Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 605, a resolution recognizing the importance of increasing awareness of autism, supporting programs for increased research and improved treatment of autism, and improving training and support for individuals with autism and those who care for individuals with autism.

Even though autism is one of the most common developmental disorders affecting children, it is still poorly understood throughout

the medical community, producing great frustration among concerned parents. For reasons that are far from clear, children with autism often lack the normal means of communicating and interacting with others, making their transitions to adult society extraordinarily difficult.

Achieving a better understanding of autism will take time, money, and the dedication of researchers and volunteers across the country. That is why I call on my colleagues to support additional funding for autism research and surveillance activities performed by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. It is also vital that we support the basic science research being performed at the National Science Foundation and other institutions, which provide the knowledge base for the more advanced health research performed by medical researchers.

One of the key questions that these researchers are trying to answer is the potential of a connection between environmental factors and the prevalence of developmental disorders like autism. That is why Representative Saxton and I have formed the Children's Environmental Health Caucus, which will serve to educate members and staff here on the Hill about the latest scientific research into the impact of environmental factors on children's health. I hope my colleagues can join this caucus and work with us to further this type of research.

It is also critical that we provide the services needed to educate and care for those who do have autism. That is why I would like to call on the Congress to establish mandatory full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It is time for the federal government to step up and fulfill its obligation on special education funding for the sake of children with special needs and for the sake of our constituents who often face high property taxes.

I would also like to commend the work of all of the nonprofit groups that do so much to provide for children with autism and their families. Groups like the New Jersey Center for Outreach and Services for the Autism Community (NJCOSAC) provide information, services, advocacy, and education. Others, like the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR), support and fund research into science-based approaches for determining the causes, effective treatments, and potential cures for autism. NAAR, headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, was founded by two of my constituents, Karen and Eric London, whose son Zachary was diagnosed with autism when he was only twenty-two months old.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution and to remember those children with autism when it comes time to debate appropriations. Funding scientific and biomedical research is not just about giving jobs to scientists--it's about giving hope to people like Karen and Eric London and their son Zachary.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.Res. 598 legislation recognizing the valuable contributions of military impacted schools, teachers, administration, and staff for their ongoing contributions to the education of military children. I want to reiterate the importance of supporting our military families through the Impact Aid program, and I commend the teachers and school administrators for the outstanding work they do. This program is vital to the education of millions of children across the nation.

Impact Aid was created in 1950 when Congress recognized the obligation of the Federal Government to assist school districts and communities that experience a loss in their local property tax base due to the presence of the Federal Government. Between 1950 and 1969, the Impact Aid Program was fully funded by Congress. Since that time the funding level has not kept pace with the amount required to cover the Federal Government's tax obligation. Impact Aid funds are sent directly to the school district. The funds go directly into the school district's general fund for operations such as the purchase of textbooks, computers, utilities, and payment of staff salaries. Over 90 percent of funding for education comes from local funds such as property taxes. But what happens if that property is owned by the Federal Government and is off the tax rolls? Kids report to class with no property tax dollars needed for their school. In my district more than 1,000 students at Monmouth Regional High School, more than 1,300 students in Eatontown, and more than 1,700 in Tinton Falls are affected by impact aid. The teachers there work very hard to provide a quality education to all their students. Teachers who teach students of military families have the added burden of teaching students whose parents are or may be going overseas.

The quickest way to take a soldier or sailor's mind off their mission is to have them worrying about their children's education. Children from military families come from some of the hardest working, most patriotic families, but the schools they attend sometimes face bankruptcy. This is because of the way we fund our nation's schools. Impact Aid honors our commitment to military families. It guarantees that those families who serve to protect our freedom are in turn protected by the Federal Government. The hard working teachers of these districts ensure that these children of military members will succeed. The administrators, teachers, aids, guidance counselors, librarians, bus drivers, janitors all need to be commended for their work.

Our constitution commands that the first job of the Federal Government is to ``provide for the common defense.'' As we improve the pay and benefits of men and women in uniform, we must also support their kids, the local schools they attend, and the teachers who teach them. The time is now to support schools that educate the children whose parents wear our nation's uniform.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Con. Res. 380, legislation recognizing the benefits and importance of school-based music education. I am proud to join my colleagues in passing this bipartisan proposal today in the House of Representatives.

As a teacher, I can testify to the value that music and art can have in a well-rounded academic program. There is a growing body of scientific research demonstrating that children who receive music instruction perform better on spatial-temporal reasoning tests and proportional math problems.

Opportunities in music and the arts have also enabled children with disabilities to participate more fully in school and community activities.

There is something special about music an the arts that speak to what is special and unique in the human spirit. Music and the arts can motivate at-risk students to stay in school and become active participants in the education process. They teach all students about beauty and abstract thinking.

According to the College Board, college-bound high school seniors in 1998 who received music instruction scored 53 points higher on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and 39 points higher on the math portion of the test than college-bound high school seniors with no music or arts instruction.

Other data show that individuals who participate in band or orchestra reported the lowest levels of current and lifelong use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs. Comprehensive, sequential music instruction assists brain development and improves cognitive and communicative skills, self-discipline, and creativity.

Mr. Speaker, music education enhances intellectual development and enriches the academic environment for children of all ages. I am proud to join with my colleagues in passing this bipartisan resolution in recognition of these facts.

Mr. Speaker, when a couple plans to marry, it is a time of anticipation, joy, and yes, stress. There is much to think about, to plan for, and to organize. But when a couple is finally standing at the altar, they should not be thinking about paying more in taxes. When the marriage penalty tax was in effect, there is evidence that couples were thinking just that: many couples stayed unmarried for tax purposes, and others even tried to game the system by divorcing each December and remarrying each January. Unless they went to great lengths to avoid marriage altogether, many couples were walloped with the marriage penalty at tax time.

The marriage penalty did not always exist. When the Federal Government first levied an income tax in 1913, all taxpayers filed individual tax returns, and the rate schedules did not differentiate between singles and married couples. By basing a married couple's federal income tax entirely on the separate income of each spouse, the original code taxed married couples no differently than it taxed single taxpayers.

Created in 1969, the marriage penalty caused many married couples to pay more in taxes than the sum of what they would have paid as unmarried individuals filing separately. In recent years, it punished married couples where both spouses worked with an average tax penalty of $1,100, while giving couples where only one spouse worked a marriage bonus. By making the repeal of the marriage penalty permanent, we will allow 70,000 working families in my district--and 810,000 in New Jersey--to use their savings for mortgage payments, car payments, college payments, childcare, or other needed expenses. It will be beneficial to the New Jersey economy.

This vote is the sixth in a series of votes over my time in Congress to remove the marriage penalty. I have always voted for its repeal. In fact, several years ago, I voted to override the former President's veto of it. Simply put, Americans have rejected the idea that our tax laws should make it more expensive to be married than to be single.

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership has made a botch of tax policy in this country. The Tax Code remains burdensome, unwieldy, and in places, unfair. Some Americans pay excessive and unfair taxes relative to other Americans. The unfairness is glaringly obvious. It should be fixed.

