Floor Statements

I move to strike the last word.

Thank you.

This has been an interesting debate. I've been able to sit down here and listen to a lot of folks on both sides talk about really investments that we need to make in the United States. I'm glad that there are some investments that our friends on the other side actually think are important to the country, because it seems in many ways the national narrative is that there isn't anything the government can make investments in that is important for our country.

To hear some Members talk about natural disasters and to hear some Members talk about the barges going up and down and farmland, there's a huge subsidy program where billions of Federal dollars are spent to support farmers. There are obviously dams that need to be built, and that is Federal money. When it applies to certain Members' districts where they are actually affected and families affected, it's their responsibility to come to Washington, D.C., and advocate for those investments.

I think what you're seeing here on our side is that we have Members on this side of the aisle who believe that investments need to be made in our communities, too, and that over 30 years, if you take cities like Youngstown or Cleveland or Detroit, you will see cities that need investment. We may not have had a natural disaster, but over the last 30 years we have had an economic disaster where we have had a lack of private investment. I am rising here to say that high-speed rail can be a force multiplier in our economic improvement in our community and across the country.

The gentleman from California just cited the number of jobs, the billions of dollars that could be invested. In Youngstown, Ohio, we would be linked up to a Pittsburgh to Cleveland corridor that would then go over to Toledo and Detroit and that would make its way over to Chicago. This is essentially connecting the United States of America.

You would be taking an economic region like ours with two major powerhouses in education and in health care that would be connected by high-speed rail. In Ohio, we gave away the high-speed rail money, too. Our Governor gave it away. And there were hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment that was going to follow the public investment that needs to be made. But if we're going to connect, if we're going to try to resuscitate some of these older areas in our country, high-speed rail is a way to do it.

These are investments that can be made. We can connect the Cleveland Clinic with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. We can connect Case Western Reserve with Carnegie Mellon, and they can partner in research, get on the train, and help lead some economic development and commercialization of products. You could take a region of our country and connect it through high-speed rail.

The problem is--and I will end with this--all of these investments need to be made. This is the dirty little secret in Washington, D.C. We're only spending 2 percent of our GDP on our infrastructure, while China and India are spending 10 percent of their GDP reinvesting back into their country. We

will lose the future if we do not make these investments. These are critical to the competitiveness of the United States. The dams that need to be built and the high-speed rail and the roads and the combined sewer and the airports and the ports and the highways and the bridges, we need to invest in all of these things.

Our country is crumbling. We can't have Members say, We only need to make this one investment for this one dam because it's in my district and because I know families who have been hurt. We've got to elevate ourselves and look at what needs to be done in the entirety of the whole country and how we are going to compete against China, how we are going to compete against India, how we are going to be globally competitive.

All of these investments need to be made, including the economic development and the private investment that can be drawn in through high-speed rail.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to remember the life of Mr. Raymond Bagaglia, who passed away on December 8, 2010.

Born in Warren, Ohio on February 7, 1930 to parents Frank and Mary DeMarco Bagaglia, Raymond led a life centered around serving his community. As a police officer for the Warren City Police Department, Mr. Bagaglia spent his days working to remove crime from the streets of his beloved hometown. When Raymond was able to spend time away from the force, he enjoyed being an active member of St. Mary's Catholic Church.

Raymond is survived by his wife, Rosemarie, and the couple's five children; Daniel, Lynn Marie, Sue Ann, Nancy Ann and Debra Ann. His son, four daughters, and nine grandchildren helped to fill his life with happiness and joy.

Please join me in extending our most sincere and heartfelt sympathies to the Bagaglia family.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to thank the National Labor Relations Board for moving in a direction with a recent proposed change that will actually strengthen a worker's ability in the United States to unite, to work within a system that has more transparency, that is fairer, that is streamlined so that we can return a little bit more power here in the United States of America to the worker.

Representing a district in northeast Ohio and cities like Akron and Youngstown, and in a region that includes Cleveland and Canton and is not too far from Pittsburgh, we have had a long, proud history in our region of a strong middle class that, in many ways, was provided by union representation, to bring some balance to an economic system, quite frankly, right now that is run by major global multinational interests that will do whatever is necessary to drive down wages for average workers.

