Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, yesterday we reached a tragic milestone. Staff Sergeant George T. Alexander, Jr., of Texas, died from wounds he sustained while serving in Iraq. His death brought the U.S. death toll in Iraq to 2,000 soldiers. In addition to that, over 15,000 soldiers have been wounded, and over 400 are now amputees. My thoughts and prayers are with Staff Sergeant Alexander's family, and with all the families that have lost a loved one in Iraq.

However, I hope the administration will use this milestone as an opportunity to be honest, to square with the American people about why we are fighting in Iraq, and to develop a stronger plan that will secure Iraq and conclude our involvement the war.

Mr. Speaker, it is often said that to govern is to make choices. When it comes to the Iraq War, President Bush has made the wrong choices. Instead of putting the entire resources of the United States behind the efforts to find those responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks, the President chose to use those tragic events as an excuse to go to war in Iraq.

Where is Osama bin Laden? Have we stopped looking for him? We have invaded Iraq. We have the shock and awe campaign. Thousands of Iraqis are dead, and now 2,000 of our soldiers are dead. We have left Iraq, and Baghdad in particular, in shambles. We have appropriated money for the reconstruction of Iraq, and we told the American people that we would basically pay for the major reconstruction with the proceeds from the oil that we would pump in Iraq. None of this is true; no weapons of mass destruction, no money coming from the oil fields in Iraq, no rehabilitation having been done. The insurgents not only are bombing all of the different sites in Iraq, they are killing schoolteachers.

We have created a breeding ground for terrorists. Oh, we claim they are coming from Syria. We claim that Iran has a hand in it. What is interesting now is Condoleezza Rice is telling us that we are going to get Iran to help us with Iraq. At the same time, Iran is developing and making more sophisticated its nuclear ability, but now we are going to try and join in with them to help us with Iraq? With this business of trying to make the American people believe that all of the insurgents are coming from Syria, we have created a new bogeyman for the people to focus on.

But that is not all about this terrorism, in this fight against terrorism. It seems to me that the President of the United States finds occasions by which he comes to the American public and he tells us that we have to be worried about a new terrorist threat. Every now and then he reminds us that the terrorists are still out there, and somehow we have to stay in Iraq. If we do not, we are going to be vulnerable to all of these terrorists. But if we stay the course, not only is he going to help keep us safe, no matter how many sacrifices we have to make, the right thing to do is to stay the course.

Mr. Speaker, that is easy to talk about and say when you are talking about somebody else's children. The President chose to go to war based on false and misleading intelligence. Look where it has gotten us. Look at the scandals surrounding the White House today because we tried to make the intelligence fit the decision that had already been made to go to war.

We are finding, and I guess we will know soon, once the indictments come down, who leaked the information about Valerie Plame and outed her because they were so mad at her husband, who had been sent to Niger to help put the story together that somehow Saddam Hussein had been seeking yellowcake in Niger. When Mr. Wilson came back and said it was not true, then they went after Mr. Wilson. Somehow the Vice President's office knows all about this.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to bring our soldiers home. It is time for Republicans and Democrats alike to understand that we do not need to lose another American soldier in Iraq.

He chose to go to war without international support or heed the warnings of those in Congress that urged him to slow the march to war.

The President chose to send our soldiers to war without the body armor and armored vehicles necessary to keep our soldiers safe.

And, he chose to go to war without an adequate number of troops or a clear plan for how to succeed in Iraq.

For those decisions, American soldiers are paying the price--and for 2,000 soldiers they have paid the ultimate price.

It is time that the President recognizes the dangers of ``staying the course'' and develops a plan that accomplishes our mission in Iraq and allows all our soldiers to return to their families.

Madam Speaker, over the past several weeks, members of the Republican Caucus have been trying to cut the Federal budget by $50 billion. They claim that it is to help pay for the rebuilding efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Rita.

Perhaps most shocking, the Republicans are trying to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

If the Republicans are successful in their efforts to cut discretionary funding by 2 percent, the VA's budget will be cut by more than $600 million which translates to nearly 100,000 fewer veterans receiving health care this year.

It is heartless and cruel to cut the VA's budget in order to make room for more tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans, while 159,000 U.S. soldiers are fighting in Iraq and tens of thousands more are deployed throughout the world.

I urge my colleagues to oppose these cuts and urge the American people to call their representatives and tell them to oppose these cuts.

Our soldiers and their families have sacrificed too much for us to turn our backs on them when they return home.

Madam Speaker, I close by thanking our soldiers for their service and pray for their safe return.

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

Madam Speaker, a little over a month ago, the gulf coast region was struck with one of the worst natural disasters ever to fall upon this country, Hurricane Katrina followed by Hurricane Rita.

In its wake, Katrina left hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, over 1 million citizens displaced, and countless families separated.

Madam Speaker, after the hurricane, hundreds of thousands of people were forced into churches, armories, hotels, community centers, Red Cross-managed shelters, the Cajun Dome, the Superdome, the Astrodome and on and on and on. Almost 5 weeks after Katrina, more than 100,000 people are still living in shelters, over 442,000 more in hotels, 4,600 on cruise ships, and untold others are camping out.

Now, certainly shelters are a short-term solution. None of us can be satisfied with what we have accomplished to date. We are failing to manage a credible program to house these hurricane victims. We can do better than that.

We in the Congress of the United States as public policy-makers have a responsibility to these victims to provide swift and targeted resources in order to assist in the reconstruction of homes, communities, and cities.

Today, we have three Katrina-related housing bills on the suspension calendar. None of them are adequate to do what needs to be done to get people out of shelters, to get people into viable temporary housing, or to rebuild the housing that has been lost in the gulf region.

H.R. 3894 provides temporary waivers for several bureaucratic provisions within the section 8 housing program, but it does nothing in the way of adding new vouchers or addressing the immediate need for housing construction in the affected areas; nor does this bill attempt to address the existing affordable housing crisis in other parts of the country, especially those cities providing shelter for the evacuees.

Madam Speaker, instead of providing additional resources to programs which we know work and which we know have the infrastructure to provide immediate relief and assistance to those most in need, we have again left the door open for another blank check to be written by FEMA.

This bill is a bill that would allow for an expedited process within the section 8 housing program. It will waive several requirements for what have been described as cumbersome roadblocks to housing section 8 voucher holders, such as income verification, tenant contributions, and initial inspections.

These things are helping, and of course, I am going to support the bill; but what I am really concerned about is all of those persons who were on the waiting list for vouchers, who are already eligible, even if they are given some temporary assistance from FEMA, even if they got it for 18 months, what happens then. They still need housing. They still are, what, on the waiting list?

It is all right to waive some of these bureaucratic rules, but this is the time that we should be thinking about what we can do about homelessness. That is not even addressed here. This simply says, if you had a section 8 voucher, we will replace it and we will make it a little bit easier for you. It does not talk about the homeless people who were not even in the system, nor does it talk about those who are on the waiting list.

There is an article that I would like to just read verbatim because I think it describes the mess that we are in; and while I do this, I am not placing blame on my friends on the opposite side of the aisle. Even though I am very concerned that we were so slow in getting to the floor with even this legislation that does not do a lot, I am really concerned that we did not take this as an opportunity to really deal with the housing crisis in the gulf as it is a housing crisis all over the country.

