Floor Statements

Remember the beginning of this Congress that we gave an opportunity for every Member of this House to vote against paying the

oil companies about $14 billion in oil subsidies, and a lot of our friends, who are now voting against the SCHIP for fiscal responsibility reasons, voted to make sure that we could not take that basically corporate welfare that we were giving to the oil companies. They voted to sustain basically that corporate welfare that was going to the oil companies.

But it's important for us to recognize that Members of the Republican Party, the same Members who were voting against SCHIP, voted against the Democrats pulling the money from the oil companies and putting it back into alternative energy, to health care, to education, all these. You had this opportunity to do this, and they refused to do it.

And to say now that you are going to draw the line in the sand, Mr. Altmire, you are going to draw the line in the sand on children's health care after raising the debt limit, as the gentleman from Connecticut just mentioned, five times they have asked to borrow more money from China, from Japan, from OPEC countries. Now you are going to draw the line in the sand on children's health care?

Now, people are sitting at home saying, I don't know a whole lot about politics, Mr. Speaker, but my goodness gracious, you are picking this battle now on the backs of children. And I don't know, I didn't get to hear your whole argument on socialism. But my question is this. If everyone is saying that this is socialism, that this is somehow a socialistic step towards national socialized medicine, why are you negotiating it in the first place?

I just want to say, the argument that you are going to hear over the next day is socialism. As the gentleman from Florida just said, it is like, what are you talking about? Go in to private hospitals, private doctors, there is no question that this is privately administered. But here is the question. If we peel it back $1 billion or $5 billion, is that all of a sudden not socialism anymore? I mean, at what number do we get to where it stops becoming socialism and it starts becoming a private, some kind of health care system?

The arguments, the strawmen, the red herrings that have been put up on this debate are absolutely ridiculous. And I can't believe the President would draw the line in the sand and just have no arguments to back it up.

From Ohio. A good guy.

I just hope our friends who are opposing this bill to cover children's health care because of the cost of it, which we are paying for, will scrutinize the Iraq spending as it starts to come up over the next few weeks and few months. As we went over already, one day in Iraq, $330 million would cover 270,000 kids for a year for this program. That is one day. And if you go through 1 week, $2.3 billion would cover 1.8 million kids. And less than 40 days in Iraq would cover all of these kids that we want to cover, 10 million kids, for 1 year. Forty days in Iraq. And all we are saying is our priority is this.

Now, I just want to take a minute here to just go over what has happened over the past 8 or 9 or 10 months here in Congress, what we have done, how we have shifted the priorities. We have the same Members who are voting against this bill who voted against the minimum wage increase. We have the same Members who are going to vote against the children's health care bill are the same members who voted against us increasing the Pell Grant and cutting the interest rates for college loans in half, the same group of folks.

When we wanted to invest all this money in alternative energy research, we took it from the oil companies, corporate welfare, put it into alternative energy research. The same group of folks that voted against this SCHIP bill, children's health care bill, voted against that, too. And all of these issues come up. The only thing we can get them to agree on is probably the veterans spending, which was the largest increase in the history of the VA.

So what we are saying is there is a pattern, Mr. Speaker, there is a pattern of behavior of a certain fringe group of people who are here that even very conservative people have agreed with us on this issue, and we can't get enough to override the veto.

I don't know about you guys, but I have got a little restaurant I go to back home called Vernon's Restaurant, Vernon's Cafe, great Italian. But when you are sitting there and you are eating and you are talking to your friends who go through everyday life, they are talking about their student loans, they are talking about health care, they are talking about what are we going to do to stimulate the economy? Why are we so dependent on foreign oil? And we all have our own little Vernon's in all of our communities. We are trying to address these bread and butter economic issues, and I think we have in this Congress. And the one that lays before us here is children's health care. For God's sake, Mr. Speaker, God help us if we can't pass children's health care.

Well, the one thing that is important too, I mean, a lot of people would say that, you know, well, my kid has insurance and we're fine and everything else. You know, but if your kid's sitting in a classroom with a kid who is sick that does not have health care because they don't

qualify for Medicaid, they're going to get your kid sick. And I think this kind of ties the whole argument together that we are in this together. You know, we have to make very sound, prudent, targeted investments in certain areas that are going to yield a lot of benefits.

These are the same kids we're asking to go off to college and get a degree in math and science. But if at a young age these kids don't have health care, where they can, if they get sick, have something, and I find it completely outrageous that in 2007 we would have a President of the United States say, go to the emergency room, or these kids can go to the emergency room. I mean, that's just ridiculous. That's just ridiculous. You don't have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to figure out that it's going to cost everyone a lot more money if this kid that has a cold ends up two weeks later in the emergency room with pneumonia or something worse and spends two weeks in the hospital.

I mean, that costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars, as opposed to a prescription that would cost 20 or 30 bucks. I mean, this is some pretty basic stuff here. And the fact that the President has drawn the line in the sand on this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So in closing, I want to thank everybody, Mr. Speaker, for being here and for participating in the 30-somethings. But I also want to say that it's been a very enjoyable week for those of us who are baseball fans in northeast Ohio. Those folks who may happen to be in, say, Pittsburgh or like Florida, or like New England for example, who, baseball season ended a long time ago for some of you, and others who are not faring as well, our sympathies go out to you. But in Cleveland, northeast Ohio, Youngstown, Akron, it's been a great week, followed up by a great week we had a few weeks ago. And many of you may not know, Mr. Speaker, that the new WBO/WBC middleweight champion of the world, Kelly Pavlick, is from Youngstown, Ohio, too.

Mr. Speaker, I'm not getting the kind of happy vibe from my friends.

I appreciate that. But I think, I want to, for the record, I want to clear this up. He says that the Florida folks weren't dancing in the end zone when University of Florida won the national title. I remember Ms. Wasserman Schultz showing up here in like royal blue and orange wardrobe with a purse that had a gator on it. I remember that. So that was a little bit of dancing in the end zone. I am being polite. I didn't even mention the fact that the Ohio State Buckeyes football team was number one in the Nation. I'm trying to be polite here. So if you'd show me a little respect.

Can we live in the present? The Dalai Lama was here today, Mr. Speaker, and he's pretty much focused on how we should live in the present moment, and I think it would behoove all of you to take the Dalai Lama's advice on that.

We joke around about baseball and Cleveland, Mr. Speaker. The Cleveland Indians are doing great, but Cleveland is the poorest city in the entire country. There are a lot of kids in that city who would, hopefully, be eligible for this program and be able to take advantage of it. The same in Pittsburgh and Miami and cities in Florida and certainly Boston. So this is important stuff that we need to deal with and, hopefully, we have been able to persuade a few votes.

Mr. Speaker, the Web site is www.speaker.gov/ 30something. But I hope this has been persuasive to folks who are on the borderline here deciding on what to do.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that, and I appreciate all your

work on this particular piece of legislation that we have a lot more work to do convincing our friends on the other side of the Capitol to act on this.

But what I find interesting is we're just standing here. You're from Kansas; I'm from Ohio. This is not a border State issue where we're directly across the border from Mexico. This is an issue that affects all of us all across the country. So, whether it's manufacturing in my district or, you know, in someone else's district across the country, this is an issue, as you said, that represents America.

