Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to honor Vivien Spitz for her dedication and devotion to the court reporting profession over the past six decades. She has given so much to the court reporting profession and gained the admiration of friends and colleagues.

Vivien Spitz has played a valuable role in preserving history and documenting events of epic proportion throughout her career. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Professional Reporters of the National Court Reporters Association. Ms. Spitz was an Official Reporter of Debates and Chief Reporter in the United States House of Representatives from 1972 to 1982. During this time she reported Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan on their State of the Union Addresses to the Nation.

Vivien also reported all foreign Heads of State who addressed Congress during this period including King Juan Carlos of Spain, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin of Israel. She reported President Carter's establishment in 1978 of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, appointing Elie Wiesel as Chairman. She was also the first woman reporter in the U.S. Senate on temporary assignments during 1969, 1970, and 1971 out of her Denver district court.

By contract with the United States War Department, Ms. Spitz reported the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in Germany from 1946 to 1948, including the Nazi Doctors Case. She recorded verbatim the words that came from the mouths of witnesses and victims who survived the heinous experiments ``in the name of scientific medical research'' conducted by doctors who had taken the Oath of Hippocrates to heal and cure, turned into doctors who became torturers and murders. Through the record that she helped to create this serious tragedy will never be forgotten.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Vivien for her years of work and dedication to her profession. The history that she has preserved through her devoted work as a court reporter will never be forgotten.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Jefferson Economic Council, Colorado's oldest economic development agency. Early next month, the council will be celebrating its 50th anniversary.

The Jefferson Economic Council has worked tirelessly over the last half-century to brighten the future of Jefferson County businesses. And even after fifty years, the Council remains the premier business organization in Jefferson County, adapting to a rapidly changing economy. The council works with county government, cities, other economic development organizations, chambers of commerce, and the business community to create cooperation and common voice for business in the county.

Mr. Speaker, as the council is fond of saying, the greatest strength of any organization is its people. I believe that is true. The hard work and dedication of the members of this organization to improving the business climate and more generally building a better community over the last five decades have been invaluable contributions to the county that I--and many other Colorado residents and businesses--call home.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Ms. Kathleen Swanson. Kathleen has been selected as one of the recipients of the Milken National Educator award. The award is presented for excellence in teaching elementary education, and is designed to help bring recognition to the teaching profession by highlighting the exceptional performance of individual teachers in supporting and promoting student achievement.

Ms. Swanson is a literacy instructional coach at Stein Elementary in Lakewood, Colorado, and she has been teaching for seventeen years. In the past six years, Stein Elementary has gone from being one of the lowest performing schools to one of the highest Title I schools in Jefferson County. This is in no small part to the dedication of educational professionals like Ms. Swanson.

The Milken folks presenting her with the award aren't the only ones who have seen fit to recognize Ms. Swanson's contributions. In fact, the Resource Center at Stein Elementary was recently renamed the ``Kathleen Swanson Resource Room,'' and each class at Stein donated a book in her name to the library.

Mr. Speaker, I hope all of my colleagues will join me in thanking Ms. Swanson for her hard work, and congratulating her on being the recipient of this prestigious award.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a local Colorado company, CH2M Hill. Since the December 26 Asian tsunami disaster, many Americans have looked into their hearts and reached their wallets in an effort to help alleviate suffering in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and other affected nations. The employees of CH2M Hill were no exception, quickly responding to the disaster not just with funds, but with critical know how and badly needed technical assistance.

CH2M Hill was one of the first companies on the scene, and one of the most active in providing critical services to victims. They partnered with other companies to provide clean drinking water to people in Indonesia, setting up a mobile water treatment unit that is providing safe drinking water to the bulk of the population in Banda Aceh. The quality of the water is equivalent to bottled water, and is currently being provided throughout the area, including to the U.N. compound and more than 10 refugee camps. It was the first privately donated system up and running in the region, purifying water at the rate of 600 gallons per minute, producing 864,000 gallons of purified water daily. This will help nearly a quarter-of-a-million people every day.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of CEO Ralph Peterson and the employees of CH2M Hill. Their efforts are to be commended, and help demonstrate that the strength of America's compassion are always best measured by the efforts of individual citizens and private companies, not the number of government programs we create or the amount of federal money we appropriate.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman, my amendment would strike all of the taxpayer funded relief provided in the bill to the countries affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

After reviewing information from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University detailing the level of private American contributions to the tsunami relief, I am not sure we need to spend extra taxpayer dollars for that purpose. Already some 130 private organizations are providing tsunami relief. Several private companies are also providing relief through their local offices in the region.

According to the report, some $800 million has already been provided by these organizations in cash. In addition, another $101 million has been provided in kind donations. That brings the total to $1 billion already, close to $1 billion, and that total does not include all the person-to-person aid that is not accounted for in the study.

Since the disaster many Americans have looked into their hearts and reached into their wallets in an effort to help alleviate the suffering in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and other affected nations.

One of these companies, as a matter of fact, a company called CH2M Hill, was one of the first on the scene to provide critical services to victims ever since. They partnered with other countries to provide a clean drinking water purification system to people in Indonesia. The quality of the water is equivalent to bottled water and is currently being provided throughout the country, including to the U.N. compound and more than 10 refugee camps.

The system is currently purifying water at the rate of 600 gallons per minute, producing 864,000 gallons of purified water each day, helping nearly a quarter of a million people each day.

I am proud of the efforts of CH2M Hill. I am proud of all of the Americans who have given so much to alleviate the suffering. Their efforts and indeed all of the efforts are to be commended. They help demonstrate that the strength of America's compassion is best measured by the efforts of individual citizens and private organizations and companies, not by the number of government programs we create or the amount of Federal appropriations we dole out.

Given this era of tight budgets and the need to provide for disasters here at home like the hurricanes that ravaged Florida, wildfires that burned through the West, tornados that hit middle America, we simply cannot ask

Americans to be all things to all people.

People have already donated what they can. We should not exact further tax dollars from them for this purpose.

Madam Chairman, I do not approach this in a light or frivolous way. I believe that the issues are significant and serious. I believe that, in fact, if more money is needed, we need to do it as a result of a study and careful examination of exactly what needs are still out there. Recent reports have indicated that in fact NGOs are saying that there is more money than they can even deal with. Some of the NGOs have indicated that people are running into each other essentially. Too many people, too much money flooding the country at the present time.

If more money is needed, I suggest it be provided in a later appropriation under a regular rule. I do not believe that any longer we can consider it to be ``an emergency'' and I certainly do not think that it qualifies for a categorization under this supplemental.

I have no illusions about the possibility of the passage of this amendment. I know it will probably fail and probably fail pretty dramatically. I recognize that entirely. But I do feel it is important to at least bring to the attention of my colleagues and to the Nation that I think a great deal has been done. I am proud of every single American who has donated. It does come from their heart. That is the way we should provide for these things. That is not the way this bill intends to do it.

Offered By: Mr. Tancredo

Amendment No. 6: Page 72, after line 17, insert the

following:

Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit the foreword to an article I authored in the Fall 2004 special migration issue of Mediterranean Quarterly. People on the Move: The Security, Social, and Economic Implications of Migration Foreword

The long cycles of history are revealing to those who study them but may harbor surprises for those who choose to ignore them. The editors of Mediterranean Quarterly, cognizant of lessons learned or ignored, decided to take a closer look at a pattern of history that seems to be at the core of current global instability: the mass migration of people in search of basic means of survival, or just survival from brutal rulers.

On an annual basis, approximately 100 million people either attempt to or actually do leave their place of birth, often not knowing where they will end up. More than 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States since the last ``amnesty'' in 1986, and the flow continues despite the promises of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Close to 1 million Albanians, almost one-fourth of the country's population, have sought refuge in neighboring countries since the collapse of their country's communist regime. Tens of thousands of Turks leave their country annually in search of work in Western Europe and endure the consequences of cultural discrimination. More tragically, young women from the poorest components of the former Soviet Empire have vanished into the jungle of human trafficking and become commodities in an ugly form of trade that is managed by the new barons of a dangerous underworld. Recent statistics assembled by Greek authorities estimate that seventeen thousand women are being exploited by sex merchants in the Balkans alone. Albanian mafia lords, in association with their former enemies and with links all the way to Afghanistan, control lucrative drug, gun, and human-smuggling operations across national borders with relative impunity. And as in times past, the Mediterranean Sea has become the crossroads of people on the move and the stage on which human tragedy unfolds almost on a daily basis.

Human cargoes float from island to island in the eastern Aegean, with boat crews waiting for the opportunity to dump these people on dry land, after having extracted the last ounce of resources from their helpless victims. On the African shores of Gibraltar, thousands of Africans patiently wait for the first opportunity to cross the narrow stretch of water and set foot on European soil. Egyptians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Filipinos, and Bangladeshis have landed on Italian, Greek, French, and Spanish shores over the years. They bring along their poverty, their energies, and their hopes. They also bring social, political, and now security concerns.

More than a dozen scholars, policy makers, and political leaders present diverse views on this critical issue in these pages. The lead essay, on the security implications of illegal migration for the United States, is written by Congressman Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, and the unfolding drama of African refugees is provided by Francis M. Deng, United Nations representative for internally displaced persons. Rochelle Gershuni, head of Israel's Ministry of Justice, addresses sex exploitation and human trafficking and its consequences for her country. Scholars of diverse origins and viewpoints deal with migration issues in Spain, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece and the South-North migration in the United States and Canada. Naturally, we do not pretend that we provide a complete picture of a huge historical phenomenon, but we do hope to spark a debate on the social, policy, security, and economic implications caused by ``people on the move.''

