Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Poe

Amendment No. 10: At the end of the bill, before the short

title, insert the following (and conform the table of

contents of the bill accordingly):

Sec. 509. None of the funds made available under this Act

may be used to carry out section 105(a)(4) and (5) of the

Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001 (49 U.S.C.

44917(a)(4) and (5)).

Madam Chairman, I spent 22 years as a judge in Texas trying criminal cases, felonies; 22,000 felony cases came through my court. They dealt with everything from major theft to capital murder cases. And a lot of those cases were gang cases. And the people in this country who believe and think that gangs are not a problem are sorely mistaken.

It was the action operative of the gangs in the Houston area to use juveniles to commit serious crimes, violent crimes, because those very juveniles and these gang leaders knew that juveniles would be treated differently, as they were. These gangs would almost laugh at the criminal justice system because the juveniles would not face the same type of punishment as adults.

This portion of the bill that treats juveniles in some cases the same as adults is a good idea, because, in our country, victims continue to be discriminated against based on the age of offenders. Those days need to end, especially with gang members.

This is an important issue.

I, too, like the previous speakers are concerned about whether this is a States' rights issue or not. But gangs cross State lines. No longer are they just a local terrorist community. And they are terrorists, Madam Chairman. We, at this time, are engaged in a war against international terrorists. We need to be concerned about the street terrorists who roam our neighborhoods and commit violent crimes in the name of some type of gang.

A specific powerful enemy to the United States is the MS-13 gang. We need to be concerned about them because they are a terrorist group. They are gang members. So the first duty of government is to protect its citizens. We do that abroad. We need to do it against those street terrorists that live among us.

I support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to salute an almost 80-year-old veteran from my southeast Texas district. A dedicated American, a charter member of the greatest generation, Private James McClammy this weekend finally received the honors due him after 60 years.

A bit of history is in order, Mr. Speaker. Private McClammy was born in Canton, Mississippi, in the mid-1920s. James McClammy grew up during the Great Depression. Times were tight, tough and hard.

Mr. Speaker, he was a depression baby, as he calls himself. His family moved to Poke County, Texas, just outside of Livingston. That is in the Piney Woods of deep east Texas. He was the son of a State highway worker. And although he lived in a peaceful country atmosphere, the world would soon be at war again.

This teenager would be like thousands of other Americans; he, too, would go off to war. With the outbreak of World War II, Mr. McClammy was drafted right out of high school. A strapping 18-year-old, he has answered that call with abiding courage. He began his basic training in the Lone Star State at Fort Sam in San Antonio and then in Camp Walters, Texas.

It is interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that my dad about the same time was going through basic training at Camp Walters, Texas, and he, too, served in the great World War II in Europe.

At any event, Private McClammy later was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, for jump school to complete airborne training. Following the D-Day landings, Private McClammy was assigned to the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division's Easy Company and was deployed to Holland.

Having been a member of the famous Screaming Eagles for less than 4 months, this young private was about to experience a day he would never forget. It was Sunday the 17th, Mr. Speaker, a perfect Sunday in September of 1944. Private McClammy was one of more than 30,000 Americans and allied paratroopers involved in Operation Market Garden. They were charged with the important yet extremely perilous mission of descending into German-occupied Holland. Their objective was to secure the bridges across this occupied country's rivers so the allied forces could avoid the German defense line, the Siegfried line.

One of these bridges was referred to in the military history as a Bridge Too Far. The 101st traveled swiftly northwards and into the lowlands of Germany. If their valiant jump attempts were successful, many believed the war could be over by Christmas, but this was not to be.

Private McClammy recalls the morning of the daylight jumps. He says, ``My memory is not as good as it used to be, but it was a beautiful day and there was no enemy fire. Our goal was to capture and hold a bridge, a railroad bridge in Veghel, Holland, to prevent the German Army from seizing and destroying it. While the Germans were initially caught off guard by the airborne landings, they were by no stretch of the imagination defeated.''

The jump into Holland was unlike any of Private McClammy's other jumps because there was no swinging around after his chute opened. Because they were so close, they jumped and almost immediately hit the ground. During the mission, Private McClammy's personal duties were clear: move forward, capture the bridge.

The Screaming Eagles 501st Regiment was led by Colonel Howard Johnson. With all of but one of his battalions descending as planned into the drop zone near Veghel, Colonel Johnson's men, including Private McClammy, marched steadfastly into the city where they successfully completed their mission and held and followed their orders: hold until relieved.

He says, ``We held the bridge and then got relieved by another unit. It wasn't until later in the day that the enemy fire started.'' While he completed that day's work unscathed, the next week he was not as fortunate. On September 23, the Germans started shelling and they continued to shell.

Amidst an artillery barrage, a nearby shell explosion sent shrapnel flying into Private McClammy's hip. He was the sole survivor because three of his teenage friends, other members of the 101st, were killed in that attack. He was trapped for several days, and finally evacuated to a field hospital in Belgium where they operated on him.

He was then flown to a facility in England where he spent the remainder of September until early December recovering from his wound. At that point, he traveled on a crowded ship back to the United States where he boarded a train from South Carolina to Texas that stopped at various cities in the southern United States to drop off wounded veterans.

Private McClammy was discharged after the war and, like many of his band of brothers, never learned he had earned the Bronze Star for his action in World War II. It was only recently that a friend and fellow soldier from the Easy Company, Willie Ray Fox, brought this to his attention.

Mr. McClammy tried for 2 years to get his medal without success. In March, he contacted my Jefferson County office, and he was awarded those medals last week.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the military and members of my office for

helping to find him those medals, and they were, Mr. Speaker, the World War II Victory Medal, the Combat Infantry Badge 1st Award, the Honorable Services Lapel Button, the World War II Parachutist Badge, the Purple Heart, and the Bronze Star.

We thank Private McClammy for his service. We thank him for being a good American. We thank him for his service.

As Shakespeare wrote many years ago about the band of brothers: ``From this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered--We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a sterling individual in my Southeast Texas District--the Mayor of Beaumont--Mrs. Evelyn Lord.

Following an over-two-decade-long tradition of service to Jefferson County, she will step down from office on May 17th. Through the years, Mayor Lord has left an indelible imprint on the Beaumont community and while she is entitled to a well-deserved break, she undoubtedly will be missed.

Mayor Lord began her legacy in local government in 1980 when she was elected to the first of two terms on the Beaumont City Council. Her plans to run for office in 1984 were cut short when her husband and close confidant, Sam, was transferred to Northern Ireland by his employer. Towards the end of 1988, however, she returned to Beaumont and was elected mayor two years later. Mayor Lord then served two successful terms and retired in 1994.

At a critical juncture in the City's history, she was encouraged to return to public life and in 2002 was once again elected to the mayorship. Only when she was certain that the City was on the path to healing did she decide to forego a fifth term as Mayor.

During her tenure, Mayor Lord remained keenly aware of the unique threats that the Beaumont area could face in a post-September 11 environment. Accordingly, she shepherded the efforts to develop a distinct homeland security plan for Southeast Texas, which has served as a model state-wide. And, realizing that quality of life issues are often the basis for community revitalization, she spearheaded the creative charge to improve Beaumont's park system through public- private partnerships.

Demonstrating the high regard in which she is held among her peers, Mayor Lord was elected to the Board of Directors of the United States Conference of Mayors and served in such key positions as Chair of the organization's Arts and Recreation Standing Committee and as a member of its Homeland Security Task Force.

Even before she came to Beaumont, Mayor Lord was a committed public servant wherever Sam's career opportunities led them. She was elected as a State Senator in the State of Delaware and served as an Administrative Assistant to a County Judge in Kentucky. In Beaumont, she served with distinction in many capacities, including Vice President of Texas Commerce Bank and as Chairwoman of the Texas State Spindletop Centennial Commission.

Finally, few charitable organizations in Beaumont have escaped Mayor Lord's helping hand, highlighted by her work at the United Way, Texas Energy Museum, Boy Scouts, Julie Rogers ``Gift of Life'' Program, Chamber of Commerce, and Community Partners for Children.

Mayor Lord's leadership at Beaumont City Hall will always be remembered and her accomplishments will be felt throughout the community for years to come. Nonetheless, I am confident that she will not disappear from public life entirely and I join all of those in Texas' Second Congressional District in wishing her and Sam the best as they enter this exciting new phase of their lives.

As Margaret Thatcher once said, ``Success is having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a sense of purpose.'' Mayor Lord . . . she has that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, ``I solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of which I am about to enter, so help me God.''

Mr. Speaker, this is the judicial oath that justices of the United States Supreme Court take to uphold America's Constitution, the sacred manuscript our Nation was established upon, the foundation of who we are.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, some of the same justices who preside over the highest court in our land are systematically unraveling the threads of the very Constitution they vowed to protect. In what amounts to a most disturbing development, the United States Supreme Court continues to flirt with the temptations of foreign court decisions and the lure of opinions of international organizations. They do this in the interpretation of our American Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, this trend is terribly troubling. Has the Supreme Court lost its way?

As a former Texas judge for over 22 years, having heard 25,000 criminal cases, I took the same oath as our Supreme Court justices, to uphold the United States Constitution. Never once did I make a decision based upon the way they do things in other countries. My oath was to our Constitution, not to the Constitution of the member countries of the European Union, such as France. America should not confer with the decisions of any of the hundreds of foreign powers on our planet. As Anthony Scalia, our justice on the Supreme Court has said, ``those decisions are irrelevant in the United States.''

In 1776, amidst a revolution, our forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence which stated brazenly and boldly the 13 colonies desire to dissolve political bonds with England. In this document, Mr. Speaker, Thomas Jefferson penned among the list of grievances against King George the following statement: He said of King George, ``He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws.''

Mr. Speaker, 10,000 to 14,000 patriots over the course of 8 years in the American War of Independence spilled their blood or died to secure liberty for us and safeguard our constitutional rights.

