Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman and also the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner), the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their work on this bill.

I would like to remind the gentleman who just spoke that frequently what is authorized and what is appropriated is not the same. I certainly share many of his sentiments, but I do believe that H.R. 2211 is an important bill because I spent 5 years teaching in a teachers college, 3 years when I was a young man in my twenties, and 2 years more recently at an unspecified age. And I was often struck by the disconnect between the theory of teaching presented in the teachers college and the practical aspects of teaching in the classroom. As a result, because of this disconnect, we find a lot of young teachers going into the classroom unprepared and they leave early, and this is very expensive to the whole system.

So H.R. 2211 requires teachers colleges to work together with school districts so education theory and actual classroom teaching experience are aligned. I think this is critical because so often what happens is the teachers college kind of drifts off into a never-never-land of theory and they are really not rooted in actual experience. So I think this is a critical change. And I think this will encourage higher retention rates.

In addition, as has been pointed out previously, H.R. 2211 ensures that teacher preparation is thorough and that teachers have sufficient knowledge and skills to truly meet the highly qualified standards set forth in No Child Left Behind. Again, my experience has been that too often teachers have not adequately been assessed in terms of their knowledge, their skill; and mediocrity has often been the norm, and that is tragic in a profession as important as this. So H.R. 2211 raises the bar for teacher preparation. I think it is a good bill, and I urge its support; and I thank those who have worked so hard to bring it to fruition.

Mr. Speaker, rural health care is struggling. The hospitals are closing and many doctors are leaving. If you are in a small community and the doctor leaves or the hospital closes, the whole community begins to unravel. H.R. 1 addresses the troubles that we see currently in rural health care. Number one, it lowers the labor share of the wage index for rural hospitals. This allows them to be more competitive with urban areas in terms of salary scale.

Number two, H.R. 1 increases Medicare reimbursement for rural doctors. Sixty percent of the patient load in my district and many other rural districts are Medicare patients. Doctors simply cannot afford to treat Medicare patient loads of this size because on many Medicare patients they lose money. As a result, they cut back Medicare patients or sometimes leave the area.

Thirdly, H.R. 1 provides a full and permanent equalization of Medicare payments to rural hospitals. An appendectomy is not cheaper in a small hospital than in a large urban hospital. In some cases it is actually more expensive. Also, H.R. 1 provides additional home health care payments and provides provision for rural ambulance.

Mr. Speaker, the reason I want to come to the floor tonight is simply to thank the gentleman from Louisiana for all that he has done for rural health care. This is probably, as far as I am concerned, the most important part of the bill. I would also like to say I represent a rural area. Many retirees in my area live on fixed incomes. Most of these people are making 15, $20,000 a year. Most of them are spending 30, 40, 50 percent of their income on prescription drugs. And so the number one concern that I see in rural America is the prescription drug bill. This bill offers considerable help to these people.

Again, I would like to thank the gentleman from Louisiana, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) and also the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle). I urge the passage of H.R. 1.

Mr. Speaker, On July 1, 2003, two organizations deeply rooted in Nebraska will join hands to form a new organization dedicated to caring for people with developmental disabilities. I rise today to recognize and commend the beginning of this new organization--Mosaic.

Bethphage, founded in 1913 in Axtell, Nebraska, which is located in my congressional district, and Martin Luther Home Society, founded in 1925 in Sterling, Nebraska, is my colleague from Nebraska's, Mr. Bereuter's congressional district, bring 168 years of experience to the field of developmental disabilities. The consolidation of the two organizations will give Mosaic secure financial strength, fiscally responsible stewardship and diverse professional choices as it works to make life better for people with disabilities.

Mosaic will serve approximately 3,700 people in 16 states and Great Britain, and will employ more than 5,100 direct support professional, regional management and home office staff. Mosaic will have two corporate offices, both of which will be located in Nebraska.

Finally, Mosaic will provide a full range of supports and advocacy for people with disabilities from early intervention through elderly care. Services will include residential group home, host home, in-home supports, behavioral skills, and spiritual development.

As Mosaic officially begins operations on July 1, 2003, I want to congratulate this exceptional organization for their visionary leadership in the field of developmental disabilities. I feel I can speak for many Nebraskans when I say that I am proud that Mosaic calls Nebraska home.

Mr. Speaker, I represent a rural area, 64,000 square miles, 68 counties, and it goes without saying it is a long ways between towns. In an area like this, veterans ofttimes have a hard time accessing healthcare. Let me give a real example. Let us say a veteran lives in Ogalala, Nebraska, which is in the western part of the State but is by no means the most remote part of the State, and let us say that individual has to go to Omaha, Nebraska to a VA hospital which is 350 miles away, and he may just be going for a routine blood test, diabetes checkup, blood pressure checkup, or any type of simple checkup of that nature. Ofttimes when he makes an appointment, the appointment will not be fulfilled for 6 months. So he waits for 6 months, and that veteran at that time then gets up at 4 a.m. and leaves for North Platte, Nebraska, which is 50 miles away. After he gets to North Platte, he boards a van to go to Grand Island, Nebraska, where he spends the night and that is another 140 miles, and early the next day he gets on another van, goes to the VA hospital in Omaha, a 3-hour trip. He completes the test that day and then he returns to Grand Island for the night, and the next day he takes the van from Grand Island to North Platte, another 140 miles, and then he gets a ride to Ogalala, another 50 miles. So he has waited 6 months, he has had a 3- day trip to go 660 miles for routine tests. This is ridiculous.

Had the veteran driven his own car or had somebody drive his own car, he still would have had an 11-hour trip and it would have taken at least 2 days, if not 3.

Let me give an urban example. Let us say that someone, a veteran with the same health problem lived in Richmond, Virginia. It would be the same as if that individual from Richmond, Virginia drove to New York City and back for basic medical care. Those same tests that were performed in Omaha, Nebraska at the VA hospital could have been done at the local hospital in a matter of three or four blocks away or maybe a couple of minutes away from that veteran, and sometimes because of their age some of our World War II veterans are having a hard time traveling today, maybe a disability, maybe the weather, a blizzard or a snowstorm, and the veteran simply does not get the healthcare at all. He does not even try because he is not able to make the trip.

