Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, on October 13, 2003, America was saddened by the death of Willie Shoemaker at the age of 72. Born in Fabens, TX, which I represent, Shoemaker has truly been an inspiration to his family and his community alike.

Arguably the most successful jockey in the history of horse racing, ``Shoe,'' lead the life of champions. Competing for the first time at the age of 18, Shoemaker retired in 1990 with an impressive 8,833 victories. Accomplishments such as winning four Kentucky Derbies, five Belmont Stakes, and three Preakness Stakes established Shoemaker among the elite; Willie Shoemaker is a member of thoroughbred racing's Hall of Fame and the Texas Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

On April 8, 1991, just over a year after his retirement, Willie Shoemaker was involved in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Paralyzation did not diminish Shoemaker's character or spirit. As an honorary Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Paralysis Project of America, the progress toward finding a cure for paralysis, by spinal cord injury, was greatly accelerated.

I would like to thank the lead cosponsor of this resolution, Mr. Dreier of California, for his work on this resolution, as well as the Chairman and Ranking Member for helping bring this resolution to the floor.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to honor such an outstanding individual from my community. I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution. Our strongest condolences goes out to his family and friends as we honor the life and legendary career in horse racing of Willie Shoemaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 743, the Social Security Protection Act. I support provisions in the bill to better protect Social Security beneficiaries from fraud. However, I cannot support the legislation because it would also seriously harm the retirement of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other State and local government workers in my congressional district of El Paso, Texas by subjecting them to the government pension offset.

Some public employees in my State have found a way to protect their retirement benefits from the unfair government pension offset, which targets public servants by refusing them their full spousal benefits under Social Security. The bill before us today would block these employees from protecting their benefits, subjecting them to the government pension offset and denying them the spousal benefits they rightfully deserve.

Among those hardest hit by this legislation will be women, and particularly widows, who very often rely on spousal benefits to make ends meet in their retirement. Many are not aware of the government pension offset, and will only learn of it as they prepare for retirement, when it is too late to make alternative plans.

We need to do more to support those who have dedicated their working lives to serving the public, rather than undermining their opportunity for a secure retirement with this bill. Therefore, I have cosponsored H.R. 594, the Social Security Fairness Act, which would allow all public employees to collect full spousal benefits.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to show their support for teachers, and all of our hard-working public servants, by opposing this terribly unfair bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a long been a strong advocate for an affordable, comprehensive Medicare prescription drug benefit, but I am opposed to this bill. I am opposed because the bill before us tonight would harm, rather than help, more than 77,000 Medicare beneficiaries in my district by breaking this program's promise of guaranteed quality health care for our seniors.

In my district, where approximately one in five seniors live below the poverty line, Medicare and Social Security are their only safety net in retirement. To jeopardize this safety net would be unconscionable.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this conference report so Congress can instead offer America's seniors the kind of Medicare prescription drug benefit that they need and more than anything that they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great regret that I rise in opposition to the conference report on the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003.

I regret that I must do so, because I have long been a strong advocate for providing America's senior citizens with an affordable, comprehensive prescription drug benefit under Medicare. Unfortunately, however, the bill before us today would harm rather than help the more than 77,500 Medicare beneficiaries in El Paso County, Texas, which I represent, and millions of others like them across the country.

For example, instead of a comprehensive, continuous prescription drug benefit, the bill offers a benefit that has a $2,800 gap in coverage that will leave about half of Medicare beneficiaries without any prescription drug coverage for part of the year, even though they will still be paying monthly premiums. While without coverage, many Medicare beneficiaries in my district will have to pay the entire cost of their prescription drugs out of their own pockets, which is the very circumstance we are supposed to be remedying.

Rather than doing more to help low-income seniors, this bill fails to ensure that they will receive the prescription drugs they need under the proposed new program. The bill would, for the first time, prohibit federal Medicaid funding from being used to pay for drugs not paid for by Medicare. In Texas alone, it is estimated that 389,400 Medicaid beneficiaries would pay more for their prescription medications under the bill. In my congressional district, where approximately one in five people over age 65 lives below the poverty line, this change could be devastating.