I believe, as many do, that tax cuts should first go to the middle- class. Not only do middle-class tax cuts ease the tax burden on the group that feels it most, but they also deliver more economic stimulus than tax cuts targeted to the wealthiest 1 percent. Through middle- class tax cuts, we can help families in New Jersey and around the country provide for their families' healthcare, education, housing, and other priorities.

The marriage penalty is one of the only parts of the Republican tax package that can fairly be described as a middle-class tax cut. That is why I support its repeal, even though I do not support the broader budgetary approach that has taken our country back down the road of deficits as far as the eye can see. Generally speaking, tax policy has a unique role in the American political system: it is perhaps where the government and the citizen interact most directly. Because the marriage penalty seems illogical and capricious, it makes the whole government seem illogical and capricious. The repeal was passed in 2001, and it should be sustained.

Of course, I am disappointed that this legislation is not offset with other revenue or savings. This repeal could have been done with a higher priority placed on balancing the other side of the ledger, but the Republican leadership is more interested in symbolism then fiscal responsibility. Still, although I do not support--and have voted against--the overall

Bush tax cuts because they are skewed to benefit the wealthy, the marriage penalty should not be allowed to return. In accomplishing this victory for married couples and working families, I invite my colleagues to begin immediately to revise their overall budget so that it responsibly and effectively meets America's needs and priorities.

Mr. Speaker, April 24, 2004 marked the 89th anniversary of one of the most harrowing events in modern day history--the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian community is too familiar with the details of this tragedy. They know well the accounts of Armenian leaders, writers and professionals in Constantinople that were rounded up, deported and killed; the accounts of men, women and children were driven into the desert between Terablus and Derzor to die of starvation, disease and exposure; and the accounts of families that were burned alive in wooden houses or chained together and drowned in Lake Van.

Unfortunately, few outside of the Armenian community know of the Armenian Genocide--

one of the most awful events in modern history. Many are not aware that Ottoman officials expelled millions of Armenians from the homelands they had inhabited for over 2,500 years. They are not aware that Ottoman officials attempted to exterminate the Armenian race and the precedent this event set for the genocides that followed. It is distressing that horrors of this magnitude have largely been forgotten.

Even more disturbing are the governments, institutions, scholars, and individuals who deny the enormity of these crimes against humanity. It is inconceivable that individuals and governments continue to ignore the substantial evidence--including numerous survivor accounts, photodocumentaries, and official documents in the archives of the United States, Britain, France, Austria, and the Vatican--that prove these atrocities took place. It is also frustrating that some rationalize these crimes or refuse to recognize this premeditated ethnic cleansing as genocide.

The international community must deal honestly with this senseless genocide. World leaders must rise above indifference and the political considerations that they have cowered behind. They must unequivocally acknowledge the murders of one and a half million Armenians that began in 1915 for what it is--genocide. They must use their position to reveal the truth and bring attention to this tragedy that has been overlooked and brushed aside for too long.

We all want to forget these horrific tragedies in our history and bury them in the past. However, understanding the immeasurable wrongs the Armenian people endured--and the mass scale on which they occurred--is vital to grasping the impact these events continue to have on the stability of the region. It is only through the painful process of acknowledging and discussing these horrific events that we can prevent similar iniquity in the future.

We owe full recognition and acceptance of these crimes to the one and half million victims of the Armenian Genocide. Anything less is an insult to their memory.

Mr. Speaker, on this Earth Day, I think it is vital to point out the increasing need for this country and this Congress to put together a sensible, rational energy policy that lowers our dependence on fossil fuels and continues to stimulate our economy.

Developing such a policy is not simply about protecting our environment. From a national security standpoint, our dependence on oil, especially in the transportation sector, is a continuing danger. You can look under every rock and drill in every inch of wilderness and coastline we have, and we will simply never be able to meet our current level of consumption. The sobering fact is that the Middle East contains a tremendous share of the world's oil supply--and the more we remain dependent on their oil, the more we expose ourselves and the world to violence and terrorism.

From a public health standpoint, we can no longer rely so heavily on those energy sources that are poisoning us. Coal is cheap and abundant in the U.S.--but its emissions, including mercury and sulfur dioxide, cause thousands of premature deaths and diseases like emphysema and asthma every year. These are the very human costs that we must consider when we think about where we are getting our energy.

Of course, the environmental impact of our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels is well known. Even as our cars get cleaner, their combined carbon dioxide emissions, along with those from power plants and other sources, are largely to blame for global warming. The emissions from burning coal foul the air, creating smog and acid rain, while mercury falls to the ground and pollutes our waterways.

Equally troubling is the way we extract fossil fuels--to get coal, we rip off the tops of mountains and dump them into nearby streams; to get oil and natural gas, we drill extensively, often risking spillage. The oil and gas industries seem to have an insatiable appetite for opening and exploiting our most precious lands and our coastlines--yet even they must realize that we cannot drill our way to a better energy future.

Mr. Speaker, the legislation we passed in this House last year was not an energy policy. It was a grab bag of goodies for special interests. The bill reads as if every sector of the energy industry simply submitted their wish lists, translated nicely into legislative language--much like the development of the recommendations of the Vice President's Energy Task Force.

What we really need is a rational energy policy that puts us on the road to a more secure energy future. We should invest in research into renewable and sustainable sources and energy efficiency. We should set intelligent goals for the future: ten, twenty, fifty years in the future, how much energy should we be producing from each source? How much should we be consuming in each sector--transportation, residential, industrial? How can we protect our environment and our health while meeting the energy needs of a growing economy? We should also get our hands around the growing demand across the country for gas for our cars, electricity for our lights and computers, and natural gas for our heat--and find out how to be efficient as possible with all of that consumption.

I would like to lay out a challenge to all of my colleagues. Let's reject the stalled energy legislation. Let's move beyond the politics of squeezing every last bit of oil, gas, and coal out of this country and work on policies that envision a sustainable, secure energy future. A future where more of our energy needs are met by those sustainable sources like wind fusion, the sun, and biomass. A future where Americans don't have to sacrifice their own health just to keep using their air conditioners. A future where cartels like OPEC no longer hold us captive to the volatile world oil market and our energy needs no longer imperil national security. A future where protecting our environment and meeting our energy needs go hand in hand.

To do so will take patience, research, and some innovative thinking. I plan to do all of these in the coming months and years, and I hope my colleagues will join with me.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the subject at the heart our democracy, voter confidence. What is the central act, Mr. Speaker, of our democracy? It is the vote. For that to work, we must have confidence. In fact, for our government to work, we must have the confidence of the citizens. This is a self-governed country, and it only works if we believe it does. It only works if we maintain faith in the system.

Now, obviously, that has a lot to do with how elected officials behave today, it has a lot to do with how the citizens feel that their money is spent, it has a lot to do with how much we elected officials stay in touch with the people.

