Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the House is taking action today to bring some sanity back to our military deployment and rotation policies. I intend to vote for this bill.

We all know that because of these repeated deployments, the divorce rates of military families are up, and the financial burdens faced by our Guard and Reserve families have been enormous. While this bill cannot address all of the deployment-related problems confronting our military families, it would address one of the most glaring: insufficient down time and retraining between deployments.

If this bill becomes law, it would mandate dedicated periods of time between deployments for all servicemembers. For active duty personnel, the intervals between deployments would have to be at least as long as the last deployment itself. For our Guard and Reserve forces, the interval between deployments would have to be at least three times the length of a servicemember's last tour.

Every Member of this House can tell multiple stories they've heard from servicemembers or their family members about the toll that these multiple, sometimes back-to-back deployments take on our military families. Let me quickly relate one story I've heard, one of many reasons I'm voting for this bill today.

Bill Potter is an attorney and lecturer in politics at both Princeton University and Rutgers University. Just over a year ago, he wrote an op-ed in the Trenton Times regarding the situation of his nephew, a Marine Corps captain, who had been blinded in his right eye after being fired on by an Iraqi policeman-turned-insurgent--one of many Iraqi policemen-turned-insurgents that we have trained and armed with an inadequate counterintelligence effort by the Iraqi government to weed out such bad actors.

Bill's nephew is a remarkable young man. Wounded twice in Iraq on his first tour in 2005, recovered sufficiently to go on a deployment to the Pacific in 2006 and is now facing the prospect of a second tour in Iraq beginning in January 2008--and of leaving his now nine year-old son behind for a third time in as many years.

This young Marine--like so many others--has already paid too high a price for this President's misguided war in Iraq. This bill, if enacted, would at least give our servicemembers and their families some real down time between deployments--time to reconnect with each other, and time for these gallant Americans to get the rest and refresher training that they will need to face the future. It's for all of those reasons that I'm voting for this bill, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the 21st Century Competitiveness Act of 2007. Taking most of its content from the National Academies Report ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm,'' H.R. 2272 is the compilation of an ambitious legislative portfolio that will fulfill the Innovation Agenda. I was proud to help craft the Innovation Agenda, on which our nation is dependent for its future prosperity, and to serve on the conference committee of H.R. 2272.

As a scientist and educator, I have had the opportunity to work at several stages of our nation's science research pipeline. This bill contains sound strategies for addressing our lagging competitiveness at every stage of this pipeline, from K-12 education to research and development. Such a comprehensive approach is badly needed. H.R. 2272 creates programs for training teachers and for encouraging students to enter into fields where there is national need. It sets us on a necessary path to doubling our investment in the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. To ensure we are harnessing all available talent, this bill encourages underrepresented students to enter science and technology. It ensures that we do not lose talent at the early career bottleneck that follows completion of a terminal research-based degree.

I am also pleased that the two initiatives that I have championed in the House of Representatives have made it into the conference

report. The first is the Foreign Language Partnership, which is a competitive grant program to enable institutions of higher education and local educational agencies working in partnership to establish articulated programs of study in critical foreign languages so that students from the elementary through postsecondary level can advance their knowledge successfully and achieve higher levels of proficiency in a critical foreign language.

The second is State P-16 Councils--that is, primary school through college. The bill authorizes the Secretary of Education to award competitive grants to states to promote better alignment of elementary and secondary education with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in academic credit-bearing coursework in institutions of higher education, in the 21st century workforce.

This bill will make us not only successful, but also a nation more worthy of success. It gives students with financial need better access to science and technology careers, empowering them to improve their lives and contribute to society. It makes necessary investments in energy research that will give our children a world we are proud for them to inherit.

I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution. Without its reforms, we will continue to lose our global lead in science, technology, and quality of life.

Mr. Chairman, I commend the subcommittee and its chair for a good bill, and I wish to enter into a colloquy with the gentlewoman from Connecticut regarding funding for Community Food Projects and organic transitions research.

The 2007 farm bill that passed this House on Friday substantially increased the authorized funding for Community Food Projects, but it changed it from mandatory to discretionary. The CFP supports hundreds of innovative projects selected competitively, such as community kitchens, farmers markets, farm-to-school programs, in Connecticut among other States. I'm hoping that we can work toward finding discretionary funds for CFP.