This is an article that I am just going to read because I think it sums it up very well: ``Housing Promises to Evacuees Have Fallen Short.'' It is a Washington Post article that was written just a few days ago, 10/2/2005, by Spencer S. Hsu and Elizabeth Williamson:

``Red Cross to Halt Hotel Stipends in 2 weeks, and Hundreds of Shelters Have

Closed.'' Well, what is important about this is the President of the United States said he wanted everybody out of the shelters by October 15. That deadline is not going to be met.

``Two weeks before President Bush's mid-October goal for moving Hurricane Katrina victims out of shelters, more than 100,000 people still reside in such makeshift housing, and 400,000 more are in hotel rooms costing up to $100 a night. Housing options promised by the Federal Government a month ago have largely failed to materialize. Cruise ships and trailer parks have so far proved in large part to be unworkable, while an American Red Cross program, paid for by the Federal Government that allows storm victims to stay in motels or hotels is scheduled to expire October 15.

``It is projected to cost the Federal Emergency Management Agency as much as $168 million. Federal officials are struggling to launch an alternative interim housing program that would give families whose homes are destroyed or uninhabitable a lump sum of $2,358 in rental assistance, or $786 a month for 3 months, with the possibility of a 15- month extension.

``So far, 330,000 families have signed up for the housing assistance. But if evacuees have to use those stipends to pay for hotel rooms when FEMA stops covering such lodging, the funds will not last long. Last week, the number of evacuees in hotels increased from 220,000 to more than 400,000 people in 140,000 rooms. Many have no idea what they will do when the program ends in 2 weeks.'' No idea.

And they talk about this one man, whose case I am just going to read from this article: ``Ronnie Ashworth, a truck driver from Chalmette, Louisiana, east of New Orleans, currently lives at the Baton Rouge Marriott. If no other housing is forthcoming after October 15, `I'll be sleeping in the back of my truck,' Ashworth, 60, said. `I have no funds right now.'

``Red Cross spokeswoman Carrie Martin said, `We're administering the hotel program with the expectation that it ends on October 15. After that, we'll still have shelters open, but we definitely don't want to move backwards.' Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people remain in about 1,000 shelters operated by the Red Cross, smaller charities and churches, scattered across two dozen States as far flung as New York and Washington.''

I am going to discontinue reading this article because I think my colleagues get the picture, and I think we are all desirous of doing something substantial. But how long has it taken us to get to the floor with this minimal response to the housing problems of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and now Rita?

Madam Speaker, I think we can do better than this, and we should be on this floor today not only talking about vouchers simply for those who held vouchers before; but we should be talking about those people who were waiting for vouchers. We should be talking about how we are going to build permanent low- and moderate-income housing. Right now we are failing.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Madam Speaker, I, too, join with my colleague and the ranking member of our Financial Services Committee in commending those on the opposite side of the aisle who really do have the providing of housing for low- and moderate-income persons on the top of their priorities.

And while I commend them because they have always shown an interest in doing this, I think we are all to be criticized for how slow this process is in dealing with the victims of Katrina and Rita. We have just got to be able to move faster than we are moving.

And while, again, today what we do in replacing those vouchers is a good thing, I am still worried about the fact that there are so many people who needed housing even before Katrina and who are going to be left out there to receive whatever resources are available from FEMA, but they will be back in the same situation they were in before, still without adequate housing, still, I suppose, on some kind of a waiting list and still among those in the United States of America without decent and adequate housing for themselves and their families.

Let me just say, as I raise the question about us being slow and not doing enough, one may ask what could have been done in this period of time. Well, by now we should have an assessment of all of those buildings, all of those apartment buildings, all of those homes, many of which are considered dilapidated, sitting everywhere from Baton Rouge to Alexandria to New Iberia, on into Texas and other places where we could have created a program by which to provide resources to bring these houses and units up to code in order to create more housing. There are a lot of such homes, a lot of such units.

Do not forget, many of the areas that we are dealing with were in deep housing crisis before Hurricane Katrina. While I am very respectful of the fact that FEMA moved people to Utah, California and New Jersey, what I am hearing is people do not want to be in New Jersey and in California and other places. They want to be near their homes; they want to be near their home cities and their home towns.

I think that we could by now have done an assessment of all of those properties that could be rehabilitated, some of which are owned by individuals, others owned by corporations, and put together a program for rehabbing and rehabilitation and bringing them back online in order to make them available.

We should also be about the business of converting warehouses into lofts and moderate-income housing. And even in some of the factory areas that are closed down, dilapidated, boarded up throughout the South, there are opportunities for the creation of housing. And there are many nonprofit, low-income and moderate-income developers who are waiting for an opportunity to be of help. I think we could have done more.

While I am going to vote for this bill, I do not pat myself on the back, nor do I pat the Members from the other side of the aisle on the back. I know they may be confronted with an administration that says it does not want to spend any money, but I must say that our citizens do not want to hear that the President or this administration does not want to spend money to deal with this housing crisis created by a natural disaster at a time when we are dumping billions of dollars into war, into Iraq, into Afghanistan. Our citizens are disappointed that we are not doing better than we are doing.

Madam Speaker, I include for the Record the complete article that I read a portion of titled, ``Housing Promises Made to Evacuees Have Fallen Short.''

[From the Washington Post, Oct. 2, 2005]

Housing Promises Made to Evacuees Have Fallen Short

(by Spencer S. Hsu and Elizabeth Williamson)

Red Cross to Halt Hotel Stipends in 2 Weeks, and Hundreds of Shelters

Have Closed

Two weeks before President Bush's mid-October goal for

moving Hurricane Katrina victims out of shelters, more than

100,000 people still reside in such makeshift housing, and

400,000 more are in hotel rooms costing up to $100 a night.

Housing options promised by the federal government a month

ago have largely failed to materialize. Cruise ships and

trailer parks have so far proved in large part to be

unworkable, while an American Red Cross program--paid for by

the federal government--that allows storm victims to stay in

motels or hotels is scheduled to expire Oct. 15. It is

projected to cost the Federal Emergency Management Agency as

much as $168 million. Federal officials are struggling to

launch an alternative interim housing program that would give

families whose homes are destroyed or uninhabitable a lump

sum of $2,358 in rental assistance, or $786 a month for three

months, with the possibility of a 15-month extension. So far,

330,000 families have signed up for the housing assistance.

But if evacuees have to use those stipends to pay for hotel

rooms when FEMA stops covering such lodging, the funds will

not last long. Last week, the number of evacuees in hotels

increased from 220,000 to more than 400,000 people, in

140,000 rooms. Many have no idea what they--will do when the

program ends in two weeks.

Ronnie Ashworth, a truck driver from Chalmette, La., east

of New Orleans, currently lives at the Baton Rouge Marriott.

If no other housing is forthcoming after Oct. 15, ``I'll be

sleeping in the back of my truck,'' Ashworth, 60, said. ``I

have no funds right now.'' Red Cross spokeswoman Carrie

Martin said, ``We're administering the hotel program with the

expectation that it ends on October 15th. . . . After that,

we'll still have shelters open, but we definitely don't want

to move backwards.'' Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people

remain in about 1,000 shelters operated by the Red Cross,

smaller charities and churches, scattered across two dozen

states as far-flung as New York and Washington.

