Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, millions of Iraqis went out and voted for a new, national parliament, and I applaud them for doing so. I also commend the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, who helped the Iraqi people vote in safety. Our troops are doing a difficult job in Iraq.

I do not favor immediate withdrawal. Opposition to immediate withdrawal is not a substitute for a clear and detailed American strategy in Iraq, nor is blindly staying the course. What is needed is coming to terms with what the course should be--a plan regarding completion of our presence in Iraq.

Last month, the Senate adopted an amendment to the Defense bill that requires the President to submit such a plan to Congress, an amendment I strongly support. Indeed, I favor the more rigorous version of the amendment that was offered in the other body. In addition to requiring the Administration to provide Congress with a detailed strategy in Iraq with measurable benchmarks, the Administration would also provide Congress with estimated dates for the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq as each condition is met.

Unfortunately, the resolution before the House is transparently political. The House should reject it.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take the language we have heard from the Republicans in the last few minutes and apply it to child support.

CBO says this budget will result in $24 billion less in child support over the next 10 years. That is the Congressional Budget Office. All right, one of you said Washington spends too much, too unwisely. Cutting child support payments by $24 billion?

You also said not how much, but how it is spent. Yes, it is spent in administrative expenditures to collect money for children.

Oh, and one of you said it is the family budget that is at stake. Absolutely, families with kids who are entitled to child support, and you are going to reduce what is collected by $24 billion over the next 10 years.

And then the lingo we hear, ``slow the growth rate.'' Under this formula, the money goes to the States and to the counties to collect money that is owed to children. I spent some time out in Macomb County talking to the people who administer this program, and I wish I could bring just one of the children who will be harmed by what you are doing and put them on this table, and have you look them in the eye and repeat your language. I do not think you would dare do it.

Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about raising taxes. You are dodging the issue.

This is not the formula for Medicaid or other programs; this is a formula in terms of the Federal share for child support. I would like any of you to stand up and deny the estimate of CBO that what you are doing will reduce the

amount collected in child support by $24 billion over the next 10 years.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

It will go up. Sure, they are going to go up because there are more kids from families of divorce. But I ask you, does CBO not say because of your change, $24 billion over the next 10 years will not be collected for the children? Yes or no?

And it is $24 billion less because of you people.

Mr. Speaker, this Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill is a very flawed bill which would badly underfund health care, education, and social services critical to all Americans. Although I was unable to vote in favor of the bill, I do want to call attention to one bright spot.

For the first time, the Congress has provided dedicated funding to educate women, their families, and their physicians about the risk factors and early warning signs of gynecologic cancer. Each year, tens of thousands of women die of gynecologic cancers that could have been treated had they been detected earlier. Ovarian cancer, the deadliest of the gynecologic cancers, has a survival rate of 80 to 90 percent if detected in Stage One or Stage Two and a survival rate of 20 percent or less in the late stages.

Although only cervical cancer has a screening test reliable enough for routine use on

women without symptoms, gynecologic cancers have clear risk factors and early warning signs. A recent study found that almost 90 percent of women with early stage ovarian cancer had symptoms before being diagnosed. That's why public education is key--if women and their doctors know the risk factors and early signs, a specialist can use diagnostic tools to rule out cancer or detect it in the early stages.

I first became aware of the tremendous opportunity for the federal government to save lives when I heard the story of one of my constituents. Johanna Silver Gordon was a health-conscious public school teacher who died of ovarian cancer after being diagnosed in a later stage--leaving friends, family, and students heartbroken that they and she had not known the early warning signs. Unfortunately, her story is all too common. I first heard Johanna's story from her sister, Sheryl, and I introduced legislation to create Johanna's Law, a national public education campaign to eradicate gynecologic cancer death. Thanks to Sheryl's work and that of thousands of other tireless cancer survivors, family members, and physicians, Johanna's Law has the support of a majority of the House of Representatives and provided the inspiration for the language in this bill.

The language in this bill directs the Secretary of HHS and the Office of Women's Health to coordinate their education and outreach efforts on gynecologic cancers into a national public education campaign, focused on early detection. The bill provides $100,000 in dedicated resources, in addition to the resources HHS already has for cancer education. It is a small but important first step toward ensuring that what happened to Johanna does not happen to other women. I commend the conferees for its inclusion, and hope we can work in a bipartisan fashion to build upon this effort.

