Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act.

Today, this House will consider landmark legislation to help our Nation's seniors afford their prescription medications. I am particularly pleased with the generous assistance this legislation provides for the low-income seniors in my district.

Those seniors with incomes below 135 percent of poverty (individuals with incomes under $12,123 and couples under $16,362) will be eligible for a prescription drug discount card that immediately applies $600 annually toward the purchase of their medicines and covers up to 90 percent of their prescription drug costs. Seniors with incomes between 135 and 150 percent of the federal poverty level ($12,123-$13,470 for individuals and

$16,632-$18,180 for couples) could ultimately have 85% of their drug costs covered.

Beginning in 2006, seniors without coverage would have the option to join a Medicare plan that requires a $35 monthly premium and would cut seniors' yearly drug costs roughly in half. For example, a senior without any drug coverage and monthly drug costs of $200 would save more than $1,700 each year. Seniors with no drug coverage and monthly drug costs of $800 would save nearly $5,900 on drug costs each year. In addition, seniors would be protected against high out-of-pockets costs with Medicare covering as much as 95% of drug costs over $3,600 each year.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation also provides a historic opportunity to help strengthen the rural health care delivery system with billions of dollars in additional Medicare payments. For far too long, Medicare has short-changed rural health care providers in my district, which threatens seniors' access to care. This legislation eliminates many of the disparities that exist between rural and urban physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers.

Finally, this bill includes important cost-containment provisions. These accounting safeguards will alert future Congresses and Presidents if the expenditures of the entire Medicare program exceed 45 percent of total Medicare spending so they can address the problem.

This may not be a perfect bill, but it is a good bill, and I urge my colleagues to support the Medicare conference report.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 253, which is a reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program, introduced by my colleagues Congressmen Doug Bereuter and Earl Blumenauer.

The legislation reauthorizes the National Flood Insurance Program and reforms it to ensure the availability of flood insurance while reducing the amount of money spent on frequently flooded properties.

H.R. 253 creates a pilot program to mitigate the severe repetitive loss properties in the National Flood Insurance Program and sets up an equitable process for the treatment of policyholders who refuse mitigation. This legislation also uses the existing Flood Mitigation Assistance Program to further mitigate repetitive claims properties.

H.R. 253 authorizes funds to be transferred from the National Flood Insurance Fund into the National Mitigation Fund for both the pilot program and the FMA program for purposes of mitigation.

Mr. Speaker, numerous communities in my district participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, including the community of North Platte, NE.

This community is surrounded by the North and South Platte rivers which merge together to form the Platte River east of North Platte.

The citizens in North Platte have been paying substantial premiums for flood insurance without experiencing the flood events that other communities encounter.

In fact, collectively they have paid over a $1 million in premiums each year, but collected a total of $26,000 in settlements.

While the citizens of North Platte are grateful the program exists in the event that the 100-year flood does come, many residents are upset with the skyrocketing premiums for flood insurance.

A $170,000 home in 1993 would have had a flood insurance premium of over $200.

In 2003, that same property is costing over $1,000 in flood insurance premiums.

Mr. Speaker, I believe this legislation will reduce the number of repetitive claims in areas that are frequently flooded, so communities like North Platte will not continue to subsidize those communities by paying higher premiums.

I ask that my colleagues support this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, as an original cosponsor of similar House legislation, I encourage my colleagues to support S. 1685, the Basic Pilot Extension Act of 2003. This important legislation would extend for five years the Basic Pilot Verification Program, which is a voluntary program that employers use in conjunction with the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Services (BCIS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to confirm employment eligibility in my home state of Nebraska, among others. This pilot, which started in November 1997, involves verification checks of the SSA and the BCIS databases of all newly hired employees regardless of citizenship. Unfortunately, the Basic Pilot program is scheduled to terminate on November 30th of this year.

The agricultural economy of Nebraska's Third District relies heavily on immigrant labor. Employers across my district have told me that they want to comply with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ aliens not eligible to work, and required employers to verify documents of new workers. However, a simple visual check of these documents by employers will not tell them if these are in fact counterfeit documents, and that this potential new hire is in fact an illegal alien.

I have heard from many business people in the Third District about their need for the Basic Pilot program. Employers need the appropriate tools to ensure that they are indeed hiring eligible workers, and S. 1685 would allow employers in all states to opt to participate in the program. By checking the new hire's documents against the BCIS and SSA databases, the Basic Pilot program allows employers to feel more confident about their new hire.

I thank my colleague, Representative Calvert, for his hard work on this issue in the House and I urge my colleagues to support S. 1685.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the House passed an energy bill, the first comprehensive energy bill that we have had in more than a decade. It is now being considered by the other body. I would like to talk about just one small part of the energy bill and that is the ethanol industry. Sometimes this is controversial. Many times people feel that this is simply a giveaway to the Midwest and particularly to farmers, but I would like to take another look at this.

It is true that the ethanol tax credit is 52 cents a gallon. In 2003, we produced 2.7 billion gallons of ethanol, so that amounts to a $1.4 billion tax incentive. Of course, that is a cost to the taxpayer. But that is not the end of the story. The ethanol industry increases the demand for corn by roughly 10 to 15 percent and as most people understand, when the demand goes up, it also drives the price up. What happens is that we, because of the ethanol industry, increase the price of corn by a minimum of five to 10 cents per bushel, and in 2002 it is estimated that the price of corn increased by roughly 40 to 50 cents per bushel. As prices rise, farm price supports decrease. For instance, if a bushel of corn brings $1.50 a bushel, the price support at $1.50 is 82 cents in the farm bill. If the price goes to $2.70, there is zero price support. As a result, what we have found is that the increase in price driven by ethanol decreases the cost of the farm bill by roughly $1 billion. As a matter of fact, higher commodity prices in 2002 reduced farm bill spending by roughly $3 billion along with the drought. In 2003, the farm bill is going to be reduced by roughly $6 billion from projected cost. That is a 25 to 30 percent less costly farm bill than what we had anticipated.

