Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts.

I think it is interesting to hear all these protestations from my colleagues on the Republican side about this issue of civil rights and how they are so concerned about equal rights for women. They are so concerned about equal pay for equal work, that if it were up to them, they would do something about it, that they care just as much as Democrats.

Yet it was the Republican President who nominated the Supreme Court, who stacked the Supreme Court of the United States with conservative, right-wing Republican ideological judges that handed down not only the Ledbetter decision, but has handed down decision after decision that has gone against working people and civil rights every step of the way. This is no mistake. This is just the agenda that the Republicans wanted.

You voted for President Bush, so don't come on down here and say but we didn't mean to. And by the way, you also cut the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when you were in charge of this place, so don't come over here and now say you protest women not getting paid equally.

And for a fact, if there were a flood of lawsuits, there would be every reason for there to be a flood of lawsuits, Mr. Dreier

Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore

The facts being what they are, the Department of Labor says, as a fact today, 76 cents on the dollar today is paid for the same hourly work for a woman as for a dollar that a man works. For every dollar a man earns, 76 cents is what a woman earns. That is a fact. If you don't believe that, go to the Census Bureau, go to the Department of Labor and ask for yourself.

For my sake, I don't want to go home and tell my mother that she is only worth 76 cents for a dollar a man is worth. I don't want to go back to my sister and tell her she is only worth 76 cents what my brother and I are worth. I don't want to go to my daughters some day and say they are only worth 76 cents versus a dollar what a man is worth when they go to work for equal time served.

If you are happy being opposed to this bill, H.R. 2831, and you are happy living with yourselves and living in the same home as your female family members, knowing that and living with yourselves, God bless you. I'm not happy with it. I couldn't live with myself

Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore

I thank the gentlewoman from California, and I want to commend her for her support.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to lead a bipartisan coalition of Members from both sides of the aisle that support the cause of Liberia, and I want to thank and extend my gratitude to them and to all parties for bringing this bill to the floor today.

Minority Leader and Whip Blunt, Congressman Mike Pence, Congressman Tim Walberg, and my good friend from Minnesota, Jim Ramstad, have come together because we all believe in the Liberian-American community.

I would also like to recognize Congressman Keith Ellison, a true champion of the Liberian-Americans, for his steadfast support and dedication to this cause, as well as to Chairman Conyers and again to Chairwoman Lofgren on the Judiciary Committee for her strong leadership on this issue.

Madam Speaker, as you can hear from this debate, this is an issue where we have had a country that has had a unique history with our Nation. It is a country that was founded by former American slaves. It was a country that was established by this country for those liberated American slaves; and it was a country whose refugees came back here because of a war that was in part fueled by American guns, where we supported former General Taylor and General Doe.

So it is a tragedy that was exacerbated because America supported a civil war that cost the descendents of those American slaves their lives. There was torture and killing that forced those former American slaves' descendents to have to come back to the United States.

Now they are here. They have made their own lives here. And the thought that we would have to force them to go back instead of them making their own decision as to when to go back. I represent a large community of over 17,000 Liberian-Americans. They want to go back to Liberia, but they want to make the decision as to when they go back. They don't want to have to be forced to go back on October 1 because we are forcing them. They have made their lives here. They contribute heavily to our community.

In fact, I have spoken this afternoon to several of my constituents. One woman, Ms. Harris, has never missed a day of work in the 20 years she has been here in this country; another family, the Dennises, who have been here; Mr. and Mrs. Akowala. He has two degrees in engineering and Mrs. Akowala is a registered nurse.

Both degrees are very important in this country. Both of whom contribute heavily to our economy. Their children were born here. But if they were forced back and their children are Americans, what happens? They go back to a country where 85 percent of the country is unemployed, where there's little running water, little electricity. Can you imagine what we'd do to that country? It's barely on its feet right now. What do we do? We do not stabilize the country that's getting on its feet. I think we further destabilize it.

Further, I think the best policy for us to help stand up to Liberia is to help and give them the remittances that Americans here in this country, the Liberian Americans here send back every year to Liberia. And that, I think, is a good policy for this country.

For all of these reasons, not the least of which is Ciehanna Stevens. She is married to an Iraqi war veteran hero who's on his fourth tour of duty. He's a citizen of this country. He's a Liberian American, fourth tour of duty serving his country. She will be deported. Imagine, the wife of an Iraqi war hero on his fourth tour of duty to be deported. That, to me, is an outrage. We need to pass this bill for all the Liberian Americans who contributed to our country.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to say that I think this is absolutely a justified effort to bring to light something that I think all of the American people deserve, and that is to understand truly what is going on at the Department of Justice insofar as the use of these letters.

