Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, 40 years ago yesterday on March 7, 1965, events in Selma, Alabama, became a seminal moment for the advancement of civil rights in our country. Last weekend, I had the privilege to join one of my heroes, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis), who was also one of the leaders of the nonviolent civil rights movement, to retrace his steps across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where America's long march to freedom met a roadblock of violent resistance. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.

By 1965, the cause of equality and human dignity had already seen much progress and setbacks: the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks's defiance on a bus in Montgomery, the breaking of a color barrier at Ole Miss, the historic March on Washington, the assassinations of Medgar Evers and President Kennedy, the bombing deaths of four little girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the Mississippi freedom summer, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But on this Bloody Sunday, about 600 people, young and old, put their lives on the line and met the unbridled force of racism for the most basic American right, the right to vote and be full participants in our democracy. The Alabama State Patrol was waiting for them at the other side of the Pettus Bridge and attacked them with clubs, tear gas, and dogs.

The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) was beaten so badly he believed he was going to die. The images were captured on TV. When the movie ``Judgment at Nuremberg'' was interrupted with the news, many people watching the movie first thought that it was a continuation of the movie depicting brutal Nazi oppression, until they realized that this was happening in America, right now. People's shock moved the political world.

One week after Bloody Sunday, President Johnson spoke to the Nation. In inspiring words, he said: ``At times, history and fate meet in a single time and a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma. Their cause must be our cause.''

Two weeks after Bloody Sunday, Dr. Martin Luther King and the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) led 4,000 people across the Pettus Bridge on their 54-mile march to Montgomery. Six months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, proclaiming that the right to vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison all people merely because they are different from each other.

Soon the Voting Rights Act will be up again before Congress for reauthorization. We should do it sooner rather than later. We should make it permanent, rather than for short periods, so we do not have to revisit the issue and debate its provisions. Surely there is enough common interest and bipartisan support to accomplish this.

Their cause 40 years ago this week still must be our cause to overcome today. For as long as the power of America's diversity is diminished by acts of discrimination and violence against people just because they are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or gay, we still must overcome.

As long as the gap between rich and poor continues to spread in our Nation, with some and not all having access to health care, we still must overcome.

As long as children of color are more likely to live in poverty, die sooner, and less likely to graduate high school and go on to college, we still must overcome.

As President Bush stated during his recent trip to Europe: ``We cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time. All our nations must work to integrate minorities into the mainstream of society, and to teach the value of tolerance to each new generation.''

President Clinton pointed out 5 years ago at the Pettus Bridge that these challenges already have existing bridges waiting to be crossed. He said: ``These bridges stand on the strong foundations of our Constitution. They were built by our forebears through silent tears and weary years. They are waiting to take us to higher ground.''

But there is still much work to be done. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: ``Human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts of people willing to be co-workers with God.''

We remember the event of 40 years ago this week not only to honor the courage, sacrifice and accomplishments by those like the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) and so many more, but also to rededicate ourselves to their unfinished work: the pursuit of justice, love, tolerance and human rights, in our country and throughout the world.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate and honor the friends & family of the brave men and women of the 652nd Engineer Company. Their duty and sacrifice are appreciated by all Americans, and it is right that we pay recognition to them today for receiving the Department of Defense Reserve Family Readiness Award for 2004. This award is being presented to recognize the top unit from each Reserve component that demonstrated outstanding family readiness while maintaining superior mission readiness. This award is a great honor and our nation congratulates you.

New challenges facing our nation demand increased vigilance on the part of our armed services. With these increased demands, the role of the National Guard and reserve forces is critical in providing the total force necessary to ensure our nation's security. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to meet with many National Guard and reserve members from western Wisconsin who have been called to service in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Over 2,200 members of the Wisconsin Air and Army National Guard are serving on active duty. The people of western Wisconsin are proud of their service and the service of all the men and women of our armed forces during this important time in our nation's history.

In the past two years, I have visited Iraq twice and have seen first hand what a fantastic job our soldiers are doing to give the people of Iraq hope for a better future. Although the road ahead will be tough, I know the efforts of the 652nd contributed greatly to our ongoing mission in Iraq.

In addition, over the past two years, I have had the opportunity to meet with many National Guard and Reserve members and families from western Wisconsin who have been called up in support of operations Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. I had the special privilege of attending one of the 652nd Engineer Company's family support meetings. I know from first hand experience the quality of this family support group. I would like to especially recognize Cheryl Iverson, the family support coordinator for the 652nd. I know her hard work and sacrifices are greatly appreciated by the families and members of the 652nd.

The American people and the Congress of the United States stand behind our armed service members and their families. As our military operations continue, I, and other members of Congress, will continue to work to ensure that our service men and women have all the resources necessary to do their job safely and effectively.

The efforts of our service people do not come without sacrifice. A member of the 652nd, Private First Class Bert E. Hoyer, 23, of Ellsworth, died on March 10, 2004, in Baqubah, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He paid the ultimate price to enhance our security and protect our liberties; he also gave the people of Iraq the greatest gift of all: their freedom. I want to extend my heartfelt sympathies to his family and friends. Young leaders like this exemplify all that is good and decent about America.

Once again I would like to congratulate the families and friends of the 652nd on this prestigious award. America is firmly behind our troops, and we're all hoping to see them home safe, secure, and soon.

May God bless our troops and their families during these deployments, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of myself and Representatives Gilchrest, DeFazio, Farr, Walsh and our more than 30 fellow members of the bipartisan Congressional Organic Caucus, to offer our sincere congratulations to the Organic Trade Association on achieving their 20 year anniversary.