We sign a lot of these trade agreements, and many people don't even know what's in the fine print, and here we find out 15 years later about this little program that's going to go on that really, I think, does several things.

One, it's a real threat to U.S. jobs in the trucking industry. And then as your bill pointed out, why it is, I think, such an important piece of legislation, and Mr. Speaker, this is the Safe American Roads Act of 2007, H.R. 1773, sponsored, pushed, advocated for by the gentlelady from Kansas who's been such a strong advocate on this issue. But basically, what we're trying to do from our vantage point is put some responsibility into this thing, to make sure that there are certain standards that are met.

And I know that was the key impetus for this whole piece of legislation from the beginning is let's have some standards, Mr. Speaker, where if you want to compete in the global economy, we're all playing by the same rules.

Now, all of the sudden we have American truckers who have drug testing and there are certain standards for the trucks and certain training that needs to happen and equipment and on and on and on down the line. Now, all of the sudden they're going to be competing with folks who just don't have to abide by the same rules.

Well, that's kind of like the President during Katrina; he flies in. He says, Hey, you're doing a great job, Brownie. Well, maybe you should look and see what he did before you start making the comments. So there's a little bit of a pattern that this administration may have.

And it makes our roads less safe. I mean, that's why you're here. That's why I'm here. We care about jobs. We care about economic development. We care about all these things, as we'll continue to talk about tonight, Mr. Speaker, but the bottom line is this. We have unsafe trucks that will be coming in that are now through the pilot program, will continue to come into our country, lack inspection, lack the safety standards that we're accustomed to in the United States. That puts those kids who are riding in cars in the other lane, or in front or behind or whatever the case may be, in jeopardy. We have certain standards in the United States.

Look at the vote on your bill, 411-3.

I bet I could guess, but I won't comment on that.

You brought up the immigration issue, and I think it's important is we have put through the homeland security bill and a variety of other bills, more border patrol on the border, Mr. Speaker. We're trying to continue to try to make sure that people who come into this country come in legally, and that is a major issue.

But because the resources that we are trying to provide are going down to the border to try to prevent illegal immigration, at the same time we do not have the resources to provide the kind of oversight and to make the kind of investments given the history of corruption in many of the industries and in the Mexican Government that lack oversight.

So here we are saying, well, we're going to let you come into our country, but they are not providing the oversight. We don't have the money to provide the oversight with the budget deficits that we're running now. So this is a critical, critical issue.

And like I think most issues of globalization, things happen too quickly, where the infrastructure is not in place in many countries for labor, for health, for the kind of protections that we want.

We like having our truckers in safe trucks. We like knowing they've got the proper amount of sleep. We like knowing the proper environmental advances are going to be made so the air is cleaner. Those are good things. I like clean air and clean water. I don't think I'm really out on a limb on this one.

But what we are saying is, if you want to do business in our country, you have got to come up to our standards. And for too long, we've been dropping ours to meet everybody else's, especially wages, which is a whole other Special Order that we could talk about.

Without having this system in the infrastructure in place to say that every truck in the future that is going to go on the road, this is just maybe fixing up trucks and picking the right people to make sure you get the right results.

It is called cherry-picking, and you are getting the results. But at the end of the day, you don't have a system in place in the Mexican domestic government, the civilian side, to monitor this to say that every truck that comes through or at least minimize. Now, we have truck accidents in this country. You are probably never going to be able to eliminate all of it. But, at the same time, we have these strict enforcement mechanisms. And we all deal with trucking companies in our district; they have got to go through a lot, logging miles and hours and sleep.

And it is a tedious task. People can make a few bucks doing it, I have noticed, but at the same time it is very rigorous. But at the end of the day, we decided as a country we would rather have safer roads. These trucking companies do not want the insurance payments if they would cause an accident, so they are inclined to abide by it. So all we are saying is let's lift everybody up and let's all play by the same rules, and we would be happy to do business with you.

And the concern for a lot of us is that this administration does not really have a very good track record of being open and honest with the Congress through a variety of issues. We go all the way across the board from the Iraq war, whether you were for it or against it or wherever you ended up; the actual execution of unbid contracts and lack of oversight and not getting the kinds of answers we need.

Katrina, we have the same kind of deal. The President goes down, Mr. Speaker, and says everything is doing great. Good job, Brownie, we are doing everything we can. Then you find out over the course of several days, several weeks, several years that it wasn't going well at all. There was no infrastructure in place; there was no civil coordination. We had all kinds of problems.

And I think it is so important that the gentlewoman, Mr. Speaker, from Kansas has brought this issue to the Congress and made it a priority, not only for her but for the whole Congress, passing legislation with 410 other Members other than herself, is that we need to make sure that, if we do it, we do it right and we get it done, and we make sure that we have the safety standards in place, the drug testing, the sleep, the caps, the traditional safety standards that we have here, Mr. Speaker.

This is important stuff. And it can't be you say one thing today, and we find out a year later that it is not going as well; everybody passes, we completely implement the program, and we find out a year later. Now we have 5,000 trucks on the road coming from Mexico, and none of them are safe, or 50 percent of them are safe. That is too risky for I think our tastes.

So it is important that we continue to push the other side of the Capitol to pass this piece of legislation, talk to our Senators, talk to the people we work with to get this thing done. This is important for the American people, a priority for you, a priority for me, and a lot of our other colleagues to the tune of 411 of us. We can't agree on anything with 411 people, but we agree on this issue.

It has got the hoof out.

I want to in closing just say that hopefully, and I think this has, that there is a real move afoot in Congress, whether it is with your bill regarding transportation and Mexican trucking, Rosa DeLauro talking about food safety, toy safety coming in from China. There is a lot of movement coming in Congress to say, hey, we have got these standards here. We were one of the first countries to implement them. They were important to us. We like the standard of living that we have here, and we want to keep it moving. That is why I think this is such a key piece of legislation.

So I am happy to support you and continue to talk about this and keep pushing.

This is about making our country more competitive, period. This is a moral issue. This is an issue that needs to be handled, and needs to be addressed. But as our friend from Cleveland was saying, this is about those kids in Cleveland and Youngstown and Miami becoming more competitive because they are healthier, they go to school healthier, they are not getting all the other kids sick, and therefore everyone in the classroom is at a better starting point to learn.

When you talk about competing with China, you talk about competing with India, 1.3 billion people in each country, and we only have 300 million, we need to get everybody on a level playing field. That is what this Children's Health Care Program does.

Mr. Speaker, look at what the President would do by not signing this bill. Our bill will cover all of these kids. It is a bipartisan bill, the congressional bill that passed; 3.8 million additional kids. Now if the President gets his way, in his budget 840,000 children will lose their SCHIP coverage, because health care costs are going up, more kids are going into the system, the poverty rate is going up. So this is about making us more competitive by making sure that the poor kids, middle-class kids in our country, have an opportunity to get a little bit of health care.

Mr. Speaker, the President said the other day, these kids can go to the emergency room.

Yes.

If you can get in. For many of the kids, you sit there and wait for hours and hours and hours, if you can even get in; and the cost, and this is the point that we are trying to make, we are trying to save the taxpayers money. There is a reimbursement that goes back to these emergency rooms when they cover charity care when people go in without health insurance.