Historical patterns show that mass population movements have altered cultures, demolished empires, given birth to new ones, and ultimately compelled humankind to organize itself into nation-states, with sovereignty determining their national characters. Now the nation-state that saw its birth in the Treaty of Westphalia is in retreat as an organizing concept of human events. Multiculturalism, globalization, poverty, and the North-South global economic divide have altered the patterns of civilization to a degree unprecedented since the eastern tribes overwhelmed the Roman Empire and the Ottomans reached the gates of Vienna.

The advanced industrial democracies, the ultimate destination of people on the move, have shown a lack of vision about the implications of mass movements of people in search of a livelihood. In their pursuit of high profits with cheap labor in the shortest time, they have adopted immigration policies that no longer facilitate the orderly integration of cultures and the peaceful evolution of new forms of ethnic identity. Instead of inviting potential citizens seeking a better life, the industrial nations have institutionalized the transplantation of ethnic communities and have set in motion a process for their own national balkanization.

The essays included in this special issue of Mediterranean Quarterly (with more to follow in future issues) examine problems caused by migration both in countries of destination and countries of origin. It behooves the first to examine their social policies and the latter to come to grips with their inability to match national resources with their peoples' needs. By selectively examining problems on both sides of the divide, the editors hope to spark a debate that will be grounded on the reality that a silent invasion is under way that could, if left unattended, transform world politics and foment global turmoil for generations to come.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a remarkable individual and a personal friend. Mr. Jerry Wartgow recently announced that he will be stepping down this summer as the Superintendent of Denver Public Schools. He will be sorely missed by all who had the pleasure of working with him in his tireless efforts to improve the quality of education and the lives of Denver area youth.

Jerry is a wonderful man who is truly dedicated to education reform. In his four-plus years as superintendent he relentlessly pursued reforms, a pursuit that sometimes put him at odds with the educational establishment and at loggerheads with state and municipal officials.

Mr. Wartgow's dedication to institutional reform and improving results was matched only by his compassion for the children he worked for every day. Jerry was a believer in the notion of education as a lifetime process. He believed that in order to get long term results in childhood achievement, education has to start early--and he brought that thought process to the superintendent's office.

As he told the Rocky Mountain News last week, ``Economically, the best possible investment is to put money in early childhood education and kindergarten. There's no question about it. That's the best way to go about secondary school reform--to start early.''

Jerry recently also told The Rocky Mountain News that, ``Successful leaders have always been able to resist the pressure to make short- term, quick-fix changes at the expense of sustainable reform.''

Mr. Speaker, without a doubt Jerry has shown himself to be one of those successful leaders.

Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin recently penned a column about Wartgow that I think did a fine job capturing the kind of man Jerry is, and I would like to submit it here for the Record.

When Jerry Wartgow leaves his job as DPS superintendent in

June, he'll leave the job undone.

Which is, of course, the only way you can leave that job.

Wartgow will have kept the position for just over four

years. In explaining why he's leaving, he notes that the

typical urban superintendent lasts only 27 months.

That's not really an explanation--and he didn't offer a

better one--but it is a great statistic.

In 27 months as a school superintendent, it's easy to

either wear out or to wear out your welcome. Or both.

When Wartgow made his announcement at the Denver School of

the Arts in a speech before school principals and staff, he

got a standing ovation. That's the way you want to go--before

the grumbling gets too loud.

And there is some grumbling, of course: about struggling

high schools, about high dropout rates, about potential labor

problems, about community schools that are not always

accepted by their communities.

In his speech, Wartgow pointed to his accomplishments--one

form of education reform following another; money raised,

even if never enough money; a district that the governor

twice named most improved--and then he told me what he really

thought about how much you can accomplish on the job.

It turns out to be a lesson--get out your paper and

pencil--for ``education'' presidents and ``education''

governors and ``education'' mayors and school board members

and state legislators and congressmen and, yes,

superintendents and everyone else who makes education policy.

And so, of course, Jerry Wartgow's lesson turns out to be a

lesson even for Jerry Wartgow himself.

It's simply this: ``Education reform'' and ``quick fix''

don't belong in the same sentence. And politicians are, by

nature of their jobs, addicted to the quicker-than-really-

possible fix.

Wartgow put it this way: ``We live in a society of instant

gratification. People want instant answers, instant

solutions, ignoring the complexities of so many of these

issues.

``You take societal problems that can't be solved by

legislators and they pass them on to the schools. And then

they expect the schools to solve them.''

You know the fixes. Vouchers will fix the schools. Or

testing will fix the schools. Or merit pay for teachers will

fix the schools. Or charter schools will fix the schools. Or

getting back to basics will fix the schools. Or--and, yes,

this may be an extreme case--dumping Bless Me, Ultima in the

trash will fix the schools.

And that's just from one side of the educational divide.

``We've been working on reform of education since 1978,''

Wartgow said. ``We've spent billions of dollars. Every state

legislature has had its own reforms. There are hundreds of

thousands of pages of legislation.''

In his speech, this is what he asked for from the

legislature: no more education legislation.

``I've lived through all the cycles,'' he said. ``You don't

give your children soft drinks--you give them fruit juice.

Look in the paper today, and there's a story about the

dangers of fruit juice.

``It's the same with education reforms. And it's further

complicated because people making the decisions are on a

different time frame than the students.

``If you're a mayor for four years, or you're an urban

superintendent for 27 months, or if you're on the school

board, what you're trying to do is to make a statement in the

time you're there. If you're a young superintendent, with a

family to worry about, you've got 27 months. And if you don't

show progress. . .''

It's a story you see played time and again.

``The reform time frame,'' Wartgow said, ``is out of sync

with the policymakers' time frame.''

In Wartgow's time frame, he will quit just after a report

on secondary school reform is

completed. One reason he's leaving, he says, is that he

couldn't see himself staying long enough to properly

implement those reforms.

``We know that economically the best possible investment is

to put the money in early childhood education and

kindergarten,'' Wartgow was saying. ``There's no question

about it. That's the best way to go about secondary-school

reform--to start early.

``But here's the problem: The benefit won't be seen for

years. I think that's it. I think that's the issue. I don't

have the answer, but I've observed the problem.

``The time frame for everything we know about how long it

takes for education reform to take hold is a much longer time

frame than policymakers and elected officials live in.''

In the time it takes to go from kindergarten through 12th

grade and, with luck, on to college, a student has lived

through a couple of mayors, a couple of governors, maybe

three or four superintendents, and all with a farewell speech

to deliver.

When Wartgow says he doesn't have an answer for this

problem, he is being modest. He does, at the very least, have

a suggestion, which would fit nicely on a sampler.

``My quote,'' he said, ``is that successful leaders have

always been able to resist the pressure to make short-term,

quick-fix changes at the expense of sustainable reform.''

Lesson given. Lesson learned?

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate and honor a young Colorado student from my district who has achieved national recognition for exemplary volunteer service in her community. Ana Dodson of Evergreen has just been named one of the top youth volunteers by the 2005 Prudential Spirit of Community Awards Program, an annual honor conferred on the most impressive student volunteers.

Ms. Dodson is being recognized for creating an organization called ``Peruvian Hearts,'' a non-profit organization to aid abused and abandoned girls living in Peruvian orphanages. This organization has over the past year collected donations totaling near $10,000. This money was used to purchase such commodities as school supplies, vitamins, books, toiletries, clothing, medicine, quilts, backpacks, and toys.

The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards was created by Prudential Financial in Partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals in 1995 to impress upon all youth volunteers that their contributions are critically important and highly valued, and to inspire other young people to follow their example. Over the past 8 years, the program has become the Nation's largest youth recognition effort based solely on community service, with more than 170,000 youngsters participating since its inception.

Ms. Dodson should be extremely proud to have been singled out from such a large group of dedicated volunteers. I applaud Ms. Dodson for her contribution and public service, and for the positive impact she has had on the lives of others. She has demonstrated a level of commitment and accomplishment that is truly extraordinary in today's world. She is deserving of our sincere admiration and respect. Her actions show that the spirit of America's youth holds tremendous promise for America's future.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn the recent ``anti- secession law'' proposed by the ``legislature'' of the People's Republic of China.

I believe it is clear to even the most casual observer that this move by China's rubber-stamp National People's Congress is little more than a thinly veiled attempt by Beijing to create a ``legal framework'' for starting a war with Taiwan.

Should China's unelected parliament enact this law, it will represent a clear-cut, belligerent and dangerous step toward a military attack of a peaceful and democratic ally of the United States. Moreover, it underscores once again that the government in Beijing is not sincere about resolving its differences with Taiwan in a peaceful or rational manner.

America's position is clear: Any change in the status quo between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan must have the assent of the people of Taiwan. As such, resolving the differences between these two nations can only be achieved through honest and direct state-to-state negotiations without preconditions. They cannot be resolved by intimidation, indignant bluster or threats of military force from Beijing.

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that Taiwan and China are not united. They are not ``one country'' as the communists in Beijing are so fond of asserting. If they were there would be no talk of ``unification.'' China must accept that it does not have jurisdiction over Taiwan, and abandon this kind of counter-productive saber rattling. The simple fact is this: Regardless of whether the puppet legislature in Beijing enacts this ``law'' or not, Taiwan will remain free, independent and outside of the control of communist China. Those, Mr. Speaker, are the facts.