The purpose was to sever ties with England forever. Then, in 1812, the British invaded the United States again. The British still wanted America to be subject to the King and their ways. They burned this very city, including our Capitol. President Madison and his wife, Dolly, fled Washington, D.C. in the damp darkness of the dreadful night to escape the invaders. The British were determined to retake this free Nation of America and this very soil on which I stand today. Americans defeated the British a second time to make them understand that we will not do things the English way.

Now, justices in this land of America, across the street from this very Capitol, use British court decisions and European thought in interpreting our Constitution. What the British could not accomplish by force, our Supreme Court has surrendered to them voluntarily. Has the Supreme Court handed over our sovereign Constitution to other nations? Mr. Speaker, has the Supreme Court lost its way?

The Constitution is the basis for who we are, what we believe, and what our values are. My colleagues will notice, Mr. Speaker, the oath our judges take is to the Constitution; not to the government, not to the President. It is to the Constitution. That is because the Constitution is the supreme authority of the land. It is our identity. It is our path to justice for all Americans.

The Framers of the Constitution made clear their vision for the Federal judiciary. Named in Article III behind both of the other branches of government, the Founders intended a court system with a narrow scope and restricted authority. As Alexander Hamilton explained in one of the Federalist Papers, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution, because it will be the least in its capacity to annoy or injure them. He states that the judicial branch is, beyond comparison, the weakest of the three departments of power.

Mr. Hamilton continued in his Federalist Papers, the executive dispenses the honors, holds the sword of the community. The legislature commands the purchases, prescribes the rules by which the duties and the rights of every citizen are regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purchases, no discretion, either of the strength or the wealth of the society, and can take no active resolution whatsoever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but just judgment.

Mr. Hamilton was wrong. History now reveals that the Supreme Court has become the most powerful of all the branches of government, although it was intended to be the weakest. And the people of this country cannot hold them accountable for their actions. Nonetheless, Mr. Speaker, an alarming number of judges deem the Constitution a bendable document, more like a catalog of suggestions rather than the rule of law; a set of elastic principles which, at the end of the day, can be easily interchanged with the judge's own personal policy and emotional agenda. As one author on the topic of our judges has put it, they see their role limited only by the boundaries of their imaginations.

And in the case of consulting foreign statutes to determine rulings here in the United States, a majority of our nine Supreme Court Justices even encourage it. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, for example, has said that although international law and the law of other nations are rarely binding on decisions in the United States and its

courts, conclusions reached by other countries and by the international community should, at times, constitute persuasive authority in American courts.

Well, Mr. Speaker, if they are rarely binding, who decides when they are binding? Is this arbitrary justice? My question is, when do foreign court decisions matter, and when do they not matter? Do our judges pick and choose foreign decisions that they like and ignore those they personally do not like? Do they pick and choose to get a desired result?

Mr. Speaker, this is constitutional chaos. In one of her books where she shares her reflections on being a Supreme Court Justice, she goes on to say that she believes American judges and lawyers can benefit from broadening their horizons. I know from my experience, she says, at the Supreme Court that we often have much to learn from other jurisdictions. We Supreme Court Justices will find ourselves looking more frequently to decisions of constitutional courts, especially common law courts that have struggled with the same constitutional questions that we have. International law is no longer a specialty; it is vital if judges are to faithfully discharge their duties.

Mr. Speaker, all judges, all lawyers in the United States take oaths to faithfully discharge their duties to the United States Constitution. None of us took an oath to faithfully discharge international law and the duty to international law. Has the Supreme Court, Mr. Speaker, lost its way?

Another judge on our Supreme Court, Justice Ginsberg, also subscribes to the importance of international jurisprudence on the Court. She thinks the premise is wrong that you only look to your friends. She has asked why, if judges are free to consult commentary, restatements, treaties, writings of law professors, law students and law reviews, they should not analyze an opinion from, get this, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the German Constitutional Court, or the European Court of Human Rights. In her view, the United States judiciary will be poor if we do not both share our experience with and learn from legal systems with values and a commitment to democracy similar to our own.

On a C-SPAN broadcast last month, another Justice, sympathetic to the use of international law and foreign court decisions, indicated that the Supreme Court is faced with more and more cases in which the laws of other countries apply. Where there is disagreement is how to use the law of other nations where we have some of those very open-ended interpretations of the word ``liberty,'' and interpretations of the phrase ``cruel and unusual punishment.'' This Justice believes it is appropriate in some instances to look to how other foreign courts may have decided similar issues. I ask, Mr. Speaker, what difference does it make how they do things in lands far, far away?

In 2002, Justice Paul Stevens in Thompson v. Oklahoma raised global norms regarding a particular type of punishment in his opinions. He states the conclusion that it would offend civilized standards of decency to execute a person who was less than 16 years of age at the time of his or her offense is consistent with the views that have been expressed by respected professional organizations, by other nations that share Anglo-American heritage, by leading members of the Western European Community, the American Bar Association, the American Law Institute, who have all formally expressed opposition to the death penalty for juveniles.

Although the death penalty has not been entirely abolished, he says, in the United Kingdom or New Zealand, in neither of these countries may a juvenile be executed. The death penalty has been abolished in West Germany, France, Portugal, the Netherlands, and all Scandinavian countries, and is available only for exceptional crimes such as treason in Canada, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. He concludes by saying, juvenile executions are also prohibited in the Soviet Union.

Mr. Speaker, regardless of how we feel about the execution of juveniles, the question, Mr. Speaker, is not what they do in the Soviet Union, but what does the United States Constitution say about this issue. Has the Supreme Court, once again, lost its way?

The same year, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Court once again looked to foreign courts; and while only 13 years earlier our Supreme Court decided that decisions of foreign courts were not to enter into the determination of sentencing in the United States, the Supreme Court did the judicial flip-flop. Justice Stevens concluded in this case that there is a national consensus in reaching his opinion. Does this mean the end justifies the means?

In the footnotes explaining his decision, the Justices indicated they looked to briefs filed by religious groups, psychologists, polling data, and a brief offered by the European Union, a brief that was used eventually as blanket consensus, the voice of the global community at large. Well, what about the Constitution? Why not use the Constitution as our guide and only guide in making decisions by the Supreme Court?

But, Mr. Speaker, perhaps the most egregious perpetrator of citing foreign court opinions is Justice Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy continues to write decisions hardly based on the Constitution, but on international law. Which law is he beholden to? Is the Constitution not sufficient for him? In 2003, in a high-profile case involving my home State of Texas, the case of Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Kennedy referred to international standards in the Court's consideration of Texas laws. Revealing the Court's reliance on the views of a wider civilization, the majority opinion was inspired by previous rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. Well, who put the European Court of Human Rights in charge of us?

This year, in March, Roper v. Simmons, writing for a 5-4 majority, Supreme Court Justice Kennedy wrote, we have established the propriety and affirmed the necessity of referring to the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society to determine what punishments are so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual. In making this decision, the majority judges looked to foreign lands to interpret what cruel and unusual means in our Constitution. In dissenting, Justice Scalia, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justice Thomas, on the other hand, said they do not believe that approval of other nations and people should buttress our commitment to American principles any more than disapproval by other nations and people should weaken that commitment.

Mr. Speaker, I realize the Constitution is an old document, well over 200 years; but this idea of ``evolving standards of decency'' is simply ridiculous. Values are timeless. American values are timeless. American standards are timeless, and they are in the Constitution.

The list of decisions against our Constitution, Mr. Speaker, is a deep cavern of vile destruction. Other verdicts handed down by the Supreme Court include citations of legal opinions from foreign courts in Jamaica, India, and the ultimate beacon of justice, Zimbabwe. Mr. Speaker, has the Supreme Court lost its way?

Let me give my colleagues an analogy. If, as a judge, I had a thief, a shoplifter appear before me who had stolen many times before and I ordered that his hand be chopped off in the public square, I suspect his attorney would object, saying, this violates the constitutional provision of cruel and unusual punishment in the eighth amendment. While the attorney would be correct based upon our Constitution, my response could well be, well, Mr. Lawyer, they chop hands off in other countries for this type of crime, so since other countries do it and they find it logical, I will accept these foreign courts in making my decisions.

Mr. Speaker, in Texas, I would have been removed from the bench for such nonsense. So why do we tolerate our Supreme Court using this same rationale going to foreign courts in their decisionmaking?

Mr. Speaker, these controversial decisions that have emerged from our Supreme Court have prompted a growing contingent of former judges in this body to join me in signing a letter to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. I, along with my fellow gentlemen from Texas, (Mr. Carter) (Mr. Hall) (Mr. Gohmert), as well as the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr.

Aderholt), all former judges in their respective States, have urged our Senate colleagues to consider a nominee's allegiance to the United States Constitution and the sovereignty of the United States when imparting their advice and consent role in the Presidential appointment process in our Senate.

When any court in the United States, Mr. Speaker, begins to permit foreign sentiments to ooze into its rulings and opinions, it dangerously weakens our sovereignty. These irresponsible allowances erode our unique political identity and the sound traditions upon which American law is established. From the mere founding of our country, our laws and courts have respected and honored the sovereignty of the United States and the supremacy of our Constitution.

My colleagues will notice, Mr. Speaker, I am not discussing or criticizing the results of the Supreme Court decisions and their holdings.

I have been careful not to comment on the results of these numerous cases where the Supreme Court reaches out to foreign courts to make their decision. While somewhat relevant, since these decisions are the law of the land, the complaint is the process and method by which the Supreme Court makes decisions. The use of foreign courts, emotions, personal opinions, result-oriented decisions, personal agendas, feelings and the opinions of focus groups is, as Justice Scalia says, totally irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the Constitution.

Unfortunately, we now seem to have some jurists in our Supreme Court who have lost their way, their balance. They have forsaken the process founded by our forefathers. They are disregarding boundaries etched into the foundation of our Constitution.