But it also has to do with the process of voting, itself; and in recent efforts to strengthen our voting procedures, particularly following the problems that became apparent in the 2000 election, a number of changes have been made that might actually serve to reduce voter confidence.

In November of this year, it is expected that 50 million votes, almost one-third of the votes that are likely to be cast in this country, will be cast on machines, touch screen, electronic machines, what are known as direct recording electronic voting machines, or DREs; and these 50 million votes will be unauditable. If we do not pass legislation requiring a voter-verified audit for each vote at the time each voter votes, we may as well outlaw recounts.

Now, I ask my colleagues if they know any candidate for office who would want to run without the possibility of a recount if there were questions about the election. If we do not take legislative action, we might as well outlaw recounts in Federal elections. Somewhere along the way, we allowed the vote count to become privatized, and we should act now to undo that.

In July of last year, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelly released a report of a touch screen task force. It was comprised of computer scientists, election officials, representatives from the Secretary of State's office, election reform groups, and election officials. This task force said, ``There needs to be voter verification imposed by a date certain.''

By voter verification, what they meant was a procedure, a mechanism, so that each time a voter goes into the booth that that voter can verify that his or her intentions are correctly recorded, in other words, that the vote cast is the same as the vote recorded.

Now, at the same time that the Secretary of State of California was releasing this task force report, computer scientists reviewed the source code used by one of this country's major voting machines; and their analysis, which is commonly referred to as the ``Johns Hopkins Report,'' found that ``this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identified several problems, including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats and poor software development processes. We show that voters without any insider privileges can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanism within the voting terminal software. Further, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to a source code. We conclude that this voting system,'' and now this is one of the most common voting systems in America, ``that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election.''

Well, there are a lot of technical computer science terms there, but what they mean is the software is unreliable, that the machines may not record the votes the way the voters intended them to be recorded, either through inadvertent error or through malicious software hacking.

The State of Maryland commissioned a third-party review of their electronic voting machines. This review was conducted by Science Applications International Corporation, SAIC, last summer. A version of that report was released and it said: ``This risk assessment has identified several high-risk vulnerabilities in the implementation of the managerial, operational, and technical controls for the voting system. If these risks are exploited, significant impact could occur on the accuracy, integrity, and availability of election results. The system is at high risk of compromise.''

Again, this is written in technical terms, but it says quite simply, your vote may not be counted.

Now, even if great pains have been taken to get rid of the bugs in the software and the systems are guarded so hackers do not get to them, we still cannot be certain, we still cannot be certain that the system works to record the voters' intentions accurately.

Now, some election officials say, well, we have been using these electronic machines for several years now and we have never had a problem, to which I say, Mr. Speaker, how do you know? If the system has an obvious breakdown, then you know it does not work. But if it appears to be recording votes, you cannot know, fundamentally cannot know whether it does work.

That is why it is necessary that there be a parallel audit trail, so that each voter owns the verification. Not some discount company that vouches for its machine, not even the election officials of the State, but the voter herself or himself can verify that the vote that is recorded is the vote that was intended.

Maryland commissioned yet another study, because there was continuing uncertainty following the really troubling results of that first study. This study, prepared by another organization, was released in January of this year. It was based on what they called a ``red team exercise,'' a deliberate attempt to compromise the system, to see how easily they could be compromised.

That reported said: ``The State of Maryland election system, comprising technical, operation and procedural components, as configured, contains considerable security risks that can cause moderate to severe disruption in an election.''

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the central act, the centerpiece of our democracy, voting. What could be more important?

Well, there is a way to deal with this problem. It is technologically and practically feasible. In fact, it is easy to give each voter the control of the verification, to give each voter the assurance, the confidence, that his or her vote has been recorded the way she or he intended.

I have introduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. I introduced this about a year ago, working with a number of computer scientists and election officials and others, seeking input from civil rights groups and public interest groups and groups of citizens with physical disabilities; and we crafted language that would solve this security problem.

Quite simply, my legislation would require that all voting systems produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits. So you go into the booth, if there is an electronic machine, one of these DRE touch-screen machines, for example. You would vote. Before you submit the vote, after you have chosen the candidates and selected your position on the referenda and so forth, the machine would produce a parallel audited record, a paper account of your vote.

One can look at it and say, yep, that is my vote. Or if it is not, one can declare it a spoiled ballot and have the election officials reset the machine and vote again, or, vote once and the other ballot is disposed of.

The legislation would not only require a voter-verified paper record for each voter at the time of voting, it would ban the use of undisclosed software and wireless communication devices in voting systems. It would require that all voting systems meet these requirements in time for the general election of this year, November 2004. It would require that electronic voting systems be provided for persons with physical disabilities 1 year earlier than is provided under the current versions of the law.

My legislation would also require mandatory surprise recounts in one- half of 1 percent of all jurisdictions so that the voters, each voter, can have assurance that the system is working. This will go a long way toward removing one of the areas of uncertainty.

I think any of us, when we hold town meetings or just walking around the

streets of our towns, we encounter people who say, ``I do not vote. My vote does not count.'' I spend a lot of time arguing with people like that. As someone who won an election by a razor-thin margin once, I can assure them that every vote does count.

But more and more I hear people saying, my vote will not be counted. And that is a very troubling sign. If people do not go to the polls for whatever reason, it is a loss to democracy. It is a tragedy for our country. And we dare not let them have the excuse that their vote will not be counted because the machine will malfunction, because there are bugs in the software, or because the software has been tampered with.

The centerpiece of our democracy, that is what we are talking about.

And I am pleased to be joined in this discussion by two people who have given a great deal of thought to this issue. I am joined by my friend the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) who served as attorney general in New Mexico before coming here to the House of Representatives. And he understands how important it is that we maintain the confidence of citizens in their government and in the process of government. And he understands how we can do that.

I would be pleased to yield to my colleague from New Mexico.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, it does not provide enough security. This past Tuesday, a day ago, I voted in the school board elections in my home district. For the first time our county, Mercer County, New Jersey, used electronic touch screen machines, the so- called DRE, one brand of the DRE machines.

As I expected, they were clear, easy to use, accessible. I think they would be good for people with physical disabilities, better probably than the old lever machines. And they were, as I expected, totally unverifiable. Now, why do I say that? Because the manufacturers will say, oh, we have batteries in there so if the power fails, they will not crash. Of course, there are a lot of computer engineers who promise that their software will not crash. But the manufacturers say, well, we store the votes in two different memory locations so there is redundancy.

With the electronic machines there is no way after the polls close that you can go back and determine what was the intention of each voter because there is this fundamental principle of secrecy. One's ballot must be kept secret. They cannot go back and say, you, Mr. Udall, voter number 23 today, voted for candidate A in this election and candidate C in that election.

So it is fundamentally different from your ATM machine, your cash machine at the bank or from other electronics that you work with because at the end of the month, with your bank, you have got either your checks or photocopies of your checks, and the bank tells you how much they think you have, and you tell them how much you think you have, and you get together on it.