Unfortunately, this is legislating on an appropriations bill. I do hope that in the course of this session we will bring up legislation that will get at the PATRIOT Act so that we can bring to light how far the Justice Department has gone in overriding the initial intent of the PATRIOT Act and overriding the sense of Congress in terms of the abuse of issuance of both National Security Letters and exigency letters. For that reason, I think the intent of this is very well placed.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) for whom this is a very important issue.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I think that this issue is an issue of due process. This country was founded on the basis of due process and on law, and that is why this strikes at the very heart of our system of government and why this is such an important issue to be raised.

And for that reason, I think that while this is a point of order, I do believe this is going to be an issue for this Congress to address in the course of this session. I commend the gentleman from Florida for raising it.

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

Mr. Chairman, let me just commend both the chairman and the ranking member for producing a bill which certainly goes a long ways to meeting the needs of our country in a number of areas.

But let me particularly point out an area that concerns me a great deal, and that's the area where I think there's a large indictment on our country; that's the area of the fact that this country has more people incarcerated in its jail system per capita than any other industrialized Nation on the Earth. More people in jail in our country than any other free Nation on the Earth.

My friends, that is an indictment on us as a Nation, that we can't do better. This bill invests more in preventing people getting in jail.

We add over $80 million to the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Act, section 5, title 5, which is prevention dollars. We have decreased that money over $280 million over the last 5 years, under the previous Congress. This year, under this bill, we increase it by $50 million, add another $30 million to the JBAG program, which is the gang prevention section of the Juvenile Justice act. We add $10 million to the Mentally Ill Offender Program, which helps us to put more money into identifying mentally ill offenders at the time of their offense, helping them to divert them from having to go into jail, and properly treating them, rather than accepting them into prison. And we quadruple the amount of dollars that are going into drug courts, the best-known source of reducing recidivism that we have in this country.

If you want to have a war on drugs, the best war on drugs is to treat people for their addictions rather than to put them in jail, and this bill goes a long ways in doing just that.

I want to commend the chairman for his work on this matter.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that if we are serious about looking at this issue of compliance, $6 million, frankly, for a country as big as China that is exporting to Wal-Mart toothpaste, pet food, auto parts and the like, $6 million ain't going to cut it; $6 million out of a budget that we are looking at here is really infinitesimal to think about in terms of really being serious about inspection.

If we are serious about looking at protecting consumer product safety, we ought to look at making sure that industry themselves are employing the proper safeguards in their own inspection safety, that they are obviously having to comply with our own U.S. inspection codes if they are selling within our own market. They are not having to comply with China's inspection. They have to comply with ours if they are selling in our marketplace.

So this is a broader issue in addition to just trade, and I think there are a lot of other significant aspects to this issue that we need to consider. I think we need to bring the trade groups that are involved with these issues to the table, and I would suggest that maybe the chairman and others maybe down the road we can begin to convene some of these trade groups.

I know from my State some of these interested groups are already working within their industries to deal with this because they know they have great liability. If they import products that they have manufactured in China here to this country that are faulty, they are on the hook and they are liable if those products are faulty, as they should be liable; that is, provided that they are not indemnified by the other side through product liability indemnification.

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

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

As cochair of the Judiciary Appropriation Subcommittee, someone who has attended these hearings all the way through, I am disappointed by this because I think it calls into question every single member of this committee and the integrity of every single member of this committee in saying that you're calling into question the integrity of this committee and what we have done as a work product as a committee. This is not the product of one individual; this is a product of a committee. So I take great exception to this Member's amendment and the questions that he has raised here.

I stand behind this work product, as do the colleagues that I serve with on this committee, both Republicans and Democrats. I serve proudly with this chairman. And we've worked as a bipartisan committee, worked together on a bipartisan basis in order to produce a work product that meets the needs of the public, to meet the needs of the law enforcement community in this country, and, I might add, way over and above the President of the United States' request for law enforcement, way over and above the request for law enforcement that this administration has put forward.

So I might say that it is ironic that this amendment comes up, that under this chairman, this law enforcement has gone further and farther than it has, indeed, under many, many previous chairs of this committee.

