Floor Statements

What's funny here, Mr. Speaker, is that this is another pattern, as these issues continue to come up, where the Republicans continue to offer solutions that have absolutely nothing to do with the problem that we're trying to deal with. You know, they lack ideas. They are a party that's void of ideas.

We cannot drill our way out of this problem. That's the issue here. Drilling has increased in the last 7 years by 66 percent, and there has been no decrease in the price of gas, there has been a tremendous increase. And on Friday, there was an increase in the per barrel cost of oil that was larger than a barrel cost 10 years ago. So the increase this year was more than a whole barrel cost 10 years ago. We've been drilling more than we've ever been drilling, 66 percent more in the last 10 years, and it's still not reducing the price.

The key here is we need to move off of our dependency on foreign oil. So if

you look at what the policies have been up to this point--and everyone says, you know, they come down to the floor, ``if we could only drill in ANWR,'' if you started drilling in ANWR today, you wouldn't get a drop of oil for 10 years. And in 20 years, you would only reduce the cost of a gallon of gas by one penny. That is the energy plan of the Republican minority in Congress and President George Bush: Go drill, and in 20 years we'll save you one penny per gallon of gas.

What we're trying to do is to make a very mature decision, which is unusual for Washington, that if we take the $15 billion or $18 billion in subsidies that we're giving to the oil companies under the Bush administration, we can move that into alternative energy research and development and have a long-term plan to solve this problem. We do not want to be here. Hopefully, God willing, our constituents will continue to elect us.

I would be happy to yield.

I'm sorry.

I reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks. So I'd like to take this opportunity to say 1.8 cents per gallon of gas 20 years from now.

What we're trying to say is we don't want to be in the same position 20 years from now or 10 years from now that we're in today, so that means that we need to make some long-term decisions. It's easy to come down to the floor: Drill, drill, drill. Drilling will not solve this problem.

If you look at what President Bush's policies have been, if you look at what the Republican Congress' policies have been--drill, increase by 66 percent--gas still goes up through the roof. The war in Iraq has totally destabilized the region that has more oil than anywhere else, and it has totally helped to drive up costs.

What we're trying to do is to have these mature discussions, not drill and veto, drill and veto, drill and veto. Let's stop the manipulation of the commodities market. Let's stop the manipulation of the futures and everything else where it's just continuing to drive up the cost of gasoline for average people. That is basically what is going on.

I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz made a great point. There are 68 million acres of land, Federal land, that the oil companies could tap into if they wanted. They have not. As for the refining capacity in the United States, everyone says, ``Build more refineries. Build more refineries.'' The refineries we have now are only working at 85 percent. So there are a lot of smoke and mirrors coming from the other side.

What we are trying to say is we need long-term, responsible policies that are going to stop providing corporate welfare for the oil companies, and we need to invest that money into long-term biodiesel, nuclear, wind, solar, and all of these other issues.

With that, I'd like to yield to our good friend from Pennsylvania.

If the gentleman would yield.

When most of us here are back home, I know that people say, ``Just stop the politics. Solve the problem.'' That entails our making some tough decisions long term, and this is kind of the general theme of what we're talking about here.

It is that we're trying to provide, yes, some short-term relief but also some long-term planning and long-term investments so that we're not here 10 years from now. If you're running a corporation or a business, you have a long-term business plan. This is our long-term business plan for the United States of America.

Do you want billions of dollars going to the oil companies that are, supposedly, supposed to help them increase refining capacity and help make it easier to drill but where they're not doing it for whatever reason? Public tax dollars. So the average taxpayer is getting hit at the pump, and their tax dollars are going to the oil companies, and still the price is not going down.

What we're trying to say is this money can be better spent. We are making a decision here to invest this into the long-term alternative energies which will prevent us, as a country, from being in the same position that we're in today 10 years from now.

I yield to my friend.

If you look on every issue, right, it is like we get hit on 9/11, the Taliban is housing them in Afghanistan, somehow we end up in Iraq. We have an energy problem. Drilling is up 67 percent. We have all this land and everything else, all these other areas. We got to keep drilling. That is the answer, when we know that it is these other things going on in the commodities market.

We look at trying to reduce the cost of college education. It is like we will put the banks in charge of loaning the money to the kids. Or if we want to provide prescription drugs, I got an idea. We will have the taxpayer pay for it, and we won't do any negotiations with the drug companies at all.

It is like they have a solution that doesn't address the current problem that we have at hand, Mr. Speaker. And what we are trying to say is we have solutions that will last more than a decade or two, and if they are wrong, we will switch them. But to come down and say drill, drill, drill, drill, drill. In ANWR, for example, it will reduce the cost of a gallon of gas by 1.8 cents per gallon of gas 20 years from now if we start drilling today. Totally off the mark.

I think it is important, the American people are onto this. They have been dealing with this problem now for like 35 years.

Before we were even born. But they have been dealing with this issue of oil and gas and the Middle East and dictators and how do we do this and prop up this one and try to figure it out.

In this whole scheme, I was watching a thing on Darfur last night. The only reason we couldn't get things done in Darfur is because China has oil in Sudan and we couldn't go in there because they were blocking things at the UN. Oil has become a major, major geopolitical and domestic problem in the United States of America. It has come to a head, and it is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the Democrats who are trying to move us off the dime and say long-term alternative energy is the investment. If we drilled in ANWR today, in 20 years you would save 1.8 pennies per gallon of gas. We can't drill our way out of this thing.

So if we don't start getting innovative and having a NASA-shoot-the- moon project for alternative energy, we are going to be in the same spot a decade from now, two decades from now. Our constituents did not elect us to come down here and play politics with this.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to once again start our 30-Something hour. We will be joined later by Congressman Meek from Florida to talk about the issues of the day and how what has been happening here in Congress affects what is going on to young people, but not limited to just young people in the 30- something bracket, but also to young people in college, young people in their 20s, young people trying to figure out how they are going to make their way in the American economy in the 21st century.

As we know, Mr. Speaker, we have been given many challenges over the past few years here in Congress dealing with many of the issues that face Americans.

Since Speaker Pelosi took over a short time ago, we have been committed, since this Congress was taken over by the Democratic Party, we have been committed to push initiatives that are consistent with the values that we hold dear in the United States of America. We hear a lot of rhetoric about values in this country, but if the policy initiatives that come out of this beautiful building in Washington, DC do not reflect our values, then we are in the wrong business.

And I am proud to say that since we have taken over here, we have shifted course from policies that many Americans believe have taken us in the wrong direction. And many of us still believe, even those of us here think we have made a shift in policy, but it has been difficult with the President to try to get a complete pivot out of the months and months and months and years and years and years of bad policy.

So I think it is important before we talk a little bit about what we have done is to go back and think about what we are trying to come out of, some of the challenges that this country faces. I think it is important to recognize politically that from 2000 until 2006, the Republican Party controlled the House, controlled the Senate, and controlled the White House. They had an opportunity to implement their policy--the neoconservative foreign policy, the conservative domestic policy, the conservative energy policy, the conservative higher-ed policy in America, the conservative ``compassionate conservative'' agenda on poverty and inequality--has all been implemented.

So when we talk about what will it look like if the conservative agenda is implemented, I think that is a false analysis of what will it look like. I think we know. I think what we are living with here today is the implementation of the conservative Republican agenda. They controlled the House, they controlled the Senate and the White House. The Bush tax policy, the Bush energy policy, all of these things that I have already mentioned have been implemented.

And if you want to know what it looks like, all you really need to do is go to the gas tank. You need to get your health care bill and see what your premium and the costs look like. You need to pull out the stub of your child's tuition. All of these things are the end result of the Republican domestic agenda being implemented here in the United States of America. You may not like it. I know a lot of Republicans, Mr. Speaker, who don't like it, but that is where we are.

And if you look at the financial situation that this country has been put in, the straightjacket that we have been put in that a lot of the changes that the Democratic Congress wants to make that we are at this point unable to make because of the financial position that we have been put in as a country and as a Nation, the fact of the matter is this: President Bush, Mr. Speaker, and the Republican Congresses that were under his watch borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President and Congress before President Bush combined.

Now think about that. In just those few years, President Bush and the Republican Congress borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President and Congress before them combined. The Republican- controlled Congress and President Bush raised the debt limit five times and borrowed $3 trillion primarily from Japan, China, and OPEC countries.

Now you want to talk about a scam going on and a shell game, we have a situation where we are borrowing money from oil-producing countries to basically give us money to go out and buy their oil, or to borrow money from oil-producing countries and from China so we can fund a war at $12 billion a month and put it on the credit card. Now that seems to me the definition of insanity, Mr. Speaker. Three trillion dollars, and this is as simple as your house payment or your car payment. You borrow money and you have to pay interest on it.

So countries like China will get the interest that the United States is paying on the money that we have borrowed, and the Chinese will take that money and they will sink it into developing and industrializing their own economy. And they are putting up nuclear plants so they have nuclear energy. And they are building roads, bridges and industrial parks. And they are funding their military and their navy. That is what they are doing with money that the United States is borrowing from them. And we take the money and we get ourselves into this war in Iraq at $12 billion a month, that is soon approaching a trillion dollars for the cost of the war, and some economists are saying at the end of the war, the grand total will be $3 trillion.

Now from Youngstown, Ohio, and Niles, Ohio, and Akron, Ohio, the folks that I represent are not really comfortable with the United States taking their tax dollars and paying interest on money they are borrowing from the Chinese so that the Chinese can build manufacturing facilities and manipulate their currency and ship the products back to the United States and put American workers out of work.

Now, there's something ironic about what's happening there. And there's really something sick, Mr. Speaker, about what's happening here. And when you look at the polls and you hear people say that 70 percent of Americans think that we're going in the wrong direction, the President has an approval rating of 28 percent, and the other 72 percent do not approve of the job that he is doing, you have to ask yourself, what is wrong? What is wrong? What is going on to have this dramatic breach in the American body politic?

And so, when Speaker Pelosi, and when we ran our elections in 2006 to come and take over Congress in 2007, it became imperative for us to try to pivot and shift this thing in another direction. So one of the issues is make sure that we pay for programs that we have here in the United States. No deficit spending.

Now, we've had problems, especially with the war, because we're committed over there. And it's been very difficult. We've tried to get out.

The President has vetoed every attempt we've ever tried to make. But we're trying to establish public policy in the United States of America that represent our values.

And if you look at what we have pushed coming out of this body, I think most Americans would agree, these are some pretty basic steps that we want to take. First thing we did when we got in is raise the minimum wage. For the first time since 1997, the American worker got a pay raise. It wasn't much. It should be a lot more. But we did what we could. And we said, this is a priority for us. 10 years without an increase in the minimum wage, but health care and energy and all of these other costs are going up for folks. Let's try to lift some people up, reward work. And we did that.

We have switched and tried to repeal the oil subsidies, corporate welfare, many of us know it as corporate welfare. Everyone hates welfare if we're giving it to poor people. They should go to work. They should work. This is America. We should not give welfare. That's the rhetoric that you hear.

But behind the scenes, our friends on the other side and President Bush are

very happy to give the oil companies 14 or $15 billion in oil subsidies, in energy subsidies.

Now, can you imagine, and today when you go to the gas pump and you pay $3.50, $3.75, $4 for a gallon of gas. You think you're frosted just filling up the tank. Think about the fact that President Bush said that he will veto any bill that comes out of this House that repeals the $15 billion that's going in corporate welfare to the oil companies.

Now, can you imagine, in this day and age, where Exxon's profits are through the roof, that the President of the United States says he will veto a bill that strips the corporate welfare out?

They're making tremendous profits. And what we have tried to do on the Democratic side, and Speaker Pelosi has tried to do, is to take that 14 or $15 billion away from the oil companies, away from the energy companies, and invest that money into alternative energy research; into wind, into biomass, into solar.

