Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I also want to extend my sympathies to the family of the prisoner on behalf of myself and my family and the citizens of the 17th Congressional District in Ohio, and really all Americans. We are reminded, unfortunately, daily about the struggles that we do have here and how real they are, and when you see the kind of torture and the kind of treatment and the kind of abuse and the murdering that go on every day in Iraq, in Afghanistan and, unfortunately, now in Saudi Arabia and many other countries, I think we are all beginning to question more and more and I think at deeper and deeper levels about the policy of our government and its effect on the credibility of this country.

I think ultimately we come to this House floor with a certain amount of humility. President Reagan had his peace through strength, and I think it is easy for the bully to go around and kick people around, and we have had to do that on a number of occasions. We needed to do that in Afghanistan, and we did it in Iraq to a certain extent; but we have now gotten ourselves bogged down in a situation that I believe is making the American people less safe than they were before we went to war in Iraq.

I just want to share some thoughts. We are wrapping this congressional session up here for the week. We are on our way to catch some planes back home. But we wanted to come down here and share some of our thoughts, because there is this growing amount of frustration among many of us, not only those of us who sit on the Committee on Armed Services, those of us who have consistently backed the troops with the defense appropriations bills that I voted for and the gentleman voted for. No one can come to you orally and say you are not supportive of the troops. We put the money where our mouth is, and we are saying we support the troops, and we voted for the defense appropriations. We worked it through committee; we made sure there were the proper modifications after the war already began.

But the question we have here is really of two different strategies. The one strategy was take the $200 billion that you are going to spend in Iraq, and take that money and not only invest it in the United States, but use it like we passed today the Homeland Security bill, use more of that money to secure our ports, to make sure people are looking through the cargo that is coming into the country.

One or two out of 50 ships that actually come into the ports actually get checked. If you ask the American people, would you rather spend $200 billion in Iraq or would you rather spend that money looking through and hiring people to work at our cargo ports, I think the decision is clear.

We put ourselves in this predicament that it is going to be very, very difficult for us to get out of. I am not saying we should cut and run. We have to do the best we can there.

Another point that I want to make is that we had the opportunity. If we wanted to set up an Arab democracy in the Middle East, we could have done it with Afghanistan. Talk about a tragedy, is what we have done in Afghanistan.

We went in there, and now we only have 10,000 to 12,000 troops in Afghanistan, when in fact we have 130,000-some in Iraq. Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan; the Taliban that was the home of al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. That is where we needed to be.

If you wanted to set up an Arab democracy, we had the opportunity to do that in Afghanistan. As we learned a couple weeks ago in committee with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, when we began to talk about the drug production in Afghanistan, which is the funding mechanism for al Qaeda, billions of dollars in heroin is grown in Afghanistan, is sold, the money goes to al Qaeda and these different terrorist organizations, and they use that money to fund terrorist attacks all around the world.

So we need to go to the heart of it. We need to cut out their financing. We did that through the special organizations and the nonprofits, and a lot of these that people had here in the United States, but we also needed to go into Afghanistan and we needed to rid them of the poppy and get rid of it. And the answer we got from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when I asked him directly what are we doing about drug sales, drug production in Afghanistan, because it seems like at least at this point that is the only crop that they can grow, and the answer was stunning. I think the American people need to know this. The answer was: they harvested the crop early this year, and so we did not have the opportunity to stop them.

Let me repeat that. The answer from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the policy of the United States in response to a question by a Member of Congress as to what are we doing about getting rid of the drugs in Afghanistan, the answer is: they harvested the crop early.

Mr. Speaker, we want to include our good friend, the gentlewoman from Cleveland, Ohio (Mrs. Jones), from the good old Buckeye State, but before I yield to her, I

want to say that obviously we do not have enough troops in Afghanistan. So here we are in Iraq doing what we are doing with 130,000 troops, we only have between 10,000 and 15,000, I do not know the exact number, I think it is about 13,000 troops in Afghanistan right now. Now, just imagine if we took some of the money that we are spending in Iraq and we used it for homeland security and we took some of the money and some of the troops that we are using there and we had them in Afghanistan, Afghanistan has natural resources we could be developing, the water infrastructure we could be developing in Afghanistan, and setting up an Arab democracy. Is that not what we want to do? Was that not the goal after hearing about weapons of mass destruction, hearing that al Qaeda is tied to Iraq, and Iraq is tied to 9/11 and they have weapons pointed at us, there is an imminent threat and all of this other nonsense that we heard before the war. But then the story eventually changed, and there is always that undercurrent of: we need an Arab democracy in the Middle East for stability purposes. Why did we not do that in Afghanistan?

We have many, many other points to make here, but I would like to begin to include our good friend here from Cleveland, Ohio into the discussion, and I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman, who is my surrogate mother here in the United States Congress.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield, as the gentlewoman brought up, this is the latest with the Red Cross, that we first said that this was just an isolated incident. This is just a few wild folks we have working with us and it is an isolated incident. Now we find out that the Secretary of Defense is the one saying pull him aside over here and put him back here and do not put a number on him.

It is the same with the Halliburton contract. Vice President Cheney for months and months said, I do not have anything to do with it. My office does not have anything to do with this Halliburton contract. Well, we find out earlier this week, it has been a long week, earlier this week that Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States, okayed the contract to Halliburton. It went right through his office. You cannot tell me that the Vice President did not know anything about it.

So when you keep looking, we see the subversion of the Geneva Convention. All of a sudden in the United States of America, we have lawyers saying, well, Mr. President, you do not have to follow the Geneva Convention. Why would you want to follow the Geneva Convention? Some people out there are saying, yes, we would like to get these guys and treat them maybe the way they deserve to be treated. But when we look at what has happened today with the beheading and the murder that happened today in Saudi Arabia, where is the moral high ground in the United States? Where do we come out, and what can we possibly say? I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I want the gentleman to repeat that, because that is a very important point and we need to share this with the American people. Reiterate that point, about the man doing the investigation.

So the gentleman is saying that if there was a 3- star or a 4-star or any officer above a 2-star, General Taguba could not investigate?

That is the way the military runs. You cannot have someone low on the chain of command investigating Jack Nicholson, the top dog.

As I begin to wrap up here, I want to make a final statement that maybe next week, to the gentleman from Florida, I have about 6 pages here that a member of my staff put together for me, Dean Thomas who does my military work, that has about 6 pages' worth of claims by the administration, President, Vice President, different Secretaries; and then it has the facts.

Let me suggest that maybe next week the gentleman and I come down here, whether it is with our 30-something hour or maybe another Special Order, and we go through these because it is astonishing to me that in the United States of America we can have a commission put together, a bipartisan commission, the likes of Lee Hamilton and Senator Kerry and the distinguished group that we have with the 9/11 Commission, and the commission issues a report and the report says what we have known for many, many months, and that is that there is absolutely no connection between Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, two separate entities that did not want to work together.

And to have the administration just come out and just keep repeating the fact that they have a connection is a slap in the face to the American people. And that is not the only claim. We talked about the Halliburton claim that was denied and found out to be true. We found out the claim, it was only a couple of soldiers; now we found out it is more of a systemic problem.