Mr. Speaker, now, many of us can go, and you talk to the CEO who runs a hospital, and I have one in mind in my district that I talk to all the time, where he tells me at every meeting we are at, whether we are talking about giving money to build another hospital or expand their facilities, or anything else, he always brings this up. I would rather give these kids a prescription for $20 or $30 than to see them two or three weeks later come into the emergency room with pneumonia, and it costs $20,000 or $30,000.

This is what this bill does. This saves us money, not to mention the fact that the kid will miss school, the kid will go to school and get other kids sick. But to have a President of the United States in 2007 lack the sensitivity of what these families go through who do not have health care, to say, well, you can go to the emergency room.

Mr. Speaker, the President doesn't have to go to the emergency room when he goes to a fancy Navy hospital. Many of us, we don't have to go to the emergency room. Many families who have health insurance, they don't have to go. But there is a segment of our population that is forced as a last resort to end up in an emergency room because they have nowhere else to go.

How about the fact, before I go to my friend, my good friend, how about the fact that we want to help these kids before it's an emergency. You're saying to go to the emergency room. Mr. President, we don't want to wait. Mr. Speaker, we don't want to wait for it to be an emergency, for God's sake.

Now, we understand that the way things have been run by this executive branch over the past 6 years, everything does seem to turn into an emergency. There is always a crisis going on with these guys. But this is about preventive care, saving the taxpayers money, and making very smart, prudent investments with the hard-earned money that people send here.

One of the arguments we get from what is a shrinking minority of Members of the House that aren't helping the override proceedings is that this is socialized medicine. And Bush is saying that this is somehow socialized medicine.

When this bill passed in 1997, there was a Republican House and a Republican Senate and a Democratic President. So what you are saying is Newt Gingrich and friends during the 1990s were for socialized medicine because they started it. It is an inaccurate argument.

The government is not taking over anything. You are still going to go to your doctor and find out where you want to go, kind of like Medicare. But this is about providing children that are poor with health care. The President is trying to say that he wants to clean it up and he is trying to say that he wants to negotiate. This is different than the House bill that passed. This is the Senate version. The Senate has enough votes to override the veto. As the gentlewoman from Ohio said, there are all these Republican Senators. We have a bunch of Republican House Members. And the other day when we were debating it, there were very few Republican House Members that even wanted to come down here and make the argument about what is going on here.

We continue today, and we will next week and the following week continue to urge the President. But we need the American people to stand up and say can't Congress at least agree on health care for children. And the only roadblock is the President's veto pen and a group of Republicans in the House.

Before I yield, I want to be sure to say that the socialized medicine argument is a red herring because the Republicans created this bill in the 1990s, signed by President Clinton, but in a Republican-controlled House.

Those groups want it.

I think the debate, too, has gotten a little bit off

track, and I quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, find this shameful.

One of the statements made by the President: Democratic Members of Congress are putting health coverage for poor children at risk so they can score political points in Washington.

Now, that's a shame that that kind of rhetoric's coming out of the White House at this point. When you look, as Mrs. Jones has stated earlier, all of the Republicans that are supporting this bill, this is a bipartisan bill. But there is a small fringe group in this House and the White House that will not allow this bill to pass.

Score political points? We're trying to provide health care for kids. This is not where we have a debate and everyone gets little debating points as we go along, and there are a lot of Republicans in this House and in the Senate that want to support children's health care, and for the executive branch to make these kinds of statements I think totally poisons the debate.

Here's another thing that some of our friends are saying on the other side, that SCHIP is incremental steps to a government-run health care program. That's just not true. These are children who are now eligible for the program but there's not enough money in it to actually cover them, we're trying to put the money in to cover them. They will go to private doctors and they will get private health care. They're not going to go to the VA, the government-run veterans hospitals. They're going to go to private docs. They're going to be involved in private health care plans.

I want to say that the most important point that I'd like to highlight before we leave, because I know time is running out, all of the waste over the past 6 years under this administration, with the nonsense with FEMA and trailers sitting in Arkansas somewhere that have rotted, the billions of dollars wasted in Iraq where unbid contracts, Halliburton wasting money, losing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, the tax cuts that went primarily to the top 1 percent, corporate welfare that goes to the oil companies, $14 or $15 billion, we are starting to rein all that in and the President picks children's health care to draw the line in the sand and say we're spending way too much money?

That is unacceptable, Mr. Speaker. That is unacceptable. All of these opportunities wasted, and now you pick these people? You don't take on the oil companies. You don't take on the top 1 percent billionaires who got tax cuts. You're going to take on little kids? That's the message? That's your legacy? God bless you.

I totally agree and that's the point. Every argument that has been put in front of this piece of legislation is a phony argument that doesn't stand the scrutiny of any kind of debate.

I agree. And there are so many different aspects for us to talk about here, but I think our friend from Cleveland has hit the nail right on the head; this is about us competing as a country. This is about us only having 300 million people in the United States, many of them poor, many of them living in your community, my community, Congressman Meek, Congressman Murphy, our communities. And what we're saying is, if we want these kids to be able to compete against 1.3 billion people in China, 1.2 billion people in India, you're not even going to get on a field unless you're healthy. And we're saying that this is a modest investment. This is $35 billion over 5 years. This is 41 days in Iraq. Now, when you think of it that way, and this has been the contrast of this whole debate; the President, over the past 6 years, has raised the debt limit for our country to go out and borrow money five times and increased the debt by over $3 trillion; $9 billion a week in Iraq; no end in sight; borrowed more money than every President before him combined, from China, from Japan, from the OPEC countries. And now, all of a sudden, in the early days of October he says he is going to, and he does, veto a bill that provides children's health care for a few million poor kids. Now, I know when I go back to my district and I talk to constituents, they cannot believe it.

And we have our friends on the other side, Mr. Speaker, telling us that this is socialism. It wasn't socialism when a Republican Congress in the 1990s put this law into action, signed by President Clinton. It was a Republican Congress controlled by Newt Gingrich, a Republican Congress.

Mr. Meek. So now, all of a sudden the same program that they helped create is now all of a sudden socialism because the Democrats control the Congress. And I think it's an absolute shame, shameful, that we would have Republican Members of this Congress come out here for ideological reasons to try to score some political points with their base with the blatant disregard of providing health care for all these kids.

Now, you can argue all you want, but the bottom line, Mr. Murphy, is that there are millions of kids who will not get health care because the President all of a sudden found the courage. You know, we all went to school with people like this, they pick on the little kids. Well, the President has this big military budget. He won't shrink that. He's got all these tax cuts that the wealthiest people in our country are getting. He won't touch that. But he's going to be a big strong guy and come in and take it on the backs of these kids. Shameful, Mr. Speaker, shameful that he is willing to do this, and that the Republican Congress, the Republican Members of the House, a fringe group, enough to prevent a veto override, will help this President sustain this veto. I find it shameful that we can't take 41 days of spending in Iraq, Mr. Murphy, and help provide some health care for these kids.

And I say this because we all know that these kids need it. I was watching Chris Matthews, and Pat Buchanan was on. And Pat Buchanan said, I think these people need to pay for it themselves. Well, if they could pay for it themselves, we wouldn't be doing this. We would be doing something else.