Now, we all know that these alternative energy forms, there's not one silver bullet. There's not one project or product that's going to come out and save us all and be a panacea for the entire United States of America and the world. We know that.

But Americans invent things. Americans make things better. Americans take a challenge and a problem and they fix it, and they solve it. They put the best and the brightest people that we have in this country, and they set a goal.

I'm not going to go do the research. President Bush certainly isn't going to go do the research. We've got a couple of rocket scientists that belong in this body that have been elected by their constituents here that may be able to actually do some of the research. But, for the most part, our job here is to set the public policy and provide the resources and the leadership for the country. And that's what we're trying to do is to say, invest into the Department of Energy, partner with energy companies.

We know you're not going to get rid of oil overnight. Many of us believe nuclear has a major role in what's going to happen here. But the bottom line is, let's make an investment into the United States, into the people, into the human resources that we have here to figure out what we're going to do, and then get the private sector and private enterprise to partner with us to get this thing kicked off.

It is crucial for us to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, crucial because we can extract ourselves from a lot of these political situations that we find ourselves in. In a lot of the global politics that we see and read, if you read between the lines and you think for yourself, you will see that there is some kind of energy component behind this, behind the politics that are going on, the geopolitics that are going on. And if we can become dependent on the Midwest instead of the Mideast, I think this country will remove itself from a lot of the problems that we have had, and we could help move this country forward. And that's what we are committed to doing here in the United States.

And just today, or yesterday, out of the Education Committee, George Miller, who's the Chair of the committee, they passed an authorization, I think, of $6 billion, if I remember correctly, to help schools, new schools. There'll be a formula to make sure that the school is green. So now, you're providing some leadership for the companies that will provide the products for a school or a building to become green. There'll be a little bit of a stimulation.

And I want to tell one quick story that I found interesting. We have a gentleman here in Congress, his name is Jim Oberstar, and he's the Chair of the Transportation Committee. He's been here since the late 1970s.

And I may miss a few of the facts here, but the point can be made that in the late 1970s, when he was a Member of Congress, and President Carter was in, he was trying to--the solar panel, there was some money put into the Department of Energy to research and develop alternative energy sources. And something popped out of that, it was called the solar panel.

And Mr. Oberstar had a piece of legislation that said we need to retrofit all Federal office buildings in the United States with solar panels. And by the Federal Government coming in and buying the solar panels, it will stimulate the solar panel market because the Federal Government is such a big consumer, and just like buying pens and everything else, and it will drive the cost down of the solar panels. So that was in 1977, 1978.

In 1980, when President Reagan came in, he completely eliminated that part of the Department of Energy that was providing that research and, basically, nothing happened. And he has now went from a rank and file member; Mr. Oberstar is now the Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. So he now has this bill that he reintroduced, told his staff to go back and get his notes from 30 years ago about what he wanted to do with solar panels.

Now, can you imagine how far behind the 8-ball we are? When you look at production of solar panels, it used to be an industry that the United States excelled in and that we had a great share of the solar panel market in the early 1990s. But now, we have been surpassed because we have not made the investments.

And I'm not here, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Meek, to say that government somehow has all the answers. But we do have a role to play in stimulating the economy, Mr. Meek. And when we do that, we will allow the private sector to come in.

So we need to do what we need to do with alternative energy research. We need to do what we need to do with high speed rail. We need to do what we need to do with broadband access. These are the things that government has a role in, infrastructure, education, health care. These are the things that we need to invest in. And that's what we've been trying to do in the area of health care.

One of the things that, I mean, you can't really find a better example or illustration of a difference in values from Speaker Pelosi and President Bush on this one issue. It's the issue of state, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. When we came in, one of Speaker Pelosi's priorities was to provide leadership and resources for the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

This is a program that would provide health care, Mr. Meek, for 10 million children of modest income, didn't quite qualify for Medicaid, middle class kids, middle class families struggling to provide health care. This was to fill that gap. Bipartisan support here in the House, and in the Senate, tremendous support.

So it passed the House, passed the Senate, President Bush vetoed it. Now, can you imagine where your priorities are when you're willing to spend $12 billion a month in Iraq, and you won't sign a children's health care bill to provide health care for middle class citizens at $35 billion over 5 years?

But you'll spend 12 billion a month in Iraq and not even ask a question as to where the money's going. There's billions of dollars that are lost in Iraq, nobody knows where they are, Mr. Speaker. Nobody knows where that money is.

And we struggle to find $35 billion to provide health care for modest income families. That investment that, at the end of the day, will probably save us billions of dollars because these kids won't go right to the emergency room. They'll have some preventative care. That will save us money in the long run. And the President vetoed it. And he vetoed it.

And in the Senate, 80 Senators overrode the veto. But in the House, we could not override the veto because a handful of Republicans on the other side were committed to support the President in his position.

Now, can you imagine that? In the wealthiest country in the world, the dominant super power, we can't scrape up $35 billion over 5 years to provide health care for middle class kids?

And the President thinks he's taken a stand on this issue and saying he's fiscally responsible, after running up $3 trillion in debt, borrowing it from Japan and China and OPEC countries?

When you're deciding on where your philosophies are, what your values are, this is the issue. This is the defining issue. Health care for kids, $12 billion a month in Iraq. Tax cuts for people who make billions of dollars a year, health care for kids?

This is clear. And our job, as representatives of the people, Mr. Meek, and I'll kick it to you here in a second, is to make sure that we bring some equity into this system.

And I will say this. The investments that we have made, or tried to make on SCHIP, the minimum wage, alternative energy, the fact that we did pass, and the President did sign a $1,000 increase in Pell Grants over 5 years, for students, and we cut the student loan interest rate in half, from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. So if you are going out trying to borrow for your kids, your interest rate is cut in half.

Those are the priorities that we push every day here on this House floor. Those are the priorities that are going to lead to an expansion of our economy.

We only have 300 million people in this country, Mr. Meek. There's 1.2 or 1.3 billion in China, 1.2 or 1.3 billion in India. We only have 300 million. And the philosophy of our party is to make sure that we invest into those 300 million people, to make sure they're educated and they're healthy. And I feel like if we make sure our kids are educated and healthy, that most everything else will take care of itself.

That's where we are. That's the agenda we're pushing.

Mr. Meek, I appreciate the fact that you're taking time away from your busy schedule and family to come down here, and I would like to yield to my very good friend from Florida.

When you look at what the Speaker has been asking the President to do now for weeks, possibly months, to suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we have this reserve in the United States that a certain amount of barrels of oil go in a day. And this is to make sure that in case of a crisis, we have oil for national defense purposes and so forth. This is oil that's going in every day.

The Speaker, based on the history and what the experts and the economists are telling us, is that if you divert that oil that's going in to the petroleum reserve and you allow that oil to be purchased on the market, that it will drive down the cost of oil.

And this will lead to a savings at the pump of about 25 cents per gallon because there will be an increase in the supply of oil in the market and it will drive the cost down.

Now, we're not sitting here saying that this is the magic wand we're going to waive and everything's going to be fine. But what we are saying is, when you implement this and you take some of the pressure off, you can save almost $6 a barrel and 25 cents at the pump. So if you are a truck driver, Mr. Meek, 25 cents, when you're putting 20 or 30 gallons in, adds up when you're spending your life driving. And throwing the kids in the back of the mini van or filling up the truck and going back and forth, this is a significant savings. And the Speaker has been pressing the President to make this move and put this oil back into the market, Mr. Meek, but hasn't had any success at all.

I yield to my friend.

Absolutely. And I think you've made some great points, Mr. Meek.

I just would like to say that, if you listen to some of our friends on the other side talk about gas prices, here is a party, Mr. Speaker, and an administration for 6 years--and the President and the Vice President being oil men--not doing a thing on energy, dependence on foreign oil, so on and so forth, to somehow accuse the Democrats of not addressing the issue, and completely oblivious to the fact that we're the ones passing legislation to crack down on price gouging, Mr. Meek. We're the ones that are passing legislation to hold OPEC accountable for price fixing. It's the Democratic Party that's repealing the subsidies to Big Oil so that we can take that money and invest it into alternative energy sources. It's Speaker Pelosi that's calling on the President to take the barrels of oil that are going into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and put those in the market to drive down gas by a quarter, that's something easy we can do. But it is the President and the Republican Congress, Mr. Speaker, that have consistently vetoed these bills or put the kibosh on them in the Senate, blocking lower prices every step of the way.

And if you look at what we have done here, pushed by the Speaker, to have fuel efficiency standards being raised for cars and trucks, we will reduce oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels per day in 2020. This is forward-looking. This is something that will save consumers between $700 and $1,000 at the pump in 2020. Now, we know that's not addressing the issues today. We're talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We're talking about cracking down on OPEC. We're talking about cracking down on price gouging that may be going on in the United States and our local communities. These are the short-term issues. And each one has been opposed by the Republicans and has been opposed by the President of the United States.

So when you ask the folks at home, Mr. Speaker, what the Congress has done, the answers are here. And if anybody wants to know what they are, they can go to the Speaker's Web site. Trying to stop price gouging at the pump, price manipulation from OPEC, divert the oil that's going into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that's what we're trying to do here. Repeal the subsidies for Big Oil and put that money and invest it in alternative research. Mr. Speaker, these are the policies of the Democratic Congress. And each one of those has been opposed by the Republican Party and opposed by the President of the United States, period, dot, Mr. Meek; period, dot.

So let there be no mistake, when common sense tells you we have a couple of oil barons running the executive branch, Mr. Speaker, and the Democrats are trying to push these initiatives to provide some relief for the common good and the common folks that we represent and it's opposed by the Republicans and opposed by this administration, it's important for us to set this record straight, Mr. Meek.

So as we begin to wrap up here, Mr. Meek, I would like to yield to you.

What's wrong with that?

Well, I appreciate that. And you brought up those who are serving here. And I think it's worth noting that the veterans measure, another initiative that the Democrats have tried to push for a new G.I. Bill, for free college for our vets, opposed by Defense Secretary Gates, opposed by the administration. This is an opportunity for us to thank those men and women who are serving our country to say, when you get out, you're going to have free college tuition anywhere in the country. And I think that's a small gesture.

And once again, I think the President and our friends on the other side are out of step with what the American people think we should be doing. It's one thing to wave the flag, and it's another thing to put your money where your mouth is.

So, Mr. Meek, I want to thank you for the opportunity to join you here on this beautiful Thursday evening in Washington, D.C., and I look forward to coming down here with you next week and continuing to make the case for the programs that Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer and Mr. Clyburn and Rahm Emanuel and John Larson are pushing in our caucus. These are the issues that we care about and we're going to continue to push.

As we've gone through this debate for years and years and years, as you said, we've been on the floor talking about this for a long time; and you start to hear these arguments, the same ones over and over and over regardless of what the facts are on the ground.

And the issue, I think, that has become most apparent, and some say the surge was a success. Some say, well, maybe it wasn't. Some say there hasn't been any political success. Some say there has been some. I think this has kind of gotten boiled down to one point. Some people are saying we need to stay. And you know what? Maybe, maybe if we accept that argument, maybe they're right. Maybe we should stay. But they're only going to stay at the expense of the future of this country. We will bankrupt this country if we continue to stay in Iraq.

And when you look at all of the great powers over time, they get too extended, too far out, too far out ahead of themselves; and what we are saying here is there is a reality on the ground that we need to deal with in order to address the issues that are facing the United States of America. This is about making sure that we are a strong country. If we are not a strong country, we are of no good to anybody else.

And the point that we are trying to make and that the Speaker is trying to make and the Democrats in the Senate are trying to make and like-minded Republicans are trying to make is that we can't sacrifice the United States of America for Iraq.

Now, we do bear some responsibility because we went in, but you can't continue to say that we are going to borrow, because we don't have this money. We are borrowing it all. $3 trillion is what the projections are now for the cost for Iraq when you factor in vets coming back and health care and what not. $3 trillion? We are going to borrow it from China and Japan and OPEC countries to fund a war that we are not having any political progress at all?