Nonetheless, world reaction to this P.R.C. ``trial balloon'' will be significant and watched with great interest by the autocrats in Beijing. Hard liners in Beijing will observe how civilized and modern nations respond to the explicit threat that the ``anti-secession law'' represents. In short, they are feeling out the free world to determine its commitment to the safety and security of Taiwan--and its more than twenty million citizens.

I hope the family of free nations will condemn the ``anti-secession law'' with a unified voice, making it clear to China that any resolution of cross-straits tensions must be peaceful and above all acceptable to the people of Taiwan.

Mr. Speaker, I address the House tonight in regard to an issue that of course I have brought to the attention of my colleagues many times in the past. I continue to offer my observations about the issue of immigration and immigration reform.

I would, however, like to preface those remarks with some observations dealing with the issue of the President's budget and the general state of affairs of the Nation in terms of our deficit and the health of the economy.

Certainly I do so as a result of listening to my colleagues and their colleagues preceding them tonight attacking the budget for being so sparse, I suppose. A $2.5 trillion budget, not meeting the expectations of many of the Members who have come to the floor tonight, and hoping a political advantage can be gained in their attempts to characterize this thing as a disaster.

But the real disaster it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that we have a budgeting system here and a budget in and of itself which is out of control, record deficits even in light of the sparse and lean budget that was presented by the President. It still has a $425 billion figure attached to it in terms of a deficit. I imagine since it is in the President's budget, he does not account for the supplemental that he is going to request in a short time, $80-some billion, we are not sure exactly how much, or the transition costs for Social Security. And if we add those, the deficit would be dramatically higher.

So I have concerns myself about the budget. I have concerns not that it is providing too little to run the government, but in some ways not being accurate in ways it defines the problem or the solution because the problem is horrendous. We have a budget that is a reflection of course of the needs, wants, and desires of Members and their constituents; and that is as the process, I suppose, should be. If we recognize what that budget does in terms of what our role here is, and after all of the rhetoric about the veterans who will not be receiving health care and the children who will be dying because they do not receive nourishment, all of these incredibly bombastic statements which have been made by the folks on the other side of the aisle about this budget, the fact is if you just do this, and I am not going to dwell on it a long

time because there is another issue I want to address, but it does make one think about what the Founding Fathers would have thought about a budget of this nature and how they would have tried to rationalize the Federal Government spending the money it spends in all of the areas in which it operates, and wondering about the extent to which any of these things are required by the Constitution.

The Constitution actually is the blueprint for the Federal Government, what it is we are supposed to do. The 10th amendment makes it clear if the power is not given to us in that document, it rests with the States and the people. Actually we can look far and wide. You can scrutinize the Constitution with a microscope, and you will not find any reference to education being a responsibility of the Federal Government. It is not. It is not there. Yet 50 to $60 billion, I have forgotten the exact number being proposed, but many billions of Federal dollars being proposed for educational services, and that is not even in the broader areas of higher education, just in K-12, and Health and Human Services and highways, all of things that we do here which are extraneous to our task. The task is to protect and defend. That is really the role we have at the Federal level. States cannot raise armies and provide for the general defense of the Nation and the common defense; and so, therefore, the Federal Government must do that. That is our role.

Every year we do more and more other things; and unfortunately we do not spend as much time, energy, and resources on the things required of us under the Constitution. So once you establish this incredibly generous activity on the part of the Federal Government and Federal taxpayers to fund all of the myriad of things in that budget, agricultural subsidies, educational subsidies, highway subsidies, Amtrak, I can go on and on, all of the things that are not our responsibility but have become such as a result of the years of indulgence, essentially. If you can just take all of that away and look at what our primary responsibility is and how we should be funding that, we could do it easily and we would have money left over for tax cuts, but we are told that the world is coming to an end, civilization is at an end, blood will run in the streets if we pass a budget of only $2.5 trillion, with really close to a $500 billion deficit.

I know that many people in America look at the budget and say it is rotten, how can they spend so much money, but do not care about the thing that I care about the most. I support the President's efforts to try and reduce the size of the budget. Unfortunately, it does not go nearly far enough. We still have an increase in the budget of somewhere around 8 percent as far as I can calculate it, and it is true that the most significant increases are going to defense and homeland security, which of course are appropriate. But we still do as far as I am concerned far too much in other areas that are extraneous to our constitutional responsibility.

So when we hear folks on the other side of the aisle argue and harangue about these cuts, it is important to remember that for the last several years, certainly the last year I was on the Budget Committee, we waited in vain to ever see a budget from the other side. It is true that the minority has the responsibility of being the sort of watchdog of the majority. That is fine.

But one of the things we would expect is if they say here is what is wrong with the President's budget, here is what is wrong with the budget that the Congress has produced because it will be produced primarily by the majority party, but if history is any judge, we will not see a minority budget. They will not provide a plan because if they do, they would have to do one of two things: they would have to cut spending or raise taxes. That is it. That is it. And neither of those two things are they too crazy about doing.

They would argue that we should not continue the tax cuts or make the tax cuts permanent. But, frankly, even if you follow their suggestion and allow tax rates to go back up to levels they were prior to the President's tax cuts, it would do little to actually change the entire picture. They would have to do substantially more. They would have to cut spending or increase taxes. That is it. If you increase taxes, of course, you begin to take a toll on the economy. Although initially there will be an increase in revenue, you eventually get to the point where taxes begin to reduce the number of jobs, the economy becomes much more stagnant, and therefore revenues begin to drop.

So they are in a dilemma. They are in a dilemma. Therefore, the only thing they can do is say these tax cuts are no good. These tax cuts are terrible. So where would they cut then? If you have a $425 billion to $500 billion deficit, where will you cut? They will not show that because the cutting job is tough. The President is to be commended for laying out a budget that does include significant cuts, not nearly enough. And by the way, no one thinks for a moment they will survive this place. Even the administration does not think that. Some of these things they put in knowing they will be replaced by Congress, but they can take the high road by offering the cuts.

Nonetheless, the cuts will not survive. We will increase the budget more than even the 8 percent that the President has planned, the deficit will increase, and all because we are afraid of angering these constituencies that feel they are entitled to some part of this.

In the entire debate that is the thing that most rankles me, the idea that all of these people receiving this largess and the share of someone else's labor, we are transferring wealth from one person to another through our tax system, everyone on the receiving end thinks it is okay, they are entitled to it.

Mr. Speaker, it is a fascinating thing. In that roughly $2.5 trillion budget which has been put forward, the greatest amount, certainly somewhere near 80 percent of that budget, is in fact wrapped up in these entitlement programs. That word implies an inability on the part of Congress or anybody else to do anything about it. That is like it is there, it was handed down by God that these programs be in existence, and we cannot do anything about it. That is Social Security, Medicare, some veterans programs. That is where all of the money is. We could eliminate all of the discretionary spending in the budget, the Department of Defense, for instance, Department of Health and Human Services, we could eliminate the entire discretionary budget and still only save $750 to $800 billion of that roughly $2.5 trillion budget. That would take care of the deficit, but we could end every program except Social Security, Medicare, and some veterans benefits. That is not going to happen, and we all know that, unless we actually address the issue of Social Security.

Now, the President has offered that proposal also, which of course the other side of the aisle demagogues the heck out of, and suggests if the President's plan were to pass, that old age pensioners, the Social Security recipients, would essentially be dead in their home within a short time, all having starved to death as a result of having their Social Security benefits cut by this heartless President. Of course these things are untrue. No one is suggesting a cut for the people presently on Social Security. That is not part of anybody's plan. Yet that is the way they present it. That is the demagoging that goes on on these issues. Again, it is the idea of entitlement.

Mr. Speaker, let me say as clearly as I can that as far as I am concerned, the only thing to which I am entitled as an American is liberty.

That is it. That is what I want from my government. That is what I deserve. That is what the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence speak to. That is what I am entitled to, liberty. I am not entitled to a pension. I am not entitled to having my child educated at government expense. I am not even entitled to the Federal Government building any highways in my district. I am not entitled to any particular benefit to help me take care of my wife, who may be pregnant, and to provide for prenatal care.

I mean, all these things are good. I am not in any way suggesting that they are not good for society and that people banding together would not provide them for themselves. But I am just suggesting that nobody is entitled to these things, nobody, no American. I am not, and I do not think anyone is.

So I wish we could stop using the word ``entitlement.'' I wish we could begin thinking about what are the things that we are actually responsible for as the Federal Government. That is what I would like to fund. What does the Constitution tell me is my role? What does it lay out as my role, and what am I supposed to do as a Member of this body to fulfill that role through the appropriations process.

And believe me, we could get out of here in about a month if we just concentrated on something like that. We would be done. Start in January and be done by March because the role is relatively limited. All the rest of this stuff is extraneous and is not an entitlement. No one, I repeat, no one is entitled to sharing the wealth of anyone else.

Anyway, I know these observations certainly will not carry the day. At the end of the debate on the budget bill, we will not have reduced expenditures. Most of the programs that the President has proposed being cut will not be cut; they will be plussed up. Some will get cut, I hope, and it is a start, and I am sure that the President saw it that way too when he sent us the budget. Personally, I am sure, although I have not had a chance to go through every single one, there are still greater cuts we could achieve, and I plan to be offering amendments throughout the process to try to achieve them.

But I do hope we will just always consider the fact that this idea of entitlements is a relatively new concept to this government, to the people of this country, and I wish that we could think about it again. I wish that we could devise a plan and devise a set of spending priorities that were not based on anything called entitlements but just simply what our responsibility is as a Congress, although I recognize that that day is perhaps not only a long way off but maybe nothing I will ever see in my lifetime, but nonetheless we will have to hope for the possibility.