I love this economic theory that we hear many times from our friends on the other side that if the minimum wage just wasn't so high, if workers just weren't making as much money, that maybe the economy would start humming. Let's reduce taxes on the wealthiest people in the United States

when they've had a boom for 20 years of an increase in income. But if we reduce wages for middle class people, that somehow this economy will just turn right around.

And let me remind my friends on the other side, we are currently living under the President Bush tax system. If this tax system of cutting taxing for the wealthiest worked had created jobs, we wouldn't have the problems we have right now. Think about it. We are living under President Bush's tax system. This system, in '01 and '03, was supposed to lead to tremendous growth and job creation in the American economy. It hasn't worked. America works when we reinvest back into our people, when we make sure people are trained and educated.

I am for a reduction in the corporate tax. We do need to keep business taxes low so that we can be more competitive. But when you start making hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, you've got to pay a little bit more in taxes. And we need that revenue so that we can rebuild our infrastructure in the United States, so that we can make college more affordable in the United States, so that average families in Youngstown, in Niles can send their kids to college to become engineers. That revenue can be used to make sure that every American has affordable health care, so that no family in the United States has to make a decision or stare at the ceiling when they are laying in bed at night, worrying about whether or not their children will have proper health care, or that if one of their kids gets sick, they may not be able to afford health care. That shouldn't happen in the United States of America.

What the NLRB has done is said, Let's give more fairness, more transparency, a more streamlined process so that workers can unite together and have some little bit of leverage against the massive corporate interests. I've been down here 9 years now in this Congress, and it seems to me that whatever the oil industry wants, they get; whatever the insurance industry wants, they get; whatever the multinationals want, they get. And if we don't begin as a country to empower average people to make a good middle class wage, we are not going to be the America any of us want. We are going to be weaker.

You want to talk about family values--these are family values. What the NLRB has done is move us closer to having some family values. So I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to say thank you to the leadership of the NLRB for some of these proposed changes. I hope they continue to move forward. And I hope this is just one small step where we, as a country, say, You know, the middle class is working, if we're manufacturing things in the United States, if we work together with a common cause, a common purpose, if we're healthy, if we're educated, everything else will take care of itself. That's the kind of country that this decision is moving us towards, and I would like to thank them.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to extend my deepest sympathies to our former colleague, the Honorable John Boccieri and his family. On Saturday, June 11th, Mr. Boccieri's father, Nicholas Boccieri passed away at the age of 72.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, on July 9, 1938, ``Nick'' or better known to some as ``Jim'', was truly a leader in our community. After graduating from Youngstown Ursuline High School in 1956, he attended St. Mary's Seminary in Cincinnati for two years. After receiving a bachelor's degree from Youngstown State University, Nick went on to teach Latin, Spanish, Italian and English at Poland, Hubbard, and Lowellville High Schools in the Mahoning Valley for 30 years.

Married to Rosemary Filisky on August 14, 1965, the couple was blessed with three sons including our former colleague John along with brothers Gregory and Nick. They helped provide a life filled with joy, laughter and love, and the fantastic gift of nine grandchildren.

Nick was ordained as a Deacon in the Catholic Church in January of 1998. As an active member of the parish, St. Anthony of Padua in Youngstown, Nick served as the Director of Youth Ministry and taught marriage preparation and confirmation formation classes.

Please join me in extending our most sincere and heartfelt sympathies to the Boccieri family.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Marine Sergeant Jeremy Murray.

Today on this House floor we renamed the Post Office in Rootstown, Portage County, Ohio, where Jeremy grew up. He served our country during several tours to the Middle East, and at 28 years old he lost his life.

His mother has worked at this post office for 11 years, so it was a special day today for us to, in a very small way here in the House of Representatives, say ``thank you'' to him for his service and to thank his parents, Pam and Harold, for raising such a great young kid who would be willing to go off to war because his country asked him and serve us in such a noble way.