For that reason, Mr. Chairman, I support today's mark and I ask my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Etheridge-Reichert amendment. The Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, was up here on the Hill this week. The Attorney General was trying to appeal to the United States Congress of the United States, trying to appeal to the American people to restore the American people's confidence in the Justice Department. I think one of the first steps he can take to restore confidence in the American people and the Department of Justice is to ensure that the people who are on the front lines of the war against terror here in our own country, the men and women in blue, the people who are protecting our men and women across this country from crime, in our neighborhoods and our cities and our towns, that those people who make the ultimate sacrifice and lay down their lives for the protection of our citizens in our own communities, that those people, when they make that ultimate sacrifice, that this country is not going to let them down. It's not going to let their families down.

The notion that we're going to make them wait for an insurance policy, make their families wait, make their widows wait, make their orphans wait, is an insult. The fact that the Department of Justice is not willing to simply step up and pay $250,000 tax-free dollars to the widow and children of fallen officers who have fallen in the line of duty protecting people in this country from the criminal element of this society is unforgivable.

The fact that this Attorney General is up here on the Hill and has no understanding of this, has no sensitivity to this, is one more example of how out of touch this Attorney General is.

This amendment, this Etheridge amendment, is another example of how this Congress has to remind the executive branch who needs to be in charge when it comes to running the pursestrings around here, where the priorities of the American people are. The priorities of the American people are let's spend money where our law enforcement is. That is where their families are.

This, my friends, is where our hometown heroes are. In my State we have people like Deputy Assistant Day, who died trying to fight a fire, and his family's widow is still waiting for that benefit. In the 1970s, President Nixon put the public safety officers' benefit in at $100,000. We never even increased it. We tried to increase it; wasn't even increased for rate of inflation, cost-of-living adjustment. I worked to try to increase it, as did Mr. Etheridge.

It took 9/11, unfortunately, it took a crisis like 9/11, before we were able to attach this bill to the PATRIOT Act and get it included as part of the PATRIOT Act and get it pushed through this Congress so that we could increase it up to over $250,000. Now that it's up there, and it's tied to the rate of inflation, it's there.

But it's not going to do a lot of good unless it's going out the door, and it's going into the pockets and into the households and the families that need it. That's why we need to pass this amendment to give the administration and the Department of Justice the resources it needs in order to give them no more excuses in order to process these claims and get those families the resources they need in order to take care of the widows and the orphans of our fallen heroes.

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

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I understand, Mr. Chairman, the President of the United States today issued a press release saying that he was not going to ask that these officers be allowed out on bail or bond even after it was requested that they do be permitted to be released on bail and bond. I find it regrettable that the President did not give some explanation for why he didn't give these officers an opportunity to be given release on bail or bond as other people who would be on trial or given that kind of opportunity would otherwise be given.

At the very least, I think the President, given the nature of these officers being in law enforcement, has an obligation to ensure their security when they are in prison because they are, I understand, at greater threat to their own lives being law enforcement officers if they are incarcerated. And I would hope that the Department of Justice in its incarceration procedures does take into account the very increased threat level to these officers because of the nature of them being law enforcement officers.

That being said, however, we do have to keep in mind that it is a Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney that prosecuted these Border Patrol officers and it was a jury of a U.S. citizens who rendered a verdict based upon the U.S. law and based upon the evidence of U.S. law, not the Members of Congress here standing based upon newspapers and based upon Fox news stories and everything else, but based upon the evidence in a case presented to a jury through an evidentiary hearing. And that is what we need to abide by is a legal process. We can't abide by a political process.

If we were to abide by political process every time a legal case came along and were to suspend the process every time we thought one case was more popular than the other, it would just upend the idea of justice as we know it in this country, because I think all of us could come here to the floor and tell of a unique story where someone was wronged by the system of justice in this country.

And I think that it is kind of ironic that my friends are so outraged by mandatory minimums with guns, because they are so outraged by mandatory minimums with everything, and yet they are the first ones to pass these mandatory minimums and then wonder, now finding their own friends in the behind and saying, no, we can't have it touch our friends, and then all of a sudden they don't want it that way.

Well, you know what? There are lots of people in this country who have been

caught behind these mandatory minimums who have just been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time that are now serving life sentences. Kids that have been caught in ghettos just because they have been friends of friends who have been part of gangs. Now that they have been associated with gangs, they have gotten the gang-related crime tagged onto them, which has added another 10 years to their sentence, and that has been a mandatory minimum just because of some law that we have passed saying that you get another 10 years because you are related to a gang member. Now it is very interesting that all of a sudden people are so outraged by these minimums that have been tacked on to these officers carrying firearms in the commission of a crime.