The sides are not reconciling. They're not moving forward in the political process. That's a problem.

So, even if you say we need to stay, you need to then be willing to spend enormous amounts of money, United States dollars, over the course of the next several decades and, as some people have said, over the course of the next hundred years.

And what we are trying to say is, we've got problems here at home that we need to deal with. We've got an energy crisis. We've got a health care issue that needs to be dealt with. Growing inequality. We can't afford to spend $3 trillion on this war.

Now, I don't think that's unreasonable because the strength of the country is at stake, and all we have to do is look around. We don't have this money. And this isn't just us. Joseph Stiglitz, Noble Peace Prize economist, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has severely weakened the U.S. economy whose woes go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion, yes, $3 trillion, on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.

This is a political reality that we have to deal with in the United States of America. And we are making difficult decisions. No one is saying yank the rug out. We are saying have a responsible, planned exit in which this country and the soldiers that we have trained and the close to $1 trillion that we have spent already, that investment, allow these people to take over their country.

I think there's a little bit of a misperception that there is not going to be, like we are going to be able to just leave Iraq, whenever it is, tomorrow or 10 years from now; and if we do it right, that there is not going to be any conflict, we will just kind of sneak out and everything will just harmoniously arrange itself.

And I think we need to realize that whether we get out 6 months from now or a year from now or 8, 10 years from now, there's going to be conflict. You have got groups of people that have hated each other for thousands of years. And there is not going to be any real polite settlement of this dispute.

And so we need to realize that. And by realizing that, I think it helps us get to the point where we say, well, maybe we need to just get out now because this dust-up is going to happen anyway.

And when you look at what happened the other day with the Iraqi offensive onto this militia group and then a thousand Iraqi soldiers left and abandoned the mission, would they have left if we weren't there? That's a question I think we need to ask, would they have left? But they know we're there. This is part of the problem.

We're creating a welfare state. These people are in a state of dependency upon the United States, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And if we continue to be there all the time, we're never going to leave, we're always going to be here for you. You know, you see all the time, this is the equivalent of a 35-year-old person still living at home with their parents. They get into a state of dependency, and they can never be responsible.

And I understand all the dynamics. I didn't want to go into this war in the first place, I was against it from the beginning, so we've got some responsibility to bear. But haven't we made the investment? And we know at some point they've got to step up and make their own way here. So I think a lot of us are just saying, let's just do it.

I yield to my friend.

Will the gentlelady yield?

I don't know if you've had an opportunity to see the documentary, and I haven't seen the documentary, but I've seen Phil Donahue talking about the documentary that he did, it's called ``Body of War.'' And it's basically these soldiers who have come back and the injuries that they're dealing with, the folks that we see going up to Walter Reed. And talk about an eye-opening experience when you first go to Walter Reed and you see these 21, 22-year-old kids without legs, without arms, severe brain damage, brain trauma, you know, all of the gruesomeness. But I think Donahue does a good job by bringing this to life and doing a documentary, Eddie Vetter does some of the music on it, so it's really a compelling case. But it goes to the point that we're all talking, you know, we're all talking numbers, 4,013, and 29,628 injured. I mean, these are numbers, but these are families that have been ripped apart, that will never be the same.

If we have an opportunity and enough facts to stop this thing, because it's not in the best interest of, obviously, a lot of these families, but this country, and you look at the human cost, as Ms. Wasserman Schultz has said, is tremendous. The financial aspect of this is detrimental to the future of this country. The readiness of our own troops, the lack of readiness, to be able to address some of these problems. And this is not something that you have to believe the Democrats or believe a politician on, this is retired Major General Punaro, Commission on the National Guard and Reserve, ``we think there is an appalling gap in readiness for homeland defense because it will be the Guard and Reserve that have to respond for these things.'' Army Vice Chief of Staff Richard Cody said the Army, ``no longer has fully combat ready brigades on standby should a threat or conflict occur.'' We're not making this up. In this country, we need to be prepared to responsibly, prudently, and practically disengage ourselves.

Empower the Iraqis. We've trained them for years. You know, I hate to always fall back on this example, but it's like when you're getting ready for a football season or a basketball season or a baseball season, you go through spring training and then the game is on a certain day and the coaches are coaching you, at some point you've taught the team all you can teach them, you've practiced as much as you can, and you're not fully ready for the game, but you've got to go play. And the coaches can't go on the field for you. And that's the situation we're in.

The Iraqis are never going to be perfectly prepared, Ms. Wasserman Schultz. It's never going to be perfect. There's never going to be a perfect time where all these people are trained to the tee and we're going to be able to say, now they're ready. Because you always make mistakes, you're never trained enough, you're never prepared enough, especially when you're dealing with all the cultural issues that we're dealing with.

So what we're arguing is that they're never going to be perfectly ready. And I think there would have been a better chance the other day of these thousand soldiers sticking with the mission that they had and staying there, but they knew the Americans were there, and so it became convenient to say, I'm out of here, the Americans will take over.

Well, when you look at how many different ways the Iraq war is like that pressure point that you hit and it has all these different ramifications all over the country, all over the economy, all over our society in so many different ways, and this is the one issue that needs to be addressed if we are going to make any kind of headway into converting our economy over from manufacturing and basically the industrial age into a new high-tech economy that everyone benefits from it.

Now, in Youngstown, Ohio, or in Warren or Akron or Cleveland or the industrial Midwest or Pittsburgh, Detroit, whatever the case may be, if the amount of money that was spent already in Iraq, nearly $1 trillion, was invested into these communities that, for example, have been hurt by globalization, and the big debate in the Ohio and Texas primary was NAFTA, NAFTA, NAFTA, and some areas benefited and some areas didn't, and Texas did this and Ohio did that and whatnot, just think, if all the communities that were very successful 50 years ago and pumped a lot of money into this country in steel and rubber and coal and all this stuff that were hurt by globalization, the investment of $1 trillion was made into those communities in water lines, sewer lines, roads, education, community colleges, worker retraining, investments into the NIH research, investments in alternative energy, figuring out who's going to make the windmill, figuring out how biodiesel is actually going to work without having all these different adverse effects, figuring out who's going to make the solar panels and how we're going to make these investments, $1 trillion that has been spent in Iraq, and we have no real signs of success.

No real signs of success. So this is what we're all factoring in here: The fact that it's costing us $1 trillion already and projected to be $3 trillion; the fact that all that money is borrowed; the fact that our friends on the other side raised the debt limit five times and borrowed $3 trillion already from Japan, China, and OPEC countries; the fact that our homeland has suffered because of the Guard and Reserve, and so we are incapable now of addressing major threats to the United States; the fact that our army is not at the level it should be, all of these factor in. The lack of readiness, the money, and then the lost opportunity.

We are Americans. We think about what can be. We think about the future. We think about where we want to go, what we want to be, what we want to do. And we are stuck because we don't have the resources to make the investments that Americans have always made: canals, railroads, Internet superhighway, investments in all these research projects that bounce into the Internet and put men in spaceships and land them on the moon. That's what Americans do. So let's put ourselves in a position where we can make these investments so these kids that we talk about all the time can have a future, have an economy. When you look at the benefits of NASA and science and technology and math over the years, how many corporations benefited from all of that, that's what we're talking about doing. Let's think about the future.

And when you look at this war as missed opportunities with Afghanistan, national security alone. We have missed opportunities catching bin Laden, focusing on Afghanistan, focusing on the global war on terror, these networks. We should have been tripling and quadrupling our special forces and hiring people who speak Farsi to translate tapes that we're pulling down from the satellites. All this stuff could have been done. A missed opportunity. Economically, missed opportunity.

So, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, thank you for coming down to this floor and claiming our hour tonight, and it's been great to be with you again. And we're going to keep plugging away here.

This is the pressure point. This is the issue facing our country, and we are going to keep speaking out on it.

I was also watching our friends who were here before, and they were saying things like: We have been so unproductive in this Congress. We haven't really done anything; and the things we have done, they are all bad. And I wrote the quote down. They are all bad.

Is this bad? Is this piece of legislation that we passed to make sure that our soldiers get at least looked at for traumatic brain injury, is that bad? We can give the gentleman an opportunity to come back here and maybe correct his statement, because I am sure he didn't mean it.

But to inject the kind of politics that some folks have on this floor over the course of the past few years into this debate has really poisoned it; and these are things that have been successful.

The largest increase in veterans spending in the history of the VA. Was that bad? Increasing the minimum wage. Was that bad? The education funding, more funding and more expansive, and the most investment this country has made since the GI bill and the education. Was that bad? Cutting student loans. Was that bad? I don't think so.

So we are trying to have these debates here very civilized in a bipartisan way and talk about how we can improve the situation for our soldiers.

I didn't mean to interrupt.

You were mentioning the troops and how complicated things have gotten.

One of the things you mentioned was what was happening in Iraq, and Mr. Meek mentioned how we got in. I think it is important to recognize, and there was a great article today in the Washington Post, what is happening with our troop strength, where we are getting to the point, we have all of these troops who go for 15 months and come back for a year. We are hearing from psychologists and psychiatrists at Walter Reed that they are not getting enough downtime. It is intense, urban warfare. They are not getting enough downtime, and that is contributing to a lot of the psychiatric problems that our troops are coming back with that need to be addressed.

What people are saying now in the military is that it has to be a year on or 15 months on, and 2 years off. Can you imagine if that is the recommendation. The recommendation is 15 months and then 2 years. Or it may even be 1 year. No, they are asking for 1 year on, 2 years off; and then if they have to go back, send them back. Can you imagine, that is the recommendation.

For them to now say you wonder what the issues are going to be when it is 15 months on, 1 year off and back again, the psychological effect on our soldiers and the cost long term to our VA health care. I think that is important.

I wanted to highlight this. This is General Richard Cody, Army's vice chief of staff who was testifying yesterday, and was talking about basically troop strength. Mr. Meek, you sit on the Armed Services Committee. You know how critical this is to where our country needs to be in case there is another conflict somewhere in the world that we have to react to.

Right now what the military leaders are saying is that we do not have the capability to react to that. Now can you imagine putting this country in that position, that we can't handle two separate fights going on at the same time when that has been the golden rule from the military for years. And what Cody said was that ``I've never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today. The Nation needs an airborne brigade, a heavy brigade, and a striker brigade ready for `full spectrum operations' and we don't have that today.''

Now if anybody wants to make a judgment, it is not the Democrats

making a judgment against President Bush, this is the Army vice chief of staff who happens to be retiring in the next couple of months and maybe feels a little freer to say the kinds of things that need to be said, but if we don't recognize what position we are in, and then to have some folks saying we need to be there another hundred years, how are we going to possibly sustain this?

That's the real deal.

Another quote, ``There has been little, if any, change of the stress or tempo of our forces,'' calling the current pace of operations ``unsustainable.'' That's where we are.

To quote Cody again, ``Where we need to be with this force is no more than 12 months on the ground and 24 months back.''

It is critical that these soldiers get the kind of rest that they need. When you look at the cost now, saying the projection, when you factor in the health care, and we are close to a trillion dollars for this war, and the projections, when you factor in the health care costs over time, this war is going to cost us $3 trillion.

And we have Members of this body who stand up and want to slash out an earmark for $250,000 to help a local community that doesn't have any money put in an EPA-mandated sewer and ignore the 800-pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the room. It is a shame. It is a shame that the debate has gotten that messy.

If we stay focused on what we have been trying to accomplished in the past few years, focus on the veterans, focus on making sure that there is an assessment for their mental health, making sure that they have their money, which we put up, the highest investment in veterans' health care in the history of the VA, those are the kinds of things that we need to focus on as a country in a time of war.

