Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago I visited Israel, spent about 12 days there, and traveled the whole country. We started in the northern part, up around Caesaria Phillipi, went down to Elat on the Red Sea, went to Jerusalem, went to Tel Aviv,…
Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago I visited Israel, spent about 12 days there, and traveled the whole country. We started in the northern part, up around Caesaria Phillipi, went down to Elat on the Red Sea, went to Jerusalem, went to Tel Aviv, talked to the people, and had a very good feel for what actually is going on there.
So often on CODELs we are in a country for 24 hours, 36 hours, and we move on. And this was a little different. And so at the present time, obviously, people know that Israel is in a very difficult spot. Recently they had a war involving Hezbollah on their northern border. And the Hezbollah was located in Lebanon, southern part of it, and fired hundreds, if not thousands, of Katyusha missiles into Israel, particularly the northern part of Israel. And yet, as we visited that part of the country, it was almost untouched, it seemed. They had repaired, they had restored, and life was going on as usual only a couple, 3 weeks after the conflict had ended.
As many people know, Hamas is very powerful in Gaza and in the West Bank and has tremendous influence in the Palestinian areas. At the present time, there are rockets being fired by the Hamas people down in Gaza, into Israel.
So as we watch this and as we watch the continual conflict with the Palestinians and the desire for the Palestinians to have a unified state, unifying the West Bank, on the west bank of the Jordan and in the Gaza Strip down in the southwestern part of the country, you can see that Israel is under tremendous pressure.
Yet, the thing that was rather impressive was the staying power, the resolve, the willingness of the Israelis to try to see this through. I guess the lessons that I took away from this, and the concerns, were that, obviously, it is important that the United States have that same staying power, that same will to pull together, that same willingness to survive in the face of adversity.
Because even though we are protected by two great oceans, the world has shrunk. Today we are not as secure as we once were. We face a true global conflict over the horizon. Many of the things that we observed in Israel, I think, apply to us, even though sometimes we are not aware of it.
Tony Blair made an interesting observation here recently. He stated that peace in the Middle East will be hard to come by unless Israel and the Palestinians and Hamas and Hezbollah can somehow resolve their differences. I believe that is very true.
Our focus is on Iraq here in the United States, sometimes on Afghanistan. But at the heart of much of the conflict and much of the turmoil in the Middle East is the conflict that involves terrorist organizations and Israel. I am not here to be partisan and take Israel's side versus another nation's side. I am simply pointing these issues out that I think are very important.
The things that I mentioned that particularly impressed me about the Israelis were, number one, a willingness to persevere in the face of great adversity, and people realize what the terrorists are attempting to do. But also not far away is Iran, and the Iranian president has basically said that he would like to destroy Israel, and everyone knows that at the present time it does appear that Iran is trying to build nuclear capabilities. This is a very tenuous situation as far as Israel is concerned. Despite these threats, as I mentioned, Israel seems to be staying the course, seems to have great resolve, and I would hope that we would have the same resolve in our country in terms of persevering in the face of adversity.
The second thing that I took away from that trip to Israel that I think is important, that may have some applicability to our situation here in the United States, is a sense on the part of the Israelis of having great unity of purpose, a willingness to pull together, a willingness to avoid all fragmentation. I guess when your back is to the wall and you are not very big, you realize that unity of purpose is critical. So we certainly detected that.
I guess I can relate a little bit to my previous experience in the athletic arena in regard to the importance of unity of purpose. A team of great athletes which was polarized and which was divided was not able to accomplish a great deal; and yet a team with less talent which had unity of purpose would usually prevail over a superior
team physically that was divided almost every time.
So the analogy that I would like to draw at this present time are some things that I have observed, as I leave this body, and this has to do really with the recent election. We certainly experienced a very contentious election. We saw a great deal of partisanship; accusations were numerous and sometimes very destructive. There were deep divisions that were very apparent between the two parties.
