Floor Statements

I want to thank Chairman Kildee and Chairman Miller and Ranking Member McKeon, who was the Chair when we were working on this, and Ranking Member Castle for a bipartisan success. We can be proud of ourselves today.

Anyone who has been around small children knows that they're sponges for information, they just sop it up if you make it available to them. And it's widely accepted that early childhood education is absolutely critical to their development and directly tied to their success when they get into school, elementary school, and their ongoing future. So getting children in a structured classroom environment earlier in their young lives provides a critical window of opportunity.

Head Start provides our Nation's poorest children with a quality start that puts them on a level playing field with others when they start elementary school. No matter where a child comes from or what his or her background is, Head Start provides an equal opportunity to succeed by starting with a quality early childhood education. That's why I'm glad I'm here today as we authorize Head Start, reaffirming our commitment to this valuable program.

This bill expands access to Head Start, it improves teacher and classroom quality, and it strengthens the services children and their families receive when they enroll in the program.

The administration, however, can and should do better when it comes to funding. Too many eligible children are still denied an opportunity to participate in a Head Start program because there isn't enough funds. Well, if this administration wasn't spending $500 billion in Iraq, we would have the necessary resources to increase funding to allow for program improvement to give every child the Head Start experience and to increase teacher quality and salaries. It just depends on where we put our priorities.

Children are 25 percent of our population, Mr. Speaker, but they are 100 percent of our future. We must provide them with the best possible beginning to their lives. So, Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with my colleagues to increase our Nation's commitment to education for all of our children and to ensure that Head Start remains the successful experience that it is.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

This is almost the 250th time I have been down on this House floor to talk about Iraq in the last 2 years. I can't remember, so I say almost how many times it's been.

During that time, the American people have been demanding two things, that the Congress step up to our responsibility and bring our troops home, and that we take bold steps to face up to the President by using our power, the power of the purse, to hold him accountable for what is going on in Iraq.

Today, Speaker Pelosi is leading the House of Representatives in a bold direction. It is the first time so far that we have tied funding to redeployment. Ninety-two Members of the House have written a letter to the President demanding that no more funding for Iraq go forward without it, meaning bringing our troops home and redeployment.

This vote also leads to next year's appropriations where we can use the power of the purse and fully fund bringing our troops home in a very responsible and very timely and actually safe way.

This bill is not perfect. It is the boldest step yet, however, and we must support it. I would not support it if we were not tying the funding to responsible redeployment. I would not support it unless there was a start date for the President to begin the redeployment of our brave men and women in uniform. This bill is the beginning, but it is a bold beginning. I think we should consider everything that is in it, and then build on that for the future and get our troops home as soon as possible.

Mr. Speaker, the Joint Economic Committee of Congress

reported yesterday on the hidden costs of the occupation of Iraq. We learned that the true cost so far is $1.3 trillion, or nearly double the amount the administration has been talking and has requested. And the price tag could soar to nearly $3.5 trillion if we continue on the administration's reckless course in Iraq.

The hidden financial costs of our involvement in Iraq are staggering, but yesterday we also learned that there are hidden human costs as well that are truly, truly heartbreaking.

CBS News reported last night that the suicide rate among veterans is over twice as great as the suicide rate for the general population. In 2005 alone, there were at least 6,256 suicides among veterans in the 45 States that provided data to CBS. That is an astonishing 17 suicides per day for just that one year.

Those statistics are for veterans of all wars, and they are shocking. But the statistics for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are even more devastating. Veterans aged 20 to 24 have the highest suicide rate of all. For these young men and women, the suicide rate is two to four times higher than the suicide rate for the general population.

And yet another report published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the mental health problems of Iraq veterans are much greater than previously thought. It found that Iraq veterans are more likely to report alcohol abuse, family conflicts, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder after being home for 6 months than immediately after their return. The suicide statistics tell us that the real Iraq death toll is significantly higher than the official count of just over 3,860. And the mental health statistics tell us that the real number of wounded is much, much higher than the reported number of around 28,000.

All of this terrible news means that we can no longer sit around and do nothing about the occupation of Iraq. We must take action immediately, and we must take it in two ways.