In addition, and this is something that is really important, ethanol is projected to lower gas prices by 6.6 cents per gallon based on 2002 prices. What that does, it translates into a $3.3 billion annual savings to consumers. On the one side, we have a $1.4 billion tax incentive which costs the taxpayers, but on the other side we have a $1 billion tax saving in the farm bill and we also have a $3.3 billion saving at the pump. So the net saving of the ethanol part of the farm bill and a part of the energy bill is roughly $3 billion.

In addition, ethanol reduces dependence on foreign oil, equal to about what we received from Iraq before the war; reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 12 to 19 percent; reduces carbon dioxide by 35 percent; provides 192,000 new jobs in the United States; improves the U.S. trade balance by $2 billion; increases net farm income by $4.5 billion annually; and it can be produced from corn stalks, rice straw, waste products and switchgrass, so it is not confined to the Midwest States. As a matter of fact, we have some ethanol plants being developed now in California. It also increases the octane in fuel because of higher combustion rates.

Then I would like to mention also the fact that it can be used in diesel fuel to increase energy efficiency. It can be used to produce fuel cells. And also it produces high protein livestock feed as a by- product.

The last thing I would like to mention is something that is very much misunderstood. We often hear people say, it takes more energy to produce ethanol than it yields. Actually for every BTU of fossil fuel used to produce ethanol, that is, to plant the corn, to till it, cultivate it, harvest it and process it, for every 1 BTU, British Thermal Unit, you get $1.389 BTUs of energy. In contrast, for gasoline for every BTU you get .808 BTUs, and for MTBE you get .675 BTUs of energy. You have a much higher yield.

You say, where does this come from? Basically, it comes from the fact that the corn absorbs the sun and this extra energy comes from the sun. It is very energy efficient, and we think it is going to be a tremendous benefit to the U.S. economy as we move forward and as we go from 2.7 billion gallons of ethanol to roughly 5 billion within the next few years.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) for introducing this resolution. John Wooden's coaching accomplishments have already been mentioned, and I do not need to go over those a whole lot; but I would just like to have people think for a minute how difficult it would be when there are over 200 Division I teams to be the top team, the one that came out on top in the national tournament 10 times, seven times in a row. Mathematically, that is almost impossible. So his win-loss record was amazing, 88 wins in a row. When you think of the home court advantage in basketball, to have won half of those away from home is remarkable.

But that is really not why I wanted to speak about John. As far as I am concerned, John Wooden is the greatest coach that I have known in any sport, in any era. And the reason I say this is not based on his wins and losses, but rather it is based on his philosophy of coaching, the way he did it and the fact that he was a consummate teacher.

His attention to detail was amazing. And it ranged from showing his players how to put their socks on. Now, that seems like a strange thing to do, but every year he would show them personally how to put on two pairs of socks so

they would not get blisters and would not get wrinkles. That is where it started, and then it went on to how to dribble, how to pass, how to shoot, how to bend your knees on a free-throw. So tremendous attention to detail. And then, of course, he went on to his pyramid for success, which was essentially the building blocks for success, which so many corporations and businesses have incorporated at the present time.

So, essentially, it was the base: the loyalty, perseverance, teamwork, integrity, and on up the line to what led to success. But one principle that influenced me more than any other issue in coaching was simply this: he said that he never talked about winning to his players. Now, that is amazing, a coach who had coached that long never mentioned the word winning, never talked about it. He quoted Cerventes, and Cerventes said this: ``The journey is more important than the end.'' And what he meant here was that the process, the thing that you do every day, is the important thing. Not the end result.

So how to dribble, shoot, pass. In coaching football, to block and tackle, maximum effort, unselfishness, teamwork, discipline. And doing it every day at every moment was the key to what he was all about. So his commitment to fundamentals and daily discipline and team chemistry and his caring for his players led to the wins, but that was not the important thing to him.

I guess now that I am out of coaching, I understand even better what he was talking about. Because it really is not the rings, it is not the trophies, it is not the championships that you remember. The thing that you really remember is the relationships, the personal growth of your players, their character development, their shared struggles, and sometimes the spiritual growth you see in those players.

Just a couple of weeks ago I pulled out one of John Wooden's tapes that he had made at age 92, and it was amazing the clarity and the attention to detail that he had at age 92. Certainly every bit as sharp as he was when he was 40 or 45. So this man has had a tremendous impact on a whole generation of coaches and players that has gone beyond what anybody else has ever done.

So I am pleased to just have a chance to say a word or two about him and certainly support the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3209) to amend the Reclamation Project Authorization Act of 1972 to clarify the acreage for which the North Loup division is authorized to provide irrigation water under the Missouri River Basin project.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3209 is a bill I introduced to clarify the amount of acreage for which the North Loup Division is authorized under the Missouri River Basin Project. This bill provides for a technical correction by inserting the word ``approximately'' on the amount of acreage authorized under the project.

Under current law, irrigators must cite the specific amount of irrigated acreage served under the North Loup project. Conflicting Federal and State statutes for reporting irrigable service areas, conversion of irrigated ground to right-of-ways, land conservation programs and habitat easements are causing ever-changing and misunderstood adjustments to irrigated acreage. This bill allows for more flexibility in determining the amount of irrigated acreage.