The Red Cross has said it will keep its shelters open for

as long as necessary, but many are in churches and public

buildings that are needed for their primary functions.

Hundreds of shelters have closed over the past two weeks, and

many of their occupants, the Red Cross said, appear to be

moving into hotels, in hopes of benefiting from the hotel

program in its final days. In search of temporary housing

immediately after the hurricane, FEMA officials went on a

$1.5 billion spending spree, buying out entire dealerships of

recreational vehicles and signing contracts for more than

$500 million with one manufacturer of mobile homes. But the

plan to create ``cities'' of 500 to 600 RVs across the South

has run into major logistical and political problems. In FEMA

lots in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, several

thousand trailers stand empty, waiting for the agency to

navigate land leases, zoning laws, local opposition and

policy questions. ``We have 12,000 mobile homes with no place

to put them,'' said Rosemarie Hunter, a FEMA spokeswoman in

Baton Rouge. To date, only 1,396 trailers in Louisiana house

displaced people. About 1,100 are occupied by workers engaged

in New Orleans's recovery effort, and 173 house families left

homeless by the storm. Policymakers say that warehousing tens

of thousands of people in trailer park communities until New

Orleans and other cities are rebuilt could lead to the

creation of dysfunctional ``FEMAvilles,'' as residents of

past encampments have called them.

Democrats go further, warning that they may become known as

``Bushvilles,'' just as Depression-era shantytowns were

called ``Hoovervilles.'' Refugee Council USA, which includes

nine U.S. resettlement agencies that have integrated 2.5

million global refugees into the United States since 1975,

said storm victims would be better off getting on with their

lives--finding housing, jobs and counseling services in new

communities rather than waiting indefinitely for homes to be

rebuilt. FEMA officials agree. Evacuees,

said FEMA spokesman Eugene Kinerney, ``need to consider long-

term housing in areas where there is available rental stock

and prospects for employment to take care of other needs,

such as food.'' But some civic and political leaders worry

that the alternative--resettling storm victims--will lead

many to stay permanently in their host communities,

fundamentally changing the nature and politics of Louisiana

and possibly beyond.

FEMA initially estimated that the homes of 300,000 families

were destroyed by Katrina and that 200,000 of them will need

government help with housing but said only time would reveal

the true scope of need. The lack of an effective strategy

to manage the largest displaced population of Americans in

at least 60 years has touched off a furious policy debate.

``The big picture is . . . everyone who has some scheme

for how people should live is now living vicariously

through the opportunity New Orleans offers'' of a blank

slate, said Ronald D. Utt, senior researcher at the

Heritage Foundation. ``All this push and pull is

happening, and all of which can be lumped in with some

notion of social engineering.'' Policy think tanks from

the Brookings Institution on the left to Heritage on the

right have criticized FEMA for relying on trailers as it

traditionally does for hurricane victims, saying Katrina's

scale overwhelms that solution. By contrast, they say

vouchers provide more choices to individuals, reduce the

need for building public housing and take advantage of

existing housing stock.

In a joint statement last week, Senate Minority Leader

Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

(D-Calif.) criticized how long it took the Bush

administration to implement its voucher program. ``It wasn't

until nearly one month after the disaster struck that the

Bush Administration finally announced it would begin to

provide rent payments to families displaced by the storm,''

as Democrats urged, they said. Under the FEMA housing

assistance plan, families that remain eligible can get as

much as 18 months of cash assistance for a maximum of

$14,148, but the money would count against a cap of $26,200

per family that Congress has set for FEMA to give in cash,

rental assistance and home repairs.

Even before FEMA announced the program, Sen. Paul S.

Sarbanes (D-Md.) pushed a plan through the Senate last month

to provide $3.5 billion in housing vouchers to 350,000

Katrina-displaced families. On Friday, Sarbanes called on

Bush to transfer control of housing assistance from FEMA to

the Department of Housing and Urban Development. ``The scope

of this disaster calls for changes in how we think about

disaster assistance,'' Sarbanes wrote the White House.

``Hundreds of thousands of people may need housing assistance

for 18 months or even longer. We cannot rely on FEMA, an

emergency response agency, to provide on-going housing

assistance to this large number of families,'' he said,

citing HUD's ``experience, staff and infrastructure.''

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

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

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

Madam Speaker, today we stand here in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, considering uses for the community development block grant to address the housing and infrastructure crisis wrought upon us by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. Madam Speaker, it is ironic because it was not more than a few months ago that I stood with my colleagues, opposed to the administration's attempt to block grant CDBG to the States and to move CDBG and 17 other programs to the Commerce Department. I am so pleased that did not happen.

Today, based upon the proven merits of this program, based on the effectiveness and consistency of a statutory mission, based on the need to quickly and effectively provide relief, the administration is now looking to CDBG, and I support that. H.R. 3896 attempts to make two major temporary changes to the community development block grant. H.R. 3896 seeks to weigh the public services cap, which is currently set at 15 percent, and which I support, that is, with a caveat, and H.R. 3896 seeks to waive the requirement for public hearings concerning the use of CDBG funds, and I am concerned about that.

Madam Speaker, at the core of CDBG is its original statutory goal to develop viable urban communities by providing decent housing and suitable living environments and the expansion of economic opportunities, principally for persons of low and moderate income.

When I traveled to Baton Rouge and New Orleans, I toured the devastation, the homelessness and the desperation that had been created by this disaster. This hurricane certainly exacerbated the poverty and lack of education, lack of economic opportunity that has plagued New Orleans and surrounding areas throughout the gulf, specifically the African-American population.

This hurricane has shown a virtual spotlight on problems that are emblematic of inner cities all across this country. I spoke to people about their needs and their hopes for their immediate future. The one thing that was consistent, the one thing that was unchanging, was the determination of people to return home.

Madam Speaker, community development block grant is a proven program that provides critical infrastructure resources, and it is a program that can help Katrina victims in their stated goal of returning home. CDBG is one of the best mechanisms that we can employ to help in the reconstruction of the gulf region, because it puts money in the hands of the community and the city government, and they know what to do with it. Furthermore, it is directed to rebuild critical infrastructure, which is a step or step one in reestablishing community. But, again, that amounts at best to flexibility and at worse a little more than a legislative process, exercise.

H.R. 3896 provides no additional resources to the directly affected areas. Rather, this bill simply creates programmatic waivers which will allow flexibility but not expansion.

Let me just say this: We all agree at this critical moment that CDBG is a great program. Many of us have thought to expand CDBG, because it is such a great program. This program helps large cities, small towns, communities, not only to repair its infrastructure but to provide services that cannot be provided in any other way because there are no other resources to provide these services.

My colleague from Louisiana just identified a number of those services, helping people with down payment, helping with child care, helping with other programs. I would have hoped that we could have expanded this program. We could deal with the identified needs, not only of New Orleans but the other parishes and the surrounding communities and with Mississippi, Gulfport, and Alabama, but because CDBG is proven to be able to help move whole cities and communities from communities and cities where they have disproportionate poverty that they have no resources to deal with.