So I just think that we should all pause for a moment when we think about being tough on crime. Here is a perfect example of where it comes back to bite us in the you-know-where when we think that we are trying to be tough on crime and then find out that sometimes when we are passing these mandatory minimums it doesn't always work out the way we expected it to be.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I just want to commend the chairman for the work that this committee has done to achieve the very purpose that this amendment that the gentleman from New Jersey has proposed.

Frankly, we have this year on July 26 the anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and we have taken many steps backward as a Nation in guaranteeing the civil rights of all Americans with disabilities. Clearly that means we need to guarantee nothing special for people with disabilities, just the same rights. Guaranteeing equal access regardless of ability is what we need to do in this country.

This amendment seeks to do that; but I might add, so does the underlying bill. I hope that Members listening to this debate do not come away with the understanding that it is because of amendments like this that we are accomplishing it. The underlying bill, if people were to see it and really look at it, does so much to offer independence and hope to people who previous to this bill were denied many opportunities because of previous budgetary priorities that shut people out in this country.

So I want to commend the chairman and the ranking member for producing a good bill that goes along the same lines as this amendment by opening up the doors of opportunity to all Americans.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Chairman, I tell the gentleman, in my State, I will give you a perfect example of where this would make a difference.

In a rural part of my State we had a contamination of our well water, and it was a contamination because of the MTBE, the chemical that goes into gasoline. I might add under the Republican majority, you all indemnified the oil and gas industry from lawsuits so that my community can't get the justice it deserves so it can clean up its wastewater and make due reparation to my constituents. What they had to do is they had to go down to the local high school to take showers. They had to attach a pump through the fire department to the next-door community.

Now under this section of the bill, this is a public health hazard. You know why, because even at home when they turn on the water, they were getting lesions on their skin because the shower water was giving them lesions. Even when they turned on the steam, the children were breathing in the steam and were getting asthma attacks. Now if you are wondering what the nexus is, this is what the nexus is between your amendment and health and why infrastructure makes an enormous difference in providing clean, safe drinking water to rural communities.

Now I don't come from a very rural State so you might think that it is kind of interesting that I would come up and speak on behalf of this. I would think that your State would probably benefit a lot more from this. Your constituents must be wondering about you offering an amendment against a section that would benefit your State more than it does mine. Frankly, this is an important program.

If anything in this country, we haven't invested enough in infrastructure. Mr. Jackson, I'm sure, has talked to his mayors and local community leaders, and they have told him that their infrastructure is falling apart. I would just commend all of us to say that if we have to do anything, we have to do more in the way of infrastructure, not less.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I think this is a perfect, perfect example of a gentleman offering an amendment where he knows the cost of something but the value of nothing.

If he were to visit any congregate meal site in his district or were to visit any of the Meals-on-Wheels programs in this country and was able to see what a difference those programs make in people's lives, he would understand that it was these kinds of programs that saved the taxpayer money.

I guess, by this amendment, he is saying what a waste it is for us to pay for someone's illness. Let's put off paying for their illness until they get really sick. Then they have got to get hospitalized. Then let's pay for it through Medicare.

Frankly, the former Speaker Newt Gingrich, every modern health care magazine, Republican Presidential contender Tommy Thompson, former HHS director, every leader and study in health care knows we ought to be going in the opposite direction. It's all about health. In case anybody has not been looking, our health care system is an acute care system. It's a sick care system. We need to be going preventive care. We need to be going health care. We need to be going chronic care management.

What in the world are we thinking by considering that we are going to actually go back to the dark days where we are going to actually spend more money on the back door to wait until people get sick as opposed to trying to prevent people from coming in and getting sick in the first place. I find this amendment absolutely mind boggling that it would even be offered as an excuse for saving money.

Quite frankly, it will end up costing the taxpayer money. Tragically, more than costing us money, it will cost us lives. It will cost us lives, and it will cost us misery amongst those senior citizens who are going to have to suffer the consequences of the cutbacks that this amendment will propose. I think that's a very unfortunate thing.

I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Madam Chairman, reclaiming my time.

I am pleased that in other bills that we are going to be taking up this year, we are going to be offering, the Democrats, medical home legislation that will allow us to invest in preventive medicine. Because we, as Democrats, believe we need to not rearrange the deck chairs on this Titanic of our health care system.

We need to reinvent our health care system and invest in health care, which is broken in this country, and start investing in prevention and not go down this road that has gotten us in so much trouble to begin with, and that is try to take care of the problem after it's already broken. Let's take care of people first and keep them out of the hospital.