This is not a new concept and would bring consistency to the act, as well as to contracts between the irrigation districts and the United States. I urge my colleagues to support this noncontroversial bill.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1732) to amend the Reclamation Wastewater and Groundwater Study and Facilities Act to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to participate in the Williamson County, Texas, Water Recycling and Reuse Project, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1732, offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to participate in the design, planning and construction of facilities to reclaim and reuse water in Williamson County, Texas. Williamson County is one of the fastest growing counties in the State of Texas. The Texas Water Development Board has concluded that existing water wells are being overdrawn, and surface water supplies are not meeting current drinking water demands. This bill will allow the communities to stretch potable water resources by replacing drinking water with recycled water on parks, golf courses and school grounds.

This bill is a commonsense solution for communities that want to safeguard drinking water supplies for future generations. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter).

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 1066) to correct a technical error from Unit T-07 of the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include

extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, S. 1066 introduced by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison will remove 19 acres of private property that has been mistakenly included within the Coastal Barrier Resources System. An identical bill, H.R. 154, has been proposed by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul). I compliment him for his leadership on behalf of this measure.

Specifically, the Matagorda dunes subdivision in Matagorda, Texas, was placed into the system despite the fact that a full complement of infrastructure, including roads and electricity, existed prior to 1977 and that it exceeded the number of structures per acre rule that is required for inclusion under the act.

For more than 20 years, these homeowners were told they were not within the system and therefore eligible for both Federal flood insurance and State wind insurance. These policies have now been canceled, and it is essential that this mistake be corrected so that their property can be protected from any future flooding problems. It is difficult, if not impossible, to sell coastal property or obtain a home mortgage without access to Federal flood insurance.

During the hearing before the Committee on Resources on this legislation, the administration expressed strong support and a local county judge testified, ``A mistake was made 21 years ago that placed this little subdivision in CBRA. It does not matter who made the mistake, but now since the mistake has come to light, please help us fix it.''

Finally, the House version of this bill was unanimously approved by the Committee on Resources. I urge my colleagues to support Senate 1066. I again compliment the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) for representing his constituents in such an effective way.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1648) to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to convey certain water distribution systems of the Cachuma Project, California, to the Carpinteria Valley Water District and the Montecito Water District.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

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

This bill authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to transfer specific water distribution systems of the Cachuma Project of the Carpinteria Valley Water District and the Montecito Water District in Santa Barbara County, California.

While this transfer would only apply to land and facilities and would not affect the repayment obligations of the Federal Government, it will help simplify the operation and maintenance of the districts' water delivery systems and eliminate unnecessary paperwork. Both districts have worked through all Federal requirements and need only to complete the process with an act of Congress.

Transfers such as those included in this bill help shrink the size and budget of Federal Government and help our communities manage our water resources in a more efficient manner. I urge my colleagues to support this consensus bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentlewoman from California for her assistance through this process.

I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in 1983, the United States embassy in Beirut was bombed. Sixty-three were killed; 120 were wounded. In 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut. Three hundred troops, nearly all United States troops, were killed. In 1988, Pan Am 103 was bombed; 259 were killed. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed. Six killed, 1,000 injured. In 1996, the Khobar Towers was bombed. Nineteen U.S. soldiers killed, 240 injured. In 1998, the U.S. embassy in Kenya was bombed; 361 were killed, 5,000 injured. And in 2000, the USS Cole was bombed in Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 were injured.

In those seven attacks, more than 1,000 people were killed. This was double our losses in Afghanistan and Iraq at the present time which total roughly 435. Yet during those seven attacks and after those seven attacks, there was very little response from the United States. As a result of those attacks, we withdrew from Lebanon in 1983 and from Somalia in 1993. I believe that this conveyed a very clear message to those who believe in terrorism. The message was this, that when attacked consistently over time, the United States will back down, will lose its will, and, of course, these attacks then led up to 9/11.

Following the loss of more than 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, we finally took a stand. The overwhelming majority of us in this body gave the President the authority to move aggressively against terrorism. We knew that this was hazardous. Sometimes we get the impression that we did not really know what we were doing. Yet I for one, and I think many people here, assumed that there might be some biological and chemical attacks against our troops, that taking Iraq was going to cost at least thousands if not tens of thousands of lives. Yet the results were remarkable. We gained control of Afghanistan and Iraq in a few months, and we lost less than 500 troops. I would say that a military accomplishment of this kind is pretty much unprecedented in military annals.

We also knew that securing the peace is always difficult. After World War I, after World War II, Kosovo, it was not easy at all; and it took a long time, and there was loss of life. Yet statements emanating from the Congress that we should pull out, that we should bring the troops home, that this war was created to boost the President's numbers, reading letters from those who have suffered loss or are discouraged, stating there is no plan for reconstruction, all encourage terrorists to believe that if they persist that we will fold, that we will lack the will and the resolve to win the war.

To not see this through is to dishonor the memory of every soldier lost and to render meaningless their families' suffering. To not see this through will leave Iraq open to Saddam's return and a betrayal of Iraqis who have helped. I am sure this is one thing that they all fear. It happened after the Gulf War. Many Iraqis who extended themselves to help the United States and allied forces suffered retribution. I think in the back of their minds is the idea that maybe this will happen again. The only satisfactory solution is to win. To lose will invite ever-increasing terrorism, and I think most people in this Chamber understand that.

To achieve victory in the swiftest possible manner with the least loss of life, this country and this Congress needs to stand united. We did so for a period of time after 9/11. This was the most encouraging period of my short tenure here in Congress. Because what I saw was that party loyalties and personal ambitions were put aside. I think the overwhelming motivation for everyone in this body was to simply serve their country the best that we could. Unity of purpose and a collective will to win will prevail. Division and second-guessing and finger- pointing and politicization will only serve to prolong the struggle and cause further loss of life and suffering.