So that is why I have introduced H.R. 2973, the Rural Veterans Access to Care Act. H.R. 2973 would allow the VA to contract for care with local medical facilities. The only stipulation is that the veteran must travel at least 60 miles or more for the care. Some people say that only happens in Montana or North Dakota or South Dakota or Nebraska. And it is true. Those States would be hard hit. But there probably are hardly any States in the Union with the exception of maybe Rhode Island or Connecticut or someplace like that where we do not have at least some veterans who are somewhat isolated from VA hospitals and are having to go great lengths to get their medical care. H.R. 2973 would set aside 5 percent of the VA funding to contract with local medical facilities for veterans living in rural areas. By contracting with local clinics in remote areas, number one, medical care would be prompt, it would not be a four to five to six-month wait. Number two, veterans who have difficulty traveling would be served. They would not have to just simply give up on getting medical care. Number three, there will be no additional cost and might even cost

less. And number four, the local hospital or clinic, which is often struggling to survive in a small town, would receive added funds.

So I think this bill makes sense. I would urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2143. Mr. Speaker, I do come from a rural area. We have 52,000 farmers and ranchers in Nebraska. I heard some figures that were unbelievable to me, that maybe only 400 farmers in this country would benefit from the repeal of the death tax. I would say out of 52,000 farmers in Nebraska, that we would look at probably somewhere between 15 and 20,000 that would benefit tremendously and will probably not be able to pass their farm on without some repeal of the death tax.

Let me give Members an example. A small ranch in Nebraska is 12,000 acres. That will support about 300 cows and that will support one family. That probably started out at $25 an acre, it is now worth $300 an acre, so it was maybe worth $100,000 when the farmer started out roughly 30 years ago. So it has increased in value. If they have two children and the last surviving parent dies in 2010, that ranch, which is worth $5 million today, would go on to those two children and they would pay no tax. But in 2011, their tax bill would be $2 million. They cannot pay that tax. They have to sell the ranch. That is an actual example of an average to small-sized ranch in Nebraska.

The Coble family in Mullen, Nebraska, had that happen to them. And who bought the ranch? Ted Turner bought the ranch. Ted Turner owns several hundred thousand acres in Nebraska today, most of which has been bought because people could not afford to keep the ranch because of the inheritance tax. And so that drives hundreds if not thousands of young people off the land. They cannot afford to ranch or farm. Of course, the same thing is true with small businesses. The only way to preserve family ownership is through insurance. And so maybe only 1 percent of inheritance taxes is the issue, but lots of people have to pay insurance in order to hang on.

I urge the support of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, as has been mentioned a couple of times, Carl Curtis served in Congress for 40 years, longer than any other Nebraskan in the history of our State. Carl was the Congressman representing the Fourth Congressional District in Nebraska for 16 years. It is kind of interesting to note that at one time Nebraska had five congressional districts. Today we have three. That has to do, of course, with the fact that Nebraska has not grown in population as fast as most other States. Carl was from the central part of the State and was very popular in rural areas. He paid a lot of attention to agriculture.

Carl was a close friend of my father's. I knew Carl quite well. Carl was not a large man in terms of physical stature; but in terms of the way he comported himself in terms of his contribution to the State, he was a person of great proportion. Carl was always well-dressed, he was always well spoken, he was courteous to a fault, and he was truly well respected and well liked by both sides of the aisle. He was not a partisan individual. I think the term ``statesman'' really represents Carl very well.

I understand that early on in his life he apparently had some aspiration of being a politician and thought that public speaking abilities were important, so having lived on a farm, he went out and rehearsed his speeches to farm animals. Whether that educated them very well or not, we may have had some of the smartest animals in Nebraska due to Carl's rhetoric. As was mentioned earlier, he did pass the bar by ``reading the law.'' I guess at one time you could do that. That is a little bit unusual, but at that time apparently you did not have to go to law school.

As the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) mentioned, probably the trademark legislation that Carl introduced was the Pick-Sloan project. At one time, the Missouri River ran wild every spring and there were numerous floods and whole villages got wiped out. Many people died. From Garrison Reservoir up in Montana to Sakakawea down in North Dakota and the whole series of dams in South Dakota, Oahe, a tremendous flood control project which now has great implications, of course, for recreation and barge traffic on the Missouri River down into Nebraska and Iowa was really very visionary and the most important thing that he did.

I think the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) mentioned that he was the floor manager at the Republican convention in 1964 where Barry Goldwater was nominated for President. Carl lived to age 95. Carl was bright and was articulate right up until the end. He was an amazing gentleman. His wife, Mildred, served on the Park Service board. So I think it is only fitting that because of his interest in flood control and Mildred's work on the Park Service board, that the National Park Service headquarters in Omaha be named after Carl. I along with others urge support of Senate 703.

Mr. Speaker, obviously, biotech is really important to the Midwest. Roughly 55 percent of the corn grown in Nebraska and a high percentage of the beans grown in Nebraska are biotech, and roughly $300 million in corn exports is being blocked by the current boycott.

As has been mentioned by several speakers previously, this boycott is not about safety. It is a tariff, and it is a thinly disguised tariff. The European Union did the same thing in blocking our beef that was fed hormones. The WTO stepped in and said, look, that is nonsense. This is against WTO rules, so it is something that has precedent. So the European Union has simply said, well, we will go ahead and pay the fine; it saves us the money. We will pay $116 million a year in blocking your beef, and that is essentially what this tariff is doing as well.

Already, people have mentioned several times about the fact that starving people, particularly people in Africa, have had their products blocked; and this is, I think, unconscionable.

Lastly, let me just say in regard to the reduction of pesticides, water use, fertilizer, these are certainly good for the environment. And we hear people all around the country decrying biotech; and yet Brazil, when we were down there a year ago, said they really did not believe in biotech, and yet they are raising 1 million acres of soybeans. So they obviously know it is safe. So usually these are simply tariff barriers. I certainly applaud the resolution, and I urge support of it. It makes a lot of sense.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Alabama and the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) for this legislation. I support H.R. 2143.