These kids, these families. And we should get the quote for tomorrow, we should get the quote and we should have it out here, but these kids, these families should pay for it themselves. And they can't. And so we've got to make a decision as a country whether we're okay with that, whether we're okay with them not having the wherewithal to pay, and then no one is willing to help them.

But we have made the decision, in the Democratic Caucus, and many of our friends on the Republican side, excluding the President and a small group of fringe Members on their side, that somehow they're going to stand on principle here. They sat here for 6 years and didn't squawk one time about excessive spending. The President didn't veto one bill that came from this House, Republican-controlled, and a Republican- controlled Senate, but now, all of a sudden. But the American people, and I know the people in my district, see right through it, and they understand what we're trying to do and how in the long term this will be very helpful.

I yield to my friend.

Can you imagine? I mean, this is just what is mind boggling. It is 2007, we're a couple of months from 2008, and the President of the United States of America says to the poorest kids in our country, you can go to the emergency room.

I mean, are you kidding me; to not have the understanding that we would save money if we gave these kids antibiotics before they end up in the emergency room 2 weeks later with pneumonia, that that doesn't save us tens of thousands of dollars, then you have no business vetoing this bill.

Throw it out there.

How much?

And the question is, what does it cost if you don't pay the $3.50 a day? You're probably paying tens of thousands on the other end. And that kid is going to end up in the classroom, Mr. Meek, with your son and your daughter and is going to end up getting them sick. Then where are we?

I yield to our friend from Cleveland. I know you had a point to make.

And if she doesn't drink her coffee, see how grumpy she gets.

If I may, I think if you have to deficit-spend, if you have to borrow money because you need to make an investment, the Federal government's decision should be based on

the same kind of principles that a family would base the decision on. By borrowing this money, are you going to yield more value down the line? So a business will buy a machine and go into debt so they have the machine, but they know long-term if they make enough widgets out of the machine that eventually they'll pay it off and they'll actually increase the value of the company. Families borrow money, like for school and for college because they know that they may have to borrow 20 or $30,000, but your son or daughter that has a college degree will be able to pay that back and have a higher standard of living throughout the course of their life.

So if we are borrowing money, if we are going to deficit-spend, it seems to me it would make sense that we want to invest into our own health care or education. But this President has spent and borrowed over $3 trillion, as my colleague from Miami has pointed out so eloquently. Where is the return? Where is the return on the $700 billion we have spent in Iraq? Where is the return? Lower oil prices? Lower gasoline prices? No. It has only aggravated the problem that we have in the global economy now. And when you look at what we have been trying and trying and trying to do, not with the help of very many Republicans on this particular issue, Ray Lahood, Steve LaTourette and a lot of our friends have been very helpful with this issue. But when you look overall on what we have been trying to do, we, as Democrats since Speaker Pelosi took over, we are trying to make good investments.

We increased the minimum wage so that average people will have a few more bucks in their pocket. We made sure that we invested billions of dollars into the Pell grant so that you will have almost $1,000 more in a Pell grant in the next 5 years. We invested money that was going to the bank so that they could make a profit loaning money to students, and we took that money and we gave it to the students and reduced the interest rate that is paid for college loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent, so when you go out to get a loan, the average person will save $4,400. SCHIP. These are investments into the health of our kids. Community health clinics. We put a few hundred million dollars more, starting in the CR and then in the 2008 budget so that we can open up more health clinics so that poor families who don't have health care can at least have a first stop before they go to the emergency room. They may go earlier and will start preventing.

My point is, before I yield to my friend, these are all investments, Mr. Meek, Mrs. Tubbs Jones, Mr. Murphy, that are going to save the taxpayer money in the long run. They are going to make this country more competitive. They will lead to a stronger, more secure America. We are entitled here. This body has proven over the last 6 years that money is going to get spent. It's either going to the oil companies as corporate welfare and subsidies, it's going to the military-industrial complex through the war, it's going in tax cuts, primarily to the top 1 percent. I am not saying that we want to tax people. I think the corporate tax needs to be fixed. There are a lot of changes that need to be made. But the overall point is, we are making investments that are going to yield value to the country and make us stronger and more unified and more prosperous as we move into the 21st century.

I yield to my friend.

We have been caring about this for a long time, since this thing started.

Can I say something that I just find funny? I can't wait to hear you. When we walk out of here, Kendrick, it is the same thing. My mom will call me and Kendrick's mom will call and we will be like on the phone, and my mom will say tonight, I guarantee you, ``I just love Stephanie.'' That is what she will say. So I have to make sure I am quick here.

But the bottom line is, we are not saying that we don't want to support the military. All of us have. Mr. Meek and I sit on the Armed Services Committee. We are supportive. These are the kinds of things that we have to support, and we have to make sure we have a strong military.

But to your point, Mr. Murphy, no one, no one thinks wasting money is a good thing. So it seems to me that our friends on the other side have literally become a caricature of themselves. They think that the American public, Mr. Speaker, has somehow forgotten and their brain was like a computer that was erased. Like the American people's brain over the last 6 years has been completely erased, and they don't remember the $3 trillion they borrowed, they don't remember the runup to the war, they don't remember Katrina, they don't remember the FEMA fiasco, they don't remember the passports.

These are the guys that know how to run government? They can't even distribute passports, and they are going to give us a lecture on how we need to run our government.

I want to make one final point. Those of my friends who are in this Chamber, those people who we work with who are in the business community, when you look at this from a purely economic standpoint, what would a business person do if they were here? Would they put a little bit of the money up front and try to prevent all of these other problems from happening? Or would they say what the President said: We'll get them in the emergency room. What would a business person in 2007 do? I would guess that they would want to put the money up front.

Now as we end, because we only have a few minutes left, before I yield to my friend from Florida, I'm going to brag. Because on Saturday there was a middleweight title fight, and Kelly Pavlik from Youngstown, Ohio, is now the middleweight champion of the world, WBO/WBC. He had a rough second round. He went down, got back up, and was a little wobbly. But about half of the fans in Atlantic City were from Youngstown, from the Mahoning Valley and cheered him on. He came back and in the seventh round knocked out the champion. And he knocked him out.

We are all very proud of Kelly Pavlik. He is a great kid, 25 years old. Humble, speaks well. Just a great kid. I want to congratulate him and his family and his mom.

I have a great story. When he won a fight a fight or two ago, I called his house just to congratulate him. His mom answers and says, ``Who is this?''

I said, ``This is Congressman Ryan.''

And she said, ``Yeah, and I'm Queen Elizabeth. Who is this?''

He is a great kid, and I want to congratulate him and his mom and dad and his grandmother and his little baby daughter and Jack Loew, his trainer. Just great people who represent Youngstown, Ohio, and the Mahoning Valley very well.

Seals driveways.

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.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman and also want to lend my support to this fine piece of legislation. I also thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot). This is something that many areas of our country need. Those areas that once thrived in the Industrial Age and are trying to recreate their economy need the kind of early capital that this bill is going to put into these small firms.