And in hoping for possibility, I must say that this brings me to the other topic that I wanted to address tonight, and that is the issue of immigration and immigration reform. And as I have done many times on the floor of this House, I have brought to the attention of my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, the concerns I have had about the situation we face in the United States as a result of massive immigration across our borders, both legal and illegal. The numbers are astounding, and sometimes I am even taken aback at them. We are now interdicting at our borders about a million and quarter people a year. Three to five people get by the border guards for every person that they actually do interdict. So we do not know for sure. Maybe upwards of 5 or more million people coming into the country every year illegally. That amounts to, let us see, a lot of people every single day certainly, 20,000 maybe, 15 to 20,000 people every day if we are going to the highest number that is possible coming in under those circumstances.

These are astronomical numbers, and they are things that are certainly disconcerting just on the numbers' side of things, what happens to us as a result of this massive increase in the population. An organization called Numbers USA has done excellent work on this, and I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that Members go to their Web site if they are interested in this kind of thing, at NumbersUSA.com, and look at what they project to be the population of the country by mid-century if we do nothing to curb immigration because almost all of the population growth in the Nation at the present time is a result of immigration, both legal and illegal; and the numbers do have consequences.

The numbers of people coming in have consequences on a lot of things. Our health care system certainly is one. Our educational system is certainly another. The fact is that we are providing services for millions upon millions of people who are working here illegally or not working. Regardless, they are here, and some are here of course legally, but we end up spending far more in the provision of services than we ever are able to obtain from these folks in terms of the taxes that they pay. So there are implications on the numbers' side of things.

The environment. We hear people talking about the concerns of the environment, but those concerns are fairly narrow when we talk to them about the impact of immigration. We have a bill, Mr. Speaker, I will be introducing very soon that will require the EPA to do an impact study on immigration. What is the impact? What is the result of massive immigration into the country on our resources and on the country as a whole? I would love to see something like that. Of course, I hasten to add it probably will never pass because no one really wants to see that. But I would like an environmental impact study done on the immigration. What is the environmental impact of this phenomenon? And I assure Members that they will find it is significant.

The Speaker probably knows the situation on the border. I have been down to the border of the United States and Mexico many times, up to the northern border with Canada many times, and what we see is really fascinating and certainly a depressing view of the landscape, especially on the southern border where people have come through by the hundreds of thousands, in fact, of course, by the millions; and as a result of just the human traffic, the actual foot paths that are created through desert, the roads that people create as a result of driving their vehicles just off of the highway and through the deserts sneaking into this country.

The amount of trash that is deposited all along that border, the pickup sites where literally thousands of illegal aliens will gather after they have walked across the border and will gather to be picked up by vehicles and taken on into the interior of the country. And these sites I have seen have turned into simply huge dumps, refuse dumps, with papers strewn everywhere and clothing and human feces and diapers and syringes and plastic bags by the thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of other things littering the place in just like maybe a 20- or 30-acre parcel of land.

Of course, the cattle eat some of the plastic. The cattle die. The human feces gets washed into the water system in the few times it does rain, but when it rains it washes this stuff away. The land becomes polluted by the human traffic moving across. But, of course, we hear nothing from our friends in the Sierra Club about the environmental degradation to the land caused by literally millions of people coming across it unhindered. And then of course just, again, the numbers, the impact on the quality of life in cities all over this country by the massive number.

We just got a report not too long ago from the Transportation Department about the fact that 70 or 80 percent of all the traffic congestion we have in this country is a result of, of course, immigration. The numbers just tell the tale. And so when people are waiting in a traffic jam wherever they are throughout the country, just think about the fact that that traffic jam they are waiting in, the smog that is being produced, the time being lost is a result of the fact that we cannot catch up, we have not been able to catch up with the numbers.

The numbers overwhelm us. They are far greater in terms of the actual numbers of people coming into this country than ever before in the Nation's history and we just cannot keep up. That is the one aspect of it, the environment.

Then there is, of course, the issue of our economy and what kind of expenses we incur, what kind of expenses are incurred by the citizens of this country who are paying the infrastructure costs to support massive immigration, both legal and illegal. It is enormous. It is enormous.

We hear all the time about hospitals on the verge of closing. Some have actually closed, some have actually closed certain of their departments, neonatal, as a result of having hundreds of thousands of people coming who are unable to pay, but coming across the border oftentimes just to have children in the United States in those border hospitals. They are inundated. And it does not stop there. It goes throughout the country.

I returned recently from Idaho. I gave an award, there is a political action committee with which I am affiliated, actually I was a founder and do certainly support in many ways their actions, but have no formal tie with it anymore. But that was a different award.

I gave an award up in Idaho, the Eggles Award. This is an award that we established a couple of years ago to memorialize and honor a gentleman by the name of Chris Eggles, who was a young individual who worked for the Park Service down in Arizona, Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, and he was killed. He was killed by illegal aliens as they came into the country, escaping from Mexico where they had committed four murders just a short time before that. He gave his life in service to the country.

We wanted to have something that recognized that, and we created the Chris Eggles Award. We give it to public officials every year who we think are doing an outstanding job in trying to actually deal with the issue of immigration reform.

It was in that context that I was in Idaho. I traveled up there just a short time ago to give this award to a gentleman by the name of Robert Vasquez. Mr. Vasquez is a county commissioner in a county just north of Boise, Idaho.

Mr. Vasquez in this small county in central Idaho is inundated with illegal aliens. His county eventually came to the conclusion that they had to draw some attention to the fact that they were incurring all kinds of costs, especially for health care and incarceration, of illegal aliens, so Mr. Vasquez sent a bill to the Mexican government for $2 million asking them to help pay for the costs of incarcerating Mexican aliens who were in this country illegally and in his county in Idaho. This is not a State that you would think would be ``affected'' by illegal immigration, but every State is affected, every State.

He recently, by the way, asked the Governor of the State of Idaho to declare his county a disaster area because of what has happened because of the impact that illegal immigration has had on his small county.

I just got back from a little place called New Ipswich, New Hampshire, and that is where I was when we gave the award that I was discussing earlier. This is an award given by an organization called Team America. It is likewise given to public officials who have done an outstanding job in trying to deal with and cope with this issue of massive illegal immigration into the country.

We gave the award to the police chief in New Ipswich, Chief Chamberlain. This town of New Ipswich has 5,000 people, in New Hampshire, mind you. He confronted, stopped a van in his little town, which had 10 illegal immigrants in the van. He called the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and they would not come out. They told him, ``Oh, well, ten, let them go. Forget about it.'' He said, ``No, they are here illegally, and I don't want them in my community. You should come and get them.''

They simply kept telling him, ``No, never mind, it is not a big enough deal.'' So he took a picture of these folks sitting in custody while he held them in custody, and took another picture as he let them go. He sent both of these pictures out. He said here is what I did. I tried to detain them. Here is what happened when I talked to the immigration and customs officials. They walk away. They were here illegally. Everybody knows it. He knows it, they know it, the government knows it, and they let them walk.

This created quite a stir all over the country. It got a lot of attention, a lot of press attention to this.

A short time thereafter, here is another group of illegal aliens in his community, New Ipswich, New Hampshire, mind you, right? He gathers them all up, calls the immigration patrol and enforcement. They are out there in like 20 minutes. They gather them up, they send them all up. They do not like the publicity that accrued as a result of their unwillingness to do their job the first time around.

These things are happening everywhere throughout the Nation. In Colorado, and this is one of the most horrible things, and, again, unfortunately, incidents like the one I am going to describe to you are happening all over the country, because we hear from people by the hundreds, by the thousands, who have been victimized by people here illegally.

In Colorado a short time ago there was an accident caused by an illegal alien. The person in the other vehicle was killed. As it turns out, this illegal alien had had had many confrontations with the law, had been picked up several times, but never had been reported to immigration control. Never. As a result, of course, he was allowed to stay in the country.

If you get convicted of a crime in the United States, you are supposed to be deported immediately. But he was never reported to them because Denver, among other reasons, but Denver, where we believe he was picked up, has this ``sanctuary city'' policy, where they will not report anything to the Federal Government about people who are in the community illegally.

As a result, we have had many instances where illegal aliens were in fact arrested for some sort of crime, are either out on bail, served some time, again are out on the street, never having that violation ever reported to immigration control and enforcement, and, therefore, of course, still are able to perform other crimes, to do other crimes, which happens all too often, again in this case in Colorado, or he is alleged to have done this, I should say. Anyway, we get calls like this all the time.

There was a sheriff, a deputy sheriff in California, Deputy Sheriff March, pulled over a guy, walked up to the car, the guy in the car shoots the deputy sheriff in the stomach. As he goes down, the guy gets out of the car, puts two more bullets in his head.

We know exactly who this person is that did this. He is back in Mexico now. He will not be extradited by the Mexican government to the United States because he faces the death penalty and/or life imprisonment, which the Mexican government now calls cruel and unusual punishment. But that is only one side of the story, because there are over 1,000 people now just from California, over 1,000 murder warrants out for people in California alone who have fled to Mexico to avoid extradition to the United States.

The saddest part about this is a dead officer, but the most infuriating part about this is that this guy had been picked up twice before, or three times, I cannot remember now, and it was for very serious crimes. I think one was attempted murder. He should not have been, of course, in the United States. He had actually been asked to leave the country. I do not remember if they forced him out, I think they did. He then, of course, came back, because there is no security at the border. He should not have been in the country.