The American people need to know what the facts are, and just because the administration wants to keep repeating what they want the world to be like and what they want the situation to be like, as opposed to what the truth is; and hopefully next week and over the course of the next few weeks and the next few months we can really try to shape the debate here and move the ship back to the truth. Because I get very, very frightened when the majority of the American people think that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and Iraq has connections, direct connection, military connections and terrorist connections with al Qaeda, when everyone is saying it is not true, when the experts are saying it is not true, when the CIA is saying it is not true, when the 9/11 Commission says it is not true.

And the administration keeps repeating it just to muck up the waters, just to make it unclear, just because people are working two or three jobs and they are worried about getting their kid a pair of tennis shoes and some health care, and they do not have time to pay attention.

So, hopefully, over the course of the next few months, the gentleman and I and maybe other Members of this Chamber, we can try to establish what the truth is and what the facts are and let the American people make the kind of decision that they want to make it, and they can make it at least in an informed way.

Then when we get this information through the newspapers or through some other entity where we can get it, and then when we get the information and we try to share the information, people were questioning, why are we doing this? And I think the short answer is with the war and all the preliminaries of the war, with the weapons of mass destruction, and the ties to 9/11 and greeted as liberators and we do not need 200,000 troops, we are going to use the oil as revenue to fund the war, all of these things that have been said and now denial of Halliburton, and then saying it is an isolated incident when in fact it seems like more of a systemic problem that we have, detaining prisoners and keeping them away from the Red Cross.

Why are we bringing this up? Because it is wrong. That is wrong. It is not right that you do that. The way we got into the predicament right now, I just could not disagree more with how this all transpired. And if the original reason was you wanted to go to the Middle East to set up an Arab democracy, tell the American people that and let them answer yes or no with their support for or against it. But do not give us all those reasons that there is going to be a mushroom cloud in Cincinnati when we have a dictator that is writing romance novels, boxed in in the fly zone and the sanctions were working.

So do not mislead the American public with this. This is wrong, and we have to say it is wrong. We have to call a spade a spade here.

Hopefully, over the hours of the next few weeks and months, we can be able to do that.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of H. Con. Res. 62. I support this resolution which honors Katherine Dunham. This renowned dancer was born in Illinois in 1909 and started studying dance in her early teens. She was one of the first African Americans to study at the University of Chicago, where she earned a doctorate degree in anthropology.

As part of a research fellowship, Dunham studied the anthropological roots of dance in the Caribbean. Her research led to the creation of the anthropological dance movement which focuses on folk, ethnic and cultural choreography.

In 1931, she started the first African-American ballet company in the United States. Later she joined the faculty of Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, where she helped create a performing arts training center and established a dance anthropology program.

She went on to create a community-based arts education program for impoverished young people in East St. Louis, the St. Louis metropolitan region's only multi-disciplinary arts organization devoted to the study, appreciation and celebration of diverse cultures.

Throughout her illustrious career as one of the word's most respected dancers, choreographers and teachers, Ms. Dunham used her talents, fame and resources to call attention to social injustices at home and abroad.

In closing, Madam Speaker, Katherine was dedicated to improving the lives of America's youth and correcting the social injustices at home and around the world, using her fame to increase support for the civil rights movement and to fight injustices worldwide. She is a good example of a person who has followed her passion and used her success for the greater good. We need more Americans to follow her fine example.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume in order to support this resolution which honors Lionel Hampton.

This talented musician was born in Kentucky in 1908 and was raised in Chicago. He learned to play the drums while in school and later moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music. He is most famous for his work with the vibraphone, earning himself the nickname ``the king of vibes.''

In 1930, he joined the Benny Goodman Quartet, making them the first racially integrated group of jazz musicians. He also established the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. Sunny Side of the Street, Central Avenue Breakdown, his signature tune, Flying Home and Hamp's Boogie-Woogie all became top-of-the-chart best sellers.

Hampton visited many different countries as a goodwill ambassador for then President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

He created the Lionel Hampton Development Corporation in order to build low-income housing in the cities.

Hampton also worked with the University of Idaho to preserve and teach the history of jazz music to future generations.

He died on August 31, 2002.

In closing, it is fitting for Congress to honor Mr. Hampton's contributions to American music, to expanding low-income housing in our Nation's cities and for his work as a goodwill ambassador.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am happy to rise in appreciation of fathers and in full support of Father's Day. Many people believe that Father's Day was started by greeting card companies to create another reason for people to buy greeting cards, but that is not so. The origination of Father's Day is generally credited to Mrs. John B. Dodd of Washington State. Mrs. Dodd wanted to honor her father, William Smart. Mr. Smart was a Civil War veteran whose wife, Mrs. Dodd's mother, died in childbirth with their sixth child. Mr. Smart never remarried and raised all six children by himself.

Beginning in 1919, Father's Day was celebrated unofficially on June 19, which was close to Mr. Smart's birthday. It was not until 1966 that Father's Day became an official American celebration when President Johnson signed a Presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday in June Father's Day.

I am happy to join my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to honor the many, many wonderful fathers who have given children their time, knowledge and strength, and most of all their love; and I would like to take this opportunity to also thank and show great gratitude for the grandfathers who have in many of our lives, mine in particular, played a tremendous role and in many instances step in for the father who is not there.

There is something special about the grandfather because they are passing down from many generations, which is very enriching, I think, for many young people in our society today. And coming from a generation where there has been much divorce and many fathers who have not been around, I think this is a very appropriate resolution, and I am happy to show our appreciation to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne).

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I think it is important that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) shared with us exactly why we are having all these problems. I think people sitting at home would be thinking to themselves why in God's name would our country be giving tax credits to companies who would outsource jobs? And the answer, as the gentleman so eloquently gave us, is that these people who are making the profits from outsourcing jobs are the same people that are donating millions of dollars to Members of this body, that are donating millions of dollars especially to the Presidential campaign, and that is probably the fundamental problem that we have in this country right now.

Our government and our laws are being dictated to everyone else by the big-money people, and they control this institution. And I think the best example that we have had, at least since I have been here, is why would we not allow prescription drugs to come down from Canada. It seems it would make sense. But then we realize, as I was reading his op-ed here that he wrote here in the New York Times, we realize that political contributions from the drug industry to Republicans in this body is $22 million, 74 percent of the total of the money that they raised. The Democrats raised $7 million, only 25 percent. Still a lot of money. But it is clear that if they are raising $22 million, 74 percent of their total amount of money that they are raising, that they would be advocating on behalf of those major corporations and they would be saying we do not want to free trade with Canada. And the same thing with not allowing them to negotiate down drug prices. Why would we not use the buying power of millions of people to sit down with Pfizer, say to Pfizer, we are going to make a deal here. They want access to these millions of people, they have got to sit down and talk to us and negotiate a fair price.