Formed in 1985 by a handful of individuals determined to build a trusted identity for organic products, this original group blossomed into the nearly 1,500 member Organic Trade Association today. The Organic Trade Association, North America's only organization dedicated to representing the views of all segments of the organic industry, has become an important source of information about the challenges and successes of the organic industry to the Congressional Organic Caucus and the public.

Mr. Speaker, millions of consumers are choosing organically grown food and fiber. Over the last decade, the consumer marketplace for organic products has risen exponentially. Moreover, thousands of family farmers have discovered the environmental and ecological benefits of organic farming methods and technologies. Working together, the Congressional Organic Caucus and the Organic Trade Association will continue to promote the importance of organic farming and organic products to both consumers and the overall health of our country's agriculture industry for the next 20 years and beyond.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I thank the gentleman for highlighting the huge budget shortfalls we are facing, but one other item that seems to be masked in the budget numbers on the previous chart, does that include the amount of money that is currently being borrowed from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds? Is that amount also reflected in those figures showing deficits?

If the gentleman will yield further, the current raid on both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds makes those budget deficit numbers much worse?

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for a question, this is a little bit before my time, but correct me if I'm wrong; it was really a Democratic Congress, working with the first Bush administration, the current President's father, that first instituted the pay-as-you-go rules back in the 1992 budget; is that correct?

It was President Clinton in his first budget that he submitted during his first administration that asked for maintaining and continuing the pay-as-you-go rules that Democrats had to pass without one single Republican vote in the House of Representatives; is that right?

And, Mr. Speaker, not one Republican back then had supported the pay-as-you-go rules that required tough political decision-making, trade-offs, in essence, with the budget, which is something that the Democrats in Congress today are advocating in the alternative budget resolutions that were submitted, because it worked so well in the 1990s, the pay-as-you-go rules, which are very simple. If you are proposing a pay increase or a tax cut in one area, you have to find an offset in the budget to pay for it in order to maintain balance.

And it led to the 4 years of budget surpluses, as the gentleman pointed out, 2 years of which the Social Security-Medicaid trust fund was not even being raided but, instead, we could use that money for important debt reduction, starting to pay off the national debt.

I was here during that first Bush tax-cut debate we had a few years ago where the big concern, on the Republican side at least, was that we were going to pay off the national debt too fast, if you could believe those days, which never materialized. But now today, we are back into chronic budget deficits, and one of the fastest growing areas in the budget today is interest on the national debt.

I see two major problems with the huge budget deficits today that are unprecedented and we did not face before. One is, who is owning that debt? Who is paying for our deficit financing? Right now, Japan is the number one purchaser of our government debt, soon to be surpassed by China. I do not believe it is in our country's long-term economic interests to be so dependent on foreign entities, let alone China, to be the number one purchaser of our debt in financing these deficits.

The other big difference we have today is ever since those long-ago years when the pound sterling was a viable currency, we have never had a rival currency up against the dollar in the international marketplace. That is changing today with the strength of the euro in the European Union and in the common marketplace.

Now, if these countries that are currently investing in buying our bonds decide to take their investment somewhere else, such as in the euro, which is gaining in strength, and the dollar, which is declining in value, we are going to get caught holding the bag in trying to finance these deficits, and that could be the perfect financial storm being created.

So again, I think it is a reason why we need to work together in a bipartisan fashion and, at the very least, reach agreement in reinstituting something that worked in the 1990s, the pay-as-you-go rules.

I commend the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), our Ranking Member on the Committee on the Budget, for the leadership and the honesty that he has shown in presenting the figures so that we can, at the very least, agree on the facts and the challenges that we are facing, and then coming up with some commonsense solutions that have a proven history of working in the past. I am going to continue to work with the gentleman and the rest of my colleagues here in trying to put together an honest and reasonable budget in order to get us back on that glidepath of fiscal discipline and fiscal responsibility again.

Mr. Speaker, every now and then you encounter someone in public service who is a public servant in every sense of the word, who transcends petty partisan politics, who brings a depth of character and a depth of knowledge to surpassed by no person, someone who loves his country, works hard for the people he represents but loves his family even more. That person was Bob Matsui who we lost over the weekend.

Bob was someone I grew to know and love. My first contact with Bob was a campaign check he sent to me in my first run for Congress in 1996. I had never met him before then but he must of saw something in me that motivated him to help me out a little during my first campaign when a lot of other people didn't think I could win.

And when I came to Congress, I quickly got to know Bob and appreciate him. He was someone who made everyone feel special. He would solicit your opinions on the issue before us, even though his depth on the issues like tax policy, trade, social security and medicare, surpassed anything anyone else had. He cared for this institution and the process of democracy and he exuded boundless optimism about the future of our great country even though his first few months as a citizen of this country was spent in an internment camp in California shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He later led the effort in Congress to right that gross injustice by having our government apologize for that action.

In short, Bob Matsui was someone I respected, looked up to and tried to emulate here in Congress. You can't replace a Bob Matsui; he was rare and never fully appreciated to the extent he deserved. But we all can learn from Bob Matsui and take his legacy of compassion, justice and fairness and make it our legacy to the next generation.

To his wife Doris, son, Brian, daughter-in-law, Amy, and granddaughter, Anna, may you surround yourself with family, friends and loved-ones during this difficult time and find comfort and understanding. Perhaps one day Anna will be old enough to read these testimonials to her grandfather and better appreciate how special he truly was. Please know that Bob was loved by many and will be missed by all.

May God bless him and keep in his company.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I had to fly back to Wisconsin for a military funeral and missed rollcall vote No. 7.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the conference report for H.R. 10, legislation to reform our country's intelligence agencies. I support this report so, as a country, we can move forward quickly to give the President a completed bill to sign. The security of the people of western Wisconsin is of an utmost priority, and I am supporting this measure to make changes necessary to protect our homeland.

