Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 699) supporting the goals and ideals of National Entrepreneurship Week and encouraging the implementation of entrepreneurship education programs in elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education through the United Sates.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H. Res. 699.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 699, a resolution to support the goals and ideals of National Entrepreneurship Week and encourage the implementation of entrepreneurship education programs in elementary and secondary education schools and institutions of higher education throughout the United States.

I want to congratulate the sponsor of this resolution, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), as well as House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairman McKeon and Ranking Member Miller, as well as the leadership in both parties in working to move this resolution to the floor in such a bipartisan fashion.

This is a very important resolution because it supports the goals and ideal of National Entrepreneurship Week and encourages creation of entrepreneurship education programs in elementary and secondary schools. The future strength of our economy depends on our youth and upon developing new businesses, which essentially is what entrepreneurship is all about. From lawn mowing businesses to baby sitting, most youths have been entrepreneurs at one time or another. Unfortunately, formal entrepreneurial education is not always available to young people.

Several studies have been done on the interests that young people have in entrepreneurship. For example, in their book, ``The E Generation: Prepared for the Entrepreneurial Economy,'' Marilyn Kourilsky and William Walstad explain that youth are overwhelmingly interested in entrepreneurship. In fact, they found that six out of 10 young people aspire to start a business of their own.

The Gallup Organization, in conjunction with the Kauffman Foundation, conducted the first national poll on entrepreneurship. What they found was that 70 percent of students polled wanted to start their own business.

Now, this would be primarily at the high school level. Yet only 44 percent had any basic knowledge concerning entrepreneurship. In other words, they wanted to start a business, but they had no idea as to how to do it.

Youth entrepreneurs provide added stimulus to the local economy. Student entrepreneurial endeavors help to foster youth retention by providing youth the opportunity to contribute and invest in their home communities. As young people build and grow businesses within a community, they are more likely to stay and invest in a community's future.

Where this has been tremendously important has been in rural areas. We have all seen many small towns that continue to unravel, lose young people, lose population, and in the district that I represent we have seen this graphically. So we find that probably the best way to revitalize rural America is to provide entrepreneurial training, entrepreneurial skills, so some people can stay there and survive and young people can start a business.

There are a number of academic reasons to integrate entrepreneurship training into curriculum as well. Entrepreneurship training can be successfully integrated into traditional course work by incorporating hands-on business activities in a traditional classroom and textbook instruction. For example, writing marketing materials, business plans, can improve English skills. Sales and accounting can improve math skills. Developing manufacturing processes for products can be incorporated in a science class. True entrepreneurial education integrates hands-on business developments into the school system.

So we find that it is possible to build entrepreneurial training into the curriculum in a school. And when this happens, some really good things begin to happen.

Entrepreneurship education has a positive effect on the academic performance of students according to a study conducted by Howard Rasheed, a business professor at the University of Florida. Students with entrepreneurship training scored better in a number of academic subjects, including reading, math, social studies, and language. Also, attendance improves, dropout rates decrease, and it also helps close the achievement gap between minority students and the rest of the student body. So there is a tremendous academic contribution that entrepreneurial training provides.

I have worked throughout my time in Congress to encourage Nebraska schools to adopt entrepreneurship programs, and many have. I am pleased to

have had the opportunity to be involved in numerous entrepreneurship efforts across the State of Nebraska, including NETFORCE, which is working to develop a curriculum that is sponsored through Nebraska's community college system.

H.R. 699 encourages more schools to adopt entrepreneurship programs and supports the goals of National Entrepreneurship Week. I strongly support this resolution and urge its passage.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the gentleman from North Carolina and Mr. Davis, and as I have no further speakers, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise to address the House for 1 minute regarding Denny Hastert, the Speaker of the House.

As many people have previously observed, the Speaker is not under any investigation at the present time. I have been part of a group that meets with Denny on a weekly basis for the last 2 years and have found this person to be a person of unimpeachable character. He is one that you can take his word to the bank; and so if there is any Member of the House who does not deserve this, it would be Denny Hastert.

Sometimes we are all painted with a very broad brush here, and I am very sorry that Denny has been painted in such a way. I simply wanted to come to the House floor today to register my support, my regard of the Speaker, and the fact that it is very unfortunate that someone of his character would be attacked in this way. And I am sure this applies to others on both sides of the aisle.

Madam Speaker, I support H.R. 5429 and the underlying rule. Energy and exploration and production in ANWR will take place under the most stringent environmental protection requirements ever applied. It will be limited to just 2,000 acres of ANWR's 1002 area, which equals one ten-thousandths of the ANWR area, the size of a mid- sized U.S. airport.

The average estimate of recoverable oil from 2,000 acres of ANWR is 10.4 billion barrels. That is more than double the proven reserves of Texas and could increase America's total proven reserves, which is 21 billion barrels, by nearly 50 percent. Energy development on ANWR's northern coastal plain could deliver an additional 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, nearly equal to the amount we import from Saudi Arabia on a daily basis.

Experts have estimated that safe energy exploration and production in ANWR would create between 250,000 and 1 million new jobs in the United States. Energy exploration and production in ANWR's northern coastal plain would raise $111 billion to $173 billion in Federal royalties and tax revenues. And given our current tax situation, we think that would certainly be somewhat notable.

H.R. 5429 includes an export ban. All oil and natural gas produced on ANWR's northern coastal plain must stay in the United States. Safe energy exploration and production have continued for the last 3 decades in Prudhoe Bay, just 80 miles west of ANWR. The caribou herd at Prudhoe Bay has tripled since development began. This contradicts the argument that ANWR drilling will lead to the demise of the caribou herd there.

Lastly, at today's energy prices, just the mean estimate of ANWR's resources represents a $728 billion economic decision. The Congress will either vote ``yes'' to invest $728 billion in America's energy security, economic growth, and job creation; or vote ``no'' to send all of the above overseas.

We cannot afford to continue to do this. Our dependence on overseas oil is certainly the major cause of our trade deficit at the present time. So I urge support of H.R. 5429 and the underlying rule.

Mr. Chairman, this is our annual debate, and this is an appropriations bill, not a farm bill. I think this discussion should occur in the course of the farm bill. We have many sugar producers in Nebraska who bought a sugar processing plant based on the 2002 farm bill. So we think that it is important it be considered at the right time.

Sugar prices in the United States are low by world standards. Grocery shoppers in other developed countries pay 30 percent more for sugar than the U.S.

America already has one of the most open sugar markets in the world, importing sugar from 41 countries whether we need that sugar or not. As the world's second largest sugar importer, the United States is the only major sugar-producing country that is a net importer.

Lastly, I would like to mention this: Ten African Nations, and many others around the world, receive the U.S. premium price, and so the U.S. sugar program benefits many developing countries. This certainly is something that we need to consider.

So I urge defeat of the amendment.

Madam Speaker, underage drinking flies under the radar screen for most people. Alcohol is legal and widely accepted by adults, and yet many times we do not realize the devastation that this is causing for young people.

The average at which young people begin drinking is 12.7 years of age, and that age is declining annually.