First, America must do a much better job of meeting the physical and mental health needs of our veterans. The administration has underfunded and ignored the Veterans Administration system, leaving veterans stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare that stops them from getting the health care that they need. Congress has passed a bill that would help veterans to get care much faster. It improves conditions at VA hospitals and invests in new ways to treat physical and mental problems caused by the war. The President needs to sign that bill as soon as possible.

And, second, we must move immediately to end the occupation of Iraq and redeploy our troops. That is why I voted today for H.R. 4156, the Orderly and Responsible Iraq Redeployment Appropriations Act.

While the bill is not perfect, it essentially says that funds authorized for Iraq will not be used to continue the occupation, but are to be used to achieve the safe and orderly redeployment of our troops out of Iraq.

That is what I and many others have been demanding, and that is what the American people have been asking. It is time to stop the death. It is time to stop the suffering. It is time to bring our brave troops home and do everything we can to help them and their families to rebuild their lives. Anything less is unacceptable and immoral.

Madam Speaker, on November 7, I was unavoidably detained and was not able to record my vote for Rollcall #1058.

Had I been present I would have voted: Rollcall #1058--``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, it's clear that the Alternative Minimum Tax, AMT, needs to be fixed. Year after year, we play this game of ``chicken'' with the end of the year, leaving millions of hard working American families fearful that they will be captured in a tax that was never meant to touch them. The good news is that the difference between this year's AMT patch and the ones that we did under the previous majority is that this time we are actually going to pay for it.

In my district alone, H.R. 3996 will save over 59,000 taxpayers from being subject to the AMT and it's my hope that this will be a first step to a responsible solution to permanently fixing this tax policy.

Also included in this bill is an extension and expansion of the Child Tax Credit, CTC, refund-ability. With economic disparity at its highest level since the Great Depression, expansion of this tax credit will help low-income families raise their children and help them get ahead. Finally, we are addressing the growing problem of the increasing gap between the wealthiest and the rest of America through a more equitable tax code. Thank you to Chairman Rangel and Chairman Neal for all of their hard work on this bill, closing loopholes, extending essential tax credits, and balancing the tax code.

Mr. Speaker, throughout most of our history, the world has admired the United States for our dedication to freedom, international law, and human rights. But today America's prestige is in the pits because of the administration's reckless occupation of Iraq.

The resignation last week of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy at the State Department brought new attention to our low standing in the world. The Under Secretary was hired in 2005 to improve our image in the world with a public relations campaign. But the effort failed. It failed because no amount of spin could overcome the catastrophic consequences of our occupation of Iraq.

Today, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, our image in the world is actually worse than it was before the public relations campaign began. Pew surveyed 33 countries and found that the United States is viewed less favorably in 26 of those countries. To be fair to the Under Secretary, her bosses in the White House had done a good job of trashing America's image in the world long before she started her job.

At the beginning of this decade, Mr. Speaker, the United States was viewed very favorably in many countries. But not anymore. For example, 78 percent of the German people viewed the United States favorably in the year 2000. Now it's just 37 percent. In Spain we have gone from a favorability rating of 50 percent to 23 percent. In Great Britain we have gone from 83 percent to 56 percent. And in France we have gone from 62 to 39.

In the Muslim world, we have just about fallen off the charts. In Turkey, for example, we have gone from 52 percent to just 12 percent.

And, most tragically, our occupation of Iraq has undermined support for American leadership in the fight against terrorism. In fact, less than half the people in all the countries I just cited are now willing to follow our lead.

We shouldn't be surprised by this. It is much harder to convince others to get behind us in the fight against terrorism when they actually believe that we are the threat to peace ourselves. And it's much harder for us to fight many other world problems, including poverty, disease, lack of education, and global warming when our standing in the world has hit rock bottom.

This foreign policy disaster is the result of a White House that has run amok for nearly 7 years. When you tear up your treaties, walk away from your friends, condone torture, go to war under false pretenses, and carelessly throw around words like ``World War III,'' you don't make America stronger; you make America weaker by destroying our credibility and undermining our moral authority.

The American people understand this, and they are demanding a new course for our Nation. They know the administration will never give us that; so they are looking to Congress to do the job. So far we have failed, but we have the power to turn things around, the power of the purse. We must use it, and we must use it to insist that any further funding for Iraq be dedicated to bringing our troops home. We must fully fund the safe, orderly, and timely redeployment of our troops out of Iraq. And we must also force the withdrawal of all of our military contractors who are acting like thugs in our Nation. We have a chance. We have a chance right now. If we don't take advantage of it, we will have failed our children and we will have failed America.