At the same time, the bill requires states to make large annual payments to the federal government, offsetting the savings states would have realized by having the federal government provide drug coverage for low-income seniors under Medicare. In short, for the first time ever states will have to fund a federal Medicare benefit, at a time when my state of Texas and many other states are facing budget troubles.

Insteaad of expanding re-importation of prescription drugs, with appropriate safety checks, the bill blocks re-importation. By doing so, it ensures that Americans will continue to subsidize low drug prices in other countries, while paying the highest drug prices in the world here at home.

Rather than empowering Medicare with the authority to use its purchasing power to negotiate better drug prices, as the Veterans Administration currently does, the bill specifically prohibits Medicare from doing so. As a result, the pharmaceutical companies benefit, but hard-working taxpayer will have to foot the bill for the higher costs.

Perhaps most troubling, the bill puts us on a path toward privatizing the entire Medicare system, breaking our government's solemn promise to America's senior citizens to provide guaranteed, quality healthcare under Medicare. Two generations of seniors have relied on Medicare and Social Security to ensure their quality of life in their retirement years. For many poor seniors in my district, these programs are their only safety net. To jeopardize that safety net would be unconscionable.

This bill, with all its shortcomings, will cost the American people nearly $400 billion over the next decade. It does include a few provisions that I strongly support and have voted in favor of repeatedly--most notably provisions providing increased Medicare reimbursement rates for healthcare providers and funding to reimburse local governments and emergency medical providers for providing care to undocumented immigrants. However, the bill would do such significant harm to Medicare recipients and the Medicare program that, on balance, I find that I cannot support the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this conference report, so Congress can instead offer America's seniors that kind of Medicare prescription drug benefit they desperately need and truly deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings) for yielding, and I also want to commend our chairmen and ranking members for the great job that they do under what, I think, are very difficult circumstances. And I would also associate myself with the comments of my colleague, the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons), about giving good compensation for great work that is being done around the world for our national security by the intelligence community employees.

Having said that, I also want to state that I rise in strong support of this rule for H.R. 2417, but I also want to note that there are many of us that have concerns about issues that are vitally important to our national security, the lack of diversity in the intelligence community, and certainly the lack of a good solid plan to diversify and understand and recruit people that know and understand and speak different languages and come from different cultures. Those are critical and important in light of the attacks of September 11.

I would urge everyone to support this rule, but at the same time I also think it is vitally important that we continue to focus. And as my colleague, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), made mention, it is difficult in this environment because we operate in a closed oversight manner and we do not have the benefit of outside input and scrutiny. So it is critical.

And I know that our chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), and the ranking member are committed to continue to work in these two critical areas, diversity and language proficiency. So with that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

First, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the chairman of our committee and ranking member for their commitment to working in a bipartisan manner on the very important work that this committee has to do.

I rise today in strong support of the conference report for H.R. 2417, the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2004. Conferees and staff worked together closely to craft a bill that provides new and better capabilities to fight the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism, as well as to address a range of global intelligence challenges that we, as a country, face today.

I want to highlight two features of this very important bill. The first one is the requirement that the Director of Central Intelligence submit an Iraq Lessons Learned Report to the intelligence committees as soon as possible. Tuesday we debated the merits of the lessons learned in Iraq. I argued that Iraq must not become another Vietnam. We need to know from the intelligence community what has and what has not worked, and what has and what has not gone well in Iraq. Better intelligence is essential to defeating the expanding insurgency that we are seeing there today. I am pleased that the bill underscores the urgency of intelligence lessons learned.

This bill also establishes a pilot project within the intelligence community to enhance the recruitment of individuals with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, skill sets, and language proficiency. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence recently held a rare public hearing on this very issue of diversity. A panel of experts highlighted the capabilities that a diverse workforce bestows upon the intelligence community. It brings added language capability and better understanding of foreign cultures. I am pleased that this bill encourages diversity in the intelligence community.

In a similar vein, this bill also fences a portion of the funds authorized for the community management account until the Director of Central Intelligence submits a report to this committee outlining his plan to improve diversity throughout the intelligence community.