From my perspective, failure is not an option. I hope the Congress can pull together. The threat is as real today as it was on 9/11.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 2359, the Basic Pilot Extension Act of 2003, which passed the House Judiciary Committee on September 24, 2003. The Basic Pilot Verification Program is a voluntary program that employers use in conjunction with the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Services (BCIS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to confirm employment eligibility in my home State of Nebraska, among others. This pilot, which started in November 1997, involves verification checks of the SSA and the BCIS databases of all newly hired employees regardless of citizenship. Unfortunately, the Basic Pilot program is scheduled to terminate on November 30 of this year.

The agricultural economy of Nebraska's Third District relies heavily on immigrant labor. Employers across my district have told me

that they want to comply with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which made it unlawful for employers to knowlingly hire or employ aliens not eligible to work, and required employers to verify documents of new workers. However, a simply visual check of these documents by employers will not tell them if these are in fact counterfeit documents, and that this potential new hire is in fact an illegal alien.

I have heard from many business people in the Third District about their need for the Basic Pilot program. Employers need the appropriate tools to ensure that they are indeed hiring eligible workers. By checking the new hire's documents against the BCIS and SSA databases, the Basic Pilot program allows employers to feel more confident about their new hire.

H.R. 2359 will extend the Basic Pilot program for employers in Nebraska and all other states for five years. I thank my colleague, Representative Calvert, for introducing this much needed extension, and I urge all my colleagues to support H.R. 2359.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for shepherding this legislation through the committee in a truly bipartisan fashion. I think it is well-written and well-received by everyone concerned, so I would like to express my support for H.R. 3076.

H.R. 1, better known as No Child Left Behind, certainly raises the bar regarding teacher qualifications. And so to do this, we will need to improve our teacher training programs at the postsecondary level.

We are currently experiencing a teacher shortage crisis of tremendous magnitude across the country, especially in the areas of math, science, special ed, and bilingual language teachers. My daughter, actually, is an English-as-a-second-language teacher, and I realize how scarce these teachers are. This bill will especially improve teacher training in these underserved areas.

Another area of the legislation that really appeals to me is that it provides for some competitive grant programs to encourage innovation and reform in higher education. So often, in our teachers' colleges, we see things done the same way they were done 20 years ago, and so I think this is badly needed, to have some innovative creative

ideas. So these grants, I think, will serve us well.

So I think this is an excellent piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker. I endorse it wholeheartedly, as I think everyone on the Committee on Education and the Workforce does, and I thank the chairman for his efforts in this regard.

Mr. Speaker, I was privileged to hear British Prime Minister Tony Blair speak in this Chamber a few months ago, and one comment he made particularly caught my attention. He said, ``As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but in fact, it is transitory.'' I think what he was saying is that essentially nothing lasts forever, including great nations.

History teaches us that, most of the world's great powers are not overcome by external force, but rather disintegrate internally. And let us take a quick study of three such examples.

Rome, of course, 2,000 odd years ago, stood astride the then- civilized world and appeared to be invincible. Yet it fell from preeminence, and the reasons historians have given us, there was a general decline in morality, increasing corruption and instability in leadership, an increasing public addiction to ever more violent public spectacles, an increase in crime and prostitution, and a populace that had become more self-absorbed, apathetic, and unwilling to sacrifice for the common good.

Then, of course, the country that Tony Blair was referring to, Great Britain, had a colonial empire that dominated much of the world through

much of the 1800s, and, of course, that empire slowly began to crumble. The reasons that some have given for this demise was that Great Britain had lost the national resolve to maintain its territory, values that led to ascendancy were eroded, spiritual underpinnings were shifted at some point.

The third example would be the Soviet Union, one of two great super powers as recently as 20 years ago, and in a matter of months, Russian disintegrated before our eyes. Alexander Solzhenitsyn reflected on this fall when he observed that, ``Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall a number of older people offering the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia, men have forgotten God, that is why all of this has happened.''

And so, Marx and Lenin dismantled Russia's heritage and value system. Russia's foundation was broken, and it collapsed like a house of cards with nothing to sustain it.

These are just three examples. I think there are many others that history is replete with that show the declines of some great nations, again without any outside military intervention. I think some of the common themes that we begin to see are that in cases like these, citizens are less willing to sacrifice for others and for country, citizens become more self-absorbed, a greater desire for comfort, for the state to provide for their welfare, a weakening of commonly held values and a decline of spiritual commitment in those countries.

What does all this have to do with the United States and our present situation? I hope I am not overdrawing the case here, but I would have to say that right now we are certainly on top, we have the most powerful military, the strongest economy, the most stable government of any nation in the world and so it is easy to think, as Tony Blair mentioned, that we are invincible but also as he said, as Britain knows, all predominant power for a time seems invincible, but in fact it is transitory. I think that was a well-taken word of warning.

Over 36 years of coaching and dealing with young people, I saw some very disturbing signs. I am going to take some time this evening to develop the theme that I saw occurring before my very eyes over that 36-year period that I think certainly bode a sense of warning, at least as far as I am concerned. The young men that I worked with were more talented with each year, yet they showed more signs of stress, they had more personal struggles, and they had less moral clarity as the years went by.

This chart here to my left reflects at least one alarming trend. In 1960, which was about the time that I started working with young people, we had roughly 400,000 cases that were referred to the juvenile courts. In 1999, that figure was well over 1.6 million. I would say today in 2003, this is the most recent figures that we have, but I would imagine that by 2002, 2003, the caseload is much higher. That represents a 400 percent increase. I really do not care what figure you look at; you will find that the chart looks about like this for issues such as teen pregnancy, teenage murder, violence, drug and alcohol abuse involving teenagers and, of course, the divorce rate for seniors and all the other social pathology that we are so familiar with. I think there are several factors that contributed to these changes that we see here. I would say the first major factor is simply some of the things that have happened to our family structure in the United States. In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was 5 percent. Today it is right at 33 percent, a 600 percent increase. So roughly one out of three children coming into our Nation today have basically two strikes against them and in most cases will not have both a father and mother to care for them. Some will, but most will not.