Unfortunately, this amendment goes a great deal of distance in the wrong direction, not the right direction.

Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I just want to commend the lady from Texas for her amendment, and say that I know how many years she spent before coming to Congress dedicated to this issue.

We had a hearing in her district around this issue of mental health and addiction and alcoholism, and we heard from the law enforcement community themselves in her district testify to the fact that over 70 percent of the children in the juvenile justice system were there because of drugs and alcohol. And, frankly, this is a scourge on our schools, and we can't just wish it away by saying, just say no. Just say no won't work. We need to employ resources, and that's what this bill, this amendment, seeks to do.

And, frankly, when you have 20 million people in this country addicted, and you have nearly 10 percent of those people, children, you have a serious problem in this country. We better get about trying to address it, and this amendment seeks to try to do that. And I commend the gentlelady for her amendment and support it.

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

Madam Chairman, I will submit my remarks for the Record in opposition to this amendment. It is outrageous that we would eliminate the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.

Madam Chairman, Mr. Barton's amendment would increase NIH funding by $650 million by prohibiting NIH from contributing funding through the authorized program evaluation tap to support other Public Health Service agencies.

The Committee has already provided generous increases for NIH--$620 million in the joint funding resolution and $750 million in this bill. That has provided an increase of over 1500 new research grants. The bill's $750 million increase is over $1 billion higher than the President's FY08 request.

This amendment is dangerous because it would eliminate the only agency that is doing research to evaluate and identify what healthcare treatments work, what is safe for patients, and how to control the costs for the medical interventions produced by NIH research--the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, AHRQ.

Twenty percent of our economy is tied to health care. 42 million seniors are dependent on Medicare for health care, and 50 million Americans are on Medicaid. We desperately need the research that AHRQ provides to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of the health care services provided through this enormous share of our economy.

Comparative effectiveness research allows us to expand coverage by only paying for what works and using the savings to expand health coverage.

The country is concerned about being consumed by out of control health care costs. This amendment would devastate funding for AHRQ, the one agency doing the research necessary to determine the best ways to deliver medical care in order to avoid bankrupting Medicare and our private health care system.

The amendment will devastate the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, by cutting 20 percent of the funding provided for NIOSH--the only agency in government that supports occupational safety and health research and brings that research from the laboratory into the workplace.

In 2005 there were 5,734 workplace injury deaths, 50,000 deaths from occupational diseases and more than 4.2 million workplace injuries in the U.S. In 2006 we saw more than a doubling of coal mine fatalities in the nation's mines. Now is not the time to cut our investments in important health and safety research programs that are critical to our efforts to protect workers from job deaths, injuries and disease.

The amendment would devastate the CDC's ability to track the health status of Americans. Knowledge of, and the ability to understand issues such as infant mortality, obesity risk factors, and childhood diseases will be seriously curtailed if this amendment passes.

While this amendment on its face would appear to provide short-term benefits to university researchers, it would have dramatic and serious long-term consequences for the patients with conditions that NIH research addresses.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, education as a whole is something I don't think we can ever go wrong in investing in, especially at a time when education is more important than ever before in keeping our country competitive in a global economy. What's going to make our workers more competitive is their ability to compete on an international level.

Now, part of that edge is going to be able to be determined whether they are going to be bilingual, whether they are going to be fluent in not just one language, but maybe two languages. It's interesting in our country, especially over the debate the last several weeks, denigrating immigration as if it's something of a drain on our society, that we have lost sight.

The greatest strength of our Nation are our immigrants, especially now. The United States is unique around the world in that we are a country of nations, nations that make up every part of the world. We are uniquely positioned as a Nation to take full advantage of the multiethnic backgrounds of all the people that make up this great country of ours. We have a ready-made market in every part of the world because of all of ethnicities that we have in our country.

Now, in my neighborhood, in Rhode Island, we have a large Portuguese community. The fact of the matter is, we have, in Rhode Island, a large Portuguese community that could be very beneficial to this country's ability to compete internationally.

By 2010, Brazil will be the third largest consumer of American-made products. Now, don't you think it would be a smart move for our country to invest more in Portuguese literacy and fluency? I think so. That's why I am for investing in the language development for the third leading consumer market of American goods that's going to lead to more American jobs right in our hometowns all across America.

This is about building up American jobs here at home. Frankly, I don't understand what the objection is. This is all about investing in our people. We are not running any deficits when we are investing in people. We are making investments, investments that are going to pay huge dividends in the future.