I would just urge all of our colleagues to have this debate be civilized and not taken to the lowest recesses of political dialogue, which is sometimes I think where we end up.

I think it is important for us to recognize as we have this debate in Congress, we recognize where we are at right now. And our friends are talking about their alternative budget, and I know my friend from Florida doesn't like me using quotes from the other side, and I understand that.

It is a free country, and I am an American so I am going to say what I want.

Our friends on the other side, this alternative budget, alternative this, alternative that, I think it is important for us to recognize if you want to know what the conservative, neocon- servative, right-wing government looks like, all you have to do is open your eyes, read the paper, go to the gas station, pay your health care bill, pay your tuition bill, and you will know that philosophy implemented is the reality we are living in today. They deregulated the financial markets, deregulated the energy sector, gave billionaires tax cuts. You see this every day. Increased tuition, energy costs going up double the rate of inflation, milk going up 26 percent, eggs going up 40 percent. And $3 trillion in war over the course. And you put all of this together and you say that's the alternative? That's what you want us to go back to?

We spent the whole year just trying to get back to ground zero, raising minimum wage, cutting student loan interest rates in half, investing in alternative energy, implementing the 9/11 report, making sure that our veterans are taken care of. We are still digging out of a hole. Can you imagine, these folks raised the debt limit five times to the tune of $3 trillion, borrowing it from China, Japan, and OPEC.

And the mortgage crisis, the anxiety people feel, that is the conservative Republican agenda implemented. We don't have to look anywhere; we are living it now. Now. So we don't have to look too far.

The other day the President said if the Democrats repeal the $18 billion in corporate welfare for the oil companies, I will veto any bill that has that in it. Now can you imagine how screwed up the situation is. Consumer protection, toys, pet food, food coming over, medicine coming over from China without the proper folks checking the stuff out, mine safety has gone down so we have mining accidents because there wasn't the proper oversight. We know what happened with Hurricane Katrina and FEMA because we put political hacks in jobs. All of this happened under the conservative Republican agenda.

So I just would like to say we are working very hard to balance the budget, make investments in education and our vets, take care of the environment, and make these investments in alternative energy so we can have green collar jobs replacing the blue collar jobs we have been losing.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment and first want to thank Mr. Miller for what he has been able to do with this piece of legislation, and also thank the gentleman from New York. And congratulations on the New York Giants' victory in the Super Bowl.

This is an issue that is near and dear to many people's hearts in this Congress, the cost of college education.

When you think about what a lot of these kids have to go through, application fees, lab fees, parking passes, meal tickets, rec center fees. You get a bill from the bursar's office, and you don't even know what it is for, but it is for $150.

And one of the key factors in the increase in the cost of a college education is textbooks. You buy a textbook for $100, you use it for the semester, and you bring it back and they say, We will give you a dollar for it. So you end up keeping it.

This amendment creates a pilot program across the United States authorizing $50 million over 2 years to allow pilot programs for book rentals. There have been programs across the country, several here or there, that have showed savings for students up to a third of the cost of the textbooks. This pilot program gives the Secretary of Education great discretion to start up to 10 pilot programs where they can begin to share books, rent books, put them back into circulation and save students some money.

This is an opportunity for us to figure out what pilot programs work, what is best for a big school, and what is best for a smaller school, but give us an opportunity to figure out how we can save these students money.

We talk about being competitive in a global economy, we talk about investing in education, but if we continue to have these kinds of barriers for our students, we are not going to get the entries that we need, and we are not going to get the production of diplomas that we need in this country to continue the kind of economic growth we need.

I think this is a good amendment that gives a lot of discretion to the Secretary of Education to make sure that we try to figure this out and do it the right way.

I would appreciate support for this amendment. I know that the chairman supports it. I think it is a good thing to add onto this bill. I think it is good for the country, and it gets us into an innovative mindset as we try to address the cost of college education.

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

Mr. Chairman, can I inquire how much time I have.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to my partner from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire) whose fingerprints are all over this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank the gentleman and appreciate the bipartisan support of this amendment. Funding education, trying to reduce the cost of college is not a partisan issue. This is something that we need to do as Americans if we want to stay competitive.

You can't fund your military without a growing economy. You can't have a growing economy without investments in education.

This particular amendment has taken the advice from the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance that was started a couple of years ago, offered this as a suggestion. We're taking that suggestion; we're working with it.

Colleges in Ohio, my alma mater, Bowling Green, is now, through this program, offering books for 35 percent of what the book should cost. So a $100 book, through this program at Bowling Green is 35 bucks. That's a significant savings for our students.

So I want to thank the bipartisan support, thank Speaker Pelosi, and thank Chairman Miller for their help with this amendment.

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

Madam Speaker, I think what is happening now highlights a lot of what has already been going on in a lot of areas around the country. I think when you start to look and see people are talking about the downturn in the economy and jobs and what is happening now: Unemployment rate going up, people not having the disposable income. When you look at a lot of areas, and it is not just Niles, Ohio. It is not just Youngstown, Ohio. It is not just Akron, Ohio. It is in Des Moines, Iowa. It is in Waterloo, Iowa. It is in Detroit, Michigan. It is in all of the industrial Midwest where, quite frankly, globalization has had a negative impact on a lot of the communities there.

So this stimulus package, I think, as you have been talking about over the past 30, 35 minutes or so, it needs to be targeted to those families that are going to spend the money to stimulate the economy, those small businesses, I think, that are going to reinvest back whether it's in a machine shop in Streetsborough, Ohio, or wherever the case may be. But make that money available.

But I think it's also important for us to talk about what we've been doing since we've been in the majority to affect the long-term growth of the economy. And I think, you know, one of the past Federal chairman's said that they're just too many bubbles, you know. That was the problem that we have had here.

We had the tech bubble in the 1990s and the low interest rates and the housing bubble, and now we are looking at that bubble bursting.

Just to give you an example on how this ripples throughout the economy, we have an aluminum extrusion manufacturer in Gerard, Ohio, 300 pretty high-paying jobs that's going to close down because they supply the aluminum for the housing market, not commercial but the housing side.

So this downturn, this bubble busting has this ripple effect throughout the economy, and that's why I think you see us in the position that we are in today.

But if you look at what we are doing long term, for long-term stimulus, what we've tried to do with stem cell research here in the Congress, that opens up whole new vistas of opportunity in the health care field. That opens up opportunity for research and development in a growing field.

If you look at what we are trying to do with alternative energy, you will see that these investments that we are making into the research and development of a lot of these alternative energy technologies, those are investments that are going to yield great benefits for us, because long term, you know, someone has got to make the windmill. Someone's got to make the hydraulics for the windmill. Someone's got to make the blades. These things need to be trucked around. These components need to be assembled.

That is a direct investment once this technology is purchased or at least improved and able to produce some sufficient amount of energy, that's going to be American manufacturing. If you look at solar panels, that could be a potential opportunity for American manufacturing.

So before I kick it back to you, it's important that we recognize some of these long-term investments that we are making here. And one of the ones that we saw, if you were looking at some of the economic indicators from the summertime when the wage was passed and implemented, there was actually an increase in consumer spending. It shouldn't be much of a surprise because if you put more money in the pockets of these folks, that's what happens.

Finally, before I give it back to you, it's important to recognize for the American people that this stimulus package, what we are seeing here is going to stimulate the economy, is what we have been arguing about here since President Bush came in with his lopsided tax cuts for the top 1 percent.

Now, if you give somebody who makes millions and millions of dollars a year--and God bless you if you do. We want you to make money. We are not against you. We understand the importance of people investing in business in our country. But that person is not going to take a couple hundred thousand dollars that they get in a tax cut and go out and spend it. What are they going to spend it on? When you have that money, you have everything that you need. You are not going to go out and say, ``Well, I got a couple hundred

thousand dollar tax cut. I'm going to go out and buy a new pair of shoes now.''

You have everything that you need. So that cut does not have the economic stimulus, and if it is getting invested, let's be honest. That is getting invested in Asia. If you are looking to make money and put it in the market or you are looking to buy a particular stock, you are going into a certain area, and it would behoove you to put that money somewhere in Asia.

So, having said that, the tax philosophy that we have here that you should give middle class tax cuts to folks, if it stimulates the economy now, if it is good for the economy now, it should be a good fiscal policy.

I appreciate you, just in general.

I know you talk about appropriations all the time, especially when you are trying to get money from appropriations for very important projects and investments in your district. In Hollywood and Miami, there are a lot of needs there.

They should get some back. You are exactly right.

And I know you have water projects there and education projects there. You have energy projects there.

If we are going to have the kind of development that we have, the economic development that lifts up all congressional districts, we have to make all of those investments.

And the latest report is 650,000 Iraqis who have been killed as well.

The point, too, is the decisions that you make, I think, and so articulately explained here, the decisions that you make have long-

term ramifications. If you make bad decisions, as we have seen, now, regardless of where you were on the war, what your position was before it started, or when it started or how your vote was, we now have to calculate and figure out $1.3 trillion was spent on this war that we elected to go into that now has been proven time and time again that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

As policymakers, we need to look back and evaluate whether or not this was a good decision; $1.3 trillion at the end of next year, or at the end of this year will have been spent on this war. We look all across our country, and has it helped reduce gas prices? No. Has it helped create stability around the world? No. Did it decrease the number of terrorists around the world? No. It actually increased the number, and every intelligence report from all over the world will tell us that.

We need to understand that as we make these decisions, whether it is on the stimulus package, whether it is on our Tax Code, whether it is on the investments that we are going to make in this country, these are big decisions, because the ramifications are pretty big when you look 5 or 6 years down the line and could be as costly when you get into an elective war as $1.3 trillion.

These are the kinds of decisions that we are making here, and I think it is very important for us to recognize, as we make them, that these have long-term ramifications. The tax cuts, you combine the war and the tax cuts. When our friends were in charge of this body for 6 years, since President Bush was in, and President Bush was President, a Republican-controlled House and Senate, $3 trillion was borrowed from the Chinese, the Japanese, to increase our debt. So our debt went up by $3 trillion. They raised the debt limit five times. So when you combine the Bush tax cuts with the war, some very immature policy decisions were made.

Now.

You mentioned bipartisanship. I think, as we are closing out here and as we had the vote today on the SCHIP bill, that it's important for us to recognize how far away the President is from bipartisanship on some of these issues. Here we have the SCHIP, State Children's Health Insurance bill. This was a program that was started by Newt Gingrich and President Clinton to invest money into the health of poor and middle-class kids. The program was $35 billion over 5 years. It passed this House in a bipartisan way with many, many, many Republican votes, mostly Democratic, but many Republican.

The President vetoed this bill twice. So a bipartisan bill drafted by Newt Gingrich, signed into law by President Clinton is vetoed a couple of times by President Bush. His reason is it costs too much money. It's $35 billion over 5 years.

This is the same President that raised the debt limit five times and ran up $3 trillion in debt and turns around days later and asks for another $200 billion in Iraq, but he doesn't have and doesn't see the sense in the investment of $35 billion over 5 years for kids' health care. So when you hear ``bipartisan,'' you have got to be skeptical.

Now I want to kick it to who we very affectionately refer to as our ``mother'' here in Congress, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who, I know I saw her on TV at the Presidential debate the other night, Madam Speaker, and I think Mr. Meek, and you were there too, that it seems like Mrs. Jones may have gotten more TV time than Hillary Clinton got during the Presidential debate.

I think you have done a great job today, Mr. Meek, and I just want to say how proud I am to come down here with you and make these points and listen to you break down the issues of the day where you are putting the cookie on the bottom shelf.

I appreciate the gentleman giving me an opportunity to share a few words. I think yourself and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), my good friend, and other Members of this body agree, it has been a long year. It has been a long slog, and I think there have been in many ways a very complicated political scenario where in some instances where we are trying to pass children's health care, we have 80 votes in the Senate, enough to override a Presidential veto, but a rabid group in the House would back the President's veto and not allow us to override.