So I think it is very important and probably the best point that we could make as we speak to the American people here tonight, because they would ask why are we doing this, and the reason is there is too much money in this game and the average person has a microphone and the people who have a lot of money have a big bull horn, and they seem to get everything done.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) talked about outsourcing of jobs, free trade, competing on a global economy, our workers trying to compete with workers who make $5 a day or 50 cents an hour in a lot of these other countries. The promise to the American people always was this: we are going to trade, we are going to compete in an international economy, in a global economy; but we are always going to invest in our own people. We are going to invest in our own children. We are going to invest in our college students. We are going to make college accessible, affordable so that we can get the high-end jobs. Now we are still losing the high-end jobs; we are losing a lot of them to India. If we would have fulfilled the promise that this government made many years ago and one has a computer-programming degree or a high-tech degree of some sort, most of those jobs are now leaving in the millions in the next few years to India where they are paying people with bachelor's degrees in engineering not even $5 an hour, and we know the kind of money that they make here.

So not only are we losing the high-end jobs; now we are no longer even investing in education. And I just want to share a few statistics with the people who are listening. Student debt is up 66 percent since 1997. Funding for higher ed in Ohio was slashed by over $18.5 million in 2002, 2003. In-state tuition at places like University of Cincinnati, Kent State University, University of Akron, Youngstown State, the tuition costs have been raised by 10 to 15 percent since basically the late 1990s, and the burden is being placed on the students who are trying to get ahead. So it is up 66 percent. I think the most atrocious statistic that we can have is, because of these increases, in the fall of 2003, an estimated 250,000 students, college qualified, could not afford to either go to college or continue to go to college. They were completely shut out because of the increase in tuition, the lack of buying power for the Pell grants.

So how can we on the one hand say that we want to trade, we want to participate in the global economy, we have the right to lift everybody else up and share some of the wealth of our own country, and then at the same time not invest in our own people? That has clearly been the policy of this administration, it has clearly been the policy of this Congress.

Since 1994, the Republicans have controlled this Chamber, they have had the presidency for the last 3\1/2\ years, and they have done nothing. President Bush promised in his election that he was going to increase investments in the Pell Grants for the first year and then graduate it up. It did not happen. College loans today are costing kids more, and the policies that this Congress wants to adopt will cost them even more money in the long run. So something actually needs to be done.

Since 2001, which is another interesting statistic, tuition and fees have increased by almost 30 percent in 49 of the 50 States. When we are talking about Ohio and talking about trying to create jobs in Ohio, you cannot overlook the fact that we have not, whether it was in this Congress or in the General Assembly in Ohio, we have not made sufficient investments into the young people who are going to create the new economy.

Really, as we are losing these jobs, it is also important to note that we do not know what the new economy is going to be. Many of us are advocating for alternative energy sources, investments in high speed rail and a variety of other issues that I think we need to advance on, but those are just our ideas. The private sector will ultimately create what the new economy is to be. But the government's role has been and should continue to be investment in the colleges, investment in the young students, and let those bright, intelligent, creative minds create the new economy we are going to have.

One last statistic that I want to share, and that is the No Child Left Behind, because we have talked a little bit about college but have not talked about K through 12. No Child Left Behind was put in place to move the bottom 25 percent of the students, bottom in regards to test scores and achievement, move them across the finish line, with investments into after-school programs, good idea; investments in the summer programs, good idea; investments into one-on-one tutoring, if necessary.

The philosophy was we are going to pull these kids across the finish line so that they can have a successful life. If they have the one-on- one tutoring, if we make the investment after school, if we make the investment during the summertime and help these kids along with intensive training, that they will be able to succeed and become proficient. So that was the Federal mandate on the States, that was the Federal mandate on the local school districts.

But, lo and behold, we prioritized and we gave tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country. Half the people in my congressional district did not get one dollar from the tax cut. So this nonsense that was being spewed out on the other side earlier tonight that everyone is benefiting from this tax cut did not hit home in Youngstown, Ohio, in Warren, Ohio, and in Akron, Ohio. It did not show up. Fifty percent of the people in my congressional district did not get one dollar back from the tax cut.

So we have all these Federal mandates underfunded. No Child Left Behind just in Ohio is underfunded by $1.4 billion just this year, $1.4 billion. That is going to go to the State to have to comply, and that is going to go down to the local school district. If you are sitting in Ohio and do not think these mandates are going to cause your local school district to have to go and try to pass another property tax increase, you are missing the boat.

So what we are trying to say here is the Federal Government has a responsibility to invest, whether it is No Child Left Behind, college access or anything else, into our young kids and students so they will be able to compete. We have missed the boat. We have not fulfilled our obligation, we have not fulfilled our responsibility, because, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) has said, we had to give these tax cuts.

If the gentleman would yield, I read that same series of articles. There was a quote in there by one of the gentlemen, and I cannot think of his name, who worked at either the food pantry or helped run the Second Harvest, and he said the lines were depression- like. Those were his words, depression-like.

So to sit here and say the economy is going just fine, just humming along, that these tax cuts have worked, and we have people, in the same article they said the increase from 2002 to 2003 was I think 17 percent increase in people using the food pantry, and then last year was 19 percent on top of the 17 percent, they have the audacity to come down here and say things are getting better.

Mr. Speaker, as sad as it is, I just want to say how this has just followed a very consistent pattern that this administration has taken with regard to the facts. And most recent, I think the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) already brought it up tonight, was with the Vice President's office regarding Halliburton. We do not have anything to do with their contract, they said. My office had nothing to do with it, the Vice President says. I do not even know what you are talking about, the Vice President says.

Well, it is in the New York Times today. Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff for the Vice President, approved the contract, okayed it, with Halliburton. State Department, terrorism is down. Well, another analysis comes out. Terrorism is up. They were wrong. Colin Powell apologizing again after the U.N. fiasco. Weapons of mass destruction. No weapons of mass destruction. Greeted as liberators. Greeted as conquerors. They are going to love us. They hate us. We need 200,000 troops. No, we do not. You are fired. We only need 130 and now we do not have enough.

Consistent pattern, whether it has been foreign policy or domestic policy, this administration at least, if we can give them some kudos but they have been consistent, but consistently wrong and have been consistently harming people.

Consistently inconsistent, just to clarify.

Our responsibility here is to identify what these problems are in order to change course for the country. We are not just sitting here talking amongst the four of us. We are here talking to the American people because we want to engage them in the discussions. Something that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) said and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) said that I want to identify with, when we talk about people not admitting their mistakes we have lost the constitutional balance in the legislative branch and our oversight ability on the legislative branch because it is all controlled by one party. We are in a very, very dangerous situation.

I think this is something that maybe the American people do not understand at home is that, and I hate to use this as an example, but when President Clinton was in and this House was controlled by the Republicans and the Senate was Republican, the Republican chairmen of the committees had the ability to subpoena witnesses and call hearings in which they could oversee the executive branch. In this case it was Mr. Clinton. But today we have the Republicans who control these committees in the House. They control the committees in the Senate. There is no oversight of the executive branch, and so we are getting legislation and mandates coming out of the executive branch with no oversight from the legislative body.