The general public, at least the public that I dealt with in rural and central parts of America, watched the acrimony and the name-calling with a great deal of dismay and sometimes disgust. And to a significant degree, I believe, the political process and Congress in particular is viewed with a great deal of mistrust and skepticism at the present time. At the root of that, I think, was some of the dialogue that they saw occur in the last several months.
It seems to me, as I talked to my constituents, and people around the country, that the public is counting on us to lead, to unite, to serve the best interests of the country, rather than to point fingers and to seek to destroy the opposition. I think that from this election some lessons can be drawn. Which way this Congress goes, I am not certain, but I at least have some wishes, I have some desires, which I will try to convey.
I guess the majority in the House and the Senate now has changed. It definitely has. This presents two opportunities: number one, an opportunity for the new majority to pay back those who were in the majority for either real or perceived slights and offenses. But the second approach can be something that I think would be more constructive, is a chance to change the political climate, to foster a more cooperative governing style and certainly something that would restore a good deal of confidence on the part of the American people.
I think there are three major factors that people continually point to in regard to the last election, and the two, the first two, have been given preeminence.
First of all, Iraq, the conflict over there, the fact that many Americans have grown weary of it; many Americans have decided that we are on the wrong course. To be honest about it, I don't think that the Congress has a tremendous amount of control over what is happening in Iraq. We have some. We can control funding, and we can make comments here, but we really aren't the generals on the ground. So that really may be a little bit out of our element to some degree.
The second area is the area of ethics, and the fact that many people were very upset with corrupt practices that had occurred on the part of a small number of people but still a number of our Members, and that this is something that Congress definitely does have directly in its purview. We did some reforms, but not enough, I don't believe, in the last few months. And I believe that Congress, Members of Congress, members of the Senate, have to be above reproach. As Joe Paterno one time said, we cannot only be fair; we have to appear to be fair. We cannot have the perception even of wrong-doing.
As I sat in meeting after meeting after meeting over 6 years, I can't really remember anyone getting up and really addressing the issue of ethics and how important this is in preserving the trust of the American people. It is something that this body obviously has to do a better job with, and I hope that it will become a major priority here.
Then the third thing, which many of the pundits have not referred to very often, has simply been the issue of partisan bickering, which I think would serve us very well to get over to some degree, and it will be interesting to see how that develops as time goes on.
The most hopeful time that I had during my 6 years in Congress was also maybe the worst time, and that was the 3 or 4 months right after 9/11, and almost everyone here can remember those times. We can remember the horror that we felt as we saw the Pentagon destroyed, the Twin Towers go down, the plane crash over Pennsylvania, and the fact that we realized all of a sudden that as a Nation we were vulnerable. That was a terrible time, and there was a lot of rebuilding to do.
At the same time, it was a very hopeful time, because, for 3 months, maybe 4 months, here in this Chamber and over in the Senate, we saw Congress work together, pull together to display a unity of purpose that I had not seen before or since. It showed what we were capable of doing as a body, as a unified organization.
So, as time goes by and as that memory of 9/11 begins to fade, it is easy to begin to become complacent again and decide that the most important thing is party supremacy.
So I would hope that people would realize that even though we have not been attacked for the last 5 years, that attack is still on the horizon; that this is still a world that is very, very combustible at the present time. We really do need to pull together in a way that we have not done for the last 5 years.
Cervantes once said something that was rather important to me in my outlook on life. He said, ``The journey is more important than the end.'' A very brief statement. He said, ``The journey is more important than the end.''
What he was saying is that the process that we go through, the way we do things, how we do things, why we do things, is really more important than the end result. Sometimes that is easy to say, but it is really hard to live with, because losing an election is very difficult. I have experienced that. Losing a football game is very difficult. Losing a business is very difficult.
But what he was saying is, you know, the process is more important than all of that. The process is more important than whether you win or whether you lose. You do things in a certain way, and you do them every time, and in the long run, that will be the most important thing.
That is why I point to the fact that doing things the right way here and unity of purpose is going to be very important. This week there will be a big football game; Ohio State is going to play Michigan. One team will prevail. They are both undefeated. I don't know which team is going to win.