So, today I rise to say thank you to Jeremy, thank you to his parents, thank you to Rootstown, and thank you to Waterloo High School that instilled in him these values, a terrific young man whom we honor here today and we honor with this post office.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Mr. Carmen A. Policy, who received the prestigious National Education and Leadership Award from the Sons of Italy Foundation on May 25th. This award is presented by the foundation annually to the Italian American who has upheld a commitment to educational excellence, leadership and the betterment of society. Previous recipients of this outstanding award include Joe Paterno and Antonin Scalia.

Mr. Policy, a native of Youngstown and Ohio's 17th district, graduated from Youngstown State University in 1963, and in 1966 earned his Juris Doctorate Degree from Georgetown University Law Center here in Washington, DC. For many years, he pursued a successful law practice career in Ohio.

In 1983, Carmen traded in the courtroom for the gridiron and became Vice President of the San Francisco 49ers. In 1991 he became President and CEO of the franchise. As an executive in the 49ers organization, Mr. Policy played a key role in delivering 4 Super Bowl trophies back to the city of San Francisco. In 1994 he was named the National Football League Executive of the Year by The Sporting News and GQ listed him as one of the most powerful men in professional sports. In 1998, Carmen became President and CEO of the Cleveland Browns and during his five years with the Browns, he served as a member of the NFL's Finance, Business Ventures, and Super Bowl Advisory Committees.

After 25 years in the NFL, Carmen, along with his wife Gail, began a new life of wine making in the Napa Valley and the couple founded the Casa Piena Winery. The roots of Casa Piena go back to Policy's childhood in Youngstown's Smokey Hollow neighborhood, where the making and sharing of wine played a central part in the vibrant family life of this largely Italian-American community.

He has sent a strong and clean message to the youth of the Mahoning Valley; if you work hard, play by the rules and get a good education, America will reward you with all the blessings of this great land.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to congratulate and honor the hard work and dedication of Mr. Carmen Policy and his wife Gail. I invite my colleagues to join me in recognition of this award.

I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the underlying bill, and I think it's important for us to go back, as we hear about market-based solutions, to why Medicare was started in the first place. There is no market to provide health care for older people, because there's no money to be made. Insurance companies can't make money off of covering old people who get sick, really, really sick.

What this plan does, Madam Chair, and the analysis was, well, it's just going to be like the Federal employee plan, where Members of Congress and Federal employees get a premium support. Well, the premium support that Federal employees get is about 70 some percent of the health care costs, and that number goes up and down with inflation for health care. So no matter what the health care costs are, the Federal employee has 70 some percent of that covered.

The problem with the Republican plan is that the voucher, or the premium support, is hooked to the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, which is 2\1/2\ percent, maybe, so the voucher is going to go up at CPI, say, 2\1/2\ percent, while health care costs are usually a percent or two above GDP growth, so say we have 4 percent growth, then health care costs are going to go up at 5 percent, maybe 6 percent. So your premium support, or your voucher, is going to increase every year by 2\1/2\ percent, while health care costs are going up at 5\1/2\ percent. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out that over the course of several years, that voucher becomes worthless, and it will only probably cover 30 percent, maybe, of the cost of the health care that these seniors are going to get.

So let's not sit here and pretend like the senior citizens in the Medicare program are going to somehow be living large and getting some kind of great health care. This dismantles the Medicare program. Period. Done. At least have the courage to come out and say, we want to dismantle the Medicare program.

If you want to look at how far to the right that the Republican Party has gotten on this issue, I've never seen former Speaker Gingrich do a faster or more complete Potomac two-step in my entire life than when he even insinuated that this may not be good for seniors, because the goal now of the Republican Party, Madam Chair, is to dismantle the Medicare program.

They tried years ago to try to privatize Social Security. This is no surprise. And so my question is, Madam Chair, if you're a 55-year-old guy in Youngstown, Ohio, who statistically, over the last 30 years, your wages have been stagnant with no increase in real wages over the last 30 years, now you're saying to them that they've got to come up with another $182,000 to be able to pay for their health care.

You can nod your head ``no'' all you want, Madam Chair. These are the facts. The Congressional Budget Office

says, neutral third party, that the average person going into this Medicare proposal will pay $6,000 more a year. That's not the Democratic study committee or our policy wonk saying it, it's CBO. Six thousand more a year. While the guy's wages have been stagnant for the last 30 years?