With a secret ballot one cannot do that. They cannot tell someone how they voted. They cannot know how someone voted. So there is necessarily a gap between the casting of the vote and the recording of the vote. It is fundamental to these machines. One cannot get around it. We cannot build redundancy in there because there is a gap filled with software between the casting of the vote and the recording of the vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for those stirring words that speak to democracy. I cannot emphasize strongly enough what we are talking about here. This is not an exercise in computer science. It is not a game of political gotcha. It is not a partisan matter. It is not antitechnology. It is simply an effort to see that voters believe that they own their government, that they own their vote, that the sanctity of their vote is preserved.

Now, someone who has studied this both theoretically and practically is the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), who has looked at this with the eyes and the mind of a political scientist, but also as someone who has had his share of close elections and

knows what it would mean if we had elections all across the country without the possibility of a recount.

I am pleased to yield to my friend from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

These electronic machines are now in fairly common use around the country, and so we are beginning to get a number of stories of questionable behavior or real horror stories. There are cases where it appears that the electronic machines have actually counted backwards as the evening has gone along. There are other cases where, well, in one election recently, ironically in the State of Florida, there was a special election for a State office, several candidates on the ballot in a couple of counties. Some thousands of voters turned out for this single election. There was only one election on the ballot, and 137 voters who showed up, signed in and went into the voting booth evidently did not vote. Their votes were not recorded.

In other elections there are suspicious results where all of the candidates, all of the winning candidates got exactly the same vote total numbering in the thousands. So there are a number of instances where there are questionable results, and the point is you will never know was there something wrong because you cannot go back and audit them. There is no audit. There is no recount possible.

So I am afraid that anytime there is a close election from now on, unless we have this parallel voter-verified audit trail, there will be a cloud hanging over every close election and the loser and the loser's supporters will wonders if they have been cheated out of the election by some sort or error or, at worse, by hacking, by theft, by fraud. And that cloud cannot be dispelled.

Would it not be ironic.

Let me refer to what a couple of States are doing, partly because Congress has been slow to address this problem. My bill has been sitting in committee for a year now. Some States have acted on their own. I have mentioned the studies that were undertaken in California and the Secretary of State of California has decided to act and has declared that in the future the California machines must have a voter- verified paper trail.

In past months, the Secretary of State of Nevada, Dean Heller, announced his decision to buy touch screen voting machines for all of Nevada's counties, and he also announced a mandated paper ballot be created through the use of a voter-verifiable record in all new DRE machines purchased in the State of Nevada in time for the 2004 general election. Said the Secretary of State, ``I did so because the voters of this State overwhelmingly supported the inclusion of a paper trail to protect the integrity of our election.'' Maybe it is time for the voters to let their county officials know how important a voter- verifiable receipt printer is to them.

Now, it would make sense for Federal elections that this be handled on a national level and not count on each county and each State to try to protect the integrity of the system for the voters. As the Secretary of State of New Hampshire wrote, ``People in other States talk about the unbelievable burden of recounts. They do not realize the costs of restoring legitimacy is far greater than the costs of maintaining it.''

He gets it. He understands that we have to have an election system that is recognized as legitimate, that allows recounts, that gives voters confidence. New Hampshire uses paper ballots in 100 percent of its precincts; 55 percent of New Hampshire precincts use an optical scan system where you fill in a circle or a box next to the candidate, and then an optical scanner or machine will count those ballots. But you have the record that the voter has marked herself or himself so that provides a voter-verification paper trail. That is 55 percent of their precincts and 45 percent use paper and nothing else. And New Hampshire's system for a number of years now has been highly successful, in the words of the Secretary of State, and ``successful in promoting voter confidence and reliability.''

In fact, to make the pointed that this is not a partisan matter, should not or need not be a partisan matter, I have here a resolution passed by the New Hampshire State Republican convention in 1988 no less. So it is not only not partisan; it is not all that new. They said, ``Whereas, the State of New Hampshire has computerized voting equipment that does not have the ability to recount manually, does not have the ability to recount at all, uses secrecy of internal procedures as a primary security strategy, does not give the voter the ability to ensure the computer has voted as instructed, now therefore, it be resolved,'' etc., etc.,

``computerized voting equipment must either produce a manually recountable ballot for the voter's inspection prior to electronically casting the voter's ballot or use as its input a ballot which can be used in a manual recount.''

The Republican Party said, we must have a voter-verified paper trail.

I am pleased now that we are joined by our colleague, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who has given a great deal of thought and energy to this question. I yield to my colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and since she speaks about appropriations, it is worth pointing out that the Help America Vote Act, which was passed to bring voting up-to-date and to remove uncertainties, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, hanging chads, butterfly ballots and all that and to provide greater access for people with physical disabilities, to provide greater voting rights for minorities, that bill is a very important step, but it is terribly underfunded. The appropriations have not come close to matching what the authors of that bill said was necessary.

But to the other point that my friend from Ohio raised where in Ohio if an election is very close there must be a recount, let me speak from personal experience.

A few years ago, I was involved in a close election. My opponent asked for a recount. In one of the five counties in my District, there were then in use electronic voting machines. No surprise, several weeks after the election, when the judge asked for a recount, those machines gave exactly the same numbers that they gave 5 minutes after the polls closed. They call that a recount but it is meaningless. If there was an error, if the voter's intention was not properly recorded, no one will ever know. Each time you interrogate the computer, it will give you the same answer. I do not call that a recount because you are not testing against the voters' intentions.

Let me quickly just read a few comments from the press around the country. The New York Times: ``Even a cursory look at the behavior of the major voting machine companies reveals systematic flouting of the rules. Software was modified without government oversight; machine components were replaced without being rechecked. And here's the crucial point: even if there are strong reasons to suspect that electronic machines miscounted votes, nothing can be done about it. There is no paper trail; there is nothing to recount.''

Anchorage, Alaska: ``Alaska law,'' and by extension the Federal law, ``should require electronic voting machines to produce a paper record of each vote.''

Bangor, Maine: ``Paperless voting machines and those that transmit results over the Internet are vulnerable to glitches and manipulation by hackers. Yet election officials in many States are tempted by a slick technology.''

Asbury Park Press: ``There's no good reason for Congress to delay mandating that electronic machines produce paper records.''

Los Angeles Times: They say, ``Machines, too, can lie.''

Boston Globe: ``It's the computers' turn to mess up elections.''

Newsday says, ``Elections flawed.''

Palm Beach Post, Orlando Sentinel: ``The electronic voting machines are better than dimpled chads but need back-up.''

Eugene, Oregon, The Register-Guard: ``Voters need a record.''

Sarasota Herald Tribune: ``A paper trail would increase faith in elections.''

I could go on. In newspaper after newspaper, in town meeting after town meeting, in letter after letter sent to probably every Member of this House of Representatives, the public is calling for a voter verified paper trail because, I am pleased to say, the American public cares about their votes. They believe their votes are sacred and we should preserve that sanctity.

