Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. The gentleman is right, the Supreme Court has ruled that every individual union worker has an absolute right not to be forced to contribute anything to political activities, to anything other than the activities related to collective bargaining. I yield to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Vic Snyder), who has been a staunch proponent of campaign reform in this Congress. I am glad to see that the gentleman has brought along his check.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez) and the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Christian- Green) for organizing this event tonight, and to say to our newest Representative in Congress, it is great to have her here. She is going to be a wonderful Representative for her district, I say to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps), and I am very glad to see the gentlewoman here. Mr. Speaker, it is springtime in Maine. When I say springtime in Maine, I do not mean the snow is gone, because it is still on the ground. When I say springtime in Maine, that it is springtime in Maine, I am just saying it is after March 21. What that means to most municipalities in Maine and most school administrative districts is that budget time is coming. For 6 years I was a member of the Portland City Council. I read six Portland school committee budgets. I went to all of our schools in the city, and I worked with members of the school committee trying to put together budgets that work for our community. Since I have been a Member of Congress, I have talked in schools all around the District. I have talked to superintendents, school committee members, parents, teachers, principals, all trying to get a grip on the problems we have with our schools, and what we need to do in order to make sure that our children get the best possible education that will prepare them for the 21st century. We have a late spring in Maine. We have, frankly, not much of a spring. We are not even in mud season yet. But I know that the debate is already beginning, because the way we fund our schools in Maine is primarily, almost entirely, with State money and with local money; now more local money than State money. That is raised on the basis of property taxes. So every year in certain communities around the State of Maine we have a huge debate among those who are trying to hold down property taxes and those who are trying to make sure that the kids in that particular community have a fair chance to get a good education and move ahead. That debate is repeated all across the country. This is a national problem. If we expect our children to grow, to prosper, to learn, we have to take account of the environments in which we are asking them to do that. With the current condition of our Nation's public schools, the question we have to ask is, what message are we sending to our children? One out of every three schools in this country needs extensive repair or replacement. Nearly 60 percent of schools in this country have at least one major building feature in disrepair: maybe a leaking roof, maybe a wall that is not quite what it should be, maybe stairs that are deteriorating, but major problems. Nearly one out of every three schools in this country was built before World War II. There is a recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers which found that the only infrastructure category in the United States to receive a failing grade is our schools, the only infrastructure category in the country. It will cost $112 billion to repair, renovate, and modernize our existing schools, and another $60 billion over the next decade will be needed for new school construction. Back in Maine we have some very good schools. We have some schools that are relatively new, but we also have some schools that are run down, that are not being renovated, that are not being replaced when they should be. It always comes back to that debate in the spring when some communities, some school administrative districts, realize they simply cannot afford to bring their schools up to the level of quality that they think they need. Just in terms of numbers, in Maine there is about $60 million in urgent health, safety, and legal compliance needs in the public schools. The total repair and renovation needs may be as high as $637 million. More than one-half of the schools in Maine have unsatisfactory environmental conditions. Air quality conditions are aggravating asthma problems. That is a leading cause for absenteeism. And some schools are really being forced to close unsafe schools. Now, as I said before, the question always comes up: How do we pay for these schools? We have had referenda in some communities where the school budget has been voted down not once but two or three or four times before we get a school budget through, and that is often just for the operating expenses. And when communities have that kind of struggle over the operating expenses, they cannot get there in terms of funding the schools. The people are saying we need new schools, but we cannot figure out how to pay for them. The Federal Government pays only 7 percent of education costs around the country and we could do a little bit more to help our local property taxpayers, to help our local communities and school administrative districts do some school renovations, school expansions, and school repairs. The Federal Government, I believe, should support States and local school districts, help them afford the costs of school construction and modernization. I think that we in Congress can be proud of the fact that the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act established qualified zone academy bonds, and they provide a source of capital at little or no interest. Now, while those qualified zone academy bonds are a step in the right direction, we need to do more. Democrats in this House, including the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez) have put forth a number of initiatives which support school construction and modernization. We need to deal with those proposals. We need those proposals to be debated here on the floor, not after hours, but while we are engaged in our legislative work. It is time to say to our children and parents around this country that children remain our top priority for the 21st century. Our goal this decade, this century, has got to be to leave no child behind, and we cannot do that if we are trying to teach in crumbling schools around the country. It is time for a new national initiative to help not to take over the school system, but simply to afford some financial assistance to our States and local communities to help them upgrade the quality of our schools. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say ``thank you'' to both the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez) and the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Christian-Green) tonight for bringing us here to talk about this very important issue. I look forward to working with them both to make sure that we get something done.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, the Thompson report released last week has confirmed what we all know; that the integrity of our political system has been undermined by the influence of soft money. The soft money loophole is the primary culprit for the abuses that Congress has spent millions of dollars to investigate. Through the soft money loophole, a single donor can give unlimited amounts of money to influence Federal elections. Soft money circumvents nearly a century of campaign finance law. The bipartisan freshman task force set out to fix the major abuses of the current system. We put our differences aside and created a fair bipartisan campaign finance reform bill, H.R. 2183, the Bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act. It closes the soft money loophole, and it gets elected officials out of the business of raising $1 million special interest contributions. It is fair. It is bipartisan. Mr. Speaker, the freshman bill must be allowed to come to the House floor without any poison pills. An antilabor bill is not bipartisan reform, it is a poison pill, and poison pills are used to kill campaign finance reform. Mr. Speaker, the freshmen deserve a vote on H.R. 2183.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, health care is in transition. Private and public purchasers of health care are turning to managed care. Today, more than 160 million Americans are in managed care plans. The shift to managed care has implications for health care quality. Managed care must be more than managed cost. On the cover of today's Washington Post is a story about a woman who fell from a cliff while hiking. She had fractures to her skull, arm and pelvis. Her HMO refused to pay her hospital bills, saying she had failed to obtain preauthorization. Only after several court battles did the HMO pay anything for this woman's care. This is unacceptable. Individuals must have access to and payment for emergency care in any situation that a prudent layperson would regard as an emergency. Every American deserves quality care. Managed care reforms are necessary to ensure that managed care is quality care.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Democrats' education agenda which will be unveiled tomorrow. It calls for modernizing schools and reducing class size by hiring new teachers. To prepare our students for the future, we must not only increase the number of teachers, but also improve the quality of teachers. I intend to introduce a bill this week which provides scholarships or stipends for outstanding graduate students enrolled in teacher training programs in math and science. These students would then be obligated to teach math or science for 3 years in an urban or rural public secondary school or repay their stipends. Among 25 nations, U.S. students ranked 12th and 9th respectively in math and science skills. Almost 50 percent of these students were taught by teachers who did not prepare in those fields. We can do better. I urge my colleagues to recruit and reward future math and science teachers for American children.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here today to talk about probably the worst natural disaster ever to hit the State of Maine. But the ice storm we experienced early in January of this year did not affect Maine only; it also affected New York State, Vermont and New Hampshire, and we had never seen anything like it. I want to use this opportunity to explain what happened in the State of Maine. Some of my colleagues, including Congressman Baldacci from the Second District of Maine, are here. We expect others to join us in a little while. We are trying to convey a sense of what it was like, what happened, and why there remains a need for a supplemental appropriation to deal with the enormous costs of this particular disaster. Today, those of us who went through this ice storm in Maine, we think of and our hearts are with those people in Florida and those people in California who have recently gone through a similar kind of natural disaster, those who are dealing with the issues of tornadoes in Florida and the floods and storms out in California. The ice storm hit Maine on January 7, and the effects of it lasted for about two weeks. It was an unusual event, because in fact the storm itself did not last that long, but the ice stayed. This photograph to my right will give you some sense of what the storm looked like. Here we have a utility pole, basically snapped off, the wires still attached, and all around are trees laden with ice. This storm, of course, extended up into Canada. Many people saw some of those Hydro Quebec transmission poles, huge steel girders, simply bent over as if they were toothpicks. That is one photograph. Here is a second photograph, the same kind of shot, showing a utility pole snapped off at the top, branches all around. Those of us who traveled throughout the State during the ice storm noticed that the hardwood trees all across a very broad band, about a 40 mile band running up through the State of Maine, the hardwood trees, many of them were snapped off within 25 to 30 feet of the top. So this was a storm the effects of which came down. It was not a flood, it was not a landslide, but the effects came down from the top. As some people said, this was a storm designed by Mother Nature to take out the utility infrastructure in Maine, and that is what it did. I have a number of experiences that I want to share. The people of Maine really pulled together in a very helpful and productive way. Like John Baldacci, I went to a great number of shelters. The shelters were put together sometimes by the Red Cross, sometimes just by local volunteers, but typically they would be set up in a high school gymnasium or some large room. I will never forget what I saw there, because on one end of the room there might be some older people, some of them perhaps on oxygen, who were simply trying to cope with the storm. At another end there would be smaller children being cared for by their parents. In the middle there might be a soccer game, and the kids who were between 6 and 13 might be playing soccer. But what I will always remember are the faces of the teenagers. Many of them did not have school for two weeks, and they were there volunteering in a shelter, perhaps the first extended volunteer effort that they had ever made. They were cutting carrots, carrying blankets, setting up cots, making sure the elderly were taken care of, and they had a pride and enthusiasm in their faces that really said it all. We people of Maine like to think of ourselves as independent people, as self-reliant people, but we needed each other during this ice storm, and we needed the rest of the country. That is why I will never look at television pictures of what happens in Florida or what happens in California again without understanding how important it is for people in this country to pull together when there is a natural disaster in one part of the country. We all need to help each other. It is part of what we do as members of this great national community. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I will yield to my good friend and colleague from the Second District of Maine, Congressman Baldacci. I have the small district, and Congressman Baldacci has the largest district in Maine, the largest district east of the Mississippi. He had more trees, but an equal number of people affected.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman, the photograph we have right here is another one that the Portland newspapers took. They did an excellent job of covering this storm. They put out a supplement titled ``When Maine Froze Over.'' This photograph says it all, in many ways. There are downed trees, downed power lines. There were people that the gentleman talked to and certainly that I talked to who could not get out of their homes for several days because there were downed power lines and downed branches. As the gentleman knows, people in Maine, sometimes we live down little dirt roads, and off to the side, where you kind of like to be tucked away in the woods sometimes. The result was that when the whole electric grid went down, people were without power all through the State. In fact, that is one thing that might be worth showing right now. We have talked about what it was like and how severe this storm was. But just to give an example, on January 8 this chart shows 275,000 households were without power. We have 1.2 million people in the State of Maine. At one time or another 600,000 people were without power. Some of these people were without power for up to 2 weeks. I can tell the Members that from all I heard, that the first night or two in the shelter might have been kind of exciting. The seventh and eighth nights were not. People who were out of their homes for that length of time really, really suffered. The other point I think I would make, the stories are wonderful. The gentleman heard and I heard stories of people who got generators and they put the generator on the back of a pickup truck and drove around from home to home, hooking the generator up and running it for about 3 hours to keep the home warm so that the pipes would not burst. That kind of action really prevented a much more severe reaction, because it was well below freezing, obviously, and we could have had major plumbing problems, in addition to all of these. What this chart shows is how gradually, over a period of time, the number of customer outages were brought down. But the stunning thing about this chart is the number that you begin with, 275,000 households. Gradually it was brought down day by day until it was 2,000 on the 23rd of January, and then we got hit again, particularly along the coast, which had not been hit so hard before, and it jumped right back up to over 75,000. So this gives us some sense of the number of people who were affected. I have to say this, one of the reasons that this number goes down the way it does is that we had help from all across the country, all across the country. We had new utility poles that were shipped to Maine from Oregon and Washington. We had electric crews coming to Maine from Delaware and Maryland and New Jersey and North Carolina and South Carolina, and Central Maine Power, which normally has just under 100 utility crews available, at the peak of this storm had 1,000 crews out there clearing away the debris, the trees, repairing the wires, doing all of those things that they needed to do, 1,000 crews. Obviously, most of them came from outside of the State of Maine.

Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman from New York. That is a terrific story. It is that kind of spirit that the storm brought out in people all across this region. Mr. Speaker, as the storm moved from New York, it went over to Vermont. I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) for his comments. We are back to this photograph that I had up here before, just again to show the type of damage inflicted by the storm. I want to take just one minute to give people a sense of how different this ice storm was than anything that had ever hit the State of Maine in the past. This chart shows the comparison of the ice storm of 1998 with Hurricane Bob in 1991 and Hurricane Gloria in 1985. Those are the two other major, major storms that took out electric power. In phase one of the ice storm of 1998, 340,000 customers lost power. In phase two, it was 75,000. So we have a total of well over 400,000. Just about half that for the two prior hurricanes. But look at the feet of cable that needed to be replaced. Two million feet of cable line needed to be replaced as a result of this storm, whereas only 52,000 feet of cable needed to be replaced with Hurricane Bob. We had 2,600 telephone utility poles that had to be replaced. Telephone utility poles do not snap easily. That is pretty basic. We have never seen anything like this at all. Transformers, 4,000 had to be replaced compared to 158 when Hurricane Bob struck in 1991. The number of customers who reported an outage, here it was basically just about 650,000. We have 1.2 million people in the State of Maine. That was 649,000 customers or households. One hundred twenty thousand by comparison with Hurricane Bob. There simply has been nothing like this in the past in Maine. And as I said at the beginning, this looked as if, it appears to be a storm designed by Mother Nature to take out the electric power grid. One of the frustrations with the existing FEMA law and the existing resources are that the utility ratepayers in Maine may be looking at a substantial rate increase to pay for this storm because we have investor-owned utilities in the State of Maine and not community-owned electric utilities. And the result is that part of what we are asking for is some relief for those ratepayers. We are not suggesting that investor-owned utilities should make a profit from an ice storm. They cannot. They will not. We will not let it happen. But it is fair when disaster relief would be available for certain kinds of customers from rate increases that it be available for customers in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York who are looking at significant rate increases simply to pay for a natural disaster that is unlike anything we have ever seen before. That is really the reason why we are here talking about this storm, making sure that people all across this country understand that there is a great need for a supplemental appropriations bill to provide additional disaster relief, not just for Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont and New York, but also from what we can say on our television every day now in Florida and in California. Mr. Speaker, with that, let me say one more thing. I just want to praise the media in Maine. The newspapers provided extensive coverage, but in addition to the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army doing everything they could, the radio and TV talk shows basically devoted substantial time, in a couple of cases around-the-clock coverage, so that people could call in and tell their stories and ask for help. That was true of radio and TV talk shows. The Portland TV stations coordinated on a telethon to raise money for the Red Cross. There was a terrific response. And all across the State in Bangor and throughout the State, people really pulled together. So we can be proud of Maine, but we also know that we need some assistance from the rest of the country. With that, I yield back to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Baldacci).