The gentleman from Pennsylvania who was here earlier, Mr. Altmire, and I are trying to create a Technology Belt between Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh. We have many early startup companies that need the venture capital that they are going to be able to access, in particular in the New Market Venture Capital Program, which will allow low-income areas to expand the reach for more capital to go in there, also the office of Angel Investment, where we have public-private partnerships so that those early startup companies will have that early capital that they need. Tax cuts for the top 1 percent don't get to these businesses. We need that early capital in order to grow them

In Ohio, for example, we have a company in Cleveland called BioEnterprise.

Over the past 5 years they have brought in over $500 million in venture capital, 80 percent of it from outside of the State of Ohio. They employ 20,000 people in northeast Ohio. The hardest thing for them to do is to get that early venture capital. That's what this bill does.

So I want to thank the gentlewoman, I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio and also the gentleman from Pennsylvania for putting this together. We are giving life and hope and opportunity to those areas of the country that are trying to retool their economy. This is going to allow us to do this, whether it's medical device technology, any kind of medical technology that may be coming up, advanced manufacturing. These are the kinds of programs that we need.

So I want to thank everyone again for putting so much effort into this bill and being so thoughtful. These are the kinds of things that are going to help us create a strong, vibrant economy in the United States and in the industrial Midwest.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Rick Diegel. Rick is the Political and Legislative Director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and is retiring at the end of this month.

Rick Diegel exemplifies the best in an American worker and advocate for the American worker. He has been an electrician and member of his union for 37 years. After rising to the position of Business Agent for IBEW Local Union 278 in Corpus Christi, Texas, Rick Diegel left his Texas home in 1983 to accept

a job with his international office. Over the last 24 years in Washington, DC, Rick has risen to the position of Legislative and Political Director of the IBEW.

When discussing a matter before Congress, one got an education from Rick Diegel. You knew you were listening to someone who came, as Rick has often said, ``out of the tools.'' Having worked and gained experience at every level, Rick did not let the issues of Washington, DC affect his vision and mission of helping American laborers. For Rick, the only question was and remains: `Is this good for IBEW members?' And those members are electricians in the construction industry, they are utility workers, railroad workers, telecommunication workers, broadcast and government workers.

His easy manner and ready smile could break the tension in any room, but those who know him best never made the mistake of underestimating his passion and his commitment to the matter at hand. He has been on the front line for a very long time and he will be missed. I wish Rick a long and happy retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, and I also thank our friend, the dean of the delegation, Mr. Regula.

I would just add for a minute my thoughts and memories of Mr. Gillmor. I graduated from Bowling Green State University, so I knew of Mr. Gillmor before I even got into politics, because as many of the Members from Ohio know, he is a legend in northwest Ohio, especially in Bowling Green and especially with the Bowling Green Young Republicans. He was very familiar.

I remember, as we all do, taking the little trolley back and forth from the office buildings over here, and for some reason our conversations always ended up talking about Ohio State football. Mr. Gillmor loved the Buckeyes. He loved going to the Ohio State football games. I remember being in the State senate seeing him at the Ohio State football games. That is just the kind of guy he was. He loved football, he loved his country, he loved his constituents, he loved this institution, and he certainly will be missed.

So from the citizens of the 17th District, we just want to thank Mr. Gillmor for his service and send our condolences and our prayers to his family and his children and his wife, Karen. And also to say, as Mr. Boehner, the minority leader said, he was a gentleman. He was a gentle man. In the midst of all the chaos of Washington, DC, his silence and his gentleness were very refreshing, and he will be missed.

I thank the gentleman.

I would just like to make a couple of points. The gentleman from Texas mentioned entitlements. I think it's important for the Members to recall that it was the Republican majority that passed a trillion dollars in spending on the Medicare part D program and had zero, zero ability for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate down drug prices to keep them under control.

And my good friend from Ohio made the point about families, this family in his district, a middle-class family. This new Congress raised the minimum wage which will help that middle-class family. This Congress in the Labor-H bill passed an increase of $600 or $700 million in the Pell Grant. They're trying to send their kids to school. That

will help. And we cut student loan interest rates in half. So that same family who has to borrow money will have to pay back $4,000 less over the course of the loan.

We're helping that family, and I'm glad we can agree on that.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

It has been said a couple times here today about money in people's pockets. And I would suggest that under the leadership of the Democrats and the Republicans, who have been great, on the Appropriations Committee, we are putting money back in the pockets of average American people.

Only half of the people in my congressional district got a tax cut. Only half. And the ones that got it only got a couple hundred dollars. So when you look at the big tax cuts that supposedly went to people who live in Youngstown and Akron, Ohio, that was a couple hundred dollars, and you compare that with what we are doing with the Pell Grants, an increase of $500 or $600, that is going to people in my district. So we are already $400 ahead of the tax cut that the Republicans were so generous to give.

When you look at cutting student loan interest rates in half, saving $4,000 over the course of a loan, that is money in the pockets of people who live in most of our congressional districts.

And I am thankful for the concern for the American families, but I wish our friends on the other side, at least most of them, were around when we tried to give them a pay raise and increase the minimum wage. They are talking about taking money out of their pockets. We are trying to put money in their pockets. That is what we are trying to do here.

And as the gentleman from New York made the point a few minutes ago, we are funding 2,800 cops. We can't pass police and fire levies in my district because the cities just don't have the money, and we don't have the local economy.

The Federal Government does have a responsibility to make our streets

safer. That is what this bill does. That is what the chairman and the ranking member of the subcommittee have done. And that is why this amendment needs to go down. This is not the time to start cutting police officers going to our streets to make our communities safer so that we can grow our local economies.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

It is very interesting and we need to continue to point this out: We had a measure within the first 100 hours we were here to cut $14 billion from the oil company subsidies, and my friends on the other side couldn't find the courage to vote for that, but they want to do it on the back of these COPS programs in our local neighborhoods. Ninety billion dollars' worth of tax shelters, they didn't vote for that, but yet they want to cut COPS programs in our local communities. They had the opportunity to stop funding these huge tax cuts and subsidies to the oil companies, refused to do that for fear of alienation, and now they choose to do it on the backs of these programs.

I think it is funny that we got the socialism talking points back out, Mr. Chairman. Dusted them from 1992 and 1993, and now they are back out. But this is exactly right, Mr. Israel. This is about putting agents, cops on the street. This is about national security. This is about protecting our country.

Now, I think it is important that we get a little bit into the details on a couple of these programs that the gentlelady's amendment is going to cut and that the previous two amendments were going to cut, too, because I think it is easy for us to say you are going to cut cops and cut the FBI. It doesn't sound like a whole lot.

But as the gentleman from New York stated earlier, there has been a decrease in FBI criminal agents by 29 percent from 6,200 to 4,400 agents. So what the committee did, in all its wisdom in a bipartisan way, said we need to hire more people. For what exact programs? Well, why don't we take a look here.

National security field investigations is one of the programs that would be cut under this amendment. Now, many of our friends on the other side of the aisle say, what, is the world going to end if we cut this by 0.5 percent? Is the

world going to end if we cut this by 1 percent? Is the world going to end if we cut this by 3 percent? Let's look at exactly what you're cutting. Just in this one little program, national security field investigations, the committee wants to hire 245 positions, 150 agents, 95 support personnel to increase the level of field resources dedicated to national security investigations. This amendment will cut agents from being on the street protecting the United States of America.