Someone who can speak with authority about this, about the importance of the franchise, how important it is that we extend the vote to all eligible voters and we make it as easy as possible for them to vote thoughtfully and that we ensure the integrity of those votes is the gentlewoman from the great State of Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown), which, I am sorry to say, the State has become the poster child of voting irregularities, but that is just because the vote was close in Florida. If it had been close in other States, we would have found voting irregularities in other States, too.

We have to do everything we can in every State to restore the sanctity of the vote, the integrity of the vote, the reliability of the vote, and with that, I would be pleased to yield to my friend, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for those remarks.

Let me again quote from Anthony Stevens, the Assistant Secretary of State of New Hampshire: The cost of restoring legitimacy is far greater than the cost of maintaining it. When there is an error in the election or when there is uncertainty that there might be an error in the election, it hurts democracy. The winner is compromised; the loser is compromised. Democracy is compromised.

So the fact that there is so much uncertainty about what happened in Florida three-and-a-half years ago is certainly no cause for celebration by the Republicans that they won because there is a cloud hanging over our democracy, and it cannot be resolved.

The HAVA Act, the Help America Vote Act, does take care of some of the problems that my colleague from Florida raised. A voter now can demand a provisional ballot. If when you show up at the polls you are told, well, we cannot find your name on the registration list, you can vote provisionally. You must be allowed to vote provisionally under the Help America Vote Act.

And then later they will determine whether that ballot is good. They will not turn you away.

It also increases accessibility, it increases compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, it strengthens the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it provides for a centralized database in each State of registered voters, and it helps replace the old machines.

That is right.

Mr. Speaker, there is one more point I want to make quickly before I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Certainly I will continue to yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with the gentleman from North Carolina also.

Each of these pieces of legislation deals with one aspect of the problem. One of the lessons of the election of 2000 was that many millions of Americans learned how complicated the voting question is. But we certainly can take care of these two matters in a straightforward way.

Again, my legislation would require that all voting systems produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits. It would ban the use of undisclosed software. It would require that all voting systems meet these requirements, a voter verification, in time for their November 2004 election, this year. It requires that electronic voting systems be provided for persons with disabilities earlier than under the Help America Vote Act, and it would require mandatory surprise recounts in one-half of 1 percent of all jurisdictions.

I think that would go a long way. Now, some of my colleagues here on the floor say, oh, that is not necessary, let us let HAVA work. I tell you one way we can let HAVA work. Each State has submitted to the Election Assistance Commission a plan of how it will comply with HAVA. That has been published in the Federal Register. Public comments on those State plans are due by May 8, and members of the public are invited to comment to the Election Assistance Commission.

That is one way that the process will work. Because ultimately it is the public, not the 435 of us here, who own this democracy and who ultimately must ensure that it works as it should.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. Con. Res. 97 and in recognition of the Garden Club of America and its members in central New Jersey.

Since its inception in 1913, the Garden Club of America has evolved from simply focusing on good gardening practices to becoming a leading advocacy group for environmental protection and community involvement. The men and women of the Garden Club work intimately with the soil and plants and know the value of clear air, clean water, and uncontaminated earth.

I work with Garden Club members in New Jersey and here in Washington, DC. They come to Capitol Hill to inform members of Congress about necessary protections for our air and water and necessary funding for preserving open space. Their hands-on work, literally, plays an equally important role in preserving the land and water around us. Garden Club members disseminate information on good gardening practices and maintenance of healthy lawns or golf courses with a minimum of chemicals. They also organize community events around gardening and provide scholarships and fellowships for young people interested in studying related fields.

The Garden Club of America has gone to great lengths to demonstrate the joys of horticulture to all Americans. They were instrumental in the founding of the National Arboretum and the Archives of American Gardens at the Smithsonian Institution and have played a significant role in the founding and upkeep of numerous other major gardens around the country.

Now, more than ever, these activists are turning their energies on the major environmental issues of the day. They are together a force to be reckoned with.

I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this resolution and continuing to encourage the work of Garden Club of America members in their districts.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise to recognize Ms. Natalie Stern, who will be representing New Jersey as our princess in the 2004 Cherry Blossom Princess Program.

Since 1948, state societies have selected accomplished female students to represent their states in the Cherry Blossom Princess Program. During the week-long program, the princesses participate in a number of events that provide them with an opportunity to share the culture and unique traditions of their state. The program culminates with a princess being crowned as the United States Cherry Blossom Queen, who will travel to Japan as a representative of the United States. During her two weeks in Japan, the U.S. Cherry Blossom Queen participates in events across the country and meets with Japanese dignitaries.

I am pleased that the New Jersey State Society picked Natalie Stern to represent our state in the festival. Ms. Stern is a shining example of the best New Jersey has to offer. She is a native of Pennington, New Jersey. She attended Stuart Country Day School in Princeton. Natalie continued her education at Indiana University and graduated in 2003 with two bachelor degrees. In addition to her studies at Indiana University, Natalie served as an intern at the White House as well as a fellow at the International Television and Radio Society in New York City.

I would like to extend my congratulations to Natalie and all of the other young women who have been selected to participate in the festival and I wish them all continued success in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 3108. This bill passed both the House and the other body in a bipartisan manner, and I had hoped that we could conclude this process in a bipartisan manner. However, I must say that I am disappointed that the conference report is actually quite partisan.

The conference report would jeopardize the retirement security of millions of hard-working middle-class families who work for small businesses. Though it provides needed reform for some pensions, it ignores the need to provide relief to the more than 60,000 mainly small businesses that join together to pool resources and reduce risk for their employees' pensions. Without relief, these small businesses face excise taxes and mandatory additional contributions, putting the companies and the family-supporting jobs they produce at risk. The conferees have chosen to forget the retirement security of approximately 9\1/2\ million workers who rely on these jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased with the conference report's changes to pension plans that are sponsored by large, individual companies. The people who work for these companies deserve to have their pensions strengthened and improved. For example, replacing the current 30-year Treasury bond interest rate that employers use to determine their defined benefit pension contribution with an index based on corporate bonds will add stability to long-term pension growth. It is critical, however, that we provide the same pension security to people who work for small businesses. Congress should not pick and choose which pension plans can get relief--we should provide relief for all defined benefit plans regardless of the size of the company offering them. I ask my colleagues to oppose this bill so that we can come back with new legislation that would provide proper pension security for all employees.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Chairman pro tempore. The Clerk will designate the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to modify my amendment at the desk with an amendment.

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

I appreciate the courtesy so we can at least consider the perfected form of this amendment.

The need for my amendment is precipitated by a recent court decision that would lift a ban that has been in effect in the State of New Jersey since 1999 that restricts the roads on which the very wide 102- inch or wider trucks travel.

And this amendment would uphold current restrictions and current policy, maintain current policy and, thus, by extension, affirm the right of States to regulate the super-sized trucks on roads that are not part of the national network.