I also want to commend my colleagues, Darrell Issa, Rosa DeLauro, and Kay Granger, who have worked tirelessly with me to promote Johanna's Law and raise awareness of gynecologic cancers. I hope we can continue to work together to build on this start.

Mr. Speaker, I mostly want to talk about substance. But you know it is so hypocritical for anybody on the majority side to come here and say that the minority is just saying no when you will not allow us to put on the floor a substitute to which we want to say a resounding yes. That is really hypocrisy. This is too important a subject to be governed by the tyranny of the majority. We need to strengthen and to save defined benefit plans in this country. This is the question. Will this bill do that? And I think the answer is basically, in all likelihood, it will not strengthen and preserve, but it will weaken and over time eliminate.

Look, when it came to Social Security your mantra was save, strengthen Social Security. And the President, in this Chamber, used those terms, when the real purpose was not to save and strengthen Social Security. The purpose was to replace it. And there is a legitimate issue here, whether what you are proposing here, when combined with the Senate's and with the administration's position, will it preserve and strengthen defined benefit plans or will it likely undermine?

And the answer, I think, is that it will do the latter.

When we come to the general debate, I am going to be talking about a number of the factors. There are four key factors at play in this bill. They are technical, but they are vital: the yield curve, the credit balance issue, the credit rating or how assets are evaluated, and the averaging and smoothing issues.

As to just one of them, the yield curve provision in this bill, the people who work with these issues, the chief financial investment people, 60 percent, say essentially that most of the pension plans are going to either be frozen or they are going to be eliminated. That is what 60 percent of these officers say will be the result.

So you are not going to be protecting workers from underfunded pension plans. What you are going to be doing, essentially, is putting in place rules that will make it difficult for pension plans to exist and, therefore, they will be withdrawn, if not, frozen. So that is really the basic issue here. And it is heightened because of the administration's position. They want to so tighten the rules that it will be hard for any of these defined benefit plans to survive.

So this is the basic issue, whether in this country we want to try to preserve defined benefit plans. Most of them are not in trouble. Many of them would be placed in trouble through a combination of the provisions in this bill and in the Senate bill.

So I want to close with this: What you are saying, and you have said it on the floor, is leave it to the conference committee. For example, there is no protection for airline workers here at all. Leave it to the conference committee. What you have said to a few of the people is we will make some adjustments here in this bill, but there is no assurance that those adjustments will prevail. So in a word, what you are trying to do is not protect defined benefit plans, but through these provisions and those in the Senate bill, with the help of the administration, you are going to accelerate their demise. That is our position. And it is worthy of discussion. It is worthy of debate, and it is worthy of your giving us a substitute that would make sure that defined benefit plans can survive in the United States of America for the workers of this country.

Mr. Speaker, in a few words, what we need to do is to reform our pension system but not to undermine it.

There is a basic issue here, and I hope Members will pay attention to it. We have had in this country in the private sector a system of guaranteed monthly benefits under defined pension plans in the private sector for millions and millions of people. That has been meaningful.

What I think is going to happen if this bill becomes law and if it were to be combined in conference with provisions in the Senate is essentially to undermine defined benefit plans and move us towards what are called defined contribution plans, so more and more, everybody will rely on a 401(k) instead of the guaranteed benefit in the private sector. That shift was tried in Social Security by the majority. It failed for good reasons, and now I think there is another effort here regarding private pension plans to lead to the same result.

We asked the Bush administration when they testified before Ways and Means, tell us the impact on industry of your proposals. They could not tell us. If you look at the chief financial officers, 60 percent of them who deal with pension plans essentially say that this yield curve of the administration, and there is a modified version of it in this bill, would lead to benefit cuts and termination of defined benefit plans, and that would affect manufacturing as well as other industries.

I know there have been some efforts to moderate that. Various people have scrambled to try to reduce the potential undermining of defined benefit plans through this provision on credit balances, but I want everybody to know that that is not likely to work out in the main because this Republican bill would discourage companies from doing the responsible and sensible thing, advance funding their pension plans to free up resources in years when they needed to make big expenditures, like rolling out a big product line, and penalize those who would do it any way, who would advance funds.