And that's where the issue of the oil companies does come in, because we're giving huge breaks to oil companies. We'll take more arrows to protect, on the other side, to protect even thinking about possibly asking the wealthiest 1 percent to pay just a little bit more to help us address this issue. The sky is falling. The world's ending. It's so bad that we can't even muster up the courage to ask Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to just help us out a little bit while we have all these problems and three wars going on at the same time? I mean, come on, Madam Chair, this is not right. This is not right.

So, at the end of the day, the Democratic plan is for Medicare. We keep it to cover senior citizens and their health care when they get older, and if we've got to make adjustments, we make adjustments. But you don't dismantle the entire plan, and you don't at the same time give tax breaks to the oil companies.

Don't dismantle Medicare, Madam Chair. Don't do it.

It's interesting. My district, the Youngstown- Warren metropolitan district, was the fastest growing in job development in the last month or two.

Youngstown and Warren, Ohio.

And it is just recent. But in large part, a couple of different things.

There is $1 billion invested into a steel mill, but also we have a major auto plant. And it was the work of the last Congress and the President saying we cannot lose the American auto industry, and they made investments in companies like General Motors. Now we have three shifts selling the Chevy Cruze all over the world. Every employee got a $4,000 bonus a few weeks back that they are spending in our community. These are the kinds of things that happen when you make things in America, when you manufacture products in the United States of America.

But the goal here I think for all of us is to wrestle control from the major multinational corporations who are running this institution and then have undue influence over the government. Whether it is globalization moving manufacturing offshore, or if it is the oil companies who not only aren't paying taxes but are completely content with our citizens sending $1 billion a day out of the United States to go try to find cheap oil, which isn't so cheap anymore, and diminishing day by day, what we are saying here is, if we drive that $1 billion a day back into the United States economy for the kind of research and development that is going on in Upstate New York, that is going on in California, that is going on in Youngstown State University and Akron University with polymers, if we pump billions of dollars into this, instead of falling from first to second to third in the green energy revolution behind China and Germany, we will start leading it. And it is about coming up with the next technologies that you gentlemen were sitting here talking about, whether it's lightbulbs or something else. We need to discover that here in the United States, and then make it here in the United States.

But what all the major tech companies are saying now, they want to manufacture here in the United States. There is so much risk when you move your operations to China, losing intellectual property, losing the cutting edge, losing the quality, that there is an incentive here.

But if we don't pump money into research, that is why this whole philosophy that every single thing the government ever does is awful and the government should just serve big business, cut taxes for the oil companies, make sure that the big multinationals don't pay anything in taxes, and we will come back and cut NIH, cut energy investment, cut the National Science Foundation, cut the National Institutes for Science and Technology, their standards and technology. These are the kinds of things that we have got to be investing in. It starts with let's get out of this dependency on foreign oil, $4 a gallon is nonsense, and this illusion that if we continue to keep drilling, we are somehow going to drop the price, is an illusion. Let's take control of our own destiny here.

I want to just show real quick this chart. This is the U.S. balance of trade from 1960 to 2010. If you will look in the last 10 to 15 years, we now have $500 billion in a trade imbalance. Most of this is energy. Most of this is oil. What are we thinking? We are giving away the house.

This is not good public policy. This is not good economics. Let's take control. Let's invest in our own people. A billion a day we send to another country that doesn't like us, and it finances the war on terrorism? And then we take our budget and have three wars going on at the same time. So we pay them to run the terrorist operations, and then we pay our own military to go to the Middle East to try to stop it. Meanwhile, the middle class in the United States, we have a $3 trillion deficit on the roads and bridges and infrastructure, sewer. College expenses are going up. We're not doing research. This is a recipe for disaster for the United States.

I yield to my friend from California.

We had a group in Cleveland, Ohio, do a study a few years back that, if you added in that cost, the 17 percent of our military budget that protects the oil lines, supply lines for oil all over the world, the actual cost of a gallon of gas would be another $1, $1.50, because of the subsidy. It's another subsidy to make oil come here.

All we are saying is pump that money back into the research. Somebody in this country will come up with some synthetic, some magical something or other that will replicate diesel fuel. It will happen if we put the money into it.