As the chairman mentioned, I spent most of my life working on a college campus. I can attest to the fact that Internet gambling is really hitting our college campuses very hard, because all you have to do is have a computer and a credit card and you are in business. Almost all students have this, so we see an explosion of gambling on the college campuses. Many student athletes are becoming heavily involved. I think someone mentioned earlier a quarterback from Florida State.

The reason that the NCAA, the NBA, major league baseball, all of these organizations are against it, is that once a student athlete becomes heavily indebted, there are really only a couple avenues he can take to get out of the problem. One is to cooperate with gamblers. Another is to shave points. So it tremendously compromises the athletic scene.

According to a 1997 study by Harvard Medical School, students show the highest percentage of pathological gambling. To say that students are not involved is simply inaccurate. For some, as has been mentioned earlier, gambling releases endorphins, much like crack cocaine, so this is a highly addictive activity.

Our society is becoming increasingly dependent on gambling. Individuals try to get out of poverty by winning the lottery or hitting the jackpot. States try to cure economic woes through lotteries and casinos.

Internet gambling does not fix the problem; it makes it worse. Internet gambling provides no useful goods or services. It usually is linked to organized crime. It often results in divorce, suicide, theft, and poverty. It siphons money that would otherwise be spent to buy food, clothing, appliances, housing, and thus hurts the economy. Above all, it hurts our families and it hurts our children.

Please support H.R. 2143, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Funding Prohibition Act.

Mr. Speaker, I think that our recent military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated very clearly that we are the preeminent military force in the world. Our economy, although it has been somewhat slowed recently, is certainly the strongest in the world.

By most measures, the United States is the most powerful Nation in the world. At the present time, we stand alone in a position of preeminence; and so sometimes when one is in that position, it is easy to begin to think that we are invincible and that this will go on forever, and certainly we hope that that is the case.

Then I think it is important that we cast a historical frame of reference on all of the recent circumstances on things that have happened.

Certainly 2,500 years ago, the Greeks were preeminent; and they, I am sure, felt that their culture would last forever and that they would be in a preeminent position until history ended; and then 500 years later, 2000 years ago, we found that the Roman empire had superseded Greece, and again, for a period of time, it was the most powerful nation in the world, just dominated the then-civilized world as we knew it.

150 years ago, the British Empire certainly was the most dominant nation in the world and controlled most of the affairs in the discovered world at that time; and of course, even the Soviet Union just 20 years ago appeared to be an almost invincible force. It was our rival. And so the United States and Soviet Union were the two most powerful nations in the world; and yet in each case, each one of these great civilizations, each one of these nations fell, and the interesting thing was that they did not fall from outside forces. It was not because somebody took them over. Rather, they fell from internal factors; and so their unity of purpose, their national resolve, the character of their people began to crumble, and as a result, they all to some degree became less powerful, and to some degree they became history.

So what is America's greatest threat today? I am sure some would say al Qaeda. Some would say it is the ongoing conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Some would say it is the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and possibly Iran. Others would say the biggest problem we have is the economy, and certainly all of these things are important, and certainly they are all worthy of our attention, and they certainly get it in this body on a daily basis.

I would submit to my colleagues that from my perspective the greatest threat that this Nation faces today is not outside forces, but rather, it is unraveling of the culture from within. So I am going to tonight, Mr. Speaker, document this thesis in some ways, and the reason I say this is because I have had considerable experience working with young people over 36 years.

From 1962 to 1997, I spent almost all of my time working with young people.

Most of them were ages 17 to 22, but I also spent a lot of time in high schools with summer camps where I worked with kids in the 9th, 10th and 11th and 12th grade. I coached 150 young men every year, visited 70 to 80 high schools in all parts of the country. Some were in inner cities, some were in suburbs, some were in rural areas; and I sat in 70 to 80 living rooms all around the country from wealthy to poor to rural. So I am not saying, Mr. Speaker, that I understand the whole situation that is going on in our country; but over those 36 years, I began to see some things that were of concern, some things that I think are worthy of note.

The young people I worked with were talented; and as time went on, they became bigger and faster and stronger and in some cases smarter, but they also were more troubled. I saw more personal problems. I saw more stress. I saw more young people who were off balance; and as a result, over that 36-year period, I progressively spent less and less time coaching and more and more time dealing with personal issues; and I think almost anyone in education would tell us the same thing, whether they are a school administrator or a teacher or a coach. Anyone who works consistently with young people over a period of time will tell us that things have changed. There has been a shift, and as far as stability, it has not been for the better.

I think, Mr. Speaker, there are several factors that have contributed to these changes, and the first of these that is very obvious, and I think almost anyone would recognize this, is a change in family stability. In 1960, when I first started working with young people, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was 5 percent. Today, it is 33 percent. So roughly one out of every three children are born out of wedlock, with no stable marriage and have two strikes against them. That is an increase over that period of time of 600 percent.

In 1960, the great majority of young people lived with both biological parents. We would occasionally see a young person who was from a single-parent family, but usually if we did so, it was because one parent or the other was deceased. Today, roughly one-half of our young people are growing up without both biological parents, again, an increase of probably 3 to 500 percent in terms of lack of stable families.

Today, only 7 percent of our families are so-called traditional families. So the family that we have is generally a father works, a mother stays home with the children and is a full-time homemaker or at least if the mother works, the father stays home, and yet only 7 percent of our families are of that nature today.

So we often think of latchkey kids belonging in the inner city where they come home after school and nobody is there, but I can tell Members from personal experience that there are roughly 80-90 percent of the young people in the suburbs and rural areas, nobody is home at 3 o'clock and they are latchkey kids as well.

So this has been a tremendous shift in our demographics. Parents today spend 40 percent less time with their children than a generation ago. The average parent spends no more than a few minutes with each child, and a huge amount of time is eaten up with the television set and work activities. The divorce rate has increased, from 1960 to 1995, 300 percent. Currently today, 24 million children are living without their real father.

I dealt with a lot of those young people and I remember particularly one case where this young man was a good football player, and by his junior year he was being mentioned as being an All-American. One day I got a phone call from a man living in another State and he wanted to know if I knew this player. I said, I coach him. He said, ``That is my son. I would like to talk to him.''