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all of my colleagues for being part of this special order. I want to end this with a small story about Bridgeton, Maine. I went up to Bridgeton, Maine, which was hit as hard as any other part of the State of Maine, and there was a woman there who owns a restaurant. She kept it open 24 hours a day for over a week to help feed the utility workers. The utility workers, when I went and talked with them at CMP, the central main power station there, they came from New York and they came from North Carolina and South Carolina and Virginia and Delaware and Maryland, and the people of Maine were very grateful. Maine people pulled together. We dealt with the worst natural disaster in our experience. We recognized that we are one community in our State and we pulled together and acted that way. But we also know that this country is one community, that we have to help each other and that that is why we will be asking for assistance through a supplemental appropriations bill.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, we are back in session and some of the stories in the paper are the same old stories. There are stories about too much money in politics, about investigations that go on and on. The Washington Post editorial this morning said it well. Many of the Senate Republicans who have criticized the Democratic fund-raising in 1996 will now vote against significant campaign finance reform. We cannot let that happen in the House. We need a campaign finance reform bill on the floor of this House in March. It should be a bipartisan bill. The Republican majority has been questioned as to whether or not they are really serious about campaign finance reform, but there are some Republican freshmen who have stood with Democratic freshmen to put together a bill, H.R. 2183, the bipartisan Campaign Integrity Act of 1998. It bans soft money, it improves issue advocacy disclosure, it tightens candidate reporting requirements. That is the bill we ought to bring to the floor of this House, a bipartisan campaign finance reform bill with no poison pills, no effort to get one side or the other, or the backers of one side or the other. We need real campaign finance reform; we need it now.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, this is the last day for one of our most distinguished Members, Ronald Dellums, who has represented Oakland, California, for almost 27 years. Yesterday or the day before there have been some tributes to Ron Dellums. There were so many Members who wanted to step up and speak their piece that some of us simply ran out of time. I did not want to end today, have Mr. Dellums retire or for myself for me to go home without saying a few words on his behalf. I am a freshman on the Committee on National Security on which he has been the former chairman and now the ranking member for the Democratic Party. In the course of my experience with Ron Dellums on the Committee on National Security, I have been struck by several things. He is a ranking member who has been always careful to make sure that he takes part of his time and allocates it to newer Members. He has forgone questioning witnesses on his own to make sure that new Members have a chance to ask questions themselves. Throughout his management of that committee, throughout his management of the minority, he has been very careful to show respect for others because he cares for others. Today when he spoke here in the well of the House for the last time, he talked about learning the lessons of patience and the lessons of humility during his 27 years here in the House. He treated us all consistently with respect, and those who heard his remarks today will understand how much he values this House and how much he values its traditions. I will also cherish some of my private conversations with Ron Dellums. During one of those conversations, we talked about something that Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. Reverend King once said, the most radical action that anyone can take is to assert the full measure of his citizenship, to assert the full measure of his citizenship. When I go back to Maine and I talk to people in Maine and I want to encourage them to participate in civil society, when I want to encourage them to do everything that they can to participate in this political process, I use that quotation, and I cannot think of anyone who better exemplifies the full participation of his citizenship than Ron Dellums. As a freshman Member when I go back to Maine, I am often asked what I think of other people in this Chamber, how I regard other Members of Congress, how they stack up. And several times in the last few months people have said to me, is there anyone in Congress that you regard as truly great? My answer has always been the same: Ron Dellums. Ron Dellums is a truly great man. This Chamber will miss him.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, Maine people are no strangers to tough winters, but the ice storm we just endured struck a terrible blow. Damage will exceed $100 million. When Vice President Gore toured the State, he said it looked like we had been hit by a neutron bomb. And that is a pretty accurate description. The damage from the ice storm which accumulated over several days snapped off telephone poles. We had 2,500 telephone polls in the State which needed to be replaced. It essentially dropped the forest canopy about 25 feet, the hardwoods broke off at the top, branches broke off, and they took power lines down with them all across the State. Some roads were impassable, blocked by fallen trees and downed power lines. Thousands of people were left in the dark and cold. Mr. Speaker, 600,000 people, one-half of the residents of the State of Maine, were without electricity for some time, and some of them had no power for as long as 2 weeks. As my colleagues can imagine, that can try the patience of even the toughest Yankee