In 1960, the great majority of children lived with both biological parents. Today nearly one-half grow up without both biological parents. Only 7 percent of today's families are traditional families as we would normally define it, with usually a father working full-time, a mother at home full-time or vice versa, but at least one parent being at home and one parent being the primary provider. This is according to the Fatherhood Initiative statistics.

So actually in many cases, and as a matter of fact in some cases, in most cases with our children, nobody is home after 3 p.m., and between 3 and 6 p.m. we find the greatest source of problems, of criminal activity and so on with our children, because no one is home. Parents today spend 40 percent less time with their children than they did a generation ago. The divorce rate, of course, has increased 300 percent since 1960 and 24 million children today live without their biological father. Fatherless children are more likely to be abused, have mental and emotional problems, abuse drugs and alcohol, commit suicide, commit a crime and be promiscuous.

I think this is graphically driven home when we realize what a greeting card company did a few years ago when they approached the prisoners in one of our Federal prisons. It was Mother's Day. They said, we'll give you prisoners a Mother's Day card free if you'll just simply send your mother a card and they had almost 100 percent participation. And so they thought that this was somewhat gratifying. They thought, well, when Father's Day comes around, we will do the same thing. They made the same offer with Father's Day cards and as you may suppose, maybe you would not suppose, there were no takers. That shows you the devastation, particularly in some of our disaffected population, that fatherlessness has caused and I think really is at the root of most of the social pathology that we see in front of us.

The foundation of our culture, the family, is certainly under assault and we have seen great changes over the last 30 to 40 years. Another major issue that has contributed to some of the problems that our young people are dealing with today is that the environment has changed. The environment that they live and move and have their being in is not the same as it was back in the 1940s and the 1950s and even the early part of the 1960s. In 1960, drug abuse was almost unheard of. I know in the area of the country that I lived in, I had heard the word marijuana, I had never seen any instances of it, had never heard of cocaine, methamphetamines, ecstacy and so on; and of course today those drugs are of somewhat epidemic proportion. Alcohol abuse involving underage drinking has exploded.

I would like to take a little time right now, Mr. Speaker, to develop this particular theme because so often we feel in the United States that the drug problem has to do with hard drugs, but by far the biggest drug problem that we are facing today with our young people is that of alcohol. A recent National Academy of Science study that was released, I believe 2 weeks ago, showed that alcohol kills 6.5 times more children than all other drugs combined. More than cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy and all of those drugs put together, alcohol kills 6.5 times more.

Underage drinking costs the U.S. $53 billion annually, 2\1/2\ times what it is going to cost us to rebuild Iraq. There are more than 3 million teenage alcoholics estimated in our country today. This is by far the biggest drug problem. The average age of first drink in our country is currently 12.8 years of age, less than 13 years of age; and the discouraging thing is that when young people drink, on the average they will consume almost twice as much alcohol per occurrence as an adult will. So young people on average tend to drink to get drunk and they often do. Twenty percent of our eighth graders drink regularly. Children who drink before age 15 are four times more likely to become alcoholics because of psychological and physiological immaturity. Alcohol impacts them much differently when they are 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 years old than it impacts them when they are 24, 25, or 26. And so there is a great increase in addiction.

The thing that I would really like to emphasize, Mr. Speaker, is this, that young people for the most part do not start their experimentation with illegal drugs by using marijuana, they do not start with cocaine, they do not start with methamphetamine. They start with alcohol. Therefore, if you really want to stop the abuse of hard drugs, the important thing to do is start with stopping the abuse of alcohol with underage drinkers.

Yet we have really pretty much ignored this whole problem because we spend more than 25 times as much money on curbing illegal hard drugs as we do on underage drinking. We spend a minimal amount discouraging young people from drinking as underaged young people. We spend hundreds of millions to fight drug production in Afghanistan and Colombia and around the world and a fraction of that money spent on curbing underage drinking would be more cost effective. It would dry up the demand. I think some type of a national advertising program, a national education program with a fairly large infusion of dollars at the Federal level is warranted. It would probably help us cure and clear up the drug problem more than anything else that we could do in this country.

Another issue that is certainly affecting our young people as they try to weave their way through the environment that they are placed in is the violence factor. As many people know, the United States is currently the most violent Nation in the world for young people ages 14 through 23, 24. The second-place country is not even close to us. We lead the world in homicide rates and suicide rates for young people.

Pornography has exploded. We have over 1 million porn sites on the Internet. Not 1,000. Not 100,000. We have 1 million porn sites currently on the Internet. That is unthinkable. I think when the Internet first began many years ago, no one would have assumed that this was even possible or probable. And here it is and so nine out of 10 children ages 9 through 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet. Again, that is nine out of 10 children who are ages 9 through 16 have viewed pornography. Much of that is hard core pornography, which really sears an impression into your mind that sometimes you really cannot get out of it and most of that viewing has been unintentional. It has been by accident.

We have corporations such as AT&T that have been involved in hard core pornography. At one time AT&T I think was the gold standard as far as how a large corporation should be run. Yet we find some of our most reputable companies involved in this industry which yields profits of 10 to $15 billion a year. And so the profit motive certainly supersedes any national interest that they might perceive. Such words as Barbie, Disney, ESPN, at one time my name, would pull up a porn site. And so a child who innocently wants to do research or look at some information regarding their hobby will oftimes pull up a porn site, and we do not seem to be able to do anything about it.