I tried also to include in this bill conference language urging that the Drug Enforcement Agency to make funds available for the El Paso Intelligence Center's Open Connectivity project. That language unfortunately was not included. Nonetheless, I still feel that EPIC has an important role to play in countering terrorism, and I hope that it is recognized for that role in this committee and others in the near future.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the motion to instruct offered by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman).

I traveled in Iraq in May of this year to observe the situation firsthand and to see how our soldiers were fairing in the aftermath of major combat operations. The situation was still tense back then, and today I think it is even worse.

I served in Vietnam, as the Members know, and it is an eerie feeling to see how similar the situation in Iraq today is to the situation back then in Vietnam, insurgents who blend into the local population, the constant danger our soldiers face every day, and the steady stream of American casualties. The Secretary of Defense has said that Iraq will be a ``long, hard slog.'' Our soldiers deserve much better than that. We cannot let Iraq become another Vietnam.

To me that means that we must all be learning lessons as we go along, the military, the intelligence community, policymakers, and Congress. The Defense Authorization bill asks for a ``lessons learned'' report from the Department of Defense by March 31 of next year on military operations in Iraq. However, the intelligence community should be preparing, I think, its own report, not a year from now, but as soon as possible.

In that vein, let me also reiterate a point that was made by our ranking member. The Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on a bipartisan basis, already knows that there were serious deficiencies in prewar intelligence on Iraq. In fact, I had such concerns about prewar intelligence even before we went to war with Iraq, which prompted me to write a letter to the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Goss) and our ranking member (Ms. Harman) prior to the initiation of that war. Specifically, my concern was about the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda the intelligence community wrote about just as the administration was trying to build its case for war in the fall of 2002. The intelligence community had not yet previously brought these connections to the committee's attention, even though I had been asking questions along these lines for some time. The intelligence community must review the analysis that it produced in this regard and determine whether there are lessons that need to be learned. Our soldiers deserve nothing less. Our country deserves nothing less.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 2359, the Basic Pilot Extension Act. The existing Basic Pilot Verification

Program assists employers in verifying the authenticity of new employee's eligibility information. The program operates in six States, including my state of Texas. Authorization for the program expires next month.

The bill before us today would go a great deal further than extending the pilot program in its current form. It would expand the program to all 50 states, despite the fact that a recent Immigration and Naturalization Service-funded report concluded that the Basic Pilot Program is not ready for nationwide implementation. The report cited concerns about invasions of privacy and factual inaccuracies. We need to address these problems before we extend the program to the rest of the United States.

Also, the bill expands the program beyond the area of employment, allowing any government agency to use the system to verify the immigration status of any individual for any purpose authorized by law. Expanding the program in this way would only magnify privacy concerns with the current Basic Pilot Program.

Finally, it is unfortunate that this bill is being brought before the House under suspension of the rules. Legislation of this magnitude requires far more than careful consideration that we have been afforded the time to have here today.

Madam Speaker, for all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote no on H.R. 2359, the Basic Pilot Extension Act.

Mr. Chairman, tomorrow we will vote on spending 86.9 billion dollars of American taxpayers' hard-earned money on our on- going military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This massive request for supplemental funds to pay for our activities in Iraq and Afghanistan brings home--to the pocketbooks of every American taxpayer--the cost of our involvement in these countries.

If this bill passes tomorrow, we will have spent a total of 175 billion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan--38 billion dollars more than we are spending for Federal health, education and labor programs here at home. And 47 billion dollars more than we are spending for our veterans, housing, economic development, NASA, environmental protection and scientific research here at home.

I am not going to argue about our activities in Afghanistan--they are wholly appropriate and necessary in order to dismantle the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

However, Iraq is different.

We have gotten ourselves into a situation in Iraq that is both dangerous to our troops and critically important to our worldwide leadership duties and responsibilities. The situation is now so serious that, to me, it is less important that we arrived at this point by serious miscalculation, perhaps manipulation and half-truths, than to understand that ``failure is not an option.''