Article I, section I, the people should govern. We do not have the ability, the minority party, to subpoena witnesses and do what we have to do to oversee the executive branch. I think the American people need to know that. There is a reason why they are getting away with all of this and we do not have the proper oversight abilities.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I think he is absolutely right. In places like Ohio, things are very difficult. The $300, $400, $500 increase over the course of a year in the gas effects people's lives. I know the gentleman from Florida is also concerned. But, Mr. Speaker, I have been very disappointed tonight, because several of the Special Orders tried to, I guess, address issues and make persuasive arguments I think that really do not exist, and one just wonders to oneself what the communities are like where these people are living. I know in Youngstown, Ohio, and in Niles, Ohio and in Warren, Ohio, and in Akron, Ohio, that people are feeling the squeeze; and people are losing jobs that pay $20, $25 an hour, health care benefits, pensions, 401(k)s, defined benefit plans, and they are losing those jobs, and the jobs that are being created are jobs that are paying $7, $8, $9, $10 an hour and no health care, in addition to the gas prices, in addition to these people trying to send their kids to school or to college. In Ohio, as I am sure it is going on around the country, that increase in tuition is 10 percent, 15 percent every single year.

So the reason we are here, the reason we want to talk about these issues is because we think something needs to be done. I do not believe that we should just sit here and criticize, although I do believe that is part of our constitutional responsibility, to make sure that we identify our platform where we want to take the country and we compare that to where the country is or where the opposite political party would like to take the country; and we try to make a comparison. I just want to share a couple of ideas that are the Democratic proposals for some of the education squeeze issues that people are feeling.

Senator Kerry, Presidential candidate Kerry, has several plans that we also agree with here in the Congress. A couple of them I would like to share with the American people here tonight. One of them is a tax credit for $4,000 for anyone who sends their kid to school or they are paying for their own school; $4,000 a year tax credit. Phenomenal. Not terrible; phenomenal. I think that is the kind of direction that we want to go in, when we can say to a young student, we are going to be here, the government is going to be here to support you.

Now, some people may say, what is the responsibility of the Federal Government on the issue of education, at least on the issue of college education? Well, some of it is Pell grants where we can give actual grants. When the Pell grant program was started in the middle of the 1970s, it accounted for almost 80 percent of a person's college tuition. Today, the Pell grant accounts for nearly 40 percent of a person's college tuition. So the buying power of the Pell grant program has decreased, almost cut in half. President Bush, when he campaigned in 2000, said that he was going to increase the amount invested into the Pell grant program so that young students would have the opportunity to go to college, but that just

was not the case. So one of our proposals is to also increase the amount of funding for the Pell grant program.

Another specific proposal that I think is something that we really need to look into and hopefully act on the first of next year, although many people believe that we cannot wait, is the issue of the States not having the money, the resources to invest. Many of the colleges in the States are publicly funded through the State tax coffers, so the State aid to universities in Ohio, for example, has decreased. And because the State aid has decreased, the local universities and colleges have been forced to raise tuition to compensate for the lack of State funding. One of the issues that we are proposing here is to have $25 billion given across the country to the States with one provision: this money is to go to reduce the increases in tuition; this money is to go directly for State aid to our colleges. This will have a direct impact. It will lower the cost of tuition for many of these universities; it will allow access.

Since 2001, I believe the statistic is, and I will have to get it, but I think it was 2001, 250,000 potential students, college-eligible, qualified to attend, proper test scores, proper GPAs, would be able to access the college system. I say to the gentleman, 250,000 have not been able to go to school because they cannot afford it. In the United States of America, that is unacceptable.

Yes. This was not the Kendrick Meek Report, this was not the Tim Ryan Report, this was not the Democratic Caucus report. This was the U.S. agency's report. I just think it is important for people who are listening here tonight to say is that we can do better in the United States of America. Why would we want 250,000 people who want to go to college be somehow prohibited from going to college because of their financial situation? We know that if we invest in these people; and we did a study, I say to the gentleman, when I was in the State Senate in Ohio, the University of Akron did a study. For every dollar that the State would invest into higher education, they would get almost $2, there were two or three studies, but they would get almost $2 back from tax revenues.

Because you get someone who graduates from high school, goes out and is working somewhere for seven, eight bucks an hour and paying taxes on seven, eight bucks an hour as opposed to someone who is college educated making 40 or $50,000 a year paying taxes on 40 or $50,000 a year. It makes sense for us to invest. We have to get return on our investments. That is not the reason we are doing it but we know the societal benefits. Less racism, more tolerance for people from different cultures, different walks of life, different religions, and not to mention the added benefit to our economy, the entrepreneurship and everything else. So the point is this is an investment we should make.

The University of Akron study is applied to this particular proposal of $25 billion. It would mean an increase in revenues to the States by $50 billion. Each State would get $1 billion.

Now, you go to a State like Ohio or Florida and say Governor Bush, Governor Taft, what would you do with an extra billion dollars? You would pump it right back into education. You would pump it back into health care. You would make sure your kids are healthy. You would be able to fund the No Child Left Behind that is underfunded.

Big time debt.

The official Democratic proposal says that the Democrats would double the maximum petroleum grant to $11,600. Now, for many people that will cover pretty much most of your college television.

It is a big number.

We are talking Democrat and Republican. And there are several Republicans I think who have taken a very courageous stand on this particular issue. If you had an opportunity today to read the New York Times, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) I believe had a marvelous, marvelous letter to the editor, or op-ed today. It was phenomenal and I cannot say enough about it.

It basically said that the Federal Government should be directly loaning money to students. We do not need the banks involved in this. I do not think the banks are inherently bad people, but why would I give money to you for you to give it to somebody else and then you charge me more and I give you a little bit more so you can make a profit and then you give somebody else the money? We insure your loan. We guarantee you. So the Federal Government gives the money to the banks or we guarantee it to the banks so the banks takes no risk at all. Why not eliminate the banks, directly lend to the students, and give them the money and tell them to go to school and tell them that we are going to give him or her and many students like him or her around the country $25 billion. And when it is all said and done, we are going to make $50 billion on the deal.

Because the Federal Government guarantees the loans, now the banks have no real incentive to go capture somebody who defaulted on their loan. Why would they? They are going to get reimbursed anyway from us. So, actually, the Federal Government, if we eliminated the banks or removed the banks from this process, we would lend the money directly, and there would be more incentive for us to go and capture people who defaulted on the loans that we gave them. We would want there to be incentive because we would get the money back. The banks are going to get their money one way or the other. They are either going to get it from the student or the Federal Government. So there is no real incentive.

Again, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) was phenomenal today in his op-ed, and I cannot say enough about his courage to say if you are a conservative, if you do believe in the private, free markets, this kind of government intervention with the banks and playing all these games is no way to do it. It was very articulate, and I commend him for doing that and having the courage to do that.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, with regards to what you were just talking about in the middle class squeeze, and I do not know if you had an opportunity to talk about this or not, but I think it is so fundamental to everything that we are talking about tonight.

CEO wages average $8.1 million, 300 times that of the average worker in the United States of America, 300 times. Now, we are not begrudging those people. God bless them. You are in America. Make as much money as you possibly can. Unfortunately, taxes on wages earned average almost 24 percent. So if you are out working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, make a wage, 24 percent. Taxes on income from investments like stocks and bonds average less than 10 percent.