who has faced some very tough nor'easters. Thousands of families with no heat found themselves stoking up old wood stoves and huddling in front of fireplaces. For those who depend on well water, no electricity meant no pump, no pump meant no water. Those close to a pond or river hauled water in buckets. No running water meant no toilets, no bathing, no washing dishes or washing clothes. I have to say that all of this produced a very brisk business in chain saws, generators and kerosene space heaters. Not only was the power out, but it was very cold. Our schools were closed for up to 2 weeks in different parts of Maine and daily life was disrupted for thousands of families. During those 2 weeks, I went to a number of shelters in Maine and I want to tell my colleagues, there are some wonderful stories, hundreds of stories of people pulling together to help each other and make a community humanitarian effort. I will never forget certain aspects of my experience going into those shelters. There would be some older people, some on oxygen, on cots on one side of the room, a gym or some other facility, there would be younger kids being taken care of by their parents, there would be a soccer game in the middle of the gymnasium or the shelter, but I will also remember most, what I will carry with me as long as I live, is the look on the faces of the teenagers, many of whom had not volunteered I suspect for anything like this for a long period of time, but there they were, cutting up carrots, moving cots, bringing blankets, helping to move equipment, and making sure that other people were well cared for. It was for them an experience that may help them understand their connection to others and the importance of community. Fire and rescue crews went door to door in some places checking on townspeople, seeing who was okay; others took generators and portable generators and moved around from home to home warming up one home, unplugging the generator, going to another home, trying to keep as many people as possible warm, and as many pipes as possible from freezing. Our radio stations canceled normal programming and took calls around the clock; that was real helpful for building a sense of community, and television stations had special programs and hotlines. We could not have done this without outside help, and I am here today to say thank you to the rest of the country. Let me give some examples of how we were helped. Central Maine Power Company, our major utility, usually has 92 crews, and during the height of our resistance to this storm, we had 1,000 utility crews working. They came from Maryland and Delaware and North Carolina and South Carolina; they came from Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York, they came from all over the East Coast and they provided an invaluable service. One truck had on it a sign on the side: Maine or bust. And they showed up. Some of those folks arrived from North Carolina at the Brunswick Naval Air Station and they were given jackets from L. L. Bean, donated by L. L. Bean. They had worked on utility lines all their lives, some of those people, never in such cold, and I just want to say that we could not have done it without the assistance of people from other States. I would also say that the response of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was outstanding. James Lee Witt came to the State, he and his people did an extraordinary job. The Federal Government stepped forward when it was needed and helped Maine people when they needed it most. I just will say in conclusion, I will never see scenes on television of a flood or hurricane and not remember how the people of this country stood up for people in Maine when we needed help.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, when I ran for this office, I called for a new national initiative on child care. I have visited child care facilities throughout my district. Every morning all across this country parents go to work and trust the most important people in their lives, their children, to someone else. Thirteen million children under age six are in child care during the day. In other homes across the country, children under the age of 6 are glued to the television. They watch TV for hours because they have no place to go, no activities to occupy their time. Too much child care is of mediocre quality, but still not affordable to most working families. This is not because child care providers make big salaries. Help is on the way. The President's proposal provides $21 billion over 5 years to improve child care for America's working families. It doubles the number of children receiving child care subsidies, and it increases the tax credits for families and businesses. Our mission is simple: Leave no child behind; support the President's child care initiative.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the National Beverage Container Recycling Initiative Act. This comprehensive beverage container redemption bill is based on the current redemption law in my State, Maine. There is one simple reason why I believe the Maine bottle bill should be the model for Federal legislation: it works. In fact, Maine leads the Nation with a 96 percent redemption rate on all types of returnables. We have over 20 years experience with our Maine bottle bill. But then, we have over three centuries of experience with the basic Yankee values that underlie the concept of the bottle bill: common sense, frugality and a respect for the environment that sustains us. After enacting the bottle bill through referendum with 54 percent of the vote in 1976, Mainers reaffirmed the law 3 years later when 67 percent of the voters opposed a repeal initiative. In 1989, to build upon the bottle bill's success, the Maine legislature extended deposits to all glass, metal and plastic beverage containers under 4 liters, except for milk cartons. Mainers have grown so accustomed to returning their bottles and cans that recycling has become a way of life. In 1993, Maine people recycled over 425,000 tons of material, which equals one-third of the municipal waste generated statewide, and is 50 percent higher than the national average. Recycling is a $1.6 billion industry in Maine, employing 8,100 people in good jobs paying an average of over $20,000 a year. Beaches and roads in Maine are cleaner, our volume of trash collected has been reduced, and jobs have been created, all due to the bottle bill. My proposal would place a 5-cent deposit on regular beer, wine, and soda bottles. The bill would also extend the 5-cent deposit to so- called new-age beverage containers. These are mostly glass juice containers such as Snapple, Very Fine, and Gatorade. These beverages constitute over 20 percent of the national beverage market. Maine is currently the only State with a deposit and refund on these containers. My bill would also place a 15-cent deposit on wine and spirit