I am pleased that we have it here today so that we can lift the cap, and they will have a little bit more flexibility. Ladies and gentlemen, I want this to be a lesson for us, a lesson for us all, that we should not only fight to maintain CDBG in HUD and not transfer it out to Department of Commerce, where we would get people who do not know what to do with it, do not know how to administer it and would only mess it up; but that we would expand it

so that we would have the resources to deal with housing crises, because this is a great program to deal with housing needs in every city and every town across this country that is eligible for it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), our ranking member, to further support

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to my colleague on the opposite side of the aisle, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker), that I agree with him that there should be a mechanism by which people who have goods and services to donate to these small towns and these parishes, there should be a way by which they should be able to do that; and I would support such an effort. Because as I traveled throughout my community, in the churches where we talked about this disaster, I had many of the parishioners say to me that they owned land in Louisiana or in Texas and they would like to donate their land for the siting of manufactured housing or even for RVs or something of that nature. They were not sure, but they knew they wanted to put the land to use for the victims of the hurricane. So I think we should find a way by which to do that.

In addition, CDBG is such a good program that I could not help but wonder as I sat here whether or not some of the money that may not be well spent in FEMA should be transferred in some way over to CDBG. Because, again, I wonder about those persons who lost their homes and all of their furnishings and they have no flood insurance. They will receive FEMA assistance of $26,000, some of which will go toward rent, and then it will run out, but the house is still left there, to be rehabilitated if it can be, or to be rebuilt and furnishings need to be purchased, et cetera, et cetera. It seems to me that CDBG would be a wonderful way by which to do rehabbing of housing and reestablishing of housing and homes.

I am just wondering aloud and hopeful that we will all give it some very, very deep thought, about how we can truly be of assistance to these victims long after the FEMA assistance is no longer operative or the Red Cross assistance is no longer operative.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) for organizing this series of Special Orders on the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act.

The Ryan White CARE Act is essential for millions of Americans who are living with the AIDS virus and millions more who are at risk of becoming infected in the future.

The Ryan White CARE Act was passed into law in 1990, 10 years after the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, to provide a comprehensive approach to AIDS prevention, treatment, patient care and community support for people affected by this dreadful disease.

The Ryan White CARE Act provides funding for a variety of programs, including drug assistance, capacity building and planning grants, services for infected people and their families, funding for AIDS Education and Training Centers, and grants to metropolitan areas like Los Angeles that are severely affected by HIV/AIDS.

The Ryan White CARE authorization expires this Saturday, on October 1, 2005. If it is not reauthorized, it will remain in its current form until legislation is approved. The Ryan White CARE Act needs to be updated to address the needs of communities affected by HIV/AIDS today. The people affected by HIV/AIDS have changed tremendously over the course of the epidemic, and HIV/AIDS programs must adapt and change as well.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic first began in 1980, most Americans with AIDS were white. Today, over 70 percent of new AIDS cases in the United States are people of color. Blacks account for about half of new AIDS cases, and Hispanics account for 20 percent of new AIDS cases. Racial minorities now represent a majority of new AIDS cases, and a majority of Americans living with AIDS, and a majority of deaths among persons with AIDS.

The Ryan White CARE Act is critical for minorities who often lack access to traditional health care and support services. About half of all Ryan White CARE Act clients are black, and that proportion is much higher in some care settings.

Title IV of the Act is especially important for racial minorities. Title IV provides medical care, case management, child care, transportation, and other support services for families affected by HIV and AIDS. Over 80 percent of the clients at clinics funded by Title IV of the Act are minorities.

The Ryan White CARE Act is severely underfunded. In the current fiscal year, the Ryan White CARE Act received a total of just over $2 billion for all programs nationwide. However, it has been estimated that Ryan White CARE programs should receive at least $3 billion in order to address adequately the needs of people affected by or at risk of HIV/AIDS.

In July of this year, the Bush administration released its principles for the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act. Unfortunately, these principles are pitting the most affected communities against one another.

One of the principles is a prioritization of core medical services. This principle could eliminate many of the support services provided under title IV, such as case management, child care, and transportation, which make medical care accessible to people in need. For most title IV clients, medical care is covered through Medicaid, not title IV; but support services provided under title IV are essential to make medical services accessible.

Reducing HIV/AIDS support services in order to prioritize HIV medical services is no way to address the needs of people with HIV/AIDS. I urge my colleagues to reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act in a manner that will ensure that HIV/AIDS programs will indeed address the needs of all communities in the United States that are affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and I urge my colleagues to make certain that the Ryan White CARE Act programs will be fully funded in future years.

Mr. Speaker, I mentioned the disproportionate number of African Americans and Hispanics that are now HIV/AIDS positive. I would like to share with you what we have attempted to do to address those very special populations.

In 1998, while I was the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, I spearheaded the development of the Minority AIDS Initiative, which provides grants to health care providers for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs serving minority communities. The Minority AIDS Initiative enables health care providers to expand their capacity to deliver culturally and linguistically appropriate care and services.

Mr. Speaker, we will not get the increases we need, so we need to pay attention not only to this reauthorization but to the very special needs of those who have suffered the most.

Mr. Chairman, today I am a Member of Congress. Prior to ever being elected to office and serving in the State legislature or Congress, I worked 6 years for Head Start. I started as assistant teacher, and I went on to be the supervisor of Parent Involvement and Volunteer Services. I love Head Start, and I have a great appreciation for what my government has done in creating this program to give poor kids and the kids of working families an opportunity to get a head start, to get prepared for kindergarten and to get prepared for success. That is what Head Start has been doing.

Not only does Head Start build self-esteem, it prepares children to read and get ready for the educational experience. It teaches parents to appreciate their children's work. It teaches parents that they can have involvement in their children's educational destiny. This is a wonderful program.

I think the committee did a good job in working through some of the problems. I do not agree with everything, but I would support this bill.

But I am absolutely shocked and surprised that my colleague that I came into this Congress with would lead an effort to kill Head Start. The gentleman knows he is killing Head Start by putting this amendment on the floor to put religious involvement in the program. A faith-based initiative has no place in Head Start. Head Start teaches children to respect each other, to enjoy each other, to respect all cultures.

On Sunday morning in America, religion is the most segregated sector of our society. Whites go to white churches, blacks go to black churches, Greeks go to Greek churches, Muslims are in their mosque, Jews are in their synagogue; and that is all right. We have religious freedom. People go to whatever church they want. But do not bring that to Head Start. Allow Head Start to be what it should be for all Americans. Do not say to people because you are a different faith, you cannot work in this Head Start program.

We do not want to give that kind of example to our children. Do not start

the resegregation of America, it is wrong. And do not do this to Head Start.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I have been terribly worried about is the inability of Congress to move quickly to do something about the victims of Katrina. I am very, very worried that we are going to be seen as a body that cannot get its act together when we are confronted with this terrible disaster. We have an opportunity to utilize resources that will not be taken from our budget. We have an opportunity to use substantial resources that could be applied toward the rebuilding of homes, to getting people started again; and if we keep fumbling and if we keep fiddling, then we are going to come under great criticism because we are not doing what we can do.

So I would just simply urge all of my colleagues, do not play with this. There are people who are suffering and people who are depending on us. We have got a great way by which to provide real assistance. Let us get it done.