Justice Scalia may be one of the last strongholds we have against judicial tyranny in today's Supreme Court. He understands the importance in honoring the original meaning of the constitution, that it is the supreme law of the land. He rightly maintains that foreign pronouncements are totally irrelevant when it comes to our courts and our Supreme Court in making their decisions.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a partisan issue. It is an issue of who will stand with the Constitution and who will stand with foreign courts.

I urge my colleagues in both chambers to support measures that aim to curb the way our Supreme Court makes its decisions, that they should be responsible to the Constitution of the United States.

As Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, warned in an August 18, 1821, letter to a friend, Charles Hammond, a lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court, he says, that is Mr. Jefferson: The germ of dissolution of our Federal Government is in the Federal judiciary, working like gravity by night and day, gaining a little today, a little tomorrow, advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction until all shall be usurped.

Mr. Jefferson was a prophet of what has become judicial anarchy. Some northeastern legal scholars, intellectual elites that sit in cigar- filled rooms agree with the ultimate decisions of the Supreme Court justices, justices that use these foreign laws, because they like the results.

But I warn these folks, the Supreme Court may not always make decisions you agree with, and they may betray you by ignoring the Constitution and citing foreign laws that create a different result than you wish. Then you will cry: Return to the Constitution; return to our sacred scripture. When your cries are made to our courts, you may too find no one is listening.

As guardians of the Constitution, Mr. Speaker, as champions of the separation of power, as accountants of the system of checks and balances, as the stewards of this legislative branch, we must implore our judiciary, our Supreme Court justices to reject the seduction of comparable side glances as they interpret the laws of this land.

I ask the Supreme Court to come back home, home to the Constitution and reject the lustful temptation of foreign countries and their laws.

I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) such time as he must desire to speak on this very issue.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) for his dedication to the Constitution, to making sure that the Members of this body are committed to that and reminding the Supreme Court that they have an obligation to that Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), a former judge, a former appellate judge from east Texas. The east Texas folks kind of think maybe a little differently than the Supreme Court does on using foreign law to make decisions that are binding on the rest of us. I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for his kind words and for his insight into this important issue.

Mr. Speaker, as most Americans go about being concerned about jobs, Social Security, the environment, health care, crime, outsourcing, all of those things are important. Many of those issues will eventually end up in our courts. Some of those cases will find their way to the Supreme Court, and while this issue is somewhat complex, it is not that difficult to understand.

The Constitution is the Bible for our democracy. Words mean something, Mr. Speaker, and the words of the Constitution are words that we must live by, that we must stand by and that we must defend.

I hope that most Americans, regardless of who they are, what their political beliefs are, understand that our Constitution came about because of sacrifices of Americans, many of whom we will never know the names of, that fought first in the War of Independence and numerous wars after that, because we are a unique land, Mr. Speaker. We are a unique people, Mr. Speaker, and the pinnacle of our uniqueness is the Constitution of the United States.

Every public official in this country, school board members, police officers, city councilmen, firefighters, members of the State legislatures, judges throughout our entire Nation and Members of this body took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is who our oath and our allegiance is made to, and all we are asking, Mr. Speaker, is that the Supreme Court come back home, follow their oath, be beholden to the United States Constitution and not to foreign countries.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 52 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 11, 2005, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the chairman on this bill. It is important that we take care of business with our military.

Mr. Speaker, having been to Iraq this year, I saw our troops, our young men and women from all branches of the service doing the finest job ever representing the concept of freedom and representing the United States; and they certainly need the supplemental.

However, I am concerned about some of the baggage that seems to have been added to the supplemental. And I think maybe in the future we should be careful about adding things that are not really important emergencies, such as in this supplemental conferring eligibility for rural housing assistance grants in the village of New Miami, Ohio; allowing some farm service accounts for the Alaska dairy farmers; increasing the cost of the Fort Peck Fish Hatchery Project in Minnesota; and adding to the National Center for Manufacturing Services in Michigan; along with $500,000 for the oral history of negotiated settlement projects at the University of Nevada.

I think these belong in some other bill. They may be great projects, but they certainly are not emergency projects. But I do urge all Members of the House to support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Cinco de Mayo. I rise to recognize and remember the importance of this day and salute the millions of Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent that will celebrate throughout the Americas this day, this important day.

While the War Between the States was raging in the 1860s, at the same time, on May 5 in 1862 an undersized, inadequately armed band of Mexicans determined to defend their land, fought a lopsided contest against their oppressors, those oppressors who were invading their homes.

Many people assume that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day from Spain, but that is not correct. Mexico's actual Independence Day is September 16, 1821. Some 40 years after Mexico achieved independence from Spain, their country was once again threatened, this time by the French. And that year, Napoleon III sent a massive, mighty military force to Mexico to unseat President Benito Juarez.

The French plan was to overthrow Juarez and take over the country. However, their overconfidence brought about their proudful downfall. They even brought along a Hapsburg prince, Maximilian, to be the new king over the Mexican empire. They were sorely mistaken in their ideal.

Napoleon's French army had not been defeated in 50 years and did not expect to lose this battle with these people. This distinguished, well- trained Army marched in with the finest equipment and the arrogance to go along with it. The French were not afraid of anything, but they should have been. Little did they know that the Mexicans would give them a fight to remember.

On May 5, 1862, the French Army left the Port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City. The French assumed that if they could take down the capitol, all of Mexico and their people would surrender.

The Mexicans were under the command of a Texas-born general, General Ignacio Seguin Zaragosa, and they waited and waited for the French, determined, diligent, and dedicated to defending this land. As the French Army headed to Mexico City, they were halted on the way. On May 5, 1862, while the cannons roared and rifle shots rang out, the French attacked 2 Mexican forts. Before the day was over, more than 1,000 French soldiers were dead. Against all odds, this hastily-assembled Mexican Army had routed the French imperialism in the city of Puebla, despite being outnumbered 2 to 1. The French left Mexico, and they have never returned.

So Cinco de Mayo is a day of celebration in Mexico as well as the United States. In my home State of Texas, where there are over 6 million Americans of Mexican descent, there are numerous celebrations taking place all over the State and in towns on this date. Cinco de Mayo is a wonderful opportunity to salute the contributions being made by all Hispanics in the Lone Star State and all of America. In my district, the second district of Texas, we have over 80,000 Hispanic members of the community. I feel fortunate to represent and live in a community that benefits from the dynamic presence of this richly proud culture.

So, Mr. Speaker, I rise to join all Americans and all Mexicans in recognition of this important day in history. The Mexicans who fought and died on a battlefield near Puebla 143 years ago represent the ideal and spirit of all humans, no matter what their race or their culture, to be free and be a free people.

Their determination embodied a spirit of freedom and patriotism. Cinco de Mayo is a chance for everyone to remember how essential our freedom is, how difficult it is to obtain, and how vigilant we must remain to defend it, no matter the cost.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time.

Mr. Speaker, born in the 1920s, he grew up in the Depression of the 1930s poor, like most rural American children. Fresh vegetables were grown in the family garden behind the small frame house. His mother made sandwiches for school out of homemade bread. Store-bought bread was for the rich. He grew up belonging to the Boy Scouts, playing the trumpet in the high school band, and he went to church on most Sundays.

In 1944, this 18-year-old country boy that had never been more than 50 miles from home finally found himself going through basic training in the United States Army at Camp Walters in Camp Walters, Texas. After that he rode the train with hundreds of other young teenagers, American males to New York City for the ocean trip on a cramped Liberty ship to fight in the great World War II.

As a soldier in the 7th Army, he went from France on to survive the Battle of the Bulge and through the cities of Aachen, Stuttgart, Cologne, and Bonn. As a teenager, he saw the concentration camps and the victims of the Nazis. He saw incredible numbers of other teenage Americans buried in graves throughout France. A monument to those soldiers is at Normandy.

After Germany surrendered, he went back to Fort Hood, Texas, expecting to be re-equipped for the land invasion of Japan. It was there he met Mom at a Wednesday night ``prayer meeting'' church service.

Until a few years ago, this GI, my dad, would never talk about World War II. He still will not say much except he does say the heroes, they are the ones buried in Europe today.

After the war he opened a DX service station where he pumped gas, sold tires, fixed cars, and began a family. Deciding he needed to go to college, he moved to West Texas and enrolled in a small Christian college called Abilene Christian College. He and his wife and his two small children lived in an old converted army barracks with other such families. He supported us by working nights at KRBC radio and climbing telephone poles for ``Ma Bell,'' later called Southwestern Bell.

He finished college, became an engineer and worked 40-plus years for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in Houston, Texas. He turned down a promotion and a transfer to New York City because it was not Texas and he said ``no place to raise a family.''

Dad instilled in my sister and me the values of being a neighbor to all, loving our country, loving our heritage, and always just doing the right thing to all people.

He still gets mad at the Eastern Media. He flies the flag on holidays. He goes to church on Sunday, and he takes Mom out to eat almost every Friday night. He stands in the front yard and talks to his neighbors. He can fix anything. He still mows his own grass even though he is 80 years of age. And he has a strong opinion on politics and world events. He gives plenty of advice to all people, including me. He has two computers in his home office. He sends e-mails to hundreds of his buddies all over the world. Dad and Mom still live in Houston, Texas, close to where I grew up.

So today, Mr. Speaker, as we on this 60th anniversary honor those who fought in the great World War II and the victory in Europe, we honor not only my dad, but all of those American heroes. My dad was one of those individuals. He is the best man I ever met. One of the charter members of the Greatest Generation. And I hope I turn out like him, the man I admire the most.

Virgil Poe, good man, good father. That is plenty for one life.

Mr. Speaker, please annotate that in my Special Order of 28 April 2005 on America's rice farmers, the profiles highlighting the farming legacies of the two Texas rice farmers--Mr. Ray Stoesser and Mr. Jack Wendt--were derived from Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Extension Center (Beaumont, TX)'s Texas Rice Newsletter in the July 2002, Volume II, Number 5 and June 2003, Volume III, Number 4 editions, respectively. Moreover, Mr. Wendt's letter to President George W. Bush appeared in a Special Guest Editorial published in the March 2005, Volume V, Number 1 edition of the aforementioned newsletter.