Binge drinking is something that is very common among young people. On average, teenagers drink more by double what adults drink per sitting and per consumption.

Teens who start drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to become addicted to alcohol than someone who starts drinking at age 21 or later.

Prevention efforts have been, I would say, very minimal. The Federal Government currently spends about 25 times more annually to combat youth drug use than to prevent underage alcohol use.

Alcohol is a gateway drug. Usually those who begin to use cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine do not start with those drugs. They start with alcohol. Television ads for alcohol products outnumber responsibility messages by 32-1. In other words, those ads that promote the consumption of alcohol are 32 times more prevalent than those ads that urge restraint, responsible drinking or discourage underage drinking. From 2001 to 2003, the industry spent $2.5 billion on television advertising and promoting their product and only $27 million, a mere fraction, on responsibility programs.

Underage drinkers currently account for 17 percent of all alcohol sales in the United States, and that is a huge margin. In my State, Nebraska, underage drinking accounts for 25 percent of all alcohol sales, and of course, those sales are all illegal.

Recent studies have found that heavy exposure of the adolescent brain to alcohol interferes with brain development. In other words, drinking at age 10 is qualitatively and quantitatively different than drinking at 21 or 25 or 30 or 35 or whatever because of developmental aspects.

This is a brain scan showing a brain scan of two 15-year-old young men. The scan on the right is a 15-year-old male, heavy drinker, a binge drinker, the person who is sober at the time of the brain scan, drinks regularly, binge drinker. The 15-year-old young person brain scan on the left is someone who is an abstainer, someone who does not drink at all. These young people were asked to perform memory tests, and you see the brain scan on the right showing minimal brain activity, as compared to the young person doing the same memory test on the left. So we see what excessive exposure to alcohol does to brain function.

Many young people drop out of school, who do not perform well in school, are simply people who are heavy drinkers. An estimated 3 million teenagers are full-blown alcoholics at the present time, and that is about six times more than those who are addicted to other kinds of drugs.

Alcohol kills six times more young people than all illicit drugs combined, all other illicit drugs. Underage drinking costs the United States roughly $53 billion annually. So this is something, again, that I mention that ofttimes people are simply not aware of.

The bill that we have introduced in the House that we think is relevant to this problem is called the Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking Act, the STOP Act, and what it would do is create a Federal Interagency Coordinating Committee to coordinate efforts

directed at underage drinking. Right now, we have multiple programs aimed at different types of substance abuse alcohol is one of those. Some of those programs are in the Department of Justice, some are in Education, some are in Health and Human Services, but there is practically no coordination of these programs. Sometimes they duplicate each other. Sometimes these programs do not work well, and so we feel there needs to be some coordinating commission that coordinates all of these programs, particularly those that are aimed at alcohol abuse by young people.

It also authorizes a national media campaign directed at adults. You say, well, why would you direct it to adults. Well, the main thing is that the attitude of parents is the number one predictor as to whether a young person will abuse alcohol as an underage drinker or not, and so many parents many times feel if a young person is using alcohol, that pretty much prevents them from being involved with heroin or cocaine or methamphetamine, when exactly the opposite is true. Someone who starts abusing alcohol at an early age is much more apt to be addicted to all kinds of substance, and therefore, we feel there is a lot of drug awareness that has to occur with drugs.

It also provides additional resources to communities and colleges and universities to prevent underage drinking. At the present time, annually 1,700 young people, college students, die each year on the college campus because of alcohol abuse. It is the leading cause of death on the college campus. This is double the rate that we have had for deaths in Iraq. So we feel that this is critical.

Also, it increases Federal research and data collection on underage drinking.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I am sorry to oppose anything with my friend Adam Putnam's name on it, but in this case I feel that I am required to do so because of my constituency.

As everyone knows, we are currently in very short supply of natural gas, and this of course has led to tremendously increased prices. In Nebraska, which is mostly rural, mostly agricultural, this has increased the cost of center pivot irrigation exponentially. We have even seen at one time 60, 70 percent of the irrigation wells were powered by natural gas. We have had to shift to diesel which is very expensive and electricity which is very expensive, and as a result farmers who at one time were making reasonable profits are now struggling just to have a profit line at all.

This has increased the cost of fertilizer, anhydrous ammonia, that is made from natural gas, and of course anhydrous ammonia is a principle ingredient in fertilizer. So we have seen as much as 400 and 500 percent in the last 5 years, again eating into the bottom line for most people in agriculture. Of course, everyone knows what this has done to home heating and cooling, 400, 500 percent increases, which has hit every American in every corner of the Nation. And so we have a crisis in this area that we need to address.

The United States has large reserves of natural gas. It has been pointed out that we have maybe 3 percent of the world's petroleum reserves, but we have huge amounts of natural gas reserves, and we are handicapping ourselves in a way that is pretty much unprecedented in this area.

At the present time, only 15 percent of available Outer Continental Shelf acres are not under a moratorium. Another way to put this is that roughly 85 percent of Outer Continental Shelf acres are off limits to exploration. And, of course, this is again handicapping what we are trying to accomplish here in reducing this shortage.

I am sure that these moratoria are due to fear of spills and pollution, and yet we have had numerous hurricanes in the last few years that haven't caused oil rigs to malfunction or lines to rupture. We have not seen any massive pollution even though we have had huge damage from these hurricanes.

Canada has natural gas wells in the Great Lakes with no pollution. In Lake Erie, they have 2,200 wells on the Canadian side alone. Now, if you have ever been on the Great Lakes, you realize that this is very much like the ocean; they can get as rough as the ocean. I have been up there fishing many times. And so if Canada has been able to do this with no great environmental threat, why can't we do this anywhere from 3 miles to 200 miles offshore in the ocean? I would think we can do this very efficiently. China will be drilling for gas off the coast of Cuba within a short period of time. Now, this is very close to Florida.

So we think these are things that we need to consider. And so at the present

time we are handicapping ourselves because of this not-in-my-backyard mentality. We all want to have something happen somewhere else, but not anywhere close to ourselves. Natural gas is clean burning; it is environmentally friendly. We need to open these supplies both offshore in the U.S. and in Alaska.

It was mentioned earlier that it would take about 7 years for natural gas to come online. But if you don't start at some point, it will be 7 years from next year, and then it will be 7 years from 2 years from now, and at some point we have to begin to address this problem.

Mr. Speaker, Lt. Col. Mark Schoenrock faithfully served as a U.S. Army officer for 28 years in positions of increasing responsibility. His performance of his duties and contributions to the United States of America over the course of his career were truly outstanding. He was recognized with two awards of the Legion of Merit, seven awards of the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal, among other awards.

He was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Army on May 13, 1978, in Lincoln, Nebraska, upon graduation from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln and the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps, ROTC. He was a four-year Army ROTC scholarship winner, graduated from the University with distinction, and was an ROTC Distinguished Military Graduate. He completed the Quartermaster Officer Basic Course at Fort Lee, Virginia, with honors and was assigned as an Assistant Brigade Logistics Officer, Platoon Leader, and Battalion Logistics Officer with the 25th Infantry Division (Tropic Lightning) at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. While assigned to the Tropic Lightning Division, Lt. Col. Schoenrock deployed with his unit three times to the Republic of Korea. He was consistently cited as being an outstanding young officer. The areas for which he was responsible excelled during numerous external inspections. His dining facility won the Connelly Award as being among the best in the Army.