There is a shift in our tax code, our tax system, where we are moving the burden to wage earners. We are reducing the burden for those people who make money on stocks and bonds that has begun to divide the country, and there is this gap that is being created for the people who have a lot and the people who do not have too much.

I think it is dangerous, and I want to share with my colleague a conversation I was having last week with an old school Republican, moderate, conservative, fiscally balanced budgets. I will not mention his name, but he was saying how this kind of system that we are running right now, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class gets squeezed and tax burden goes on to those people who earn wages and the taxes are reduced for those people who make money on stocks and bonds and everything else, when we have a trading system that removes the good jobs to other places like China and India and they are not replaced by good paying jobs, where there is no health care, where people cannot find good employment, we begin to jeopardize the whole system. We begin to put the whole system at risk because we lose the stability that we need to have, and poor countries have revolutions because the poor get so poor that they just take up arms.

Now, I am not suggesting we are at that point, but we are beginning to move in a direction where the very rich donate money to this place. They get the laws they want, the free trade agreements that they want, the tax

structure that they want, the cuts in government that they want, the investments in government that they want, defense spending and something where the big companies can make a lot of money. There is no stabilizing force, and that is what the government is here for. We are here to stabilize this democracy and stabilize this country, and we have always been that country where people can look and say here is the middle class, the average people have an opportunity, average people are going to get educated, average people are going to have health care; everyone is going to have health care; everyone is going to have an education.

I think we take a step back and we look how the government and what we are talking about, the investments that we are talking about, have a stabilizing force on our society as a whole and allow us to be that kind of example that we want to be for the rest of the world.

That would be great. I will be here. Would you like for me to share the Web site?

Send us an e-mail if you would like, to [email protected]. We would love to hear any personal stories or opinions on the topics we discussed, and I would like to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) for all his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, this opportunity to share a few words about President Reagan.

Mr. Speaker, when our country was confronted with a terrible menace of dangerous ideology, Reagan rallied America and united the world to decisively defeat the threat of Communism. We are grateful for that leadership.

Ronald Reagan elevated the office of President. When mistakes were made, Ronald Reagan personally accepted responsibility. It did not matter what focus groups, polls, his advisers, political consultants said, he understood that the buck stopped with him and him alone.

He was an American icon, forever remembered for his warmth and the respect he afforded to others, and our thoughts and prayers today are with Nancy and his children and his family at this very difficult time.

Even when President Reagan broke the hearts of the Democrats, he was respected for his honesty, his beliefs, and the dedication he displayed in pursuing them.

As a young elementary student during the Challenger disaster, it was enormous comfort to those of us who were all watching, because there was a teacher on the Challenger at that time, to listen to President Reagan as we began to question why America was sending these astronauts up into space; why was there a teacher on the Challenger at that time. And President Reagan said to us that the future does not belong to the faint-hearted, it belongs to the brave, and communicating to us what America was all about.

I also remember as a young man President Reagan interacting with then-Speaker Tip O'Neill, in the way they got along, and they laughed and they talked and they joked. And that was a great example for those of us who were beginning to get acquainted with the political system.

I remember the courage and the humor that President Reagan showed when he was shot, hoping that the doctors were all Republican and telling his wife, who was terrified, that he forgot to duck.

I also cannot help but remember President Reagan, during the Washington Redskins ceremony at the Rose Garden after winning the Super Bowl, hitting Gary Sanders on the money as he ran a drag pattern across the Rose Garden.

The differences then, despite our disagreements, were real; but because of the way President Reagan led, he taught us that there is a big difference between strong beliefs and bitter partisanship. Strong beliefs and a love of country are the only way to bring this country forward as we face the enormous challenges that we have before this body today.

Ronald Reagan always stressed that we are a can-do country. Democrats and Republicans both believe this. And I believe it is that sense of optimism, as we look back on history, that the Presidents that moved the Nation forward were optimistic and believed the best and the brightest in this country would continue to move us forward.

Mr. Speaker, I believe we can get back on the right track with strong leadership and a real commitment to confronting the problems that face American families today. In the words of Ronald Reagan, we can do better. With tolerance and inclusion, uniting rather than dividing, we can continue the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

So when we return to work next week, I hope this House will be inspired by the leadership of Ronald Reagan instead of mired in the partisan politics that have too often affected our work as of late. We should be inspired by his patriotism and devotion to our country, and we should remember his faith, his optimism, and his unwavering commitment to his convictions as we do the work of the American people.

In the words of President Reagan, those comforting words he gave us some 18 years, and we will never forget Ronald Reagan, nor the last time we saw him, for now he has slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God. We will miss him.

Mr. Speaker, on Saturday, May 29, the National World War II Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall here in Washington. This memorial honors the courage and sacrifice of the millions of men and women who served our Nation during one of the most critical times in history.

How this monument came about is a classic story of American democracy. The spark came from Roger Durbin of Berkey, Ohio, who made the request to his U.S. Representative, Marcy Katpur. With the help of America's veterans, Congresswoman Kaptur led the effort to pass legislation that authorized the memorial. I commend my distinguished colleague and good friend for her deep commitment to all our Nation's veterans and her extraordinary work on behalf of those who served in

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Brigadier General Michael F. Gjede on his service to the United States of America. After more than 35 years in the Air Force, General Gjede will be retiring, and we in northeast Ohio have been very privileged to have him as the Commander of the Air Force Reserve 910th Airlift Wing at Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna, Ohio.

A graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, General Gjede earned his commission through the Air Force Officer Training School program in 1968. Once he had earned his wings, he served two tours in Vietnam flying B-52s and logging over 140 combat missions.

General Gjede has held numerous command positions in the Air Force,

and the 910th is the second flying wing that has had the opportunity to have him as their commanding officer. As our wing commander at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station, General Gjede's personal involvement, his encouragement, and intuitiveness have produced an overwhelming response, as recognized in the achievements of the wing's members.

The 910th's functional areas performed flawlessly, despite a stressful and turbulent atmosphere caused by the events of September 11, 2001. His superior leadership was the driving force that kept all personnel properly focused, allowing them to consistently meet and exceed requirements. Despite the challenges of the most aggressive reserve operations tempo in history, the 910th immediately responded to the homeland defense initiatives in support of Operation Noble Eagle and the worldwide requirements for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

General Gjede's continual involvement in base renovation and new construction projects, operation and maintenance facilities, and quality of life projects will produce benefits far into the future. The accomplishments of General Gjede culminate a long and distinguished career in the service of his country and reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.

On a personal note, one of the unique experiences I have had with General Gjede was an opportunity to participate in the Youngstown Air Reserve parachute program. It is not really a program. It is a simulation of parachuting. General Gjede gave me an opportunity to put on the suit, strap myself in, and look down and do the virtual reality and try to land on a carrier. Well, needless to say, I had my suit pants on, so General Gjede got to see me with suit pants, a tie, and the equipment necessary for parachuting dangling from the ceiling at the air base and missing the boat completely and going directly into the water. I do not even believe I got the parachute out in time. So General Gjede has seen his Congressman in some very compromising positions. Luckily, there was no one in there with a camera to take any pictures.