Some of our Republican friends were standing in the way of us getting SCHIP. My point is it is a very complicated political situation. I think within that context we have a tremendous amount of success. I think that as these bills begin to hit and get signed into law and the investments are made, I think the American people will begin to realize there has been a change in the direction of the country.

Believe me, we are nowhere near where any of us want to be. Nobody is happy, but we are satisfied to some extent that a lot of the programs that we have pushed forth will be signed into law, and have already in some instances been signed into law.

And those people who are in our congressional districts who are feeling the anxiety of globalization, of trade, of the economy, of the squeeze that is being placed on the middle class, I think we will see next year, if they are trying to put their kids through college and they go to take out a loan, and they recognize that last year when they took out the loan it was 6.8 percent and next year it will be 3.4 percent for college, they will recognize that something happened there, that it was the Democratic-led Congress who allowed that to happen.

When they go and apply for a Pell Grant and there is a few more hundred dollars that they qualify for, a thousand more over the next few years, those families will recognize that it was the Democratic-led Congress under Speaker Pelosi's leadership that allowed that to happen.

When you are working for minimum wage, whether it is two or three jobs, trying to piece your family together, you will recognize it was the Democrats who came in and made that happen.

When you see the auto industry begin to transform because of the amount of pressure that was put on them, CAFE standards and some other issues that we were able to work out to allow the auto industry to move forward and make these investments, that is because of the Democratic- led Congress.

It ain't over yet.

We are going to plow through them.

I think you make some great points because, you know, we have the veterans piece, the education piece, but I think you touched upon something when you started talking about the NIH and the energy research and investment that we're making in alternative energy. What we're trying to do, people are struggling. You know, people in our districts are wondering, especially in the Midwest in the manufacturing areas, what are we going to do? And what we're trying to do, I mean, you can't just give a job and the government hires everybody. But what we're trying to do, which I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz has said, make these strategic investments in alternative energy, green-collar jobs, solar panels, I mean there's a lot of opportunity here. And in the health care field, the more research we do in the health care field the better off we're going to be, the more efficient the system, the more medical devices, the more research our scientists can do. There's a lot of opportunity here. So not only are we trying to raise the minimum wage, increase access to education, make sure our veterans are taken care of, which are all substantial accomplishments but, at the same time, make these long-term investments, where we're prying open different sectors of the economy.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

We are moving in a new direction. We pushed and pushed and pushed with this AMT to get it paid for--$50 billion. And what we were going to do is close down loopholes where hedge fund owners and hedge fund operators are putting money offshore and basically hiding it. And the Democratic Party, Speaker Pelosi, our Blue Dogs united, liberals, Democrats, conservatives, all of us united saying pay for this. If not, the tax is going to tax people making 50, $75,000 in New Castle and Scranton, PA and Youngstown and Florida, so we wanted to pay for it.

The Republican Party opposed us paying for this by going after hedge fund managers period. You can read all the articles. Read all the analysis of what happened here.

So they sided, Madam Speaker, with hedge fund managers who are making billions of dollars a year.

Then we tried to repeal some of the issues dealing with the oil companies and making sure they're paying their fair share. The most profitable industry in the country is getting subsidized. And we're saying, no. We need to take some of that money and we need to invest this in alternative energy.

Again, in the Senate the Republicans stood strong to make sure that that did not happen. So in two instances, whether it was with hedge funds managers or with the oil companies, we were trying to make sure we brought some equity into the system and paid for making sure that our middle class doesn't get a tax increase.

I'll be happy to yield.

That would be the Democratic party.

And this is all about, you know, borrowing of the money. And as the gentlelady from Florida said, I think everyone at some point has mentioned it here tonight, $3 trillion in the last 6 years borrowed from foreign interests, raised the debt limit five times, borrowing from China and Japan. And my nephew, little Nicky Ryan, who's, you know, 2 years old is saying to us, what are you doing? Uncle Timmy, what are you doing?

We're passing it down, passing it on. Someone's got to pay this bill. And it's your kids and your kids and Kendrick's kids who have to do it.

I yield to my friend.

Also known as corporate welfare.

I think what we've done, and I think what the Speaker has done and Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn and John Larson and our leadership team have done over the past year is, you know, we've heard for a decade about family values. And I think what has happened here is our legislation has embodied what families need, the minimum wage community health clinics, education funding. We, I think, have spoken through our actions here, and I think that's very important.

In addition to that, when we talk about staying out here and continuing the message side of this, part of politics is to communicate with the American people. But what's important is anyone who's watching this debate, we're telling you our side, they are saying their side, and there are the facts, and the American people get to listen.

We wanted to make sure that the hedge fund managers were not hiding money in offshore accounts. That was something we ran on, and we tried to do it and continue, but we don't have a big enough majority now to handle some of these in the Senate and here.

We were the ones who wanted to pull the corporate subsidies. We were the ones who actually succeeded in the education and the health care and the energy and all these other issues, not nearly again as far as we wanted to go. But for us to come out here and continue to pitch our accomplishments, what we've done, what we're going to continue to do, the fact that we're not happy, there are still jobs leaving many communities across our country that need that growth, that investment in alternative energies, that's what we are trying to do, trying to accomplish.

We're not satisfied. So to the people back home listening to us, we're not satisfied. We're not done. We're going to continue the good fight.

And so I'd just like to say to everyone here, thank you. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa.

Happy New Year.

I have about five funny jokes that are in my head right now that I want to say, but I'm going to pass on all five.

I think on behalf of us, I think we're very lucky. We had a great freshman class that has had a tremendous impact.

Mr. Altmire, I know, has passed a couple of pieces of legislation through the Small Business Committee that has really, I think, redefined what government investment and what the Small Business Administration needs to do, angel investor funds, venture capital funds, to invest in these new start-up communities. So communities like ours who are trying to convert from manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, from manufacturing in auto and steel and rubber to some kind of high-tech business, we now have an SBA bill that would allow those young companies to get venture capital money that would match. I mean, just a lot of innovative things.

I don't want to get into the details, but we want to say thank you because you guys have all been great: Zack Space, Jason Altmire, Chris Murphy, Patrick Murphy, Arcuri, the sheriff. We have a lot of great people. And Yvette Clarke from Brooklyn, New York, has been phenomenal. We've got a great class. So, thank you, thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

The thing is there's like hundreds of people on the other side of the aisle who are taking earmarks, who feel like that it's better that they make the decision for their own district as to where the money should be spent or some bureaucrat in Washington makes the decision as to where the money is spent. Somebody's spending the money. Now, it's either the elected Representative who's going to spend the money or it's going to be someone here in DC who's going to spend the money and has no idea of what the dynamics of the district are, what your long- term economic development plans are, what the health and safety welfare needs are of your district.

So I think it's best in a democracy for the elected Representative, who gets to have meetings in their office with different constituents, as to who will decide where this money is spent.

Now, is the autism center in Youngstown, Ohio, pork? I got three- hundred-and-some-thousand for that. Is the water line in a poor community to make sure that we have clean water, is that pork?

I love it when the Members from the western part of the country come to the House floor and talk about all this government spending. You know, in California, in Arizona, there are congressional districts that would not even exist if it wasn't for a Federal investment. There are congressional districts that they're in a desert. How do you think the water gets from the Colorado River to your congressional district? Through osmosis? No. There is Federal investment that is invested in these different congressional districts, you know, the Colorado River Basin Project and all of these different projects that bring water to your district and your constituents.

So I think it is absolutely absurd for people to come to the House floor, and we've done exactly what we said we were going to do. We made this process transparent. There's nobody here that thinks you should be able to hide something. So now when you make an investment or you claim an earmark, your name goes on it, and it says Rich Center for Autism in Youngstown, Ohio, at Youngstown State University, Congressman Tim Ryan, 17th District.

The issue here is that the earmarks are a very small percentage of the Federal budget. All of these bills have been bipartisan. If you look at all of the appropriations bills that have passed out of the House, there has been a significant number of Republicans who have joined with the Democrats to make these investments, especially Members of the Appropriations Committee that have looked at these issues very carefully to make these investments in a bipartisan way.

The energy bill, of which our friends on the other side, Mr. Speaker, have derided us and it's a Democratic this and a Democratic that, 314 votes; 314 votes, which is 70 or 80 Republican Members of this body have joined with us to try to increase CAFE standards, make investments in alternative energy, make investments in the middle America and the Midwest. This is on a bipartisan basis.

So it seems like those folks who come to the floor seem to be on the fringe level of the party that they're talking about these things. But I think it's important for us to talk about some of the investments that we have made here.

There has been a significant shift in priorities. Now, we haven't come anywhere close to achieving what we have wanted to achieve since we have taken over. We don't have 60 votes in the Senate, and the Republicans have done a good job of blocking a lot of our legislation that we've tried to pass.

The President has vetoed SCHIP, which is the State Children's Health Insurance Program, that we wanted to provide 10 million middle-class kids with health care, and the President vetoed it twice. And the fringe Republicans, many have joined with us. Ray LaHood, Steve LaTourette, a lot of good Members of Congress have joined with us to try to override that veto, but the President was able to sustain it.

So we asked to cover health care for 10 million kids, $35 billion over 5 years. President said we're spending too much money. Turned around within days and asked for $200 billion more for Iraq that we're going to borrow from China. And so some of the investments that we're trying to make, I think it's important for the American people to know what we have done.

We've raised the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. We've cut student loan interest rates in half from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent, which will save and increase the Pell Grant by $1,000 over the next 4 or 5 years. We will save the average student or their parents, whoever's footing the bill, $4,400 over the course of their loan that they take out. Those are significant investments to the middle class. We're going to fix the AMT, which would come in and zap 23 or 24 million people.

But I think it's important that we share with the American people, Mr. Speaker, the investments that we have made here, that are different than what the President wanted us to do, and we can go through this.

But medical research, $607 million above the President's request. That's a lot of money, $607 million to research Alzheimer's, cancer, Parkinson's and diabetes. Now, I think the American people want us to work together to try to fund some basic research.

Would the gentleman yield?

I yield to the gentleman.

Well, it's interesting that one of the gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, that was down here complaining about earmarks just minutes ago prior to our getting down here, and we are not here to play gotcha but we are here to reveal what has happened here, in this bill loaded with earmarks, loaded with all this pork, one of the gentlemen down here, Mr. Speaker, had requested 20 earmarks worth $38 million but turns around and comes to the House floor and is critical of the Rich Center for Autism in Youngstown and dam safety projects and after- school programs and some of the other districts that are here and calling it pork and in one of the instances was trying to in some way disparage the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) in his project that he had that was named after him and the same gentleman is now supportive of the Thomas Road Improvement Program that is now under way that his predecessor, Representative Bill Thomas, submitted with his own name on it for the project but yet comes down and is critical.

So our point is not to play gotcha. Our point is to say that Members of Congress should be able to direct a certain amount, and it's only a small percentage of the budget. I don't even know if it's .5 percent of the entire budget.

Right.

Will the gentleman yield?

We have got more here. The gentleman from California, the previous gentleman, who just made fun of us for all the earmarks, had 20 earmarks worth $38 million and is supporting one now named after the former Chair of the Ways and Means Committee.

Another gentleman down here that was from Michigan got press releases, and you will love this one, $3 million for an extended cold weather clothing system through the Army. He was just down here making fun of everybody, and he's requesting thermal underwear. And it's not funny because the reason we are here is to make sure that we are getting this all out. And for Members of Congress to come question the Rich Center for Autism. And I know Mr. Altmire has a lot of issues. We have all got issues.

You know, obviously there have been situations decades ago where, you know, everyone was spending too much money. And for us to put in the PAYGO rules that say you've got to pay for every dime you spend one way or the other I think is a significant step in the right direction. Nobody here wants to continue what has happened over the last 6 years.