Look, there are some transition rules, but they are not going to basically resolve this issue of whether we are going to maintain, strengthen defined benefit plans.

Now, it is said, look to the conference committee. All I can say is, look at the history of conference committees in this institution in recent years. What is likely to come out is a bill that would make this bill even worse, and even if it did not, what we face with this bill is this basic question: Do we want to strengthen defined guaranteed pension plans and payments, or are we going to move to everybody on their own? I think this House should stand up and say, let us stand up for a defined benefit system in this country.

Madam Speaker, there is no question that Congress must give law enforcement the tools it needs to prevent terrorist attacks against the American people. When the Congress approved the PATRIOT Act 4 years ago, we recognized that the serious nature of the threat required giving law enforcement broad new powers to help prevent it. There is also no question that the House and Senate should not allow the PATRIOT Act to expire on December 31. Indeed, nearly all of the 166 provisions of the PATRIOT Act are already the permanent law of the land.

Four years ago, the Bush administration and the Leadership of the House rushed the original PATRIOT Act through the House without full debate or the chance to make improvements to the bill. There is no need to rush an imperfect bill through the House today simply to accommodate a 6-week holiday recess.

While the conference report makes a number of improvements to the measure the House approved last summer, further improvement is needed. In particular, I am disappointed that the bill before us does not include language to change how first-responder grants are allocated. We need to make the formula risk-based. Just last week, the bipartisan members of the former 9/11 Commission awarded Congress and the Bush administration a grade of F for our failure to distribute homeland security funds on the basis of risk. The 9/11 Commission made this recommendation 17 months ago. How can we continue to justify a first responder grant formula that awards Wyoming $37.94 per capita while Michigan--a key border State--receives just $7.87 per capita? If we're not going to fix this problem now, then when will we make this change?

In a number of other areas, the Senate-passed version of the bill included key safeguards that were removed from the conference report. In particular, the Senate bill contained important protections relating to the business and library records provisions of the Act that have been so controversial with our constituents. The Senate-passed bill required the government to show that the records sought by the government have some connection to a suspected terrorist or spy. The standard contained in the conference report is much weaker. It would allow the government to compel the production of business or library records merely by showing that the records are ``relevant'' to a terrorism investigation.

In addition, unlike the Senate-passed bill, the conference report fails to protect the records of innocent Americans collected by means of National Security Letters. The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year to obtain consumer records from communications companies, financial institutions, and other companies. These National Security Letters are issued without the approval of a judge and permanently bar recipients from telling anyone besides their lawyer that they have been served. Unlike the Senate-passed bill, the conference report does not provide for meaningful judicial review of the National Security Letter nondisclosure requirement. Under the bill before the House, the records collected under National Security Letters can be kept forever and even used for data-mining. We need better privacy safeguards in this area.

I will vote against passage of this legislation today because I am convinced that we can write a better bill that safeguards both our vital security interests and basic American liberties. To that end, I have cosponsored legislation that calls for a three-month extension of the current PATRIOT Act to give Congress additional time to perfect this legislation. We should take the time we need to do the job right.

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to be here with my colleagues. John Dingell is being lionized here tonight and for good reason, as was true on previous occasions. And I think ``lion'' is a good term to describe John Dingell. Ferociousness. There is a ferocity about John, about his beliefs, a belief in the common man and woman and their aspirations and their needs.

A ferociousness about the need for health for everybody in this country. He has devoted his life to this. A ferociousness, and I am not on the committee, but Members who have been there tell me that is so true when he investigates. And also for the automotive industry, it is in his blood. It is in his being, raised in southeast Michigan, knowing the importance of it.

A lion is also known for bravery, and, John, you are gutsy. You are brave. You do not simply look to see where the winds are blowing, and that has been a mark of your career.

A lion is also known for eminence. And I think just, for example, and Mr. Obey and others have talked about the environment, what a lofty person John has been about our earth, about its sacredness, its sanctity.

And also, John, you have been an eminence in terms of the institution here. You believe in it, and you want everybody else to believe in it.

A lion is also known for gruffness, and there is a bit of that in John. He can be very succinct.