Madam Speaker, I along with Hon. Ellen O. Tauscher, Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, Hon. Mike Honda, Hon. George Miller, Hon. Tom Lantos, Hon. Zoe Lofgren, Hon. Mike Thompson, Hon. Pete Stark and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are proud to rise today to honor Teamsters Joint Council 7 on the occasion of their 100th anniversary. Theirs is a proud history, whose origins in the days of the California Gold Rush speak to a long- time concern for the welfare of working people.

In the mid-1800s, when San Francisco was a booming Gold Rush town, the Teamsters Association was formed to address competition from Australians who had arrived with stronger horses. While not a true trade union, it was the first teamster organization on the West Coast and the precursor of Teamsters Joint Council 7.

The Teamsters Association collapsed in the depression of 1854, and in 1856, a new Draymen's and Teamsters Union was formed. By 1888, however, the majority of working teamsters had dropped out, leaving a guild of employers and bosses. Due to poor conditions, a second attempt was made to create a union in 1900, and again the organization was commandeered by employers.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters came into existence in 1903 and stepped up to organize local unions by occupation after the 1906 earthquake led to a more complex system of goods distribution. On November 18, 1907, the Joint Council was chartered to oversee these groups.

By 1912 there were 13 groups ranging from hackmen to ice wagon drivers. The Joint Council helped in disputes with employers as well as differences among the locals, relieving union officers of many routine duties and improving the welfare of the membership.

In those early years, Teamsters Local 85 dominated the operations and provided notable leadership. Local 85 had demonstrated its ability to create solidarity when they called a strike in 1901. Other labor unions rallied around, and the employers backed down. This action earned San Francisco a reputation as the strongest ``Union Town'' in the nation.

Today Joint Council 7 has 15 affiliates and serves the greater Bay Area from Santa Rosa in the north to Salinas/Monterey in the south. The current affiliates are:

Local 70, Oakland, Chuck Mack, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 78, Hayward, Steve Mack, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 85, San Francisco, Van Beane, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 278, San Francisco, Jack Bookter, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 287, San Jose, Bill Hoyt, Secretary- Treasurer; Local 315, Martinez, Dale Robbins, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 350, Daly City, Robert Morales, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 490, Vallejo, Carlos Borba, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 624, Santa Rosa, Bob Carr, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 665, Daly City, Ernie Yates, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 853, San Leandro, Rome Aloise, Secretary- Treasurer; Local 856, San Bruno, Joseph Lanthier, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 890, Salinas, Franklin Gallegos, President; Local 896, Vallejo, Rene Medrano, Secretary-Treasurer; Local 912, Watsonville, Brad Sebring, Secretary-Treasurer.

Under the leadership of president Chuck Mack, who has served for 25 years, the organization has developed many additional functions. These include legal support, a commercial drivers' training program, political activity to support working families, alcohol and drug treatment, and maintenance of a charitable trust to assist members after disasters and tragedies as well as to support community causes.

Their own words say it best: ``100 hundred years old and our members are still priority number one!''

Madam Speaker, organized labor in this country has led to better wages, health care, and pensions for workers. Throughout the years, Teamsters Joint Council 7 has reaffirmed its commitment to the working families of the Bay Area. We all wish Joint Council 7 continued success in the future and hope that their second hundred years will be as productive as the first hundred.

Madam Speaker, it is with great sadness that I rise today to recognize the passing of one of our notable pioneers, Dr. Daniel Collins. Dr. Collins died this month at age 91, leaving an enduring legacy to the people of Marin County, where he lived, to those of the San Francisco Bay Area, where he worked and taught, and to generations of black Americans across the country.

A practicing dentist, Dr. Collins was the first black man to teach at the University of California, San Francisco School of Dentistry.

``It opened the doors for others,'' says his son, Chuck Collins.

After his retirement from dentistry, he served on the board of directors of the San Francisco Dental Society, the trustees of the American Fund for Dental Education and as a member of the house of delegates of the California Dental Association. Moreover, such pioneering efforts extended beyond his professional life. Dr. Collins founded the first black-owned savings and loan in San Francisco, for example, as well as the San Francisco chapter of the Urban League, later known as the Bay Area Urban League.