And when you look at what's happened, over $3 trillion in debt has been borrowed from China, Japan and OPEC countries. Our friends on the other side, when they were in charge, raised the debt limit five times in order to go out and borrow more money. And we see the situation that we're in now. So we're trying to, slowly but surely, rein all of this in and make very strategic investments.

And I would say, Mr. Speaker, that you can go to the Web sites for the Speaker and our caucus and what we're doing. We're making investments into alternative energy, research and development, so we can open up new sectors of the economy. We're making investments in education, saving the average family who takes out loans and utilizes the Pell Grants $4,400 over the course of that loan. That's a middle- class tax cut. What we're going to do with the AMT, the alternative minimum tax, we're going to prevent 23 million people from getting a tax increase next year. And that's a middle-class tax cut. These are people making $50,000 to $75,000 a year. We're going to prevent that from happening.

Significant steps in criminal justice. Cops on the beat. In communities like Youngstown, Ohio, the city doesn't have the tax base to keep hiring more and more cops, so it's harder to develop your economy if you don't have security. So, these are the kinds of investments that we're making.

So, in closing, as we wrap things up, because I think we're going to wrap things up here in a minute, first, Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit these two articles for the Record so that not only are these earmarks represented openly, as our rules have provided, but there are also press releases that some of our Members on the other side who have been on the floor detesting earmarks, their press releases can now be submitted for the Record.

[From the Bakersfield Californian, July 11, 2007]

Get an Eyeful of Earmarks

Earmark--a.k.a. ``pork barrel''--spending has almost as

dirty a reputation as its porcine namesake.

Earmarks are items from a pot of money--$29 billion in

2006--from the $2.4 trillion federal budget that is set aside

from the complex federal appropriation process for

congressmen to dole out for specific projects in their

districts.

There are two problems with earmarks:

Some ideas are silly, flag-waving expenditures with little

widespread redeeming value.

Good or bad, finding out what the money is for and who the

patron congress member is can be a nearly impossible task for

the public until it is too late to change the spending

outcome.

That could be changing, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-

Bakersfield, may be among the 34 of 435 members of Congress

who voluntarily released his list of requests in time for the

public to comment. Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, has not.

Early disclosure is the key element to any credibility

claim. With that in mind, why wouldn't everyone list their

proposed earmarks the way McCarthy has done?

See the first bulleted item above. A good project gains

stature, but a stinker may, like Dracula, die a deserved

death when the light of day shines on it.

Thus, disclosure has the potential benefit of increasing

the quality--and hence the justification--of earmarks.

But can earmarks be justified at all?

Yes. The federal budget process tends to look at the big

picture--after all, it is measured in trillions of dollars.

An earmark can focus on a small, highly localized need that

is easily overlooked in vast appropriation measures.

McCarthy requested 20 earmarks worth $38 million for the

22nd district (Kern and San Luis Obispo counties) and another

$142 million for Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake Naval

Air Weapons Center.

He may not get any funds, but some examples include

$122,000 to help the Bakersfield Police Department deter gang

violence; $7 million for the Lake Isabella Dam safety

project; $500,000 for Cal State Bakersfield to help nursing

education.

A classic example is the Thomas Road Improvement Program

now under way. In his final year in office, McCarthy's

predecessor, Rep. Bill Thomas, provided desperately needed

highway funding that otherwise would have been sucked up by

politically powerful Southern California and Bay Area

jurisdictions.

Whether an earmark is good or bad is up to the individual

voter. But at least now you know what is being requested. (A

full list of McCarthy's requests was published in the July 1

Californian.)

Walberg Secures House Approval of Funding for Biological Weapons

Prevention

Washington, August 16.--U.S. Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI)

announced today that 2008 funding for Dexter Research Center,

Inc. was approved in the Department of Defense Appropriations

Bill that recently passed the House. The bill will now go to

the U.S. Senate to be voted on as part of the fiscal year

2008 Appropriations process.

``The Department of Defense must have the capability to

respond to chemical and biological attacks, and this

important project will increase the safety and security of

our men and women in uniform,'' Walberg said.

With this funding, the Michigan company will help develop a

Total Perimeter Surveillance (TPS) system based on infrared

technology able to identify and trigger an immediate response

to chemical and biological attacks against Department of

Defense facilities.

``We are excited to have this opportunity to leverage our

science and manufacturing capabilities to help make our

national defense sites even more secure,'' said Robert Toth,

Jr., President of Dexter Research Center.

Funding details:

Dexter Research Center, Inc. (Washtenaw County)

$2,000,000--This project funding will go towards assisting in

the development of a Total Perimeter Surveillance (TPS)

system capable of identifying and responding to chemical and

biological attacks. The TPS solution, based on novel infrared

technology, can provide complete perimeter threat detection

and identification with sufficient advanced warning to

Department of Defense facilities to meet current threat

requirements.

Walberg Secures House Approval of Funding for Sonobuoys

Washington, August 13.--U.S. Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI)

announced today that 2008 funding for sonobuoys, produced by

Sparton Electronics of Jackson, was approved in the

Department of Defense Appropriations Bill that recently

passed the House. The bill will now go to the U.S. Senate to

be voted on as part of the fiscal year 2008 Appropriations

process.

``Funding for sonobuoys, produced by Sparton Electronics,

is important for the security of our naval personnel and

Jackson County,'' Walberg said.

Funding details:

Sparton Electronics, (Jackson County) $2,500,000 increase--

This project funding will go towards procurement of sonobuoys

for the Department of the Navy. The sonobuoy remains the

Navy's primary sensor for detection and localization of

submarines by air anti-submarine warfare (ASW) platforms.

Sonobuoys provide the only means to rapidly sanitize large

areas of water prior to fleet units arriving in the area.

Walberg Secures House Approval of Funding for Peckham Industries

Products Used by Military

Washington, August 17.--U.S. Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI)

announced today that 2008 funding for Peckham Industries was

approved in the Departments of Defense Appropriations Bill

that recently passed the House. The bill will now go to the

U.S. Senate to be voted on as part of the fiscal year 2008

Appropriations process.

Peckham produces Fleece Insulating Liners, a Cold Weather

Layering System and a Multi Climate Protection System all

used by United States military personnel.

``These three projects greatly benefit our brave men and

women in uniform and Eaton County,'' Walberg said.

``It's a privilege to provide our soldiers with the

equipment they need,'' Peckham CEO/President Mitchell

Tomlinson said. ``These contracts represent much needed jobs

and opportunities created for persons with disabilities.

We're proud to continue providing the highest quality, high

performance cold weather gear available to our military.''

Funding details:

Peckham Industries, $3,000,000--This project will go

towards the production of Insulating Liners for Extended Cold

Weather Clothing System for the Department of the Army. This

product was created in direct response to soldiers'

complaints of bulkiness and lack of breathability in previous

attire.

Peckham Industries, $3,000,000--This project will go

towards the production of a Cold Weather Layering System for

the United States Marine Corps. The CWLS is part of the

Marine Corps' Mountain and Cold Weather Clothing and

Equipment Program, which provides lightweight, durable combat

clothing that allows Marines to operate in all kinds of cold

weather environments.

Peckham Industries, $2,500,000--This project will go

towards the production of a Multi Climate Protection System

(MCPS) for the Department of the Navy. The MCPS is a modular

ensemble that provides total performance by layering thermal

protection and shell garments.

And I would just like to say, go to our Web site. Look at what we've done for K-12, student aid, rural development, the farm bill. All of the things that we've passed out of here have been investments, actually met the President's budget numbers, so it's just a shift in priorities.

So, I'm saying I think we've made significant progress this year, and we hope to expand it next year.

And with that, Mr. Meek, I yield back to you.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Philip Fawcett, who has been serving as Legislative Fellow in my office since January and will be completing his tenure at the end of this month.

Phil Fawcett joined my staff last January through the 2007 Congressional Fellowship Program of the Brookings Institution. He exemplifies a truly remarkable and exceptionally dynamic professional and has contributed greatly to the work my office has done for the 17th District. His work on the issues of transportation, housing, and the environment has been well-organized and efficient, and I have greatly valued his advice on a wide variety of co-sponsorship and voting matters.

Phil Fawcett attended the Georgia Institute of Technology and graduated with highest honors with a degree in aerospace engineering. Phil also gained his masters and doctorate degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He went on to pursue a career with the Aerospace Corporation and has worked closely with the National Reconnaissance Organization and numerous other programs within the Department of Defense. His extensive education, combined with his impressive 14 years of experience with technical and programmatic consulting, has played an integral role in his Legislative Fellowship. Having worked with various areas of the U.S. Government and numerous IC agencies, Phil has significantly contributed to my domestic agenda as well as international affairs related issues, such as my testimony to the U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission. He has also been a vital component in the areas of currency and trade, as he was responsible for helping to move legislation on international monetary policy and currency manipulation. His letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee that urged movement on the currency issue garnered the collection of over 90 member signatures.

Phil Fawcett has worked closely with my district office and maintained crucial relations with the Department of Commerce, U.S. Trade Representative, Ohio Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration, among many other essential divisions. He has also handled all issues related to my co-chairmanship of the House Manufacturing Caucus with skill and proficiency. Furthermore, his vigorous commitment to the organization, planning and implementation of the Tech Belt Forum last September generated a very successful event, which was a significant stepping stone in the future economic and industrial advancement of my district.

I would like to personally thank Phil Fawcett for his tremendous dedication and distinguished service and wish him all the best in his future endeavors. Phil, it's been a pleasure working with you and good luck!

It is not just the President. It is enough Members of Congress on the Republican side primarily that are standing by the President. They have to go to the voters next year and say, in my last term in Congress, I stood by President Bush. The thing is that when you talk about the war funding, the waste, the no-bid contracts, the Pentagon losing billions of dollars and nobody knows where it is, you don't hear our friends on the other side, Mr. Speaker, come up and pitch a fit about that. But if you want to talk about $1 billion or $2 billion more in health, education, job retraining, all of a sudden the sky is falling. All of a sudden the party that raised the debt limit five times and borrowed $3 trillion under President Bush is now concerned with a shift in funding to college education, Mr. Meek, to community health clinics, Mr. Altmire, to Head Start, to these fundamental programs that this country has stood behind. And the kicker is SCHIP, $35 billion over 5 years, and the President says that's too much spending so we can't provide health care for 10 million kids, poor kids, but we can just turn

around without a blink of an eye and ask for $200 billion to keep the war going in Iraq, without any kind of deadlines or timelines or any kind of shift in the focus. That's the frustrating part.

Before I yield to my friend, I would just like to say there has been a pattern here. On September 11 or after September 11, Mr. Murphy, it was go shopping. And then during the whole SCHIP debate, it was, well, they can go to the emergency room, these kids. Then during Katrina it was, ``You're doing a good job, Brownie,'' consistently these flippant remarks that the President tends to make that lacks an understanding of the seriousness of some of these situations.

So it is frustrating as we are trying to make some investments into the United States of America, into this country, and the President consistently, with a small band of Republican supporters, is able to veto this, and unfortunately, we don't have enough votes in the House yet to override these vetoes.

I yield to my friend.

It's interesting, and I think you made the right point. It seems like the President has one priority, and one and only one, and that is the funding of the war. What is interesting is when you look at the Labor-HHS bill, some of the other bills we are trying to pass that increase the Pell Grants and some of the other things, we are not getting the level of support we should.

These vets need those programs. These veterans that are coming back, it's not like they are making a lot of money, many of them with their kids they are trying to send to college. So why wouldn't this apply? The vets aren't just fighting for the Defense appropriations bill that passes out of the House or the VA benefit package that passes out of the House. The veterans are fighting for America. They are fighting for a strong country that does research and development. Veterans have family members who get cancer. So they are very concerned, I would think, Mr. Speaker, with investments at NIH to continue cancer research. They have kids that may need health care. They have kids that go to school. They may have a kid that wants to participate in a Head Start program. In each instance, Mr. Altmire, our fearless leader in this 30-Something group tonight, these vets are fighting for what makes America great, and that is freedom, that is investment, that is a strong economy. Those are the kind of things we are investing in.