So all those characteristics of a lion, I think, apply to John Dingell as a lion in this place. But we were chatting in my office. Some of the staff has worked directly with John, and everybody has worked with his staff, and we were talking about another characteristic of John that is sometimes lost, and that is gentleness. Some of it comes from his beloved wife, Debbie, but I think it is part of his being.

So we were talking about, and I finish with this, a fable about a lion, the fable about Androcles and the lion. Androcles was a slave, as we might remember, who escaped. He fled from the Emperor. He wandered about and came across a lion. And the lion, he thought, would go after him. But, no, it was kind of moaning and groaning, and so Androcles approached and found the lion with a huge thorn in the paw. And Androcles took out the thorn, and they became friends. And the lion took Androcles, as the Members may remember, to the cave and helped to feed him. But soon afterwards, the lion and Androcles were captured, and the sentence was to throw the slave into, I guess, the center of a ring and throw him to the lion. And so here they came. And the emperor showed up, and all of his court, and they expected that the lion would approach Androcles and maul and eat him. So they let the lion loose. And the lion comes from the den and rushes in, and there is a lot of roaring. And at first, I guess, the lion roars at Androcles, but then as he comes close, he recognizes who it is, and he licks his hands like a friendly dog.

And the emperor hears this story, wondering what had happened, and Androcles tells the story, and the slave is let loose and the lion.

And I close, if this fable applies, and I think it does, to John and his gentleness, I think John would have done something different. Androcles would have said, Look, the lion is loose; however, I think the lion also would have said to the emperor, We will go after you unless you make sure among all your constituents there is universal health care.

And, John, you have been a lion with the ferociousness of your beliefs and all the other qualities but also with a gentleness. And we salute you today. We are proud of you in good measure because you have made this institution something to be very proud of.

Mr. Speaker, the issue here is priorities and choices. There are some similarities, but the differences are vast. Let us look at the whole picture here, the whole picture.

You have an alternative minimum tax that is going to hit millions of people if we do not act. We have $45 billion in extenders on which there is basic agreement. We have a reduction in the capital gains and dividends tax which continues for the next few years. We have proposed budget cuts. We also have the alleged, by the Republicans, need for fiscal discipline.

So what are their choices, because you cannot really do everything. So here is their choice: extend the dividends and capital gains reduction that continues in any event, extend it to 2009 and 2010 even though over 50 percent goes to people making $1 million a year. That is their first choice.

Their second choice is budget cuts: cuts in student loans, cuts in child support. And I want to say to my colleague from Michigan, administrative money for child support goes to raise money for children, not for bureaucrats. It is 4 to 5 dollars for every dollar we provide in administrative support. Essentially, what the Republicans do is to reduce the amount of money going to kids over the next 10 years by $24 billion.

Their choice also was to leave out the AMT from this bill, but then they bring up a bill yesterday, do not pay for it, and it can be objected to in the Senate and may not happen at all. So their choice is clear: tax relief that goes to people making a million bucks or more and cutting student loans, cutting food support for people who need it, and cutting child support which will mean reductions of $24 billion over the next 10 years. That is what the choices are here.

Mr. Speaker, they do not even maintain fiscal discipline, because if the AMT thing were to happen, it would be unpaid for and would add to the deficit. Our substitute has very different priorities. I urge its adoption.

This is a stealth approach, this so-called Stealth Tax Relief Act, to a real problem. The two gentlemen who have spoken had a choice in the committee. You had a choice. You had a choice between helping out with a tax cut a few years from now with more than 50 percent going to 1 percent of the population, or voting to help those 15\1/2\ million Americans who would otherwise have a tax increase. You voted for the 1 percent.

You had a choice in committee between helping out some years from now people making a million dollars a year, or helping next year millions of families making 75,000 to $100,000. You chose the millionaires. So now you are coming here and saying, well, we must do something. You had a chance to do that in committee. You did the wrong thing then, and now you are trying to cover your tracks. You do not pay for it. There is little chance the Senate will act, and so essentially this is an effort to cover your tracks.

But let me just suggest, you can try to hide from what you did in committee and what is in the reconciliation tax bill, but you cannot run on it next year. So now you are trying to put up something that gives you cover for next year's election.

Look, when you say we could have done something in the majority, I think we have been in the minority now for 11 years. Where have you been?