Thank you for your attention to this information.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a man who spoke on this floor and wandered these historic hallowed hallways over a decade ago.

Craig Washington, a former Democratic Congressman from Texas, made a name for himself in this place of Washington and in the Lone Star State of Texas.

At home in the great State of Texas, he is best known for his courtroom mesmerizing oratory, his remarkable victories as a criminal defense lawyer and his persistent passion for helping out the little guy.

Eleven years ago, he left Congress and headed back to Texas. Now Washington is back in the spotlight again defending one of Texas' high profile clients and doing what he does best, arguing for constitutional rights, helping the downtrodden. Those are the people who need him the most.

He is gracing the front pages of the Houston Chronicle yet again, but if you ask his daughter, Chival, she claims that her dad is just a regular guy and that is one of the reasons she admires him so much.

Craig Washington was born in deep east Texas, a town called Longview. He grew up in Houston and after high school he enrolled in Prairie View A&M University at the age of 16 with the hopes of becoming a dentist. Eight years later he finally graduated with a grade point average too low to complete his plans of dentistry. He was tremendously intelligent but could not be bothered with attending classes.

In 1966 Craig Washington was introduced to the Dean of the Texas Southern University Law School. Washington had charisma and determination even at a young age, and he managed to talk the dean into accepting him into the law school program and then transferring to dentistry. But instead he was hooked on the law and looked on it for the rest of his life.

Four years later, he would graduate with honors and become the assistant dean and assistant professor of law at his alma mater.

Then in 1970, he left the university to enter private law practice, and in 1972, he was elected to the Texas State Legislature. In 1982, he was elected to the Texas States Senate. It was there he made a name for himself as the second African American to serve in the Texas State Senate since reconstruction. It seems, Mr. Speaker, the war between the States died real hard in Texas.

In 1989, his good friend, Congressman Mickey Leland, was killed in a tragic

plane crash representing this body in Ethiopia. Washington was determined to continue the work that Leland started and he ran for Leland's seat and was sworn in as Leland's replacement in Congress in 1990.

His years in Congress were spent on national issues and advocating for those who had no voice. Some in Texas did not agree with the way he voted and carried himself, but inside this beltway he was seen as a star on the rise. He was a maverick. He wooed his colleagues on many issues and upset more than one organization when he voted against big issues like NAFTA and even NASA.

One particular evening on this House floor he argued against amending our Constitution to protect the flag. He said, ``I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the Constitution to a man who will burn the Constitution and then wrap himself in the flag.''

That is typical Craig Washington. Although Craig Washington and I disagree on many political issues, I admire him because he never made a decision based on politics.

Eleven years ago, Washington left this Congress to return to his roots, Texas.

He has a home in Bastrop, Texas, a small German town near Austin, and today Washington devotes most of his time to fighting for those who have no advocate in our courts.

When I was a prosecutor, we tried cases against each other, and I found his word and handshake were his bond, as it is today. When I became a judge, I had the opportunity to see him represent people in the most serious of accusations. In court, he spoke with the oratory of Daniel Webster and often uses his words with such power, he could put the jury in a hypnotic trance.

Like Spartacus of the ancients, Mr. Washington goes into the pit of the courtroom arena armed with the sword of righteous indignation, the shield of the Constitution, and the breastplate of impeccable honor to fight for those broken of spirit. When Craig Washington does his final summation, I am convinced the angels from above get a seat in the rafters of the courtroom just to listen to his voice, a voice from heaven advocating persistently and passionately for the poor and persecuted.

Craig Washington may be quiet, but he is a hell fire and brimstone lawyer from East Texas that argues a case with such intelligence, intensity, and logic that juries are forever mesmerized. He has the courtroom demeanor and dignity the law deserves and a hallowed respect for the Constitution that is waning today among many lawyers and even some Supreme Court Justices who see the Constitution as an inconvenience to result-oriented agendas.

Politically, Craig Washington, I think, is a populist and an honorable gentleman from the Old South from an era when honor was important. He serves his clients with distinction and compassion and tremendous energy. He is a tremendous criminal defense lawyer as well as a right-thinking American, and I stand today on this floor where he stood 11 years ago to salute Mr. Washington. I am proud to call him my friend; and if I ever leave Congress, I hope to return to the courtroom to join him in trial, to do battle together against the forces of evil, tyranny, and injustice.

Madam Speaker, on Friday night, April 15, I had a meeting with local rice farmers in my southeast Texas district. We met out in the country in the lowland plains of east Texas on Aggie Drive in Beaumont, Texas. Really, it was closer to China, Texas. Many of these men had finished a 16-hour day and came to the meeting after working all that time in the fields. They drove up in their standard work vehicles: Texas pickup trucks. Their appearances would fool you, however. They are highly intelligent, some very well educated. They know more about farming, farming machinery, nature, conservation, irrigation, water resources, meteorology, pesticides, insecticides, fertilizer, trade, global competition, foreign governments, and efficiency than many who have a string of degrees behind their names, especially those near this House.

As we sat around and ate fried catfish made out of rice flour, I talked to them for several hours about their plight. One rice farmer said this was his last year in farming. He was finally just going to sell off his equipment and sell the land. They painted for me, Madam Speaker, the extremely bleak picture of the present and future in rice farming. And while one could argue that economic decline plagues all rural America across the board on account of the death tax and high tax levels, too many government regulations, the rice farming industry has been hit particularly hard.

Consider the following: in 1997, 8 years ago, there were about 10,000 rice farms in the United States. By 2002, that number had dropped to about 8,000. The State of Texas in 1972 had more than 600,000 acres of rice farming. That is about the size of Rhode Island. Last year, it was less than 200,000 acres, a two-thirds loss of the land to something else. Unfortunately, rice farmers, those in southeast Texas, for example, cannot change to alternative crops because other crops do not thrive in this environment, the marshy, unique wetlands and humid climate of southeast Texas.

In addition, the farmers have to contend with the whims of the Lone Star weather, ranging from sun to hail, too much rain to not enough rain, or none at all. Natural disasters like hurricanes, they come and go and ravage the land where we live. According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, in 2002, the average American rice farmer made about $1,700 from farming, or about 82 cents an hour for a 40-hour work week. I will repeat that. That is 82 cents an hour for a 40-hour work week, and that was with government support. This harsh reality forces most farmers to rely on nonfarming income to support their households.

Rice farmers work their own land, Madam Speaker. They do not hire day laborers or seasonal workers. They cannot afford it. The farmer and his kids, they work the land. Rice farmers can barely support themselves financially, let alone make needed contributions to the industry to keep it afloat.

At one time the American Rice Growers Cooperative Association in Dayton, Texas, that is in my district, they owned an irrigation system using the Trinity River to irrigate between 5,000 and 6,000 acres of rice land. It has not run in 3 years because not enough farmers could financially commit to pay $25,000 to run the pumps to irrigate the land.

Now, get this, Madam Speaker. The water rights have been sold to the city of Houston, and the land is being used for trailer parks which, as one farmer put it, once the land is gone, it is over for the rice farmers. You see, rice land takes years to develop. If it remains unused for extended periods of time, like 3 years, the land becomes useless for rice farming.

Moreover, industry representatives are dwindling. Farm machines, the John Deere stores, they are disappearing. Each year, older farmers quit or retire. Each year, less acreage is being used for crops. Each year, fewer young men go into farming because the cost versus the return on this investment is not sufficient for any type of lifestyle. What is the incentive for the young to enter the farming industry?

This meeting we had on April 15, most of the farmers there were at least 50 or older. Farming, rice farming is a very labor- and energy- intensive business. It requires electricity to run the pumps to irrigate the crops, diesel fuel to run the combines, and fuel for the crop dusters, pesticides to control insect problems. And we have a lot of insects in southeast Texas.

In addition to the labor from early morning to dark, from February to November, it is about 8:30 now, Madam Speaker, in southeast Texas, most of the rice farmers are coming in from working all day.

All the costs have increased, yet the price that the farmer receives for selling his crop remains the same or has dropped. It also takes an enormous amount of time to fill out Federal forms, which has tripled, according to the farmers.

These farmers are required just to sell the rice they grow. Due to government regulations, sanctions have prohibited farmers from making sales of their crops in an open market. They are even told by this government, our government, how much they can plant.

Back in the 1970s, in what was called the rural renaissance, an average of 300 farmers or so would attend the American Rice Growers annual dinner. Last year at the dinner, 14 rice farmers showed up.

Once the experienced rice farmers leave the industry, we cannot restore this lost knowledge. No government program can do that. Not to mention that the present farm program constitutes only four-tenths of 1 percent of the national budget.

Madam Speaker, I would like to take some time to recount the personal stories of two of the countless Texas rice farmers, to give this body an idea just who these folks are.

Ray Stoesser, he is a friend of mine. He is also a third-generation rice farmer in southeast Texas. He has a true appreciation for the value of research, education, and he loves the land. One of the most successful and consistent producers, he brings an exceptional crop each year to the rice market.

Ray is quick to point out there is no secret to rice farming. He says, ``I believe that God could give me the talent

and the strength to become a good farmer.''

Ray's grandfather, Emil Joseph Stoesser, immigrated from Germany around the turn of the country and settled in Illinois. He learned about rice farming through a friend, decided to move his family to Texas, southeast Texas.

He had a different type of farming apparatus. He brought with him two Clydesdale horses, probably the first two Clydesdale horses ever in the State of Texas. They came with the farming community and he hoped to use them to plow his rice fields. Soon after moving to Texas, however, the Clydesdales succumbed to the heat and the humidity and mosquitoes common in our area. After that, they used mules to pull the plow.

Ray remembers how, as a boy, he worked long hours to clear the new property and get ready for rice production. He said, ``Dad had 3,000 acres that was completely unimproved. We had to clear the trees, pull up the roots, build the canals, dig the wells just to get it ready.''