In 1999 the then Secretary of Transportation and his associate at the Federal Highway Administration, the administrator, in writing and in person with Members of Congress and concerned State and local officials, categorically affirmed that, quote, ``nothing in Federal law or regulation would prevent New Jersey from banning large single or twin-trailer combinations from the subject routes unless they were traveling to a terminal or making pick ups or deliveries on these routes.''

And with that clarification, the State of New Jersey, the former Governor, Governor Whitman, subsequently adopted new limitations on what roads large trucks may and may not use.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the purpose of the amendment, in fact, is to maintain current law and current policy, to make sure that this new law, should it take effect, would not change anything.

New Jersey will continue and has declared its intention of arguing this in court; and we, the State of New Jersey, expect to win in court. We just do not want to change the policy with this new legislation. So this was not to side-step the courts but, rather, to keep the law the same.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, this would not preclude the truckers from continuing their suit or the State.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time, and I will address those points.

The amendment simply allows the States to have the authority that the Department of Transportation determined 5 years ago that they had under that existing transportation law. We just want to make sure that in the legislation we are considering today we do not change that. If it is determined that that is in violation of the Constitution, certainly they will be the governing decision, but if it is not determined, we do not want anything in this law to preclude those States' rights.

With that, I ask support for my amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, in just over 3 years the United States has faced two acute intelligence failures. The first was the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The second can be found in the arguments made to go to war in Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction have not been found. Anti-American sentiment has been strengthened and spread across the Islamic world. In the aftermath the United States has been saddled with a long-term commitment to pay the rising costs of war and endure the continuing loss of life in Iraq. It is in this context America's hard- won lessons from its past covert activities should be turned to, to guide us in our current endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to include in the Record a copy of the following speech by Professor Raymond H. Close delivered to the Princeton Middle East Society at Princeton University last month on the uses and misuses of intelligence in the conflict with Iraq.

Uses and Misuses of Intelligence

(By Raymond H. Close)

Today I want to describe to you the details of a few

specific situations that took place a number of years ago

where intelligence estimates and covert actions were

employed, and in some cases deliberately distorted, in a

manner calculated to support policy objectives of the U.S.

Government that might otherwise not have received the support

of the American people and the approval of the world

community. From an assessment of those experiences in the

past, perhaps we can draw some useful lessons to guide our

intelligence officials today in fulfilling their professional

obligations more honestly and appropriately.

My own experiences in the twenty years that I spent

actually engaged in clandestine operations in the Middle East

were entirely in the areas of old-fashioned espionage and so-

called covert action--which I define as the effort to achieve

specific strategic objectives for the United States through

secret intervention in the political processes of another

country. As you all know, the term ``covert action'' can also

include the employment of lethal violence in some situations

to accomplish objectives that could not otherwise be

justified by our own legal system or by humanitarian

principles, carried out by methods designed to hide our

government's role behind a shield of ``plausible denial''.

Let me start by telling you about some of my experiences in

Lebanon during the years 1952-1958, from which some lessons

can still be drawn, I think.

In 1957, I participated in a covert action operation in

Lebanon, explicitly ordered by President Eisenhower, in which

it was our objective to keep a government in power that was

committed to the open and enthusiastic support of American

policy objectives in the region, but was under assault by

internal elements determined that their country should adopt

a more independent stance. We were initially successful, but

our crude manipulation of the democratic process during

Lebanon's 1957 parliamentary elections contributed directly

to a civil war that was ended only on the landing of a large

U.S. Marine and Army military force one year later. To

justify that armed intervention, we deliberately and

knowingly provided false intelligence to the United Nations

purporting to prove that our forces had responded to indirect

aggression against the freely elected government by forces

inspired and supported by international communism. This was

pure fabrication. By the autumn of 1958, following our

military intervention, the government that we had supported

by our covert action had been replaced by a regime composed

primarily of individuals who had been leaders of the

political opposition, but who were not by any objective

standard enemies of the United States. The supreme irony, I

always thought, was that shortly thereafter Barry Goldwater

wrote a book in which he extolled the glorious success of our

ill-advised and ultimately counterproductive covert action

operation in Lebanon. Goldwater recorded that, in a

triumphant demonstration of how to employ U.S. power in the

cause of freedom, a communist regime had been overthrown in

Lebanon and replaced by a pro-western government. This

breathtaking contradiction of historical fact was an example

to me of how effective the big lie can be, and has,

particularly in recent months, reminded me to keep an open

mind when it comes to assertions of fact by senior American

policymakers. A case in point: On February 5th, 2003, just

one year ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his now-

famous report to the United Nations Security Council, said

this: ``My colleagues, every statement I make today is

backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not

assertions. What we're giving you are facts and

conclusions based on solid intelligence.'' Secretary

Powell's use of the pronoun ``we'' in this statement was

clearly intended to include CIA Director George Tenet,

whose face appeared right over Powell's shoulder

throughout the presentation. Tenet's presence could only

have been intended to put the CIA's official stamp of

approval on everything Powell was reporting--even

information that Tenet must have known was highly

questionable.

The Bush Administration apparently felt under pressure to

strengthen its case for war in Iraq by persistent enhancement

of whatever intelligence happened to be available that seemed

to support their policy objectives. The details of how that

corruption was implemented are much less important, however,

than the violation of principles that allowed a preemptive

war to be initiated on the basis of evidence that was known

by the senior levels of our government to be inconclusive,

and even demonstrably false in some cases. This misuse of

intelligence will have long-term costs, first among which is

that American and world public opinion will, in future crisis

situations, be so dubious about the credibility of American

intelligence that approval and support of other U.S. military

actions overseas may be withheld by the international

community even in situations where intervention is urgently

called for. Secondly, the personal image of George W. Bush

relying on questionable information to make life and death

decisions has drastically compromised his credibility and

effectiveness as a national and world leader. Finally, the

present crisis has revealed flaws in the way various

intelligence agencies in Washington evaluate their product,

and how honestly and objectively it is packaged and marketed

to their customers in a competitive

political arena in which the possession of allegedly

``solid'' secret information can provide such a formidable

advantage.

Another appropriate example, from which valuable lessons

can still be derived today, concerns events in Africa in the

late summer of 1998, when the Clinton Administration

retaliated against terrorist bombings of the American

embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam by launching long-

range Tomahawk missiles at targets in Afghanistan and the

Sudan. The missile attack on Khartoum, in particular, because

it was based on embarrassingly inaccurate intelligence, made

subsequent American counter-terrorism strategy much more

difficult to implement. At that time, in September 1998, 1

wrote the following in an op-ed piece published in the Sunday

Outlook Section of the Washington Post under the headline:

``We Can't Defeat Terrorism with Bombs and Bombast''. This is

an extract from that article, written exactly three years

before 9/11:

``To launch missiles into countries with which we are

technically at peace--and to kill their citizens--is to

declare that the United States is free to make its own rules

for dealing with the international problem of terrorism. What

standing will we have in the future to complain about any

other country that attacks the territory of its neighbor,

citing as justification the need to protect itself from

terrorism? Did those who authorized these attacks think

through the long-term implications of this short-sighted and

dangerous precedent?