Elberta Eriksson worked with Dr. Collins in those early days of the Urban League and remembers helping him promote awareness of discrimination in employment.

``I would see something on the college bulletin board announcing a job on Market Street or something,'' she says. ``When I would walk in to apply, they would say I was too qualified. Then I would report back to the Urban League and they would follow up.''

She notes that Dr. Collins' intention was to help blacks to fair employment before there were fair employment laws.

As a pioneer, Dr. Collins felt called to mentor young people, and he and his wife, DeReath, were activists in their community as members of various groups, such as the Marin African Coalition. Together they helped to found MARC--Malin Aid to Retarded Children--now known as Lifehouse, a residential and counseling center for people with developmental disabilities located in San Rafael.

In 1960, former Gov. Pat Brown appointed Dr. Collins to the State Board of Education, which 6 years later approved a new history text that recognized the contributions of women and minorities. He was also named a Distinguished Alumnus by UCSF School of Dentistry, and a Local Hero by Bay Area television station KQED. His alma mater, Paine College, even named a library after him.

``But he had absolutely no ego whatsoever,'' says Regina Carey, a family friend and Dr. Collins' personal assistant for many years. ``He would do all kinds of things and get all kinds of accolades and it never went to his head.'' Among Dr. Collins' pioneering efforts, she notes, was his selection as the first black to head a national campaign for a presidential election, when he supported Adlai Stevenson. Collins also helped create the Sun-Reporter newspaper in San Francisco and the Church for the Fellowship of All People, one of the first nondenominational, interracial churches in the country.

But perhaps Dr. Collins' greatest contribution will never be marked by an award or a plaque or a resolution. Perhaps it will be the one few people ever know about--which is this: In the early 1950s, when Dr. Collins and his wife tried to buy a home in Mill Valley, long a summer resort area for San Franciscans and an all-white town in an almost all- white county, a deed restriction prevented the homeowner from selling to a black man. Local real estate agents offered to buy the house to keep the black family out. That the doctor and his wife were successful in purchasing their home and moving into the town eventually changed the landscape for future generations of black families in Marin.

But then, Dr. Collins did that in all areas of his life, in his own quiet way. That is why, Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and courage of Dr. Daniel Collins.

Madam Speaker, it is with great sadness that I rise today to recognize the passing of one of our notable activists and a conscience for social justice, the artist Pepe deLappe. Pepe died of a stroke last month, at the age of 91, leaving an enduring legacy to the people of the San Francisco Bay Area, across North America, and throughout the world.

Admired by artists, art students, collectors and museums; loved by her family and colleagues; and appreciated by the disenfranchised, the underdog, and political progressives, Pepe devoted her life to social justice. She used her considerable talents to champion the causes of the working class and the needs of society's cast-offs.

``She was always on the side of the downtrodden,'' said her daughter, Nina Sheldon. ``She spent her whole life dedicated to civil rights and to social movements.''

That her social activism melded with her artistic conscience into an exotic bohemian life had its genesis around 1931, when she was 14. She became friends with the artist Frida Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, when he was commissioned to paint murals in San Francisco. Pepe became part of Kahlo's drawing circle, where, she once said, she was treated as a total equal, despite her young age.

This experience, along with her father's permission to discontinue regular school, encouraged Pepe to travel to New York a year or so later to attend art school. She returned to San Francisco at age 18, a legal adult, and joined in the city's maritime strike, an event which had life-changing consequences to her, as well as to those involved.

If the history of a war is written by the victor, then the history of a people is written--and portrayed--by its artists. Pepe did a series of paintings of the longshoremen who participated in the strike-- paintings which still hang in the San Francisco headquarters of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. From that time until only weeks before her death, she captured poignant, comic and disparate emotions and the conditions that gave rise to them. Depicting the lives of the ordinary and extraordinary people of the working class or on the fringes of society, Pepe expressed not only the history of the time, but the social mores of a culture.

But paintings, cartoons and lithographs were not Pepe's only media of expression. She also worked with words and spent many years of her life as an editor and writer for local ``alternative'' newspapers, including People's World, published by the Communist party.