Where is your balance sheet?

You know, the cost of everything but the value of nothing. When you look at your balance sheet, you would assume that you can do everything on the sheet. You can just automatically have someone grow up, not get an education, expect to get more out of them than you put into them.

I don't know any business deal where a business person expects to get something more out of a deal than they put into it, except maybe Enron. Is that your kind of politics over there? You expect to get rich quick without even investing?

I don't know, as Democrats we believe that you have to invest in people before you can get a return on your investment. That's what we are doing in this investment in education. We are investing in our workers. We are investing in our people, because we know in order for us to get a return on our investment that is what's going to be the key.

I can give you specific examples in my State where we have bilingual workers who now are able to take what they have learned, thanks to these Portuguese studies, and also take that and be able to teach other people Portuguese and be able to add fluency to their vocabulary and also be able to expand their economic opportunities as well.

I think that's a good thing for this country. It expands the American Dream in this country, and that's why I oppose the gentleman's amendment.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Announcement By the Chairman

Madam Chairman, the fact of the matter is, we are living in a global economy. We are living in a great country. Whether the person is from Arizona or Rhode Island, the gentleman ought to know that we are all in it together.

As a Federal Government, we have a responsibility to this country. Whether the person comes from one State or another is irrelevant. It's an investment in all of us to invest in this education.

I urge defeat of this amendment.

Madam Chairman, I want to rise and congratulate the gentleman from Wisconsin, Chairman Obey, as well as Ranking Member Walsh for their good work on this bill.

This bill, Madam Chairman, does a great deal in rejecting the President's cuts that would have provided $7.6 billion below last year's level in programs vital to protecting our Nation's health and education system.

This bill today, instead, provides a 3 percent increase over last year in areas such as family intervention, early learning, education and health care access. Let me tell you what that means. That means that we can help make a difference in averting the kinds of problems that will come later on, because now we will invest in prevention. Programs such as the SAMHSA, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration program, and Starting Early Starting Smart, which invests in family intervention, are so crucial. We know from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study that the Kaiser Foundation did that families that are in crisis produce children that are at higher risk for not only delinquency but for drug abuse, for HIV, and for greater health care problems.

In this bill, we provide funds to go towards those families so that we can reach those parents. If we reach those parents, we reach those children. That, my friends, is what real family values are all about; it is reaching out to the families in this country in order to reach the children of this country. If we reach these children, they will be able to grow and prosper, and we as a Nation will be even stronger for it.

Madam Chairman, I thank the chairman for the work that he has done in helping to build a stronger safety net for the children of this country. It will make our country an even stronger place for all of us to live.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I find it very ironic from the other side that they are so outraged about these cuts. This is an account within the Department of Labor that has seen a 33 percent increase over the last several Congresses, a 33 percent increase within this specific account of the Department of Labor.

Now let's put that in perspective to what the Republicans put into other accounts within the Department of Labor. I seem to recall the International Child Labor Inspection in the last several Congresses was cut repeatedly over the last several Congresses, up to 87 percent.

This is the International Labor Organization's duty to oversee child labor standards to ensure that our competitors are not using children in the conduct of labor when competing with us and our manufacturing process. Yet it was good enough for us to cut 87 percent of the inspection for child labor, but good enough for us to increase the 33 percent.

Now we hear a complaint that somehow it's not good enough for us to just, since the account has done very well, to just keep it as it's going. Now there is a big outrage about this.

I might add, where was the outrage when the 12 percent cut was for the wage and hour department? Where was that? I didn't hear any outrage. Where was the outrage for the compliance for the contractors? I didn't hear any outrage for that.

It's just interesting, when we hear these complaints about where the cuts are, let's find out where the priorities really are. I think we are hearing them. They are not with the children and child labor. They are not with the workers and the wage and hour inspections, and they are not with the contractors and making sure that they are protected on the job.

They are here going after, once again, people who are trying to earn a living. I think that's a very clear set of priorities in this Department of Labor account.

Let me just say to the gentleman from Florida, I find it curious that he says he is standing up for workers, because he must not recall his party gutting workers' overtime pay. I don't know whether he recalls that his party was for flex time.

Make sure every worker out there understands the Republican Party passed flex time. That means that your overtime pay, America, is gone. They passed it. They are not for working people. They said, if you work overtime, that it wasn't counting as overtime pay, and that that overtime pay towards your pension didn't get calculated to your overtime pension. So don't say you are on the side of workers.