So I talked to this young man and I thought he would be thrilled being reunited with his father. He said, ``He left me when I was 1 or 2 years old and now the only reason he wants to talk to me is because I am somewhat famous as a player, and I do not want to talk to him.''

I sensed the anguish. I saw young people time and time again who had a father who was missing in their life and they were trying to fill that void, and usually it was with all the wrong stuff; and it was not just young men, it was young women as well.

This Sunday is Father's Day, and fatherless children are in some difficult circumstances at the present time. Fatherless children are 120 percent more likely to experience child abuse, twice as likely to drop out of school, 2-3 times more likely to have mental or emotional problems, 1\1/2\ times to 2 times more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and 11 times more likely to commit a violent act.

I ran into a story recently that is true, and this had to do with a greeting card business that contacted a prison. Mother's Day was approaching and they notified all of the prisoners that they would provide a Mother's Day card free if the prisoner would use it and send it to his mother. They had almost 100 percent participation. Practically all of the inmates took the card and mailed it to their mother. They thought this was quite a success.

So Father's Day was rolling around and they thought they would do it again. And the interesting thing, Mr. Speaker, in that particular prison there was hardly anyone who asked for a card to send to his father because, I would assume, because none knew their father, or their father had abandoned them.

What I am saying as far as the family is that the launching pad, the family, is not totally broken. We have some good families in our country, but the launching pad is certainly cracked, and changes have been undertaken in our society that are going to be really difficult for us to rectify in the immediate future.

So on top of the family disintegrating to some degree, we find that the environment in which young people are living has changed dramatically. When I began coaching in the 1960s, drug abuse was almost unheard of. We had never heard of cocaine, steroids, methamphetamine. We heard a little bit about marijuana, but that was somebody out in Hollywood, and none of the young people I was dealing with had experienced it. Of course today, currently, we find that we have a drug epidemic on our hands, and that includes alcohol. We have between 2 and 3 million teenage alcoholics in our country today. So the drug issue has become one of epidemic proportion.

The thing that is really interesting to me and astounding to me and discouraging to me is at one time we assumed rural America was the bastion of the family, and that was the one place we could count on traditional values. Yet we find at the present time that drug abuse in rural areas is equal to that of the urban areas, if not greater. The greatest scourge currently in rural areas that we have is methamphetamine abuse. It is roughly twice as prevalent as it is in the cities. If you are addicted to meth, the time that you are going to have to spend in inpatient treatment to have any chance of being cured is not 3 months as it is for alcohol and other drugs, it is roughly 24- 36 months, and then the odds are very good you will not beat it and meth probably at some point will kill you.

The average meth addict will commit roughly 130 crimes per year to support that habit. Imagine the cost to each community of one meth addict, and we have rampant meth abuse in the rural areas. We also have the highest rate of violence of any civilized nation in the world at the present time. The United States has the highest homicide rate. We have the highest suicide rate, and of course we have had numerous school shootings in the United States in recent years, and Columbine is almost the catch word for that type of activity. So the violence activity has escalated astronomically over the last 25 years.

Also, pornography has exploded. There are over 1 million porn sites on the Internet today. Sixty percent of all sites on the Internet have to do with pornography, and that is more than one-half. Additionally, there are more than 100,000 child porn sites on the Internet. Child pornography is illegal, and yet we have 100,000 child porn sites. So our children, our young people, are being engulfed by a wave of pornography.

It has been estimated that 1 out of 10 children between the ages of 8 and 16

have viewed pornography on the Internet, and mostly this has been unintentional. They have used a search word such as Pokemon, Disney, Barbie, ESPN, and those search words bring up a porn site, and once you bring up a porn site, you begin to get spam, which is dozens of porn sites and the child is inundated with pornography.

I was really surprised about a year ago, Mr. Speaker, to realize that my name used as a search word brought up a porn site. We were able to get that rectified, but the average young person in my district who is maybe doing a research paper on his or her Congressman and plugged in my name would all of a sudden be confronted with a porn site. In a civilized Nation that simply should not happen. I have grandchildren ages 3-10. I have four of them. I can imagine that they will someday be exposed to hard-core pornography, and this should not happen. Many people say pornography is a victimless crime. It does not really hurt anybody so what you see and hear does not make any difference in terms of how you behave.

If that is true, why do we have an advertising industry that spends billions of dollars on advertising? Obviously, if you see a soft drink advertised in an appealing ad, it changes your behavior. You are more apt to purchase that soft drink or automobile or whatever is being advertised. Obviously what we see and what we hear has a tremendous impact on our behavior, and our young people today are being inundated with these kinds of messages, and that is discouraging to see.

The video game is also a problem. Today, 8- to 18-year-old boys average 40 minutes a day playing video games. There is nothing wrong with that as long as the video games are within the lines. They might be a little bit violent, but they are probably not going to be a real problem. But we see that some of these games have gotten progressively more and more violent and more and more graphic. Many of them teach stalking and killing techniques that are actually used in training military personnel, Special Forces, to go out and kill people.

One particular video game that we saw recently here in Congress was such an example. It was one in which the young person would engage in stalking someone and shooting them, and if you hit them in the right place in the head and the blood flew, you were rewarded by a series of pornographic images. That was your reward. So people say that is for adults and those were adult-rated games, but the average person who plays those games is 12 years old. The marketing is beamed directly at young people who are teenage and preteenage children.

There is no way, Mr. Speaker, that you can play these kinds of games for any length of time and not have it impact you in some way in the depths of your psyche.

There was a school shooting in Kentucky a couple of years ago, and the young man who did the shooting went 9 for 9. He shot at 9 young people and he hit all 9. Many law enforcement people said that was amazing. Hardly any law enforcement individual could have done that, but the amazing thing was this particular shooter had not fired a gun before. He had played a lot of video games, and in playing those video games, he had shot lots of people. Apparently he got very good at it because he was almost perfect in his score. That shows you what video games can do.

We have much music, some television, many movies, some talk shows are very explicit and very graphic, and all of these things, if you think about it, simply could not have been put on the airwaves 30 years ago. It would have been impossible to present this kind of material, and yet we have drifted so far that this becomes commonplace and nobody objects. And obviously, this is impacting the minds and hearts of our young people.