Let's look at another one, surveillance. This committee wants to hire another 50 people, 50 positions under the surveillance program to provide additional resources for the FBI to conduct surveillance in support of priority national security investigations. Do you think this isn't going to affect anything? There are going to be less agents investigating. There are going to be less agents listening to the terrorists who already may be in this country. This amendment will ensure that these agents don't get in the field, they don't get hired, and that they don't listen to what the terrorists are saying and hopefully protecting the United States of America from the next terrorist plot.

This is a dangerous amendment that puts this country's security in jeopardy.

Mr. Chairman, we had an opportunity within the first 100 hours to cut $14 billion from going to the oil companies. We supported it. Our friends on the other side of the aisle rejected that approach; they would rather take it out of security. So I think it is important we go back.

My friend from Tennessee said where do we slow the growth. Well, we tried to slow it from going to the oil companies and we tried to slow it from going to corporations who harbor themselves in these far-off distant lands to avoid paying taxes. Our friends choose to take it out of security.

Let's look at a couple more of these programs because sometimes the details hurt. Crimes Against Children, which is a program we have, the committee wanted to have an increase of 14 positions to provide a coordinated investigative, operational and intelligence effort to combat crimes against children and to address child abduction, predators who sexually assault children, and child prostitution. There will not be 14 positions to protect our children if this amendment passes.

How about this one, weapons of mass destruction directorate. Sounds like a pretty good idea post-9/11, and in a bipartisan way it passed out of committee. Here is what it will do. The committee wants to hire 146 positions, 29 agents, 69 support personnel, to develop the essential baseline capabilities to build a dedicated weapons of mass destruction program designed to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the threat of weapons of mass destruction. If this amendment passes, we are going to have less agents trying to find folks who are in our country trying to unleash weapons of mass destruction.

How about the Data Intercept and Access program; 41 positions, 6 agents, 35 support to provide the technical expertise, training and necessary equipment to execute lawfully authorized electronic surveillance of data network communications facilities trying to protect us. This bill has some essential components to it.

This committee went to great lengths to make sure that they would make the proper investments. This is very well thought out. I think we would be hard-pressed to find any American who would read this and say no, you know what, we should not hire that many agents. We should give that money to the oil companies. I don't think there are many Americans who would say that.

One more before I yield back. Render Safe Mission, the RSM program; nine positions, three agents, six support personnel to address the White House directive, the White House directive, giving the FBI the mission to respond to devices involving weapons of mass destruction within the United States and its territories. Within the United States. This is not about Iraq. This is not about Afghanistan. This is about funding nine positions in this one specific field, people who are experts to keep this country safe.

I think the more we get into these programs, the more ridiculous some of these amendments seem. The American people would not support a 0.5 percent decrease in these programs, not a 1 percent decrease in these programs, not a 3 percent decrease in these programs. These are essential.

When you look at the money, Mr. Chairman, that has been wasted in Iraq on unbid, no-bid contracts, no oversight provided at all, when you look at the $14 billion we tried to get off the oil companies, that makes sense. Get that money. Don't get it on the backs of FBI agents who are going to be operating surveillance operations here in the United States.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to continue the math analogy and the math equation here.

What do you get if you have a weapons of mass destruction directorate program that has 146 positions, and you cut that budget by .5 percent or 3 percent? Well, we won't get into the details, but you get less than 146 positions. That is a cut.

What do you get if you cut the Render Safe Mission program that wants to hire nine people, and you cut that by 1 percent? You're going to get less than the nine people.

Stop cutting national security.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman, and I just want to go through a little bit of the details here and some of the logic and some of the facts.

There's been an increase in crime. There's been an increase in methamphetamine use. So the committee said, as Mr. Obey stated, in reaction to that, we're trying to, we'll do the southwest border and methamphetamine enforcement program, hire eight positions, four full- time equivalents, in order to attack a poly-drug-trafficking organization located along the southwest border by increasing DEA's intelligence gathering, detection monitoring and surveillance capabilities. Most of the methamphetamines coming into our country are made in California or in Mexico, out West, very close to the gentlewoman's district.

What this program does is it hires people to try to address this problem, and basically there's been a DEA hiring freeze.

We want to increase this. We want to spend money, invest in this program, one, because we will allow the DEA to hire more agents to address this issue that is growing, so you need to grow the agents that are going to address the issue.

But, two, this is going to save us money in the long run. When Mr. Obey says the price of everything and the value of nothing, that's what we're talking about. Why wouldn't we want to make this small investment to try to prevent the long-term consequences of these young people with drug treatment, in prison, with insurance claims, this has a long-term ripple effect that will cost us 10 times the amount of money.

Finally, the gentlelady said, I hope you don't mean to say that we don't want to address this issue, or this issue isn't important to us. I think it's important to note that the President's budget, when he submitted it to the Congress of the United States, terminated this program. He cut it completely. He zeroed it out.

I hope our friends on Capitol Hill will take a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and let the President understand the kind of importance that this program has and ultimately the amount of money that will save us.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve my time.

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

It is my intention. I am the final speaker.

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

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

I continue to reserve my right to close.

I will continue to reserve my right to close, unless my chairman wants more time.

I thank the gentleman for his fine arguments, and all of the gentlemen and ladies who have made their presentation here tonight. And I would also like to thank the Appropriations Committee for the Transportation and HUD bill. This was passed out of committee in a bipartisan way unanimously with Democrats and Republicans. So, again, we come to the floor to have a discussion with a very small group of fringe Members from the other side, Mr. Chairman, so that we can continue to get fiscal responsibility lectures from the Republican Party.

Now, getting lectures on fiscal responsibility from the Republican Party is like getting lectures on animal welfare from Michael Vick. It really doesn't have any credibility. It really doesn't have any credibility.

So we need to look at what the two different approaches here. And I am not going to be long because we have a lot of votes tonight, and we want to get the Members out of here as soon as possible.

There is a difference in philosophy, and the bottom line is this: There are certain things that individual members of our society cannot do. One of them is build a road. Another is build a bridge. And others that we have already had discussions about are going to college and being able to afford college and making sure some families have loans to go to college. And that is what we are here for. That is what we are here for. We are here to do the things that individual citizens cannot do for themselves, and that is what is included in this bill.

We have had talks about trillion-dollar train wrecks coming up, and I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona stating the fact that, yes, the party in power over the past 6 years, $3 trillion was borrowed primarily from China, Japan, and OPEC countries.

And our friends on the other side had to go to the Treasury Department and ask for the debt limit to be raised so that they could go out and borrow more money. So the lectures have all been given and we've heard them, and we'll probably hear them again later this week and we'll probably hear them again next week.

One of the Members mentioned entitlement spending. It was the Republican Party, Mr. Chairman, who passed the largest increase in entitlement spending with the Medicare part D. And you want to talk about fiscal irresponsibility; they passed it without even giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to negotiate down the drug prices. That is the platinum standard for fiscal irresponsibility.

So we move forward. What would this cut do? What would this 1 percent cut?

And as the gentleman from New York stated earlier a few of the programs, I think it's important that the Members

know what exactly is going to be cut here. Safety belt performance grants, going to be cut. Occupant protection incentive grants, going to be cut. State traffic safety information system improvement grants, going to be cut. All of the investments in future growth.