So that was a good experience I have had, among many, with General Gjede; and he is going to be sorely missed.

But I would also like to say that behind every great man is a great woman. He has a phenomenal wife, Jerylynn, who we have had the opportunity, my wife Julie and I have had the opportunity to get to know. She is a tremendous, tremendous woman. She is a great First Lady for the 910th. She has an enormous amount of class and composure and brought a lot of elegance to the air base, and we will sorely miss her as well.

So on behalf of the people of the 17th Congressional District, I want to thank you, General Gjede and your wife, and wish you and your family the best.

On a personal note, I have enjoyed our time together, our dinners together, and hope that in the future there will be many, many, many more. We are definitely wishing and hoping that you will stick around in our community after your retirement, because our community certainly is a better place and a stronger place with you and Jerylynn in it, and we will not just miss the General and his wife but we will miss our friends.

So I wish you the best of luck and hope that we get to see you in our community and look forward to many, many, many further experiences together on behalf of the air base.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.

Over the past week, we had a break. We normally are doing our 30- something event on Tuesday nights, but we are here on Thursday night tonight, and we are going to take a little different twist here. Normally, we talk about issues that are facing young students, young people trying to make their way in the workforce.

Rockthevote.com to help with voter suppression across the country. It will inform you about whatever your situation may be locally.

I just brought a couple of these that I wanted to read, because we are going to, obviously, move to another topic. We received a couple of e-mails that we pulled out here, one from a Luther Lowe from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and one also from Alleyn Harned from Columbus, Ohio, who lives in Delaware. I am going to read a couple of paragraphs out of the e-mail we got, because most adults will say why are kids not participating and being active in the process? There is youth voter apathy.

I just want to read these. This is Luther Lowe from William and Mary. ``Rather than sit and watch our local representatives make laws which are unfair to young people, I decided to participate in my local democracy. I applied to register to vote at Williamsburg which required I also fill out a detailed two-page questionnaire in addition to the normal form. One week later, I received a notification of my registration denial. The reasons? I was claimed on my parents' income taxes. I drove a car owned by my mom who lives in Arkansas. According to the local registrar, I should have been voting in my parents' hometown. The problem with that is I have never voted in my parents' hometown. I voted for Al Gore from my boarding school in high school. I spend less than 2 months a year in Arkansas, so why should I be participating in local elections there? With the help of a local attorney from the ACLU, I fought back. It was only after two lawsuits that I was able to register on a technicality that I am a member of the Virginia National Guard and Governor Mark Warner is my primary commander in chief.''

Give me a break. Here is a kid that wants to participate in the system, and he has got to hire a lawyer from the ACLU to get a right to vote from the university.

And he is a National Guardsman. The kid loves his country, loves the State of Virginia, has not been in Arkansas all that much, and they are trying to limit his right to vote.

I think that is the perfect example of why we are doing this, why we want to keep doing this, and slowly, over time, allow us to at least communicate to the young people of this country that sometimes it is a little bit of a fight. It should not be, but let them know that there are people here working on this for them.

It would be funny if it was not so sad.

We will move on a little bit to the topic that we have been talking about a lot in the Committee on Armed Services and also been talking about a lot in Congress; and, obviously, the President of the United States has been talking about this a great deal.

Notice the picture that I have next to me. The gentleman on my far right, on the gentleman's far left, is President George Bush II. And on my near right here is Mr. Chalabi, who was the main informant, the main intelligence gatherer for the United States of America in leading to the war in Iraq.

The reason why we are going to talk about this is because some people may be asking, what are two 30-somethings that primarily have been focused on long-term debt for the country, increase in the deficit, annual deficits that we have in this country, student loans and college debt for students, debt for the country, debt for students, job access, outsourcing, we have talked about a lot of these issues, why are we going to talk about the war?

I think, and I know the gentleman knows this, that there has been nothing that has damaged this country fiscally or with our political bank account more than the latest war in Iraq. I was against the war, as I am for full disclosure for the American people, for a lot of reasons that we are talking about today.

And I see that there are some young students that are up in the gallery now, so we actually have a live audience here. Why should they care about what is going on in Iraq?

Announcement By The Speaker Pro Tempore

Why should we talk about Mr. Chalabi? Why should we talk about his relationship to President Bush? Why should we talk about his relationship to Vice President Cheney?

This gentleman stood up in the gallery during the State of the Union address as a friend of the President of the United States; and now we see in the paper today, from CNN's Inside Politics, Condoleezza Rice is now downplaying the relationship that this administration had with Mr. Chalabi. And she says, we had a relationship with Mr. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress just like we have relationships with a number of Iraqi organizations devoted to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

That is not true. It is not just like every other relationship they had, because this gentleman was sitting in this gallery during the President's State of the Union address which, as we know, it is an honor to be recognized here in this Chamber, whether it is legally or illegally acknowledged. But he was acknowledged as a friend of the administration.

$400,000 a month.

Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman is passionate about this. I think your performance on our committee has been a passionate performance, and I think it is important for the young people who are watching it or the C-SPAN viewers who are watching this to understand at how much of a disadvantage the next generation is going to be because of the acts of today, the amount of credibility that we lost in the world, the amount of negotiating power that we have lost in the world; and I am going to give a couple of examples and tie this into something that we were talking about before a few weeks ago.

We were talking a lot about China stealing our manufacturing in the

United States of America, how we are losing the manufacturing base in this country, and the majority of these jobs and companies are moving to China, exploiting the labor and human rights and everything else. How does that tie into this?

Because of the political capital that we have been expending on Iraq, we cannot deal with a greater threat, which is North Korea, which has increased their nuclear arsenal by 400 percent in the last 3 years. So because we are so bogged down in the Middle East right now, we have to ask China to deal with North Korea for us, and therefore, we cannot play tough with China on manufacturing. So this has helped us not to be able to deal with the erosion of the manufacturing base. It is the same with the oil prices.

OPEC is now saying they are going to turn the spigots on. We are not sure. We will believe it when we see it, but we have to ask Saudi Arabia to help us with our problems in the Middle East and Iraq, and we cannot talk tough with Saudi Arabia for the gasoline prices. So we have put ourselves at a weak bargaining position with China, weak bargaining position with the Saudis to deal with the oil crisis and the gas crisis in this country.

I want the American people who work two jobs and deal with their grandparents and their parents and people are sick and they are sending their kids to school, who do not have time to digest all of this, and I want them to understand that we have made bad political moves, and we hire Presidents and hire Members of Congress to put us in good political positions.

I heard many Members on the other side talk about Thomas Jefferson. Well, we bought the Louisiana territory. That was a good political position. It put the country in a good position. NASA put the country in a good position. For us to just sit here and watch our country be put in a weak position, a weak bargaining position, a weak negotiating position, all in the process of pulling out the credit card and dropping $200 billion in the Middle East, which now we have to stay and win, no one's arguing that, we have to support our troops, and I know we both voted for the Defense authorization bill. So this is not pacifist. We do not want any war ever, and we are going to support the Defense spending in this country, the Defense appropriations. We both have voted for that.