Approximately 25 percent of those who are presently incarcerated in our Federal prisons, 25 percent of the people presently incarcerated in our Federal prisons are non-citizens. We do not know the exact numbers for the States, but I think in many States it is very similar to that.

If the Federal Government were doing its job, of course, these people would not be in the United States. They could not have come here illegally. If they did come here illegally and did something wrong, we would have either put them in prison for a longer time, or, of course, deported them.

But we do not. We do not pay much attention to it because, of course, there are a lot of pressures that try to push us away from actually enforcing the law in this country.

These pressures come from a variety of places. They come from political parties like the Democratic Party that sees massive immigration as a source of voters. They come from the Republican Party who sees massive immigration, both legal and illegal, as a source of cheap labor. We get pressures from a lot of folks here on the Hill to not look carefully at the issue of immigration and immigration reform.

There will be a battle in this House tomorrow, on the Floor of this House tomorrow, over a bill that is designed to do a couple of things that desperately need to be done. It is referred to as the Sensenbrenner bill. I certainly hope that it will pass, and I think that it will, but the opposition will be vocal and we will see whether we can get through the whole process.

This is simply to say that there should be a standard applied for giving driver's licenses to people, and if States want to give driver's licenses to people who are in this country illegally, that is fine, we cannot stop them, but we can say that they will not

be valid for any Federal purpose like getting on an airplane, interstate travel, commerce, or going into Federal buildings or applying for any sort of benefit that Federal dollars are attached to. We can do that and we should do that.

Also, of course, the other thing that the bill does is to plug up some of the loopholes in our statutes, in our laws, with regard to people who are here as refugees, claiming refugee status. Many of these people have taken advantage of the loopholes. Some of them are terrorists or are potential terrorists, and they have a record; and they get here and they claim a certain status, and we have to essentially keep them. And if we can stop some of them, if they are terrorists in the country of origin and we know it there, we can deny access still. But once they get here, under the present law, if they get here, somehow we can not deport them. We can stop them from coming here because they are terrorists, but if they get here somehow, we cannot send them back under the present law. This bill is designed to address these issues.

There will be a huge fight tomorrow, and the debate will be lengthy and it will be vitriolic and very bitter on this kind of an issue.

I do hope, of course, as I say, that we pass it. But this is the first time since I have been in this Congress now, and this will be my seventh year, that I have actually seen a bill come to the floor with the potential of passage anyway, and this bill, having a true reform aspect to it. So I am encouraged by that, but I know a lot of work yet has to be done in the area of immigration reform.

Some of our opponents in this area keep putting bills forward that they say are true remedies and they are bills that are designed to develop some sort of guest worker program, but all of them with a component that I think is unacceptable to a majority of at least the Republicans in this House, I know to a majority of Americans it is unacceptable, and that component is this thing called ``amnesty.''

There was a Member on the Floor not too long ago, a proponent of this particular kind of plan who kept saying that we should not call these things ``amnesty.'' He is trying to emulate Bill Clinton, when President Clinton at the time kept redefining terms in order to suit his own agenda. We all remember it all depends on what the definition of ``is'' is, that famous line. The same thing here.

Well, what is it? We are going to do this, but we do not want to call it ``amnesty,'' and we should not say ``amnesty,'' because people do not like amnesty, so we will not call it ``amnesty.'' Now, it is amnesty if you tell people who are here illegally that if they just come and tell us who they are, they can stay, that is amnesty. That is what amnesty is. That is the definition of amnesty.

Now, there are a whole bunch of things, other things that the President throws into this periodically. He says, I am not for amnesty, because I am not for giving anybody immediate citizenship. Well, good, I am glad. I am very happy to hear that, Mr. President, but that is about 5 or 10 steps past amnesty. That is not amnesty in and of itself, so do not set up these definitions, create the definition, and then you say, I am against that.

We cannot tell anyone who is here illegally that they can stay, because if we do, then that is amnesty, and if you give amnesty, all you do is encourage lots of folks, of course, to come here to this country, break the law, because they get rewarded for it. It is as simple as that. It is a terrible policy to give people amnesty, to reward people for breaking the law.

Now, the other side does not like us to use the word because they know Americans do not like it. So they keep trying to figure out how to obfuscate, to pretend that it is not part of their legislation when, of course, it is. We will point it out time after time after time, no matter where they want to run or where they want to hide or how many dictionaries they want to try to rewrite. It is amnesty, and we will point it out every single time they bring it up. What they say is that we do not have a plan, because we say we do not want to do mass deportation and we do not want amnesty, that it is the status quo on our side.

Well, let me tell my colleagues right now that I would deport anyone who is here illegally. I want that understood clearly. If someone is in this country illegally, the penalty for that is deportation, and I would, in fact, deport anyone who is here illegally.

Let me also hasten to say that our plans include provisions that, in fact, would make that task relatively easy because most of the people who are here illegally, if we did what our side is proposing, which is to say secure the border, number one; and number two, go after the employer who is creating the demand in the first place.

Actually enforce the law. That is all our side says, enforce the law.

There is a law against coming into this country illegally. We do not enforce it. There is a law against people hiring people who come into this country illegally. We do not enforce it. But if we did, if we did this weird, wild, wonderful, strange concept of enforcing the laws we have on the books, we would see a significant reduction in the number of people who are here illegally, because they would not have jobs, hopefully they would not get benefits and hopefully they would return to their countries of origin. And then you can establish some sort of guest worker program perhaps to allow people into this country in an orderly fashion to end, as the President says, the chaos on the border.

But it is idiotic to suggest that we could have a guest worker program if we do not secure the border on one end and go after the employer on the other. That is the demand and supply side of this problem.

So I absolutely am in favor of deportation for anyone who is here illegally. And I know all of the sad sob stories we would hear, that they have been here for ages, a long time, they have kids in school. Well, I am sorry about that, but the fact is, if they have broken the law to come in, then the penalty is deportation. And if we can make it easier by simply not giving them jobs on the one hand and making it harder for them to cross that border on the other, if we can make it easier for people to return to their country of origin and if we do not have to go through ``mass deportations,'' fine. But anybody who is still here after we put those two things in place needs to be deported.

Why are we so afraid of saying that? That is the law.

Now, if we do not want that law, then I think that the gentleman from the other side of the aisle who proposes his plan for guest workers should also propose that we stop deporting people who are here illegally, just take that away, repeal the law. But if he has the law on the books, then I suggest that the gentleman and anyone else who stands on this floor, who has taken the oath of office to enforce the law, should enforce the law. If they do not like the law, repeal the law, but do not keep ignoring the law. It is the worst possible thing to do.

We have put forth measures time and again on this floor that are truly comprehensive in nature. We will be introducing a bill of a similar nature in the very near future. It is a very comprehensive plan, and it deals with the issue of enforcement of our borders, and it also deals with the enforcement of our laws against people hiring folks who are here illegally, and it also creates a guest worker plan. But that can never happen in the absence of the other two things, never. It is a sham.

Any plan that just establishes a guest worker program without border security is a sham. No one thinks anything like that could work. I will not impugn their motives, because who knows why. A lot of folks have different reasons for pushing this concept of amnesty and ignoring the 20 million people who are here illegally.

But we cannot do it. It is not good public policy, and there are ways to address the issue. What is encouraging, Mr. Speaker, is that I have determined a shift in attitude on the part of this House, especially members of the Republican side who have for whatever reason seen the light and are now much more enthusiastic in terms of their willingness to do something about this issue. Maybe it is because Members of the other side in even the other body, in this case particularly Hillary Clinton not too long ago stated her adamant opposition to illegal immigrants coming into this country, wanted those borders defended.

There is a bit of humor there because I cannot for a minute believe that it is, I do not know how deep seated the feeling is. It does not matter. When Hillary Clinton says that, it sends a message pretty loud and clear to the rest of us that, politically speaking, we are on the right side of this issue.

The American public wants and demands immigration reform. They want an end to illegal immigration. They want a reduction of the number of illegal immigrants into the country, and we better start understanding that that is the mood of the country and respond to it. That is the nature of the system. That is exactly what we are supposed to be doing here, and it is happening. I have certainly seen it, and I am glad of it.

I think perhaps the most significant event of which I am aware in terms of its impact on this debate was the passage of Proposition 200 in Arizona. Mr. Speaker, this was a fascinating sort of exercise in democracy. The people of the State of Arizona recognized that the Federal Government has essentially left them high and dry. The borders are undefended. They are the funnel, Arizona had become the funnel through which hundreds of thousands of people, in fact, millions of people, a year were coming across the borders of Mexico and the United States into this country. Their social services were being depleted. Hospitals, schools, all the things I talked about, the rates of crime committed by people, illegal aliens was rising dramatically. Incarceration rates were therefore up.

So the people finally got a belly full of it, and they could get no satisfaction from the Federal Government. They could get no satisfaction from the State government. Most of the people there were afraid to touch this thing, and the people in government were afraid to touch it. In fact, every Member of the Congress, everybody from the Arizona delegation opposed it, Republican and Democrat. The two Senators opposed it.

I should back up and say, as a result of being so frustrated, the people of Arizona put an initiative on the ballot. It said a number of things. One was that if you are not here in this country legally, you cannot get social service benefits in the State of Arizona. It also said that you are going to have to prove you are a citizen if you are going to vote in Arizona.

These are pretty radical ideas. Ideas that everybody wanted to run away from, the establishment wanted to run away from for fear, among other things, that anybody connected with it would be seen as a racist. Well, they go ahead and put the issue on the ballot. And, I mean, all the newspapers came out against it; both parties came out against it. The proponents were outspent, I think, 2\1/2\ to 1 by the opponents.