On September 11, 2001, our Nation was brutally attacked, and several thousand of our citizens were killed. Our country was shocked and dismayed, but we were far from defeated. The resolve of our Nation is strong, and we stood up to the challenge and struck back.

After the attacks on that fateful day in September, many questions about our homeland security were raised. I supported and worked for a comprehensive Homeland Security bill that created the Homeland Security Department and cabinet level secretary. The creation of the Homeland Security Department was an important first step for our country to ensure the security of its citizens. But there remained many unanswered questions about our Nation's intelligence failures before September 11, which is why I supported the creation of the independent bipartisan 9/ 11 Commission.

On July 22, 2004, the 9/11 Commission provided a full and complete report to Congress and the American public. I praise the Commission for its excellent work, leadership, patriotism, and service to our country. We owe it to the families of the victims of 9/11 and to the citizens of our country to use this report to make certain this type of attack never happens again; I fully support the unanimous and bipartisan recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

While I had several concerns with many of the provisions included H.R. 10, I decided to support passage of this legislation back in October. I supported H.R. 10 because when the safety of our country is at hand we need to be able to cross the aisle and work with our colleagues to protect our country. After passage, however, I was glad to see the conference committee move to more closely align the conference report with the 9/11 Commission's 41 recommendations and the Senate passed bill. Over the past several weeks, we have had several opportunities to pass this very important legislation, but the House leadership has been working towards passing the bill with the support of the majority.

I support this conference report for several reasons. First and foremost, the families of the 9/11 victims and the 9/11 Commission supports this conference report and have worked hard to ensure the legislation improves the safety for our country. In addition, the conference report contains not only major reforms of the intelligence community, but significant measures to improve aviation and border security and emergency preparedness and response. This bill implements a substantial portion of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations; I am happy that the conference report includes a strong National Intelligence Director as well as the essential authorities necessary for the National Intelligence Director's success. It also creates a strong National Counterterrorism Center and an independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board.

The 9/11 report also addresses foreign policy and public diplomacy, something we cannot deal with in this legislation before us today. One of the most important chapters in the 9/11 Report was chapter 12, which offered a global strategy to work with the Arab and Muslim worlds. If we follow the recommendations in this chapter, and focus our energies on improving our economic and political ties to this part of the world, it will not only improve the image of the United States of America, but it will help reduce future terrorist attacks on our country.

Once again, I would like to thank the members of 9/11 Commission for their patriotism and hard work to help safeguard our country. I would also like to recognize the tireless work that the families of the victims of 9/11 have put into creating the Commission on the attacks, and, secondly, that legislation was brought to the floor for deliberation. Finally, I would like to thank the conferees for all their hard work on this essential legislation. I encourage my colleagues join me in supporting this long-overdue, critical legislation. This legislation is a crucial step toward making our country safer from terrorism.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a fellow Member and friend, Congressman Jerry Kleczka, and to congratulate him on his twenty years of outstanding service to those in Wisconsin's 4th Congressional District.

Since the age of twenty-four, Mr. Kleczka has been active in the public service sector and has served in the House of Representatives since 1984. Mr. Kleczka has made a timeless effort to serve his constituents and has demonstrated his commitment to serve those in his local community by becoming a member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Brady Street Area Association, and America's Black Holocaust Museum.

Mr. Kleczka has illustrated his desire to meet the needs of his constituents by addressing a variety of issues while serving in the House of Representatives. The people of southeast Wisconsin were once faced with the severe problem of elderly abuse in public housing complexes. Recognizing the severity of this situation, Mr. Kleczka fought back with strong legislation resulting in Milwaukee becoming the first city in the nation to provide elderly-only public housing.

Mr. Kleczka has demonstrated not only his desire to improve the health and well-being of elderly in unsafe living conditions, but he has also fought for measures to decrease health care costs and increase personal privacy for deserving Americans.

Mr. Kleczka has also displayed his leadership capabilities by representing not just those in his district, but all citizens from Wisconsin by serving on the House Ways and Means Committee. This committee has allowed him to take an active role in the legislative process and effectively serve the people of Wisconsin.

Mr. Kleczka has served in the House of Representatives in a respectful manner, and his creative insight for implementing new policy and unselfish dedication to serving others will be greatly missed but not forgotten.

To the Wisconsin delegation, the retirement of Jerry Kleczka may feel like the Packers losing the leadership and dedication of their head coach Mike Sherman. It will be very difficult to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Kleczka; however, I am confident that my fellow Wisconsin members will follow the example Jerry Kleczka began twenty years ago.

I want to thank Jerry for his leadership and his friendship. I wish him the best of luck on his new endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to have had the opportunity to serve with such an outstanding Member of Congress over the past eight years. I would like to congratulate him on his retirement from the United States House of Representatives at the close of the 108th Congress. Serving with him in Congress has been an honor, and I hope to maintain our friendship in the upcoming years.

Since coming to Congress in 1997, I have had the pleasure to work with Cal on numerous issues in addition to building and growing the influence of the New Democrat Coalition (NDC). If there is one word that best represents Cal, it is integrity. Upon my arrival in Washington, DC, I immediately turned to him as both a mentor and a friend. As founder and co-chair of the NDC, he was always a respected voice on critical issues.

The NDC, through Cal's leadership, transformed how the Democratic party worked in the late 1990s. Intent on modernizing both the Democratic party and the country, New Democrats support policies that expand economic growth and see that all Americans have the opportunity to benefit from that growth; ensure a fiscally responsible and efficient government; secure the homefront; and advance a robust foreign policy that includes trade, constructive U.S. leadership throughout the world, and a modern and strong military. As a testament of Cal's leadership, the Clinton Administration frequently sought allies in the NDC. The Clinton Administration turned to the NDC for the critical support of the coalition's major legislation initiatives such as welfare reform and trade with China.