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman just stated a rule that is unclear. The gentleman was questioned by the gentlewoman from Florida about the rule. The gentlewoman basically said, are you saying we cannot refer to the President of the United States or to the Vice President of the United States? I would like clarification on the rule that you attempted to describe.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) for organizing us this evening to talk about poverty. As a matter of fact, I know that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) had already began to organize around the issues of poverty and had been trying to focus us for some time to really get involved in unveiling what is going on in America. And, despite the fact that there are so many competing interests and despite the fact that not enough Members of Congress have the courage to talk about poverty or race or class, Katrina has brought us face to face with what is wrong in America.

As we stand here today with this picture from Newsweek, with this child's face, this baby's face with the tears running down, the caption: ``Poverty, Race, and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame,'' we are forced to have to deal with these issues of poverty, race, and class.

There was an interesting debate going on when this hurricane first struck. The journalists would say to African American legislators, did race have anything to do with this? They were looking for the confrontation, helping to draw out the right-wing conservatives so that they could say what they normally say when we begin to describe what is wrong in America: Ah, there they go, playing the race card again, or trying to marginalize someone when they dare to get up and talk about race, poverty, and class.

Well, what is interesting about this discussion is every journalist who confronted an African American legislator raised the question until finally I said to them, you are asking this question so often, you must know something. You must know something that you want to talk about. Do you think this is about race? And so I say to my colleagues I have decided, based on what has happened with this horrendous disaster, that we must talk about class, race, and poverty.

As a matter of fact, as I sat in my bedroom watching the 20,000 or more people sitting outside the convention center and I heard the head of FEMA, Mr. Michael Brown, say that he did not know they had been sitting there for 3 days, they were without water, they were without food, they were without lights, and that coming on the heels of what had happened in the dome where the evacuees were placed, no electricity, toilets not working, food ran out, water ran out, I got up from my seat and caught a plane and went to Louisiana, because I could not sit there any longer watching what was happening to the most vulnerable people in the world.

Going there, going to these shelters, going to the Louis Armstrong Airport, watching people suffering, thousands of people without water, without food, without medical care, old women in wheelchairs who needed their medicine, people with diabetes and high blood pressure and the morgue that was being placed right there in the airport to accommodate the people who were dying on the sidewalks, I decided that it may not be politic to talk about race or class or poverty, but, Mr. Speaker, when I came to this place, I came to talk about those issues, and I decided that I, too, had been organized by the right-wing and others not to confront the issues in ways that I know I feel deeply about.

So I do not care what happens and from whence it shall come. In addition to everything that I do, call me whatever you want to call me, say that I am playing the race card, say whatever you want to say. I am going to talk about race, I am going to talk about poverty, and I am going to talk about the class issues of America.

We are brought face to face with these issues, looking at what happened in New Orleans. The population of New Orleans is 448,000 people; 67 percent of the city's population is African American. About 27 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The city's median household income is $27,514. Two in 10 households in the disaster area had no car, compared with 1 in 10 nationwide. About 4.5 percent of the disaster area received public assistance. Nationwide, the number was about 3.5 percent. In 2000, New Orleans had the fifth highest poverty rate and the fourth lowest household income of major American cities.

In the lower ninth ward neighborhood, which was inundated by the floodwaters, 98 percent of the residents are black, and more than a third live in poverty. Sixty-five percent of these families are one- parent families. The housing in New Orleans is much older than the national average, with 43 percent built in 1949 or earlier, compared with 22 percent for the United States and only 11 percent of them built since 1980, compared with 35 percent for the United States.

New Orleans public schools are 93 percent black; 55 of the State's 78 worst schools are in New Orleans. The State of Louisiana rates 47 percent of New Orleans schools as academically unacceptable, and another 26 percent are under academic warning.

About 25 percent of New Orleans adults have no high school diploma, and we can go on and on and on. Louisiana has the largest percentage of children living in poverty, 30 percent.

Louisiana and Mississippi have the highest infant mortality rate in the Nation, 10.3 percent per 1,000 births. Louisiana and Arizona have the biggest teen dropout rate in the Nation. Well, as we travel around the Nation and we take a look at poverty, today we are talking about New Orleans, but let us take a look in St. Louis, Missouri, let us take a look in Philadelphia, let us take a look up in Harlem, let us take a look in Appalachia. Let us take a look at poverty in America.

We cannot continue to place our heads in the sand. Why do we have this poverty? Why it is that public policy no longer discusses poverty, race, and class? It is because the right wing conservatives have been very successful at silencing those of us who should be discussing it.

They have pulled every trick in the book. They have their talking heads on Fox Television and other right wing stations that are basically undermining us and basically denigrating us whenever we talk about these issues.

But, ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that we are going to have to do this, not only for ourselves but for America. The attitudes that have come out of this hurricane, the President's mother, Mrs. Barbara Bush, said the people in the Dome were disadvantaged anyway, they were better off.

Attitudes. You know, people want us to say the President went into the White House and said, we are not going to go to New Orleans to help the black people. No, we are not saying that. We are not saying that it is that obvious, that it is that overt. It is about attitude. It is about the kind of attitude that drives your actions.

When you have Barbara Bush saying, well, they are better off. People who are dying in the Dome, people who are dying outside of the convention center, they are better off, so why should we care? I mean, it is that kind of attitude that leads to the kind of policies and the kind of marginalization that leads to a lack of concern and resources for the people who so desperately need it.

Attitudes. We have one of the Members of my committee that I serve on, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker), who said God had done what we had not been able to do in getting rid of public housing. Attitudes that lead to the kind of decisions that result in racist actions.

In addition to all of this, we find that there are things still going on in Louisiana that we thought we would never see again in life. There were a group of people who were told to cross a bridge to get to safety and to high land.

These African American women and men, for the most part, with a few whites with them, started across the bridge to a little town called Gretna, I believe. And they were met by the police officers with guns. And they shot their guns over the heads of women and children, mostly African American women and children, and said, get back over to New Orleans, this is not the Superdome, we do not want you over here. You cannot come over here.

And for those people who managed to get past them at the end of the bridge, they came and they took their food and their water away from them and drove them back on the other side of the bridge.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would not be worth my salt if I did not direct my attention to these atrocities. I would not be worth being elected to the Congress of the United States of America if I did not stand up for the least of these and the most vulnerable of these.

We have seen the face of poverty. It was reflected in a profound way, people trapped and died because they did not have transportation. People died because they did not get rescued. Their government let them down. People said do not point the finger. How many fingers do I have?

I am pointing them all. Because in addition to whatever mistakes were made at the local and the State level, in the final analysis, we have the most powerful government in the world, and they let the people down. They let the people down even though we had the resources, we have the helicopters, we have Navy bases. We found a Navy base over in Alexandria, Louisiana, England Air Force Base, that is boarded up that has 450 rooms, dormitories, that are not being used.

We had ships fully equipped with all of the medical equipment right there right off the coast. Unused. We have the resources. We have the National Guard. We have the money. We have what it needs.

Now, people want to ask me, did it happen because of race? I submit to you that when you have the kind of attitudes that speak like the President's mother, Barbara Bush, who spoke like the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker), who acted the way the police officers acted that drove my people back across the bridge shooting guns over the heads of women and children, that results in racist acts.

It results in the kinds of decisions that marginalize, that deny, that cause people to die and to be harmed unnecessarily. And so poverty is an issue that we must pay attention to.