Give him a minute of my time. He's from Pennsylvania. He can't help it.

It is clearly currency manipulation. Here is the deal: Chevron, $19 million refunded from the IRS last year. They made $10 billion. Valero Energy, 25th largest company in America, $68 billion in sales last year; they got a $157 million tax refund check subsidized by the taxpayer.

If we are going to do this, we need shared sacrifice. We need everybody to contribute, especially those people making a lot of money, to help us reinvest. These folks are benefiting from an old-age industry--that we are running out of oil. It only makes sense. It went into the ground for 4 billion years. We pulled it out in 150 years, and we are burning it. Something is happening. It is an old industry and we are subsidizing it. We need to be Americans who invest in the next great technology to lead the world.

Mr. Speaker, this is about prevention. This is about women's health. And this is about making sure that we reduce the need for abortion in the United States of America.

And how we got so illogical to think that if we could give poor and middle class women access to birth control, that somehow is going to increase the abortion rates in the United States is beyond me.

We see our friends time and time again talk about respecting life, and I see in many instances on the other side of the aisle, that ends once the baby is actually born.

Respecting life means early childhood health care. It means affordable health care for families. Those are life issues. Early childhood education, Head Start, Pell Grants. Those are about making sure that citizens in the United States of America can have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In this bill, if we pass and defund this organization, we will have more problems on our hands, more breast cancer, more cervical cancer. And it's going to be more expensive. And all of these folks on the other side that want to run government like a business and make good investments, you can't make better investments than preventative health care like this organization provides.

Mr. Chairman, we've heard this afternoon our debt is unsustainable, it's a warning, it's a fiscal crisis of unprecedented proportions. But heaven forbid to try to solve those great problems that our country has right now, the problem that we have, we ask the wealthiest in the country to just pay a few more thousand dollars, those people who have seen tremendous gains. You know, cry me a river.

Here we have David Stockman, former head of the OMB under Ronald Reagan, talking about the budget being presented by the Republicans: ``It's simply unrealistic to say that raising revenue isn't part of the solution. It's a measure of how far off the deep end Republicans have gone with this religious catechism about taxes.''

We're asking for shared sacrifice. You're getting into Medicaid, you're getting into Medicare, you're getting into Pell Grants, but the wealthiest are going to walk away not sacrificing one thing. Three wars we're in, and we can't ask the wealthiest to pay a few bucks.

This ends Medicare, Mr. Chairman. Let's be honest. It ends Medicare. These people 55 and under, whose wages have been stagnant for 30 years, now when they get into the Medicare program, they're going to have a voucher or premium support that increases by 2.2 percent indexed to CPI, or 2.5 percent, and the GDP in health care will grow between 4 and 5 percent. So every single year that this person that's 55 is in Medicare, they will lose 2 to 3 percent ground in being able to pay for their own health care.

We need to go back and remember why Medicare started in the first place. It is not a good business proposition to provide health insurance to older people in the United States of America. You can't make money off it. So we're going to give these folks a voucher that doesn't keep up with health care inflation and send them into the private market and somehow think we're doing them a favor? No shared sacrifice.

Again, we're putting the burden on the middle class person who has paid into Medicare, depends on Medicare, has been getting wages that have been stagnant, probably doesn't have health insurance between 55 and 65. So you want to talk about driving up Medicare costs, now we add someone who doesn't have health insurance into a market that they won't be able to afford when they do turn 65.

This budget is wrong. We need balance. We need shared sacrifice. And we need investments in the United States. This budget comes up short, and David Stockman says the same thing.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to ask a question of the chairman. Where in this budget is the sacrifice that is being made by the top 1 percent of the people? On the wealthiest 1 percent.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Reclaiming my time, you are lowering the corporate income tax. What sacrifice is being made?

I am watching you go through this, and I wanted to come down and take part. Last night we did the budget for next year. Democrats consistently, all day and all night, offered amendments to try to correct this idea of there not being any shared sacrifice. So as we sift through, we go through the budget line item by line item, and there are millions being cut, if not billions being cut, from Head Start, early childhood programs, the Pell Grant, veterans health, all of these things that get reinvested back into our people, and the RAND Corporation and all of these studies that are done, for every dollar we invest in early childhood, we get about $17 back into society. For ever $1 we invest in Head Start, we get $7 to $9 back. And all of our friends on the other side who say we ought to run government like a business should look at some of these statistics. These are critical investments that we need to make in the United States if we are going to be competitive.