The family is less stable. The environment young people are growing up in is more threatening, and also I would submit that our value system has shifted and shifted considerably. I would point to a study that was done by Stephen Covey who wrote the ``7 Habits of Highly Successful People'' and what he did was research everything that he could find that had to do with success. He said that he noticed a marked shift. He said in the first 150 years in our country's history, success was defined primarily in terms of character traits. A successful person was honest, a successful person was hardworking, a successful person was faithful, was loyal, compassionate. And so really it had to do with qualities of virtue, and that is what success was.

Then he said about 50-60 years ago he began to notice a shift in the literature that he was reading. He noticed that at the present time and for the last 50 years or so that success is now defined in terms of material possessions, in terms of power, and in terms of prestige. So a successful person has money. He may not be an admirable person, but if he has enough money, he is successful. He may have influence and power, and if that is the case, he may not be a good person or an admirable person, but he is a successful person. He may be very popular. He may have people wanting his or her autograph, and he may not be a very good role model, but if he has popularity, he is labeled successful.

So success is no longer linked to character and that is an interesting shift in the way that our value system has come about.

In 1998, there was a poll done that indicated a very high approval rating for the President who was in office at that time. Even though that particular President had misbehaved rather badly with an intern in the Oval Office and had lied to the American public, he still enjoyed a very high approval rating.

The thing that really grabbed my attention was that there was a poll that was done and the question that was posed to the American public was this: Is there any correlation between job performance and private behavior? In other words, what you do in your private life, does that have anything to do with your job performance? Seventy percent of American adults say it has no connection, that there is no relation. You can be a bank president and do all kinds of unscrupulous things in your private life, and it does not affect your job. You can be a very unscrupulous coach, and it would not make any difference in how you did your job. It was amazing to me that this many people in the American public would say that there is no correlation between job performance and private behavior, because what we are saying here is that character really does not count, because what you do in private essentially is an issue of character. The value system has certainly changed in that regard.

In the business world, we have seen some changes. I would submit that WorldCom and Enron and Global Crossing were not isolated instances. These were not accidental happenings. It was simply a reflection of the shift that we have had in this culture to an all-out infatuation with material success. And so anything goes in those types of situations. The Great Wall of China, Mr. Speaker, was breached twice. It was several thousand miles long. It was believed to be impenetrable. As a result, it was built to keep out the barbarian hordes. Yet twice it was breached. In neither case was it a situation where the barbarians overran the wall, knocked it down or had a military victory. It was because they bribed the gatekeeper. What I would submit at the present time is that a lot of our gatekeepers at the present time have not been responsible. As a result, we see a lack of trust in our country today that is almost unprecedented. Many people no longer believe that some of the leaders that we have in various industries and politics and athletics and the business world can be trusted. Of course, the alarming thing here is that democracy is based on trust. When trust evaporates, then it is very difficult to run an effective democracy.

The predominant world view today, Mr. Speaker, is something called postmodernism. Postmodernism is a belief that there are no moral absolutes, that nothing is absolutely good or bad in and of itself. As a famous individual recently said, the Ten Commandments are irrelevant. And so everything is relative. Theft is justified at times. If you need what you are stealing bad enough, it can be justified. Everything is relative. Murder certainly could be justified if you happen to kill someone who is really not an admirable person. You can rationalize that it is okay. Adultery is certainly something that is acceptable if nobody

is going to find out. Even treason would be okay if you were angry enough or hated your country badly enough. Postmodernism has dominated our thought and I think has had a tremendous amount to do with the way our young people and our country begin to see things.

In view of the fact that we have had a family breakdown, we have had a decline of the culture and a shifting of values, this is an extremely difficult time for our young people. They are being asked to weave their way through a minefield. In this minefield, there is alcohol and drug abuse over here, there is harmful video games over here, unwholesome music and television over here, there is promiscuity over here and gangs here, violent behavior and broken homes and all of those things; and somehow we are saying, you have got to get through this thing and you are probably going to have to do it by yourself because you are not going to get much parental support or adult support. And so we are asking our young people to do something that is very, very difficult and in some cases almost impossible. What we find is that our children's feet are not set on a rock but they are, rather, set on sand.

I think it is important we pay attention to these issues because a culture is never more than one generation away from dissolution. There is no permanence if the next generation coming up cannot pull it off. And so we need to think about this. De Tocqueville said something that was very interesting. It was a powerful sentence. He said, America is great because America is good. He said this probably 100, 150 years ago. He did not say that America was rich or powerful or perfect, but he said America was good and that is why America was great. I think America still is good, and I think America is great; but I would say that there are some signs on the horizon, some storm clouds that would lead us to wonder a little bit where we are headed and to cause us to sit up and pay attention.

What can be done? It is easy to state the problems, we hear that all the time, particularly around here, what is wrong. It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that you do not leave an issue without at least setting out some possible solutions. One thing that I would submit that makes sense to me is the issue of mentoring. We cannot legislate strong families, we cannot legislate morality; but one thing that we can do is provide a mentor in the life of a young person who badly needs it. It is assumed that at the present time in our culture there are roughly 18 million young people who lack a stable, caring adult in their life and badly need a mentor. What is a mentor? A mentor, number one, is someone who cares, someone who has no ax to grind, someone who simply cares enough to show up and spend time with that person. He is not a father, not a mother, not a grandparent, not a preacher, not a teacher, no one who is paid to do this; but it is someone who simply cares enough to be there with that child and provide stability and a caring environment and a stable relationship in the life of a young person who probably does not know what that looks like.

The second thing that a mentor does is he affirms. I guess I saw that very clearly in athletics. If you told a player that you really believed in him, that you really thought that he could amount to something, that someday he had a future with you, oftentimes he would grow into that which he did not know that he was even capable of being. On the other hand, if you said, you know, I really do not think that you are going to make it, son, we do not really think we have a place for you here, his performance would begin to tail off and pretty soon he would play down to that level of expectation and he would be gone. So affirmation is critical. No one can live without some type of affirmation, whether you are 50 years old or whether you are 30 or whether you are 10. A mentor is someone who says, I believe in you. I really think you can do this. And you are important to me. A mentor is one who affirms.