containers. As an incentive to implement the bottle bill, retailers would receive a 2-cent per container fee for their participation in the program. Unclaimed deposits would go to the States to help fund their environmental programs. The benefits of a national bottle bill are obvious: cleaner highways, beaches and communities. But there is more to a bottle bill than improving the appearance of our country. Recycling creates jobs, reduces the volume of heavy solid waste at landfills and transfer stations, and saves energy. Moreover, a bottle bill engages all people in the task of protecting our natural resources. I am convinced that a bottle bill modeled on Maine's extraordinarily successful program would benefit the entire Nation. Already nine other States have some form of bottle bill in effect. The 77 million Americans who live in these bottle bill States already recycle more than the rest of the 186 million Americans in States without bottle bills. In 1995, EPA reported that the 10 bottle bill States recycled 1.63 million tons of beverage containers, 300,000 more tons than the 1.33 million tons recycled by the other 40 States combined. As I introduced this important bill, I cannot help but offer an appropriate paraphrase of a timeless political adage, which I hope this legislation will bring to life: ``as Maine recycles, so recycles the nation.''

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I am today introducing legislation which would amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to authorize the Secretary of Education to hold owners of proprietary institutions liable for unpaid refunds of unearned institutional charges. Mr. Speaker, this legislation is necessary to protect students caught in the occasional mismanagement of higher education institutions. Students should be able to attend an educational institution and trust that their tuition and financial aid dollars are being handled properly. When this is not the case, the Secretary should have the power to impose appropriate sanctions not only against the proprietary institution involved, but also against the owner of the institution. This legislation covers owners of for-profit institutions. I want to be clear that public and private non-profit institutions would not be affected by this legislation. Trustees of public and private colleges and universities would not be considered as owners or proprietors of an institution for the purposes of this legislation. My bill will solidify the Secretary's power to hold the owner or owners of a proprietary higher education institution liable for financial losses to the Federal Government and student assistance recipients. Presently the Secretary has the general legislative power to do so, but there is no meaningful mechanism in place to collect funds owed. Therefore, the Secretary has only been able to seek recourse from institutions, not their owners. Many institutions fail to make unearned refunds because they are bankrupt. My bill provides the Secretary with the mechanism to collect the funds. It does so by holding the owner liable in the same way that an individual would be responsible for penalties for the nonpayment of taxes. Taxpayer dollars should be protected to ensure the continued availability and viability of student financial aid programs. A person who has left one proprietary institution without the resources to pay refunds due and owing to students should not be able to start another school without compensating students who are owed refunds. Yet this can happen now. My legislation corrects this problem by requiring that a proprietary institution of higher education may be provisionally certified only if the prospective owner provides the Secretary with financial guarantees. Mr. Speaker, next year when we consider the Higher Education Reauthorization, I expect that interest in this legislation will grow. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation in the months to come.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recall to the Members of this body that last weekend the Speaker of this House indicated there would be a vote on campaign finance reform next spring. But that raises many questions. For example, when next spring? We need a vote as early as possible. It raises the question of what kinds of bills. I urge all Members of this body to insist on a bipartisan bill and bipartisan bills to bring to the floor in order to vote on campaign finance reform. We know where the Republican leadership has been on this issue. The leadership has said we need more money in politics. We do not need to ban soft money, we need to take off all the limits on contributions to individual candidates. That is the wrong approach. We need more controls on contributions in this country, we need less money in politics, and we need to do that by working together with the other side. The people back home want less money in politics. The people back home know that every voter, every contributor, every person who wants to participate in this system is being discouraged by the very large sums of money given to the national parties. We need to ban soft money, we need tighter disclosure on issue ads, and we need a vote early next spring. We will talk a lot less about campaign finance reform if the Republican leadership gives us a vote.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here tonight to share with my friends and Walter's friends our memories of him in his service to this House. The people of California's 22nd District chose well when they chose Walter Capps, and we want to express our sympathy today to, Lois, his partner in life and in politics, and to their children, Lisa, Todd, and Laura. We now know, as freshmen, how we have come to know each other over the past year, and we knew Walter well by now, but if I can take you back to the time when we first came together, we were getting to know each other, telling each other stories about how difficult our own races were. And each of us felt that we had had a particularly difficult race. Then we talked to Walter and we learned that he had been hospitalized for three months and that he had essentially campaigned from his hospital bed and that while in his hospital bed he had written his 14th book. We realized that this was a very extraordinary, gifted and talented man. His kindness, his intelligence, his integrity will always be with us, but I think we will remember especially his joy in this job. And we will remember, as several have said, Lois and Walter walking outside, looking up at the Capitol rotunda all lit up at night, absolutely enthralled with both the responsibility and the joy of being here. Lois, in particular, his partner in life, was thoroughly engaged in the issues that we dealt with and shared his goals and values. I want to just say one other thing. We knew him as a representative here in Congress. But there was a tribute today in the Washington Post written by Lou Cannon which gave some sense of what he was like as a professor. It mentions his class on the Vietnam war and the 800 people who would sign up. And it has a paragraph that I believe you should hear. Lou Cannon talked to people who were in Walter's class. And he said: A Vietnam veteran told me he had left the Capps lecture arm in arm with someone who had dodged the draft. A Vietnamese student wept as she told me that Capps had made her family's sufferings meaningful to her. Nobody quite knew how he did it. I think he was effective because he understood but did not judge. I think he was effective because he understood, but did not judge. That sums up Walter Capps to me in a great many ways. He made his family, his university, his State, and this House better for his presence. He was our friend, and we will miss him. But he has taught us to listen to the better angels of our nature and try to live up to his example.