Similarly, while the 2007 farm bill authorized a substantial increase in funding for various organic programs, funding for the organic transitions research program remained flat for the fiscal year. The market for organic food has reached $15 billion and is growing. Yet farmers need help making the transition from traditional to organic methods of farming, and without that help we will increasingly be dependent on overseas sources for organic products.

I ask the Chair to consider an increased level of funding for these programs.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2008, and to commend the Committee and Subcommittee leadership for their efforts on the bill, but also to express my concern about the lack of funding for community food projects and the lack of an increase in funding for the organic transitions research program for Fiscal Year 2008.

The 2007 Farm Bill that passed the House on Friday substantially increased the authorization for Community Food Projects (CFP) funding, from $5 million to $30 million annually. However, it also changed the funding from mandatory to discretionary, and funding for CFP was not included in the FY 2008 Agriculture Appropriations bill that is before us today.

Hundreds of civic groups and associations throughout the country, as well as low-income consumers and farmers who produce for local and regional markets, benefit from this program. The program facilitates and builds the capacity of non-profit, community-based organizations so they can establish projects that meet the food needs of low-income populations; identify and address weakness in urban food systems, such as insufficient retail food stores in densely populations neighborhoods and poor access to healthy and fresh foods for schools; and promote comprehensive responses to food, farm, and nutrition issues by combining the resources of multiple sectors of the food system. From its inception in 1996 through 2007, CFP received mandatory funding under the Food Stamp Program and it has funded more than 240 innovative projects such as certified community kitchens, community supported agricultural operations, farmer's markets, agri-business incubators, farm-to-school programs and other projects.

I regret that the 2007 Farm Bill made CFP funding discretionary, if it remains so in the enacted bill, I hope that the Senate and House conferees will work to ensure that the prevailing level of funding for CFP will be provided in the enacted Fiscal Year 2008 Agriculture Appropriations bill.

In addition, I wish to stress the urgency of increasing funding for organic transitions research in Fiscal Year 2008. While the 2007 Farm bill will substantially increase funding for various organic programs, funding for the organic transitions research program has again remained flat for Fiscal Year 2008. The market for organic food has reached $15 billion and, according to the Organic Trade Association, growth in sales of organic food has been 15 percent to 21 percent each year since 1998, compared with 2 percent to 4 percent for total food sales. Although there are now 10,000 organic farms in the United States, that is not enough to keep pace with demand. As a result, organic food suppliers must increasingly look for organic produce and other agricultural products from overseas locations.

The Organic Transitions Program is a highly competitive grants program established as part of the Department of Agriculture's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service. This national program has been extremely important to the organic farming community in funding research to assist farmers in overcoming the barriers to transitioning their farm operations into organic production. Through grants awarded under the program, for example, a university in the West has been funded to research ecological soil community management for enhanced nutrient cycling; a Northeastern university has been funded to research reducing off-farm grain inputs on northeast organic dairy farms; and another--a university in a Great Plains state--to fund research into the transition to sustainability.

The demand for research on a wide variety of topics related to organic agriculture has been increasing in proportion to the surging growth in the demand for organic agricultural products, and the benefits of this research accrue not simply to organic and other farmers, but to the entire health-conscious population. Notwithstanding this surge in demand, funding for organic research to facilitate the transition into organic farming methods has been holding steady at just under $2 million for the last few fiscal years, which represents only one-hundredth of one percent of the size of the industry the research is intended to support.

The organic transitions program has been extremely important to the organic farming community in funding research to assist farmers in overcoming the barriers to transitioning

their farm operations into organic production. My amendment to increase funding for this program to $5 million passed in the House last year, and I hope to see this level of funding included in the enacted Agriculture Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2008.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the principle of equal pay for equal work and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007, H.R. 2831.

On May 29, 2007, the Supreme Court issued a disturbing and retrobressive ruling. In a 5-4 ruling the Court issued its decision in a sex discrimination case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear, that fundamentally changed protections that American workers have enjoyed for more than 40 years when they were codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As a member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, I participated in a hearing on the flawed ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. During that hearing the Committee heard testimony from Lilly Ledbetter describing the pay discrimination that resulted in her earning twenty percent less than the lowest paid man in the same position at Goodyear.