Ray's dad was a dedicated and talented farmer. And Ray attributes his strong work ethic and teachings to his dad. Every day after school Ray would meet his dad on the farm and work until well after dark.

Ray also had a son that followed him into the rice farming industry. Neal Stoesser is 26 and has been farming since his senior year in high school. Although he works in partnership with Ray, Neal also farms 1,000 acres of rice and soybeans independently of his dad.

In 2002, Ray and Neal had 2,000 acres of rice, all in Cocodrie, 5,000 acres of milo, 650 acres of soybeans. This was a father and son team that farmed from one end of Liberty County to the other, about 60 miles from one end of their farming community to the other end.

In good years the Stoessers average about 7,300 pounds an acre on this main crop of rice. They sell to the Beaumont Rice Mill and the Gulf Rice Mill. Ray has considered joining the Riceland Co-op out of Arkansas, but he prefers to have his rice sold and milled in Texas. He says, ``declining infrastructure is a real problem for our Texas rice industry, and we want to do what we can to support our local mills.''

But Ray feels that the government policies regarding food exports have really hurt American farmers. He recalls the years when Iran and Iraq were two of our best export markets. They would buy the lion's share of U.S. rice. Not surprisingly, Ray feels the Cuban market should be open to U.S. farmers, as export embargoes only serve to hurt American farmers. They hurt farmers here at home. And they are not effective in dealing with political problem governments.

Ray's younger son, Grant, is also very involved in the family farming operation as well as promoting the rice industry.

And of course, there is Mom, Eileen Stoesser, very proud of all of her boys. She includes Ray as one of her boys, and has had many happy stories to tell about their life on the farm as the wife of a rice farmer. She remembers making a trip with her family and driving past endless fields of green. Eileen thought this was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen, and asked her parents what is growing on these flooded fields? Little did she know how important that beautiful crop would be, how it would come to shape her life. It was rice growing in southeast Texas.

Ray and Eileen, they are humble folks. They believe that all their success comes from the good Lord. Ray said, ``I can plant the crop, but I cannot make it grow, only the good Lord can do that. I have been blessed with a wonderful upbringing, a beautiful family, and the talent to serve God by producing food for the American people.''

That is Ray's story. He is still farming in southeast Texas.

Jack Wendt is also a third-generation rice farmer. He just planted his 62nd rice crop. Jack, he is not a young guy. Some would call him a senior. He is in his eighties. But you would be hard-pressed to keep up with the pace that he sets each day. Jack and his wife Billie, they live in Richmond, Texas, and the house outside of Kendleton is used for social gatherings, receptions, weddings, church functions and rice meetings. That is what they do in the country, Madam Speaker.

Much of the furniture in the house is from their parents. There are several door frames dating back to 1868 from the original homestead of Billie's grandparents in Fulshear. That farm had been continuously operated by her family for over 100 years and was designated as a Texas Century Farm by the Texas Department of Agriculture. There are old photographs of Billie's and Jack's ancestors around the house, kitchenware and tools that date back to the 1800s.

Jack takes pride in their family heritage. The man Jack called Grandpa Wendt came to America, like many other rice farmers, from Germany. He came in 1856, and he settled in this town called Sweet Home, Texas. That is right, Madam Speaker. It is Sweet Home, Texas.

His father, William George, born in August of 1886, served in World War I, fighting for the United States. In 1936 his family moved to Stowell, Texas and started farming rice.

Jack Wendt is an activist, and he has written our President, President Bush, and a number of Members of Congress, letters about the issue of rice. This is one of the letters he has written President Bush recently. I will read part of it because it is lengthy.

He starts, ``Dear President Bush, I am a third-generation rice producer. I have spent my entire life, except for 3 years in service to the United States during World War II, being involved in agriculture; rice, cattle, cotton, and grain. I will be 83 years old this year, so I have seen a lot of changes, changes from horses and mules to 400 horsepower tractors, threshing machines to combines. This statement is coming from a farmer who is still actively engaged in the production of agricultural products.

``All of us who are engaged in production of agriculture commodities that are subsidized by the USDA are very concerned about the proposed cuts the administration is considering in the 2006 budget. Some commodities will not survive if these cuts are a reality.

The subsidies that we now get for our crops are just enough to keep us in business. Other developed countries are supporting their rice production 3 to 10 times more than we are in the United States. The reason: These countries do not ever want to be without an adequate food supply.

Three of our most lucrative markets we have ever had were Iran, Iraq and Cuba. The seed money to develop these markets came from our check- off funds. Now our government has curtailed sales to these countries by putting sanctions on the countries. Other rice-producing countries are supplying most of their needs. That should not surprise us. If we do not sell food to some country, they will buy it somewhere else. When and if these sanctions are ever lifted, it would be hard to reestablish these markets.

American agriculture is known by some to be the envy of the world because of its quality and high production per acre. Since we are losing prime farmland to urban development, it is very important we maintain and support American agriculture and research so we can continue to produce our needs on less acreage. You know and I know we do not want to depend on our food supply coming from foreign countries. Although we in the United States, in the American agriculture, represent less than 2 percent of the American population, we play a vital role in the balance of trade with other countries. Agriculture is America's number one export. It totals $53 billion a year.''

He goes on to say, Madam Speaker, ``Keeping a strong agricultural system in our country is as important as keeping an updated and strong army. The old saying goes; 'you cannot fight or work on an empty stomach.' Once you lose the desire of the American farmer to produce, and he is forced to leave the farm, it will be hard to replace him or get him back on the farmland. American agriculture was built on individual initiative, private investment and incentives to produce. Once destroyed, agriculture will not be restored overnight by some government program or some government bureaucrat.

``If there is one thing Americans do not worry about these days, it is running out of food. We worry a lot about health care, jobs, the environment, crime. But food miraculously shows up on our supermarket shelves every day. There is plenty of it. It is not priced

that bad, and it tastes pretty darn good. The truth of the matter is our food supply is the best and safest in the world. Let us face it, Americans are complacent about food and where it comes from, not realizing that most of our food is homegrown.

``Restrictions and regulations are putting a noose around the farmers' necks and tightening. Most of the farmers are top-notch stewards of the land. They care about the environment and want to do the right thing, but regulations that are being talked about in Washington, DC are punitive and would curtail farming.

``Here are a few of the facts. Today, each American farmer produces food and fiber for 144 people.

``American farmers produce 18 percent of the world's food on 10 percent of the world's land.

``American farmers account for 25 percent of the world's beef and veal production, 40 percent of the world's corn production.

``Food is most affordable in the United States where consumers spend less than 10 percent of their income on it.

``Farm programs that we now have represent only four-tenths of 1 percent of our national budget.

``However, as it is with most Federal legislation, the cost of our farm program is misleading. Our farmers will not receive all the money earmarked in the farm bill. In fact, they will receive only 30 percent of the funds. The remaining 70 percent in this fund, in this bill, provides support for the Food Stamp Program, the Children's Nutritional Programs, the Women, Infant and Children Care Program, and a range of other USDA programs. The bottom line is that funding provided to producers through the farm bill costs $0.17 a day per family in the United States.''

He goes on, Madam Speaker, to point out, it takes 440,000 people to process, package, market, finance, and ship agricultural exports. Thanks to our farming families, more and more Americans in related businesses are working.

The United States is one of few families in the world that has never known wide-spread hunger. Not relying on other countries for food is key to national security. The vast majority of food America eats is grown by U.S. farmers. The question is not whether food price support is necessary, but one of determining how much price support is needed to protect our food producers and our food supply from unfair competition brought about by unequal agricultural trade restrictions on the American rice farmer.

Like other businesses in our country, U.S. agriculture products have shown they can compete with the very best from any country, sometimes even when the playing field is leveled against them. So we must keep our agricultural system strong so Americans can never be dependent on foreign food imports to feed our people. If the American consumers want to keep adequate food supplies, the safest and cheapest cost per capita of food in the world, then our government should maintain a support level on agricultural commodities that is necessary to keep us in business until free trade supply and demand will return as it was in the past.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker, with two comments in quotations from former Presidents. One is from President Dwight David Eisenhower when he said: ``Our farmers are the most efficient in the world. In no country do so few people produce so much food to feed so many at such reasonable prices.''

He also quotes President Bush 41, when he said: ``Our Nation owes a debt of gratitude to our farmers and to our ranchers to help ensure the stability of our economy, for providing food products that amply meet our citizens' needs and for representing what is best about America and its people.''

He concludes in his letter, Madam Speaker: ``Therefore, Mr. President, I urge you pose proposals to reopen the farm bill and single out farming families. Please give us new markets for our rice.''

Madam Speaker, these figures and personal accounts all point to the two main obstacles faced by rice farmers. The fact that the land that the farmers work in many times is not land that they own, but they are tenants on the land. Yet the owners of the land are the ones who receive the subsidies. Also, the United States Government has shut off several of the key markets to which our rice farmers used to sell.

The rice farmers that I have talked to, Madam Speaker, they do not want to be dependent on the government. Most believe they are forced to sell their land and become tenants to land owners because of the government. The land owners receive the subsidies. Maybe the farmers who work the land should receive the subsidies.

But with all this talk about free trade, the real issue is, Madam Speaker, is we prohibit free rice trade. It is unjust to further cut subsidies unless we expand the scope of the rice trade. During the 80s, Iraq was the number one rice market for American rice producers, producing 80 percent of Iraq's rice imports.

American rice sales to this country alone peaked at 500,000 metric tons. But from 1991 to 2003, because of Saddam Hussein and the Iraq sanctions, the U.S.A. Federation and the U.S. Rice Producers Association estimate that the United States lost $1.9 billion in rice export sales to Iraq.

As a result of loss of these sales to Iraq, other countries have stepped in to sell rice to Iraq. Two of them are Thailand and Vietnam. We have perfectly good rice in the United States, perfectly good rice in Texas and the five other States that grow rice. Not every State grows rice in the United States, Madam Speaker. The States that grow rice are Texas, California, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi.