Today, we are focused on New Orleans; but tomorrow, we have got to focus on poverty all over the United States of America, whether we are talking about New Orleans or any of the other cities that many of us represent.

I am grateful to be able to be in good strength, and I am grateful that I have found my courage again, the courage to do what we should always do. I am so grateful that I am resigned, and I have resolved that this Congress is going to hear about this day in and day out.

Never again shall I find myself in a position where I am crying and lamenting after the fact. I have got to be in the faces of those who make public policy. I have got to use my influence. I have got to do everything that I can possibly do.

The President of the United States does not back up. They are in our faces. Yes, Mr. Speaker, he gave another no-bid contract to Halliburton. We have criticized him time and time again about Halliburton and the fact that they stole our money in Iraq, they cheated us. But they do not back up. They stay in our faces with their policies, and we have got to stay in theirs.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Committee on Ways and Means and all of those who helped to move this bill to the floor. This is very important, but it is but a beginning by our government in an attempt to meet the needs of this awesome disaster. More must be done, and I am hopeful that everybody understands that we have got to keep working.

I have traveled to these shelters in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Alexandria, Opelousas, and New Iberia; and I ran into many of these welfare recipients, who, of course, as the Members know, live day to day and did not have money at the end of the month oftentimes, and they are really frightened. They do not know what is going to happen to them. And this will help. This will help with some cash assistance.

But I want the Members to know there are a lot of other questions about what is going to happen to them, for example, those who would be rolling off welfare because they are at the fifth year. That is not addressed here. Some other things are not addressed.

Again, I am very grateful for this. I am going to support it. But I will certainly be here helping to provide another voice to say that there is more that must be done. Mr. Speaker, as we do this, let us all remember that they are in these shelters. Some people are living with 5,000 other people. We have got to get them out, welfare recipients and other people who are there. This work is awesome, but we can do it.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very special time in American history. We have experienced one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of this country. We have lost lives, and we have seen this catastrophe mismanaged in ways that most of us could never have imagined.

Mr. Speaker, I was sitting at home watching television, and for 3 days or more, I saw almost 30,000 people in front of the Convention Center in New Orleans waiting for food, waiting for water, waiting for some assistance. They waited and they waited and nothing happened.

I decided to leave Los Angeles and join with some of my friends in New Orleans to see what was going on. After all, I am the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the Committee on Financial Services; and when people are homeless in America, particularly 30,000 as a result of a catastrophe, I need to understand what I can do to make sure that those people are housed, that they get some kind of shelter.

So I went to New Orleans and was met by State Senator Cleo Fields, and he and his staff and others, we joined together and we went to the State Police compound, motor vehicle compound where people were gathered. All of our agencies were gathered there. The governor of the State was there. Mr. Chertoff was there, representing Homeland Security. Mr. Michael Brown was there, representing FEMA. The National Guard was represented and on and on and on.

I had an opportunity to speak with the governor. I had an opportunity to speak with Mr. James Lee Witt, who is now advisor to the governor, who was once head of FEMA, to try and find out what was going on and where the breakdown was.

What became very, very clear in my interactions there early on in one of my visits was that there certainly had been a breakdown, that responsibility had not been accepted, assumed, implemented in ways that we expected. And what surprised me more than anything else was the fact that we have spent a lot of time organizing Homeland Security. We have spent millions of dollars making sure that there are plans in cities and States. We have spent millions of dollars identifying the first responders and their responsibility. But all of the sudden we have a catastrophe that could have been a terrorist attack.

The levee that broke, that was vulnerable and could have been attacked by a terrorist, and this is the operation that was supposed to respond, it had fallen apart. It did not happen. And poor people, the most vulnerable of people, were left without any protection.

By the time that I got there, they had started to move the people to the Louis Armstrong Airport. This had become a staging ground, and the buses were supposed to go there to take them to shelters that had been identified all over the State. And they were supposed to have airlifts that were taking them even farther out of State.

Cleo Fields, a State senator was trying to get them to open England Air Force Base. It is an Air Force base that is right there in the area, Alexandria, Louisiana, that is all boarded up, has 450 dormitories unused. He brought with him three huge buses, and he told the governor and everybody else, Mr. Chertoff and everybody else, that he was going to fill these buses up with people from the Convention Center and people along the highway and people at the airport, and he was going to take them to England Air Force Base and he was going to force them to open it up and let them in and give them some safe and secure place to live until they could get permanent housing.

We put them on the buses and we drove into the Louis Armstrong Airport and it was a sight that I shall never forget in my life. There were thousands of people on the sidewalks, in wheelchairs, people who did not know what their future held. We finally got inside the airport. Thousands of people, people who needed medication, people who needed insulin, there were people who had not been attended to.

Well, we stayed there a few days and we went to a number of shelters up and down the State. We were not only in shelters in Louisiana, the top part of the State, but the bottom line is this, Mr. Speaker, our government failed us, and they failed the most vulnerable people.

We cannot let this get swept under the rug. We have to keep this before the American people. It does not appear that the attitude exists here that we will pay attention in the way we paid attention to 9/11. But we have to make sure that we do not fail the people again and again. We have got to get them out of these temporary shelters. We have got to get them into permanent housing and that is some responsibility that we are going to accept.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) for yielding me time.

Almost 2.8 million American manufacturing jobs have been lost since President Bush took office in 2001. These were good jobs with good wages, and they have been shipped overseas to countries with cheap labor. CAFTA will export even more American jobs, but it will do nothing to improve wages and living conditions in Central America.

CAFTA is not about free trade at all. It is an outsourcing agreement. It allows profit-hungry corporations to ship American jobs to impoverished countries where workers can be forced to work long hours for little pay and no benefits. It is a bad deal for Central American workers, and it is an equally bad deal for workers here in the United States.

I ask my colleagues who are thinking of voting in favor of CAFTA, how will you tell poor workers in Central America who are trying to organize labor unions and demand living wages that you voted for this agreement which does not require their governments to respect human rights or comply with international labor standards? How will you go home to your constituents and tell them you voted to export their jobs overseas? How will you tell working families in your district that you care more about corporate profits than workers wages?

I request Members to vote no on CAFTA.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3199, the U.S. PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization Act. This act grants the government overbroad and even unconstitutional powers that have not been adequately addressed.

The PATRIOT Act is misleading American citizens and causing them to forfeit their civil liberties in the interest of what has become a political war on terrorism. At the same time, the President's war on terrorism fails to fund protection for our transportation systems, our ports and, still today, uninspected cargo is being placed in the belly of the airplanes of all of our airlines.

Yet we continue in this act to violate the privacy of our citizens with section 505, the National Security Letters section of the PATRIOT Act, which allows

law enforcement to demand detailed information about an individual's private records without judicial review, without the individual ever being suspected of a crime, without a requirement that law enforcement notify the individual that they are the subject of an investigation.

Furthermore, this section contains an automatic permanent gag order on the recipient of a national security letter, not even allowing the recipient to consult with an attorney. And this act is very confusing. In one section of the law, 215, they can get an attorney. In section 505 they cannot. I do not know what we are doing here today.

Mr. Chairman, this power represents a clear violation of the fourth amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as threatening speech protected under the first amendment. In fact, a U.S. district judge struck down section 505 in a case involving the government's collection of sensitive customer records from Internet service providers without judicial oversight. The judge found that the government seizure of these records constituted an unreasonable search and seizure under the fourth amendment, and found the broad gag provision to be an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech.