But I do know this: The deciding factor will probably be something that was overlooked in the preparation, something that has been laying there for the last 9 or 10 weeks unaddressed.
It may be a fumble. The back doesn't carry the ball high and tight. He flags the ball, something that should have been addressed. It may be an extra point where a guy isn't stepping with his right foot. And all of a sudden, he gets blown off the ball, and somebody blocks an extra point or somebody blocks a punt. It may be fatigue in the fourth quarter; conditioning that wasn't undertaken that should have been done.
Often, that which is ignored which does not seem to be very important or very apparent all of a sudden, in a crisis, becomes critical. That is the way it is with our country at the present time. I feel that there is something that we really are not paying adequate attention to. It is like how you carry the football. It is like blocking. It is like punt protection. Those kinds of things that are little don't seem to make a lot of difference, but all of sudden it jumps up and bites you.
The greatest threat facing the United States as I see it at the present time is something that we need to pay attention to, and that is our young people, because young people are the future.
There was a study that was released today by America's Promise, the organization that was headed up for many years by Colin Powell, still very active, and his wife. They did a research report which released some information that I thought was very revealing. It said, there are really five things that a young person needs to have to grow up and be productive and to be healthy and to help make this country work.
They said, these five promises are: number one, caring adults in that young person's life, and 40 percent of our young people indicated at the present time that they either don't have any or don't have enough. One out of five young people indicate that they do not have a single caring adult in their life, somebody that really cares for them as they are.
Number two, a safe place and a constructive use of time. And a tremendous number of our kids go home to homes that are not safe because of abuse. They live in neighborhoods that, because of gangs or violence or whatever, are not safe. Again, that is a major problem: a healthy start and
healthy development. Many of our young people grow up without adequate medical care, medical attention, and as a result, they don't in the first 3 or 4 or 5 years of life have an even start, and this, again, is a tremendous handicap.
Effective education; 25 percent of our young people don't complete high school. Many of them who do complete high school are not adequately prepared for the world of work, and we are falling behind in many areas internationally in terms of our education.
Then, opportunity to serve other people, to give something of themselves. So the interesting thrust of this whole research study, it was interesting, indicated that 31 percent of our children have either four or five of these essential ingredients, and the conclusion of the study is that these 31 percent will be pretty well prepared.
These 31 percent will do pretty well with the rest of their lives. But then they said, you know, 48 percent have only two or three of these factors, and they have a chance, but they are kind of on the bubble.
If you only have two or three of those five ingredients going in your life, you are somewhat crippled, and you may be fortunate and you may make it, but you may be less than fortunate and you may not make it.
Then the critical thing was, they said 21 percent have only one of those factors, or they have zero, so 21 percent, one out of every five, of our children is at tremendous risk of not being a productive adult, of having a life that is certainly not what it could be. So it is important that we focus on this and understand how important this is. One in 12 of our young people today attempts suicide. So there is a certain desperation out there.
I would like to now turn to something that Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said on this floor about 3 years ago, which I think is somewhat germane, that relates to what I have been talking about with our young people, with our divisions in Congress and so on. He said, ``As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but in fact it is transient.'' So what he was saying is that every great nation for a period of time has assumed that it was going to live forever, that things were not going to change, that it would be preeminent forever, and then eventually realized that this power that they had, this aura of invincibility, all of a sudden was not there anymore. So I think that there is no question as we look at history that what he said is very true.
I would like to just take a quick cursory look at three nations that certainly would have fit that category he was talking about, nations that were invincible at the time. Certainly Rome 2,000 years ago ruled the entire civilized world, appeared to be invincible, but eventually fell from preeminence. The reasons historians have given that they fell were, number one, a general decline in morality; an increase in corruption and instability in leadership; an increasing public addiction to ever-more-violent public spectacles; an increase in crime and prostitution; and above all, a population that became more self- absorbed, apathetic and unwilling to sacrifice for the common good.
Does that fit any of our parameters here? I don't know, but it certainly is something we need to be aware of and we need to think about to some degree.