Mr. Speaker, I have put issues on the ballot in Colorado in the past. I know how hard it is. It is a very difficult thing to do to pass them, especially when you have that kind of opposition, the entire political establishment opposed to you. But the measure passed. It passed with 56 percent of the vote. But even more important, more amazingly, more shocking to many people here, although it was not surprising to me, 47 percent of those who voted for the amendment were Hispanic. So all those old canards, those things we hear, if you do this no Hispanic American would ever vote for you if you do things like this. If you do things like what? Enforce the law?

Do Hispanics not want the law enforced in this country? How many of them have come here illegally? Many in my State have been here many generations before my grandparents got here in the late 1890's. They have a stake in the Nation. They have a part of the Nation. They are Americans first. They want secure borders. They want the ability for American citizens, Hispanics, yes, Hispanic by ethnicity to be able to compete in the marketplace for jobs. They know that people who are coming across these borders create competition at the lowest level, the lowest rung of the economic ladder for low-paid, low-skilled jobs. So Americans with few skills find it harder and harder to ever work their way out of poverty.

When people talk about being compassionate when you look at this issue, I ask them to be compassionate about American citizens. I mention that the people in New Ipswich, the 10 that were taken into custody by Chief Chamberlain, I neglected to tell you they worked for a roofing company, according to the police chief, and they were paid $18 a day for their labor.

Now, I often hear that people are only coming for jobs that no American wants. Well, for $18 a day, yeah, it is hard to get an American to take a job like that. That is true. But for those who say, as the President does and others on the floor, that we just have to match every willing worker for every willing employer, I say think that through. Do you mean that?

Willing worker. You have willing workers for $18 a day. Are you willing to bring them here and allow them to compete against an American worker? How about the guy who is willing to work for 16, 15, 14, 13? You will find somebody in the world willing to come here and work for less than the guy who is presently employed here. The Federal Government has no role in this, I ask? No role in trying to control those borders and thereby, yes, prop up wages.

Yes, it is true, propping up wages is a result of controlling your borders. That is true. But this is the difficulty we face here.

But as I say, Mr. Speaker, I think things are changing. I think Prop 200 sent a message that was heard by many people who are politically astute, Hillary Clinton being one, of course, many others now who I see standing up and talking about this and going on television about it. It is great. I am happy to have the support of every single one of them. I will happily turn over the role of immigration reform leader to those who have positions of authority in this body which I do not have and probably never will.

I like to see a committee chairman on our side. I like to see people as prominent as Mrs. Clinton on the other side on this issue. It is fine with me because what it tells the rest of us is that it is politically acceptable now to move in the direction of immigration reform. And we will be moving that way I think tomorrow. We should have to keep our eyes on it.

The opponents will not simply walk away from the battle, but they know they are on the defensive, and they are becoming very concerned about that, as well they should because the tide is turning. And we will be, I think, able to say by the end of this legislative session that we have actually won some battles, that we have actually brought the issue to the fore and been successful in many different ways.

So I just want to say in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, that every night when I do a Special Order and I go back, usually the fax machines are going and the e-mails are coming in and the phones are ringing from people who have felt strongly about this for a long time; and they come from all over the country, they come from every area of the country, north, south, east and west, small towns, large towns and from people with Hispanic surnames, because it is just so true that this issue does in fact touch a nerve Americans. It touches a nerve with Americans.

They want to keep America a place in which they can be proud, and they want to keep our borders secure, and they want to be able to pass on a bit of America to their children and grandchildren, and of course, in that endeavor, I wish them and us all the best.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, February 9, 2005, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 57.

Mr. Speaker, while I support passage of this resolution, I am disappointed that events require us to debate it today. How any European leader could seriously contemplate the notion of arms sales to the regime in Beijing is, frankly, a mystery to me.

Beijing's abysmal human rights record has scarcely improved since the massacre at Tiananmen Square that prompted the EU to institute the embargo in the first place. The communist authorities in China continue to detain hundreds upon thousands of political prisoners. Torture remains widespread and systemic. Political freedom is nonexistent, as are the right to worship freely and the rule of law. The flow of information is rigidly controlled by government authorities and there is no independent media or judiciary.

And the Chinese regime has shown no signs of changing course. They have backpedaled on promises of democratic reform in Hong Kong and routinely threaten the peaceful democratic nation of Taiwan with military force. And these threats have only become louder and more belligerent in the years since the imposition of the embargo. In fact, the Chinese have become so bellicose and bold in their threats to ``crush'' Taiwan's self-determination that they no longer make any secret of their buildup--some 500 and counting--of missiles pointed directly at Taiwan.

So we must ask why? Why would any freedom loving European nation entertain the idea of selling weapons to a regime like the one currently ruling on the Chinese mainland? How could any nation that calls itself a friend of the United States seriously consider selling weapons to a regime whose stated goal is to annex, by force, Taiwan--a democratic ally of the United States? Perhaps most importantly, why would any European country sell weapons to the People's Liberation Army knowing that someday U.S. servicemen could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan straits?

Does the EU honestly believe it is in the best interests of the trans-Atlantic alliance to create a possible situation that could pit U.S. soldiers and sailors against Chinese soldiers wielding European weapons? Haven't enough U.S. soldiers been killed by European weapons in the last two World Wars? The European Union member nations should think very seriously about that last question before they decide to lift this embargo.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a pleasure to be sitting here listening to these fine presentations. I believe that these folks that are still watching this evening are truly privileged to hear the kinds of concerns that have been expressed and, I think, the words that have been so eloquently provided to us this evening about our efforts in Iraq.

However, sitting there it does seem to me to be kind of interesting to think about all the people who we know are not feeling all that well about what has happened, all the folks around the world who watched the election on Sunday and thought, oh, Brother, now what are we going to do.

This is not good news to a lot of folks. Certainly, I guess President Chirac, many of the French people themselves, the French Government, Michael Moore, other members of the looney left in California and Hollywood, Barbra Streisand, the Syrians and Al Jazeera and Osama bin Laden and Dan Rather and many parts of the United Nations, the Baathists in Iraq. There are a whole bunch of people who are upset about what happened, and we tend to think of them as being peculiar in many ways or at least that they are folks who are so far out in the left that their opinions are completely and totally skewed by their political ideology. That is true; that is the case.

I was struck just the other day by something that happened in Colorado, my home State, where a professor at the University of Colorado, a tenured professor who was the chair of the ethnic studies department, in and of itself I think a questionable line of academic inquiry, but nonetheless something that the University of Colorado saw fit to confer that kind of status upon, having an actual Department of Ethnic Studies, and this gentleman, the chairman of that department by the name of Ward Churchill made some comments that were picked up as a result of the fact that he was going to be speaking at a college in New York State, Hamilton College, and his comments were repeated in the media in the last couple of days.

Among other things, what Mr. Churchill, this professor, a tenured professor at the University of Colorado, said was that the people who worked and died in the World Trade Towers were ``little Eichmanns'' because they were part of this huge bureaucracy of trade and that they were facilitating essentially the engine of world capitalism, which to him made them ``little Eichmanns.''

I mean, this is a guy, remember, who holds a position of academic authority, who is paid a handsome salary; and if we look at his own academic background, we come away wondering how he ever got hired at any university, let alone the flagship institution, University of Colorado. He may have someplace, somewhere gotten a job teaching at a middle school that was in dire need of a social studies professor, but one cannot imagine when they look at his background that he could actually get a position like the one he holds.

Now he went on to say that, ``True, these people were citizens of a sort. But innocent?'' He said, ``Innocent? Give me a break.''

They deserved to die. Those are the words I am adding here. They deserved to die. I guess he was saying they were not innocent and we should not, therefore, be concerned about the fact that 3,000 or more died in that event.

A lot of people in the State of Colorado have called for him to resign; others have called for the University of Colorado to dismiss him. Of course, that is not going to happen. We know no university today would dismiss someone for saying something so incredibly ludicrous or outrageous. And if they did, of course, he would sue. He would go to court and claim that he has a right to say what he has said because he is exercising his first amendment rights. And then they would talk about the fact that he has tenure and he is protected under that situation.

And in a way, I agree. In a way, I think it is right. In fact, I have chosen not to join the chorus of those people who are demanding that he be removed. I think what Mr. Churchill offers to us is a great example of what we on the conservative side of the aisle here and the conservative side of American politics have been talking about for a long time as a problem in our university system, in the halls of academe in general. They have been taken over by the loony left.

Mr. Churchill is a perfect example of the loony left. He is perhaps the looniest of the loony left and so, therefore, I want him to continue to speak out. I like listening to him. I hate what he has to say, but I like the fact that people are seeing and judging for themselves what is happening in our institutions of higher education, because he is an example. He is an example not just of what is happening at the University of Colorado or even in the major institutions in the United States. He is an example of a philosophy that permeates those halls of academe. It is a hatred of America, down deep, a hatred for everything we are and everything we stand for that he exemplifies.

And it is the same thing with all the people I mentioned earlier who look at what happened on Sunday and down deep they feel very, very, very worried, very upset. They cannot really get over the fact that the seeds of democracy were planted in Iraq. They were even nourished by the blood of many wonderful American servicemen and women and certainly by the blood of thousands and thousands of Iraqi citizens.

They were hopeful that, in fact, we would fail, that the whole experiment would fail. They were hopeful that we could not claim any degree of moral superiority, that we could not claim the high ground, the moral high ground, because, in a way, they hate America. They hate the institutions we have established. They hate the freedom that we enjoy. They hate the economic system that we have established. They hate George Bush. They hate the political party he represents.