Applying the law as it was written and intended, the trial court awarded Lilly Ledbetter backpay and compensatory damages because of Goodyear's illegal sex discrimination. On appeal it went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Justice Samuel Alito led the 5-4 majority in dismissing the case. According to Justice Alito, when Lilly Ledbetter failed to file a discrimination case within the statutorily provided 180 days from the initial decision to pay her less than her male colleague, she was barred from filing a complaint and no relief was available. Despite documenting the sex based evaluation system Goodyear managers used, Lilly Ledbetter was denied justice and the rights afforded to her under the Civil Rights Act.

In a strongly worded dissent Judge Ginsburg noted the fallacy of the Majority's argument regarding the timeliness of Lilly Ledbetter's filing. She reminded the Court that a previous ruling that held each ``paycheck perpetuating a past discrimination . . . are actionable not simply because they are `related' to a decision made outside the charge-filing period . . . but because they discriminate anew each time they are issued.''

Judge Ginsburg explicitly called on Congress to intervene and uphold the protections provided by the letter and the spirit of the law, saying ``the ball is in Congress' court.''

Today, we answer Judge Ginsburg's call and reverse this disturbing Supreme Court decision. Today, we make clear that Congress is committed to protecting the rights of American workers and to ensuring that they have adequate remedies if they are discriminated against in the workplace.

The passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 clarifies that when it comes to discriminatory pay, the protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act extend not only to these discriminatory pay decisions and practices but to every paycheck that results from those pay decisions and practices. Any reasonable citizen who believes that we need protect the rights of workers for fair treatment at the workplace and fair pay would surely find the Supreme Court decision unreasonable. We must act once to reestablish fairness. I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this conference report, which seeks to ensure that our government fully implements the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. While the Congress has previously enacted the majority of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, several were not addressed during the last Congress. Moreover, in the years since the Department of Homeland Security was created and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 became law, we've learned a number of lessons about how well--or poorly--these reforms have worked. The bill before us is a partial response to those lessons learned.

This bill authorizes robust funding for a variety of homeland security grant programs, including emergency management performance grants, interoperable emergency communications grants, and the Urban Area Security Initiative Grant Program. The bill also mandates more emphasis on a risk-based approach to the awarding of UASI grants, something that I and others in the New Jersey delegation have long advocated.

Improving the department's ability to spot threats and foil attacks before they happen remains a primary concern of all of us in Congress. Those of us who serve on committees that deal with intelligence issues know that the department's intelligence operation suffers from a lack of clout within both the department and the intelligence community as a whole. The bill offers a partial remedy for this problem by reorganizing the department's intelligence operations and elevating the Chief Intelligence Officer from an Assistant Secretary to an Undersecretary--putting that officer on par with his counterpart at the Pentagon.

I agree with the thrust of this reorganization. However, we shouldn't deceive ourselves: rearranging the department's organization chart is no substitute for the President putting forward highly qualified nominees for this and the many other positions at DHS that remain vacant to this day. While I believe this proposed reorganization will help to rationalize and streamline DHS's intelligence management structure, the President must take action to appoint intelligence leaders who are aggressive and focused--and then hold them accountable for their performance or lack thereof.

Another 9/11 Commission recommendation relating to our intelligence operations concerned declassifying how much we spend per year on intelligence activities.

Those who oppose declassifying the overall budget figure claim it would undermine our security. Declassifying the overall budget figure would simply tell the American taxpayer how much of their money is going towards intelligence programs and activities, something they most certainly deserve to know. Declassifying the overall budget figure would in no way compromise intelligence sources or methods. That is why I was disappointed that the conferees elected to include language that allows the President to postpone or even waive the disclosure of the overall intelligence community budget figure by certifying to Congress that such disclosure would damage national security. This was a needless concession to the President and I will seek to have this provision reexamined next year.