We have only 300-plus million people in the United States. We are now competing against 1.3 billion in China. We are now competing against over 1 billion people in India. So we have to have all 300 million of our people on the field playing for the United States of America.

And you know what? That means we've got to invest in their health care to make sure those kids are healthy. We've got to make sure that they're educated. This is not the time to make college more expensive by cutting the Pell Grant from the top rate that we had, that the Democrats put in when we were here. The top Pell Grant would be 5,500 bucks. Now with the cuts that the Republican budget is going to make, if you're sending your kid to college, you're now only going to have $2,100 as a maximum Pell Grant. To me, if we're trying to get more people into college, more people doing research, more people innovating in our economy, more entrepreneurs, we need to invest in these kinds of things.

And yesterday all of our friends on the other side of the aisle had the opportunity to come down in public with a vote, one side or the other. In each and every instance, they voted against those investments.

In fact, we even offered a few amendments, one saying if you make more than a million bucks a year, which, where I come from, is a lot of money, let's raise the taxes on those people who make a million dollars a year or more and try to offset some of these deep cuts into Head Start, into the Pell Grant, into the Medicare program.

The gentleman from California was talking about wages. We have seniors now who over the past 30 years, whether they worked in the steel industry in Youngstown, Ohio, or the rubber industry in Akron, Ohio, or throughout the industrial Midwest, in many instances they lost their pension. I remember when my grandfather retired in 1979, his pension was $392; and when he died a few years ago, it was $392.

So now what the new roadmap for the Republicans does is it says for these people who are 55 and in the industrial Midwest who have seen the diminishment of their wages over the last 30 years, while the top 1 percent was going up, they're saying now they want to take the Medicare program and just give some support to let the senior go out into the free market and buy their own Medicare.

So Medicare is ``medi-gone.'' You are now going to be on your own. So now if you're a senior citizen in the United States under the Ryan roadmap--not this Ryan, the Ryan from Wisconsin--under his roadmap, the Medicare program will give you money, and it will not increase with the level of health care inflation, which is 10 to 15 percent a year. So they'll give you some money to support you to go out and get your health care. It won't keep up with inflation, and there will be nowhere else to go. These same people who over the last 20 or 30 years projected into the future, wages have been stagnant. So you're going to go into the seniors' pockets so that they have got to pay for your health care.

So we had this----

Tombstone made up: ``Medicare 1965-2011, created by LBJ, destroyed by the GOP.''

Now is not the time for us to make these cuts and tell our seniors who have paid into this system, who have planned on this system and the people under 55 whom this will affect that they're on their own and do nothing to try to rein in the health care costs. And that's the real issue.

If the gentleman will yield for a moment.

Because one of the amendments last night in the hearing, in the budget markup, was to implement the framework from the Debt Commission, the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which said two-thirds of the savings should be cuts and one-third should be revenue primarily from the top 1 percent of the people who have had all these benefits over the last 30 years. Every single Republican on the committee voted against implementing that framework, which was Heath Shuler's amendment, and it is to be noted that they had an opportunity to vote for that and they shirked their responsibility.

I thank the gentleman from Pittsburgh.

I would just like to lend my voice to taking this and studying this, because there are issues here. There will be a transition. We want our businesses to be aware of what the actual statistics are, to study these regs, what they're going to be and what the effects are going to be. But in no way, shape or form does this diminish mine or I don't think anyone else's support for a green energy future that we need in the United States.

I have been sitting here listening and you have several Members over there saying, ``China isn't going to do cap-and-trade.'' The fact is they're starting to do it. ``China is never going to tax carbon.'' The fact is they're starting to do it. And now we have dropped from first place in leading the green revolution to second, now to third, behind China, Germany, and now the United States.