The other day, I understand that the individual running for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee said ``I hate Republicans and everything they stand for.'' Hate. Howard Dean. Well, I wonder how Mr. Dean felt. I wonder how he felt down deep. I wonder even how John Kerry felt down deep.

I wonder how some of our colleagues here in the House felt when they saw that the seeds had been planted, they were sprouting and that democracy has a chance, that it may in fact spread throughout the Middle East, that it is possible. We can now begin to hope for it in a way we could not have dreamt about a year ago and that the President's idea about the basic nature of man is right.

Rousseau, long ago, stated, ``Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.'' And this essence that there is something in every human being, and the President has spoken of this very eloquently and forcefully on many occasions, that there is something in every human being that strives and yearns for freedom. Yet we look around the world and we see so many people who are incapable of achieving it because of the governmental system that is imposed upon them.

Maybe that is, in fact, a great threat to the United States, as the President has said. Regardless, the fact is that on

Sunday something happened. And regardless of where we are in the political spectrum, we should acknowledge the fact that it did happen and that millions and millions of people in Iraq are now able to think about themselves as the Founding Fathers and Mothers of a new country.

Now I prefaced my remarks tonight with a description of what I consider to be the loony left and how they reacted to this and how the ``Hate America Crowd'' in the United States and throughout the world reacted to the events of Sunday. I want to expand upon that a little bit, because this is a topic that is, I think, of enormous importance to the United States. It will have a great effect on where we go and how we get there and, in fact, what we are able to achieve in this world.

It is also affected by a variety of things we do in a policy sense. And, of course, I will talk about the issue of massive immigration into this country and how this is going to affect the situation that I have described, the kind of task we have ahead of us to establish who we are as a Nation and where we are going and how we are going to get there.

There is in the country, and throughout the world of course, but certainly in the United States there is something I refer to as the cult of multiculturalism. This is exemplified by people like Mr. Churchill, who really and truly despise America down deep. They despise who we are. They would like to see a different America entirely, one that is not bound to any of the ideas or ideals upon which this country was founded. Why? Because those ideas and ideals were an expression of Western civilization.

If in fact Western civilization was the underpinning or was the foundation of who and what we are and if that civilization was based upon a set of ideas put down on parchment originally, paper eventually, about the nature of man and his relationship to government and his relationship to his God, that if those things were done by white males, at some point back all the way to the Greeks, then there is something bad about it. There has to be something we can take issue with.

Columbus, as I saw one time in a history textbook in a charter school in my district, as I was waiting for the classes to change, I picked up this ninth grade textbook, and thumbing through it I got to the chapter on the Founding of America, and it started out with the following sentence. And this was a declarative sentence. It was not a quote, it was not in italics, it was not a person's opinion, it was set out as the beginning of the chapter. ``Columbus Discovered America and Destroyed Paradise.''

Now that was the textbook's analysis. That is what children read. That is what we teach them: There is nothing of value in the United States. There is nothing of value in our history, that we are a product of a corrupt system and mode of thought, and everything that stems from it has got to be derided and debased. That is what we tell our children, and that is what people like Mr. Churchill tell our students in his classes, who then in turn go and teach our children in the K-12 system.

I want to mention an anecdote here, something that happened to me a few months ago. I was in a school in my district, in a county in my district that is a very wealthy county, one in which I do not live, I should hasten to add, but, nonetheless, a very wealthy county, where the schools are the best schools that we can provide in terms of the physical structure, in terms of all of the accoutrements that go along with education, the books, the materials, the overheads, everything that we could want, the highest paid teachers. So of course we assume they are the best; right?

It was a brand new high school. It was a brand new high school, and I was asked to go and speak. It was a school where there were 250 some students, and they came into the auditorium and we had a 15-, 20-minute chat and then they started sending up questions.

The very first question I received was: What do you think is the most serious challenge or problem facing the United States? I said, well, before I answer that, I am going to ask you all a question, 250 students assembled there. I said, How many of you believe you live in the greatest country in the world?

Now, let me tell you, generally speaking, certainly when I was in school, and even for a long time thereafter, when you asked a student something like that in a junior or senior high, there would be a reaction sort of like, well, you know, they are talking about my team. So there is a natural reaction of exuberance and enthusiasm. They would say, yea, absolutely, it is great, it is wonderful, our school is wonderful, our team is wonderful, our country is wonderful.

So I said, how many people here believe you live in the greatest nation in the world? What followed was not the typical reaction that you expect from a group of high school students. There was this sheepish, this very tenuous, this very sort of scary silence as they looked at the teachers who were lined up on either side of the auditorium and the principal who was standing by me.

Finally, about two dozen raised their hands, again very, very sheepishly, cautiously. Nobody did anything exuberantly. Nobody. Not a single person jumped up or gave a feeling of, again, this kind of exuberance about yeah, absolutely, it is my school, my country, my State, it is all great. You know how kids are. No, they did not do that.

Something had happened in their life. Something had happened prior to their coming into that auditorium that made them very trepidatious about saying it. And I determined from that that it was not as a result of the fact that the other 225 or so students hated America. I do not think that is true at all. What I do believe is that they were completely and totally incapable of affirming that statement. They were afraid to raise their hands for fear that someone would actually say, ``oh yeah, why do you think so?''

They could not affirm it, so they simply wanted to sit there, afraid to say anything, the children of this country, the children in one of the most affluent areas, with all of the amenities that could ever be given to anyone, tan from the slopes at Aspen, wearing the best clothes, driving all the nicest cars out in the parking lot, having all of these amenities, more things than have ever been given to any children on the face of the earth since the creation of mankind, and they enjoy it because of where they are, and I said, well, you know what, I think this is the most serious problem we are facing as a Nation.

I said to them, I do not have time to talk about all of the things that make this country wonderful. If you do not know it, I do not have time in this 20 minutes we have together to make you understand what this country is all about and why you should be proud of it and why in fact I think you can make the case it is the best place in the world. But I said, let me just leave you with this, and again I am talking with 9th, 10th, 11th graders, no 12th grade class yet in this new school. I said, just think of it this way, do you know anyone, have you ever heard of anyone who has escaped from the United States or from the West to say, Pakistan, for a better life? Have you ever been confronted by anybody who has escaped from the United States for a better life? They have escaped from the United States usually one step ahead of the law, that is true, I have no doubt about that. But if you raise the gates all over the world, where do people go? Do they go to Saudi Arabia? Do they go to South America? Do they go to Canada? They come to the West, including Canada and Western Europe. They come to the West. By the millions, Muslims come to the West to escape a worse situation, looking for freedom, both economic opportunity and religious freedom. They seek the West. They seek Western civilization, the thing Mr. Churchill derides.

We can be proud. We should be proud of who we are and what we have been able to accomplish on this planet. It is certainly true that we have warts and we have done things wrong; and if we could do things over, I am sure we as a society, as a civilization, would do better. But the fact is above all those things, we have given the world ideas and ideals of great and enormous value starting with the rule of law, a uniquely Western concept. The rule of law, not of men.

The idea of individual freedom and religious liberty, these are Western

ideas. There is no reason to be ashamed. It does not mean we have to put down anybody else. It does not mean we have to seek the destruction of any other civilization. It simply says here is what we have done and we can be proud of it, and most of the world seeks it. In a begrudging way they seek it. Perhaps the strangest phenomenon we can imagine, the millions of people who come here from other countries, maybe with the intent of destroying us because we do not match their religious point of view, but coming here nonetheless for all of the benefits that Western civilization provides.

We do not have to whitewash our past, neither do we have to degrade or debase it. If we do, there are consequences. The Ward Churchills of this world will succeed because they will have in their classrooms students who have never been confronted with the facts of life in terms of who we are as a society. They have never been taught about the things that we can and should be proud of as a civilization. They have only been taught that we should be ashamed of who we are, hence two dozen kids out of 250 in a high school in Douglas County, Colorado, two dozen sheepishly raised their hand and said yes, I kind of think we do.

We are in a desperate battle as a civilization because I think we are in a clash of civilizations, as Samuel Huntington has pointed out in his book of that title. I think we must do everything possible in order to be successful in that clash to have our own people understand who we are. And whether you come here as a black man, a brown man, a white man, or anything in between, you can come here and accept the ideas and ideals of the American creed. It does not make you a Democrat, it does not make you a Republican, a liberal or a conservative. It makes you an American. And then we can start dividing up.

But if we lose this whole idea of what it means to be an American, if that is not there from the beginning, all we are is a place on the planet made up of subgroups, of a balkanized culture, people who consider themselves to be something other, a hyphenated, something other than American.

I had an interesting conversation with the Catholic bishop of Denver not too long ago, Bishop Gomez. During the conversation we were talking, and because I have a particular interest in the issue of immigration and I am concerned about massive immigration into the country when it meets up with this multi-culturalism, I have a strong concern what happens in the Nation when we do not integrate people into our society any more, when we tell them to keep their language. We tell them keep your culture, keep your customs, even keep your political affiliation and loyalty to a country outside of the United States. We tell them that.

I was concerned, and I expressed it, the fact that Iraqis were allowed to vote in the United States. I am not concerned about an Iraqi national voting in the United States, but the United Nations came into the United States, set up a voting system that allowed for American citizens of Iraqi descent to vote. American citizens should not be voting in any other country's elections, but we did it and we allowed the United Nations to set up the voting procedures.