Many of us are dismayed by the way the FCC is regulating obscenity on the Nation's airwaves. They are the primary arbiter. They are the ones who are supposed to be the watchdog in this area. According to the Parents Television Council as of July 23, 2003, the FCC had not fined a single broadcast station in the United States for airing indecent material. Also they had not suspended a single license in the United States for airing indecent material. Not in the entire history of the FCC have they done anything like this, despite thousands of complaints. This is something, Mr. Speaker, that absolutely needs to change. Many of us in this body are attempting to cause the FCC to begin to take their responsibility seriously.

The Department of Justice has been focusing on eliminating child pornography but has done relatively little to enforce hard core Internet obscenity laws. Of course the Department of Justice has had their hands full, particularly since 9/11. We realize that they have a very heavy caseload. But we have really petitioned the Department of Justice to get more active. In the preceding 8 years prior to 2000, practically nothing was done to enforce obscenity laws in the Department of Justice, and we feel that we have not seen a whole lot of action in the last couple of years as well.

Another issue that has been a concern is that of the video game industry, eight- to 18-year-old children average spending 40 minutes per day playing video games. Again, 40 minutes a day on the average, ages 8 through 18. And video games, as most people know, have become increasingly violent. A recent video game that was displayed to Members of Congress showed stalking and killing activities that are used on training films in the military to teach people how to kill people. In this particular video game, if you were a good shot and you hit somebody in a vital spot, such as the head, blood spurted and everything happened; the reward was several frames of pornographic material.

This is, as far as I am concerned, off the charts. I do not think the average adult can even conceive of some of the things that our children are seeing in terms of video games. The average player of video games is 12 years of age. The Kentucky school shooter who was very effective and killed several of his classmates had never fired a gun prior to the day that he took a gun to school, but he had been very proficient in playing video games, and he had done a lot of firing and shooting in video games which translated apparently quite well into his activities on the school ground that day.

Of course much music, some television, many movies are graphic. The current content would have been impossible to present for public consumption 30 years ago or even 20 years ago. This is particularly disturbing to me because I have grandchildren ages 4 through 11. I am very concerned about the environment that they are moving into and the things that they are either advertently or inadvertently exposed to because it certainly has an impact on the way they see the world.

In addition to some of these issues, I would have to say that our value system has shifted considerably. Stephen Covey wrote the book ``Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'' several years ago, and the thing that he noted was this: he said that in the first 150 years of our country's history, success was primarily defined in terms of character traits. A successful person was honest, a successful person was loyal, a successful person was hard working, kind, et cetera, generous. And then he said something happened about 50, 60 years ago as he began to survey the literature of our Nation as it had to do with the issue of success, he noticed that success began to be defined more and more in terms of material possessions. A successful person was no longer one who had good character; a successful person was one who had money; a successful person was one who had power; a successful person was one who had celebrity. And so today we find that many people who are labeled successful are really not people of character. They are people who have material wealth, celebrity, publicity, and so on. So certainly our value system has switched a great deal. And we have seen this affect the business world, WorldCom, Enron. We have seen it in the press. We have seen it in athletics, in the church, and in politics; and so it is quite concerning as to what effect this has on our culture at the present time.

The predominant world view that I noticed today, Mr. Speaker, is something called post-modernism, and what this states, the view of the world being post-modernism, is that there are no moral absolutes. So murder is not absolutely wrong. It depends on the circumstance. There may be cases when this is justified. Adultery is not absolutely wrong. There may be circumstances in which it is okay. Everything is relative. It may be okay to dishonor one's father and one's mother. It may be okay to steal or to lie or to do all of the things that have been taboo in societies throughout history.

So we have a system of relativism that leaves our young people with nothing firm to hold on to at the present time; and particularly on the college campus we will find that post-modernism is currently almost 100 percent holding sway in terms of the minds of our young people.

So, Mr. Speaker, in view of the family breakdown, the decline in our culture and shifting values, it is an extremely difficult time for our children. We are asking them to weave their way through a minefield littered with alcohol and drug abuse, harmful video games, music, TV, movies, promiscuity games, violent behavior, and broken homes; and we are asking them to do this with little or no parental guidance in an ever-shifting value system.

So it is a very difficult time, and I think we need to pay very close attention to these changes in our family, to these changes in our environment. And as de Toqueville said, he made an observation that I thought was rather astute a couple hundred years ago. He

said: ``America is great because America is good,'' and what he was doing was he was referring to the large number of churches, civic clubs, youth groups, and individuals who reach out and help others. This was somewhat unique to the United States at that time that we would help those who were less able to help themselves, and we had all of the different groups who were reaching out, and he had not noticed that in Europe. He said this is really the key to America's greatness. So he was referring to the inherent decency of the American people. He was referring to the strong moral and spiritual underpinning of the Nation. He was referring to the basic American ethic: ``Do unto to others as you would have them do unto you.'' So I think the important thing to remember, that these observations were made 200 years ago, and I suppose the corollary to his observation would be this: if America is no longer good, then America may no longer be great.

I am not one who believes that we are not a great country, and I believe there is a tremendous reservoir of innate goodness in our country today. But by the same token, I think it is important to point out that some of the standards and some of the values that have made us great have slipped considerably.

So one may say, what can be done? This has been a discouraging picture that I have painted, and sometimes I even hesitate to do this, but I think it is something that we need to face, we need to talk about on this floor. So some of the things that can be done in this body and throughout our culture are as follows: number one, we can do some things to provide mentoring for some of our young children, and mentoring is simply providing an adult who cares about the lives of young persons. So many of our young kids today do not have anyone who cares for them unconditionally and to have someone who is not a father, not a mother, not a preacher, not a teacher, no one who has an ax to grind, is paid to do so, to have a person who is a mentor, who is an adult who cares enough about someone, to show up and say I care about you unconditionally, and whatever happens, I am here for you.