Regarding measures Congress can take to improve its oversight of the intelligence community, I was pleased to see that the report indicates that the Senate is considering following the House's lead in this area. Earlier this year and under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, the House passed H. Res. 35, which created the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, which I have the honor of chairing. Our panel contains a mix of members from both the Appropriations Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Our charter is to continuously review the operations of the intelligence community and to recommend changes in policies and funding levels where necessary. We just completed our first such review, and the vast majority of our recommendations were approved by the full Appropriations Committee just this week. If the Senate is looking for a model for how to better coordinate its intelligence oversight work, I would highly recommend that they look at the model we're now using here in the House.

I was also very disappointed to see that the conferees dropped language relating to workers' rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining with the department. Most other Federal workers already have this right, and our failure to ensure our airport screeners are allowed to organize and negotiate for better salaries and benefits is wrong and should be revisited next year.

On a brighter note, the bill significantly enhances the power and status of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), whose creation was another key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.

Currently, the PCLOB is under the direct control of the Executive Office of the President. It has lacked significant funding, something I tried to remedy in the fiscal year 2007 Intelligence Authorization bill by offering an amendment to the bill that would have authorized an annual funding stream of $3 million. Unfortunately, the Republican majority blocked that amendment from coming to the House floor for a vote. This bill solves that problem by authorizing a steady increase in the Board's budget, from $5 million for fiscal year 2008 up to $10 million through fiscal year 2011, and such funds as are necessary from 2012 and beyond.

Another drawback to the current Board is its lack of independence has clearly undermined its ability to act as a true civil liberties watchdog. The bill before us would remove the Board from the EOP and make it an independent agency within the executive branch, and require that all Board members--not just the chairman--be subject to Senate confirmation. The bill also gives the Board real subpoena power, a critical tool for ensuring compliance with the Board's requests for information and testimony from executive branch officials.

Overall, this is a good bill whose enactment would enhance our Nation's security, and it is for that reason that I will vote for it and I urge my colleagues to do likewise.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this appropriations bill.

One of the most important roles of government is ensuring public safety. Over the last several years, the Federal Government simply has not been providing enough support to local and state law enforcement. The Justice Department's Uniform Crime Report statistics have now shown for 2 consecutive years measurable increases in violent crime nationwide. The Bush administration clearly has its priorities skewed, as the budget it proposed for the Community Oriented Policing Services (C.O.P.S.) program for Fiscal Year 2008 was a mere $32 million, a reduction of over half a billion dollars from last year's level.

This bill addresses that problem by increasing C.O.P.S. program funding to $725 million, and designating $100 million of that amount to be used to hire an additional 2800 police officers nationwide.

There is simply no question that our country's far more robust commitment to putting cops in the streets in the 1990's help reduce violent crime over the last decade. According to the General Accountability Office ``C.O.P.S. funded increases in sworn officers per capita were associated with the declines in rates of total index crimes, violent crimes, and property crimes.'' The same GAO study showed that between the years of 1998 and 2000, C.O.P.S. hiring grants were responsible for reducing crime by about 200,000 to 225,000 incidents--one third of which were violent. Across the state of New Jersey, approximately 4,790 officers were hired by local police departments using C.O.P.S. funds. This meant an additional 628 police officers and sheriff deputies walking the beat in the local communities of my Congressional District. Further, 33 school resource officers were hired to ensure that our children's schools are safe. The committee's increase in funding for this program for Fiscal Year 2008 is a welcome change from recent years, but I hope it will only be a down payment on much larger increases to come. Ideally, we should return to the kind of funding levels that gave us the kind of nationwide police presence we enjoyed in the last decade.

I am pleased that the committee has provided a robust increase for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants Program by more than $80 million over the Fiscal Year 2007 level to $600 million. These grants are vital to our local communities--they help local law enforcement organizations get the support they need to combat violent crime, particular gangs and drug-related criminal activity.

In the area of science funding, the bill provides for much needed increases in the overall budget of the National Science Foundation, and for science education funding. Recent history has shown that when the federal government invests in science programs and education, our Nation as a whole benefits.

When funding for the National Institutes of Health was doubled during the previous decade, many students recognized the opportunity and acted accordingly. Federal seed money fostered high-income, highly desirable jobs and entrepreneurial companies that lead the 21st century economy. Their innovations have made the U.S. the global leader in the life sciences and biotechnology.