Following his 3 years in Hawaii, Lt. Col. Schoenrock completed the Quartermaster Officer Advanced Course at Fort Lee, Virginia, again graduating with honors. He was selected as the Outstanding Logistician for the course. He was subsequently assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas, and the First Infantry Division, Big Red One, where he served as a company commander and maneuver brigade logistics officer. He was consistently rated among the top officers in the entire brigade. He led the ROTC Third Region advanced camp transportation mission. In this effort, his soldiers drove over 1,000 missions covering over 170,000 miles flawlessly. As the First Brigade logistics officer, he deployed twice to the Federal Republic of Germany in support of Operation Reforger. He was responsible for the entire logistical support (supply, maintenance and transportation) of 2,500 soldiers and 298 tracked vehicles. During Reforger, he ensured the brigade's safe and efficient transport from Kansas to Germany and return. He also deployed five times to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California in his capacity as a company commander and maneuver brigade logistics officer. As a company commander, he was cited as always coming through in a first class, professional manner. As the brigade logistics officer, he was cited by the brigade commander for his mature judgment, poise under stress, technical competence, positive nature, willingness to learn, great energy and dedication to excellence.

Upon the completion of his 4-year tour at Fort Riley, Lt. Col. Schoenrock was selected to represent the Army in the highly competitive Training With Industry (TWI) program. He served as the Army's first representative with the General Motors Corporation, Allison Gas Turbine Division. He played an instrumental role in the development of the T- 800 engine, which was the engine in the Army's Comanche helicopter. General Motors cited him as a credit to the U.S. Army.

Following TWI, Lt. Col. Schoenrock served as a Contracting Officer and Contracting Section Chief in St. Louis, Missouri, responsible for the development and acquisition of petroleum logistics and water logistics. He was responsible for the acquisition of many end items that served our soldiers during Operation Desert Storm and that were vital to the United States' ultimate victory in the deserts of southwest Asia. He was cited by the Contracting Director as the best military section chief in the entire directorate. He then was selected to attend the Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) in resident status at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Following CGSC graduation, Lt. Col. Schoenrock was selected to be the principal acquisition advisor to the Inspector General of the Army in Washington. In this role, he advised and assisted the Inspector General with some of the Army's most sensitive acquisition programs and other matters. He routinely was responsible for matters of national importance and interest. He was cited as consistently demonstrating those traits that are expected

from the Army's best officers. He then was selected to serve as an executive officer in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Research, Development and Acquisition). He served as a key facilitator in preparing the Army leadership for senior level Secretary of Defense and Congressional reviews for programs that were valued in excess of $30 billion. He excelled in managing all administration, logistics support, security and automation to support 37 senior civilian and military personnel. His senior executive service supervisor called him the best officer with whom he had ever served.

He then was selected to serve as a liaison with the U.S. Congress. Lt. Col. Schoenrock worked directly with the Army leadership and with Members of Congress and their staffs in resolving matters of the utmost national sensitivity and urgency. He ensured that programs that total billions of dollars were wisely and prudently executed to provide maximum benefit to the Army and to the communities that are closely related to the Army. He excelled as the principal congressional coordinator for the prime vendor support initiative. This is the lead Army program in which the Army is considering the outsourcing of the entire wholesale logistics of a principal major weapons system, with cost savings of $1.8 billion. He flawlessly announced nearly 1,000 contract actions, each valued in excess of $5 million, to over 3,500 Members of Congress, totaling $22.5 billion. He was an influential and visible spokesman on Capitol Hill.

In his last assignment, Lt. Col. Schoenrock excelled as the Inspector General for the State of Colorado. He advised and assisted the State of Colorado military leadership in the conduct of all military functions for 5,000 soldiers and airmen. He trained the Republic of Slovenia Defense Inspectorate in the conduct of inspector general functions as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, Partnership for Peace Program. He also established the effort to develop the legislative liaison function between the Slovene Minister of Defense and the Slovene Parliament. His efforts with Slovenia went far towards helping this newly-emerging democracy develop the foundation for an enduring form of democratic government and to attain NATO membership. He excelled as a member of Governor Owens' state advocate council responsible for military and veterans issues. He contributed to significant increases in the wartime readiness of the Colorado National Guard and its ability to execute a myriad of missions in support of Operations Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Lt. Col. Schoenrock's efforts contributed immeasurably to the Colorado National Guard's soldier welfare, readiness and public image.

As a career Army officer, husband and father, and dedicated citizen, Mark Schoenrock exemplifies what is good and right about America. His life is a credit to his family, to his home state of Nebraska, to the U.S. Army, and to his generation. His 28 years of service as a U.S. Army officer in increasingly demanding positions of trust and responsibility rising from company level to the Department of the Army staff and service with the U.S. Congress, culminating in 8 years as the Colorado Inspector General, significantly contributed to the security and freedom of the United States of America. His career achievements influenced the lives of thousands and left a legacy of freedom that will be built upon for generations to come. His career was a credit to his generation of Americans who have served the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, there is a great deal of cynicism about politics today. H.R. 4975, the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, is a significant step toward additional transparency and accountability in the legislative process and will ensure that everyone has equal access to the legislative system. Had I been present on May 3, 2006, I would have voted ``yea'' on H.R. 4975.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Mr. Sherman for bringing this legislation to the floor.

I just wanted to say a couple of words about Coach Wooden. I have known him personally and I understand he has been ill. I hope he is watching today. Of course everyone has discussed his record, the seven straight national championships and 10 national championships in 12 years, which is remarkable, 88 straight wins. But the thing I thought I would mention is that the most significant thing that I know about John Wooden is not his record, but it is rather the way he went about achieving that record.

One thing that I picked up from him that was invaluable to me as a coach was that he never talked to his players about winning. You would think in a business that is so keyed to winning that you would frequently mention the word winning, but he never did. He always talked about process. He always talked about how you went about achieving excellence, starting with the way you put your socks on, the way you shot free throws, the way you passed the ball. He was a tremendous detail person, a great emphasis on fundamentals.

One quote that he had in one of his books that I thought was significant was he talked about Cervantes. Cervantes mentioned that the journey is more important than the end. What he was saying was that it is not the final destination but it is how you get there. Of course, we are in a business here that is very end, very goal-oriented, and sometimes the end justifies the means. And so I have always appreciated that about John. It was simply what he taught his players and what he taught people in coaching in general about how to approach the game. So there could not have been a finer person chosen for this honor.

Thank you for so honoring him and we hope that he recovers quickly and is out of the hospital.

Mr. Speaker, I too would like to add my congratulations to Congressman Baird for H.R. 556.