Also, thirdly, a mentor is one who provides some guidance. So many young people that we have today have never seen anyone in their immediate family or their immediate life who has graduated from high school, maybe no one who has held down a steady job, no one who has a concept of what it is like to be a good parent. A mentor is someone who provides some guidance and says, I believe in you. I think you can do this. I think you can graduate from high school. I think you could make it in this college, or I think you would be really good at this. Guidance is critical. Mentoring works. It reduces dropout rates by roughly 100 percent, reduces drug and alcohol abuse by 50 percent, teenage pregnancy by 40 percent, violent acts by roughly 30 percent, and improves relations with peers and parents, improves self-esteem. Even though it is not perfect, it is the best thing that we know of, the best opportunity that we have to begin to rectify some of those relationships that have been so badly broken and have damaged those young people so badly.

The President has proposed currently $450 million over the next 3 years for mentoring. That is $150 million a year; $100 million would go for mentoring for all children and $50 million would be designated for children of prisoners. If that program is enacted, and I hope Congress will do that, I hope it will be funded, that will reach 1 million young people. That still leaves 17 million that are not being reached. But mentoring is cost effective, because a good mentoring program will cost $300 to $500 per child per year. It costs $30,000 to lock somebody up. As we mentioned earlier, a meth addict, someone who commits 130 crimes, would be almost difficult if not impossible to total up the dollars. What we are doing in our society today is we are spending huge amounts of money on the back end, and we are losing person after person after person, the recidivism rate is about 85 percent, and we are not spending the money on the front end where we can really make a difference. Mentoring is something that we think is a possible solution, at least a partial solution.

The President has been talking about the Call to Service Act. This is legislation which encourages volunteerism in our country. One of the greatest resources that we have in this country today is our senior citizens. We have so many people who have retired in their late 50s or in their 60s, and they are going to live until they are 80 or 90 years old and they are still healthy and they are still vibrant. The greatest need that we have in our country today is extended family. Our kids growing up do not have grandparents, some do not have parents at all; and so we feel that the Call to Service Act can certainly be used to hook up people who will volunteer, who have some life experience to help our young people, to mentor them, to tutor them, to be supportive; and we think this is a tremendous opportunity.

The Internet gambling bill was passed today on this floor. I hope that it will have some success over in the other body. As a culture, we are trying to gamble our way to prosperity. The difficult thing is that it impoverishes those who can least afford to gamble, breaks up families, directs money from children's needs. It is tied to organized crime, and students are particularly susceptible. One thing that we noticed on Internet gambling is that the most high-risk group of people in our country is students. All you need is a computer and a credit card. Most college students and an awful lot of high school students have that and the more times that you gamble in a short period of time and the less troublesome it is to do it, which Internet gambling provides the optimal situation, the more addictive it becomes. For some it has the same addictive effect as crack cocaine. So a certain percentage of our young people are getting addicted very quickly. This is a powerful issue, and I believe that the Internet gambling bill if it is passed in the other body can certainly be a tremendous help.

We eliminated the marriage tax penalty which was certainly countercultural to tell people that if you live together, you are going to have less tax consequences, it is going to save you $1,000 or $1,500 a year as opposed to if you were married just makes no sense, because marriage is the basic family unit in this country. We have rectified to some degree that particular marriage penalty.

I think it is really critical that we fund drug prevention programs. Let me just mention one here, Mr. Speaker. Byrne grants. Byrne grants go out to fight meth. It is amazing how much

methamphetamines cost. If you find a meth lab, to get that dismantled and all the chemicals disposed of costs thousands and thousands of dollars. So if we do not fund this, and right now it is not scheduled to be funded, this is a tremendous blow to our culture and particularly to our rural areas where most of these meth labs occur. We need to make sure that we are giving people the tools that they need.

H.R. 669, the Protect Children From Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003. I am its cosponsor. I think this is certainly one that can correct some of the problems of video games. H.R. 756, the Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act, addresses the issue of some people trying to get around the child pornography statutes by having children pose as models in provocative poses, and so this addresses that.

Above all, Mr. Speaker, we need a fundamental shift in the way that we address first amendment rights in the courts. This is a dangerous statement for somebody to make, that we have got to watch out for the first amendment. Everybody is in favor of free speech and the first amendment, and I certainly go along with that as well; but I would like to point out some things that have happened in the courts in recent years that I think have been very damaging to this culture.

In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act that made it illegal to send indecent material to children via the Internet. Listen to what happened to that, Mr. Speaker. In June of 1997, the Supreme Court overturned portions of the law and made this statement. They said, indecent material is protected by the first amendment. And so what we are saying is those who produce indecent material have protection, and yet those children who receive that material and are influenced by it have no protection.

In 1996, the Child Pornography Prevention Act outlawed child pornography, including visual depictions that appeared to be of a minor and so it may not actually be a minor involved; but it could be a computer-generated image, or it could be an adult posing as a minor and how do you know? The Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional and overturned the law banning computer graphics showing child pornography.

In October 1998, the Children Online Protection Act was signed into law to prohibit the communication of harmful material to children on publicly accessible Web sites. It makes sense that you should not be able to on publicly accessible Web sites send pornography to children. Yet the Supreme Court refused to rule on the 1998 law. As a result, it was never enacted; and it still sits there today and is void.

The 106th Congress passed the Child 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 of 2002, the Federal court declared the law unconstitutional. Free speech is protected, while women and children are attacked.

It is important to note that 80 to 90 percent of rapists and pedophiles reported using pornography usually right before they commit the act, and they will admit that this has shaped their behavior and made a difference. It seems to me our women and children ought to have rights and freedoms as well, and yet it seems the way we have phrased the argument that they are being victimized, whereas others who are perpetrators are being given freedoms to do so.

The Court has often ruled against school prayer. I would not do so necessarily, but some have traced some of the cultural decline I have mentioned tonight to the absence of school prayer, which began I believe in the 1960s. But there have been some decisions that really caused me to wonder. I will mention some of these.

In 1992, the Supreme Court declared an invocation and benediction at a graduation ceremony unconstitutional. On the floor of this House, every day we start with a prayer. In many public places, prayer is used. And yet at a school graduation it is not legitimate to have a minister, a priest, a rabbi, a cleric say a prayer. Again, this seems to fly in the face of the way our country was founded.