I suppose that when you were for OSHA reform, that you are for workers, right? Reform in your view meant inspection was voluntary. That's really standing up for workers, making it so that the employer, all they had to do is, you know, check their own book to say whether they were protecting workers' heads or not from scaffolding or for those chemical plants that you mentioned, whether they were safe or not.

They didn't have to worry about covering their tracks. They didn't have any tracks to cover any more under

your bill for OSHA reform. As far as other bills, NLRB, forget it. You guys threw that out the window with the TEAM Act. There is no negotiating for unions.

So don't stand up here and talk about how you guys like to protect workers under this phony premise that you want to see more transparency and compliance. That's just a lot of hogwash.

In terms of international labor standards, if you don't understand the connection between slave labor abroad and workers here at home, I am sorry, you don't understand globalization.

If the gentleman doesn't understand, through the Chairman, doesn't understand the comparison between children working overseas, fighting, working to try to manufacture products that are going to compete against our unionized workers here at home or our manufacturer workers, whether they are unionized or not, if he doesn't understand that they are competing against one another, I can't explain it to them.

If he can't understand and grasp that it's in our interest to make sure that our competitors don't use children that are being paid pennies on the dollar while our moms and pops are having to compete against them with minimum wage standards, I can't explain it to him. If he doesn't understand that, it's hard for me to give him an economics lesson that they are competing in a global economy that has transparency of products thanks to these trade agreements.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation calling for the safe and responsible redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq. Make no mistake about it: The administration's incompetence in planning and executing the post-war occupation has brought us to this point. It is now Congress's responsibility to stand up for the majority of American voices who seek an end to this war. This bill provides for a redeployment of our troops not only so that they will be safe, but also so they will be focused on securing our Nation, not caught in the crossfire of a sectarian civil war in Iraq. We must provide for our men and women in uniform and their families.

Some assert with no basis that the war in Iraq has made us safer when, in fact, the opposite is true. I am deeply troubled by today's report from the National Counterterrorism Center which states that al- Qaeda is stronger now than at any point since 9/11. Terrorist cells capitalized on our preoccupations in Iraq to reestablish a presence in the Middle East and beyond. For years, the Administration has stubbornly insisted that Iraq is the central front of the War on Terrorism, but today's report clearly indicates just how damaging this war has been to our national security.

The President's progress report on Iraq issued today shows unsatisfactory improvement of security benchmarks. The report predicts a rise in insurgent violence in the coming months and an increased effort to disrupt life for Iraqis. In addition, there appears to be no improvement in eliminating the sectarian influences that have infiltrated Iraqi security forces. This is not acceptable. The administration has not delivered on its promises in Iraq and now we must move forward to establish a new direction. It simply is not fair to ask our soldiers and marines to continue to police someone else's civil war. It is especially irresponsible when considering the mountains of evidence from our own intelligence agencies pronouncing that this conflict cannot be solved by our military might alone. We must refocus our attention on the true threats to our Nation and our citizens.

Americans owe a debt of gratitude to our troops and their families for the sacrifices they have made during this difficult time. Servicemembers have had to endure difficult assignments and failed civilian leadership; but they have done so with honor and dignity. We must not forget the families who had to go without their loved ones for months at a time; the missed birthdays, baseball games, long nights away.

Mr. Speaker, the time for talking has ended; we must act, without delay, to redeploy our brave troops out of Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, I rise for a colloquy with the gentleman from California.

As I understand, an important provision in this bill is a loan forgiveness program for individuals serving in high-need professions. One of those is child and adolescent mental health professionals.

Do I understand the chairman in helping me secure this program in the overall bill so that we can bring more professionals into this area?

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people. Too many people are waiting in our juvenile detention facilities all across America. It is causing a disruption in education all across this country. We need more child and adolescent mental health professionals if we are going to have an education system, and I thank the gentleman for helping us get more of those professionals in the field so we can move forward with their education.

I thank the chairman of the committee.

I'd like to thank Chairman Miller for his leadership in bringing to the floor the largest single investment in college financial aid since the GI Bill.

The bill we are considering here increases the maximum Pell Grant by $500. It will cut the interest rate on student loans in half.

It provides loan forgiveness for college graduates that agree to teach in high-need areas and who agree to go into public service professions. It accomplishes all of that, and yet here is the best part: this bill saves the American taxpayers $750 million.

By reducing the excessive subsidies that Congress has lavished on private lenders, lenders that we have seen in the news this year have acted unscrupulously time and again, Chairman Miller has more than paid for the investments he is making in our students.