No, instead, you have adopted tax policies that, by and large, surely in the provision in the tax bill, the reconciliation bill, help the very wealthy instead of helping the families, millions who will be caught up by the increased coverage of the alternative minimum tax. And I do not have to go through with this. You have described these families. But essentially it is crocodile tears for them instead of real action. You made your choice.

Tomorrow, you are going to have a chance to make the choice again when we put up a substitute, or if you do not allow that, a motion to recommit. So essentially what you are going to do is to vote ``yes'' today; and when we bring up the substitute or the motion to recommit, you are going to vote ``no.'' So ``yes'' today and ``no'' tomorrow. That is not even a fig leaf. That is total inconsistency.

We proposed in the committee, we proposed dealing with the minimum tax now. You passed a bill that said no, you want to give the majority of tax relief that was not paid for, the 20 billion, to people making over a million dollars a year. That is undeniable.

My suggestion is that you, instead of passing the reconciliation bill that helps the millionaires and ignores the millions of families making 75,000 bucks or more a year who will be affected by the minimum tax, that you go back and do it the right way and not hope that somehow this stealth bill will cover your tracks.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) for the time.

Workers rights matter to the rules of competition negotiated in trade agreements.

In order to make globalization work, and I emphasize this, its benefits must flow broadly among the majority of the population, not flow to the top and merely trickle down to the rest.

To spread the benefits of globalization, workers must have internationally recognized core labor rights: prohibitions on child labor, forced labor and discrimination, and importantly, the right of workers to associate and bargain collectively so they can advance their economic interests.

This is not a pro-versus-anti-trade view. It is a view of how to expand trade in a way to spread its benefits among the population, stimulate, where it does not exist, a strong middle class necessary for a Nation's stability and, yes, the development of its democracy, provide U.S. workers with a more level playing field, and create markets of consumers with the income of other countries to buy our products.

Each trade agreement presents its own challenges and opportunities. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has insisted on using a misguided, cookie-cutter approach as to the basic standard on worker rights, saying to our trading partners simply ``enforce your own laws.''

Where internationally recognized standards of workers rights were well-established in law, in practice, in a Nation's history so that there was unlikely a retreat, many of us voted yes: Chile, Singapore, Morocco. But we always warned that ``enforce your own laws'' as a standard was fundamentally an inappropriate approach and would be subject to misuse and abuse if adopted in the future under very different circumstances. That was vividly true in CAFTA, regarding the rights and position of workers. There were major gaps in the laws, in actual practices and in the socioeconomic dynamic of those Nations. So we, in the Democratic party, overwhelmingly voted no.

We insisted that an unbalanced framework for expanded globalization would in Central America lead to further poverty, further insecurity and hinder democratic development.

When the administration began to negotiate an FTA with Bahrain, it was clear that there existed issues unrelated to economic globalization which, if negotiated effectively, would militate in favor of approval of an FTA.

Those included the end of the boycott of Israel and its impact on the movement towards security and potential peace in the Middle East and American diplomatic relations with a Nation moving faster than many others in the Middle East towards democratic processes.

Also, Bahrain had taken the first steps a few years before to reform their labor code toward providing workers with their basic international rights. While the code was more advanced, it is true, than in many Middle East Nations, it still fell short in several important respects.

So, in view of all these circumstances, as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) has mentioned, a number of us chose to work with and press the Bahrainian government to bring their laws up to basic international standards.

That started an intensive process where the negotiating parties did work in good faith and where the Ways and Means Committee at a hearing agreed, across party lines, that promises were not enough but that there must be concrete action on major gaps in labor laws.

The Bahrainian government has now introduced concrete legislation, as Mr. Cardin has announced, to fill these gaps in their labor code. They will apply to both citizens and to the foreign workers who are there in large numbers.

Bahrain is a small Nation, 667,000-plus people with over 235,000 non- nationals, with a per capita income far higher than is true in other Nations, where the majority of citizens in those Nations live in poverty, and with a constitutional monarchy whose written support of these labor reforms provide confidence that the formally introduced reforms will become law.

When all of these particular circumstances are taken into account, those of us on the Democratic side of the Ways and Means Committee who have actively worked on this matter decided to support the Bahrain FTA.