The Court also has held that a minute of silence in school is unconstitutional. Now, a child may spend a minute of silence and may say a prayer, may look out the window, may think about the upcoming test. He is not forced to believe in any doctrine. He is not forced to pray. Yet the Court said that a minute of silence is unconstitutional.

The Court also ruled not long ago that a student-led prayer at a football game was unconstitutional. The students voted in this particular student body to have a prayer. They wanted a student-led prayer before the game. The Court said this would really violate the rights of the football players who had to be there and also some of the cheerleaders required to be there. Yet this violated the rights I think of those who chose to have the prayer, the students themselves.

As most people understand, the words ``under God'' were struck from the Pledge of Allegiance by the Ninth Circuit court. Most of the framers of the Constitution obviously mentioned time and time again their dependence upon God, and yet we are trying to strip this away also from our Pledge of Allegiance.

I am not going to get into the abortion issue at any great length. It is very controversial. I realize there are many people on both sides of the issue. But I will mention one thing.

Just recently Congress and this House passed the partial-birth abortion ban. The reason I do not think this is particularly controversial is that this particular ban I believe drew something like 84 votes in the affirmative on the Senate side, and we had a fairly large majority here, and we saw a great many people who are for abortion, who are pro-choice, in quotes, vote for this ban. They were beginning to get the idea of how barbaric it really is.

So this was something where there has been a real shift. Currently 70-some percent of Americans do not favor partial-birth abortion; and many of them, as I said earlier, are in favor of abortion. Yet this particular law, I am sure, will be challenged in the courts, and there is a fair chance it may be overturned as somehow being unconstitutional.

So we have seen a steady erosion of the culture by some decisions that have been made in the courts. The reason I think this is so important to bring up today is that some people cannot understand why there is so much controversy over in the other body regarding the appointment of judges and justices; and the reason is that what is at stake, I believe, is the future course in many of these issues, particularly in moral issues, that our country is going to take. So these are monumental issues, and the shape of the Supreme Court, the shape of our district courts, our courts of appeal, are going to go a long ways in deciding what this country abides by in upcoming years.

Mr. Speaker, this country was founded upon principles of dependence upon God, a recognition that life is sacred, the importance of sound character, and the fact that children are our most important assets. There is no question that we are involved in a cultural and spiritual struggle of Titanic proportions. This struggle may present the greatest crisis facing the United States today, as I have outlined I think fairly clearly.

As Congress addresses critical issues such as national defense, the economy and health care, which we certainly need to spend a lot of time 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, and particularly our young people. I say it again, our Nation's survival, long-term, will rest primarily upon the character of our people.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 35 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding time to me, and I appreciate his help very much.

I would also like to thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) and his staff for all the work they have put in; the gentleman from Louisiana (Chairman Tauzin) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) and their staffs; and also Lisa Knott from my staff. Many people have cooperated.

As has been mentioned, currently only 20 States have comprehensive laws regulating sports agents; 17 States have no laws at all. My State, Nebraska, is one of those. Thirteen States have a patchwork of laws governing sports agents.

Here is the problem. I will use primarily a football illustration, because that is what I understand the best. As of April, 2002, the National Football League Players Association reported 1,200 certified agents to represent NFL players. The problem is that of those 1,200, only 400 had clients, so we have 800 people who say they are agents and they have nobody to represent.

There are also several hundred other agents who are not even certified by the National Football League who also call themselves agents. So if they call themselves agents and do not have a client, they are pretty desperate. What these guys do is, they will go after undergraduates, and they will sometimes be very unscrupulous in doing so. There are some good agents, but many are not. So here are some of the things that happen.

They will offer an undergraduate athlete cars, clothes, cash, sometimes even drugs, to sign an agency contract. Of course, immediately this renders the student athlete ineligible.

They promise an athlete that he will be drafted higher. The National Football League tells them they will be drafted in the fourth round, and the agent says, that is a lot of baloney. I will get you a personal trainer, I will get you a nutritionist, we will go to California, we will work hard, you are going to get bigger, faster, stronger, you are going to be a first-round pick, and you are going to make $6 million just to sign your name.

Of course, that is totally untrue. They cannot get a player drafted higher because of the agent's activities. So the player drops out of school at that point, and he gets a nutritionist, and nothing happens.

They use runners, as has been mentioned. These are usually former players. These are student athletes in the school. Sometimes they are simply students in the school. The player has no idea that he is dealing with somebody who represents an agent. So the runner takes him out to dinner and gets him obligated.

They sometimes threaten athletes with physical harm.

Lastly, they often tell a student athlete they will predate or postdate a contract so they will not jeopardize their eligibility, which is absolutely untrue. The minute they verbally agree to a contract or sign it, no matter whether it is predated or postdated, they are ineligible. These are some of the problems.

With these problems in mind, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) and I have introduced H.R. 361, which has been referred to previously as SPARTA. It makes it illegal for sports agents to entice student athletes with false or misleading information, promises, or representations.

SPARTA requires the agent to inform the undergraduate athlete and his school in writing that the player has signed an agency contract and is ineligible. What often happens is a school does not know that they have got a guy out there playing who is ineligible, that he has already signed a contract, so this forces the agent to let the school know in writing that he has a player under contract and that player is ineligible.

Under SPARTA, sports agents who engage in illegal recruiting will be fined up to $11,000 per incident per day. The Committee on Energy and Commerce passed this legislation by voice vote. The Committee on the Judiciary passed SPARTA by voice vote. So this legislation is bipartisan and it is noncontroversial.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I do not know any college athletic director, coach, reputable athlete, or most reputable agents themselves who would oppose this legislation.

Again, I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon), all those involved, and urge passage of this, what I think is a very important Federal backstop, very important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

I rise to support the Homeless and Runaway Youth Act, H.R. 1925. I would like to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), for their work on this committee.

The number of young people in our country who are currently homeless is truly alarming. Most of these young people are without any parental support. Many are simply fleeing abusive and dangerous situations. So it is critical that we provide these young people a safe haven, a place where they can have food and shelter.

But certainly young people need more than this. They need the help and the care of an adult. They need a relationship. I think that is important. I think whether a child is homeless because he simply has no parents or is fleeing an abusive situation, they all share one thing; that is that there is no adult in their life that they can really count on.