To address this, I proposed an amendment that would have provided the recipients of national security letters that would allow them to consult with their attorneys and any person that was necessary to produce the required records. This amendment would not have greatly changed the real meaning of section 505. It was simply a common sense amendment that would have provided some legal recourse and balance for the recipients of national security letters. However, the amendment was not made in order.

Mr. Chairman, what makes this country so great is our respect and protection of individual rights and civil liberties, and we must continue to provide adequate safeguards and protection to these rights. While I agree that our national security is a top concern, we must find the appropriate balance.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have this amendment that I place before this body. It is an amendment that talks about gag orders. It talks about a provision of law both in sections 215 and 550 that does not allow one who is the target of an investigation or one who has assisted the FBI in gaining records, access to records, to talk about the investigation, to let people know they have been contacted, or that they in some way have been involved in assisting the authorities in seeking information.

This amendment of mine is a very, very simple amendment that talks about what happens to someone who is under a gag order who may, through no fault of their own, place themselves in danger of being harmed or being killed because someone finds out that they have been involved, they are involved in the investigation in some way, and they are threatened by the person who discovers that they have been involved in the investigation; or what happens to someone who is employed at a particular business where they give the FBI access to information. The employer wants to know did they give out information, they cannot tell them, they get fired from their job.

So I have raised the question about this gag order of what happens when someone is placed in a position through no fault of their own that they have to give up information. And someone may argue that in one section of the law, 215, they have the right to get a lawyer and this could be included in the information that they share with the lawyer that would attempt to get them out from under the gag order. But we know that there is nothing in 215 or 550 specifically that would protect this person under the gag order.

Mr. Chairman, what I am attempting to do, and in the scheme of things perhaps it is not that important because we have a PATRIOT Act, PATRIOT Act II, that will basically extend two sections of the PATRIOT Act for 10 years, sections 206 and 215, access to businesses and other records and roving wiretaps; and we have these 14 other sections of the PATRIOT Act that are made permanent.

I suppose my colleagues and the people of America should be worried about

all of this, all of what is being done in this PATRIOT Act in the name of fighting terrorism. People should be wondering whether or not they are being asked to give up their civil liberties, if they are being led by the people that they elect to protect them to undermine their own civil liberties.

This is not simply about the gag order under 215 or 550. This is about gagging Americans, period. This is about saying shut up, do not tell me what the Constitution guarantees you, we do not want to hear that. We want you to understand that there are enough people in power who believe that in order to exercise the power as they see it, they have a right to undermine the Constitution of the United States of America. Not only do they believe it, but they are selling it to you based on fear and intimidation.

So my amendment in the scheme of things is not that important to try and protect a person or some persons. My amendment really is about giving me a platform to talk about how America and American citizens are being gagged, how we are being told that no matter that folks have really fought for this Constitution, no matter that we really had some true times when we have had to stand up for the Constitution, and even go to war to protect the Constitution. We are now being led to believe that anything that is done, and that is what this PATRIOT Act is all about, it goes beyond what anybody should have to expect in order to fight terrorism.

This PATRIOT Act is not in the best interest of Americans. There are those on the other side of the aisle who have gotten up today and said I talked to a constituent who complained about the PATRIOT Act and I said to that constituent how have you been harmed, and the constituent could not explain it.

It is not about whether or not I feel my rights have been denied or not. It is about whether or not the children of this Nation, the children of the future, it is about whether all Americans are being denied their civil liberties because they have been led into the support of a PATRIOT Act that really just flies in the face of the Constitution of the United States of America.

And so when I talk about the gag orders and I reference them in order to frame an amendment or to have this platform to talk about this PATRIOT Act, it is really about whether or not I am talking about all Americans being gagged in a very, very clever and sophisticated way.

There are those who will not oppose this PATRIOT Act because they do not want to be considered unpatriotic. I stand here in the Congress of the United States questioning the wisdom of my colleagues on the PATRIOT Act, and I dare anyone to say I am unpatriotic because I do it. I do it because I am patriotic, and I live in an America that has taught me that there is a Constitution that demands we as American citizens question our government, that we do not allow our government to do anything that they want to do.

I have been elected by the people, and I could be a part of this charade of the government doing whatever we want to do in the name of so-called terrorism, but I do not see myself as an elected official nor do I see myself simply as a citizen that believes that the government is right in everything that it does.

Because I do not believe that, I dare to question those on the other side of the aisle and those on this side of the aisle. I dare those who would wish to stand up and challenge me and charge me with not being patriotic because I do so to get up here and debate me now on patriotism.

And I will tell Members what patriotism is all about. Patriotism is about a Constitution and a democracy that says America is different from everybody else and that we have come through a time and a history that has taught us that if you are to have a democracy, you must have certain guarantees, and those guarantees are embodied in the Constitution that guarantees us freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, and freedom of privacy. Those are the things that we should hold dear and we should fight to protect and we should hold onto with everything that we have, with every ounce of energy that we have.

Nobody, no elected official, no so-called leader is so smart they should tell the American people do not worry about it, give up your rights and give up your freedom, I know better than you. I hope that somewhere in America, in some fourth and fifth grade out there, there are teachers who are watching the debate on the PATRIOT Act. I hope that these are the teachers who are teaching the Constitution of the United States and the history of this Constitution, about how it evolved and how it developed; and I hope they will teach them about the amendments to the Constitution that strengthen it to make sure that we embody in this Constitution all that may not have been thought about in the original framing of it by way of amendment.

I hope that the teachers are able to say watch the debate on the floor of the Congress of the United States so that you can understand that there are some intrusions that are taking place today with the PATRIOT Act that fly in the face of the Constitution.

I want you to be aware of it because when you leave this class, when you grow up to be whatever it is you are going to be, I expect that no matter where you are, whether you are in the United States, abroad, no matter where you are, you know how to stand up and fight for the Constitution of the United States that guarantees certain rights and privacies that are now being intruded upon with this kind of act.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Americans are getting tired of this war. Mr. Chairman, we have been misled and we have been lied to. We trusted the President, and when the President came to us after 9/11 and asked for the authority to find those who had committed the attack on our country, we all voted for him.

But since that time, the President did not go after the perpetrators; the President did not go after Osama bin Laden. Instead, he went to Iraq. They went to Iraq because they told us there were weapons of mass destruction, and now we have discovered there were no weapons of mass destruction. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda is still out there operating, and we are still in Iraq.

Why are we there? The President came and told us, ``mission accomplished.'' And then we find that our soldiers are being attacked every day. They are dying, over 1,760; over 15,000 maimed. They have lost their arms and legs and eyes.

Another lie. We were told that the soldiers had everything that they needed, and then we find just yesterday in talking with one of the soldiers returned from Iraq, he has been drinking filthy, dirty water; did not even have clean water, did not even have bulletproof vests, and we found that the Humvees did not have the armor.

They also told us they were going to get the proceeds from the oil that they were going to pump and they were going to pay for rebuilding of the infrastructure. No, that is not happening. We are spending over $1 billion per week, and it goes on and on and on.