Although she eventually parted ways with that dogmatic organization-- by mutual agreement, she once quipped--she never lost interest in current affairs and politics, mostly recently holding up a sign as she sat in a wheelchair at a rally to protest the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

At age 74, Pepe fell in love with long-time friend and fellow painter Byron Randall. The two spent the rest of their lives in Petaluma, where Pepe remained involved in politics and the artistic life. In fact, when she died last month, some of Pepe's works--many of which are owned by major museums and institutions, including the Library of Congress and San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor--were being showcased in an exhibition at the Huntington Museum in San Marino. Titled Pressed in Time, the exhibit features a taped interview with Pepe.

Madam Speaker, it is impossible to contain the life of such a woman in two short pages.

But for those of us who knew Pepe deLappe, these words are only shorthand to the memories of her long, successful and influential life as an artist, activist, and idealist who, in her own words, ``refused to take life lying down.'' The world needs more people like Pepe deLappe. She will be greatly missed.

Madam Chairwoman, I rise in support of H.R. 3685.

Before I came to Congress, I was a human resources executive, and even then, during the 1970s, my company had a policy that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. It

boggles my mind that it has taken Congress this long to even try to catch up.

I acknowledge that today's bill is a good start, but it is just a beginning. Many of my constituents want this legislation to include provisions that were in the original version of the bill and in the amendment that Representative Baldwin will introduce later today.

I share the concern that the legislation before us does not protect the transgendered people. Transgendered people are particularly subject to workplace discrimination, and nearly one-half of all transgendered people have reported employment discrimination at some point in their lives.

My home State of California is one of a dozen States which already provide this basic liberty, freedom from discrimination based on gender identity. We have done so because we recognize that transgendered people, like all people, deserve protection.

Today's bill is not perfect, but please know that today and every day I commit to working with my colleagues to pass this bill and to keep up the fight to expand protection for all peoples.

Madam Speaker, employees who expose illegal practices benefit us all. But when they blow the whistle, they are often retaliated against. They are demoted, lose their jobs, and are blacklisted. Congress has established broad protections for Federal government employees and contractors who speak out. But when it comes to the private sector, there are large gaps in coverage.

Last spring, the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, which I chair, held a hearing on private sector whistleblowers. What we heard at the hearing made it clear that these brave employees who put their jobs and lives on the line by coming forward to report violations of the law need more protection.

The Private Sector Whistleblower Streamlining Act of 2007 is designed to fill the gaps for private sector whistleblowers. First, it establishes whistleblower protections for workers who report violations of Federal law related to health and health care, environmental protection, food and drug safety, consumer protection, transportation safety, working conditions and benefits, energy, homeland and community security, building and construction-related requirements and financial transactions.

Second, it provides for reinstatement, compensatory damages, and in egregious cases, punitive damages for workers who have been retaliated against. In addition, the bill requires

that the same well-tested principles used in determining whether or not a complaint is valid for Federal employees and contractors (and some private sector employees) who blow the whistle is used for private sector workers.

Third, the Act establishes a new office within the Department of Labor, which will be dedicated solely to administering whistleblower complaints. Following an investigation by this office, the Act provides an opportunity for hearings before a Department of Labor administrative law judge and final review by the Office of the Secretary. Complainants would also have the right to take their cases to court.

Since the substantive whistleblower protections under OSHA and MSHA are well-established, the Act takes a different approach for those who blow the whistle on safety and health violations. Procedurally, the Miner Act functions at an acceptable level, but the procedures of the OSHA Act badly need an overhaul. So the Streamlining Act would provide complainants under the OSHA Act with the same hearing, final review, and court opportunities as for others. For practical reasons, it would leave the initial investigations to OSHA.

Finally, the bill requires the National Academies to study why some persons or communities are reluctant to step forward and report illegal violations.

We want to encourage workers to come forward and report violations of law. The Private Sector Whistleblower Streamlining Act of 2007 will make it easier for them to do so.

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I join you here today to honor Bill and Lucy Kortum for their outstanding contributions to Sonoma County, the State of California and the Nation. Having made significant changes to the environmental consciousness in California and beyond, among other good works, Bill and Lucy have changed the world permanently--for the better.