These kinds of things are of great concern to me because we do seem to be destroying the whole concept of citizenship with literally scores of millions of people coming into the country who have no desire to become American, and we tell them on the other hand that they should not.

Bishop Gomez said to me, I do not see why you are so concerned about this, Congressman. He said, For instance, the Mexicans coming in, I can tell you right now, they do not want to be American.

And I said, Well, Bishop, of course that is the problem. That is exactly the problem.

Mr. Speaker, they do not want to be American, and we are telling them they should not be. We are telling them to keep their own language, to keep their own culture and their own political affiliations to a country other than the United States; and this will not accrue to our benefit, and it will not help us as a Nation. It will not help us defend ourselves in this clash of civilizations because we do not know who we are because we are just a group of people here on this place, on the planet. We are simply residents, that is all, not citizens, just residents. They have no affiliation, no loyalty, no concept of the oneness of the American creed, no appreciation for the history that got us here. Heaven knows, we would not want to say an appreciation for Western civilization.

Not long ago I introduced a resolution into this body and it simply said that the Congress of the United States is encouraging schools throughout the country to make sure that students graduating be able to articulate an appreciation for Western civilization. It did not say you have to even like Western civilization. It just said you should be able to articulate an appreciation for it. Be a critical thinker. If somebody says what are the good things about Western civilization and what it has created here, be able to talk about it. Even if you disagree with who we are, at least be able to lay out the facts. That is what the essence of a good education would be, it seems to me.

You cannot imagine the kind of push back I had on this. In fact, it never got to the floor of the House. The majority leader said I would not want to do something like that unless we can get some Democrats to go on it, it would be very scary. So we never did bring it to the floor, for fear of what people would say, for fear that somebody in this body would argue that we should not allow students to be able to articulate an appreciation for Western civilization.

I went on to say that school boards throughout the United States should adopt this measure because all we can do here in Congress is say this is what we think should happen. I do not believe that the Federal Government should get involved in the creation of curricula, but I certainly believe we have the right to express ourselves. School boards have the right to totally decide it. They can say here is what we want our students to be. Here is the kind of student we want graduating from our school. And they can say, therefore, as a school board, we say these children will have to be able to articulate an appreciation of Western civilization when they come out of our school system.

Members cannot imagine the kind of opposition and hatred expressed towards this idea, some by the NEA, the National, quote, Education Association, and I put it in quotes because the NEA has nothing to do with education and everything to do with indoctrination. But they hated the idea. We were not mandating it on anyone. I was just saying it was a good thing to be able to have students articulate an appreciation for Western civilization. If you go to our Web site, www.house.gov/tancredo and pull up Our Heritage, Our Hope, you will see a resolution that you can take to your State legislature or your school board and have them pass.

If you just want to see a fascinating sort of debate go on, take the resolution, and we passed it in the State Senate in Colorado, by the way, after a horrendous and very heated debate. Just go ahead and take it to your school board, take it to your State house and see what happens with just that one simple concept.

So it is true, Mr. Speaker, that I am deeply concerned about the many things that happen to this country as a result of massive immigration when it meshes with, connects with multi-culturalism. These are tough issues, they are not easy to explain, and they certainly do not fit on a bumper sticker. But they are important for us to think about.

Mr. Huntington, who I mentioned earlier, has written another book which came out in May of 2004, and I think it is a wonderful analysis and asks the enormously important question as the title of book, ``Who Are We?'' Who are we?

He lays out the consequences if we do not know the answer. If we cannot understand who we are, if we cannot appreciate who we are, if we are just simply here, folks living on this chunk of land on the North American continent, that is all, then the clash of civilization is not going to be much of a clash. We will lose. We will lose. Because the people with whom we are at war know

exactly who they are. We are not so sure, I am afraid. We are not so sure. And if students coming out of our school system, our public school system, are afraid to actually say yes to the question, Do you think you live in the greatest country in the world, why would they fight? And God bless those who do. God bless those who go into harm's way to defend us. How long can this last? If we do not know who we are, if we do not understand the values of Western civilization that are embodied in everything we see around us, in not only the architecture but the laws and the philosophy that we have in this country about the relationship between man and government and, yes, man and his God; if we do not appreciate these things, what makes us think they can possibly last? They will fall. Of course they will.

That is why I spend as much time as I do talking about the issue of immigration. There are all kinds of other parts of this picture to talk about. Certainly the jobs issue, the displacement of American workers, the effect on our economy, the costs to our health care system, the incarceration rates, the cost of incarceration for the 25 percent of our prison populations who are not citizens. I could go on and on with the very practical problems that are presented by massive immigration when it combines with this cult of multi-culturalism. But the bigger picture is represented by people like Mr. Churchill, what he thinks and what he tells children and the fact that he is hired by institutions of, quote, higher education, to call the victims of 9/11 and the Twin Towers ``little Eichmanns.'' Mr. Churchill and Michael Moore and Dan Rather, this is what we reap. It is a scary thing for us, because the consequences are very serious.

I will continue to speak out on this issue of immigration, of our national security. We talk about the national security implications of immigration and open borders. There are two ways to look at it. One is the very practical way that when the borders are open, when they are porous, people come across them, some of them to just work, some of them to sell drugs and the others to do things to us that are very bad. Some people come into this country for the purpose of killing us, killing our families. They choose the easiest way to get here, and that is across the borders because they are porous.

Why are the borders porous? Not because we cannot control them, but because it is economically advantageous to certain groups in the country. Certainly employers, millions of employers in this country who rely on cheap labor, want those borders open. Other countries, Mexico is a great example of a country that has turned into not just a neighbor but now a lobbying agent to keep the borders open. Why? Because they receive $18 billion a year from their nationals who are working here sending money home, and they do not want the nationals to connect with America. They do not want them to become American. They want them to maintain their political and psychological allegiance to Mexico because they will continue to send money home to the country, and that is what now props up the country.

$18 billion is now the second most significant source of income Mexico has, second only to Pemex, their oil company. It dwarfs everything else, including all foreign investment and including all tourism dollars spent in Mexico, remittances from the United States. It has changed the dynamics in the world. It has changed relationships between countries. There are seven nations in the world that presently take in more than 10 percent of their gross domestic product as a result of remittances from the United States from their nationals working here.

It changes a lot of things. It creates employers in this country who get hooked on cheap labor demanding open borders. It creates governments in countries all over the world who get hooked on remittances demanding open borders and our own security is therefore left as a secondary or tertiary topic. So there is an absolute and total connection between immigration, open borders and our national security, but it does not just happen as a result of keeping those borders open so people will come across them with bombs or some sort of chemical or biological warfare agent. It is also a threat to our national security because when it combines with the cult of multi- culturalism, it creates a very, very sharp dagger pointed right at the heart of America. So we have to understand it. We have to talk about it. We cannot be afraid to address it.

Mr. Speaker, the most wonderful thing I can report to you tonight is that things are changing here. I came into this body 7 years ago. I would come to the floor as I have done tonight. I have tried to address this issue in every way I possibly could, the concerns about massive immigration, both legal and illegal into the country, the implications for us as a Nation, begging that it be debated. I created a caucus called the Immigration Reform Caucus, and I think there were 16 Members that originally signed on. There are now somewhere approaching 75 or 80. There are Members who stand up now and talk about this issue who never touched it before. Why? Because they are hearing from their constituents, Mr. Speaker. Because this system is working. Because the American people are making their voices heard here in this body. It is a wonderful thing to see. It gives us hope for the future.

And so I do think things will change. I do not know how quickly. I also know that we have an enormously difficult road ahead of us, because these Ward Churchills, these folks who comprise the loony left are, in fact, embedded in the system. They are in our institutions of higher education throughout the country, and their products are teaching the children in schools in my district and in yours. There is a lot of work ahead of us.

But I have great hope in our ability to change things. After all, it is really our only option. What else can we do but try everything we can think of and to come on the floor night after night as I have done over these 7 years, many times thinking that no one was listening, that no one cared about the issue. I received some of the most nasty e-mail, letters and telephone calls from people calling me every name imaginable, some unimaginable. But that is changing. Now when I go back to my office, I hear the fax machines going even tonight, it is now almost 11 o'clock here in Washington, D.C., but there will be people who will respond to this. We get hundreds now, sometimes thousands, of responses, all from people saying, continue to do what you do. People from every walk of life, people from every ethnic background.

This is not an issue that springs out of any sort of racial sort of motivation or profile, but it is an issue that everyone who calls themselves and thinks of himself or herself as an American, thinks of himself or herself as an American first, it is something that they are concerned about, and they have a right to be concerned. It is a dangerous situation we face. So we can fight a war in Iraq, and we can plant the seeds of democracy; but to ultimately be successful in this clash of civilization, we have to know who we are.

And so I ask the President, I hope in his State of the Union message that we will hear on this floor tomorrow night, he will begin to articulate that, that he will begin to talk about the things that make us great, the things about which we can and should be proud, the things that we should promote, the ideas and ideals of the American creed, ideas and ideals that can be accepted and should be accepted by every human being who is here in the place we call the United States, not just the North American continent but a place bounded by borders and a place that benefits from some of the greatest political thinking in the world, that created our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, and the freedom that we enjoy and that millions around the world enjoy or envy.

It is great to be an American. It is great to explore what possibilities there are out there for other human beings on this planet that want to actually begin to experience the idea of freedom. We can do this. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It is everything, I think, to be proud of.

I, Mr. Speaker, for one am immensely proud to be a tiny part of this great Nation and someone who springs from the heritage that we call Western.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 57 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, February 2, 2005, at 10 a.m.