In aviation, the inspectors, the budget for inspectors in aviation for this country will be cut under this amendment. There will be less inspectors inspecting the maintenance of our airplanes than there would normally be if this amendment doesn't pass.

Transportation, Housing and Urban Development programs. Airport safety grants under this amendment will be cut. There'll be less money for airports. $6.9 billion in this bill for air traffic services. That will be cut.

Continue on. Rail, passenger rail grants, those will be cut. Improvement and safety grants, those will be cut.

This is the kicker. Housing for the elderly. That will be cut under this amendment. Housing for the elderly will be cut under this amendment.

And we don't say that these are going to be cuts just because they're going to be cuts, and we're not saying we're spending money on these programs just to spend money. This is the difference.

I think this amendment, Mr. Chairman, is very simple and it sounds good. Why can't we just cut 1 percent across the top of this budget?

There's changes going on in the world that make it a little more complex than we would normally think it is. I'll give you some examples. Traveling on our Nation's highways has grown by 94 percent from 1980 to 2005, from 1.5 trillion miles to 3 trillion miles. Of course you're going to need to spend a little bit more money if you have more people on the roads and you have more roads.

Now, the congestion has resulted in 2.3 billion extra gallons of fuel being burnt. That means $794 per commuter. Now, there's no way a commuter can get the $300 tax cut that they got a few years ago and go out and somehow fix the congestion problem. There's no way to do that.

We had this same discussion with brownfields. An individual citizen can't clean up a brownfield. You need the Federal investment.

And when you're talking about elderly housing, the elderly population in the United States, Mr. Chairman, is going to grow over the next 25 years by millions and millions and millions of seniors, so it's important that we make these investments.

Another program that will be cut is housing for the disabled. 49.7 million Americans live with a disability. Forty-three percent of those are women. Forty percent of men 65 and older have disabilities. If they had the money to pay for it themselves, they would pay for it and we wouldn't need to be here.

We're making these bipartisan investments, Republicans and Democrats, on the Appropriations Committee to help move the country forward. And one of the key approaches that we've had when we started this year, under the leadership of Chairman Obey, is to figure out what the world's going to look like in 10 years so that the investments we make today will have our society ready to compete in the global economy 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

And the bottom line is, this bill here reflects the values of this country, passed by Democrats and Republicans in the committee. And those 1 percent cuts may not mean a whole lot to me, may not mean a whole lot to the chairman, but if you're an adult with a disability, elderly senior, if you're a disabled citizen of this country, if you use the aviation system.

How do you fix the aviation system by yourself? You need to do that together, and that's the investment that we make here. So I appreciate the difference in philosophy.

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

I thank the gentleman. Would the gentleman from Georgia yield for a question?

I was wondering, I will ask it as you are walking, do you believe that the Federal Government has responsibility for any K-12 education programs?

You do believe in Federal spending on education at the local level?

I thank the gentleman.

I wanted to make sure, because as we had the conversation, I have heard many gentleman who were up here earlier say they didn't believe in any Federal spending for education, local education, at all.

I just want to clarify that you, at least, do believe that we do have an obligation to spend money. I appreciate you saying that.

I know. I have been here.

I don't think I am.

Mr. Chairman, that's twice in the past 2 days that our friend from Georgia has admitted being on the fringe. In response to the claim that I am on the fringe voting for this bill, I would just like to say I joined his colleagues, every Republican on the Labor-H subcommittee from all over, conservative Republicans, in support of this bill.

The gentleman from New York; Mr. Regula, the gentleman from Ohio, these are balanced, fair investments.

As the gentleman from New York stated, we are not raising taxes. Check, keep your forms from last year, your tax forms, and compare them to next year. There will not be an increase in your taxes.

What we are doing is we are not spending the money on the banks, we are spending it on the kids. We are not giving it to the oil companies, we are giving it to the kids for education and health care.

It's a difference in priorities. There is not a tax increase in here, and the bottom line is we make investments into the future of our country.

I find it offensive and staggering that the minority leader can come here, along with our friends, and talk about leaving the country in better shape than they found it, or that we have that obligation. Three trillion dollars in debt under your watch, Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican White House, $3 trillion.

The gentleman from Ohio wasn't here, but this Congress asked the Secretary of the Treasury to raise the debt limit five or six times so they could go out and borrow more money from China, more money from Japan, more money from OPEC countries. So we don't need lectures on how to leave the country better off than we found it.

Would the gentleman yield so I could ask you a question?

You will probably remember, because we were in the State Senate together in Ohio, there was a study done by the University of Akron. It said every dollar that the State of Ohio invested in higher education, they got $2 back in tax money. This is an investment we are going to make, and we are going to yield returns.

That's been the philosophy, and it hasn't worked.

We raised the debt limit six times. How can you say it worked?

Two seconds, I would just say if your philosophy has worked, you would be in the majority right now.

Madam Chairman, we believe we do have a fringe four or five here in the Congress. And it's not, when the gentleman refers to me or the gentleman from New York or the chairman, you're talking about a

bill that passed out of the committee with unanimous support from Democrats and Republicans. You will see on the floor it will pass with Democrat and Republican votes. This is a bipartisan bill.

But we have a fringe group in the House that consistently wants to try to find out and try to figure out how to make things work. And what this bill does is it invests in our future. And the bottom line is this. We're now competing with 1.3 billion people in China, 1.2 billion people in India, competitive global economy.

And over the last few years, we've seen for the average American people, and the gentleman from Georgia said, well, we want people to keep more of their own money. So do we. But they haven't been over the past few years.

There's been a $3,200 increase in their energy costs, a $1,200 increase in their health insurance, a 40 percent increase in college tuition. Wages for college grads in the last 4 or 5 years is down 5.2 percent.

Gas prices, the fastest growing part of the budget has been the interest payments on the debt. But our bill addresses middle class family wages, down $1,669 over the past 2 years. So the American people have not been able to keep more of their own money. And so our agenda, through this bill and other bills that we have passed addressed that issue.

How do you reduce the cost of energy? You make investments in research and development, and that will yield us benefits down the line.

How do you help families send their kids to schools? You invest money into the Pell Grant. You cut student loan interest rates in half. And the difference really has been with the student loan interest rates, we're not spending any more money. What we're saying is that money is not going to go to the banks. That money is going to go to the kids and the students, and we're going to cut the student loan interest rates in half and increase the Pell Grant.

We have money in here for our community health centers, so kids can get preventative care, so they end up they can get treated for a cold, instead of ending up in the emergency room for a much higher price to the taxpayer. So we're making significant investments. And this bill will help secure a strong future for the United States of America.

We need to get more kids in college. We need to invest in foreign languages. That's what this bill does. And I'm proud of this bill, on a bipartisan basis.

And I think it's important for the people, Madam Chairman, who are listening as this goes into the Congressional Record. What do they want? They want an investment in their future, and that's what this bill does. It makes that investment to secure our future and make us strong and move us in a new direction.

I thank the gentleman.