It is very powerful in the life of a young person. A mentor is one who affirms, who says I believe in you, I know you can do it. I think that this is something that you are capable of. I see great promise in you. And I saw that in athletics, that if they affirmed a young person, they ofttimes became that which they did not even know they could be; and on other hand if they did not affirm them, if they beat them down, if they are negative, which so many of our kids experience all the time, it would not be long before that player played down to that level, and before long he would quit.

And of course a mentor also provides a vision. So many of our young people simply have no vision of what they could be, that they could go on to college, that they could do something in electronics, that they have musical ability. So a mentor is one who guides them in those directions. Mentoring reduces dropout rates, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, violence. And the President has proposed $150 million annually over the next 3 years for mentoring initiatives. Actually, the funding will be about half of that, but it is still much better than we had in the past.

The National Mentoring Partnership says that roughly 18 million children in the United States today are badly in need of a mentor, and yet at the present time we have roughly 2 million who are being mentors. Roughly one out of every 10 has a mentor. So I think one thing that could greatly change the shape of our Nation and our future would be to provide a much more systematic mentoring program, and I think the President is behind that.

I think some legislation can help. The Internet Gambling Bill, H.R. 2143, is something that I think could be very beneficial. We have a great many young people, particularly college students, who are inundated with credit cards. And anymore all one has to do to build a huge gambling debt is to have a credit card and a computer. So we would like to shut this practice down because some kids run up a 10, 15, $20,000 gambling debt in a matter of days; and of course their future and their credit rating is ruined. So we feel that this would be an important bill. H.R. 669, Protect Children from Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003, sponsored by the gentleman from California (Mr. Baca), of which I am a cosponsor, prevents marketing extremely graphic violent video games to children. We think this would be a step in the right direction; but, again, we would worry about the courts declaring it unconstitutional. So I think we need a fundamental shift in court decisions regarding the first amendment.

I am not a constitutional expert and do not pretend to be so, but I would like to point out some court cases that have certainly shaped the course of our Nation's history and its future. In 1996 Congress passed the Communications Decency Act that made it illegal to send indecent material to children via the Internet; but in June of 1997, the Supreme Court overturned portions of the law and, get this, said in the opinion: ``Indecent material is protected by first amendment.'' So this was one of the first times, I believe, that the Supreme Court said that indecent material is okay. The first amendment gives one the ability to do that, and we are not going to stand in the way of people sending indecent material to children over the Internet.

That was a landmark case.

In 1996 also, the Child Pornography Prevention Act outlawed child pornography, including visual depictions that appeared to be of a minor. So the issue at hand was this: You cannot have an actual minor involved in the production of child pornography, but if you use computer-generated images, which you can not tell whether they are real or not real, then that type of child pornography is apparently okay, according to this particular Supreme Court decision.

In October 1998 the Children On-Line Protection Act was signed into law to prohibit the communication of harmful material to children on publicly accessible web sites. The Supreme Court's refusal to rule on the 1988 law prevented the law from being enacted, so we were not able to protect children who were involved in receiving harmful material on publicly accessible web sites.

The 106th Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act to require schools and libraries that receive Federal funds to use Internet filtering to protect minors from harmful material on the Internet. In May 2002 a Federal Court declared the law unconstitutional.

What we have here is free speech is protected for pornographers and, in some case pedophiles, while women and children are attacked. Roughly 80 to 90 percent of pedophiles and rapists report using pornography, oft times before they commit an event.

So, some people say, well, what is the big deal? Pornography is harmless. It does not really have any victim. Yet, if you think about it, we spend billions of dollars in this country on commercials, and if those commercials did not change behavior, if what you see and what you hear and what you read does not change your behavior, then we are spending billions of dollars unnecessarily. So, obviously, the pornography industry does have a tremendous impact on behavior and the environments that our young people exist in.

I would also point out that there have been some issues that have to do with prayer that are somewhat concerning in our schools. In 1962 the Supreme Court ruled the following prayer unconstitutional. This was the landmark decision. This was the particular prayer: ``Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on thee and we beg thy blessings upon us, our teachers and our country.'' It seemed relatively innocuous and relatively simple, but that prayer was ruled unconstitutional because of separation of church and state.

It would appear that many court rulings regarding separation of church and state have ranged far afield from the intent of our framers of the Constitution. The First Amendment states, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.''

Of course, most everyone realizes where that came from, the Constitution, was that this country was founded by people who were attempting to

escape from a religious state, the Church of England, so they did not want a government-sponsored religion which took over the country.

But I think that in the interpretations that we have seen in the courts, we have ranged far afield from what the Constitution actually intended. The framers of the Constitution were assumed to be hostile to expressions of faith in the recent interpretations of the court that we have seen.

Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the framers of the Constitution, said this: ``We have been assured, sir,'' and this is his quote, ``In the sacred writings, that except the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in the political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests. Our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down future ages. I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessings on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.''

What he was talking about was in this body, on this floor, he was saying we should have a prayer at the start of business every day. This is one of the framers of the Constitution. So at this point, both the House and the Senate begin their business daily with a prayer, and yet we have moved so far as a Nation away from what Franklin originally intended.

George Washington said this: ``The propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained.''

In assessing the writings of some of the Founding Fathers, David Barton, an historian, said this: ``Franklin had warned that forgetting God and imagining that we no longer needed his concurring aid would result in internal disputes, the decay of the Nation's prestige and reputation and a diminished national success. Washington had warned that if religious principles were excluded, the Nation's morality and political prosperity would suffer. Yet despite such clear words in cases beginning in 1962, the Supreme Court offered rulings which eventually divorced the Nation, its schools and its public affairs from more than three centuries of its heritage. America is now learning exponentially what both Washington and Franklin knew to be true. We are suffering in the very areas they predicted.''