In my previous profession, 36 years of coaching, I dealt with a great many young people in situations like this where they had absolutely no support. I saw firsthand the difference a coach, a teacher, a mentor could make in the life of a young person.

This is one reason why I would like to, in conjunction with discussing this particular bill, mention the importance of an initiative that the President has recently promoted, which is to make a rather concerted effort in this country to promote mentoring. A mentor will reduce absenteeism from school by 50 percent, reduce teenage pregnancy, reduce drug and alcohol abuse and violent behavior.

Currently, we have 18 million young people in the country who need a mentor, so along with this bill I think a mentoring initiative is critical. I certainly support this bill and would like to thank again the chairman and the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), for their work.

Mr. Speaker, I must at this time speak in opposition to the Miller-DeFazio amendment. As a member of both the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Resources, I saw the evolution of the McInnis-Walden bill, H.R. 1904, heard it debated at length and heard it amended at length. The base bill provides desperately needed safeguards for our Nation's forests. It is well crafted, it is thorough, it is comprehensive.

I have five major concerns with the Miller-DeFazio amendment:

Number one. As has been stated many times today, the one-half-mile thinning zone is not adequate obviously to protect many homes and many residential areas. Many fires have jumped further than the one-half- mile limit.

Number two. The Miller amendment does not adequately address bug and insect outbreaks. This has been particularly a big problem in the South, in the East, and in some of the areas in the Midwest which abut to the State of Nebraska. The red oak disease has been particularly predominant in that area.

Number three. This amendment prohibits new road development. Certainly no one wants a lot of new roads in our forests, but new roads occasionally are

critical to firefighting. Last summer that was one of the major problems that we had; we could not get to the fires. And so at times some road building will be necessary.

Number four. The Miller amendment requires several mapping and reporting procedures which will slow down the decision-making process necessary to reduce fuel loads. We need less paperwork; we do not need more. The base bill, I think, does eliminate paperwork, and that is very important.

Number five. There is a concern that this amendment does not address some watershed concerns that are critical to clean water. I am a fisherman. I am very concerned about streams. I am concerned about habitat. The base bill, I think, does a better job of protecting the watershed areas.

The base bill is comprehensive and thoroughly crafted. I urge its passage without amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Chairman Larry Combest on a long and successful congressional career. I was privileged to serve on the Committee on Agriculture under Larry. We were certainly at opposite ends of the spectrum. My first 2 years on the committee were Larry's last 2. I was without status. He was the chairman. Regardless of seniority, each person had access to Larry and his staff on an equal basis. I have always felt that the true measure of a person's character was how he treated those who could do nothing for him. In that respect, I thought that Larry was really exemplary and I really appreciated the way I was received.

The most significant accomplishment of the Committee on Agriculture the last 2 years was reauthorization of the farm bill. This was a very exhaustive process. It went on over 2 years, involving roughly 50 hearings, 25 of those in various parts of the country and 25 here in Washington. Input was received from such diverse groups as the Farm Bureau, Farmers Union, corn and soybean, rice and cotton, fruits and vegetables, Ducks Unlimited, Nature Conservancy and the Sierra Club. Everybody had a chance.

What the chairman did was ask each group to write the farm bill as they saw it needing to be written and also to score it, to come up with what it was going to cost; and so this was kind of a unique approach because I think everybody that tried began to realize how complex this was.

Again, he took input from every group. The bill was written in full committee, which I appreciated. Everybody had a chance to speak their piece. It was truly bipartisan. We hear the term bipartisan around here all the time, but this was a case where I can really, honestly say that I do not believe either side was given any advantage and that each side felt they had equal ownership, and as a result the farm bill was passed almost unanimously out of the Committee on Agriculture.

Larry was under a great deal of pressure to delay the writing of the farm bill until 2003. Yet he realized that agriculture was in trouble, that we were surviving each year on roughly a 7, $7.5 billion emergency payment and this simply could not go on, so he pressed forward and got the bill done in 2002 in the face of a fair amount of criticism. I thought that he showed great tenacity in doing so, and I really appreciated his efforts.

I visited South America with Larry and other members of the Committee on Agriculture a little bit more than a year ago, and I can recall one meeting in Brazil with their agriculture leadership in which they were very critical of U.S. farm policy. They thought they were poised to take over the soybean market of the world, and I remember Larry's response. He said, ``My responsibility is to protect the interests of American farmers and ranchers.'' That is what he did. Our farmers and ranchers really comprise only 1 percent roughly of our population. At one time they were a very significant part of our population. Now they are about 1 percent, and so they certainly need advocates. I really appreciate the fact that Chairman Combest truly did all that he could to represent a very important and often unappreciated part of our Nation.

I would like to thank the chairman for his contribution and for his career here and for the way that he worked with other people to bring agriculture to the forefront during the farm bill.

Mr. Speaker, in the world of athletics, each year our young people get bigger, they get stronger, and they get faster. Unfortunately, many of our young people just get bigger. They consume diets that are very high in fat. Sometimes a serving of fruit equals a serving of Fruit Loops and a serving of vegetables equates to French fries or potato chips.

As has been mentioned previously, 60 percent of Americans currently are overweight, 20 percent are obese, and among our young people the percentages are just about the same. An alarming trend has been that we are starting to see atherosclerosis in elementary school children. These are

fatty deposits in the coronary arteries which lead directly to heart disease. This was unheard of 20 or 30 years ago. Type 2 diabetes is exploding among our young people. And of course this again is related to being overweight. Many children do not exercise. They watch TV and play video games.

Senate 870 authorizes the extension of a valuable school pilot program. The fruit and vegetable pilot program provides fresh fruit and fresh vegetables to a limited number of schools during the current school year. A recent Department of Agriculture study found that normal-weight children consumed significantly more fruits than overweight children. Studies have shown a positive relationship between consuming a balanced healthful diet of protein, fruits and vegetables and children's performance in the classroom and on the playing fields.

I thank my colleagues from the Committee on Education and the Workforce for bringing this small, yet important, piece of legislation to the floor and urge my colleagues to vote to extend this valuable pilot study.