Cal is a fourth-generation farmer and partner in his family farm, growing cotton, alfalfa and walnuts at his farm in California's San Joaquin Valley. Through his tenure in the House, Cal has concentrated heavily on Agriculture issues. During the last farm bill, I served on the Agriculture Committee and was able to see firsthand how knowledgeable he is when it comes to farm policy. I look forward to working with him again on the next farm bill in his new role as the President and CEO of National Food Processors Association (NFPA). The NFPA is extraordinarily lucky to get one of the top leaders in food policy today.

Cal, in addition to his other accomplishments, is a great student of the big issues facing our country today. As long as I have known him, he has always had a willingness to dive into new subject matters and learn them as quickly as possible.

I want to thank Cal for his leadership and his friendship. I wish him the best of luck on his new endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of S. 2856. This important legislation clarifies Congress's intent in the last Farm bill--that administrative costs needed to implement voluntary conservation programs should flow from the Commodity Credit Corporation and not from the working lands programs themselves. It is crucial that we pass this bill today otherwise scarce conservation funds will once again be lost.

Mr. Speaker, USDA has diverted more than $200 million from four working lands conservation programs. Specifically, USDA diverted precious funds from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Farmland and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP), the Grasslands Reserve Program, and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) to pay for administrative costs.

The 2002 Farm Bill clearly intended USDA to use mandatory funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation to pay for the administrative costs of two land retirement programs. The plain language of the statute and legislative history, including a critical colloquy, support this interpretation of the Farm Bill, and GAO concurred in a recent memo. But, government lawyers misinterpreted the 2002 Farm Bill and forced USDA to divert working lands funds.

Despite the funds provided by the 2002 Farm Bill, most farmers and ranchers offering to restore wetlands and grasslands or offering to change the way they farm to improve air and water quality are still rejected when they seek USDA conservation assistance. For example, farmers and ranchers face $3 billion backlog when they seek financial assistance through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program to improve water quality or wildlife habitat. These long lines only grow longer when funds are diverted.

By providing new funds for working lands programs like EQIP and WHIP in the 2002 Farm Bill, Congress provided needed resources to help farmers manage working lands to produce food and fiber and simultaneously enhance water quality and wildlife habitat. For example, EQIP helps share the cost of a broad range of land management practices that help the environment, including more efficient use of fertilizers and pesticides, and innovative technologies to store and reuse animal waste.

Lastly, because 70 percent of the American landscape is private land, farming dramatically affects the health of America's rivers, lakes and bays and the fate of America's rare species. Most rare species depend upon private lands for the survival, and many will become extinct without help from private landowners. When farmers and ranchers take steps to help improve air and water quality or assist rare species, they can face new costs, new risks, or loss of income. Conservation programs help share these costs, underwrite these risks, or offset losses of income.

Mr. Speaker, this is an important bill to America's hardworking farmers and ranchers and I urge my colleague's support.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the bill before us today. For the third time in as many years, we are debating raising the debt limit because of irresponsible government policy. Today, this House will vote on raising the debt limit by

$800 billion, which will bring the debt ceiling to an astounding $8.2 trillion.

It concerns me that we need to raise the debt limit because of irresponsible fiscal policy such as giving tax cuts to the nation's millionaires while our country is fighting a war overseas and my home state of Wisconsin is hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs.

While I understand that it is sometimes inevitable that we must raise the debt limit, I believe that such a serious step should be taken in conjunction with pay-as-you go rules. I believe our country must return to the days of fiscal responsibility with a realistic, workable plan to put America back on a path to fiscal security. A first step towards that goal is to restore the pay-as-you-go requirements which left budget surpluses in the 1990s and enabled us to begin paying down the debt.

We need to start making decisions that will leave our children a better country to inherit. As the father of two little boys, I did not come to Congress to leave my sons a legacy of debt, hurt economic growth, and make this country more dependent on foreign nations, who are currently the largest holders of our debt. By 2014, American families will pay an additional $9,400 in interest on the national debt. That same year, the Social Security Trust Fund will be completely depleted if this Congress' reckless fiscal policies continue unchecked.

I am voting against such fiscal recklessness because there is no plan to restore fiscal responsibility in the future as we rapidly approach the Baby Boom generation's impending retirement. The American people deserve no less than a government that applies the same fiscal responsibility that any hard-working American family would in crafting a household budget. This Congress has failed to apply such fiscal responsibility; therefore, I urge all my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose H.R. 4818, the omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005. This $388.4 billion catchall federal spending bill represents the skewed budget priorities under which the Republican House Leadership has been operating. It puts special interest priorities before the public trust and severely underfunds critical programs.

H.R. 4818 is an exclamation point on a year-long spending spree by Congress at the expense of taxpayers and future generations. Taxpayers are picking up the tab on gratuitous government spending, while essential programs are shortchanged; the bill falls short of its commitment to the No Child Left Behind program by $9.4 billion, freezes the maximum Pell Grant for the second year in a row, and shortchanges funding for veterans' benefits and rural conservation initiatives.

Additionally, the credibility of the legislative process was compromised, as appropriators of the majority party defied procedural methods to rework the bill exactly to their liking, not to mention the liking of the White House. Appropriators handily struck backroom deals to make the following changes: to exclude a measure to allow the reimportation of prescription drugs; to override a House-passed provision to protect overtime benefits to six million employees; and to change bicameral recommendations on federal outsourcing and travel and trade relations with Cuba.

Also, it concerns me that just last week we had to raise the debt limit for the third time in the past several years to an astounding $8.2 trillion. Moreover, it worries me that we had to raise the debt limit because of irresponsible fiscal policy such as giving tax cuts to the Nation's millionaires while our country is fighting a war overseas and my home State of Wisconsin is hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs.