These are manufacturing jobs. Tons and tons of steel go into a windmill; 8,000 component parts. They manufacture them in Illinois, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania. These are jobs for our people. Why else would the United Steelworkers of America be against this and be for the green revolution? We're making this happen, and we have to get out of our own way while we do it.

I just want to make two points because we hear a lot from the other side about Ronald Reagan, and I know they burn incense and light candles for Ronald Reagan. In the 1980s, it was President Reagan who used cap-and-trade for leaded gasoline, and it was George Herbert Walker Bush who used cap-and-trade for sulfur.

This is something that can be done if we put a price on this stuff. Lead the world, not be led.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to commemorate Brain Awareness Week (BAW) and the benefits of this informative week in educating students and the general public on brain science in my congressional district and across the country. Brain Awareness Week, launched in 1996, brings together the Society for Neuroscience, the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, and 2400 other organizations in 76 countries who share a common goal of improving public awareness of brain and nervous system research. During Brain Awareness Week, which is being held March 14-20, neuroscientists around the globe educate K- 12 students, senior citizens and the public at large on the wonders of the human brain. These activates include tours of neuroscience laboratories, museum exhibitions, and classroom discussions on elements of the human brain. This year, in my congressional district, high school students will have an opportunity to learn about brain physiology by working with Kent State University's graduate students to dissect a sheep's brain. This event will get these kids excited about the mysteries of the mind and the nature of scientific discovery. Today, in recognition of Brain Awareness Week, I would like to highlight a serious neurological disorder that affects millions of Americans--impacting their livelihoods and families: Addiction. In fact, 9 percent of Americans--more than 22 million people--abuse drugs on a regular basis.

As co-chair of the Congressional Addiction, Treatment and Recovery Caucus, I understand the urgency of treating addiction and the burden this neurological disorder has on lives, loved ones, and our economy. According to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control, each year, more than half a trillion dollars is lost to substance abuse in the United States alone. These losses are realized across the board--in health, criminal, and productivity-related areas. That impact totals about $181 billion for illicit drugs, $168 billion for tobacco, and $185 billion for alcohol. Even more worrisome are the statistics on drug-induced mortality. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 38,000 people in the United States died of legal or illegal substances in 2006. That figure doesn't even include the 300,000 to 450,000 deaths each year attributed to nicotine addiction. As disturbing as these numbers are, they don't reflect the unquantifiable impact of drug abuse. Drug abuse dissolves families, shreds the social fabric in neighborhoods, leads to loss of jobs and income, contributes to poor school and job performance, and is often a causal factor in domestic violence and auto accidents.

Mr. Speaker, the consequences of substance abuse for children in society are especially tragic. Drug-addicted parents often don't properly care for their children, neglecting medical and educational needs, and failing to provide basic food and shelter. When parents fail, the government must step in. These deficits are ultimately made up for by the taxpayer. Although more than 75 percent of illicit drug users are employed, these adults are more likely to frequently change jobs, be involved in accidents, be absent, and be less productive even when at work. Notably, heavy drinkers are absent from work four to eight times more often than non-addicts. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), drug use changes brain chemistry and physiology beyond just the brain's reward system and includes regions involved in memory,

learning, impulse control, stress reactivity, and more. Repeated drug exposure ``resets'' these circuits toward compulsive behavior so that a person's control over the desire to seek and use drugs is compromised, despite devastating consequences.

Over the course of the last three decades, the scientific and medical communities have made amazing strides in the understanding and treatment of drug abuse and addiction. Combined biological, epidemiological, and social science discoveries have given us a detailed understanding of the risks, mechanisms, and consequences of drug abuse and addiction. Today, the rate of cigarette smoking in youth is at its lowest recorded point since tracking of teen drug use and attitudes began in 1975.

Marijuana use has shown a consistent decline since the mid-1990s, although that trend has flattened in recent years; a study released last month by NIDA found that daily use of marijuana among America's youth is making a bold comeback--surpassing tobacco use.