Earlier this year, I led more than 80 of my colleagues in an appeal to this committee that it increase overall funding for the NSF as well

as education-specific funding. I'm pleased that the committee responded by increasing NSF funding to $6.509 billion, $80 million over our collective request, as well as adding $72 million specifically for science education funding. I want to thank the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Obey, and the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Mollohan, for demonstrating a commitment to make meaningful investments in the NSF's physical sciences and engineering programs.

Finally, the Commerce Department portion of this bill provides badly needed additional funding to address perhaps the greatest threat to our collective future--global climate change.

The committee has added $171 million over the President's request to help fund a number of key climate change initiatives, including a comprehensive study of the problem, as well as changes to National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program to ensure that critical climate monitoring sensors are added onto future NPOESS platforms. It is vital to both our economic and our national security that we take whatever measures are necessary to gain a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that drive global warming so that we can implement the full range of measures necessary to combat it.

Mr. Chairman, I commend the committee for bringing us a bill that reflects the priorities of the American people, and I urge my colleagues to vote for it.

Madam Chairman, our Nation's food inspection system is a critical safeguard in guaranteeing the health and welfare of all Americans. However, the federal protections that have existed for over 40 years are now threatened by a provision in the Farm bill that would allow meat and poultry inspected by state inspectors to be sold across state lines.

The Nation's food inspection system has served our Nation well by providing clear guidelines and a network of dedicated professional Federal inspectors. Its roots go back to the early 1900s, where a Federal inspection system became one of the landmark legislative accomplishments of President Theodore Roosevelt. While occasional problems have developed, on the whole, our national meat and poultry inspection system has been an unqualified success, with minimal incidents of food borne illnesses due to poor practices, handling or hygiene.

So why would we change a system that is so successful? It is my understanding that this change is being proposed to encourage the growth of small meat processing facilities as well as create new markets for state-inspected meat. While more competition and building new markets are laudable goals, they need not come at the expense of food safety or result in the dismantlement of the federal inspection system. No one has made a compelling case that the federal inspection system has truly hindered competition or market development. Thousands of small plants do well under the current inspection regIme.

However, in making this change, we are opening the door to problems that could multiply the exposure of consumers to food borne illnesses and food poisoning. The record of plants subject to state inspection is troubling. The USDA IG has repeatedly found that state inspection regimes often do not meet basic requirements for sanitation or cleanliness.

Despite this, language was added to the Farm bill to roll back these protections. A letter to Congress from a coalition of groups promoting food safety pointed out that the provision would:

Eliminate the 40 year old protection in the federal meat

and poultry inspection acts that prohibit shipping state

inspected meat across state lines.

Make 80% of all federally inspected plants eligible to

leave federal inspection in favor of state programs which

supporters of the bill insist are more understanding of

company problems.

Not allow states to impose additional or higher food safety

standards.

Ignore the inability of states to implement recalls of

adulterated meat and poultry that have crossed state lines.

The potential for the spread of food-borne illnesses across the country will only increase if we are to allow this provision to remain in the legislation. I plan to work with my colleagues to ensure that this troubling provision be dropped when the conference to the Farm bill is convened. Americans deserve the piece of mind that comes with the knowledge that the next meal they consume will not make them sick nor cause them harm.

Madam Chairman, I acknowledge and do not disparage the work of the committee. Let us consider, though, how much better we can do-- for consumers, for the Northeast, for New Jersey, for specialty crop growers, for small farmers, for nutrition programs, for our common environment.

By shifting from obsolete programs the Kind amendment provides an additional $1.2 billion above the committee bill for fruit and vegetable growers--tripling the Farmer Market Promotion Program, making $500 million mandatory for Specialty Crop Research, making $150 million mandatory for Community Food Projects, and providing hundreds of millions of dollars for community supported agriculture, and the School Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.

I want to emphasize that the Kind amendment would provide $3 billion more than the committee bill to conservation programs.

Support for the Kind amendment is broad and diverse including environmental and conservation groups, nutrition groups and groups that serve low-income Americans, specialty crop and organic farmers, and taxpayer groups. This is a sensible amendment. Indeed, the proposal by Mr. Kind, the gentleman from Wisconsin, is a remarkable, admirable legislative reform. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill.