We have the most professional, most dedicated, best-trained and best- equipped military in the world. It is absolutely necessary that we supply anything and everything to support and ensure the safety and success of our troops. They represent the best this country has to offer, and their sacrifices should never be taken lightly or for granted. As commander in chief, the president committed them to this war, and now we must provide them with all the resources and support they need. I support every penny of this request that supports our troops. And in addition to supporting them this week, we must also remember to fully support and fund the veterans programs that they will rely on in the future.

The Administration is asking us to support a request for reconstruction in Iraq of 18.6 billion dollars that, according to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer (administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority), is probably just the down payment. Bremer has indicated that reconstruction costs alone may top 60 to 70 billion dollars.

This bill would provide 5.7 billion dollars to rehabilitate Iraq's electric power infrastructure. In my district, which includes the city of El Paso, and in other districts on the U.S.-Mexican border, hundreds of thousands of our own citizens don't have electricity. Never mind that a failure in our own power grid caused a huge blackout in the Northeast recently, and that Hurricane Isabel left hundreds of thousands in the dark, while many of my colleagues were told by Federal disaster relief agencies that they don't have the funds to help.

Also included in this bill is 793 million dollars for health care programs and upgrades to hospitals and clinics. El Paso, a city of 700,000, is in desperate need of affordable health services and is in the midst of a health care crisis caused by severe budget cutbacks at the State and Federal levels.

This bill includes 4.3 billion dollars to expand access to safe drinking water and improve sanitation. Hundreds of thousands of people along our Nation's border don't have safe drinking water or sanitation services. In fact, nearly 5,000 households in the El Paso area lack complete plumbing.

This supplemental includes another 500 million dollars for transportation and telecommunications projects in Iraq. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 households in the El Paso area have no telephone service available for their use.

Mr. Speaker, there are those in the Administration who talk about our ``responsibility'' to provide these services to rebuild Iraq when we along the border are constantly told there is not enough money to assist in the development of these services here at home. What about the responsibility to our own citizens in our own country?

This Administration comes to us and the American people expecting to receive a blank check with no questions asked. It seems to think the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, can be used to ramrod anything and everything. It acts as though it is unpatriotic to ask for justification and accountability. Mr. Speaker, it is not unpatriotic to ask for justification and accountability for the taxpayers' money--it is one of the most patriotic actions a member of this body can take.

The request for funds to rebuild Iraq is bundled together in this bill with the money essential to support our troops. At the same time that their sons and daughters are being

wounded and killed in Iraq, the American people are being asked to pay the bill for programs and projects in Iraq that are desperately needed here.

I intend to support this flawed supplemental request, but only because the safety of our brave men and women in uniform depends on it.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

This amendment is designed to address serious shortfalls in two critical areas to our national security, foreign language proficiency and diversity in their workforce.

Specifically, my amendment will cut $5 million from the general intelligence community management account and add $5 million for programs designed to increase language proficiency and workforce diversity in the intelligence community.

Success in the global war on terrorism and in Iraq demands that our Nation have the best intelligence collection and analysis possible. Officers with only a marginal understanding of the language and the culture of intelligence targets will only be marginally effective for this country.

The report of the joint inquiry into the events of 9/11 reflects my long-standing concerns about the lack of progress that has been made by the intelligence community in enhancing language proficiency and diversifying its workforce.

Specifically, it recommended that the intelligence community implement, expeditiously, measures to identify and recruit linguists outside the community whose abilities are relevant to the needs of counterterrorism.

The joint inquiry further recommended that the intelligence community should enhance recruitment of a more ethnically and culturally diverse workforce and devise a strategy to capitalize upon the unique cultural and linguistic capabilities of first-generation Americans.

To address these critical needs, my amendment will provide funds for training in critical foreign languages and language maintenance and award programs. It will also fund scholarship programs, recruitment efforts and other nontraditional programs that are designed to enhance the recruitment and the retention of a diverse workforce.

The intelligence community must have a diverse set of people that have the cultural awareness, the language familiarity and the skill sets that will allow our Nation to succeed against an increasing number of formidable foes around the globe. My amendment will provide funds for increasing diversity of the workforce and language proficiency, two vital and important national security imperatives.