Mr. Speaker, recent scientific advances have revolutionized our understanding of addiction as a chronic, relapsing, disease and not a moral failure. According to the NIDA scientists have now identified the specific sites of action in the brain where every major drug of abuse has its initial effects, including opiates, methamphetamine, cocaine, tobacco, and marijuana. Brain imaging technology has demonstrated that addiction is a brain disease by delineating profound disruptions in the specific brain circuits affected by addiction. In-depth, NIH-supported studies of chronic drug exposure confirmed that by causing abnormal regulation of key brain receptor, addictive drugs modify the strength of connections between neurons. The scientific knowledge we have accumulated will be used to transform the way we treat addiction and how we prevent drug abuse and its escalation to addiction. Neuroscientists are working to identify the genetic and environmental factors that put people at risk. For instance, genes account for about 50 percent of a person's risk of becoming addicted, and environmental factors influence the effect of these genes. Progress in genetics research will lead to more refined prevention and treatment interventions targeted to individual risk or to modifiable environmental influences.

Now, it's time for our policies to catch up with the research findings. We have to understand that addiction is a treatable disease requiring continuing care and multifaceted approaches, like diabetes, or heart and respiratory disease. We have to continue to support the research advancements by investing in a strong, sustainable research funding platform for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will bring us further in understanding and treating drug abuse and addiction. Failure to properly address this growing problem will only lead to more lives ruined or extinguished by drugs, more families broken by abuse, and more taxpayer money squandered on ineffective programs.

Mr. Speaker, today I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Brain Awareness Week, which exposes our constituents to the wonders and mysteries of the brain. I also ask that you join me in continuing to support basic research funded through the NIH and NSF that provides a foundation for new addiction treatments and drug abuse prevention methods that have an enormous impact on the lives of millions of Americans.

I thank the gentleman.

I just want to use an example here from a district in northeast Ohio, an old industrial district. We've had chronic foreclosures for 30 years. The census just came out. The city of Youngstown went from 180,000 people down to about 65,000 people. The tax base has been eroded. And in the last few years, Youngstown has been cited as one of the top 10 best cities to start a business by Entrepreneur magazine. Site Selection magazine says it's one of the top 10 places to start or grow a business.

In part, the renaissance of Youngstown is because of Federal investments like this that help us downsize and shrink our community. And I find it ironic that our friends who are trying to reduce government spending, we're trying to get rid of dilapidated housing where it increases crime, prostitution, drug use. This all puts more pressure on the safety services within a town like Youngstown.

This bill to repeal this money is actually going to cost cities and rural areas more money because you're not allowing us to reinvest into these places, downsize them, shrink them, make them more manageable and, over time, reduce the tax burden on the local taxpayer. These are critical investments that are needed in the United States of America. This should have been $5 billion, not just $1 billion.

I would invite the gentleman to Youngstown, Ohio. He can see it for himself.

Mr. Speaker, this Monday morning the Prime Minister of Australia, the Honorable Julia Gillard, will be participating in a ceremony on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to present a $3 million check from the government of the Commonwealth of Australia to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to help build the Education Center at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

On behalf of my constituents, I hereby extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Prime Minister Gillard and the Australian people. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Australia has been a reliable and close ally and partner to our nation. The decision by the Australian government to make such a generous contribution to build the Education Center is a vivid reminder of the close ties that bind our two countries.

The Vietnam War was a difficult time for both the United States and Australia. From 1962 to 1972, some 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam, during which time more than 500 Australians lost their lives and another 3,000 were wounded or otherwise injured. I am gratified that our close friend and ally, Australia, is joining Americans in helping to build the Education Center at the Wall.

Of the 185,700 Ohioans who served in Vietnam, the names of the 3,095 Ohioans who died during the war are etched on the Wall. For almost thirty years, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has served as a powerful and moving tribute to their sacrifice and the sacrifice of the more than 58,000 Americans who perished in the Vietnam War. I cannot overstate the importance of telling the stories of bravery and dedication behind the names etched on the Wall. That is exactly what the Education Center at the Wall will do. Not only will the Education Center tell the story of the Vietnam War, but it will also serve as a fulcrum of education and learning about the courage and patriotism of all of America's service members throughout the ages.

I was so moved and gratified to learn of the Australian government's generous contribution to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. In a larger sense, Mr. Speaker, this is a gift from the Australian people to not just the Memorial Fund, but to all Americans.

Thank you, Prime Minister Gillard, and many thanks to the Australian people.