The proponents of the fiscal year 2005 Omnibus have touted it as a package of real programs that benefit real people. This bill is an insult to the principles of this democratic body, and what I want to know is when the special interest spending spree will cease and real people will again be the priority.

We need to start making decisions that will leave our children a better country to inherit. As the father of two little boys, I did not come to Congress to leave my sons a legacy of debt, hurt economic growth, and make this country more dependent on foreign nations, who are currently the largest holders of our debt. By 2014, American families will pay an additional $9,400 in interest on the national debt. That same year, the Social Security Trust Fund will be completely depleted if this Congress's reckless fiscal policies continue unchecked.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose the fiscal year 2005 omnibus bill. I cannot in good faith support such fiscal recklessness because there is no plan to restore fiscal responsibility in the future as we rapidly approach the Baby Boom generation's impending retirement. The American people deserve no less than a government that applies the same fiscal responsibility that any hard-working American family would in crafting a household budget.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Massachusetts for yielding me this time. I want to commend the leadership of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, from Chairman Boehner and Ranking Member George Miller to Subcommittee Chairman Castle and Ranking Member Woolsey, all the members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, the work that was done in the conference committee for trying to produce this bipartisan bill. That is why today I am proud to stand in support of the rule and also in support of the reauthorization of IDEA.

Mr. Speaker, this is an incredibly important program that was created in the mid-1970s. It was created under the premise that every child in America should have access to a quality education, including children with special needs. Since that time, the schools throughout the Nation have brought these kids in, have embraced them, have dealt with issues in regards to the authorization language, in regards to funding issues; but fundamentally it is a program that works and is working for our children with special needs.

This legislation, I think, goes to clean up a lot of the problems that were inherent in IDEA. The gentleman

from Delaware just referenced some of the paperwork burden that our special education teachers have been straddled with for so many years. There has been the issue of disciplinary problems in the classroom that I think we have reached a good compromise on now. It was the goal in this reauthorization bill to improve the quality of the teachers in the classroom dealing with these children with special needs, the second most important determinant on how well our kids are going to perform just behind parental involvement. It does strive to increase student performance and educational achievement. Overall, this is a very good bipartisan bill, and I would recommend my colleagues today to support this reauthorization bill.

But there are also some things in the future that we have to stay focused on and continue to work on and that is the impact of No Child Left Behind and the new standards and the testings and the impact it is going to have on these children with special needs and the fact that under No Child Left Behind, every child is supposed to be 100 percent in conformance of the rules that were written by the Department of Education by 2014. We just know now that there are some children that are not going to be able to obtain that high standard. Unless we are willing to start telling the schools that by 2014 every one of them is going to be failing, I think we need to be a little bit more realistic in our approach to these children and what is going to be required, but without leaving any child behind.

But I think another big problem that we are going to have to continue to slug out here starting with this omnibus coming up but also in future years is the funding of IDEA. The Congress has never lived up to the full cost share promise that was made, the 40 percent cost share for IDEA funding. This means the financial burden has been left at the local level. It is affecting property taxes back in the State of Wisconsin, which are going up way too much; and it is starting to pit students against students in the classroom over the allocation of the limited resources that we are allotting for IDEA and also now for No Child Left Behind.

I am disheartened to hear some of the figures coming out of the omnibus discussions where the President was requesting a $1 billion plus-up for IDEA. It looks like we are only going to get about $600 million. That is far short because this last fiscal year we were only funding it at 19 percent of the 40 percent full cost share. We can do better. For $10 billion, we could fully fund IDEA and get up to that 40 percent cost share and alleviate the financial burden that is straddling so many of our school districts throughout the Nation. It is just a question of priority, a priority of what we are going to place first as an investment in our budget, whether it is going to be the children and the future of our Nation or whether it is going to be other priorities that we are going to see in this omnibus.

Let us face it, Mr. Speaker. By the end of this year, we will have allocated close to $200 billion for what is taking place right now in Iraq. We are hearing rumors now that the administration is going to come back early next year requesting another 70 to $75 billion in Iraq. With just a fraction of that amount, we could fully fund IDEA, fully fund No Child Left Behind, give the schools, give the teachers, give the parents the resources they need to make sure that every child has the opportunity that they need to succeed in this country and in this world. That is what is at stake.

While we have got a good bill to support today, I think there is more work that we have to stay focused on and try to work in a bipartisan fashion to address the implications of No Child Left Behind with IDEA students and the element of full funding for this program. Hopefully, we will have the same type of bipartisan spirit as we move forward in the future.

My colleague from Tennessee has been a real voice of reason on the committee as well as the ranking member of the Committee on the Budget for trying to inject a little voice of reason in this whole fiscal responsibility debate that we need to have in this Congress and throughout this Nation. Because it is staggering, looking at these numbers and what the administration is coming back to Congress and asking for this week, another huge increase in the debt ceiling limit.

There are a lot of ramifications to what the President is requesting us to do this week in increasing the debt by addressing the symptom but not addressing the cure that we need to get out of the fiscal mess that has been created in this Nation over the last few years. It is a mess that is spiraling out of control. We see the increased costs and what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. We are also butting up against an aging population in this country, the so-called baby boomers who are about to begin their massive retirement in a few short years, putting in jeopardy Social Security and Medicare solvency for future generations. And we are not addressing a cure to the solution, one of which the ranking member and those of us on the Committee on the Budget here tonight have been advocating for the last 4 years, and that is reinstituting the budget tools that were in effect in the 1990s, the pay-as-you-go rules, so we maintain balance in the budgeting decisions.

If you are advocating a spending increase or a tax cut somewhere, you have got to find an offset to pay for it to maintain that balance. It worked well in the nineties. It gave us 4 years of budget surpluses, a couple of years in which we were not even touching the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and all that has been reversed under the current administration and with the leadership of the current Congress.