All we are saying is bad decisions have been made and they have been made because we have been taking advice from a con man who has conned everybody for the last 25 or 30 years in the world, who was found guilty of 30-some counts in Jordan, fraud, embezzlement, has been running around the Middle East and running around Europe over the past years. Everyone knew the reputation of this man; and he just told this administration what they wanted to hear, and they bought it hook, line and sinker; and now we are stuck.

We will pay for the bus fare.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, and that intelligence was based on information that they were getting from Chalabi, who is a known criminal. I mean, you are taking the country to war on intelligence, none has been true yet. We repeatedly hear: Saddam's ties to 9/11, treated as liberators, the whole list, use the oil revenue, whole list. All of that intelligence was wasted on information that we were getting from this guy. That is what is frustrating to me.

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I think we need to add on to what my colleague just said, as we welcome our good friend from the great State of Alabama here with us, is that after 9/11, and we all have agreed that 9/11 was an intelligence failure. Everyone has agreed on that, regardless of party. So if you are in a position of power where you are about to go to war and you know that your intelligence apparatus has just failed the country completely, you would think that you would ask a million more questions. Not a hundred thousand, a million. And you would think you would be shaking the intelligence community left and right to try to get accurate information. Instead, we were relying on a con man to get the information that we wanted to hear.

So what I do not understand is why, after a major intelligence failure, you do not try to rectify that problem by having and assuring that you have good intelligence. Not to make a minor decision, but to go to war and to send 140,000 troops to war. Why are you not making sure we have good intelligence?

I think that is something that maybe in many ways Members of Congress did not ask enough questions, the media did not ask enough questions, that we were not confrontational enough as to what the Iraqi policy was going to be.

We have been talking here for a while, so I would like to yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my colleague.

The gentleman brought up General Eisenhower and spurred thoughts in my mind of the gentlemen of that day, of the Churchills and the Roosevelts and the Eisenhowers and the larger-than-life figures that participated in the greatest conflict. You just cannot help but to compare them to what the behavior is today. However, it just cannot be compared.

If we look at how Roosevelt handled himself and when we look at how Churchill not only stood up and gave his great Nation an enormous amount of confidence at a time when no one thought England would be able to stand tall, the big contrast I can recognize with Churchill and President Bush is in the preparation that Churchill gave and the leadership that London gave their people before anything was happening. This is going to be a long struggle, but in the end it will be our finest hour. We are not going to surrender. Churchill just kept saying, we are not going to surrender. If you take it, you are going to take it by us being knocked senseless onto the ground, was one of the great Churchill quotes. The preparation.

In this country, I think it was the exact opposite. We are going to be greeted as liberators. It is going to be great. Do not worry. It will be a drive-by war. We will use their oil. They are going to love us and hand us roses.

Yet when you look at the monumental figures of that era, who, like the gentleman said, kind of raised everybody's eyes up and tried to put the institutions in line with the values of the country, I really did not see that during this.

Mr. Speaker, I was just enjoying listening to the gentlemen talk. I want to clean up a couple of things that were mentioned. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) mentioned that now we want to make sure that our soldiers have the equipment that they need, we want to make sure that the vehicles are up-armored and they have the vests and the plates to go into the vests and everything else.

We have gotten so caught up in the fact that we want to get it to them, we forget to ask, you are telling me we went to war and we did not have our troops properly equipped? Lack of preparation.

In the Defense appropriations bill that we just passed out of the House, we reimbursed parents or whoever for people, parents who paid for vests for their kids. I mean, you have to be kidding me. We had to reimburse parents that paid for their protective vests for soldiers in Iraq.

The general that testified about the prison abuse said that there were a couple of problems, major problems. One, lack of training. One, lack of supervision. To me, after almost 2 years on the Committee on Armed Services and a layman, civilian, lack of training and lack of supervision to me means we do not have enough troops there. If you are not training them properly, you do not have enough people to train; and if you are not supervising them properly, you do not have enough people to supervise. I think that is basic common sense to say this group has not prepared us for this war.

One other thing I would like to say because some young people are probably sitting at home listening to this, remember as soon as President Clinton got in office, there were always investigations, investigating this, Travelgate, Nannygate, this gate and that gate. They were always investigating the man. Why? The House and the Senate were Republican. The White House was Democrat. We are now in a one- party rule system. The House is controlled by the Republicans, the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, the White House is controlled by Republicans. I am not saying that they are always wrong, and I am not saying that we are always right. All I am saying is when there is one-party rule, we cannot subpoena people out of this House because the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) from the Committee on Government Reform is not the chairman of the committee.

If he was the Chair of the committee, we could subpoena some of these people who wear the suits and bring them before committees in the House and have them sit and tell us what happened and why and make sure we are starting to hold people responsible for their actions.

That is just what I want to say to the American people, is you cannot have one party rule the whole government. It is unhealthy for the institutions; it is unhealthy for the country.

There is no balance right now. There is no one overseeing what is going on. We get fed a line from somebody like this, and no one can stand up and question it. That is not a good way to run your country. This country was founded on all the different aspects, the branches and everything else, in order to bring some balance to these institutions we have.

Mr. Speaker, I find it very interesting that the other side has taken this opportunity to talk about the Medicare prescription drug bill. Two provisions the Democrats

wanted to get in: one, reimport the prescriptions from Canada, drop the price in the United States of America and allow a free market competition; and, two, ask the Secretary of HHS to buy in bulk on behalf of the Medicare recipients, again dropping the prices. But the increased amounts of campaign contributions to this body has led to both of those provisions being absent.

The thing that Democrats are most offended about is not the cost. It is about the deceit. We were told $400 billion this program would cost. Actuaries were told not to release the real figures to Congress, and the real figures ended up being $140 billion more. That is the shame, and that is the sham.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for yielding me time, and I also thank the gentlewoman from the Buckeye State for her comments as well.

I am rising here, Mr. Speaker, to urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question. As the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) said, there are several amendments here that we wanted to get in to this that were not allowed.

One of the amendments obviously offered by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) was to extend unemployment benefits. We have thousands of workers in the State of Ohio who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and need help. These are people who are locked out, these are people who are unemployed, these are people who cannot afford to go back to a job that pays $6 an hour. We hear a lot about job creation, but the jobs that we are losing are $20 an hour with health care benefits. The jobs we are gaining are $6 an hour at Wal- Mart.

One of the amendments, the Ryan amendment, would request an authorization of such sums as necessary from 2004 to 2009 for on-the- job training opportunities for medical and safety occupations, police, firefighters, rescue personnel, paramedics, medical personnel. This money would go to the Governors. The Governors would be able to use 75 percent of it in a formula based on population, based on the need as well, with 20 percent of the money being discretionary, to go for first responders.

This would be an economic stimulus for local communities in many places like the State of Ohio that could use this economic stimulus. Many of the cities, municipalities, townships, and counties would be able to take this money, use it for training and be able to hire more and, therefore, provide a direct economic stimulus.

There is also another debate I think that is going on here, and I think it is a debate that the American people need to hear and need to participate in. Basically, after 9/11 there were two philosophies. One we are exercising now with the war in Iraq, over $200 billion being spent over there.

