Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the House and my colleague from Georgia for arranging for this time to talk about a new suburban agenda for the country, one that addresses key issues before families in America and reflects the new suburban…
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the House and my colleague from Georgia for arranging for this time to talk about a new suburban agenda for the country, one that addresses key issues before families in America and reflects the new suburban reality of the way we live our lives.
This Congress is well known for being home to a Rural Caucus and an Urban Affairs Caucus. But to date we have never had a Suburban Caucus addressing the needs of suburban families. For us at this time we should recognize not how Americans lived in the 20th century but how they live now in the 21st century.
In the most recent election, over half of all voters were from suburban families, and suburban communities are under attack. They are under attack from gangs moving to the suburbs and taking on suburban police departments. They are under attack from Internet predators. Over 50,000 of them online at any one time attempting to contact our kids. We see a growing wave, a disappearance of green and open space that need to be protected. And there is a general fear held by three- quarters of the American public that it may be more difficult for their kids to enter the middle class than it was for them.
Five dozen Members of Congress have gathered together to put together a suburban agenda to address these needs. And one of those Members is representing the Atlanta suburbs, Congressman Tom Price, and a member of Suburban Agenda Caucus, and I yield to him.
I thank the gentleman.
One of the critical problems we have is from powerful social networking sites like MySpace.com and other sites that have given online predators powerful tools to reach children. Our leader, the author of the Delete Online Predators Act, is a Congressman from Pennsylvania, Mike Fitzpatrick and I want to yield to him.
I thank the gentleman who has become the leader on protecting kids from these new powerful tools online.
Suburban families have told us consistently that they want congressional action on education, health care, conservation and the economy; and one of our big reforms in the area of health care is accelerating health care information technology. I yield to my colleague from Georgia to talk about that major piece of legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. We saw a dramatic testament to the value of fully electronic medical records when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The many civilian hospitals had not yet upgraded to fully electronic medical records, and their record rooms were flooded out. Many of those patients then lost their medical histories, but the veterans in New Orleans did not have that problem. Their records were already fully digitized, and so a veteran reporting to a VA hospital in Houston or in Baton Rouge had their complete medical history protected.
That is one key issue in the suburban agenda, but another is protecting kids from predators, especially in schools. We heard of the great tragedy of Jessica Lunsford, an example of inadequate screening for people who come in contact with kids, and one of our experts on this field is my colleague from the State of Florida, and I yield to her.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman who lost Jessica Lunsford in her own district.
Our leader on this issue is Congressman Jon Porter from Nevada, the author of the School Safety Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act, and I want to yield to him.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada because he is the author of the lead bill of the suburban agenda, and that will be coming up shortly in the Congress here.
We know that, for example, in the State of Michigan, schools unwittingly hired 2,500 people convicted of sexual assault, murder and other felonies, exactly because these predators fell between the cracks of the various State registries which have been established and were not brought together in a single Federal register.
One of the great problems that we have is also the emergence of international drug gangs moving into suburban communities. There are over 800,000 members of drug gangs now in America. It would be the seventh largest army in the world, and we need action to make sure that these gangs, sometimes suppressed inside large urban cores by capable police departments like the Chicago Police Department, are now moving into the suburbs. This is a phenomenon that we are not immune to in Chicagoland. It is happening all over the country, and I yield to my colleague from Atlanta to talk about the law enforcement situation that they face with gangs in that community.
One of the critical problems we have, we have heard of gangs like the Latin Kings and the Vice Lords and the Gangster Disciples, but we have a new gang emerging called MS-13 that may have reported, we don't know, links to international terror groups coming out of drug activity south of the border that seem to have no compunction with killing police officers, both on the West and East coasts. This is not just a threat to kids in school, it is a homeland defense issue.
We all know Dave Reichert from Washington, who was the national hero who tracked down the Green River killer and is someone who understands well law enforcement challenges east of the Cascades in Seattle.
One of the big issues we are also dealing with is a fear among families in America that it may be more difficult for their children to reach the middle class than it was for them. Another key item of the suburban agenda would establish 401-kids, a tax-deferred savings account for each child.
I want to yield to my colleague who shares Florida with the author of that legislation, Clay Shaw.
I thank the gentlelady.
We have seen a number of gangs morph from the view that we had of them in the 1950s coming out of cartoon images like West Side Story of the Jets and the Sharks, a group of local toughs that no longer exist. These gangs are all connected to international drug cartels, many times having weapons and contacts far exceeding local law enforcement, especially suburban law enforcement.
And now the view that they have is that they merely need to move outside of cities where they take on smaller police departments or high school officials and security officials that are not well experienced with these groups to continue their operations.
Congressman Reichert's Gang Elimination Act of 2006 makes common sense. It simply says to the Attorney General, identify the top three national drug threat gangs and put forward a plan to the Congress to take them down within 4 years. It sets an example of those gangs that if you represent a near and present danger to kids and to the homeland security of the United States, that the U.S. Government is going to take effective action.
The suburban agenda is very much about the security of families from gang violence. It is also about financial security. It is building a nest egg for each child with 401-kids family savings accounts. The Congress should build success upon success. The creation of the 401(k) program transformed the culture of the country to promote much greater savings and investment for people's retirement. In 2001, the Congress created 529 college savings plans, and over 7 million Americans have saved over $75 billion in these accounts.
The 401-kids accounts expands the tax-free savings for each child's college education to also allow the first-time purchase of a home. This is something that much more greatly ensures access of our children into the middle class. That opportunity is not just to build a nest egg for the child, it also gives an opportunity for each parent to sit down with that child and review how their
account is being built, what is the difference between a stock and a bond and a regular savings account, how they did this year, to build a culture of savings and investment for the rest of the child's life.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia.