Here we are rebuilding Iraq with American money, and yet rice is bought from Vietnam to restore Iraq. I ask the question, why. Charity begins at home if we wish to have charity, and maybe we should think about some of the other foreign giveaway programs that this country is involved in before we cut subsidies to our rice farmers, remembering, of course, that they really do not want the subsidies as much as they want market for their rice.

In January I had the opportunity to go to Iraq. I met with James Smith. He was a counselor for the Office of Agricultural Affairs at the United States Embassy in Baghdad. That is a long title, but he is the person that is responsible for helping American farmers get rice to Iraq.

He is a good individual. He understands rice economics 101. I congratulate him on his efforts to make sure that we get rice, especially Texas rice and rice from the southeast United States to Iraq.

Upon returning to the United States, I was later invited by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bonilla), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations to join him and other congressional leaders to discuss with the Iraqi grain board the further expansion of United States rice trade to Iraq.

We learned in that meeting that the Iraqis, through the Iraqi grain board, had purchased 60,000 metric tons of U.S. rice and another 360,000 metric tons will be purchased soon. The Iraqis wish to buy all the rice that they can. It is estimated that Iraq will need 1.3 million metric tons of rice every year. We want that rice to come from the United States, and we need to make sure that it is American rice that is on the Iraqi supper table and not rice from Vietnam.

And while, Madam Speaker, this is a great historic first step, we cannot stop there. We need to reopen trade, not only with Iraq but also with Cuba on the issue of agriculture products, specifically rice. These two countries along with Iran were countries that we used to send our rice to before trade embargoes and sanctions were set.

So these are some issues that are before the House and before our country. It is called food and food supply. I am working along with many others to facilitate rice trade with Cuba. I believe that our sanctions against Castro's regime, which have been in place since 1963, should not prevent our Nation from selling our farm products to the people there.

Madam Speaker, the Cuban people will eat rice just like the Iraqi people will; and if we do not sell it to them, they will get it somewhere else. Why are we economically hindering ourselves, our farmers, and our industries?

The Cuban market remained closed until this body passed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000. With the reopening mandated by this law, rice sales to Cuba have grown to $64 million a year. But now we hear that some want to slash back this trade for political reasons.

On February 22 through the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, it announced it was redefining what Congress had put into law, that being the definition of payment of cash in advance. To most folks, payment of cash in advance is not a complicated issue. It means what it means. This bureaucracy is getting in the way of congressional intent. So Cubans are beginning to look to other nations, not surprisingly, Vietnam and Thailand and other sources for their rice. So I encourage other Members of this House to co-sign on to H.R. 1339 to further explain in simple terms to government bureaucrats that farmers should be allowed to trade with Cuba on a cash for crop basis.

I continue to hear from rice farmers in my district that if U.S. political leaders would open world markets to American farmers, price supports would not be necessary. The modest price support provided by the U.S. Government and the greater efficiency of the U.S. agriculture production simply are not enough to provide a level international playing field and prevent erosion of U.S. agricultural infrastructure. We just want markets, Madam Speaker.

America's food supply is the safest, it is the best quality, it is the most abundant and the cheapest in the world. As the agricultural society of the United States declines, we will become more and more dependent on other countries for our food. This could lead to a national security problem.

It is one thing for this country to become more and more dependent on other countries for energy, but we should never get in the position, Madam Speaker, that this country becomes dependent on any country for our food. We cannot let that happen. It is a national security issue.

Maybe we should also consider using Texas rice as an alternative fuel like Nebraska is doing with corn and Hawaii is doing with sugar. In devising a long overdue energy plan, we should capitalize on rice's potential. We should be openminded, be innovative, and not depend on foreign nations for not only our food but our energy as well. And this has great possibilities, Madam Speaker.

This week is Small Business Week. Farms, the American farmer, the American farm family are the best examples of small business in the United States. So tonight and tomorrow morning when we push ourselves away from our tables, we need to thank the American farmer. We need to thank the folks like Ray Stoesser and Jack Wendt. We need to thank their families for what they have done to America and for America. They are our natural resources, for there is nothing quite like the American farmer.

Madam Speaker, that is just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to commemorate an historical event in the Lone Star State's grand, glorious heritage. On March 2, 1836, Texas declared independence from the dictatorship of Mexico. On March 6, the Alamo fell with the loss of 187 defenders, all volunteers, William Barrett Travis, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie.

Now, I am going to tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, the rest of the story and why this day is so important to Texas.

Less than 60 days after the fall of the Alamo, on this day years ago, an 18-minute battle took place on the murky banks of the San Jacinto River where it meets Buffalo Bayou in southeast Texas. History forever changed. Texas' independence from Mexico was secured, and Texas became a country for 9 years.

After the Alamo fell, the Texas army moved rapidly east, being chased by three invading armies from Mexico. The Texans had been joined by settlers fleeing the advance of the tyrant Santa Anna, who was burning Texas settlements. The armies reached a marshy lowland where General Sam Houston decided it was time to turn and fight the enemy.

In a letter Sam Houston wrote to a friend on the morning of April 19, he said, ``The odds are greatly against us, but the troops are in fine spirits and now is the time for action. We go to conquer'' for Texas and they did.

Most battles, Mr. Speaker, in our history start at sunrise, but the Texans were not waiting for another day. So General Sam's army of frontiersmen, shopkeepers, lawyers, ranchers and former slaves, all volunteers, in various types of odd attire, began mustering at high noon. They did not look like an army, but they all had the boldness and bravery and brazen courage to fight for Texas and for freedom.

The Battle of San Jacinto started at 4 o'clock on the afternoon of April 21, 1836. The Texan army consisted of approximately 800 volunteers under the command of General Sam Houston. The Mexican army consisted of approximately 2,000 professional, experienced soldiers under the command of Mexican President and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Santa Anna's army of hardened veterans had not yet been defeated in battle and even a few years before had defeated the French invasion of Mexico.

The battle began when the Texans, advancing in a single column, attacked the Mexican camp. They were fatigued, they were filthy, famished and fuming, but Houston was mounted on his white stallion leading the army. Armed with tomahawks, Bowie knives and long rifles, they went forward across the open marshy plain of southeast Texas. A Georgian Huguenot, a Kentucky colonel, and a Scotch-Irishman from Tennessee led the march across the tall grass and down upon a Mexican camp engaged in their afternoon siestas.

The pace was set by two unlikely characters that played field music as they marched. There was a German named Frederick Lemsky on the fife and a free black that, by all accounts, his name was Dick the Drummer. Two other musicians volunteered, but none of the foursome knew any marching music. They were only familiar with the popular music of the day. Therefore, Sam Houston, with a smile, had

the foursome play ``Come to the Bower,'' a bawdy-house love song regarded as quite risque at the time. As the soldiers marched on to victory, they carried their banner, a flag of Miss Liberty consisting of a partially clad female proclaiming freedom.

The enemy was caught by a stunning surprise. The battle lasted 18 minutes, but the Mexican defeat was devastating. Only nine Texans were killed or mortally wounded. Six hundred thirty Mexican soldiers were killed, and the number of Mexican soldiers taken prisoner exceeded the entire number of the Texas army.

The battle cries of ``Remember the Alamo'' and ``Remember Goliad'' were the soldiers' calls for vengeance. This was a soldiers' battle, and they had scores to settle because they had lost brothers and friends at the Alamo and Goliad.

The heroes of the battle of San Jacinto were a diverse mix. The youngest soldier at San Jacinto was Elijah Votaw, a 15-year-old that had been in Texas for about a year. The oldest was Asa Mitchell, a 60- year-old who had been in Texas for about 14 years.

Captain Juan Seguin headed a unit of about two dozen Tejanos, people of Hispanic descent born in Texas, who fought in Houston's army and wore pieces of cardboard in their hatbands so fellow soldiers would not mistake them for the enemy.

If we want to credit the most unlikely of heroes, we have to acknowledge the Yellow Rose of Texas, Emily Morgan. Legend has it that Emily Morgan, the young, beautiful, racially mixed housekeeper who had been captured earlier by Mexican forces, is said to have been lingering with Santa Anna in his tent, causing him to be unprepared for the Texans' attack. Later Santa Anna, when he was captured, was found hiding in a well.

The battle of San Jacinto avenged the massacre of Texan soldiers at the Alamo and the murder of hundreds of Texans taken prisoner at Goliad and gave Texas its independence from Mexico.

Texas claimed the entire area from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Canada, including not only the State of Texas, but New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming.

So General Sam Houston, his boys took the day, and they defeated the invaders and proclaimed to all, ``Don't mess with Texas.''

Mr. Speaker, every year a local radio station, KILT, with its morning crew of Hudson and Harrigan and top newsman in America, Robert McEntire, honor this day by playing a recording of a bunch of third graders from Tomball, Texas, singing the State song, ``Texas, our Texas,'' with an old, out-of-tune piano. It is because of the Battle of San Jacinto, Mr. Speaker, all Texans can sing along with pride, ``God bless you, Texas, and keep you brave and strong, that you may grow in power and worth throughout the ages long.''

When Sam Houston died some years later, his last words were ``Texas, Texas.'' And Mr. Speaker, the rest, they say, is Texas history.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak for a group that live in the silent storm of stressful sadness. They live with the vicious wounds of being a victim of crime in America. To be a victim, to be chosen to be the prey by a predator, to have a life stolen or broken by criminal conduct, Mr. Speaker, it is a terrible and tragic travesty. But to have your own government desert you, abandon you, too, is an injustice. It is an injustice to the injured, to the innocent, to the victims.

Mr. Speaker, the Victims of Crime Act, VOCA, the VOCA fund was created in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan to provide the most consistent stable source of funding for services to crime victims. It included counseling, victim advocacy programs, safety planning, State victim compensation funds that would help crime victims recover the costs associated with being a victim. Yet the current budget proposes to rescind the over $1.2 billion presently in this fund and redirect its resources to the Department of the Treasury, where it will be treated in the general revenue. It would go to the greater business of the general fund.