Bill's priorities were clear from the time he was young, growing up in Sonoma County where he could hike or travel anywhere in the county. His father told him, ``Enjoy it now, because when you grow up, it will be gone.''

Determined that wouldn't happen, Bill has contributed in many ways to protect the valued lifestyle of the community. That work has had lasting effect around the world, and resulted in a long list of notable accomplishments. For example, as co-founder of COAAST (Californians Organized to Acquire Access to State Tidelands), Bill led the fight to ensure the public's right to use California's 1,300 miles of coastline. Out of that came the California Coastal Protection Initiative, a ground-breaking measure that created the Coastal Commission to regulate development along the State's coast.

``That's not only a gift to the people of California,'' says Professor John Kramer of Sonoma State University, ``but that bill was instrumental and served as a model for environmentalists around the globe of how you could value coast with the notion that it's a common value. And it has been re-affirmed by the Supreme Court over and over.''

Among Bill's other contributions were the idea of triple use for urban wastewater, the selection and securing of land for the campus of Sonoma State University, and the idea of a hiking trail along the length of California, now called the California Coastal Trail--which includes a part named after the Kortums.

Because of his steadfast dedication, Bill is considered the dean of Sonoma County environmentalists. As such, he was the first to serve as a Sonoma County supervisor. He was also one of the founders of Sonoma County Conservation Action, an organization that has been instrumental in electing environmentally minded local officials, and is now a leader in transportation issues, as well.

Bill's ideas were always backed by Lucy's actions, says Kramer. ``Bill would get an idea and Lucy would type it up on an old Underwood.''

While her husband led the charge and attended meetings, Lucy organized papers and photos, typed documents and maintained computer files. It has been said of the couple's partnership that ``he runs around and she organizes it.''

But Lucy has contributed more than administrative support. ``While Bill was preserving our environmental heritage, Lucy was preserving our architecture,'' Kramer notes.

Her love of history motivated her to earn a master's degree at Sonoma State University in the subject. Her meticulous research about historic sites resulted in more than a dozen Petaluma buildings being named to the National Register of Historic Places.

It was Lucy who was responsible for the research of every one of the 144 California Carnegie libraries, Kramer notes. The thesis she wrote from this research, entitled ``Carnegie Library Development in California and the Architecture it Produced, 1899-1921'' served as the multiple property nomination that resulted in 10 California Carnegie libraries being added to the National Register of Historic Places. In fact, the paper still sets the standards by which such libraries achieve the National Register designation.

In recognition of her dedicated volunteer service and scholastic achievements in the field of historic preservation and research, the Sonoma County Historical Society awarded Lucy the Jeanne Thurlow Miller Individual Award in 2005. The next year, she was named Petaluma's ``Good Egg'' and chosen to lead the town's annual parade, an acknowledgment of her volunteer work for the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum. She still serves as a board member of the Petaluma Historical Society and Friends of the Petaluma Library.

In addition to her own accomplishments, Lucy worked tirelessly alongside her husband to bring about the coastal trail, the coastal commission and the California League of Conservation Voters, among others.

``They've been such incredible individuals,'' Kramer notes. ``Beyond just living a good life [and raising a family of three], they've given to their community in extraordinarily wonderful ways.''

Madam Speaker, I ask you to join me in acknowledging two amazing people who have made a difference. Thank you, Bill and Lucy, for your contributions to the betterment of Sonoma County and the world.

Mr. Speaker, when the President invaded Iraq in 2003, the American people were warned that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a great threat to peace. We were told that launching a preemptive war would not make life harder for the Iraqi people nor compromise the security of the international community. And we were promised that the quick war to liberate Iraq would come at no cost to America's prestige abroad.

Five years later, it is painfully clear how very wrong the administration was and how dearly we are still paying for its mistakes. The administration launched a war of choice based on half truths, broken promises, and delusions of a swift and easy victory, but the most shameful of the administration's claims was that we were fighting abroad to protect our freedoms at home.

The President argued that sending our Nation's brave servicemen and - women into an unwinnable occupation was the only way we would safeguard our civil liberties. Since then, by repeatedly invoking the possibility of threats to our national security right here at home and abroad, the administration has justified its unprecedented attack on our constitutionally protected freedoms.