One of the more disturbing aspects about this whole debt ceiling limit and the fiscal irresponsibility is who we owe it to. Right now, a majority of the debt is owed to foreign interests, Japan being the largest purchaser of government debt today, soon to be surpassed by China as the number one purchaser of our debt in this Nation. I do not believe it is in our best long-term economic interest to be so dependent on China, to be financing our red ink in this country for years to come, because it can wreak havoc on the financial markets in this country if they decide to take their investments somewhere else. That really has not received the attention I think it deserves, given the long-term implications of our dependency now on foreign countries in order to finance the debt that is being accumulated because the current administration is not willing to make the tough decisions to maintain fiscal responsibility around here.

It is going to be an important debate we have this week. There is going to be an increase in the debt ceiling at the end of the day. Those of us who want to reinstitute these rules do not have the votes to do it today, but hopefully with the help of the American people, some who are watching perhaps tonight, we are going to create this synergy that is necessary in this Congress in order to start making these tough decisions again that worked very well in the 1990s and gave us incredible economic prosperity and job growth and an incredible dynamic to help grow the economy which is being lost now based on the decisions that we are seeing.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield for one final point.

Madam Speaker, this literally is the ticking time bomb sitting beneath Social Security and Medicare. They do not want to talk about it. They do not want to talk about fiscal solvency and fiscal responsibility that will help shore up Social Security and Medicare for the next 75 years. But this really gets to the crux of it. And later, next year perhaps, in the next session of Congress, we are going to have a serious discussion about Social Security reform. I think the best reform measures we can start taking today is instilling a little more fiscal discipline in the budgetary decisions so that this $160 billion annual raid on the Social Security trust fund stops and we have that ability to deal with the baby boom generation's retirement, which is about to explode in future years. But, again, it is the lack of leadership right now that we are seeing from the administration and here in Congress that is preventing us from really shoring up Social Security and Medicare as viable programs for many generations to come.

Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Washington State, for yielding me a little bit of time for this very important discussion.

First of all, I commend him for it, his leadership throughout Congress and the Nation, in trying to draw attention to and highlight an incredibly important issue not only for the current generation but future generations. That is, how are we going to, as the world's most powerful Nation, economically, militarily, culturally, our influence throughout the world is going to address one of the seminal issues of our generation, and that is global climate change and warming, what we can do policy-wise to try to effectuate the needed changes in order to stem the terrible results that might occur if we do not start acting today on it.

The science is in. My colleague from Washington has cited the scientific studies. In fact, even the current administration now is releasing recent reports indicating that climate change is real, that global warming is occurring, that it is heavily influenced by man-made objects and that it is something we cannot ignore any longer.

The problem we have, however, with the administration is lack of leadership and a lack of ideas and a solution on how to address it. They have the science before them. The President during an initial report that said, hey, this stuff is real, it is happening, we have got to take corrective action, excused the record as the work of bureaucrats within the EPA and various agencies that was putting the science together. But a more recent study that just came out in August highlighted the very real effects and the tracking data of climate change and the fact that it is heavily influenced by man's action on this globe.

The question is now what are we going to do with the science. It was interesting to note and see that Russia has been the latest signatory to the Kyoto treaty which now puts the treaties into effect because they had to have a certain number of nations that produced a certain amount of these greenhouse gasses to first sign the treaty before it would be implemented. Russia now puts them over the top. Granted there are some problems with Kyoto, issues that need to be addressed and cleaned up and further corrected; and that is why there was an overwhelming vote against the Kyoto ratification in the Senate about a year ago. But what has been lacking in this debate on a global basis is U.S. leadership and what are we going to do about it.

I know the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) has been one of the champions of a new Apollo energy program, one that makes sense for us not only addressing the global climate changes that is occurring now but makes sense for us economically in regards to our long term energy needs as

a Nation. If we do not get our energy policy right, we will not be very successful in growing the economy and creating jobs.

We have seen what the dependence and addiction to foreign oil has done to us economically. We have been looking at $2 a gallon for gas prices for too long. It is a hidden tax on working families that are paying more out of their pocket at the pump in order to pay for these increased energy costs. Gas prices this winter will be 30 to sometimes 40 percent more in the upper Midwest and in the northern regions that will be relying on heating bills to get through the winter season. And we see the implications foreign policy-wise of our addiction to oil in the Middle East and why we are so heavily involved there right now. There is something we can do about it.

I guess what is so frustrating, serving on the Committee on Resources, as my friend from Washington and I do, is there are certain steps that we can be taking in order to wean ourselves off from this dependence on foreign oil in order to move to a new energy policy that emphasizes alternative and renewable energy sources: the wind, the solar, the geothermal, the biofuels, the ethanol. And also a major investment in the energy source of the future, fuel cell development, so we become a hydrogen-based energy society as opposed to a carbon fossil fuel base that we are currently dependent upon and that is creating these greenhouse gases.

So the question now becomes what are we going to do about the science that is staring us in the face. Are we going to continue to ignore it, claim we cannot do both, grow the economy and address global climate change at the same time? I believe we can. And I believe there is job creation involved if we do start bringing these new technologies online, creating new businesses and new industries to deal with the new Apollo energy program for this country.

We should see the leadership from the White House setting dates certain for certain goals of achieving greater alliance on alternative and renewable energy sources, but we are not. In fact, the energy bill that is currently pending before Congress is better suited for the 1950s as opposed to the 21st century. There is a lot of new technology that can be developed that will spur economic growth and jobs if we have the political will to do it. And I believe at the end of the day this can be a win-win scenario, not only for job creation in this country but in addressing the root causes of global climate change, something that the rest of the world is waking up and realizing and starting to take action on their own.