First of all, the good news. In many parts of the country, cocaine and heroin are being diminished rather rapidly. The bad news is that the reason in many cases this is happening is simply because methamphetamine has come in. Methamphetamine is cheaper. It is more addictive. If we had a map here, we could see the sweep of the growth of methamphetamine from the southwestern part of the United States all the way across the country, and now maybe just a few States in the northeast are somewhat preserved from having to battle this problem. But, of course, that problem is going to be coming in their direction.

The State of Nebraska recently released a study which indicated there were 22,000 people addicted to methamphetamine. In the State of Nebraska, that would be equivalent to about the eighth or ninth largest community in the State of Nebraska. A study in Arkansas recently indicated that the average meth addict will cost the State of Arkansas $47,500, in view of crimes, children in foster care, time in prison and so on. So if you multiplied that out, 22,000 people by $47,500, you are talking about over $1 billion in a State with 1.7 million people. So it is a significant, huge problem.

Just as an example of one of the more innocent victims, a child born to a mother addicted to methamphetamine will usually cost anywhere from $700,000 to $1.7 million to get that child from birth to age 18 because of the devastation and the defects the methamphetamine has caused in that child, not to mention the amount of pain the child goes through.

So as has been mentioned earlier, there really is not one answer to this problem. It has to be multifaceted. And, really, we are looking at three things.

Number one is education. And as Congressman Baird mentioned, the scary thing is that the age is getting less and less and less. So you have to start in about the 3rd or 4th grade letting kids know what this is, what is in it. You also have to educate parents, because parents are the number one determinant as to an attitude that a person is going to have towards substance abuse.

So for every dollar that we spend at the front end in education and prevention, it has been proven that we save $10 or $15 at the back end in terms of the devastation that the drugs cost. So we have to spend more in prevention, we have to spend more in education, and I think that is something this body needs to keep in mind.

Secondly, law enforcement. The number one law enforcement tool we have for methamphetamine is the drug task forces, and this is funded primarily by the Byrne Grants. Last year, we zeroed out the Byrne Grants. And we fought with every fiber that we had here to get about two-thirds of that funding back, but it wasn't enough. So we have to make sure that the Byrne Grants are fully funded, because again, in the White House budget, they have been zeroed out this year. We absolutely have to have those.

And the last issue is treatment. It has been proven that drug courts are much more effective than throwing people in prison. We have so many people who are simply addicted and they are sent to prison. A drug court enables them to be tested twice a week, they get treatment, and they can usually hold their families together and pay taxes. So we think these are all things that are very, very important.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Nancy Campbell of Lincoln, Nebraska, on receiving the Commonwealth Academy Recognition for Educators (CARE) Award. The CARE award, presented by Commonwealth Academy in Alexandria, Virginia, honors educators who have made outstanding educational contributions in their communities.

This year, Nancy Campbell was selected as one of only a few educators nationwide to receive this award for her work at the Lancaster County Youth Service and Juvenile Detention Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. Formerly of Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Nancy Campbell has been teaching for 38 years, and she has spent the past four teaching reading, basic skills and positive action in the boy's maximum security area at the Youth Service Center.

Ms. Campbell received her B.S. in Education from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and over her career she has taught at 12 schools in 9 States. Since one of her sons has Attention Deficit Disorder, she has a special understanding of students with learning challenges, serving as president of an Attention Deficit Disorder parents support group in Scottsbluff for 10 years.

Ms. Campbell lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her husband Dave. She has three sons, one of whom is adopted, and has also raised three foster children.

I ask my colleagues to join me in applauding Nancy Campbell and congratulating her on this distinguished achievement.

Mr. Speaker, in 2003, I was privileged to hear British Prime Minister Tony Blair speak in this Chamber, and one comment he made that particularly caught my attention was this: He said, ``As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but in fact it is transient.''

What he was referring to, I believe, was that all great nations, when things are going well, assume that they are going to go on forever. But history shows us with example after example that this is really fallacious reasoning. So we might examine three such instances.

First of all, going clear back to Rome, which ruled nearly the entire civilized world 2,000 years ago, Rome appeared to be invincible, but eventually it fell. The reasons given generally by historians are these: There was a general decline in morality; there was an increasing corruption and instability in leadership; an increasing public addiction to every more violent public spectacles; an increase in crime and prostitution; and a population that became more self-absorbed, apathetic and unwilling to sacrifice for the common good.

Secondly, we might look at Great Britain itself. Certainly Great Britain has not fallen from preeminence, but it certainly is not the power it once was during the 1600s up through much of the 1800s, when it really dominated the entire world.

That empire slowly crumbled, and the reasons given again by historians were these: It lost the national resolve to maintain its territory, values that led to its ascendency were eroded, and spiritual underpinnings shifted dramatically.

Thirdly, we might just take a look quickly at a more recent superpower, Russia, which was one of two great superpowers as recently as 20 years ago. In a matter of months Russia disintegrated before our very eyes, and I think I along with many other people were amazed at how quickly this happened. Alexander Solzhenitzyn reflected on this fall when he observed this. He said, ``Over a half century ago when I was still a child, I recall a number of older people offering the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia,'' and he quotes. ``Men have forgotten God. That is why all of this has happened.'' Marx and Lenin had dismantled Russia's religious heritage and values, and Russia's foundation was broken and it collapsed like a house of cards with nothing to sustain it.

There are some common themes in all of these historic national collapses. First of all, the citizens became less willing to sacrifice for others and for their country; citizens became more self-absorbed, had a greater desire for the state to provide instead of providing for themselves; a weakening of commonly held values, and a decline of spiritual commitment.

You may say, well, what does all of this have to do with the United States, and why are you talking about this this evening? We obviously have the most powerful military, the strongest economy, the most stable government of any nation in the world today.

It is very easy to think that we are invincible and that this may last forever. But as Tony Blair stated so clearly, as Britain knows, all predominant power for a time seems invincible, but in fact it is truly transient.

This statement of Prime Minister Blair's rang a bell with me as I sat and listened to him, because over 36 years of coaching and working with young people I witnessed some trends that were concerning to me. The young men that I worked with were more talented physically and more gifted each year, yet they showed more signs of stress, more personal struggles, less moral clarity as time passed.

This chart illustrates some of the difficulty that we are currently experiencing with some of our young people

that shows the juvenile court delinquency caseload. It starts in 1960 with really not very many cases, and it more than quadrupled by 1995 and 2000, and that trend has continued upward even today.

Several factors I think have contributed to these changes. First of all, the family structure has certainly eroded in our country. In 1960, when I first started coaching, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was 5 percent. Today it is 34 percent; in parts of our country, the out-of- wedlock birth rate is 60 and 70 percent. So we have at least one-third of our young people entering the world with two strikes against them. It does not mean they cannot live a successful life, but it is certainly going to be much more difficult.

In 1960, the great majority of children lived with both parents. Today, nearly 40 percent of our young people grow up without both biological parents. Again, this makes life more difficult. Less than one quarter of families with children under 6 have a parent staying home with them full time. Of course, that again is a tremendous shift from the way it was 40, 50 years ago. One-third of all school-aged kids come home to an empty house for at least part of the week, and the hours between 3 and 6 p.m. are the largest at-risk time for children in our culture at the present time; it is those 3 hours after school, before parents begin to come home.