I hope that I can get the support of all my colleagues on this very critical amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I have a high degree of respect for my colleague. I have been on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence finishing up my third year, and the bottom line is that we have not seen a strategic plan to, in fact, diversify the workforce or specifically address issues dealing with language.

My purpose in offering this amendment is to continue to highlight the critical nature and the imperative challenge that we face when we do not have this as a priority for our country. That is really why I left this at $5 million because I did not want to try to hurt any one program or this account in particular, but I specifically wanted to highlight the critical need and the lack of a strategic plan by our intelligence community to work in this particular area.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, in deference to my colleague, I would close by saying I hope we can have a recorded vote, so that we can understand the importance of the issue. I hope the gentleman is in agreement.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be a cosponsor of H.R. 1828, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, and am even prouder still to see it on the floor of the House of Representatives today.

This important piece of legislation gives the president the diplomatic tools necessary to hold Syria accountable for its support of terrorism, its weapons of mass destruction program and its occupation of Lebanon. Syria should not be allowed to support terrorist activity from groups, such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with continued impunity.

Passage of this bill will require that sanctions be imposed on Syria unless the president can certify that it has taken steps to end its support of terrorism, discontinue its weapons of mass destruction program, and end its occupation of Lebanon. Sanctions could include banning most U.S. exports to, and investment in, Syria; restricting the movement of Syrian diplomats here in the United States; barring Syrian aircraft from our airspace; and freezing Syrian assets in our country.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support this important legislation, which will put appropriate pressure on a regime that continues to support groups that perpetrate heinous acts of terror against the people of democratic Israel and that further destabilizes an already volatile region.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, tomorrow we will vote on spending $86.9 billion of America's taxpayers' hard-earned money on our on-going military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. This massive request for supplemental funds brings home, to the pocketbooks of every American taxpayer, the cost of this administration's foreign policy. This administration has gotten us into a situation in Iraq that is both dangerous to our troops and critically important to our worldwide leadership. This situation is now so serious that it is less important that we arrived at this point by serious miscalculations, perhaps manipulations and half truths, than to understand that for us in this country ``failure is not an option.''

As Commander in Chief, the President committed our soldiers to this war, and now we must provide them with all the resources and support that they need. Our soldiers represent the best that this country has to offer, and their sacrifices should never be taken lightly or taken for granted. But the administration is also asking us to support reconstructing Iraq to the tune of $18.6 billion, and this is only the beginning of what could be as much as $70 billion in investments.

Mr. Chairman, if it is our responsibility to provide these services to rebuild Iraq, why are we along the southwestern border constantly told that there is not enough money to develop these services here at home? What about the responsibility to our own citizens? This bill includes $4.3 billion to expand access to safe drinking water and improve sanitation while hundreds of thousands of our own people along our Nation's border do not have these services themselves.

This bill also includes $793 million for health care programs and upgrades to hospitals and clinics while cities like El Paso are in desperate need of these same services. And this bill includes $5.7 billion to rebuild Iraq's electrical power infrastructure while hundreds of thousands of our own citizens here at home do not have electricity. If we can find the funds to support these projects in Iraq, the American people demand that we find the funds for their needs here at home.

Mr. Chairman, I intend to support this supplemental request, but only, only because the safety of our brave men and women in uniform depends on it.

Mr. Speaker, on July 27th, America mourned the loss of one of its greatest citizens when Bob Hope passed away at the age of 100. Our Nation came to know Bob Hope for his great career that spanned stage, screen, and radio. But it was his unrivaled commitment to our troops that made him an American hero. Hope headlined USO shows during World War II and the Persian Gulf War, as well as in Korea and Vietnam. Bob Hope is recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most honored entertainer in the world. He has been honored by the entertainment industry, the educational community, every branch of our armed services, and the United States Congress. He has had more than 2,000 awards and citations for humanitarian and professional efforts including 54 honorary doctorate degrees, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1997, by an act of Congress, Bob Hope was made an ``honorary veteran.'' Upon receiving the award, Hope said, ``I've been given many awards in my lifetime--but to be numbered among the men and women I admire most--is the greatest honor I have ever received.''