Mr. Speaker, VOCA funds, these funds that we are talking about, are

not derived from taxpayers paying dollars to the Treasury of the United States. But these funds come from fines and forfeitures and fees paid by convicted Federal offenders. This is an offender's accountability for the harm they have caused when they committed the crimes against citizens. It is a wonderful, successful idea. It makes outlaws pay for the damage they have caused; makes them pay for the system that they have created. It makes them financially pay the victims for these crimes.

In fact, there are over 4,400 programs that provide vital victim assistance services to nearly 4 million victims a year because of these funds that are contributed by criminals.

Half of these victims receiving these services are victims of domestic violence. Other victims are victims of sexual assaults, child abuse, drunk driving, elder abuse, robbery, assault, and old-fashioned stealing. They receive this type of assistance through shelters and rape crisis centers, child abuse treatment programs. Prosecutors' offices received help, law enforcement agencies and victim advocates. All of these agencies received funds paid into this fund by criminals.

State crime victims compensation funds with VOCA funds help crime victims to pay for out-of-pocket expenses that they incurred while the criminal committed a crime against them. These expenses include medical care, counseling, lost wages, funeral costs, and many, many more.

You see, when a crime occurs, the victim has no recourse financially against a criminal, even though the criminal may be convicted and sent to our Federal penitentiaries. Criminals just do not have any money. So victims are compensated through this fund through fees paid by other criminals.

Many victims, when they suffer criminal conduct against them, have no insurance. This is what they look to to save their livelihood and their lives. Without victims' compensation funds in the United States, funded by VOCA programs, paid by the defendants, victims have two choices, live without this aid or ask taxpayers to pay in some form of taxation what defendants are now paying for and what defendants should pay for in the future.

Mr. Speaker, as the founder of the Victims Rights Caucus along with the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris) and on the other side of the aisle the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa), all of us are united in this decision that reducing VOCA funding is an injustice to the people of the United States, the good people, the people who never asked to be victims of crime but yet they were chosen by some criminal to be a victim.

It is ironic, Mr. Speaker, this is Victims Rights Week, the week that we proclaim in the United States the worth and value of victims, and yet it is the week that the budget is considering to reduce these funds, take these funds donated by criminals and put it in the general fund. How ironic this is.

Mr. Speaker, in all of my career I have been involved in the political process, I have been involved in the justice system. First in the District Attorneys Office where I served as a chief felony prosecutor in Houston, Texas, for about 8 years and then a judge in Texas for 22 years where I saw 25,000, 25,000 defendants come to court charged with crimes against an equal number of victims. And during all of that time I have witnessed in the United States the victims' movement, how victims have been treated in the system. And sometimes we have forgotten as a people in 2005 how victims have been treated over the past.

Things have not always been as good for victims after the crime as it is now; and I think a history lesson is due, Mr. Speaker.

I tried numerous cases as a prosecutor, numerous defendants, death penalty cases, but I would like to talk about one person who really showed me the way of how victims continue to be victims after the crime was committed. And I have changed her name because her family still lives in Houston, Texas.

Back in the late seventies there was a young lady who was married and had a couple of sons that lived in Houston, Texas. She worked in the daytime. At night, she went to school working on a masters degree at one of our universities.

She left the school one evening. Her name was Lisa. And she was driving down one of our freeways and she had car trouble so she exited the freeway, Mr. Speaker, came into a gas station that she thought was open. It was not open. It was closed, but she did not know that. And she got out of the vehicle and started talking to an individual that she thought was a service station attendant.

Luke Johnson was not the service station attendant. He was just hanging around. One thing led to another, and Luke Johnson pulled out a pistol. He kidnapped Lisa, took her and her vehicle to a remote area of East Texas that we call the Piney Woods. He sexually assaulted her and pistol-whipped her. In fact, he beat her so bad that he thought he had killed her. Later, when he was arrested, he was mad that he had not killed her.

Lisa was a remarkable woman. She survived that brutal attack. She was found about 2 days after she was abandoned in the woods by a hunter that was going through that area. He stopped, rescued her and made sure that her medical needs were met.

After she recovered from this vicious attack, Luke Johnson was arrested and charged with aggravated rape. I prosecuted him for this conduct. A jury of 12 citizens in Houston, Texas, heard the case, heard Lisa testify in this case. Luke Johnson was convicted and received the maximum sentence of 99 years in the Texas State penitentiary as he earned and as he deserved.

Now we would have hoped as a people, as a culture that justice would have been done, that we would go on, that life would be good, but that is not, Mr. Speaker, the world that we live in. Because we live in a world far different from that.

As Luke Johnson is shipped off to the penitentiary where he belonged, Lisa could not quite cope with that crime. The first thing that happened was she never went back to school, never wanted to go on that campus again. The next thing that occurred was she lost her job. In fact, she was fired. She could not focus, and she bounced around from job to job. She started abusing drugs, first alcohol and then everything else.

Her husband, the sort that he was, decided he no longer wanted her. He sued her for divorce, convinced a judge in Texas that she was not mentally capable of raising those children that she had, and he got custody of both of them. He moved out of the State of Texas where he is somewhere else in this country today.

Then not long after all of this occurred, Lisa's mother gave me a phone call and told me that Lisa had taken her own life and she left a note that I still have in my office today and that note says, ``I am tired of running from Luke Johnson in my nightmares.''

You see, Lisa faced this entire crime alone. There was no VOCA. There were no funds for victim advocates that could sit and be with Lisa through the trial. There were no funds for therapy and counseling after this crime and after the trial. Lisa was on her own when she testified, and she was on her own after the crime was over, and she received the death penalty for being a victim of crime. Luke Johnson, he just spent a few years in the Texas penitentiary for that crime, and he is running loose somewhere in Texas.

Times did change from this type of conduct where victims were abandoned by the process, and we have progressed. When I was a judge, to show you the example of how people through VOCA make a difference, I will tell you about a second case.

This case involved a little girl named Susie. A first grader in Houston, Texas, she walked to school every day and walked home. You know, in the big city we do not normally like our kids walking to school or walking home. It is not safe. Susie's case proves the point.

One afternoon, she is walking home from school, a 7-year-old first grader in Houston. This individual, who had been stalking her for some time, pulled up beside her, rolled down the window of his pickup truck, yelled out the window, Hey, little girl. I lost my dog. Can you help me find my dog?

She stopped long enough for this perpetrator, this predator to jump out of his vehicle, grab Susie, kidnap her and

take off. He left Houston, Texas, and went down to the Gulf Coast down to the beach area of Galveston, Texas, about 50 miles from Houston. He took her to a secluded portion of that beach area, and he did to that little girl, that 7-year-old, exactly what he wanted to for as long as he wanted to do it. After he was through having his way with Susie, he abandoned her in the darkness of the night and fled. Before he left, however, he took all of her clothes away from her.

About the time the sun was coming up, Susie, in shock, walking up and down the beach, was rescued by a sheriff's deputy that was patrolling the area. She received medical aid and the attention that she needed.

The person that committed this crime was arrested out of State, extradited back to Texas to stand trial for this crime of aggravated sexual assault of a child, a 7-year-old girl.

The case was tried in my courtroom. It was sort of a high publicity case because of who the defendant was. But when Susie took the witness stand, sat next to me on the witness stand, the prosecutor started asking her questions and she turned and saw the perpetrator in the courtroom, she could not say anything. She did not say anything. All she did was stare at the offender. Eventually, she started to cry. And, Mr. Speaker, she has cried a long time. She probably thought she was alone. She was alone, but she could not testify.

Well, what do you do? Well, this was the main witness. Without this witness, the State did not have a case. The prosecutor asked for a postponement of the trial. I quickly granted that. We recessed. We came back a day or two later, and we started up the trial again.

Susie testified, sat next to me and testified. And that day she was able to testify in detail, graphic detail what happened to her when she left school one afternoon and what this perpetrator did to her.

The difference, the difference was there was another person in the courtroom, seated on the back row looking at her, telling her in her own way, you can testify. You can do this. I believe in you.

Who was it? It was the victim advocate that worked with the District Attorney's Office that walked that little girl through that case. And because that woman was in the courtroom and because she had worked with this victim before and Susie saw her, it gave her the courage to testify. And that predator, that child predator was convicted of that case because one person, a victim advocate, was present in the courtroom.

See, there was a time there were no victim advocates in the courtroom, and that time has passed, and part of the reason is that VOCA funds are used to fund advocates of victims in our courtrooms.

One of cases that I tried where I met my first victim advocate was a case that was called the choker rapist. What this individual did, he assaulted co-eds from the University of Texas, choked them and sexually assaulted them. He did this numerous times. He was sent to the Texas penitentiary. By some error or mistake, having been sentenced to about 700 years in the penitentiary, he was released after a short period of time. He came to Houston, and he continued these ways of assaulting co- eds from the University of Houston. He was captured again, and this case was tried. The victim in that case was similar to Susie in that it was difficult for her to testify. She was older. She was a college student.

The first victim advocate that I ever laid eyes on in 1984 was sitting in the courtroom, helping this witness keep with the trial and the crime and testifying. That person's name was Anne Seymour, and that was many years ago. But yet Anne Seymour and many like her work with victims on a daily basis, and part of the way they are able to take care of victims is by funding that they get from VOCA each year.

Mr. Speaker, many people do not realize that when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, now 10 years ago, that travesty, that assault on American citizens, VOCA funds were available and used to help those victims cope with that emergency. And those funds were available immediately so that victims and their families could be helped.

I would like to read a letter from Marsha Kite. Marsha Kite's daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, and her letter states how she feels as the mother of a murder victim about the VOCA funding.

She says: We are only days away from the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and I hear that there is consideration for emptying out our Federal crime victims fund.

Number 1, this critical fund that is paid for by criminals and not taxpayers.

Two, the fund helped thousands of families and survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing, including my own family. The administration needs to take a hard look at what they are contemplating and realize the devastating impact it will have on programs that provide direct services to crime victims, including crisis intervention, emergency shelters, emergency transportation, counseling and the criminal justice advocacy programs, all of which were provided to Oklahoma City families.