Twenty-four million children in our culture live without their real father. Fatherless children are two to three times more likely to be abused, have emotional and behavioral problems, abuse drugs, alcohol, or to commit a crime. There is a greeting card company that contacted the inmates in a prison just before Mother's Day, and on a whim they decided that they would provide Mother's Day cards for any inmate that wanted to send a card to his mother. The reception was very good. Almost 100 percent of the inmates accepted cards, sent it to their mother. So they decided that they would try the same thing on Father's Day, and yet they had almost zero response. Practically no inmate would write a card to his father. I would assume the reason is that so many of the people there were people who had been abandoned by their fathers, did not have fathers, and as a result you could see a tremendous dichotomy between those who were still attached in some way to a mother as compared to those who were attached to their father.

The foundation in our culture, the family, is certainly under assault. It does not mean that we do not have good families, we have many good families; but there has been some sign of erosion, some things that are certainly very concerning. Of course, the family unit is the basic element of our social structure. When that begins to fall apart, then things begin to get very difficult indeed.

Also, we might mention that in addition to some of the difficulties that we are experiencing in our families, the environment in which our young people currently exist has certainly changed as well. One thing I am going to talk about here for the next 3 or 4 minutes is underage drinking, alcohol abuse, because this has become a huge problem in our culture. The National Academy of Science study showed that alcohol kills six and a half times more young people than all other drugs combined. So it kind of flies under the radar screen, where we think about cocaine, we think about heroin, we think about methamphetamine, we think about marijuana, and yet six and a half times more young people are killed by alcohol than all of these other substances combined. It costs the U.S. $53 billion annually, alcohol abuse, underage drinking. There are roughly 3 million teenage alcoholics, which is by far the largest number of those who are addicted to some kind of substance. The average first drink in our country today is at 12.8 years of age, and that age is declining.

One of the problems we have with underage drinking is that so often young people binge drink. On average, they will consume twice as much alcohol per occasion of drinking than an adult will. Of course, this leads to some very difficult situations. Twenty percent of eighth graders drink regularly. Children who drink before age 15 are five times more likely to become an alcoholic than those who wait until they are 21 years of age to start drinking. Youth are 96 times more likely to see an ad promoting alcohol than to see an ad discouraging underage drinking. So, obviously, in the advertising world, you can see where the emphasis is. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fight drug production in Afghanistan, Colombia, and around the world, and a fraction of that money spent on curbing underage drinking might be more cost effective in our own country.

The National Advertising and Education Campaign has been effective in combating teen tobacco use, and the same thing is needed to combat underage drinking and yet we seem to ignore the problem.

Another substance abuse epidemic that is sweeping the Nation and has really gotten most of our attention is the methamphetamine epidemic. In my State of Nebraska, the problem has become tremendously pernicious and has been somewhat overwhelming. I would like to illustrate this by showing a few charts at this time.

This was the incidence of methamphetamine labs in 1990. California and Texas were the only two States that reported more than 20 meth labs out in the countryside; of course, that changed rather rapidly. We see here in 2004, all but maybe seven or eight States in the Northeast were reporting large numbers of meth labs, and of course in many cases they are reporting as many as 300 or 400 or 500 meth labs that we know about in a given year. So methamphetamine has swept from the west coast and the Southwest all across the country, and the prediction is that certainly those Northeastern States will also be hit very hard by methamphetamine within a relatively short period of time.

Many people have seen the following pictures, but I think it shows rather graphically what methamphetamine does. This was a young lady who was arrested in November of 1979, and was arrested each succeeding year for the next 10 years for methamphetamine. She was picked up by authorities, and each year they took her picture, a mug shot. You can see the first 5 years that she certainly deteriorates somewhat, and then in May of 1986 there is a more dramatic change; in January of 1988, a significant change, and this is where some people begin to believe that she started to inject methamphetamine, and then you see further deterioration in the bottom right picture was taken in January of 1989, 10 years later, after the first picture.

This was taken in the morgue when she had eventually succumbed to her addiction, and so the interesting thing is that she did survive for 10 years. Many people on meth do not do this, but you can see that the aging process was tremendous and it probably took the toll that normally a person would age 50 years in that 10-year period of time, and she did it in 10 with the assistance of methamphetamine.

A report released by Voices For Children found that meth is one of the reasons for a 38 percent increase in child abuse and neglect in the State of Nebraska. This is true all across the country. As we see meth increase, we see child abuse, child neglect goes up, and we see many cases of serious injury and death on the part of young people simply because their parents no longer are able to care for them or care about them. The meth addiction has taken over and occupies all of their time, their attention and their devotion, and children suffer greatly.

According to a recent report to the legislature by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, an estimated 22,396 Nebraskans are methamphetamine dependent or abusers. This is in a relatively sparsely populated State with 1.7 million people. So it constitutes the population of a pretty good-sized town in the State of Nebraska.

A study done by the University of Arkansas found that methamphetamine users cost their employers about $47,500 annually due to increased absenteeism and loss of productivity. If you took $47,500 costs, and that is fairly conservative, times 22,000 individuals addicted, you have got over $1 billion in costs in the State of Nebraska. Of course, I am extrapolating those figures from Arkansas, but I believe that they are probably fairly accurate.

Judge John Icenogle, a drug court judge in Buffalo County, Nebraska, testified at a hearing here in Washington

before the Education and Workforce Committee, and I would like to read you a little bit of what he said: ``In April of 2005, approximately 6,000 children were living in out-of-home foster care placements within the State of Nebraska. More than half of the parents from whom children are removed have problems due to use of methamphetamine.''

So we have 6,000 people in foster care living in out-of-home placements. Roughly 3,000 of those kids are there because their parents are addicted to methamphetamine.

During a recent 2-week period in Lancaster County in Nebraska, the county attorney filed juvenile petitions on behalf of nine newborns because of methamphetamine use by the mothers. This is the interesting part: additional birthing expenses for a meth mother include as much as $1,500 to $25,000 per day for the care of her child. Some children require nearly a quarter of a million dollars of care to ensure the child attains the age of 1. This is simply because of reduced birthrate, damage that methamphetamine causes; and this does not say anything about the horrible suffering that these children go through.

The developmentally delayed children can require up to three-quarters of a million dollars in special care during the child's first 18 years of life. So to get one of these meth babies from birth to age 18 in some cases will cost $700,000, $750,000, not in all cases.

Congress has taken some steps to address meth production by making it more difficult for meth cooks to be able to obtain pseudoephedrine, which is one of the primary ingredients, the only ingredient which you absolutely have to have. That regulation has been helpful, along with some laws from various States.

One thing that I think we did in that bill, which I think is very important for us in Congress to realize, is that at the present time, somewhere in the vicinity of 70 to 80 percent of the methamphetamine coming into the United States today is not made in meth labs. Those are kind of on the way down. Meth is coming, in most cases, from Mexico from superlabs; and in order to have a superlab, you have to purchase huge amounts of precursor chemicals, and chief among these are the pseudoephedrine. There are only six or seven places in the world that manufacture large quantities of pseudoephedrine, and so in the bill that we did, we said we want the five leading exporters of pseudoephedrine and the five leading importing countries of pseudoephedrine to report, to give their invoices to the United States, to report to us, and that way we would be able to track where the pseudoephedrine is going and where those superlabs are.