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I come from the other side of the country from Walter and Lois Capps, but Diana and I count as one of the blessings of this job the chance that we had to get to know both Walter and Lois. We will miss him. I am told that his class on the Vietnam war at the University of California Santa Barbara, taught annually, had the largest enrollment on campus and reached more students than any other course in the entire University of California system. Knowing Walter, I believe that. I understand that. He brought a decency, a compassion and honesty about this business to this House that was a credit to him and to the citizens of the 22d District of California. He cared deeply about education, that was his background. But he also, because he came at this time of life that he did, he was not caught up in all of our partisan battles. He really was here to do good, and he did it as long as he was here. I was talking to a member of my staff a moment ago. She said she met him once and he was a kind soul. She said it well. He was a good and kind and strong gentleman, and we will miss him.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentlewoman yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I served as a city counselor in Portland for 6 years and as mayor of the city of Portland. I was also an attorney. So I have a perspective, I think, on this issue that I want to share with other Members. First of all, in cities like mine, we have perfectly appropriate and sound local zoning practices. I would argue that most communities, a great many communities in this area, do very well. Second, I would say this. Although if you look around the country there is a variation between how quickly you can move through State court and how quickly you can move through Federal court, at least in my State it is more time consuming, more expensive to go to Federal court, more complicated. I would just say to Members of this House, we have heard over and over again the urging of Members of this House to push more responsibility back to the State and local governments. We have also heard concerns about the Federal courts. What are we doing with this bill? We are pushing local land use disputes into the Federal courts so they can be dealt with there. That is why the National Governors' Association, the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors are all in opposition to this bill. This bill, as they say, would give parties to a local property dispute immediate access to Federal courts before State and local processes have a chance to work. I do not think that yields better government for us here in the Congress or for our taxpayers back home. The distinguished gentleman from California, the sponsor of this bill, said it would provide equal access to justice for ordinary landowners. I dispute that. I agree with the gentleman from California [Mr. Farr], who said this bill is fast track for developers. We should not pass this bill. The Founding Fathers never intended the Federal courts as the first resort in resolving community disputes among private property owners. Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the letter dated October 21, 1997 from those three groups, the National League of Cities, the National Governors Association, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, talk, talk, talk. That is what we have been doing about campaign finance reform. It is time to vote, vote, vote. That is what we need to do in this House. We would not need to talk so much about campaign finance reform if the Republican leadership of this House would bring this matter to a vote. And if I could just respond briefly to what the gentleman from Maryland was just saying, about we can always do it our own way. When we play tennis, we play by the rules. When we play football, we play by the rules. We do not make up individual rules for individual players. What we need in this body is, we need a vote on a bipartisan campaign finance reform bill. We know enough about what went on in the 1996 elections to know that we need to do something different. I am a member of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, chaired by the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton]. We have spent $3 million for 1 day of hearings; $3 million for 1 day of hearings. And when I was back in my home State of Maine this past week, I heard over and over again the same refrain: We are tired of these investigations. We want to get to the bottom, but we are tired of investigations with no legislation. We want to see Members of Congress do something for us people back home. Now, there are not many Republicans who are on a bipartisan campaign finance reform bill, but my friend, the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Asa Hutchinson, is cochair with me of our freshman bipartisan group. We produced a bill. We went through a 5-month process. It was a bipartisan effort. We ban soft money. We take the biggest of the big money out of this system. We have put together a bill with no poison pills. We took the poison pills out. And I think that is the kind of legislation that ought to come to the floor of this House; that we ought to give every Member of this House a chance to stand up and vote, not just talk about campaign finance reform. I believe that if we do that, if we ban soft money, if we take the biggest of the big money out and we make sure that the parties have enough money to keep going so they can fulfill a role, if we make sure that every group, every group that wants to participate in this system by way of a third-party advertisement has to disclose who they are, has to disclose how much money they are spending. Then the American people will know more about what is going on in this political system and they will be able to deal with it. I sense in my home State a crisis of confidence in this political system. I also sense a real impatience with this Congress for all of the talk and no action. The fact is that if we bring this matter to a vote, then we can move this question ahead. For that reason, Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote against the previous question and bring campaign finance reform to the floor for a vote.