But if the world's largest economy and the world's greatest consumer of fossil fuels remains on the sidelines, as this administration has decided to do, we will not see tremendous progress being made on this front regardless of what other countries throughout the globe are trying to do right now. That is why I commend my good friend from Washington State for getting up here on a late evening here, Tuesday night, to continue talking about this very important issue. And it is an issue that the younger generation gets. I do not know if it is intuitive or if they have just gotten enough information themselves, but they know the problems we are facing ecologically and environmentally.

They also believe in this whole global warming science that is out there right now. I believe they also believe that it is their generation that will pay the highest price if action is not taken today with the policymakers we have right now. I believe it was one of the more important issues in the last Presidential campaign that did not receive the attention that it deserved. I pledge tonight to continue working with my friend from Washington State to continue to draw attention on this important issue, to see what we can do working in a bipartisan fashion, because this is going to be an issue that we will have to lock arms together and jump into the icy waters on if we will have significant progress on it.

And there can be a lot of different areas of the sensible center that we can pursue in this Congress in the upcoming session, and hopefully being able to work with the administration even though they are doing new personnel changes right now, to address one of the more pressing and important issues changes of our day, that is, global warming. And what this generation is going to leave as a legacy for the next generation to inherit.

Unfortunately, there has been too much dithering. There has been study after study and scientific report after scientific report, all pointing in the same direction; but it is falling on deaf ears right now. And we do not have the luxury of time on our side. The longer we delay in taking affirmative action on this, the harder it will be to address this at the end of the day. So the clock is ticking.

We will continue speaking out on this. We will continue working amongst ourselves trying to form these bipartisan coalitions, trying to develop a greater consensus in our country to address this. I think the American people are there as well. I think given the option, they want to see us moving to a more sustainable energy policy that is more ecologically and environmentally friendly for their children and grandchildren as well. Lord knows the rest of the world is waking up to the possibilities that exist out there. And there is so much potential with the creativity and the innovation that this country has, that the American workers and with the science that we are developing in this country.

What is lacking and what the missing ingredient I believe is is the political leadership and the will to get it done. That is really what is at stake. And I thank my colleague for having this Special Order this evening talking about this issue and for his leadership on it as well.

Madam Speaker, I think the gentleman is right. I think this really comes down to two different visions, two different camps of what we can and cannot do. The optimist versus the pessimist. The optimist which we are members of happily really do believe we have the innovation, the creativity, technological know-how to lead the rest of the world in developing the changes that have to be made in regards to energy use and new energy technologies coming on line.

Conservation could be a big part of what we are talking about as well. It is something that unfortunately the Vice President poo-poos every time someone tries to bring it up, is the things we could be doing to develop more energy-efficient machines that we rely on for our quality of life.

It was interesting that when California just a couple of years ago was going through their energy crisis, energy consumption dropped 11 percent within the first month through increased energy conservation practices. So conservation can also be a part of this. What does this mean for the average person back home in western Wisconsin, the district that I represent?

We have a very good manufacturing company called the Trane Company. It is one of the largest employers in western Wisconsin, over 2,000 workers. They manufacture high-efficiency commercial heating and cooling units to be sold. They are so efficient and so good at what they do that those machines are already in full compliance of what the Kyoto treaty calls for. If we unleash this potential, that means creating more jobs in districts like the third congressional in western Wisconsin, with new companies being able to expand by developing a market share with these new machines, these new technologies that are crying out to be developed.

But again it is a question of political leadership and whether or not we have enough visionary people to see where we can take it and what steps we have to do and what each of our roles is going to be as consumers, as manufacturers, as producers, as policymakers because there is going to be a role for all of us to play, but it will require a buy-in.

The gentleman mentioned the Apollo program of the 1960s. When President Kennedy first announced the goal to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, most of the scientific experts did not think it was possible. We were experimenting with Saturn and Jupiter II missiles that if they were not exploding on the launch pad at the time, quickly exploded after launch or dovetailed into the oceans off the launch pad. And for the President at the time to conceive of putting a live human being on top of these flying bombs that were blowing up typically on the launch pad, and safely launching them out into outerspace and then landing them softly on the Moon, and then relaunching them from the Moon and landing them softly on the Earth's surface so that we do not lose anyone, was a vision that very few people in the scientific community in the early 1960s thought could be achieved by the end of the decade.

But it was that political leadership and vision and marshaling the resources and the best and the brightest that our Nation had to offer that enabled us to achieve that dynamic mission by 1969.

It was an incredible technological achievement, and it was spurred by a vision that President Kennedy had for our Nation at the time.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, we are seeing a very exciting development. In Wisconsin, people think the Dairy State, a lot of farms. There are still a lot of family farms in that. The operations are getting better. The livestock herds are getting larger.

One of the grant programs that I and others were able to include in the last farm bill was a methane digester grant program going to these family farmers to start developing methane digesters. That is using the waste that these livestock herds are producing and converting it into energy.

Again, it is another small piece of the energy puzzle that we need to be looking at in further developing as this Nation, because there is not going to be a silver bullet that is going to provide the cure-all for all of this, but it is finding out where the pieces need to fit in, whether it is solar, whether it is the wind turbine farms, whether it is methane digesters, whether it is the further development of hydrogen fuels in this society.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote a really interesting article just a couple of months ago in regards to the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he said that that is not our only intelligence failure in Iraq, not being able to find these weapons of mass destruction. If we do not learn from this, that our dependence on their oil in that region is a large cause of what is happening over there right now, and that, too, will be another intelligence failure on our part if we do not derive the lessons of our dependence on the oil in the Middle East and start converting to a new energy policy for a new century and wean ourselves off from that dependence, which would then start forcing those regimes in the Middle East instead of basing their whole economic model on the natural resources that are being extracted from their soil and instead forcing them to diversify their economic base, and have them start drilling their human capital more than their natural resources, that is going to lead to the type of transformations and reforms that we desperately need throughout the Muslim and the Arab world right now.