This week, the White House announced that it foresees American troops in Iraq into at least 2009, and the President has even gone so far as to suggest that our presence in Iraq may evolve to look like our presence in South Korea. We've had troops stationed in South Korea--on permanent bases--for over 50 years. This resolution says clearly to the President and the people of Iraq that we will not turn our temporary presence in Iraq into a permanent one. The Congress should take whatever additional measures are necessary to ensure that no funds are expended for the construction of permanent bases in that country, and to that end I urge my colleagues to vote for this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join the gentlelady from New York, Ms. Gillibrand, in support of H. Res. 521, Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the 1932 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. This was truly a great moment in the history of sports. The beautiful Lake Placid-Wilmington region played host to athletes from around the globe and the event put the USA on the map of winter sports. The graceful Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie won the second of her three gold medals. American speed skater Jack Shea won two gold medals, a first for Olympic competition. The United States won 12 medals in all, the most in the competition. Ever since, the spirit and beauty of competitive winter sports have remained on display in Lake Placid, which played host to the United States' memorable 1980 hockey victory over the Soviet Union, and in countless skiing, skating, sledding and other events. We can all be proud of Lake Placid's rich history.

Madam Speaker, at the end of last month, Dr. William Wulf ended his 11 years as the President of the National Academy of Engineering.

Many of us have come to rely on the NAE, along with its affiliated organizations, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, to help sort through the increasing science and technology quotient in our policy debates.

Bill has been extremely effective in helping Members of Congress understand how technical issues affect our lives. He was instrumental in the National Academy work Rising Above the Gathering Storm, which caught the attention of America about students' and workers' declining ability to compete internationally. He was among the first to warn of the increased need for cybersercurity, which everyone is talking about now, but Bill Wulf was realizing 10 years ago. He also worked on data copyright issues, patents, energy legislation--the list goes on. He also has shown great interest in deploying reliable voting machines around the country.

Bill Wulf was a frequent resource at committee hearings, where he taught many in the research community about the value of skillful communications with policy makers. He has led the NAE with grace and with vision and the organization emerges from his period of leadership strengthened and invigorated.

Bill is heading back to his faculty post at the University of Virginia, where many fortunate students, both in engineering and in the liberal arts, will now get the benefit of his thinking that has been so helpful to us here in Washington.

I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking Bill Wulf for all he has done for the Academies and for the Nation. We look forward to continuing to work with you in the years to come.

Madam Chairman, I rise today to oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from Indiana, Mr. Pence to the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2008.

Mr. Pence's amendment would deny Federal funding under Title X of the Public Health Services Act to Planned Parenthood health facilities throughout the country. As a supporter of Planned Parenthood and the services that it offers to my constituents in my central New Jersey district, I firmly oppose this purely political amendment.

This should not be an anti-choice or pro-choice debate about one of the many services that Planned Parenthood provides. In fact, according to Federal statute, no money from Title X can be used for abortion services. Title X makes grants to public and private nonprofit organizations to provide family planning and basic reproductive health care information and services to low-income women. Therefore this debate should be about prevention. It should be about continuing to provide women with the necessary tools for proper prevention, including contraception and education. It should be about protecting women's health by providing women with access to reproductive health care.

Planned Parenthood's 841 affiliates provide reproductive health care services to 5 million men and women annually including 84,500 in the state of New Jersey. 63 percent of these patients receive reproductive health care services and 37 percent receive family planning services. Through family planning services Planned Parenthood estimates that its services prevent over 631,000 unwanted pregnancies annually.

Cutting Title X funding to Planned Parenthood is nothing short of irresponsible. The low income women who are served through Title X are four times more likely to face an unintended pregnancy. As a safety net provider, Planned Parenthood plays a critical role in serving these women. Title X has proven to be effective and prevents 1 million unwanted pregnancies each year. Planned Parenthood, as the Nation's oldest and largest family planning provider, is responsible for preventing 60 percent of unwanted pregnancies and we should not act to prevent women from getting the reproductive health care they need. I urge my colleagues not to support the Pence amendment.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman, as you may know, the funding authorized for the Help America Vote Act of 2002, known as HAVA, for disability access and protection and advocacy payments, was never fully appropriated. Section 261 of HAVA authorized $100 million in disability access funding to make polling places accessible to individuals with disabilities and to provide them with information about the accessibility of polling places.