As a combat veteran myself, I was proud to welcome Bob Hope among our ranks. Bob Hope was a great American. He will be missed.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to have been able to work with my friend and colleague, Mr. Miller, as a co-author and lead cosponsor of this resolution. He and I are the founding Members and co-chairs of the Congressional USO Caucus. I also have the benefit of serving on both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Veterans Affairs Committee with Mr. Miller. As the 137 Members and Senators of the Congressional USO Caucus, it is my hope that we will be able to support the mission and goals of the USO in Congress in the spirit of Bob Hope.

I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring my colleagues' attention to one provision in the Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Report on non-intrusive inspection technology.

The conference report directs Customs and Border Protection to accelerate its efforts to complete a field test of pulsed fast neutron analysis (PFNA) technology at the Ysleta border crossing. This field test is an important part of our Nation's efforts to use next- generation technology to better secure our borders while also facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel.

The Departments of Defense and Homeland Security have been working to carry out field tests of the PFNA truck inspection system in Ysleta, Texas. PFNA, described in a Fortune Magazine article earlier this year as ``beyond-Superman technology,'' has the potential to enable inspectors to detect the chemical composition of articles deeply buried in a fully-loaded cargo truck. The use of such technology in interdicting explosives, chemical agents and weapons, nuclear devices, dirty bombs, drugs and other threats has the potential to prevent destruction and the loss of life.

Earlier this month, U.S. Government screeners failed to detect, for the second time in two years, a shipment of depleted uranium in a container sent by ABC News from overseas. This is distressing and frightening news. Luckily it was just a test by one of our country's premier news organizations. However, we may not be so lucky in the future. PFNA technology could help us interdict such shipments. However, before such technology can be deployed, it must obviously be tested.

This conference report recognizes the importance of these tests and further understands that they should take place without undue delays so that if PFNA proves successful in the field, it can be deployed at ports of entry and protect America against terrorist threats and other criminal activity. PFNA could be the tool that prevents a catastrophic attack and I thank the conferees, in particular, Chairman Harold Rogers, for prioritizing our efforts to test this and other cutting- edge technologies.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to support the motion to instruct conferees offered by my dear friend and colleague, and fellow member of the Armed Services Committee, the Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Ciro Rodriguez.

This motion instructs the conferees on the Defense Authorization bill to adopt provisions that were overwhelmingly approved by the House when it passed the Armed Forces Naturalization Act earlier this year. These provisions would remove administrative and financial barriers to obtaining citizenship by those non-citizens who are risking their lives to defend of our Nation. Thirty-seven thousand legal permanent residents currently serve in our armed forces, and their service deserves to be recognized.

The Rodriguez motion also recognizes the important supportive role that family plays and calls for inclusion of measures to ensure that when their loved ones die in the line of duty, family members will not suffer even more by having their immigration status placed in jeopardy.

After every major conflict in the past 100 years, we have granted citizenship to thousands of immigrants who fought wearing the U.S. uniform. Let us do the right thing and act now to continue the American tradition of honoring those who have proven their loyalty to our country on the battlefield. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Rodriguez motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call my colleagues' attention to a ``hot topic''--the Rio Grande Chili War Festival, taking place September 20 and 21, 2003, on the Yselta del Sur Pueblo reservation in my congressional district.

The Festival will feature a variety of local foods, including Mission Valley Long Green chilies, a chuck wagon cook-off, live entertainment, Native American dancers, and games. Most importantly, the event will establish once and for all that the best chilis anywhere in the Southwest are grown in El Paso.

You see, Mr. Speaker, some of my good friends and colleagues from New Mexico and Arizona might be under the misimpression that their communities have our nation's greatest chilies, or best chili festival. While I am sure they are very good, El Pasoans know that those bragging rights belong to us!

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I commend everyone involved with the Rio Grande Chili War Festival--the best chili festival in America--and wish them every success with the event.