But there was another philosophy that did not get much hearing. There is also another idea that we had here, and that was take some of those billions of dollars that we have been spending in Iraq and invest that to batten down the hatches in the United States of America. More money for first responders, police, fire, Border Patrol; more money into the intelligence community; hire people who speak Farsi that can infiltrate some of these camps. I think it becomes a choice between hiring police, fire and military personnel in Iraq, or hiring police, fire and medical personnel here in the United States of America.

I think this would have been an opportunity for us to provide a direct economic stimulus and change course a little bit by investing here and protecting the civil defense, the homeland security. I think that would have been a better way to go.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon). This is truly a bipartisan effort, and I appreciate all of the help we have received. This is a county in my district which has been low on resources, as many counties have been, not only in the State of Ohio but across the country. There has been a reduction in money from the State level to the local county level, and this is an opportunity for the Federal Government to step in and help a community that needs our assistance.

I would like to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) who has been very helpful, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member. I would also like

to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) and Governor Bob Taft and the Director of the Department of Job and Family Services, Tom Hayes, who has been extremely patient through this process, as well as the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), and the local county commissioners in Portage County, Commissioners Smiles, Keiper and Frederick, and the State Senator, Kim Zurz, and the State Representative, Kathleen Chandler.

This was truly a bipartisan effort, an effort to help a local community that needs help. As the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) said, about 88 percent is being picked up, and that will assist the local community.

With that, I would like to again thank the gentleman for his help. I appreciate the Chair of the committee as well and all of the staff who have been tremendous. The staff of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) and the staff of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) and the staff of the committee has been great, and I thank them for all their help.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to state for the record that my vote yesterday on the amendment to H.R. 4200 offered by Susan Davis of California was intended to be a ``no'' vote. I oppose this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, if people were just watching this and just tuned in and they hear us talk about some of these issues, I mean we go back to our districts every week and we talk to people who are not engaged in the day-to-day debates that we have here.

You would think we are making this up, because it goes on and on and on and on, and you would think that the Democrats are just playing partisan politics. But if you just clearly look at the facts, you will find that we are not making this up, and you may come to understand as you listen to a lot of the special orders, you listen to the 1-minute speeches, you listen to the debate on the House floor, why some of us are so outraged at what is happening here.

With the veterans' issues that we are talking about and closing down of the facility in Brecksville, Ohio, which many of the veterans in my district go to for service; and they are moving it into downtown Cleveland into Wade Park. We are asked to support this move because the administration has told us that there will be no decline in the service, there will be more services. There will be more services; it will be better for everybody.

I hate to be the guy to spoil the party, but this administration does not have a very good track record on keeping their promises, and whether you go to Iraq, whether you go to their economic policy, the domestic policy, No Child Left Behind, promises to veterans, promises for Pell Grants, whatever it has been, they have not lived up to the promises they have made.

So why should the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the Congressman down in Mississippi, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Doyle), why should we take this administration at their word that they are going to take care of our veterans? Because they have not; they have not with our soldiers, they have not with our Reservists. And so we are here tonight, I think in part, to hold their feet to the fire and to question the kind of leadership that they are getting.

One or two points that I just want to make: The Secretary of Veterans Affairs has said that the budget that is coming out of this, that the budget, not that the President recommended, is $1.5 billion short, billion with a ``B'', short of what is needed. The veterans organizations have said that the President's request is $3 billion short of what they need.

Now, is the veterans organization too high and the Democrats too high? I do not think so, but at the very least, the administration should at least follow the lead of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who says $1.5 billion more to meet the needs.

For this administration to continue its shortsighted approach, along with all of its domestic policies, this one is what kills me, and especially because the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) has spent so much in the health care field in understanding the needs for investment.

There is a $50 million cut in the award-winning VA medical prosthetic research and development program. Now, here is an award-winning program that is developing prosthetics for amputees, the best around; and we

have soldiers in Iraq right now that are losing arms and legs as we speak, and we are cutting funding for the research and development of better prosthetics.

It continues, it continues, it continues; and it is just the shortsightedness that this administration has. To do it for young kids, to do it for the poor, to do it for the uninsured is shameful, but to do it to the veterans who have given us this system that we have here today, I think it is especially shameful.

I am glad to join you here tonight to continue this conversation.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield on that point, because this is an important point to make.

Everyone who in some way receives some kind of public assistance, whether it is the veterans, or No Child Left Behind, or people going to school, everyone, Medicare, all the social programs that we have been asked to make some kind of sacrifice. The only people who have not been asked to make any sacrifice at all are the wealthiest people in our society.

They have been asked to make no sacrifice at all, and these gentlemen were talking before we got up here, about an hour ago, and they said, quote, and I wrote it down, ``Republicans will not raise taxes.'' And I think there were two words left out of that. Republicans will not raise taxes, well, maybe three words, on the rich.

Absolutely.

If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, the ultimate irony of this whole deal, and this job provides a lot of opportunities to have some very great moments, very sentimental moments, and one I remember distinctly is when we walked into the Cannon caucus room and we were having a veterans' hearing for their budget. All the veteran organizations were there and filled this huge, beautiful room. They were in wheelchairs, on crutches, bent, amputees, just sacrifice written all over their face. Those are the veterans who have created and protected the system, the democratic and capitalistic system that we have right now and that allows people to create wealth for themselves.

The fundamental aspect of this system is to have a strong economic and democratic system which has been given to us by these veterans. And these people who are benefiting from this system have not been asked to sacrifice. I just wanted to make that point.

Well, I just wanted to say that that is a letter sent from the head of the Department of Defense, the Republican- controlled administration sent to this Congress saying that if you pass a benefit for the veterans, we will veto the bill. It is that clear. It is black and white.

I would be happy to yield.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is appropriate for us to talk about what the Democrats' plan is and what we would do. I think it is important not just to criticize, although there is plenty of room for criticism in this administration.

The Democratic budget that we want for veterans would increase the tax for those who make more than a million dollars a year, not all of it. As the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) said, they get $123,000 back from the Bush tax plan. We would say they would only get $100,000 back. They would have to give around $20,000 of their tax cut back.

Part of that money we would use, $2 billion of it, to restore the full survivor benefits to families of military retirees. $2.5 billion we would put in veterans health care. We would improve military housing for 50,000 military families.

So if anyone is at home asking, what is the Democratic plan, this is our plan: $2.5 billion for health care, 50,000 families for military housing, $2 billion to restore full survivor benefits. And our legislation, if we were controlling this Chamber, the other Chamber and possibly the White House, would permanently permit Reservists to buy military health care through the TRICARE program.

Many of the Reservists, almost 2,000 of them, and I hear often about the health care issues, our plan would allow them to buy permanently into the TRICARE program. We would give them pay raises, things the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) talked about, the combat pay, et cetera; our future veterans would be taken care of.

So the Democrats have a plan. Let the millionaire keep $100,000, we are going to take a few thousand away and invest it into our veterans and into the research and development for our amputees that will be coming back, so they have the best possible health care that the United States of America, the wealthiest superpower ever in the history of world, can at the very least take care of its veterans.