So to say your only priority is the war and spending what is now projected by the end of the year $1.3 trillion in the war. The President says, and a small group of recalcitrant Republicans say here in the House: We can't fund it because we don't have the money to put in the health care and everything else.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Walter M. Duzzny. Walter, who has served as the Director of Mahoning County Emergency Management and Communications for 25 years, is retiring at the end of this month.

Walter Duzzny has dedicated over thirty-four years to public service. He began his career in Emergency Management and has made great contributions to the field ever since. As the first Director of the Disaster Services and Preparedness Agency, Walter influenced the Agency to adopt an ``all-hazards'' concept, which resulted in the development of a County HazMat team and Safety Service and Support Centers. Thanks to Walter's hard work and dedication toward the Agency, Mahoning County has the proper tools to implement preparatory, response, and recovery strategies in the event of an emergency.

Walter has contributed to Mahoning County in more ways than one. He has remained an active member of the community through his participation in several organizations. As a retired Army Reserve Colonel, Walter serves as the President of the local chapter of the National Reserve Officers Association. He also serves on the Board of St. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church and remains a member of several other organizations.

Walter's accomplishments have positively impacted Emergency Management on local and national levels. His innovative drive and valuable contributions will be greatly missed.

I wish Walter all the best in his retirement.

I thank the gentleman and appreciate the opportunity to make a few remarks here.

Madam Speaker, a lot has been said here. The minority leader came down and said this makes him sick. Another speaker came down and said we are somehow holding the troops hostage. Another Member comes down and says this is a sad day. You know, I think all that rhetoric may be nice, but what we are trying to do here is run the government. As has been stated several times, when the Republicans were in charge, they put bills together and got them passed. And now all of a sudden to take a stand here like this has never happened is, I think, a tad bit disingenuous.

But we have to ask ourselves now that everyone is bringing the troops in here: What are the troops fighting for? They are not fighting for a Defense bill. They are not fighting for a VA bill. They are fighting for our country. And what is our country? Our country is a country that makes investments in its own people. They are fighting for America because it's a great place to live. It's a great place to get educated. It's a great place to get health care. And for us to say somehow they are just fighting for only a portion of our society, I think is a bit disingenuous, too. I bet if we talked to some of the troops and we asked them what it means to be an American, they would say it means to be free and to be able to achieve the American Dream. And you achieve the American Dream by being healthy, by being educated, by having access to this great country. That is what we are trying to do here.

We have a great bill. This Labor-HHS bill is great. It is called the people's bill. Just like the VA bill is the people's bill. This all goes together. This is one cohesive investment that we need to make in our country; and we are asking the Republicans, Madam Speaker, to join us.

You can't hide behind the President. Article I, section 1 creates this body. We are the ones who fund the government. If the President wants to veto this, help us override the veto.

These are all good bills. And when those veterans get home, as Mr. Obey stated, they need the same exact kind of attention and their families need the same exact kind of attention that every other citizen gets. They want high quality, low-cost education. They want high quality, low cost health care, and they want an opportunity for their kids to live the American Dream. Is that too much to ask? That's the question: Is that too much to ask?

Mr. Speaker, if I can intervene here, I mean, you look at the money that we're borrowing and then we're giving tax cuts. So it's not that we have the money laying around here and say, boy, we've got a lot of money laying around here, why don't we just give the wealthiest people in our country the money back. We're actually going out to China and OPEC countries and borrowing the money to give tax cuts, and then we borrow the money from OPEC countries to fund the war to get oil from the Middle East.

This is the most convoluted scenario that you almost think you've got to read a Tom Clancy novel to drum it up. And then when you look at the priorities that aren't getting funded here that we're now trying to fund, and on the House floor today we had the minority leader, we had the minority whip, we had all the leadership of the Republican Party tell us how somehow funding education, lowering tuition costs, reducing the amount of student debt that our students are going to have to incur, funding community health clinics is somehow not an important priority, that somehow if we put all these bills together with the defense bill and the veterans bill and education bill and health bill, that somehow those aren't all American priorities, that somehow when these vets get back, that because all these bills are somehow put together in a process that's going to speed this whole thing up, that somehow when those vets get back, they don't need health care, their kids don't need health care. Somehow when the vets get back that they don't need education, they don't need increased Pell Grants to send their kids to school.

Am I missing something here? Like these vets are out fighting for our freedom here, just for a defense bill, or just for a vets bill, that they're somehow not fighting for some of these basic, fundamental American values that we have. And look what's going on back at the ranch when our friends are playing around with the budget, not wanting to pass legislation, passing tax cuts for the top 1 percent, look at the hole we've gotten into.

Now, this is something that is very important to me, and I remember a few weeks ago I was at my brother's house who has two young kids, Dominic and Nicky. One's 1 and one's 2. And my sister-in-law said it's scary about these toys. I remember her saying that.

Here's from 2001, and it goes up as the years come, the amount of imported toys coming from China. Okay. Over here, the yellow line that drops off, that is the number of Consumer Product Safety Commission employees going down. So we only have 400. As the number of imports from China and toys come into our country goes up, the Bush administration has reduced the number of Consumer Product Safety employees to actually monitor these toys. Same thing's going on with food.

So when you look at these mixed priorities, you know, sometimes we think, well, the war's going on in a far-off place or it doesn't affect me. If you've got kids and you've got toys, this irresponsible behavior that we saw in Katrina, we saw with the government contracts in Iraq, comes right into your household because of a lack of investment into the United States.

Right.

We haven't borrowed money to make sure that we can hire enough people in the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make sure our toys are safe coming in from China. We're borrowing money to give the top percent a tax break, people making millions and millions and millions of dollars a year, and hey, if you make millions, God bless you, but now we're in a position where we don't have enough employees to monitor the toys coming into the country and we're giving multimillionaires a tax break. We're borrowing the money from China, which is pretty interesting when you think about all these toys coming in from China, that we're borrowing the money to fund the war and the tax breaks from China. So China's now our bank. So now they, of course, want their products coming into the country.

So, now all of the sudden, things like the reduction in employees at the Consumer Product Safety Commission happens because the Republican House and Senate and the White House have got us so dependent.

You mind if I go through here? I don't even know what these toys are. I see them on my brother and sister-in-law's floor. You'll know soon. You're newly wed.

The football bobblehead cake decoration. Okay. These are toys that have been recalled due to lead. This has a Patriots bobblehead.

When you think about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trailers sitting in the gulf coast that never got used for Katrina, when you think about all the wasted, unbid contracts through FEMA, to Halliburton, and in the war, I mean, hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars.

Then all of a sudden we find that we have these regulatory issues, this is security, this is economic security. This is family security, when you hear Democrats talking about securing the country, it doesn't mean we want to start a war, it means we want to protect the homeland, and border security, family security, food safety, toy safety, product safety, these are things that it is our responsibility, as Members of Congress, to take care of. You have people sitting in towns and cities and counties all over the United States that are very, very concerned with this issue.

To have a person who is in charge of these kinds of things say we only have one person who is in charge of toy inspection, and we don't need any more money to do it is a complete dereliction of duty, of our responsibility here. When you look at what we are trying to do at every single turn, from raising the minimum wage to reducing college costs, to ensuring product safety, to ensuring food safety, this is about economic security. This is about homeland security. You know, 50,000 new cops on the beat, first responder funding. I mean, these are all things that we have been pushing and our friends, many of them on the other side, are obstructing this from getting done.

Do it.

How about the President the other day? This drove me crazy. He says, Congress is wasting their time with all these hearings. It ceases to amaze me anymore that we try to pass children's health care, and the President says, well, they can go to the emergency room. We are trying to have oversight so that we can have real product safety, safeguards up for food, and you are having all these hearings. We are trying to oversee what's going on in Iraq so we can, A, fix the problems we are having, but, B, finding all of these billions of dollars that have been going to these nonbid contracts and the jobs are not actually getting done. Then he said, oh, you are having all these hearings.

Then he said today, about the SCHIP bill, I don't know if you heard this, but he said, Congress is trying to pass this health care bill for kids, but it's really a trick. He said it was a trick. This is not a trick. This is us trying to pass health care for kids. He thinks it is somehow cute to say that on Halloween that this is somehow a trick.

We should have a hearing on that.

We are getting them now, and, of course, it's important to recognize that you probably can't monitor every piece of corn that's coming into the country or every product that's coming into the country. But what happens is if you do have a significant presence, one is in random inspections, there will be a general consensus among people shipping food into your country that there will be inspections, and they may get caught if they do not keep meeting the standards.

But at the same exact time, what this does here is if people are getting busted for sending food in from China, then all of a sudden you are going to see production increases here in the United States, whether it's toys being manufactured or maybe something else. So it's very important.

This is about safety. This is about protecting our kids. This is about making sure that our families have, when they are having Thanksgiving dinner, have a lot of knowledge and confidence in how the government is administering these programs.

Well, you know, one of the things we talked about while you were out trick-or-treating was the connection between the money that has been borrowed by the past three Congresses and the administration from China, that's now our bank, and how their exports have been facilitated into this country, in this instance, the toys. So it's very difficult, I think, from a perspective of someone who's borrowing money from a country to say, hey, wait a minute; we've got some real issues with doing business with you. It becomes very difficult. And so I think our position with China, borrowing the money, the OPEC countries and many, many others, has put us at a significant position of weakness in dealing with a variety of foreign policy issues, but also dealing with issues like this.

Now, I showed this chart earlier, Mr. Meek, and I know, I think this was your idea to get it. But this is the chart of the number of toys being imported into the country and the number of employees that are assigned to protect the consumer. And so, much of this, much of these imports have been from China, and I don't think it's a coincidence that we want to somehow facilitate business with this country, which is fine. We know we have to do business in a global economy. But you don't do it at the expense of the health, safety and welfare of your own citizens.

I would be happy to yield.

Well, I know you have a lot of good ideas.

We just need to, I think, look back, and I say this with the utmost respect, Mr. Speaker, because the President basically, yesterday, in his press conference, I think it was yesterday or maybe today, in his press conference basically was making fun of Congress for holding hearings, making fun of us. But when you look at what we're holding hearings on, we're trying to fix problems that we have in the country. So we're having hearings on FEMA and the disaster that we all saw on TV at the gulf coast. We're having hearings on Iraq, the unbid contracts, the problems that we're having there, the wasteful spending, the billions of dollars that the Pentagon doesn't know where it is. We're trying to have hearings to find out what's going on. Hearings on toys. I mean, we're trying to figure out how do we fund this, how do we have enough consumer product safety workers here in the country to make sure that our people are safe when you're dealing with products or food. I mean, when the administration then continues to make light of these very serious concerns, it's troubling to us to somehow say that we're holding hearings, which is our constitutional duty. Article I, section 1 of the Constitution created this body.

So, again, we have Katrina, we have the war, we have toys, we have passports, FEMA, we have all of these issues that we're dealing with in this country. I'm sorry if we're trying to solve these problems.

I yield to my friend.

If the gentleman would yield, it's, I mean, we're obviously in a very complicated world. We're trying to solve some very complicated problems. And the frustrating part is when you have the President of the United States have a series of comments throughout his administration that have basically, you know, simplified all of these issues. You know, after 9/11 the big great challenge he gave us, Mr. Speaker, was to go shopping. You know, we try to pass children's health care and he says, well, you can get health care at the emergency room. And then, Mr. Meek, at his press conference today, he said that our whole children, SCHIP, trying to cover 10 million people program was a trick on the American people. These are, you know, we're wasting time holding hearings.