Number 3, no person, regardless of life choices or situations, should be met with the harmful or inadequate services. Each victim should be provided with the opportunity to access services based on their needs and not be further traumatized by a system that is neither prepared nor underfunded.

So, Mr. Speaker, these funds have helped numerous victims and their families, and it would be a total injustice to cut these funds and put them in the abyss of the general revenue.

Other examples of VOCA funding go to domestic violence shelters. Domestic violence shelters are a necessary requirement in our culture, and good people throughout this United States organize and establish these shelters to protect victims of domestic violence.

We have such a one in my hometown of Humble, Texas. It is called Family Time, and Family Time is available on a 24-hour basis for victims of domestic violence where they can go and find safety when they have to flee their own homes. If they do not go to these domestic violence shelters, where will they go?

If it was not for these shelters, many of these abused women would go directly back to that house and be victimized and abused again. These shelters are saving their lives. Many of these shelters rely on VOCA funding, and they would close down without the help of these funds, and these women and these children would be sent back to an environment of violence, domestic violence.

These are just a few examples, Mr. Speaker, of how these funds are spent.

It is interesting how we, as a Nation, are very concerned about the victims in lands far, far away across the seas, the recent tsunami crisis, where we have President Bush and President Clinton raising money in the United States to help these victims. While it is very important that we show that we are compassionate to peoples all over the world, Mr. Speaker, charity begins at home, and we need to take care of our American families first and then the world families, if necessary.

So we must do both, but we must never neglect our own people, our victims for some other Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to just continue this history lesson talking about children, children in the criminal justice system, specifically children who are the victims of sexual assault.

There was a time, Mr. Speaker, when a child that was sexually assaulted would have to go through a long process in the criminal justice system. It in itself was a crime. The victim would be interviewed, usually by a police officer, a stranger. Another police officer would instruct the victim to go to the county hospital. They would wait in the emergency room along with everybody else that goes to the emergency room. They would be seen by a doctor that may or may not know anything about sexual assault cases, a doctor that sometimes was not even available to testify at the trial because they had been sent to some other hospital in the Nation.

After being seen by this doctor, then the child would have to go to the police station to be interviewed again, and there were occasions in my home city of Houston that these victims would sometimes get on the elevator to go to be interviewed by the homicide detective, and the perpetrator would be on

the elevator as well going to be interviewed by another detective.

Then, after this was over with, they would have to go to the district attorney's office and be interviewed for the trial by a prosecutor, sometimes a prosecutor that has never tried a sexual assault case, and eventually the trial would come and those traumas would continue.

Mr. Speaker, we are fortunate to say that those days are over. Those are no longer the days of children that are sexually assaulted in the United States because of groups like the National Children's Alliance here in Washington, D.C., where I am a board member. That alliance has over 400 children advocacy centers throughout the United States, and what those centers do is this.

When a child is sexually assaulted, rather than be bounced from place to place, agency to agency, they are taken to one location, a child friendly location, and probably the best example of this center is in Houston, Texas, Children's Assessment Center, that is a privately funded, publicly funded establishment, and here is what happens.

When a child is sexually assaulted, they go to this center. It is a very friendly, child friendly center, and they are interviewed only by child experts. They are interviewed about the crime and what took place. Their medical needs are met there by qualified doctors and nurses that deal with child sexual assault victims. The child, after this occurs, is allowed to talk to a prosecutor that deals only with child assault cases. The child then, before and after they testify, are provided therapy and counseling by child psychiatrists and experts, and they do all of this at the center. Every time they need to be involved in the case, they go to this one place, very child friendly, and because of centers like the Children's Assessment Center in Houston, Texas, and 59 others in Texas, 400 or more in the United States, child victims are able to cope and recover from the tragedy of sexual assault against them.

Children's Assessment Center in Houston sees 350 children a month that have been sexually abused and assaulted. They receive VOCA funds, as well as funds from the community, from private foundations and the county government. The funds at the Children's Assessment Center go for a therapist, a bilingual therapist, that is able to talk to children that do not speak just English. That therapist, along with other therapists, will disappear if VOCA funds are cut.

Just to show an impact on these centers, they constantly help kids cope with the crime. It is more important to help the child recover than even to have the perpetrator convicted, but they do many things with these kids to help them realize what has occurred in their own lives and how they can vent by even writing a letter to the perpetrator.

I have one such letter that was written by a little girl to the person who sexually assaulted her that I have received from the Children's Assessment Center in Houston today, and she starts out her letter this way.

These are some of the things that I have been wanting to say to you. I used to think that you were a nice person and that you would never hurt me. Then things changed. After you began touching me, I thought that you were not a nice person, and I wondered if you were hurting Mommy, too. When I think of you touching me, I get very mad, and I sometimes am sad. You are a jerk and a child molester. Sometimes when I think of you, I am mad at you for hurting me. I want to tell you that I am glad you are in jail and you cannot hurt me anymore. If I ever, or when I see you again I will tell Mommy and call the cops, and I will make a mad face at you. Ha, ha, you thought I would never tell but now everyone knows. I also know you did this to my sister, too. It is signed by a little girl.

Letters such as this help victims, children cope with the crime that has been committed against them. These Children's Assessment Centers all over the country, God bless them, are doing a work to save America's greatest resource, our children. VOCA funds go to these centers, and without this funding, many of these centers would not be able to open the doors.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in the House on both sides of the aisle to join me and the other 50 Members and counting who have signed a letter to the Committee on Appropriations chairman to save the VOCA funds.

Grassroots victims organizations across the Nation have been flooding congressional offices with phone calls and pleading for their representatives to save VOCA and for them to sign this letter that 50 have already signed. Fourteen national victim advocacy organizations have partnered in support of saving the crime victims fund. And they are, Mr. Speaker, these organizations that work victims: Justice Solutions, Incorporated; Mothers Against Drunk Driving; the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence; the National Association of Crime Victim Compensation Boards; the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators; the National Center For Victims of Crime; the National Children's Alliance; the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence; the National Crime Victim Research and Treatment Center; the National Network to End Domestic Violence; the National Organization for Victim Assistance; National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children; the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape; the Victim Assistance Legal Organization; and even way down in Midland, Texas, the Midland County, Texas, Sheriff's Crisis Intervention Center which has 35 volunteers. That organization will cease to exist if these funds are cut.

We all are concerned, Mr. Speaker, about the budget, about the deficit, about Federal spending. We all are in agreement about that, but maybe we need to reprioritize how we spend money. Maybe we should reconsider some of the foreign giveaway programs that this country is involved in, giving away money, and maybe we should think about victims here at home, remembering that the victims fund, VOCA, is not funded by taxpayers, but it is funded by criminals, as it ought to be, and they should continue to pay, pay for the crimes that they have brought upon the good people of our community.

Mr. Speaker, victims pay. They always pay. They continue to pay after the crime is over with, and we need to be compassionate and sensitive about them because the same Constitution that protects defendants of crime protects victims of crime as well.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about a person that I never met. He was an individual that did not have much going for him. He was born the same year that my son Curt was born in the 1970s, and my son now is a big, old strapping kid in his twenties, and sometimes when I look at Curt, I think about Kevin Wanstraf and the people I prosecuted that killed him.

Kevin Wanstraf was born in Mississippi. His mother did not want him. So she dumped him off to some charity. The charity, though, found a home for him, and the home was in Houston, Texas. The people who adopted Kevin Wanstraf, John and Diana Wanstraf, could not have children of their own. They were middle-class folks, and so they found Kevin, they adopted him, and they made him their son, and they were happy as a family could be.

But unbeknownst to this family, Diana Wanstraf's brother, Markum was his name, was plotting to kill this entire family. While he was plotting to kill the family, Markum Duffsmith, along with three other henchmen years before, had murdered Markum's own mother, and because of the way that crime was committed, he was able to convince law enforcement that it was a suicide, and he was not prosecuted until after he had murdered his nephew Kevin.

He collected the estate of his mother, and he spent it, and when he was through spending the money, he needed more money. So he then plotted this other murder, the murder of John Wanstraf, Diana Wanstraf and Kevin Wanstraf.

One evening while John and Diana were watching Channel 13 news in Houston, Texas, two people that Markum had hired, posing to be real estate agents, forced their way into the Wanstraf home and first shot John, then shot Diana and then, while Kevin Wanstraf, a 14-month-old baby, was asleep in his baby bed curled up to his favorite Teddy bear, clothed in blue terry cloth pajamas, dreaming about whatever those babies dream about, he

was murdered. He was shot in the head. He was sacrificed on the altar of greed.

Because of the work of a couple of Houston police officers, all those killers were brought to justice. Two of them received the death penalty and were later executed, and two received long prison terms.

Over the years, I have kept a photograph of Kevin Wanstra on my desk, as a prosecutor, as a judge for 22 years, and now as a fortunate Member of Congress representing the Second Congressional District of Texas. You see, Kevin Wanstra never made it to his second birthday. He was denied the right to live. He was a victim of criminal conduct.

Our Nation, Mr. Speaker, needs to be concerned about the Kevin Wanstras in our culture because they have the right to live as well. Kevin Wanstra will never grow up, he will never be in the backyard playing catch with his father, will never play football, never have a date, never get married, all because he was chosen to be prey, the victim of a crime.

So our Nation, Mr. Speaker, during this Victims' Rights Week, needs to be determined. It needs to be reinforced as a culture that we will not stand idly by while people are maimed and hurt in our culture, that we will support them, that we will be compassionate toward them, and we will make sure that criminals who commit crimes against them will pay, and they will financially pay in the funding of VOCA.

Mr. Speaker, we as a people will never be judged the way we treat the rich, the famous, the important, the wealthy, the special folks. We will be judged by the way we treat the innocent, the weak, the elderly, the children. I hope when we are judged, Mr. Speaker, we are judged favorably.