Mr. Speaker, we can no longer allow these attacks to go unchallenged. After authorizing the National Security Agency to openly violate Federal laws by eavesdropping on Americans, the administration successfully worked to legalize warrantless spying on innocent Americans. After consistently disregarding laws designed to promote public access to information, the administration expanded laws that authorized the government to withhold information from Congress and the American people.

After championing the virtues of democratic rule of law, the President has openly condoned torture, denied habeas corpus to prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, and fought every single attempt to hold members and friends of his administration accountable for their actions.

This abuse of power at the expense of the rights and freedoms of the American people, often in the name of protecting these very same rights and freedoms, is a shocking betrayal of the will of the American people.

Last month, after the House passed legislation ensuring that every contractor in Iraq would be accountable under American criminal law, the administration granted immunity to Blackwater Security employees who were involved in a Baghdad shooting that left 17 civilians dead.

This administration will never take responsibility for their actions. It will never end the occupation of Iraq. Instead, the attack on our civil liberties will be the only mission they will have accomplished.

Mr. Speaker, it is Congress' responsibility to stand up to this President. We must end the administration's war of choice. We must restore the checks and balances that have been eroded under this President. We must fight for peace and the protection of civil liberties. We must fully fund the safe and orderly withdrawal of all American troops and contractors.

Mr. Speaker, we must give Iraq back to the Iraqi people and America back its integrity.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 573 and to commend grassroots and advocacy groups across the country for their powerful voices and invaluable efforts to raise awareness about the deepening humanitarian crisis in Darfur. This resolution will honor these groups for their hard work and urge the government to use its influence to halt the killing of innocent people in Darfur. Local communities continue to insist that the international community honor its responsibility to end the ongoing genocide in Darfur. We must heed their message, because it is one we cannot afford to ignore.

As a member of the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, the Congressional, the Human Rights Caucus, and the Congressional Sudan Caucus, I share their immediate concern that our country must do everything it can to end the genocide in Darfur. More than 2.5 million Darfurians have been displaced from their homes and as many as 400,000 Darfurians have needlessly died over the last four years as a result of violence, hunger, and disease.

The tragic events unfolding in Darfur have been felt intensely by local communities across the world. The strongest efforts to end the genocide will grow from the concerns of American citizens who can no longer sit quietly by while the atrocities in Sudan continue unabated. I am proud to represent the people of California's Sixth Congressional District, who are among the people most involved in stopping the genocide in Darfur since the crisis started.

Dear Sudan, now an international movement, began in my hometown of Petaluma in 2004. Their goal was to raise enough money from citizens of Petaluma to feed the refugees from Darfur for one day. Dear Sudan, Love Petaluma was so successful that other communities began organizing first locally, then spread across the Nation, and recently founded chapters in other countries across the world.

Dear Sudan, Love Marin has hosted educational forums and worked to develop a broad coalition of religious and community groups, encompassing the entire San Francisco Bay Area. Another group, Marin Interfaith, has been instrumental in spreading the message about the ongoing genocide to the religious community at large.

Additionally, students throughout the Sixth District have organized under Save Darfur, other national organizations, or on their own to help raise awareness for the crisis in Darfur by planning educational forums, rallying, and washing cars to raise funds for refugees. Just this past weekend, a student group in Santa Rosa held a car wash at a local market, and this December, a group of students from Terra Linda High School are planning a half-day conference on the genocide.

Groups like these demonstrate the best elements of our Nation, where people can come together to work for change in the world. It is with their energy and passion in mind that we must renew our commitment to end the genocide in Darfur.

Mr. Speaker, if the President is going to negotiate trade agreements based on the failed NAFTA model, this legislation is the very least that we can do for our workers who lose their jobs because of international trade and globalization.

Mr. Speaker, America faces record high trade deficits and plant closings, and it's our laid-off workers who are the casualties. Strengthening trade adjustment assistance, TAA, isn't the

magic pill. It is not the cure-all. It can only be a help by fixing the flawed trade policy. We will do what our workers need, but we owe displaced workers in the meantime, and we owe their communities around the country the chance they need to regain their economic footing with job training, with health care, and they need to know that it's available to them and how to take advantage of these programs.

Mr. Speaker, while the bill will not prevent millions of workers from losing their jobs, it will give them the tools they need and the tools they deserve until they are once again able to compete in the global workforce.