But, better yet, in this amendment they talk about not getting out until we train the Iraqi soldiers. How long and when? We were told they had trained over 40,000. Guess what? I say to my colleagues, only 5,000 have been trained and they do not have a plan for how to get it done. We do not even have enough people that speak the language to be able to train the Iraqi soldiers. How long is this going to go on?

When people get up here and say they know that there is going to be more violence, more people are going to be killed, whose children are we talking about? Whose father are we talking about? Whose mother, whose daughter are we talking about? It is all right for us to say, there will be more deaths, there will be more violence, but I say to my colleagues, Americans are getting tired of it. It is their children, and we should not take that lightly.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank the gentleman from Vermont for bringing this issue before us today.

Mr. Chairman, I have a station in my district that would be impacted by this; hard working people who work to protect all of the general pilots that come into that area, the City of Hawthorne, will lose their jobs. I do not understand why somehow the Alaska Flight Service Stations are protected from this privatization effort but all of the other stations are not, and they are going to consolidate and basically close down most of these 61 Flight Service Stations in the United States that service the needs of general aviation pilots, but not the Alaskan service stations.

In addition to that, I do not know what pilots the gentleman is referring to who have gotten behind consolidation and closing down these stations. It is not true of the pilots who call me. They do not like the privatization. They want to do away with it. They support the amendment of the gentleman from Vermont that we have before us, and I would ask the Members of this Congress to stand behind this amendment.

Save these Federal jobs and keep the protection that we have with these very caring Federal employees who do not want to be placed in a situation of unemployment.

Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to speak on this appropriation that is before us.

I am perplexed with how and why decisions are made, basically, by my friends on the opposite side of the aisle to do away with economic development. And as I look at what is happening, what is proposed, for example, to be transferred to Commerce, what is zeroed out, what I see is an attack on programs that could create some real initiative and self-reliance.

The YouthBuild program was just talked about. YouthBuild is an important program where young people are developing skills and attitudes to become independent. Why would we zero that out?

In addition to that, the section 108 loan guarantee program is an economic development program for cities that does job creation and helps to improve cities and build up the old towns. Many of our cities are using this; and for some of the little towns and cities, they absolutely depend on these kinds of economic development funds.

Mr. Chairman, I do not understand why the attack on these economic development programs, these programs that will help to make our young people self-reliant, and the block grant program that is being reduced by 21 percent, that goes into our cities to help us deal with not only senior problems, young people, the gangs, et cetera. I think we are undermining our efforts to strengthen America and to invest in human potential by cutting these programs and zeroing them out.

I would ask that reconsideration be given, if no place else, but in conference. I am going to come back later on today with an amendment on section 108 loan guarantee programs, because that will not be scored against the budget. These programs are kind of guaranteed by CDBG moneys, and you do not have to spend the money to get this economic development.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I have examined very carefully this budget that we have oversight responsibility for in the Committee on Financial Services and the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Development, and it is a matter of whether or not we are going to stand up here on every issue and try and get those programs back that have been zeroed out and attempted to transfer over to Commerce, whether or not we are going to stand here and beg for some meager assistance to help us with the Section 8 program, whether or not we are trying to get the Brownfields back or the section 108.

Well, it is pretty difficult to choose which one you want to spend your time on. As ranking member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Development, I really would like to speak on all of them because it is really unconscionable that in this time in the United States of America, 2005, that we are haggling over dollars to help American citizens have a decent quality of life with decent housing.

We have a crisis in housing in America, not just in our cities, in our rural areas. People are not able to have decent housing. They are looking to their government for some help. We are giving some help. And I am appreciative of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) for the hard work that he has put into this budget. I know that given what he had to work with, with the limitations of this budget, he has done the best job that he could possibly do. That is why some of us have been so opposed to these tax cuts.

We know that the tax cuts that we have passed in this Congress have benefited the richest 1 percent in America while we have people who are sleeping under bridges, families that are living in cars, people who work every day who cannot get into apartments because they cannot pay the first and last month's rent; children who go to school every day living in cars who are basically homeless because they do not have a place to live.

For those people who are fortunate enough to get the Section 8 vouchers, now we have to say to them as we did in Los Angeles that we cannot fund some of those vouchers. We made some mistakes in Los Angeles, and we over subscribed what we had. And we had people out there that we had given the authorizations to that we cannot honor. And now we are talking about taking money from one of the most profound programs in all of government, a program that simply allows individuals and families to have a decent place to live, and we are going to eliminate their ability to have decent housing because we want to spend money on some computers.

Well, I am all for good systems. I am all for upgrading. Now is not the time. Let us not take money from these housing subsidies in order to have computers when, in fact, if we take this amendment, we can fund 15,000 more vouchers. That is not too much to ask.

I know that there are those who have said we have made the additions. We are not going to undo them. We are not going to turn them around. But those of us who get these calls in our offices, ask us, Where can you find me a place to live? How can you help me?

The lines are long all over America. People wish to get in this Section 8 program because they cannot do any better.

Our ranking member referred to housing production. It is next to nothing. We do not have housing production. The cost of the land acquisition is too high. It is absolutely prohibitive to try and build low-cost units for people who really need them without some government help. And we do not have enough government help in order to acquire the lands and to write down the costs of building these units.

The best thing that we could do for those who could not do it without us is to provide them with Section 8 housing vouchers. I do not think it is too much to ask. I support this amendment, and I am very thankful that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) and the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), despite the fact that they were advised not to do it, had the courage and the guts to do it. So I stand here with them to say no matter what else we are cutting, let us put the money back into this program.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment that is basically known as the section 108 loan guarantee amendment. This is an amendment that is offered to the Community Development Grant Fund for cities and counties that would allow them to continue to have a section 108 loan guarantee program for the purpose of big-scale developments in the cities that would be guaranteed by the CDBG funds.

These are very important economic development funds. In the past, we have had a substantial amount of money in this fund, and it has been used by the cities to create jobs and to rebuild downtowns, to rehabilitate old towns, to basically not only create jobs, but revitalize cities.

So we are simply asking that we take a small amount of money from the advertising section of the drug policy section of the budget so that we not only not transfer, but we keep some money in this fund by which to keep section 108 a viable program.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman from Michigan has described something other than section 108 loan guarantee programs. Section 108 loan guarantee programs are considered one of the most potent and important public investment tools that HUD offers to local governments. It allows agencies to transform a small portion of their CDBG funds into federally guaranteed loans large enough to pursue physical and economic revitalization projects that can renew entire neighborhoods. It is a very effective public investment.

The small amount of money that I am asking to be taken from the drug program is from the advertising budget. I do not want to spend a lot of time

talking about the ineffectiveness of that program; I simply can say that that program has not reduced drug use in this country, despite the millions of dollars that we have spent.

Again, $120 million is a lot of money for an advertising program that does very little to deter anybody from using drugs. I would hope that some day there will be some restructuring of that program to try and make it more effective, because I really do think it is a waste, practically, of the taxpayers' money.

Having said that, I would advise my colleagues that many of you have section 108 loan programs in your districts that are providing funds for great revitalization; and should these funds not be available or we not continue this program or show some support for this program, in addition to whatever dollars are remaining, I think you will find that your cities will be very disappointed, because this is the only money that they have been able to count on that is not scored against the budget to do this kind of revitalization and job creation.

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