I know that my constituents in Rhode Island who take out Federal students loans will appreciate the $4,420 in savings this bill provides to them. And I also know that the rest of my constituents will appreciate the fact that this increase in student aid does not cost them one extra dime.

When Democrats took control in Congress, we promised to cut student loan interest rates in half, while at the same time proceeding in a fiscally responsible fashion. Today, we are fulfilling that promise. I will be proud to vote in favor of this bill, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, our troops are returning from all over the world having suffered from many wounds, but many of the wounds that they're suffering from are not visible to the naked eye. Those wounds are psychological wounds. And tragically, our veterans system is not equipped, as we've seen this last week from a series by the Washington Post, to address many of those concerns.

Our Nation needs to be better prepared to address the psychological and emotional wounds that our veterans are facing. And tragically, this country has not come to grips with the mental health crisis that even our own citizens face.

This Congress needs to address this problem. It needs to address it within the Veterans Administration, and it needs to address it for this country by passing mental health parity and by making sure that we address PTSD for our veterans, making sure we have oversight of the VA, and making sure that they address the needs of our veterans, both visible and invisible wounds of our Nation's veterans.

Mr. Chairman, I don't want anyone to mistake, after hearing the previous debate or any one of these amendments, what the big picture is here today. The success story today, the take-away message today is that this bill is the biggest increase in veterans health care in the history of the veterans health care system, the biggest increase in the 77-year history of the veterans health care system; and it has happened under the chairmanship of Chet Edwards.

Every amendment here is talking about nickels and dimes compared to the overwhelming increase in billions of dollars, billions of dollars that are going into this veterans health care system that has never seen such an infusion of dollars. We're not talking about a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there, and that's often what ends up happening. We're talking about money for this program or that program. We are talking about billions of dollars that have never been even seen in this kind of fashion in any kind of veterans health care program before.

And so what we are doing here is raising the bar for generations to come because what we're doing now is layering the bar up. So from now on, the floor is 20 stories higher than it was the day before. And from now on, whenever another veterans budget comes up, it is going to start from the top floor and move even higher.

I want everyone to know that this is a monumental day. This budget exceeds even the proposed budget of all the veteran service organizations, even the VFW, the American Legion, the Paralyzed Veterans of America; this is even more than they have asked for.

And I want to say on behalf of the mental health needs of our veterans, we are doing all that we need to do and more to try to make sure that their needs are met. And we should do so, because the suffering that these veterans have had to undergo as a result of this war has been unbearable. And we, as a Nation, owe it to make sure that not only do their outward physical wounds get met and treated, but their inward psychological wounds get tended to as well. And this bill does that.

I want to thank the chairman for his work to make sure that not only their outward wounds, but their inward wounds get addressed as well. And I commend him for his leadership. He ought to feel very proud to be chairman on such an historic bill such as this, and I thank him for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I have and will always support our troops.

I have grieved with their families when they have fallen in battle. I have visited them in the hospitals and watched as they recover from some of the most devastating injuries any human could endure. As a member of the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee, I joined my colleagues earlier this week in passing the largest increase in veterans' health care funding in 77 years. I want our soldiers and marines in Iraq and Afghanistan to never doubt that their country values their sacrifices and will always be there for them and their families, whether in battle or when they come home.

This bill, however, does not honor nor protect our troops. Without accountability and a clear change in policy, this bill simply becomes another blank check for President Bush to continue waging this war without regard to reality or the demands of the American people. The Congress has an obligation to provide our troops with the funding they need to succeed, but it is under no obligation to support a policy that leaves our troops trapped in the cross fire of a civil war.

This Administration's disregard for the reality in Iraq, for what a clear majority of Americans now demand, and what is in the best interest of our long-term national security has gone on for too long. This is a vote to make clear that the Congress will not sit idly by as more American soldiers and marines are sucked into the quagmire of Iraq. It is long since past time to begin bringing our troops home. American blood cannot be a substitute for Iraqi political will.

The Administration's mishandling of the war in Iraq has brought us to this point, and the Administration's determination to save face at all costs has again denied our troops a policy that takes full measure of the sacrifices they have made.

I cast this vote with a heavy heart. The White House has been playing a reckless game of ``chicken'' when it comes to our troops, but neither the Congress nor the White House will ever bear the true burden. Our troops and their families shoulder the true grief and pain of suffering.

The Administration has been served notice. It's my hope that this is only the beginning of Congressional efforts to force the Administration to face reality.