We think much of it will be in Mexico; and if they do not comply, we are entitled to remove up to 50 percent of their foreign aid, which is a significant penalty, which should get cooperation. This is part of the bill that I think will really help us get a handle on the crystal meth that is currently coming in from those superlabs.

It is critical that we have a balanced approach to this problem of methamphetamine. There is not just one thing you have to do. You have to start out first with education, and probably start with young people in third, fourth, fifth grade and their parents, and of course, photos like I have just shown are very graphic. Sometimes they are rather disturbing, but it shows people exactly what methamphetamine does. We think education is critical because for every one dollar you spend on education and prevention, you are usually going to get anywhere from $10 to $15 from the back end in reduced crime and not having to lock people up and reduced assaults, foster care and so on. So this is important.

The second thing that you have to do is you have to have interdiction. You have to have people on the ground who are attacking the meth problem on a daily basis, and in many parts of the country, drug task forces are critical. This is why the Byrne grants that Congress provides, which fund these drug task forces, is critical. Last year, we were zeroed out in the President's budget on Byrne grants, and we restored as much as we could, about two-thirds of what we probably needed. This year again we are zeroed out, and again we will have to fight to get that funding back; but this is critical to have the Federal money to be able to attack the meth problem in terms of law enforcement.

Then, lastly, the third leg of the stool is the issue of treatment. Right now, we have a lot of people who do not manufacture methamphetamine, people who have not committed crimes on methamphetamine; but these are simply people who are addicted to meth. The question is what are you going to do with them. So often what we are doing is we are sending them to prison for 12 months or 18 months. They get no treatment. Their family usually falls apart, and as a result, they come out as bad off or worse off than when they went in. On the other hand, if you put them in a drug court, they get tested twice a week. So you know that they are clean. You know that they are off the drug. They get treatment. They get to go to group therapy. They can usually hold down a job and pay taxes. They can usually hold their family together. So this is critical, and it is the most cost- effective, efficient way to treat the problem. Again, we need to have substantial amounts of money for those drug courts.

So, anyway, we feel that the meth issue is becoming huge, and it is really impacting our culture.

The United States is also one of the most violent nations in the world for young people. We have the highest youth homicide and assault rates in the developed world, and suicide is currently the third leading cause of death for young people. The violence has certainly escalated.

Pornography has also exploded. There are currently 260 million Internet porn sites cataloged as recently as 2003. Let me repeat that number: 260 million Internet porn sites. Our Internet is simply inundated with this type of activity. Nine out of 10 children between the ages of 9 and 16 have viewed porn on the Internet, mostly unintentional. This was according to a study done by the London School of Economics.

Many of us are dismayed by the way the FCC is regulating obscenity on our Nation's airwaves. We do not feel they are doing enough, and a poll in 2004 found that 82 percent of adult Americans surveyed say that the Federal laws against Internet obscenity should be vigorously enforced, and most people do not believe they are being enforced to the degree that they should be.

Video games, something also impacting our young people. More than 90 percent of American children play video games every day, and one-half of the top sellers contain extreme violence. Some teach stalking and killing of victims, similar to military training and video games; and pornography is sometimes a reward for hitting a target in one of the video games.

The young man who was a school shooter in Kentucky had never fired a gun before the day that he went to the school and started picking off his classmates, but he had been trained and trained on video games, shooting lifelike people, and he became remarkably accurate.

So we think that some things should be done in this regard as well. Much music, some television, and many movies are very graphic, and that content would have been impossible to present for public consumption 30 years ago. I have some grandchildren, ages 6 through 13, and I know many people in Congress are concerned about grandchildren, children, and the effects that some of the things we have just mentioned are having on those young people.

Lastly, let me just mention that the value system in our country has certainly shifted. We mentioned that the family has been eroded to some degree, the environment is more threatening, and the value system that we have held dear for so many years seems to be changing to some degree also.

Many folks may have read a book by Steven Covey called ``The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.'' Covey points out in his book that over the first 150 years of our Nation's history success was defined primarily in terms of character traits. And so a successful person was honest, a successful person was hard working, faithful, loyal, and compassionate. And that was what success was all about. Then he noticed

that over the last 50, 60 years that the definition of success has changed remarkably. He said, success now is viewed as acquiring material possessions, acquiring power, and prestige. And so success is no longer a link to character traits, rather it is linked to those things which are powerful, impressive, and have to do with monetary advantage.

So the value system, obviously, has shifted significantly over the last 50, 60 years. We have seen certainly a discouraging lack of integrity, sometimes in government, sometimes in athletics, sometimes in the business world. We have seen extreme political partisanship. Ofttimes on this floor you hear one side attacking the other. I think that has eroded public confidence to some degree in the political sector.

Presently, Mr. Speaker, the predominant world view is something called post-modernism. Post-modernism is certainly very alive and well in our culture, especially on our college campuses. What post-modernism says, essentially, is this: It says that there are no such things as moral absolutes. There is nothing absolutely right or nothing that is absolutely wrong. Everything is relative. In the case of theft, maybe even murder, maybe even incest, adultery, or treason, it depends on the circumstance. So as a result, we have a whole generation of folks growing up with the idea that there really is nothing that is truly wrong and that everything can be explained away depending upon the circumstance.

In view of all that I have been discussing, this is an extremely difficult time for our children. We are asking them to weave their way through a mine field littered with alcohol, drug abuse in some cases, harmful video games, and sometimes music, television, and movies that are not very healthy. And we are asking them to weave their way through with less parental guidance and an ever shifting value system. So we have to be aware of what is happening to the next generation. We need to pay close attention. There is no culture that is more than one generation away from dissolution.

I am not one who is a doom and gloom individual. Much of what I have talked about this evening is certainly not very cheery or terribly optimistic. But I think unless we begin to look at things in a realistic way we will not be able to do much to correct the problem, maybe before it is too late.

A Frenchman by the name of de Tocqueville made an astute observation early in our Nation's history. He said this about America. He said, ``America is great because America is good.'' And he was referring to the large number of churches and civic clubs and youth groups and individuals who reach out to help those who are less fortunate. To some degree, that is still very true of our country. We are a generous people. We are really basically at heart, I think, a very good people. 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, and he was referring to the basic American ethic, which is essentially do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Of course, de Tocqueville wrote 200 years ago. So the question is, are his observations true today? Some are. However, as we have pointed out, there are some disturbing signs of change. But what can be done about this? We don't want to leave the subject, Mr. Speaker, without at least talking about some possible solutions.

One thing that I have been very interested in through the last 10 or 15 years and during my time here in Congress has been the issue of mentoring. Mentoring, of course, is providing an adult in the life of a young person who cares, number one. And it is amazing how many young people really don't have an adult in their life that they can absolutely count on; that they can depend on; someone who cares about them unconditionally.