I am sure the Chair and my colleagues would agree, it is important for equality under the law that all voters have good access to voting.

In addition, section 291 authorized $10 million annually for fiscal years 2003 through 2006 and such sums as necessary thereafter to pay for the protection and advocacy systems of each State to ensure full participation in the electoral process for individuals with disabilities, including the process of registering to vote, casting a vote and gaining access to polling places. To date, only $55 million of that amount has been appropriated under HAVA to fund accessibility, and only $22 million has been appropriated to fund protection and advocacy systems.

Voting is indeed the cornerstone of our democracy, and unless all eligible voters are assured access to the polls, that fundamental right and the integrity of our electoral system generally are severely undermined. Therefore, I seek to amend the bill to provide $15 million in funding for accessibility under section 261 of HAVA, and an additional $6 million in funding for protection and advocacy systems under section 291 of HAVA, for a total increase of $21 million. This would result, as you can quickly calculate, in several hundred thousand dollars per State to assist in voting for voters with disabilities.

I urge my colleagues to support this increase.

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

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his agreement, and simply ask that he continue, as he always has, to stand up for the American ideal of equality for all at the polling place.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman, this amendment is intended to make it possible for more teachers throughout America to have the professional development that we have promised them in science, math and technology education.

You may know that under No Child Left Behind, the Elementary and Secondary Act reauthorization, that was the Eisenhower Program that provided teacher training and professional development, was changed to Math and Science Partnership. Subsequently, the funding was cut to about a quarter of what had previously been provided, and it has never recovered.

I recognize that the committee under Chairman Obey's leadership has tried to get back that lost ground that was lost under previous leadership. Nevertheless, the teachers and hence the students are not getting what they need. Whether you look at the ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm'' report of the National Academy of Sciences or the Congress's own Innovation Agenda or the President's Competitive Initiative, we are all saying, in fact leaders of this country are yelling and screaming that we must do better in science and math education for our competitiveness, for our quality of life. If we are to do that, we must help the teachers with their professional development.

Funding prior to No Child Left Behind for math and science teacher development was $485 million. Currently under this appropriations bill in front of us, the funding for the successor programs for math and science teacher professional development is $182 million. Again, I recognize what the committee has been trying to do. It is not enough. We owe it to the students. We owe it to the teachers. But even more, we owe it to our society.

If our economy is to grow, if our productivity is going to grow, we must do better in math and science education. This is one of the important steps as recommended by the Glen Commission on Elementary and Secondary Education, as recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, as recommended by so many, including so many in this room. So I urge the adoption of my amendment which would put $25 million additional dollars into the Math and Science Partnership.

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

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I also thank him for presenting this amendment, similar to an amendment that I offered earlier in a larger dollar amount. Perhaps this one will have a better chance of success. It still should provide funding for hundreds of teachers in each State, to get some of the professional development that we have promised them that they need and that will help our competitiveness, our quality of life, our economic productivity and the science capacity of our students.

Madam Chairman, we are not doing nearly enough in this area, and everyone says so. We should look for every opportunity to enhance our science and math education, and start by helping the teachers whom we ask to teach these subjects to our students.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 980, the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act. I have been a cosponsor of this legislation in every Congress since I was first elected, and I am glad that under Democratic leadership, it has finally come to the floor of the House for a vote.

It is imperative that we do all that we can to assist the police and firefighters that sacrifice so much in order to protect us. This bill requires States to establish a collective bargaining floor to allow police and firefighters the chance to negotiate their labor agreements. Many States already have similar laws on the books, but for those that don't, this is a good starting point. Public safety officers should have just as much of a right as other workers to organize. When they do so, they not only benefit themselves, but also society as a whole.

We are not forcing unionization on States, nor are we doing anything here today that could in any way jeopardize public safety. We are simply allowing those brave men and women who provide for our safety the chance to negotiate a more livable wage, a better pension plan, and expanded health insurance coverage. We owe it to them, and I am glad that this body will finally take up this important bill. I urge passage of H.R. 980.