Great Britain 150 years ago dominated the world, had a colonial empire that dominated the world from the late 1600s through much of the 1800s, yet this British Empire eventually slowly crumbled. The reasons given by historians are as follows: Number one, they lost the national resolve to maintain their territory. It takes a lot of energy and commitment to maintain far-flung colonies around the world. Next, values that led to ascendency were eroded. The integrity, the character of the people, somehow was no longer what it once had been. Spiritual underpinnings began to shift. Some the spiritual values were no longer there.
Russia, 20 years ago one of the great nations of the world, one of the two superpowers at that time, in a matter of months disintegrated before our eyes. Alexander Solzhenitzen reflected on this fall when he observed this. He said, ``Over a half century ago while I was still a child, I recall a number of older people offered the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia.'' Then he quotes. ``Men have forgotten God. That is why all of this has happened.'' That is what he found many people in Russia saying. Marx and Lenin had dismantled Russia's religious heritage, values had fallen, Russia's foundation was broken, and eventually it collapsed like a house of cards with nothing to sustain it.
So if you look at these three nations, which I just picked out randomly, there are really some common themes of historical collapse. Number one, citizens are less willing to sacrifice for other people and for their country; number two, citizens become more self-absorbed, they have a greater desire for the state to take care of them; number three, a weakening of commonly held values; and number four, the decline of spiritual commitment.
I think there are some warnings here, some things we might think about, some things that may be applicable to our country and to this body here.
We currently have the most powerful military, the strongest economy, the most stable government of any nation in the world, and so it is easy at times to think that we are invincible, that this will go on forever. But as Tony Blair stated, ``As Britain knows, all predominant power for a time seems invincible, but in fact it is transient.''
I think it is our job here in this body and in this country to see to it that it doesn't become transient, at least not real soon; that we are able to preserve the integrity and identity of our country that has been so important.
In over 36 years of coaching, I witnessed firsthand some trends that were concerning to me. I noticed over that 36 years that the young men who came into the program became, over time, more troubled. They were people who showed more stress. They had less moral clarity as time passed.
When I started coaching in 1962, I think most of the players I dealt with knew that it was wrong to tell a lie. They knew that stealing something was wrong; it was just something that was a given. And yet, as time goes on, we ran into something called postmodernism, the idea that everything is relative, there are no moral absolutes. As a result, if you can get away with something, it may be okay.
That has become a rather pervasive theme in our country and particularly in our institutions of higher education, the idea of postmodernism. As a result, I saw young men who were a little more troubled, a little less stable, and I think there are really two major factors behind this.
First of all, family stability has certainly eroded. I saw that because when I first recruited players and went into their homes in the 1960s and the early 1970s, it was rather rare to see a young person who did not have both parents, and if you saw somebody with only one parent, it was usually because one parent or the other was deceased. But as time went on and as I wrapped up my coaching career in the late 1990s, roughly one-half of the young people that we were dealing with had grown up without both biological parents. One parent or other had simply taken off, a divorce or something had occurred; so that certainly left some tremendous scars.
In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was 5 percent. Today, it is around 36 percent. About one out of every three children is born outside of marriage. Less than a quarter of families with children under the age of 6 have a parent staying home with them full-time. One- third of all school-age children come home to an empty house for at least part of the week, and the hours between 3 and 6 p.m., of course, are the greatest hours of risk for young children.
Then, the last thing I will mention here, 24 million children in the United States live without their real father. So being fatherless is a huge problem in our country today, and those young people who are fatherless are two to three more times likely to be abused, have emotional behavior problems, abuse drugs and alcohol, commit a crime and so on.
There is a greeting card company that went to a prison on Mother's Day and offered to give free greeting cards to every inmate who would want one to send to his mother. They had almost 100 percent participation. Almost every
inmate of that prison decided that they wanted to send a Mother's Day card to their mother.
They had so much success, the greeting card company came back on Father's Day and they made the same offer. They had practically zero participation.
You say, well, what in the world happened here? The thing was that the great majority, almost all of the men in that prison, did not have a father. Their father had simply abandoned them, probably early in life, and as a result they were not interested at all in sending them a card.