There are very serious issues that our families are dealing with, and to have the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the free world, someone who is able to stop children's health care from being administered in this country to 10 million kids, someone who's able to veto bills, and you need to rally, you know, a lot more Members of Congress in order to pass something, to try to simplify and make light, and I like to have as much fun as anybody else and we have our share of fun here, but we're dealing with some pretty serious issues. That the President's behavior and tone and temperament and comments on these issues becomes very frustrating.

I yield to my friend.

Can I make a point too? And I want to say this because we all have a lot of good friends who are on the other side who have voted for the Labor-Health-Education appropriations bill, voted for defense, voted for the vets; and the argument being made today was that somehow this was unique that we are putting several appropriations bills together. If you ask people in our districts, the whole process is foreign to them anyway. It's just get the job done. And when we look back at our Republicans friends, Mr. Speaker, when they were in charge, on 59 different occasions, had put bills together like we're trying to do. And so I think it's important. We are trying to get the job done. But this is not every Republican. This is, in my estimation, some very fringe, extreme members of the Republican Party who are basically backing the President on these things, and he has just enough Members on the Republican side to sustain a veto.

In the House.

It's the same disjointed kind of argument that the President, Mr. Speaker, has given us on the SCHIP bill. This is 10 million kids, $35 billion over 5 years. We could pay for these 10 million kids to get health care for a whole year for 40 days in Iraq. And the President, who has run up $3 trillion in debt, borrowed it from China, raised the debt limit five times, is now going to draw the line in the sand on fiscal responsibility on 40 days in Iraq to provide health care for 10 million kids. I mean, there are so many disjointed arguments and floating pieces that are going around here that just don't make a whole lot of sense to many of us.

I hope that we can try to continue to push to get more Members on the other side of the aisle to join with us to do some pretty basic things that the American people want us to do.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay respect and tribute to former Rep. Charles Vanik of Ohio, who died Wednesday August 31 at his home in Jupiter, Florida at age 94.

Looking back at the career and mission of Representative Vanik, it is an utterly refreshing example of a legislator who didn't let politics get in the way of his goals and vision for his constituents and people all over the world. Many of my colleagues have already mentioned the historic Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Reform Act of 1974. This critical human rights legislation was the mark on the map for Charles Vanik with regards to those outside the state of Ohio, but for us Ohioans, we know Congressman Vanik as a lifelong stalwart for all of those who are socially and economically oppressed.

Charles Vanik led a life of complete selflessness. After receiving his law degree he was on the City Council and in the Ohio legislature where he was valued for his consistent effort and achievements. He then joined the Navy during World War II. After his time in the service, Charles Vanik became a municipal judge until 1954 when he first ran for Congress. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee with jurisdiction over tax law, Congressman Vanik was known for his fights against big business tax breaks in the halls and corridors of Congress as he was known for his signature bow ties.

Congressman Vanik served honorably and long as a dedicated public servant. Mr. Vanik,

who had rarely spent little more than $3,000 for any of his re-election bids, became increasingly discouraged with the changing political world and the need to siphon time and resources away from addressing the concerns of his constituents. He chose not to run for re-election in 1980.

Charles Vanik's life and his commitment to principle are truly remarkable. I believe one of the most important things we should learn from the actions and words of Charles Vanik is to constantly hold ourselves to the highest possible standards, no matter what the political environment or what criticism you might face. The United States Congress and the state of Ohio will miss one of its greatest public officials, Congressman Charles Vanik.

We're still struggling. There are a lot of emotional issues that Cleveland Indians fans have had for a long time. And then you factor in the Cleveland Browns and the drive and the fumble and Michael Jordan singlehandedly beating us a couple of times in the playoffs and you add this to the mix, we have some psychological issues we need to deal with, Mr. Speaker, and hopefully we will be able to work through them.

But today is the day that we are talking about the excess in spending on the war. We hear a lot back in our districts, I'm sure you do in the Seventeenth District in Miami, and I hear in the Seventeenth District of Ohio, we hear about the rising cost of health care. We hear about the rising cost of education. We hear the problems that we have incurred in this country because we haven't invested into developing alternative energy sources in the United States of America, and we haven't developed them fast enough.

We have all these issues that local communities deal with, Community Development Block Grant money that they get from the Federal Government that local communities can build sidewalks and roads and sewer lines and they can use all this money. That is Federal money that works its way down to local communities. And when we look at the needs of local communities, every single day in the paper in Ohio, it is water lines, it is sewer lines. In the summer it is what sports do we have to ask the kids and the parents to pay for this year? Why are we cutting the art programs? Why don't we have enough money to handle the septic and the sewer systems in our local community? For years, the Federal Government continued to make those investments. And what we hear now coming out of the executive branch, Mr. Meek, is that we don't have the money to do it.

Now, we are talking about providing health care for 10 million kids, poor kids, who live within 200 percent of poverty, a family of four making maybe $40,000 a year. What we are arguing on our side is that we think it is in the best interests of this country, all of us together, not one family or this family, all of us, is that if we provide and pay for health care for these 10 million kids and their families, because we believe on this side and our friends on the other side who voted with us, not the President, we believe that if we make this very small investment of $35 billion over 5 years, that we are going to have a healthier country, that we are going to have kids who aren't sitting in the classroom getting other children sick, that they are going to be able to concentrate and focus.

We sit here and we say, ``We need more people to major in math. We need more people to major in science. We need to compete with the Chinese. They graduated thousands and thousands of more engineers than we did in the United States of America.'' Part of that is we need our kids to be healthy. We need them to be able to concentrate in school, not sneezing and getting colds and pneumonia and not missing classes. We need them to be healthy. And that is the basic concept behind the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

To have the President, after he began a war that is going to cost us $2.4 trillion, with a T, tell us that we don't have enough money to provide health care for these 10 million kids is a complete outrage and doesn't really make any sense. Now, I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, for the Congress to know and to be reminded that over the past 6 years, with a Republican President, a Republican House and a Republican Senate, that this President and that Congress, those Congresses have borrowed more money from foreign interests than every President and Congress before them combined. Over $1 trillion in foreign money. Now, the same Congress and the same President asked to raise the debt limit, meaning we can go out and borrow, as a country, more money, five times he asked to raise the debt limit. Then, on top of that, the final number is the increase of the debt under this President is $3 trillion. So he raised the debt by $3 trillion, raised the debt limit five times. Now we have a war that is going to cost us $2.4 trillion, with a T, and he says, ``We don't have enough money, Mr. Speaker, to provide health care for 10 million kids at $35 billion, with a B, over 5 years.''

For 40 days in Iraq, we could pay for 10 million kids to get health care for a whole year. Forty days in Iraq. And what is the investment going to get us? It is going to get us healthier kids. It is going to get us kids who can concentrate and pay attention in school. It is going to save us money in the long run because we are not going to cart these kids off to the emergency room 2 weeks later with pneumonia when we could have taken care of them with maybe a small prescription. Those are the kind of prudent investments that we want to make in this country. Those are the kind of investments that we should be making in this country.

We talk a lot in this country about what are we going to do in the next century? We lost manufacturing, and we are not sure what the new economy is going to look like. But there are some things we know about, Mr. Speaker. We know that our kids in Niles, Ohio, or Youngstown, Ohio, or, Miami, Florida or wherever you are from, are competing more directly with the students in China. We know that our kids are now competing. The old steel belt and the old rust belt in Ohio is Cleveland and Youngstown and Akron and Pittsburgh. For the longest time, those cities used to compete with each other and those businesses used to compete with each other. Now this whole region is competing with Shanghai. And our kids are competing more directly with those kids in China, India and all over the world, 1.3 billion people in China, 1.2 billion people in India. We only have 300 million people in the United States of America. We are at a real disadvantage when it comes to just mass numbers. And democracy is not always easy, either. If you want to open up a factory in China or you just clear a neighborhood out, you give everybody 25 bucks, they give you a week to get out. There are no environmental laws. There are no worker rights. It just happens. The government comes in and moves everything along. Democracy is sometimes a little more difficult, in a good way. We have rights; property rights, human rights and all kinds of different things that citizens in China don't have.

But my point here is this, we only have 300 million people. So if you look at what the Democratic agenda, the 6 in '06 and what my friend from Florida has been stating, what we have been trying to do is very, very simple. We're trying to invest into those 300 million people so that they're healthier, so that they're more educated, so that they are able to live the American dream. Now, no one here is saying that everyone needs to be a winner. We understand that life is life. There are winners and there are losers. But as a

country, we want to make these investments because we all benefit from it. We all benefit from that.

The investments we are making now, just look at our agenda now. One of the first things we did, we raised the minimum wage for the first time since 1997 so that we are lifting people up. One of the second things we did is we reduced the cost of college education, or tried to. We cut student loan interest rates in half. So when you go out and borrow for your kids to go to school or a student borrows next year to go to school, the interest rate will be 3.4 percent, as opposed to last year when it was 6.8 percent and that money was going to the banks. They were making a heck of a lot of money off of it.

Mr. Speaker, we are saying keep those rates low; let's improve access so that everyone can go to a community college and get a skill or they can go off to college and get an associate's degree or a master's degree or Ph.D. so that they are educated to compete. What we also did was increased the Pell Grant by $1,000 over the course of the next 5 years. Is that as much as we want? No. Absolutely not. We are not even close. But we are moving in that direction. It's tough, when you have a war that is costing you $2.4 trillion, to come up with any money to make these kinds of investments. But that is what we wanted to do, and we have changed the direction in regard to college education.

Now, if you're a kid going to school in Ohio, where we had the new Governor come in and he froze college tuition for 2 years so there will be a zero increase next year and a zero percent increase the following year, if you add that to what we have done with the student loans and the Pell Grants, you're talking about saving average families thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. An average student loan, because of the interest change we made, an average family will save $4,400 over the course of the loan.

Now, we are not coming out here beating a drum, saying we have got to cut taxes, we have got to cut taxes for millionaires. We are saying if you send your kid to school and you take out a loan, we just saved you $4,400. If you have someone in your family, or one of your students, kids that are going to school that are working for minimum wage, they got a pay increase. If you're utilizing the Pell Grant, you're going to get more of that. These are good, solid investments we've made. In addition to this, we have the State Children's Health Insurance Program. So these kids have opportunity.

Now one of the other things that really isn't on the agenda to talk about, but the Senate just passed it last night, we are trying to pass it again through the conference committee and hopefully get the President to sign it, but the President said he was going to veto it, is the Health and Education bill, where we are making investments to build community health clinics so that people who don't have health insurance now can at least go to a health care clinic and get some preventive care.

Mr. Speaker, I just found it stunning, and I think a lot of other citizens of this country did as well, and I know many Members of Congress have found it stunning too, when we were having this big debate about children's health and the President said, Well, they have health insurance. They can go to the emergency room.

I found that absolutely stunning that the President of the United States, in 2007, his solution or lack of solution is to say that these kids could just go to the emergency room. Now, I am sorry, but that is unacceptable. Not only is it bad economics, it is unacceptable from a moral position.

It has been frustrating, but I want the American people, Mr. Speaker, to understand what we have done through the House is passed legislation. And my friend with the great reform of the Small Business Administration, our friend from Pennsylvania, creating an angel investor fund and basically retooling the SBA for the 21st century in a high-tech economy, the things that we have done have been investments into our country and into our people.

Now, I'm sorry. Giving $100,000 tax break to someone who makes millions of dollars a year is not benefiting anybody because they are not even taking that money and investing it back into our country. They are investing it probably in China and India. What we are saying is we are going to make these investments.

I think it is important, too, to recognize we are just beginning. I think we have moved into a new direction. We are clearly not done. We are clearly not close to being done. No one here is satisfied. No one here will say, This is great; we have really accomplished everything we wanted to. We can go out and turn out the lights and let someone else finish the business.

We have got a lot more to do, if you look at what we want to do with alternative energy, if you look at what we want to do as far as continuing to try to reduce the cost of education, K-12 and whatnot.