I think it is important that the Founding Fathers really did not intend for the pendulum to swing as far as it has. I think that they obviously acknowledged the importance of issues of faith, and this was the foundation upon which the Nation was built.

There are some other decisions that I think are worth looking at. In 1992 a Supreme Court decision declared an invocation and benediction at a graduation ceremony constitutional, so a preacher, a rabbi, a Muslim cleric, cannot at a graduation exercise lead any type of prayer. That was decided in 1992.

The court also has held more recently a minute of silence in school is unconstitutional, so at the beginning of the classroom day it is not constitutional for a minute of silence to be held in which a child may choose to pray in his own way. He may look out the window, he may think about his history lesson, but it is just a minute of silence. There is no formal, organized prayer, no one is proselytizing, and yet that has become unconstitutional.

Then this, one of the strangest rulings that I heard of, was the court ruled that a student-led prayer at a football game was unconstitutional. This is not inside the school building, it is not a school administrator, it is not a teacher; this was a prayer that was chosen to be selected by the students, and a student was going to lead the prayer. Yet this was unconstitutional because the football players might have to listen to it and might be offended, I guess.

Of course, most recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the term ``under God'' from the Pledge of Allegiance, and that will now be heard by the Supreme Court, probably within the next few months, and it appears that those are there is a very strong probability that this may be a four-to-four deadlock, which means that the Ninth Circuit Court will be upheld and that will become the law of the land, at least for that part of the country.

Certainly I am not advocating here that teachers or administrators be allowed to proselytize in the schools. I do not think that would be appropriate. I do not think that is intended. But it does seem that we have come a long, long ways from where the framers of the Constitution originally intended us to go.

The Constitution is increasingly being interpreted as a ``living document.'' That sounds really good, does it not, because it is kind of progressive. It sounds like we are forward-thinking and the Constitution is not a dead piece of legislation, but it is currently alive and it is being changed and it is moving ahead.

Yet the important thing to realize is that the Constitution is often not interpreted as it was written, but rather as justices believe that it should be. Look at the legal decisions increasingly coming down, based not upon what the law states, but based upon the personal ideology of the jurists.

The Constitution is not based upon absolute principles, but rather the shifting sands of relativism. This philosophical bent of the Supreme Court justices and District Court justices determines the course of the Nation.

Over the last 20 or 30 years we have seen the Nation slowly but surely driven in certain directions that many people would believe is not what the framers of the Constitution intended. That, Mr. Speaker, is why the activities in the other body regarding the makeup of the courts and the court appointees is becoming such an important issue, because, within the next 1 or 2 or 3 years, the shape of the Supreme Court certainly will be determined, and, with it, the direction that our Nation proceeds over the next 15, 20, 30 years I think will largely be decided.

The willingness of Congress to focus upon the pernicious influences impacting our children, the willingness of the American people to demand that those profiteering at the expense of our culture and our young people be reined in, will largely shape the future of our Nation.

Terrorism is an ever-present threat. The economy is of concern. However, terrorism and economic distress will not prevail as long as our national character is sound. I would like to say that one more time. There is certainly no intent on my part to minimize the critical nature of terrorism, the crisis in the Middle East, the situation in Iraq, the difficulties with the economy, health care, Medicare, all of those types of things. Those are critical issues and they occupy almost 100 percent of this body's attention. But the reason I am here tonight is to try to point out the fact that we will handle all of those problems. None of those problems will overcome the United States if our character is sound, if our young people are nurtured in the right direction.

And, therefore, something that I think is very pernicious is slipping under the radar screen and something that this Congress, this body, and the American people need to address on a consistent manner. So this struggle may present the most critical crisis facing the United States today.

As Congress addresses important issues such as national defense, economy, health care, and so on, it is critical that we not lose sight of the fact that our Nation's survival is directly linked to the character of our people.

I would conclude by saying this our future rests with our young people and with the soundness of their character, their willingness to sacrifice, and their spiritual grounding. And I hope that we will give adequate attention to these issues some of which can be handled through legislation, some through expenditures of money, for instance, in the trying to prevent underage drinking, some in our attention to who goes on to the courts and who does not, but above all this really rests with the American people and with their willingness to persevere.

And I would like to echo what de Tocqueville said, ``America is great because America is good.'' And I think we need to maintain our vigilance that America continues to be good.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 22 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, October 21, 2003, at 9 a.m., for morning hour debates.

Mr. Chairman, I think everyone that I know in this body agonizes over an additional $87 billion supplemental spending bill. No one is real happy about it. While we may disagree on some of the details, I hope that we can agree on two things. Number one, we are engaged in a conflict that we cannot afford to lose. Whatever it takes to win needs to be done. And, number two, more than ever, we need to display a unity of purpose and a common resolve in this body that we may not have seen since 9/11.

Our opponents believe that persistent acts of terrorism will eventually prevail. They saw internal strife that resulted in failure in Vietnam. They saw us leave Beirut after a truck bomb destroyed a Marine barracks. They saw us relocate troops after the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. And, unfortunately, they also see partisanship, and they see discord, and they see finger-pointing on the floor of this House at a time when this country cannot afford that. And so they see us as a Nation which can be divided. If we pull out, if we back down, if we give up, if we fail to see this through, every soldier that has died in Iraq will have died in vain, and we will have sent a clear signal to terrorists everywhere that we are an easy target. We will have shown that the U.S. no longer has the national resolve demonstrated at Valley Forge, at Gettysburg, at The Argonne, and on D- Day. When the stakes are high and when the task is daunting, and this is, commitment, perseverance and unity of purpose eventually prevail. I urge approval of the supplemental, and I hope that this can be accomplished with a spirit of bipartisan cooperation that displays a united front to the world.