So a mentor is someone who does that. It is not a preacher, not a teacher, not a parent, and not a grandparent. It is not somebody who has an obligation. It is somebody who simply cares enough to show up. And that is very powerful in the life of a young person.

Secondly, a mentor is someone who affirms, who says, I believe in you. Again, there are so many young people today who don't hear a positive message. They do not hear a kind word; that somebody believes that they can be successful; that they can do what they need to do; that they see some strength.

Then the third thing a mentor does is provide a vision of what is possible. Again, so often young people are really limited by their experience. Maybe they have never seen a parent who has completed high school. Maybe they have never seen anyone in their immediate family who has accomplished anything or maybe even has held down a steady job. So their idea of growing up is to drop out of school at age 16 and get a job in a fast food place and maybe buy an old car, and the rest of the future is maybe not very promising. So providing a vision, again, is something that certainly a mentor can do.

Mentoring programs have been proven to reduce dropout rates, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, violence, they increase attendance, graduation, grades, and even peer relationships. So it is one of the best things we have going. And in view of the fact so many young people do not have tremendous parental support, mentoring is one thing that we can provide.

A few years ago, the President proposed $150 million annually for mentoring programs, and Congress has come through pretty well, I think. We provided $184 million over the last 5 years, and this really has reached hundreds of thousands of young people who are now being mentored who would not otherwise have had a chance to have a mentor in their life.

Currently, the National Mentoring Partnership estimates that there are roughly 18 million young people in our country today who badly need a mentor, and yet we are only mentoring somewhere between 2 and 3 million of those 18 million. So there is a lot of work to be done. But if we could begin to fill that gap and get somewhere close to providing an adequate mentor in the lives of those 18 million young people, it would make a huge difference in this country and make a huge difference in the future of this country.

Sometimes legislation can help, and there have been a number of bills introduced. I have introduced H.R. 1422, the Student Athlete Protection Act, to close a Nevada gambling loophole. Some people say that is really not that relevant, but it is interesting in that the State of Nevada is the only State that legalizes betting, gambling on amateur sports. It seems that this is something that we ought to think about a little bit. Currently, thousands of people go to Nevada during the NCAA basketball tournament, also during the football bowl games, because they can bet on game after game after game.

Having been a coach, and the reason this is important, so often you had to win twice. You had to win on the scoreboard and you also were expected to beat the point spread. And that puts a lot of pressure on young people. It certainly puts pressure on coaches. But we are older and we are expected to be able to perform. But I think that that influence has not been healthy on the world of sports and certainly has been difficult for young people.

The Software Accuracy and Fraud Evaluation Rating Act, or SAFE Rating Act, sponsored by Joe Baca and myself, is one that would require the Federal Trade Commission to study the voluntary rating system for video games to determine if its practices are unfair or deceptive.

This is important because right now in the video game industry, you cannot really tell much about the content by looking at the rating. It is not quite like movies and some other rating schemes we have. So the bill holds the video game industry accountable for their products and ensures that parents have accurate information in making purchasing decisions for their children.

I think there are an awful lot of parents who have kids playing video games every day who have no idea what is going on in those games. They simply are not aware of the content.

We certainly could use a fundamental shift in some of the court decisions regarding the first amendment. Legislation passed by Congress will not help if it is overturned by the courts on a regular basis. The court has ruled in some cases to protect pornography. In 1996

Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, which 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 stating ``indecent material is protected by the first amendment.'' Of course that ruling, that decision, set the tone for many other decisions.

In 1996, the Child Pornography Prevent Act outlawed child pornography. In April 2002 the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional. Again a precedent was set.

In October 1998, the Children Online Protection Act was signed into law to prohibit the communication of harmful material of children on publicly accessible Web sites. The Supreme Court's refusal to rule on the 1998 law prevent the law from being enacted.

There are many, many cases like this. What we see is sometimes under the guise of free speech, and certainly everyone in Congress believes in the principle of the first amendment. However, we find that some people's rights are being trampled because 80 to 90 percent of rapists and pedophiles use pornography on a regular basis, often before or sometimes during the commission of their crimes. Therefore, we think that it is time that we rethink some of these rulings.

Some people say pornography is harmless. However, what we read and see and think about certainly affects behavior. If this was not the case, I am sure that people would not spend billions of dollars on advertising because advertising does change behavior. There is no question to that effect.

The court has often ruled against school prayer, and I certainly would not advocate that a teacher or superintendent or principle or somebody in the school should be allowed to proselytize or say a prayer in class that would be offensive; but in 1962 the Supreme Court ruled the following prayer unconstitutional: ``Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.''

So it would appear that many court rulings regarding separation of church and State have ranged far afield from the intent of the framers of the Constitution. Benjamin Franklin said, ``We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that except the Lord build the 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 builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves will become a reproach and a byword down to future ages.''

He continues, ``I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.'' On Franklin's insistence and urging, the House of Representatives and the Senate open every day with prayer.

I am not suggesting that the same thing needs to happen in our schools, but it does appear that the intent of the framers of the Constitution was maybe a little different than what we have seen played out in the courts.

George Washington said, ``The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a Nation that disregards the internal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.''

We have seen that the warnings of Franklin and Washington to some degree have come full circle. As we have moved further and further away from our spiritual underpinnings, we begin to see some of the fruits of that wandering. So despite the fact that the Constitution does not contain a separation of church and State clause, in 1992 the Supreme Court decision declared an invocation and a benediction at a graduation ceremony unconstitutional. The court held a minute of silence in a school was unconstitutional. So if you started the school day with a minute of silence in which students may pray silently, they may think about their history test, that minute of silence was held to be unconstitutional. That seems a little bit strange.

The court ruled a student-led prayer at a football game was unconstitutional. And of course many of us know the words ``under God'' was struck from the Pledge of Allegiance by the Ninth Circuit Court. The Supreme Court restored the phrase, but it threw the case out on a technicality. I am sure that challenge will resurface sometime soon.

So we have seen many examples of different rulings that have certainly affected our culture. A partial-birth abortion ban was recently struck down by the courts. And many in this body who favor abortion voted for this ban. More than 70 percent of the public now oppose partial-birth abortion. I am not going to go further into the abortion issue, but it seems rather strange that something that is disapproved of by so many people in the United States would be struck down.

The Constitution is increasingly interpreted as a living document. So the Constitution is often not interpreted as it was written, but rather as justices believe it should be or maybe how it should have been written. Legal decisions increasingly come down based not upon what the law states, but rather based upon the personal ideology of the jurist.

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

And so it will be interesting to see now that we have had some change on the court, and I do not mean to say that the court over a number of years has been totally errant, there are many great decisions they have made, but I am saying that the general drift of the court has been one which has led us down a path that is certainly quite a distance from where we started out in the founding of our Nation.

So the makeup of the courts and the will of Congress will greatly influence whether we continue to drift further from our spiritual heritage or draw close to those values upon which our Nation was founded, the willingness of Congress to focus upon the pernicious influences impacting our children. And sometimes I am concerned because I see people who are here in Congress who fought the fight over the Internet battles and pornography and some of these things, and have simply started to back off because they realize that they have passed laws and they have passed laws and because of various court rulings they have not gotten anywhere and so they have almost quit trying. That is unfortunate.