And since my friends on the other side of the aisle have embraced their fringeness, I would like to just point out to you from the Roll Call today, around the Hill there is a festival, 11-day play, this weekend. I know many of you go home, so many of your staff may want to attend this, it's the Capitol Fringe Festival. So you may be able to attend and completely embrace the fringeness.

But again, as the gentleman has said, Madam Chair, when we first got in the majority in January, we tried to pass out of this House, in our Six in '06, provisions that we passed, campaigned on and then passed. One of the provisions was to strip $14 billion from the oil companies. And our friends, who are now wanting to take this money from Pell Grants and investments in education, investments in health care, voted against stripping the oil companies of $14 billion. And this is what we're talking about.

This bipartisan committee passed out of the committee unanimously, on support of the Republicans on that committee, with the support of the Democrats on this committee, well thought-out pieces of legislation, well thought-out amendments in the committee, supported unanimously by both sides. And what we're saying is, we have to make these investments.

And there is no tax increase in this year's budget, none, zero, that's it. You can't point it out. In 2007, keep your forms, 2006, or last year's forms, and compare them to next year's, and there will be not one dime of an increase. All we did was we took that money that our friends were giving to the banks and we invested that money in the kids. The $14 billion that was going to the oil companies at their times of highest profits is going into health care and education now and alternative energy.

As I said earlier, this is very simple. We're in a globally competitive market, and we need to make investments into our kids and into our future. That's what this bill does.

Now what you're saying is, with tuition costs going up 40 percent, health insurance going up $100 a year, and energy costs going up $3,200 a year, that the solution to that problem and every other problem we have in the country right now is a .5 percent cut that would put additional burdens on families who are trying to send their kids to school, would reduce the money that we're making into making our citizens healthier and community health clinics so that at the end of the day would allow us to prevent people from ending up in the emergency room and costing us billions and billions of dollars more.

These are good investments, voted on in a bipartisan way, and will secure the strength of our country in the future.

Madam Chairman, I hate to interrupt this beautiful debate going on, but I think it is important for us to make a point. We offered our friends in the fringe an opportunity within the first 100 hours we were here to strip $14 billion from the oil companies, corporate welfare that they were getting from the United States taxpayers, and you all voted against it, or at least most of you did. You had a chance for $14 billion from the oil companies. But you choose to come here now and take it out of the hide of the students and the middle-class families who are trying to make ends meet.

That is the difference. This is a change in priorities. You had a chance for $14 billion from the oil companies. You were silent. Now you choose to do it for programs that are going to make us stronger in the long run.

So I thank the gentleman, I thank the Chair, I thank the ranking member for putting together such a great bill here, and I think we should leave it as it is and not ask the people who have had increased energy costs, a 40 percent tuition increase, now to say wait a minute, we don't want to help you with that. We want to cut that by .5 percent, too.

Madam Chairman, I seek the time in opposition.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin such time as he may consume.

Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Madam Chairman, I would like to just say, I have voted for the ban on partial birth abortion. I consider myself a pro- life Democrat.

But I will say that this amendment will increase the number of abortions that are performed. Fifty percent of abortions are performed on women who live within 200 percent of poverty. If they don't have access to prevention, they will end up getting an abortion. And I believe that if we truly want to prevent abortions from happening in the United States of America, we have an obligation, a moral obligation, to fund programs like this and prevent unintended pregnancies. Those are the poor women who end up going to abortion clinics and having abortions.

Let's prevent the number of abortions from increasing by rejecting this amendment. And the more money we spend on prevention, that will mean we will continue to reduce the number of abortions.

And I want to thank the gentleman for working on this with us.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to make a point here because I think what just happened on this House floor 5 minutes ago was extraordinary.

For a member of the Republican Party to get up and defend what has happened here and the investments that we're making I think exposes what's been going on here for the last several months, is that we have a fringe group, Mr. Chairman, of Members of this Congress who consistently get up and try to pin Members against each other, try to find specific programs and somehow expose somebody as somehow being irresponsible. And I think it's extraordinary what happened here, that we have an extreme group in this Congress that consistently tries to divide us when we're trying to get the people's work done.

This is the United States of America, and the gentleman from New Jersey benefits from the Federal court system that helps Wall Street thrive. It's the rule of law in this country that is funded by the taxpayer, courts, judges, buildings, the rule of law, and that allows Wall Street to benefit. That allows citizens in New Jersey to earn a good living and to pay taxes.

And we have Members from Texas, Mr. Chairman, the great investment that this country has made into that great State, NASA, the universities, Texas has benefited from those investments.

Members from the West, where the West wouldn't even exist, we have congressional districts that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the investment of the Federal Government to build dams. The Colorado River Basin Project--there wouldn't be congressional districts in the West if it wasn't for the Federal investment.

We're the United States of America, for God's sake, and let's stop trying to divide each other. Let's recognize that this bill has been supported unanimously from the Appropriations Committee, Democrats and Republicans, and I want to thank the distinguished Member from New York who put so much thought and concern into this bill, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), who have consistently tried to make investments and recognize that people in Alaska, kids in Alaska need help, and I'm okay with that. I've never been to Alaska but we have needs.

Let's stop trying to divide each other and stop the lectures of fiscal responsibility. The mess we're in is here because of $3 trillion in debt that our friends have borrowed from China and Japan and OPEC countries over the past 6 years; borrowed more money, Mr. Chairman, from foreign interests than every President and Congress before them combined.

So enough of the lectures on fiscal responsibility. We're here now. Let's make these investments. Let's compete in a global economy by making these investments. We're competing against 1.3 billion people in China, 1.2 billion people in India. We need to make these investments. We only have 300 million people in this country. They need to be educated. They need to be healthy, and they need to live in a clean environment. That's what this bill does.

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

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman and I thank Mr. Walsh, the ranking member, for putting such a terrific bill together that is going to allow our Nation to compete in the global economy of the 21st century.

This bill makes investments in our kids, this bill makes investments in our workers, and this bill makes investments in American families. If our kids and our workers are healthy and educated, then we will be able to compete in the global economy.

I think it is important, just with this bill, if we look at what is going to happen next year when these investments hit, when students and workers are going to get a Pell Grant and it is $500 or $600 or $700 more for them. Tack that on to the education bill last week, where interest rates will be cut in half. Tack that on to the Energy and Water appropriations bill, where we are investing in our scientists and alternative energy research and we are creating new sectors of the economy so that we can compete in a global economy.

The anxiety that has been felt across this country over the last couple of years has been profound, and this bill helps address the challenges that American families have had. By reducing the cost of education, by making sure that we have community health clinics for people to go and take their kids, with the SCHIP program, this bill will have more to do with us being a competitive country in the next couple of decades, I think, than anything else we could possibly do.

So I would like to thank the chairman and ranking member and say that this is a bipartisan bill. This came out of the committee with the unanimous support of Democrats and Republicans, who agree that these investments needed to be made.

Madam Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman again and thank the Republicans for their support.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island. And I also find it a bit peculiar that our friend from Florida, being from Ohio, we disagree on our favorite college basketball team, we disagree on our favorite college football team, so it is not a real surprise that we are going to disagree here. But I find it peculiar that he was saying that he was trying to support the workers. And I wish he would remember the vote on the minimum wage when he and the leadership of his party were consistently trying to prevent us from passing the minimum wage to help the American worker.

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