But so long as we, the largest consumer of these fossil fuels, remain the supply line for those regimes and their economic base, as long as we remain addicted to what they have got, we are not going to see the type of economic and political and the cultural reforms that that region of the world desperately needs right now.

That, too, is something that we have got to wake up and realize, in light of what is happening in the Middle East today, that a lot of this stems from our dependence on their energy that they

are producing and our inability to start pivoting now and seeing the long-term ramifications that this has and the national security implications that I believe it holds for our Nation in future years.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, it is one of the fascinating conversations I like to have with our astronauts. We are very proud of Mark Lee who is an astronaut who grew up in Viroqua, Wisconsin, Western Wisconsin. Of course, Deke Slayton was from the Sparta area in Western Wisconsin. I had a meeting with one of the Shuttle astronauts down at Cape Canaveral about a year-and-a-half ago, and I asked them all, what is the one thing that really leaves an impression upon you when you are out in space and looking back. They all say it is the greater respect for our environment and our ecosystem on this planet because, from their perspective, out in space looking back, I think they see intuitively how fragile our environment really is and the atmosphere and this planet that we all share together, and I think they all understand that much more work needs to be done on this front.

The fact that we have had an energy bill now pending for the last couple of years I think speaks more to the dysfunctional nature of this Congress recently that has become so polarizing, so partisan, and there is not enough outreach, not enough effort to find that sensible center on policy, to try to come together and work in crafting truly bipartisan bills where we understand it is going to be a process of give and take and that compromise should not be a four letter word in trying to make our democracy function.

But unfortunately, there is this 218 strategy where the leadership on the other side just wants the minimum number of votes, and more Republicans, the better, in order to get anything passed around here that it makes great achievements virtually impossible today.

On issues like the environment and energy policy, it is something that is going to require the Nation coming together if we are going to be make significant strides.

It is going to be interesting that later this week we are going to be dealing with another vastly important issue, and it is not one that is really short term, but it has long-term implications, raising the national debt ceiling limit. This is not something that we are going to see tangible results tomorrow if we start addressing it, but it does have future long-term implications about economic growth, and it is the same thing in regards to global warming. It is something people are hearing about now, and they are starting to see the science come in, but it is not something that is going to a direct and immediate impact on their lives tomorrow.

What we are talking about is what this means for the next generation and the generation after that and why it is incumbent upon us to start worrying about this today rather than punting it for future generations. I am concerned that the same attitude is being taken with the huge accumulation of debt in this country today, that all we have to do this week is jam another $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling in a bill that has to pass in order to keep the government functioning, and there is very little thought about the long-term implications of what these decisions mean in the future.

Again, this is a classic issue, and I have enjoyed working with my colleague from Washington State and look forward to working with him on this in the future because it is an issue that obviously is not going to go away anytime soon, and it is going to require a lot of hard work.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for one final point, this has been a consistent pattern with this administration. Even with their own agencies producing reports on global warming, the President on down has kind of pooh-poohed the findings. And in fact at one time the President commented on one of the global warming studies that came out of the EPA that it was just the work of a bunch of career bureaucrats, as if to discount the findings of that report. But the most recent one, just released in August, was signed off on by the agency heads of those departments, so it is a little more difficult then for the President, with these political appointees, to claim they are just a bunch of bureaucrats doing what bureaucrats supposedly do, in his eyes, and that is producing a bunch of invalid, nonscientific- based reports, when in fact the information out there is just to the contrary.

This administration has tended to base policy more on faith-based initiatives rather than science-based findings and studies, and that is very disturbing. Because if your instinct is wrong on something as important as this, it could lead this Nation down a disastrous course that could take decades to try to reverse and change, if it is not too late already.

That is why during the course of the election there were so many scientists around the Nation writing letters and indicating their concerns and displeasure in regards to the administration's practice of discounting scientific research and findings on the important topics of the day, and that pattern has been consistent from day one.

Now we have a second term that is about to begin. We have new political appointees that will be made. Many of the Secretaries have submitted their resignations, so there will be a turnover in leadership, and what will be very interesting and I think very important in the days and weeks to come is who the President is deciding to head up these very agencies that will have so much influence and so much say in the future course of the policy that this Nation will follow which will have implications not only for us here at home but on a global basis. So these appointments are going to be very important in the days to come.

When my colleague and I were in Norway, studying their alternatives and renewable energy plan, we received a briefing on the global circulatory system and how that could be impacted from global warming. I do not know if too many people watching tonight realize our oceans have this circulatory pattern to it with the water flow.

The gentleman from Washington mentioned the gulf stream a little earlier that warms in the southern climates and goes up north and keeps the Northern Hemisphere warm and the shoreline free of ice accumulation. The fear with global warming is that as the water goes to the north, it will not cool. And if it does not cool, it will not drop. And if it does not drop, it will not continue the circulatory pattern in the other oceans throughout the world and so the whole system could shut down. Like the blood that rushes through our body, if it stops pumping and stops circulating through our body, you can imagine the disastrous consequences.

The Earth's environment and ecosystem is based on that ocean circulatory system that would be adversely affected if global warming continues at the pace that it currently is. It could potentially shut down, creating an environmental havoc that perhaps is only realized in the imagination of Hollywood producers right now in the movies they are starting to produce but which may not be that far off from reality. This too I think is a huge implication that we have to start studying more and taking seriously in the policy decisions that we face in the upcoming session of Congress.

Again, Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his leadership on the

issue and for garnering some time this evening.