. From her early efforts in low- income communities in Boston and New York in the 1950s to the nationwide reach of the Parent Services Project she currently directs, Ethel has demonstrated that caring for vulnerable populations with respect and compassion reflects how we are as a people.

In 1973 Ethel founded the Fairfax-San Anselmo Children's Center (FSACC) and was the director until 1999. FSACC provides childcare for 150 low- to moderate-income families each year with ground-breaking programs such as the Get Well Room for mildly ill children, extended hours, extensive family support, mainstreaming, and transportation for school-age children. With the efforts of her late husband and partner Stan, the family support program increased fathers' involvement through the Men's Group and its various projects.

The Parent Services Project (PSP) was founded in 1980 as Ethel realized that, in order to promote the well-being of children, we must promote and incorporate their families. Working in partnership, parents and staff develop support groups, respite and family fun events, workshops and trainings, and other activities requested by the families. With Ethel leading dissemination and advocacy efforts, the PSP approach has now been integrated into over 800 programs across the country. These services vary widely, as they are developed by the needs of the particular parent group; organic development at each site is the norm rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

As a consultant to many of these programs and a stirring and sought- after conference speaker, Ethel continues to travel the Nation promoting the family support principles that guide PSP. She has also published numerous articles and received awards including Marin Citizen of the Year, Marin Women's Hall of Fame, and Woman of the Year from the California legislature.

Throughout these endeavors, Ethel's husband Stan, who passed away last year, and her two children and four grandchildren, have provided her a loving support network. And Ethel's extended family--the many people whose lives she has touched--have also returned her warmth over the years. In the words of one director of a children's program that she helped, ``Ethel opened our eyes to a whole new approach in life as well as work, a mode that united families and staff to support each other and to promote the success of our children.''

Mr. Speaker, Ethel Seiderman understands that through honoring and sustaining each other we can truly build a better future. And I honor her on the occasion of her well- deserved receipt of the Beryl H. Buck Award. I know that she will continue to embody community giving while inspiring others to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of order.

Mr. Speaker, at a time of declining morale, when we are barely able to maintain a volunteer force, the sign on the Army recruiter's door might as well say: ``Openly gay Americans need not apply.''

Here is the military, struggling to meet its recruitment goals and in some instances even lowering its standards as a result, but still they are turning away and actively weeding out an entire group of people for no other reason than raw prejudice. How dumb is that.

But yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that universities receiving Federal funding could not ban military recruiters from their campuses in protest over the military's discrimination against gay Americans. I am not going to relitigate that case here on the House floor, but I do think and I sincerely hope that this case can shine a national spotlight on the absolute folly of the ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy.

Because of their sexual orientation and their unwillingness to conceal it, selfless patriotic Americans are forbidden from serving their country. They cannot serve even though their skills are desperately needed, even though there are available slots, even though they are volunteering for duty that most of their peers have opted against.

How does the Army expect its people to be all they can be when it will not allow them to be who they are. What can be more un-American? Yet another example of a Nation preaching the rhetoric of freedom and self-determination around the world while undermining those very values here at home. It is a civil rights outrage to be sure.

But on a purely practical note, it is just plain bad national security policy. Is this any way to defend a Nation, by purging the military of talented and dedicated soldiers because they are unashamed of their love for members of the same sex? It is arbitrary, irrational, and dangerous.

A GAO report, released about a year ago, concluded that 10,000 Americans have received military discharges under a policy of ``don't ask, don't tell'' at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $191 million.

In recent years, since the launch of wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the military has purged several Farsi and Arabic translation specialists because they were discovered to be gay. This shocking and incomprehensible personnel decision has prompted my friend and colleague, Barney Frank, to relabel the Pentagon policy: ``Don't ask, don't tell, don't translate.''

How is that for a forward-looking national defense strategy? At just the moment when we need to understand Mideastern culture and win over hearts and minds of its people, the military dismisses the people who speak their language. The 9/11 Commission cited a shortage of Arabic speakers, and, thus, an inability to translate key intelligence as a handicap in our ability to predict the September 11 attacks.

Mr. Speaker, I have been outspoken in my opposition of the Iraq war and my belief that now is the time to bring our troops home. But I am antiwar, not antisoldier, not antimilitary. I want us to have the strongest possible national defense, a goal that is in no way incompatible with rooting out intolerance and protecting equal rights.

There is no trade-off, no balance of competing interests in this case. If ``don't ask, don't tell'' fails the social justice test and detracts from national security, what possible use could it have?

I would have thought that a 3-year $250 billion war that is stretching the military to its breaking point would compel the Congress and the Pentagon to reexamine this block-headed policy. Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will.