I would say that we welcome Republicans, Democrats, everyone, to join this agenda, because while this is popular, while people want this to happen, it hasn't happened yet. This is an incomplete agenda, where we have not set a national strategy to eliminate gangs; we have not established 401-kids programs; we have not interlinked the Federal databases on sexual predators; we have not taken sufficient action on social networking sites like myspace.com to protect kids.
All of this, then, builds up to a set of unfinished work which the Congress should now finish in order to protect the lives of Americans.
One of the other issues that we hear about very often from suburban families is that we need to take greater action for conservation, that we support the national park system, we want it to be healthy and we want it to grow, but we also want to protect green and open space right near home. Without action by the Federal and State governments, there might come a day when we would drive to work or school and see an unending series of strip malls and no green or open space taken to protect the environment in our local communities.
The suburban agenda also contains two pieces of legislation, one by Jim Gerlach and the other by Mike Fitzpatrick, both of Pennsylvania, that encourages donations of open space for conservation purposes and also protects farmland from being gobbled up in suburban communities. I think it is critical that we embrace a future in this country of rapidly expanding suburban communities in which families 10 and 20 years from now also see green and open space and that they do not let inaction by the government or a climate which does not encourage the donation of these areas, to let these key properties go.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia.
I thank the gentleman.
It was decisive action of this kind that saved the Wagner Farm in Glenview, Illinois. We still celebrate the cows in that suburban community, now intensely built up, but because of foresighted action by the local community, that farm was preserved and it is helping educate a number of kids in the area about different ways to live and to preserve green space in their community.
I want to speak for a second about another bill, a bill that is later on in the suburban agenda that defends the rights of teachers to be able to search a child to make sure that their classroom is gun and drug free.
A number of us, me included, hesitated seeing a child using our training and our instinct as teachers, knowing that we probably have an issue with a child, but under Federal law and current Supreme Court decisions, we have to show a specific suspicion toward that child before we can execute a search of their book bag, their clothes or their locker.
I think that the country is ready to trust teachers, especially people that are long-experienced, certified, full-time teachers, to use their intuition and experience to defend a fundamental value, which is that Americans have a right to a safe and drug-free school and that the teachers and the administrators in that school know best how to appreciate danger and handle it immediately.
I recently talked with two teachers at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, where they said that they knew the children, where they had a problem of a weapon potentially coming into the school, but they hesitated. They hesitated because many families in the neighborhood were lawyers, and they would worry about a big lawsuit and jeopardizing their jobs. That hesitation so far in Lincolnshire, Illinois, has not led to a tragedy.
But we have seen other tragedies, like at Columbine High School or in my own district in Winnetka, Illinois, where Laurie Dann led an attack against school kids with a gun.
Defending the rights of teachers to ensure the safety of their classroom is what the Teacher Safety Act is all about from Congressman Geoff Davis, and I think this once again represents commonsense action.
Why do we need to take Federal action on what should be a local issue? Because the Federal courts have continually ruled on this issue, and it is only by action of the Federal legislature that we can define the rights of teachers to protect their classroom.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia.
What we want is to give a message to the country's teachers that when it comes to an issue of the safety and security of kids in the classroom, do not hesitate. Do not worry about some impending lawsuit. Make sure that your classroom is secure. We are going to trust your judgement as a certified teacher, as a full-time employee of the school, to make that call and to make sure the classroom is secure.
When you look at all of this, we know that the House has long been a forum for issues on rural issues, and those are very important issues. We have also been a forum for issues on urban communities, and those are vital to the future of the country.
But there is a reality in the 21st century and it is that Americans, a majority of them, live in suburbs. Suburban families face a number of critical problems. There are drug gangs moving into suburbs that are seeking to take on suburban law enforcement communities that do not have the experience of big-city departments.
There are thousands of online predators who are trying to contact our kids using powerful engines like MySpace.com.
We are watching as green and open space disappear in the suburbs. And millions of Americans worry that it may be tougher for their children to enter the middle class than it was for us.
Suburban families are under attack, and they need a voice in the Congress; and that is why this agenda is coming forward.
These are critical issues in my district of Libertyville, Illinois. They represent commonsense, practical, grass-roots solutions coming from the communities to the Congress in a way that we welcome Republicans and Democrats coming together to move this agenda forward.
We will be outlining all of this in detail tomorrow: a School Safety Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act, which helps us screen and make sure that everyone coming into contact with kids is safe and appropriate; a Delete OnLine Predators Act to make sure that these powerful search engines are not put in the service of online predators; a Gang Elimination Act, making the commonsense step forward of identifying the top gangs that are a threat to kids and the Homeland Security of the country and to take them down; a Health Information Technology Promotion Act to accelerate high technology, health information technology to make sure that your medical record, when appropriately available, is appropriate to every doctor that you see and is in a survivable form in case there is a fire or other catastrophe. And, last, a 401-Kids Tax Deferred Savings Account to have more guaranteed access of children, not just in the suburbs, but also in cities and in rural communities into the middle class with tax deferred savings from the day a child is born.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia to wrap up.
I thank the gentleman. Tomorrow, then, five dozen Members of Congress come together to unveil the suburban agenda, many of these pieces of legislation already with bipartisan support, and it represents commonsense solutions addressing real issues before the country, important issues for all families, and it represents a critical agenda of key items of legislation addressing problems before American families that can be done in this session of Congress.