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to thank the gentleman for the bill that the gentleman and the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] have put forward. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that bill. I would like to talk a little bit about the science. What the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] was just saying about his child and what he is seeing in a baby that is only now a few days old, we know a lot more about the brain of infants than we ever did before. About 15 years ago, neuro scientists assumed that brain structure was genetically determined at birth. They did not recognize how important a child's early years are and how the experiences of those early years have an effect on the brain itself, and how important environmental conditions are, such as nourishment, care, surroundings and stimulation. The impact of the environment is particularly compelling and it affects how the brain is wired. To explain that, during the first 3 years of life the number of synapses in the brain increase rapidly, all of these connections between different parts of the brain. But then the number of those synapses holds steady through the first decade of life, and those that are not used decline and atrophy and basically disappear. So the formation of neuro pathways in the brain is directly related to the quality of care that young children receive. I went to the White House Conference on Early Childhood Development a few months ago, and one of the speakers said quality child care is brain food. The fact is that too many of our young people today are not being fed enough brain food, and in fact, for too many working parents in this country, the cost of quality child care is really not affordable. It is too high for many of them, and we need to do more than we have. I want to connect that research with some of the stories that I am hearing back in Maine. When I go and talk to superintendents or teachers right now, they are telling me that when kids come to them in kindergarten, there are now an increasing number who seem unable to sit still. They will spit at their classmates, they will fight with their classmates. They are really not ready for school because they are not able to interact productively with other kids in that kind of session. What they are saying is, we need to do something about these kids, because most kids have good parents, most kids get a decent start in life, but there are some, some really who do not. It points out the need as a matter of Federal policy, as a matter of State policy, as a matter of policy for every school board that we look to what happens before kids come to school. In Bath, ME, there is a program called Success By Age Six, and part of that program involves home visits, prenatal, postnatal, the kind of encouragement for parents, the kind of help for parents so that they can be productive in stimulating their children, helping them develop the skills that they will need to get along with adults, to get along with other kids, to start to have the ability and interest in learning to read or start to have the ability and interest in learning mathematical concepts. When we think about our children, when we think about the kind of stimulation they need in those early years, we need a set of Federal, State and local policies that makes sense, that reflects what we know in terms of science and what we know in terms of our own common sense, what we are hearing around the country. I think that is the direction we need to go in.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to raise a fascinating study that I heard about a couple of weeks ago in Sacramento County, California. The study period looked at all of those 9- to 12-year-olds who had been arrested for a crime. During the study period there were 132 9- to 12-year-olds who were arrested for a crime. It turned out that exactly one-half, 66 of those children, were already known to the California Department of Human Services as being alleged victims of abuse or neglect, and half of them were not known to the department. That is very interesting, because in Sacramento County at that time there were 1,100 children between the ages of 9 and 12 who were known to the Department of Human Services as being victims of abuse or neglect. There were 73,900 other children who were not so known. So if we think about the likelihood that someone who has been a victim of abuse or neglect will commit a crime, it is not double or triple or ten times or 20 times or 50 times. On the basis of that study, you are 67 times more likely to commit a crime between the ages of 9 and 12 than a child who is not a victim of abuse or neglect. Every conservative, every person who believes we have to conserve our public money, ought to support investment in children, because dollars put into taking care and improving the lot of kids who are victims of abuse or neglect will pay off a thousandfold down the road.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I came to this Congress from the Portland City Council, 1 year as mayor and 6 years on the Portland City Council. And while I was there, I heard from, I think, almost every person in my district about the significance of high property taxes. I have only been here for 9 months, but I will bet that in the course of the debates in this Chamber over the last few years about education, that no one has stood up and said, ``I am for abolishing the Department of Education,'' or, ``I am for cutting funding for Head Start or other education programs,'' and in the same breath said, ``And I will advocate at the local level for an increase in property taxes to support additional education programs.'' I bet that has never happened, because the same people who would say we want the Federal Government out of education would say also that we are not going to support increases in local property taxes to fund education. The fact is that when it comes to 0 to 3, 0 to 6, the Federal Government is the funding agency. This Government, we already fund Head Start, and, as the gentleman from New Jersey said, we do not provide Head Start for all the kids who need it or for all the kids who qualify according to our regulations. What we have to do is to make sure that we take seriously the problems around this period, 0 to 3, 0 to 6. But it is going to be a partnership between the Federal Government and the State governments and local governments and school boards and the private sector. We cannot do it alone here, but we have to set the goals and urge the people in this country to take this issue seriously.