Certainly the family structure has changed in our country, and I think we have to pay attention to that. We have to buttress it as much as we can. We can't legislate a lot of these things, but we can certainly attempt to do something about it.
The second thing that I will address, and this will be the last thing I will talk about, is the fact that the environment that our young people are now growing up in has certainly changed as well. The family, the launching pad, has changed, has become less stable, and the environment into which we are thrusting our young people has certainly become more difficult, has become more challenging, has become more dangerous, and, as a result, we have seen some major changes.
One thing that I was very proud to see this House address yesterday was the matter of underage drinking. This has become a huge problem in our Nation, and we did pass the STOP bill yesterday. I don't know if we will get if done in the Senate or not. I hope we will. It simply made an attempt to do something about the ravages of underage drinking. I will just present a few interesting details regarding underage drinking.
A recent National Academy of Sciences study showed that alcohol kills six-and-a-half times more children than all other drugs combined. So if you look at cocaine, if you look at heroin, marijuana and on and on, and you combine all of those, alcohol kills six-and-a-half times more children, more than 4,000 a year, which is a huge number. It costs the United States $53 billion annually. There are currently 3 million teenage alcoholics. So it is by far the biggest drug problem we have.
The average age for the first drink of a young person who decides to use alcohol before age 21 is 12.8 years of age. When you start using alcohol that young, that early in your life, it makes a huge difference because of your psychological and your physiological immaturity. A young person who starts drinking before age 15 is five times more likely to become an alcoholic than one who waits until they are 21 years of age.
Anyway, this body has done something about this, not probably enough, but at least it is a good start, and I was proud to see that happen yesterday.
Another drug that is particularly pernicious and is spreading like wildfire across the country is methamphetamine. Many places will find that the rates of use of heroin and cocaine are going down rather dramatically, and the reason for that is methamphetamine is moving in.
Methamphetamine is cheaper and methamphetamine is much more addictive, so it is sweeping across the country. It started in California and has slowly moved across, and now there is a pocket up in the northeastern part of the country where we don't see much of it, but through the Midwest, through the South, through most of the rest of the country, it has become pretty much a tidal wave. So we have been very concerned about this.
We find that in Nebraska roughly 22,000 people, according to a recent report, are addicted in a State of only 1.7 million. The average meth addict will cost society about $50,000 a year, so in Nebraska it is about a $1 billion a year problem, and nationally it is huge. It is eating up a huge amount of our money at the present time.
So we did again make some attempt to address that here, the Combat Meth Act was important, and I think maybe the most important part of that bill was that we did something to try to regulate sudafedrine, which absolutely is necessary in order to produce methamphetamine.
There are only about six or seven countries in the world that produce sudafedrine, and so what we did in that bill was, we said those countries that produce sudafedrine and ship it to other countries will need to give the United States invoices of where those shipments of sudafedrine are going, which enables us then to track the sudafedrine to the ``superlabs,'' which are mostly in Mexico; and we think that is the most helpful way we have of getting at some of those superlabs that are shipping about 80 to 90 percent of the methamphetamine into the United States.
These are some things that have been done.
Of course, we realize that we have a huge problem with pornography and some of video games that are affecting our young people and so on. I will not try to outline all of these, but I just want to mention the fact that I believe that it is important that we, as a body, as a Congress, pay attention to what is going on with our young people, because if we don't, if we fail to address those issues, it is a little bit like a football team ignoring something that eventually will catch up with you.
As Tony Blair mentioned, ``The long-term well-being of a nation is served well only when you pay attention to the next generation.''
And we have a lot of warning signs out there that we are beginning to slip, that we have not paid adequate attention, that the next generation coming up may not be able to carry the ball, so to speak. So I hope that that will be a major concern and a major thrust in this body as we move forward.
It has been a pleasure for me to be here for the last 6 years. A lot of great friends, both sides of the aisle. It has been very challenging at times, and I see great potential. I do hope that we will pull together and hope that we will serve the Nation as best we can as time moves forward.