And also 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 great concern. However, terrorism and economic distress will not prevail as long as our national character is silent. So we are engaged in a cultural and a spiritual struggle of huge proportion, and I can only hope that the principles upon which this Nation was founded remain preeminent. As Congress addresses important issues such as national defense, the economy and health care, 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.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to address the House this evening.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I too urge support of this important amendment.

As we have learned from implementation of No Child Left Behind, in many cases school districts with the greatest needs have the most trouble attracting highly qualified teachers to their communities. This is true particularly in the inner cities, urban areas, and then in a district like mine, which is almost entirely rural. So to have more teachers available, a larger pool, is critical.

As has been mentioned, Teach for America currently has 3,500 members. And the thing I do not think has been mentioned is that they are serving roughly 300,000 students around the country. So this is one program that enables us to capture some of our best and our brightest young people coming out of college.

This has been a tremendously successful program, and I am very pleased that the chairman and other members of the committee have chosen to offer this amendment. I also appreciate Mr. Regula's support. That is also very important.

Mr. Speaker, I think most Americans are pretty interested, very concerned about the high cost of energy, particularly fuel.

At the present time, we are nearly 60 percent dependent on foreign oil. OPEC provides the largest part of that oil that we are importing. We currently have a very large trade deficit, and petroleum is really the major part of, at least the largest single entity in that trade deficit, and this is a major threat to our economy. Right now, the purchase of foreign oil contributes about one-third of that trade deficit that we are now experiencing.

The United States has only 3 percent of the world's petroleum reserves. So we are highly dependent on the rest of the world. We are now using more petroleum than we are discovering. So we are on a downhill slope. Obviously, we have to do some things differently than what we have been doing, and I think the energy bill we passed here in the Congress last summer was certainly a step in the right direction.

Many people may remember there was a renewable fuel standards in it that was fairly significant. There were incentives for wind, solar, hydrogen fuel cells which may be the wave of the future, something that is not a renewable fuel standard, but also some nuclear incentives were in there. We have not done much nuclear production for a long time, whereas Europe has moved ahead, and much of the energy in Europe is now due to nuclear power.

A couple of the major issues in a renewable fuel standard have to do with ethanol and biodiesel, and the remainder of my remarks will be addressed mainly to those topics.

First of all, a renewable fuel standard adds $51 billion to farm income over 10 years, and the good news for taxpayers is that this reduces government farm payments by $5.9 billion over that 10-year period. That is money that otherwise would be paid by the taxpayer. It also reduces the trade deficit of the United States by roughly $34 billion, and it significantly reduces air pollution as well.

So we think that obviously there are some tremendous benefits to the renewable fuel standard. Currently, we are producing roughly 5.9 billion gallons of ethanol this year, 2006; and the energy bill mandates by the year 2012, just 6 years from now, that we produce 7.5 billion gallons; but, actually, we will far exceed that at the pace that we are now producing ethanol.

By 2025, there is a goal on the part of many of us to become independent of the oil that is produced in the Middle East, which would mean we would need to produce roughly 60 billion gallons of ethanol, biodiesel, and those types of fuels. And this is doable. It is going to take a concerted effort, a commitment on the part of our country, but we can do that. Technology is changing rapidly.

One thing that I think is important to show is that we often hear that, well, ethanol is okay, but it actually burns up more energy than it produces. And that is not true. Ethanol, for every Btu of fossil fuel used, yields just about 1.4 Btu's of energy because a lot of the energy in ethanol comes from the sun. In contrast, gasoline, for every 1 Btu of fossil fuel used to produce it, yields about eight-tenths of a Btu. So there is an energy deficit.

The same is true of MTBE. And, of course, MTBE is rapidly being phased out, so there is a tremendous demand now for ethanol to fill that gap. So, anyway, the technology is certainly changing.

Something that is on the horizon is cellulosic ethanol. This is ethanol that would not necessarily be made from

corn, but would be made from switchgrass, rice, wheat, corn stover, so corn stalks, wheat stalks, and rice stalks can be used. These are things that are currently sometimes burned or thrown away. Also wood chips. So there is a tremendous opportunity out there in parts of the country that are not necessarily in the Corn Belt to be in some form of the ethanol industry.

Biodiesel is now where ethanol was about 10 or 15 years ago. It is on the cusp of really becoming a major part of our fuel supply and shows great promise. There are many spin-offs and by-products from ethanol. For instance, biodegradable plastics can be made in the process of wet milling. And right now a great deal of our packaging stores, like Wal- Mart and others, are now using biodegradable plastics.

So we think there is a great future here. And, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to address the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Pryce).

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the United States' third case of BSE or mad cow disease was diagnosed. The first case was December 2003, which was a Canadian-born cow that was diagnosed in Washington State. The second case was last June, a cow from Texas, and now this latest case, a cow from Alabama, and it is assumed that it is at least 10 years old or older. If so, this cow was born before the 1997 feed ban went into effect, and that is significant because in 1997, it was decreed that no ruminant animal feed would be fed to livestock; and, of course, ruminant feed means it contains some parts of animal within the feed.

It is assumed BSE is acquired by an animal eating part of another animal that is BSE positive. As a result, we think that this feed ban should control the spread of BSE over time, but this apparently was an older animal that may have been prior to the ban.

Also, it is duly noted that roughly 150 people in the United Kingdom have died from a related disease to eating BSE-positive animals, so it is a concern.

So this leads to some questions:

Number one, is U.S. beef safe?

The answer is yes, despite this third case. Annually we slaughter roughly 35 million cows in the United States, and we have had three positive since 2003, and our testing system is sophisticated to the degree if there is one animal that is positive for BSE in 10 million cows, we would be 99 percent certain to find that one cow. So the testing, the surveillance has been ramped up considerably. We have tested 640,000 animals since June of 2004. Also, any animal in the United States that is slaughtered has the brains and spinal tissue removed, which is the tissue that normally carries the BSE prion.

The second question: Will this hurt beef exports from the United States?

The answer is it will certainly not help, and it may hurt to some degree. However, I think people around the world have become more familiar with BSE, what it is and how it can be prevented, and so it might not be quite as alarming as it was 2 or 3 years ago.

Japan closed their border to U.S. beef 3 years ago. The border was opened last December, and it was closed again in January due to a breach in our export procedures. So we have lost that market which is roughly $1.4 billion a year in U.S. trade to Japan. A lot of this depends on confidence on the part of the Japanese public that we have rectified the problem. So this latest case is not going to help.

Hong Kong has also suspended beef imports from one U.S. packing plant here in the United States rather recently.

That leads us to the final question: What needs to be done?

It is very important that we have animal ID in the United States. Most other countries have it. We need to be able to determine where this animal from Alabama came from, what feed yard. It has only been on this one farm for 1 year, so the previous 9 years, where was it and what animals might have been contaminated along with it? Until we have that knowledge, until we have animal ID, it is going to be very difficult for us to maintain a positive trade climate around the world. So it is imperative that we begin to work on this and get this done as quickly as possible.