``Let's get down to practical realities. The new threat we

face is often stateless, without sovereign territory or

official sponsorship. Friendly governments around the world--

especially those with large Muslim populations such as India,

Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the

Gulf states and the new republics of Central Asia--share a

common need for internal and regional stability. Terrorism

is a weapon that threatens all civil authority. This set

of circumstances provides an unprecedented incentive,

which is to say a God-given opportunity, to establish new

systems and procedures for intergovernmental cooperation,

even among states that may differ on other basic issues.

But the fight against a silent and hidden common enemy

requires infinite patience and tact on the part of law

enforcement agencies and intelligence services. It demands

absolute secrecy, mutual trust and professional respect.

If the United States loses its cool without warning, if it

is seen by others as a loose cannon that resorts to sudden

violent action on a massive scale, the critically needed

cooperation will not be there.'' Later in the same article

I added: ``President Clinton and others have labeled all

Islamic terrorists as members or `affiliates' of the

`Osama bin Laden Network of Terrorism.' This is, of

course, the common mistake of demonizing one individual as

the root of all evil. In fact, elevating bin Laden to that

status only gives him a mantle of heroism now and, more

ominously, will guarantee him martyrdom if he should die.

Informed students of the subject have known for years that

although the various militant Islamist movements around

the world share a common ideology and many of the same

grievances, they are not a monolithic international

organization. Our recent attacks. unfortunately, may have

inflamed their common zeal and hastened their unification

and centralization--while probably adding hosts of new

volunteers to their ranks. We are rolling up a big

snowball.''

I received many complimentary messages after that article

appeared in the Washington Post, including one from Robert

Bryant, Deputy Director of the FBI, who invited me to lunch

and told me that he had instructed all his officers who were

working on the terrorism target to read it. He particularly

appreciated the emphasis that I had put on dealing with

terrorism by patient criminal investigation and cooperation

with other international law enforcement agencies rather than

by what I had dubbed ``bombs and bombast''. The intelligence

indicating that the pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was

producing a precursor of biological weapons was completely

incorrect--another case of bad intelligence having been

seized upon to justify a violent military initiative that

proved to be unjustified and seriously counter-productive.

Thomas Pickering was Deputy Secretary of State for Political

Affairs at the time. I clearly remember when this

distinguished and highly respected statesman, a former U.S.

ambassador to Jordan, Israel, India, the Philippines and the

United Nations, appeared on national television to explain

and defend the Clinton Administration's Tomahawk missile

attack on the Sudan, offering confident and positive

assurances of the accuracy of U.S. intelligence reports that

the Daral-Shifa plant was a critically dangerous

installation--putting himself in exactly the same humiliating

position that Colin Powell is in today as a result of his

similarly inaccurate testimony before the United Nations one

year ago.

Finally, I would like to take a look at some important

features of the present situation in Iraq, looking again for

lessons that should have been drawn from earlier experience,

but were ignored. Here I am prepared to go out on a limb with

some current intelligence estimates of my own. In other

words, I'm ready to make some predictions about the future,

based on my own past experiences. I offer these predictions

with confidence, but with sincere hopes that they will prove

to be wrong.

The United States began its invasion of Iraq operating

under a number of seriously flawed expectations that were

based on nothing other than bad intelligence, construed by

dedicated ideologues to suit their own preconceived

misjudgments.

One expectation was that gratitude toward the United States

for liberating their country from Saddam's terrible

dictatorship would be the determining factor in shaping

Iraq's political future, in defiance of overwhelming evidence

that their own social and cultural heritage would inevitably

take precedence over American dictates. Secondly, the U.S.

has maintained a confident expectation that a new government

of Iraq would grant the U.S. long-term leases on military

bases from which the U.S. could project its power throughout

the entire Middle East and Central Asian region for a long

time into the future. Another expectation has been that the

new Iraqi government will continue in the future to cooperate

closely with the United States in the management of its oil

and gas resources, even when Iraq's own economic and

political needs might be in conflict with American

objectives. And fourthly, the Bush Administration leadership

(and especially the neo-cons and their allies in Congress)

have all confidently expected that Iraq would become a fully

cooperative partner in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian

problem, even when U.S. policies are in conflict with Iraqi

conceptions justice. It is as if our intelligence experts

have suffered total amnesia when it comes to the historic

realities of nationalism in the Arab world.

My prediction is this: Any new political group aspiring to

leadership of Iraq must recognize that its popularity and its

credibility will depend on the degree to which it can

demonstrate its independence (read that as ``defiance'') of

American influence. When this finally becomes apparent, the

United States Government will decide to interfere with the

political process to whatever extent, and by whatever means,

are necessary to ensure that control of the country remains

with acceptably cooperative and compliant Iraqis. I think

that such an operation would of necessity be anything but

covert, and I'm ready to predict that it will be a messy

failure. My conviction that the CIA will be directed to

ensure the installation of a compliant new regime in Iraq is

based on my experiences in Lebanon and elsewhere, which

demonstrated that men who occupy the Oval Office seem

inevitably to develop an irrational confidence that by

pushing a button they can have their dirty tricks department

across the Potomac River in Langley perform a covert action

operation to fix the problem--justifying the action as

necessary to protect the freedom of the American people and

the welfare of all humanity.

In my opinion, the hard reality is that when push comes to

shove, the Bush Administration, for all its exalted

protestations of virtue and Godliness, is not going to allow

a government that defies U.S. policy objectives to take power

in Baghdad. High principles will, as I have seen so many

times in my own experience, be compromised as necessary to

produce results that can be presented as justification for a

preemptive war costing thousands of human lives and uncounted

billions of dollars. The end result will be that the entire

Middle East will be destabilized, while the forces supporting

and sustaining terrorism will be injected with new vigor.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to briefly announce the introduction of the Knowledge Utilization in Education Act of 2004.

This act, which I will introduce today in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, aims to increase the use of research-based knowledge to boost student performance and close the achievement gap.

There is a clear need for this legislation. Research shows that student achievement increases when teachers use practices based on scientifically valid research. While the No Child Left Behind Act requires educators to use instructional practices based on research, such practices are not widely used. Given that students in 25,000 public schools may not be making adequate yearly progress, steps must be taken now to meet the demand for research-based instruction.

Overall, the act would help schools by providing new resources so educators can link education knowledge to classroom practice. The bill would also launch a national leadership initiative to bolster education knowledge.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this act. Congress should act now to give classroom teachers the research-based tools they need to help our Nation's children succeed. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the FY2005 Concurrent Budget Resolution that was reported by the House Budget Committee and that we have before this House for final passage. I do so for a variety of reasons that I want to explain.

I am heartened by our country's recent up tick in the index of leading economic indicators. Yet, we are also chastened because we all count among our families, friends, and neighbors, dislocated workers who have fallen victim to corporate down-sizing and dismayed recent college graduates and long-term unemployed Americans who are looking for their first or next jobs. All are seeking to grasp a rung up the ladder of economic opportunity, and this budget will not help them.