Our experience here, and I emphasize that, does not diminish but only reinforces our insistence that as we face far different circumstances, when achieving a positive result from expanded globalization confronts very different dynamics, and that is true in negotiations with Latin American countries and others, our Nation must do for the rights of workers what it does for all other provisions of trade agreements. It must negotiate to place these international standards squarely in the body of the trade agreement with enforcement.

Only then can we be confident that globalization will help workers in other Nations uplift themselves, create a vital middle class in those Nations so important to those Nations, move towards international competition so that trade, as now increasingly being verbalized by President Bush, is both free and fair.

Only then can we be confident that competition with our workers from other countries will not be based on who can most suppress the rights of other workers and that for our own businesses, in this day and age, as mentioned, of our massive trade imbalances, there will be increasing numbers of middle income residents in other Nations to buy our goods and services.

Under those circumstances, I support this agreement, conditions very plainly spelled out here. I hope this administration will take notice.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Putnam, I will read you the facts from the Congressional Budget Office estimate, that this action will result in a reduction over the next 10 years of $24 billion in child support. That is the Congressional Budget estimate, and that takes into account adjustments the States might make in providing more money for administration. This is the most callous, callous reflection of your fiscal irresponsibility. You have driven yourselves and this country into so much debt, now you are reaching into the homes of this country. This is antifamily. This is antikids. There is no defense of it.

This money is for administrative purposes. We have been paying two- thirds. The result of it, and it was part of welfare reform, is that child support has gone up and up. The kids have benefited. And now what you are going to do is to reduce those benefits. And we will hear from your side, oh, child support is going to go up, anyway. This is a fact and I close with this. CBO says if anyone votes for this, they are going to reduce child support payments over 10 years by $24 billion. I say to you, you go home, you face the kids in your district, you face the parents in your district, and you tell them you voted for this. If you won't tell them, we will.

Mr. Speaker, I will vote against House Resolution 547 today, but I want to clearly state my reasons for doing so. In particular, I want the record to show that I strongly disagree with the highly misguided decision of the Palmdale School District in California to administer a questionnaire to young children that included totally inappropriate questions concerning sex. If there was a law that blocked elected school boards from making boneheaded decisions, the action of the Palmdale School District would fall squarely within its purview.

But that is not what the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee has brought before us today. Instead, the resolution condemns the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for not finding a law or constitutional principle to override the decisions of democratically-elected school board members. My friends on the other side of the aisle often rail against ``activist judges'' and complain when, in their opinion, judges make law from the bench. As has been noted by others, it appears that in this case the Majority objects to the fact that the 9th Circuit judges were not activist enough.

There are many avenues for parents who disagree with any decision made by their local school board. In this particular case, the public outcry against the Palmdale School District questionnaire resulted in the survey being promptly discontinued. If parents wish further redress, they may also vote the school board out of office.

For these reasons, I will vote against this resolution today.

I first of all would like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) and the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall), the chairman and ranking member of the committee, for their mutual interest and work on this and also to the chair of the subcommittee, Chairman Pearce, and also to Ranking Member Christensen. I also would like to thank cochairs of the Ukrainian American Caucus, Members Kaptur, Weldon and Bartlett, for their support and also to my friend and colleague from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) who is a cosponsor and who is on the committee; and also to thank the leadership for moving this along.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation, H.R. 562, to authorize the government of Ukraine to donate a memorial in the District of Columbia honoring the victims of the manmade famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33. I am proud to have introduced this legislation that this body is considering it today. This legislation is important for all of humanity. It is very important to the 1.5 million Ukrainian-Americans throughout our country, many of them my constituents. It has special meaning to the people of Ukraine, as the gentleman from West Virginia has mentioned, who have embarked on a courageous effort to build a free, democratic, open society, and indeed to all of us who value freedom.

During the famine genocide of 1932-33, between 7 and 10 million Ukrainians were deliberately and systematically starved to death.

The memorial authorized by this bill will not only honor their memory, but serve as a tangible reminder to all of us that we must work together to prevent such tragedies in the future.

We are familiar with the terrible suffering caused by famine that is the result of natural forces. But this famine is all the more tragic because it resulted from criminal acts and deliberate decisions by political officials. Yet, it is also one of the least known of human tragedies.