This misguided budget resolution frames critical policy choices for our national economy that will shape our lives and the lives of all of our constituents at the regional, State, community, and personal levels for many years to come.

One policy option, that is embodied in this flawed budget resolution, is to keep borrowing against our future and that of our children, and perhaps their children, to keep our economic ship afloat. This is how we have added more to the national debt in the past three years than in the prior two centuries of our Nation's history. A vote in favor of this budget resolution is a vote for more ``borrow and spend'' policies that are responsible for our country's current fiscal nightmare.

Adding insult to fiscal injury, this budget resolution also clears the way for more tax cuts for those who need them the least, given the predisposition of the Bush Administration, and who have benefited disproportionately from the Bush tax cuts enacted by this Republican- controlled Congress so far. Where is the tidal wave of re-investment in new plants, equipment, and jobs and factories in America that the proponents of this budget have promised us repeatedly in the past three years? At their behest, the American people are required to put our collective faith in the belief that the ladder of economic opportunity will not be pulled up behind the most affluent. If we continue down this ill-advised, self-indulgent path, we run the risk of drowning in a sea of red ink and our children and grandchildren can look forward to lives of indebtedness and growing inequality.

This Congress could make a better choice. In so doing, we could build upon what has worked in the past when our economy was growing by leaps and bounds and creating millions of new jobs, as recently as the 1990s. We could abandon the fraud of supply-side economics, once and for all, step up, and reassert control over shaping our preferred economic future--one that offers more good jobs, a higher standard of living, and real economic opportunity for all of the American people. Sadly, this budget resolution takes us farther down the wrong track.

Over several generations, American economic wealth and power has been built largely on the foundation of unparalleled imagination, research, innovation, productivity, and hard work. Investment and commercial opportunity in our economic system have always followed new discoveries and laboratory breakthroughs, not the other way around. Before prudent investors have risked their capital in new commercial ventures, our scientists, inventors, and pioneer thinkers have been supported in their efforts and rewarded for their successes in achieving what had previously been unthinkable.

If we want to strengthen our economy again, in the future, if we want to create new, good-paying jobs for all of our people, and promote broad-based, sustainable economic development, then I believe we must become more creative and provide more support from the public and private sector for cutting-edge research and development. We have to stop borrowing and spending. We have to stop eating our seed corn. We have to provide increased and more sustained support from the public and private sectors for basic research and development.

Up to now, America has always been a nation of explorers, creators, and inventors. We need to regain that edge and ride a new wave of research and follow-on commercial development into a new age of economic growth and prosperity. But this budget resolution does none of this. The supporters of this budget don't want to keep faith and invest in the American people, increase Federal support for research, development, and entrepreneurial drive, and rebuild American competitiveness in the global economy. If they did, they could not in good conscience vote for the skewed priorities of this budget resolution and the Draconian, counterproductive cuts it will dictate.

Let me cite a few of the most glaring examples:

On Federal support for research and development, the Federal research and development portfolio would mostly decline compared to last year's funding, consistent with the 0.5 percent increase for nondefense, nonhomeland security discretionary spending overall. Even the two favored nondefense research and development agencies in recent years are being forced to accept diminished expectations: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

On education, this budget again short-changes our students, teachers, and schools. It will provide $8.8 billion less than authorized and promised when the Congress enacted the No Child Left Behind Act at the urging of President Bush. It fails to provide any increase in the maximum Pell grant award at a time of soaring tuition costs in higher education. It also falls way short in funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), providing only half of the 40 percent Federal funding ceiling.

For America's veterans, this budget is another slap in the face and betrayal of what they have earned and been promised. This budget provides $1.3 billion less than what the House Veterans' Affairs Committee has recommended--on a bipartisan basis--to maintain vital veterans health care programs. Over the next five years, this budget cuts $1.6 billion from the total needed just to maintain current service levels. In practical terms, this shortfall will imperil health care for at least 170,000 veterans. Alternatively, it will result in 13,000 fewer doctors, nurses, and other caregivers needed to treat veterans. No wonder the Disabled Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and AMVETS are all strongly opposed to this budget.

On the environment, this budget promises more tax cuts, while cutting funding for clean air, safe drinking water, and the cleanup of toxic waste sites. It actually calls for cutting $1.5 billion (5.1 percent) from last year's funding level. That means clean water and drinking water needs, like the elevated lead levels in DC's water supply, will go unmet. Groundwater contamination from leaking MTBE and petroleum will continue. Promised conservation funding will not be provided and American taxpayers will foot the bill for egregious corporate polluters.

On homeland security, this budget provides $648 million (14.6 percent) less than last year for first responders, with firefighter assistance grants in particular being cut by $246 million (33 percent) below last year. It also cuts funding for port security by $79 million (63.2 percent) below last year's funding level. At a time when our Nation continues to face new threats to homeland security, it cuts $857 million from the President's request, applying cuts to all homeland security activities outside of the Pentagon.

On health care, this budget requires $2.2 billion in Medicaid cuts at precisely the time when nearly every State has already been forced to cut their Medicaid programs. It forfeits $1.1 billion for State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which means 4,000,000 children will lose coverage over the next four years. NIH will be cut by $553 million below last year's funding level, when adjusted for inflation and over the next five years, public health programs face an $11.4 billion shortfall. With over 887,000 people in the U.S. living with HIV/AIDS, this budget cuts $28 million. Cardiovascular disease research will be cut by $22 million, even though heart disease is the leading cause of death in America.

For American workers, this budget gives them the back of the hand. It fails to extend unemployment benefits and drastically shortchanges child care funding, when work requirements for welfare recipients are being toughened. It calls for $3.1 billion in cuts for safety net programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the earned income tax credit, child nutrition programs, and public employee retirement benefits.

For our small business constituents and entrepreneurs, this budget is badly deficient.

While funding for the Small Business Administration is not broken out as a separate function in this budget resolution, the Bush Administration has already made clear its intention to slash SBA funding in FY 2005 and beyond. President Bush's FY 2005 budget calls for cutting at least $79 million for the SBA from last year's funding. That would leave total funding for the SBA at nearly half of what was proposed in Former President Clinton's final budget request. It would also remove all Federal subsidies to the 7(a) loan program, the SBA's flagship program, and instead place higher fees on small businesses. The microloan program is targeted for elimination altogether.

I could go on and on with examples of why this budget ought to be rejected. Suffice it to say that it is more of the same policy prescriptions that have caused an $8.5 trillion fiscal slide and the loss of nearly 3 million jobs in the last three years.

We can and should do better. I want to support a budget that reflects fiscal responsibility and that will help all Americans achieve financial security. That means investing more in the American people and in programs to help create good-paying jobs, improve education, lower health care costs, make college affordable, helps small business grow, keeps faith with our veterans and military retirees, protects our homeland, and promote environmental sustainability. This budget resolution fails on all counts.