Despite efforts by the then-Soviet Government at the time and afterwards to hide the planned and systematic nature of this famine genocide, it is clear that the Soviet Union used food as a weapon. By introducing unrealistically high quotas on grain and other agricultural products which were strictly enforced by Red Army troops, the Soviet Government deliberately starved 7 to 10 million Ukrainians. The harvest of 1932 was only 12 percent below 1926 to 1930 averages, but millions of Ukrainians died a slow agonizing death of hunger.

In his book, ``The Harvest of Sorrow,'' British historian Robert Conquest provided a vivid picture of the devastating effects of the famine genocide in Ukraine: ``A quarter of the rural population, men, women and children, lay dead or dying, the rest in various stages of debilitation with no strength to bury their families or neighbors.''

Materials now being found in KGB archives have shown the premeditated political nature of the famine. We in our beloved country must persist in standing with those living under oppressive and tyrannical regimes as they struggle for their freedom. Part of the struggle is to remember the brutal acts of these regimes and their victims.

Preventing the recurrence of crimes against humanity, such as the Ukrainian famine genocide, begins with remembering the tragedies of the past. That is why I believe it is so important for there to be this monument, remembering the millions of innocent victims.

I urge my colleagues to join together in honoring their memories and ensuring they are never forgotten by supporting this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution, and I am glad we are doing so. My colleague has described what the major problem is.

We have a predicament. Early detection of ovarian cancers most often leads to treatment and successful treatment, while late diagnosis makes treatment exceptionally difficult.

We have today 80,000 women who are diagnosed with gynecological cancers and about a third or a little more with ovarian cancer; and every year about 27,000 women die from the gynecological cancers, and about half of those, a little more, from ovarian cancer.

We need very much to step up to the plate on this vital, vital need; and this resolution is important because it helps to call attention to this need.

I do want to point out the need also for us to go further than this. A number of us have been working for a number of years to provide some Federal resources behind our good intentions.

The bill, which is called Johanna's Law, would set aside some Federal moneys for a national public awareness campaign and also would provide grants to local entities and to national groups to help educate women, physicians, insurance companies, and everybody else about the need, the importance, and the feasibility of early detection of ovarian cancer.

I hope today will be another step towards not only recognition but also action. I congratulate the sponsors of this resolution and all who are talking in favor of it.

Mr. Chairman, the bill before the House today is a good example of a legislative cure that is worse than the underlying disease.

I want to say at the outset that there have been some very questionable uses of eminent domain. The fifth amendment to the Constitution clearly states that private property may not be taken except for public use, and then only after just compensation has been paid to the property owner. In many cases, the use of eminent domain is justified, but it is invariably controversial. I remember the controversy that attended the construction of the Walter Reuther Freeway in my home State during the 1960s and 1970s. Some communities were furious over the project, but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the road served a clear public use.

Other uses of eminent domain are much more questionable. In Washington, as in so many other cities, a decision has been made to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to build a new stadium for the benefit of Major League Baseball and the future owner of the Washington Nationals. Indeed, the District Government filed court papers the other day to seize $84 million worth of property from its current owners. Are stadium deals like this a legitimate public use? Evidently, they must be since the legislation before the House contains an exception that would seem to allow the use of eminent domain to build such facilities.

While lucrative stadium deals apparently enjoy protection under this bill, there is a blanket prohibition placed on the use of eminent domain for economic development purposes. States and localities that take land for private, for-profit projects or those designed to increase the tax base or employment stand to lose all their Federal economic development funding for 2 years. The penalty would extend to all economic development funds, even those going to meritorious projects that do not use eminent domain. The language of this legislation is so broadly written, and the penalties are so severe, that it will tie our cities and States in knots. Any use of eminent domain could conceivably trigger the overly broad penalties contained in this legislation. The potential liability facing cities and States that use eminent domain is open-ended and could extend for years or even decades into the future.

Land use planning is primarily a State and local function. Members of Congress frequently pay lip service to States' rights and local control, but this bill would overrule the limitations that many States have placed on eminent domain and land transfers to private entities for economic development purposes. In the case of my own State, in 2004, the Michigan Supreme Court limited the use of eminent domain by narrowly interpreting the State constitution's takings clause in County of Wayne v. Hathcock.

There is a lot of room for improvement in the use of eminent domain. Unfortunately, the legislation before the House is an unreasonable and unworkable solution.